2503.20 — Shelter #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera

"Ow!" May Ri cried, tightening a screw under the maker, startled into hitting her head.

"Sorry," Reina said, "It's important! Mother won't send the cargoon, but the nisei need to flee Elysium. Their mothers are in danger and are insisting on shelter."

Taking multiple wives— The Decath patriots were implementing it literally with a mass wedding vid-downlink. They'd announced they'd confiscate by force any vehicles landing at their docks.

Mari, squatting beside the spidery device, said, "We women are better prepared than the imports think." Mari, now 17, had implemented universal suit training, secretly in some places.

Reina stood listening, nodding, while gently shaking her little infant son Joyous. He was ebony-skinned like Adrian, not the crème shade of Felice, who seemed to take after Carlos. The nisei hadn't objected to multiple wives; no, they'd reinterpreted. Reina, the Escalante Dome manager and Onēsanue, approved the plan and started pinging women.

With one Martian time zone, 2 am was early morning local, with bright green skies. The cargoon settled into shadows cast by a rocky black crater wall, rotors at idle. Mari in an exoskeleton, a medic, and an assistant jumped to the red sands, having made suit-comm contact with refugees half a kim outside the docks. Suited up in the cockpit with the pilot, May Ri lowered her binocs to point, saying, "There!" Mars green suits. Adults, kids, infants in rescue balloons. Relieved, she added, "According to plan. 10 o'clock."

"Ack!" Mari replied.

Movement caught her eye. She panned left, scanning upslope. Focused. Made no sense: Two men holding bent sticks vertically? Horizontal sticks? "Arrows!" she shouted. "They've got long bows! Your 8—"

They fired.

Mari screamed.

Pointing furiously, May Ri yelled at the pilot, "Get them!"

"With what?"

She shoved the throttle forward.

The pilot lunged, getting them airborne, stating, "No weapons."

"He shot my daughter! Run him over!" May Ri had resisted letting makers make weapons. Long bows! Good idea, she admitted.

"What!?"

"Do it!"

The helieo pitched forward, banked left. With the thin air, them shooting sunward, the men didn't immediately notice.

"Lower! Lower!"

When the pilot flinched, she clapped a gloved hand over his. The bowman ought have dived aside, but she heard a thump. Front hyper nacelle. The second man scrambled to a rock outcropping. Collision avoidance braked them, lifted them. The pilot spun them around, looking. "Where is he?" the nisei cried.

"Mari?" Her skin cooled. "Anyone see him?"

Not Mari: "Pulling himself up on your running board."

"Pitch us!" May Ri cried.

The helieo waggled. Then: "He's up!"

And could climb into the cabin!

She rushed rearward, heart racing, stomach clenching. She had no time to don the exoskeleton. In cross-section, the cargoon was }O{ shaped, the upper a VTOL and rotor downdraft shield, the lower landing skids. Handholds, yes, but not easy to shift as the helieo waggled and pitched. A hammer slid and clanked a bulkhead. She grabbed it. The spring doors, timered open, could be opened from the outside. With Mari down, the man could fight the refugees boarding, or would fight her if inside.

"Where?"

"Three meters to the door."

Handholds at the door. Ok. Swing out? Hit a hand? Snow his visor?

"He's close!"

Fist tight on the hammer, the other grasping the hatch bar, she braced a foot and made like a flag as the wind changed. She swung the hammer.

They belly-whomped.

Caught him reaching.

Tall, his arm warded her attack, but kept him from grappling her. She swung again, the hammer grazing his suit. She kneed him and curved the trajectory up at the visor at the same time; the weak hit barely left a white dent. As he jerked away, she kicked his chin, then swung for his other hand.

He jerked it back—letting go.

"Pitch us!"

The ship slammed her into metal, then flung them both. She cried as her wrist wrenched. The downdraft caught him, swatted him down like a toy to the rocks.

Bruised, despite the suit, wrist screaming, shoulder sprained, she swung back in. They boarded the refugees. The medic treated the arrow in Mari's right arm, cutting open the suit in the pressurized cabin.

May Ri hovered, despite the blood, despite the women, some crying.

Mari growled. "Momie!"

Back in the cockpit, she mused she'd get charged with two more murders. Reaching for her book plate, she punched in ¡PanDORA! backwards, thumbed the screen in three spots, and released her software lock on the maker base system she'd designed. It could now make Martian weapons.

