J Mauldin - Final Solution

Foolish bravery seeped into my spine. “Why didn’t it work out for us?” I ventured. “I mean, we were close, we had so much fun and loved so many of the same things. Remember the band Europe we used to crank up while racing? Alice Cooper? Poison? You grew up on that shit too. Lex’s rock class was a blast. Hot damn, we nearly got kicked out every day for being too loud.”

She let out a long breath and tugged the cuffs of her uniform. “Look, David, you’re great and all, but, well—you haven’t been afforded the same opportunities as I have.”

My mouth went dry. I had a feeling this was coming. Even though she’d always acted like someone from my neck of the red world, she’d always had an air of class which couldn’t be covered up no matter how much dirt she was caked in.

“Ha. You mean money.” I closed my eyes and swallowed my anger. Just because I was born with less didn’t make me worth less. “But what does money matter out here? I hardly had enough credits to get a few beers back on Mars, but here I keep this ship alive. They say money is power, but look, the guy with no money sure has a lot of power. If I don’t do my job, we die. Pop the top on this can, lungs go out the ass. It’s over.”

One of the hatches leading into the arboretum opened with a clang of metal on metal. The heavy boot steps that followed had to be Dour Face, Security #3.

“I gotta go, Master Engineer.” She stood up and looked over her shoulder, pressing her uniform flat with her palms. Her expression hardened. “You best get back to work, or I’ll have to tell the Captain you’re slacking off with idle chit chat. I hear you’ve got quite the record on citations right now. We can’t have one of our most valuable men thrown in the brig. What would happen to our little Coke can?”

I nodded, feeling a trifle sick. “Yes, Lieutenant Fryatt.”

As she left I stared at the silly rubber gasket wrapped around my finger. I wondered if she still had hers. They’d been our gifts to one another after wrecking Mr. Harrison’s skimmer, part of a pneumatic pump system found in the dirt. They were about all that was left of the damn thing, well, except the door handle.

“No way she kept it,” I mumbled, and went back to replacing filters. “And it’s damn foolish for me to think otherwise. That girl’s too good for you, David, get used to it. You’re shit and you’ll always be shit.”

I wallowed in my state for a while, dwelling on many regrets, and not all in the love department. There are moments in life, crossroads where one choice can change everything. I could think of two such instances, and in both moments I’d made the wrong decision. I told myself I’d done what had to be done at the time. I knew Dad would agree, but that brought no solace. I deserved nothing good for my choices.

Back in Crew 1, César was kicked back on his bunk watching videos from off the Sol Net on his tablet. A pretty girl of teenage years with his likeness was smiling wide on screen.

“ Gracias a dios, hermano . We got your credits. Father has an appointment with a specialist next week. They think it might be an autoimmune disorder. His spirits are high, but he’s just weak, no way he can work. Quiet, Linda!” A girl screamed off camera, and César’s sister vanished for an instant. “You left me alone with this little cucaracha. Tiny pain in my ass, she is. Got me a shadow twenty-four seven. Should have never shown her that stupid Mickey Mouse show; she’s been yellin’ Toodles all day.” Both his sisters laughed boisterously, and so did he.

Being in the service was all that kept his sisters and their invalid father fed. The Brethren said that they took care of their people, but at slave level wages and one hundred percent inflation, it was damn near impossible to survive in the Martian colonies without criminal actions of one kind or another. César was Martian born, but his family had been part of the Colombian lottery for new settlers in the 2040s. They’d been promised a better life than their crime-ridden country, freedom from narcos, and had had one for a while. Then, the political scene shifted and once again they were part of the destitute. As soon as César was old enough, he joined up so that his sisters wouldn’t need to follow a path like he had. He wanted them to have real lives, not get used up and hung out to dry by bored rich folk from up in the Estates.

Sometimes I wondered if the government was just trying to cull the herd, having moved too many of us from Earth too quickly. Or if, as they’d often told us, the war really had tanked the economy. I wasn’t sure what to believe. Trust was a luxury I couldn’t afford, and the balance on my account was overdrawn.

I knocked on the open hatch to the bridge. Sixteen days had passed, not bad for internal bureaucracy. My request for extra power had finally been heard, and for once, I was called forth to discuss it in person. What a dangerous idea.

“Goddard, come in,” XO said from his place in the Captain’s chair, a cushy armed affair with a hidden five-point harness and two cup holders. I stepped inside the room and gave a salute. He returned the formality rather hurriedly. “I received your request over the requisition of Photon Focusers in the belt.”

“Very good, sir. The word?”

“Currently, our network consists of only ten operational focusers. One took meteorite damage a month back and two others went offline for unknown reasons. It’ll be a year before we can fix them. The time on the remaining ten has already been purchased over the next six months by a Russian company, Bear Logistics. I wish we had dedicated focusers for military ops, but they’re too expensive not to lease them out when not in use. Just another way for our faction to bring home the bacon.”

I nodded. The solar system was becoming a pretty busy place if ten photon focusers were booked for the next six months. “They must be trying to get their cargo back to Earth faster than usual. Aren’t those are usually reserved for colonist ships?”

“Indeed they are. Bear is getting a big bonus this year for their haste, which is why you submitted this request to begin with, yes? You’re afraid at sixty percent power output we’re cutting a bit too close for our potential acceleration.”

“Yes, sir. We need more power. Our current output is sitting around five hundred kilowatts. I’d like to see more like six-fifty or seven hundred. That’ll give us another forty percent thrust to work with if need be. I’m afraid if we have to make excessive course corrections under fire we’ll arrive too late.”

XO sucked on his teeth and peered off to the side. “The Captain and I have had long discussions over this and agree. How many Focusers will be required to beam the necessary sunlight to our arrays and be at full capacity?”

“Like I said in my request, this far out, three. At one or two AU it’s not a big deal.”

“That will take some doing,” he flipped through his tablet and frowned, “but so long as the ships who’ve purchased that time aren’t decelerating, I don’t see any major issue. We’ll buy them out and redirect their streams to the Vindicator .”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Anything else, Goddard?”

I glanced around the room, looking for Liberty. She wasn’t present. “No, sir.”

He waved a hand at the hatch. “Dismissed.”

As I left the bridge, Smith took hold of my sleeve, whispering, “Don’t screw this up, Goddard.”

“Didn’t plan on it,” I said, jerking my arm free.

Two years I’d been on this ship and hadn’t let anyone down when it came to serious matters. I got tired of this air of officers, thinking that because they’d grown up privileged it made them better than me. That their shit didn’t stink. That was what this was about; not my incompetence, but their insecurity. They didn’t like the idea that some dusty bottom dweller held their fate in his hands.