J Mauldin - Final Solution

I nodded and took the vape pen from her open palm. “Thanks.”

“I talked to father this morning.”

“What did he say?”

Her eyes trailed over the many trophies her father meticulously curated and placed within shadow boxes. “Nothing at all.”

“Was it enough?”

She remained silent and turned to leave, as if ignoring the question. But then she paused, right hand inches from the hatch’s control panel. “You know, we could always just leave. There’s a pair of short range lifeboats aboard. All we’d have to do is sneak off to the cargo bay. Mars is only a few hundred miles below, and I have contacts who could pick us up in skimmers. They could take us somewhere safe no one would find us.”

“You’d never be able to live with yourself. You’d never be able to set the scales right.”

She closed her eyes and a sullen sigh of resignation crawled out of her. “You’re right. I just—I was thinking of that sunset you spoke of. I was thinking of having a few more years with someone special before the end. I want to be your companion, sitting on the hillside beneath the mountains as a sea of black turns blue, then white, dust storms dancing in the sun’s distant shafts of life-giving luminescence. I want to feel your warmth as the red planet changes, as we make it breathable for all mankind. I want others to see it.”

“This isn’t the end.”

“Not the end.” She took a deep breath from in front of the hatch and depressed the button. “Here we go.”

We stepped through the portal, shifting from informal to formal like a switch, duty radiating from us both like a yellow giant star. I would have liked nothing more than to have run away with her, but I couldn’t. These people had suffered with us, died with us. We had to see it through to the end. Love or not, selfish or not, we couldn’t keep from doing what was right. And what was right for now, was to win the battle and change the world. A small task, sure, but we rested upon the fulcrum of change.

We entered the bridge as one, welcomed by the sound of hurried chatter and bleeping sensors. XO waved a hand and pointed at the main display. I stood at attention at the side of the room, lips sealed and waiting for orders.

The main display showed two predominant images. One, our virtual location with glorious Mars beneath, radioactive scans and spectral analysis beamed to us direct from our network of sensor satellites showing us the Razor’s status. The second, a live video feed from detachable drones flying aloft our ship and pointing down. We were on the night side of Mars, traveling along the equator with the planet’s rotation. The Razor was orbiting towards us from the dayside, approaching us from behind. From the drone’s view, the Vindicator , a white series of cans stuck together with circular solar wings, could be seen zooming just above the ultra-thin atmosphere of Mars, red and orange mountains among the vast windswept plains flowing beneath her like a river. I could just make out the thread of the space elevator at Arsia Mons a few thousand miles ahead, leading down onto the dark surface where it met with the bright dotted lights of home.

“Sitrep?” Liberty asked, sounding very much like her father in tone.

“Fifty-five minutes till we’re in line of sight,” XO replied. “We have twenty-five functioning two-stage batteries, all set for the fight, not that we’ll get the chance to fire that many at close range. Auxiliary power is sufficient to see us through the battle if solar is rendered inoperable. Soft suits are being distributed right now in case of decompression.” He pointed to a security display, showing both Griffin and Kelly passing out soft suits to every crewmember on board. “Your father and Graham have been locked up in Crew 2 as requested. That’ll give Griffin, Kelly and Goddard free movement during the fight. Don’t need opposing ideals coming out during battle. Graham’s got a mouth on him.”

Liberty nodded. “Excellent.”

“We’re about to bring weapons up and run a test.”

“Goddard,” Captain Liberty Fryatt, not Lib, turned to address me. “See that test through.”

“Yes, Ma’am.” I tipped my head, saluted, and was off. I was starting to get used to this, Liberty being Captain and all. I liked it—a lot.

I puffed on the vape pen as I made for the back of the ship, blowing smoke into my path. It helped to calm my nerves, giving me something to focus on other than my fears. Several simple things happened in slow motion. I saw a small group huddled together in Crew 1, their heads bowed in prayer. Doc patted me on the back and gave me a thumbs up. Devins wished me good luck. Higgins gave a salute and smiled.

“Give ’em hell, Goddard,” Brix said, sliding on his soft suit.

“Only because you said so,” I told him.

“Damn right.”

“Sir! Get your suit yet?” Griffin asked as I entered weapons storage and control, my station for the remainder of our engagement.

“Yeah, thanks. It’s over there by the wall.”

“Time to get suited up?”

“Not yet, we have plenty of time before we’ll need them. The cabin will remain pressurized. Where’s Kelly?”

She hopped up on a metallic box and shrugged. “Passing out a couple more suits and he’ll be done. Five minutes, no more.”

“You seem a little chipper, all things considered.”

“Maybe.” She cocked her head to the side and winked. “But like you said once before, it’s just another alarm.”

I narrowed my eyes at her but said nothing. She was being brave and I didn’t want to take that away. “By the numbers, Griffin.” To business.

“Yes, sir.”

I held up my watch, wrist in. “Bridge, you there?” The screen before me displayed the same information as the bridge’s, only that mine had a third status window. Inside the frame it showed the icons of all twenty-five nuclear batteries full with green light. They were ready to go.

“Copy, Goddard,” XO called back.

“Standby for firing test.”

Griffin hopped down and began working, fingers skittering across the keys of the controls like a pianist. “Engaging counter rotation. Locking armature. Releasing fire control to the bridge.” She pressed the release button and frowned. “Releasing fire control to the bridge.” Nothing happened. She pressed the button again and again, harder each time. Her face screwed up and turned white. “Releasing… Goddard? Sir?”

I hit the button, having the same result, and felt sick. No response. Not even an error message. Not even the satisfying click of a tactile button.

“Something wrong?” XO buzzed from my watch. “Kelly, just put the suits over there…”

“Not sure, sir.” I fought it best I could, but my wrist was trembling. “It’s not letting us release the firing control.”

“Can we control weapons from there?”

I flipped a couple switches, trying to reroute manual control to the weapon’s room. We’d done this during training exercises, but never combat. No luck there either. I couldn’t even get to a command prompt from our interface. Nothing would work. It was as if the system was locked up, a kernel failure or stop error, not just a lock out.

“Shit,” I mumbled.

Griffin scrubbed her lips with finger tips. “What’s wrong? Bad hard disk? Ram sticks go out? A full diagnostics will take hours. Too long.”

“We need to get into the core right now. I hate it, but we’re gonna have to do a hard reset. That’s all I can think to do. Maybe one of the drivers has gotten corrupted, maybe an old firmware copy loaded during a power cycle. I have no idea, and we don’t have the time to fuck around with it.”

She raked a hand through her hair, random, sweaty strands sticking up on end. “Alright, but I might have a way around it. I’ve got some backups on my tablet.”