“He must have been talking out his ass. He tends to do that sometimes.”
“Normally I’d agree, but I don’t think so. He was earnest in his meaning.”
Liberty’s watch spoke. “Their response is coming in.”
She lifted her wrist. “We’ll be right there.”
“Whose response?”
“The Razor’s.”
I shook my head at the notion, then proceeded to the bedside table, taking a drink from our former Captain’s decanter of whiskey before washing it down with Coca-Cola. Hot damn, it was fine, like liquid sex and lottery winnings.
“Feel better?” she asked from the doorway, her lips forming a sly grin.
“I’ll be back for the rest. You can damn well bet on it.”
She took hold of my right hand and rubbed it gently before placing it flat over her heart, my palm curving around her breast. “May not be gin, but would you like some company later to help polish that off?”
This was her way of apologizing, and would have to be enough. Actions were more powerful than words, and she was all action. “I’d like that.” I took her hands and kissed the tops of them, putting my forehead against hers and taking a deep breath. “Come on, let’s see what the Axis has to say. Perhaps God has softened their hearts to see reason.”
I took a seat at the edge of the room as far away from William Fryatt as possible. Dour Face sat between us, keeping his stun stick close at hand, a hard eye fixed on our prisoner. I couldn’t shake the idea that the other shoe was about to drop. There might not have been a spy aboard, and Fryatt’s intent might have been to throw me in the brig for intermingling fluids with his daughter, but there was more to this. My incarceration felt—too convenient.
“Here it is,” the Comm told Liberty. “What the? But this doesn’t make any sense.”
“Let me see that.” Liberty sidled up beside her, confusion growing as she scanned the message. She read it aloud, “Vindicator, we did not attack first. Your ship was headed for Europa, and therefore, we set to intercept you near Mars. We clearly understand your intention to turn our colonies to slag. We have detected radioactive materials on board your vessel far in excess of nuclear batteries alone. You are carrying fusion bombs. Therefore, there is no resolution that can be met but for your ship’s destruction.”
The former Captain twisted in his cuffs.
“Wait. They were responding to our move? Not us responding to theirs? Father? Explain.” Liberty turned, a worried slant in her expression. She was putting pieces together not at my disposal. I had a feeling I knew the direction this was going. “Did you provoke them? Tell me, father. Did you?” The heart shaped birthmark on her neck flashed red as it filled with hot blood.
William Fryatt averted his increasingly sunken eyes, finding his bindings were far more interesting than addressing his daughter’s question. XO cleared his throat and looked angry, but kept his cool, waiting on Liberty to lead the interrogation.
Smith elbowed me in the ribs and handed over a tablet displaying sensor data from our last scan of the Axis’s ship, the Razor.
I swallowed at what I saw. “Is this accurate?”
“It is,” she replied, fingers rubbing the piercings of her right ear.
“You provoked them, didn’t you?” Liberty’s hands came up to cover her mouth. “You told them we were going to attack. Tell me it’s not true. Damn it, tell me!”
William Fryatt straightened his back and raised his chin in defiance. “A father must do what he can to protect his daughter.”
The room became a vacuum as absolute as the void. Even our computers took a brief respite, their constant white noise retreating from the gravity of the moment.
“How does this protect me?” Her open hands became fists. “Putting me trapped inside a can to be shot at day and night? You could have left me on Mars, and I would have been just as safe, if not safer. I had a personal security detail. Not even gangs like the Gatos would have messed with me.”
“But the Axis would have attacked us eventually. Our probes detected thousands of centrifuges enriching radioactive materials for battle. They were building bombs by the freighter load, and weren’t sending them back to Earth. That left only one purpose.”
“Are you so sure?” I cut in with a voice like a razor, slicing his intentions in two. I raised the tablet and pointed at the screen. “Our most recent sensor data shows little radioactive material on board the Razor compared to the start of our mission. If they were carrying bombs, they’d still have high readings. But they’ve been firing often, haven’t they? More than what we would have expected. And each time they fire…”
“They have less radioactive materials,” Liberty finished, giving me an appraising look.
“There’s more to the message coming in,” Comm reported. “You will not win a face to face conflict. Our vessel is a gunship, not a bomber like yours. We have confirmed this information to be valid, and we shall see you in hell.”
The Axis never had any intention of bombing Mars, even if they had the means. Only in protecting themselves from the likes of us. We were the villains of this narrative and never knew it. The Captain had orchestrated this to see an end. He had been the one to set events in motion.
“You did this,” Liberty said, her nose an inch away from her father’s. “Why? Why! Were you aware they had no bombs? No weapons of mass destruction?”
“No!” he shouted, spit dribbling over his lips like an animal. “I wasn’t aware, and after what happened on Ceres, I wasn’t taking chances. As soon as you were safely aboard, a message was dispatched that we were coming for them. I took hold of a small window of opportunity where the planets were aligned just right, and forced us down a path leading straight at their home with Mars in its center. I had no intentions of slowing as we approached our home, but to try and take those bastards out before they hit orbit. But if they had had bombs or no bombs, it wouldn’t have changed a thing. All important personnel were moved into secret bunkers on the southern pole weeks ago. Let the Axis drop their payload and turn Arsia Mons to dust, we’ll finish off their only true foothold and return as heroes of the Brethren, soldiers of a righteous war. This system would then have been ours! Ours! And you, you would be safe. Safe from war and moral depravity. I might not could have saved your mother, but I thought I could save you.”
She slapped him across the face with an open palm. “Never speak of mother. She was a peacemaker, not some militaristic warmongering political puppet.” Liberty’s voice became deadly quiet. “It was about the future earnings, wasn’t it? You would let our people die for nothing, but for us to become murderers and corporate puppets. Let our children perish for dollars, only to put the bomb to theirs and eliminate the competition outright. There’s good reason the Axis hates us, and this is it. We push ourselves into places they’ve rightfully taken as their own, impose our moral and religious doctrine on the edge of a knife, forcing them into trade deals with Earth bound countries who wish to see us all suffer for their own profits.”
“Traitorous words,” William Fryatt growled, “from a traitorous daughter. But that’s a father’s love for you. Even if you’re not worth saving I still wished to try. I would burn the red world to see it done, even now.”
Liberty’s chin shook. “In the Crystal Caves you taught me that all life was precious, even those we don’t agree with.” She freed a necklace from beneath her shirt. My eyes went wide. She fingered the rubber gasket dangling from its chain. “What happened to that man?”