Chapter Thirty Four
Lisbet was in a VR cage. She had the faceplate on and a set of headphones over her ears. She was aboard a solarship and she was supposed to be in cryostasis, but she and Beck had refused to be put to sleep. They were accompanying the mercenaries from Io back to the Jovian system, though Lisbet was not going to Io. She had been told that Io was not a great place to visit by Iona who proclaimed noisily that if she was going to the Jovian system, she wouldn’t set foot on Io or Europa. She would only go to Callisto and Ganymede because they were the only civilized places. She refused to acknowledge that Amalthea was a place where people lived.
Except Europa was exactly where Gage and Iona were taking Lisbet and Beck. Lisbet had had her freedom returned to her, along with a bonafide offer from Beck that she could divorce him if she wanted to.
Lisbet refused.
After all, after everything that happened, he wasn’t going to prison. The governing body of Mars was so pleased by the way things had turned out that Beck was able to drop every pretense. They had found that roughly four thousand people had died in the first space battle. The government huffed. That many people have died on Earth during a tsunami. Besides, they wouldn’t have died if they hadn’t attacked the Mammoth ships.
Through scans of the planet, information provided by Invocation, and search parties that explored tunnels, they had found and gutted every pleasure palace except for the palace complex of Carlos Beltrose. In the end, he had extended permission for every person in his pleasure palace who wanted to evacuate to do so. They learned from the survivors that most of Beck’s family had refused to come out and had died in the collapse.
The miners who were woken from cryostasis to claim credit for their crimes envied them.
Antar died, but that ended up being because Tiffania killed him. However, no one was very interested in prosecuting her. He had broken all sorts of laws by replacing her bracelet and that was still on her body when she was interviewed and allowed to retell her side of the story. She had all the proof she needed to claim self-defense. She was released from her contract and she was on her way back to Earth where she would be able to start a new life with the money Antar had paid for her.
Carlos and Hessia evacuated. When Carlos gave the reason why he had decided to evacuate when so many of his other family members had not, he answered that he knew Vantz was Beck and he believed in his son.
What was going to happen to them exactly was unclear. The government was still accepting testimonies from his slaves explaining what he had done.
Beck visited and had his father removed from cryostasis for just long enough for him to thank him for what he did. As Vantz had explained, none of the other miners had come forward, allowing their slaves to be saved.
“Did you blow up our lives just for that one girl who died?” Carlos asked from under his untrimmed eyebrows.
Beck shrugged. “I don’t know, but if I did, wouldn’t that be wonderful? It would mean she didn’t die for nothing.”
“And would you have killed yourself if I didn’t send Lisbet into orbit?” his father persisted.
Beck looked everywhere in the room, except at this father. “I may have. I may have thought that there was a chance I would die when I set that rocket to explode next to my head after we spoke and I cut the transmission. Sleeping Beauty Inc.’s literature stated what force the cryochamber would take and the math looked sound, but it might have been a defective chamber. I might have died when I pulled that stunt, but if Lisbet lived… my setting it off early to put additional pressure on you would have been worth it.”
Carlos shook his head. He didn’t understand. “Hmph! My heart is cut in two,” he growled. “Half of me wants to kill you for what you did and the other half of me is proud that you daredeviled your way to the top under my very nose because you wanted to change something and found the power to do it. You’re going to be in the history books now.”
“You too,” Beck informed him.
“Does everyone know you’re Vantz now?” his father asked dully.
“Yeah. Every name they used to call him, they call me now.”
“So, you’re Ares, the god of war, who conquered an entire planet, doing something Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar were not able to do.”
“Actually, they’re changing the reckoning of calendars on Mars. Now everything before the terraforming is called BB for Before Beckett and everything after will be called AB for After Beckett.”
His father scoffed. “Is that true?”
“No,” Beck admitted immediately, scoffing at his joke. “But they are changing the reckoning. They just haven’t decided what to call it.”
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The moment hung for a moment before his father asked, “What’s going to happen to me?”
“I don’t know. I’ve filed every single appeal that could be filed to urge the government toward leniency. I’ll get up in any court and say whatever I can to downplay it all. There is one thing you won’t be able to do, which will be living on Mars. They won’t let you back no matter how soft they decide to go on you.”
“Fine. See if I can go to Europa with Hessia. I can still dig and whether I have ever been a good guy is not important when you need a digger.”
“I’ll see what can be done, but it won’t be for a while. I’ve asked them to have your trial last. I hope seeing all the unrepentant miners before you will help your case.”
“Will you be an old man when I wake up?” Carlos asked.
“Maybe.”
When they were finished, Beck said goodbye. Carlos was put back into cryostasis to await his trial.
Beck was able to take credit for what he’d done, and he said what Vantz had done, gave credit to his friends who had helped him create Vantz and to keep him safe while the miners were attempting to assassinate an AI construct thinking it was a person.