They had opened the box, not her. She hoped not to regret her actions, like the mythical woman.

#RSMarsNeededWomen 20

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2503.23 19/ — Intersectional #Writever #Mars #SpaceOpera CW: Crude Language

"No! Worse," Raymond answered, "May Ri was an animal in constant heat! If I didn't satiate her, I'd get clawed—sometimes she'd claw me anyway. I should never have walked away from her! Look at this scar...!"

That was in answer to Randy's question, after he'd found May Ri chatting with her first lover, over a 13m light delay, however inadvertent it was. Stepping in front of her with a kiss, he'd asked, "Was she always so athletic and insanely inventive in bed?"

Boy talk...! Over the still-up little-used open deep space network.

Crosstalk was how Princess May Ri of Mars and her Five Daughters, formerly a Mars kidnapping sensation, earned her title (it wasn't her friendship with the Onēsanue) and her second infamy. The two men and her reminiscing inspired Raymond to scan and send his entire uncensored paper library over the open network during idle time, which led to how May Ri arranged the first Lunatic trade transit to Mars, in order to deliver a cargo of refined asteroid metal and martian machinery to Earth space.

May Ri sat hands steepled across her mouth touching her nose, watching the vid, barely breathing. A telepresence of a dozen nisei women representatives joined with five Directors (which made a quorum including Īto), together with the hispanic male Captain of the Pride of Selene from his stateroom office desk. A stylized pale white and grey full moon hung behind him.

Animated red, green, and grey sprites chased one another in a Mars globe outline.

Wait...

Wait...

After multiple hop light transit times of 4m 40s Mars-Earth-Lunar Republic, decrypting multiple keys, fortunes in E currency bouncing back and forth...

Document icons turned green. They opened. Most were E-signed Princess May Ri on Behalf of Nisei Mars.

May Ri thought, Couldn't I have been the face of Mars for my engineering contributions? Noooo. She asked, "What's it mean? It's done? Do I have to sign anything else?"

"The banks and creditors signed off," the captain acknowledged, giving a quick salute. "Consider this our final handshake. Now, I take my cargo to its new owners."

Secretary Īto explained, "We've officially bought the debt and remaining assets of EM Mars Corp. As agreed, I move to vote to dissolve the corporation—"

One of the hundreds of lurker sprites bloomed into a new male face on the vid. He was a sixth Director—accompanied seconds later by two others, and Former Director Ezekiel Stan, manager of Elysium. He shouted, "Not so fast! Per our charter, and the Decath codicils, I dispute that you have a majority of the population to move to vote..." He meant male population, despite the nisei outnumbering the imported men.

The trade ship captain said, "We break orbit in 32 minutes. Enjoy your freedom." His link faded out.

Three days later, she received notice that the City of Chicago PD had a warrant out for her arrest for 1st degree Murder and Infanticide by Abortion and 79 counts of Illegal Sexual Activity by an Unmarried Woman, cc'd to all the Directors of EM Mars Corp. She tried pinging Raymond but got an incorrect address error. A memo promulgated by the new Elysium Consortium of Domes (ECD) suggested she be stoned to death.

A month later, May Ri killed a man with an exoskeleton gauntlet†. He had beaten his wife half to death and was caught while kidnapping his daughter (now 13) whom he had never visited. The witnesses, the mother and daughter, insisted it was self-defense and accidental. Elysium issued a warrant for the Aggravated Assault and Murder committed upon their dome citizen.

Five days before the Pride of Selene entered lunar orbit, a cargo vessel at the International Earth Docks was hastily reflagged with the blue-white-red registration of the North American Decath States (NADS) and loaded secretly. Two days later, it fired missiles on the Lunar Republic Orbital, destroying their patrol ship tug and damaging their search and rescue shuttle. NADS announced it was annexing the "breakaway" state. The Pride of Selene declared it piracy when later boarded.

The Decath minister on Deimosbase agreed to an ECD request granting, per his interpretation of scripture with due consideration to the diminished population of men on Mars, that men be allowed and encouraged to take multiple wives. Alarmingly, the remaining starship shuttle in Mars space (two were deployed on asteroid mining missions), was rebased to Elysium Township, in compensation for never receiving a monorail connection or makers to build spinlaunchers—restricting human orbital access to the Decath domes. #RSMarsNeededWomen 19

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† #Writever 2503.02 Rights Prologue https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114092086538327781

[Author retains copyright (c)2025 R.S.]

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