Both Beck and Lisbet were given a reward. It was provided by wealth that had been stripped from the pleasure palaces.
Lisbet wanted to check on Cassica and see if she was well in her new marriage. If she was not, Lisbet planned to spend her money buying out Cassica’s contract on Europa. That was why they were heading there.
Beck was with her. At that moment, he was in a VR cage next to her. They were playing Emerald War.
“Playing this game is how I recruited all those guys from the Church of Voynich,” he explained. “They developed this game. It’s all about anti-slavery. All the quests in this game are about saving people. None of them are about making money, winning the prize, or proving how awesome you are. One day, I was lucky enough to be playing with Benediction himself and I told him that I was playing the game to get ready to do it in real life. He was very interested and I told him my plans. Of course, I told him I was Vantz and he was so fascinated by my ideas that I sent him more information and more information until he decided he was on board. It’s pretty easy for him to keep slavery out of Io. No one wants to go there, but don’t let any of the wrecking crews or the boys from the church hear you say that. They’re used to the smell and they think Io is better than other moons. From there, he introduced me to his brother Leviticus, who introduced me to his brother, Testament, who introduced me to his brother, Invocation, who introduced me to their brother, Gage.”
“How many brothers are there?” Lisbet wondered.
“Ten, though not all of them came to help. Apparently, Apostate isn’t really much for leaving his moon, regardless of the cause. Heretic didn’t come. He said his wife was expecting triplets and he had to stay to film it.”
“Really?”
Beck shrugged loud enough that Lisbet could hear his shoulders heave. “That’s what he said. I don’t care that I wasn’t able to get all of them. They’re good guys though. Testament and Leviticus are working with the traumatized slaves. Invocation swears by them, saying we couldn’t get anyone more empathetic if we hired empaths, but none of that stuff makes any sense to me. Invocation says that’s because I’m traumatized too and so trauma on those levels is normal for me. He wants me to block off an entire year so he can work with me, but I don’t know. Ripping open old wounds seems like a waste of time when there is science to be done and sex to have.”
Lisbet agreed with him wholeheartedly and immediately lost interest in their game.
“I don’t know,” Beck went on. “I feel like I’m healed. I wrote those fairy tales. They highlighted the sore spots of my life. I showed them to you and your reaction to them let me know that what I went through wasn’t okay. It made me feel justified in the path I had chosen. And when you knew everything about me, you didn’t just want to comfort me once, you wanted to be with me endlessly, like I was still good enough.”
Lisbet pulled off her faceplate. “You are more than good enough.”
Seeing her disconnected, Beck pulled his faceplate off as well and turned to her. “I just felt like a monster.”
“Surely, you don’t still feel like that,” Lisbet said, the corner of her mouth twisting in apprehension.
“I think I don’t,” he said softly. Lisbet’s hand was on the black padded rail of the VR cage with neon tube lights lighting up the space. He traced the lines of her veins with the tip of his finger. “I think all that is behind me, but then I’m with you, and for a moment, what we’re doing, how we’re touching, how I’m moving, how you’re moving, they’re all the same as from times in the distant past and the moment we’re having is identical to something I’ve burned down, but I still want it with you. It does feel like the past and the present are the same in a moment like that. For a few seconds, it’s like I didn’t give up the old me and, if I feel the way I’m feeling, I would never want to give it up entirely.”
“Sex is weird,” she said reflectively, lacing her fingers with his. “In that one moment when we’re together, everything is inside out. It’s okay if the world is burning. It’s okay if I’m burning with you. In that moment, all of you is open and all of me is open. I wouldn’t want you to think that you needed to remake yourself to be something acceptable to me in the moment when we’re the most honest. If little pieces of your abuse come back to haunt you at that moment, it’s okay. I won’t blame you for it.”
He smiled and drew her close so her head rested against his chest.
“Though I’m not entirely clear why you were so set on me. You were set on me before I even got here,” she said, hearing his heartbeat with her one ear.
“The heart wants what the heart wants, although it was probably the monster in me that wanted you.”
Lisbet pulled away so she could look at him. “Why?”
“Because you would never choose me under normal circumstances. You are nothing like the other women who have been sent my way. Even Charcoal, who was the tamest, was nothing like you.”
He was absolutely right. In her life back on Earth, her father would never have approved of her romance with Beck. Even if there were still huge sums of money involved, her father would have said no. Thus, she would have said no because she wasn’t acting for herself in those days.
“Well,” she said with a mild shrug. “I want to know whether the monster in you was the one who smoked like a stovepipe. I haven’t seen you with a cigarette…” she trailed off, realizing something. “You know, I don’t think I’ve seen you with a cigarette since we woke up from cryostasis.”
“Huh…” he said, licking his lips. “Actually, I completely forgot that I smoked.”
THE END