Lady Liberty

I had always known my gramps to be a strange man. As often as he seemed to let the simple things slip from his mind, there was never a day I didn’t see him holding that book. Seldom did he let me glimpse more than a few stray words, but now I held it between my fingers, and it had never looked so heavy before. Thick and timeworn, its yellowed cover and sturdy, stiff pages had a tackiness to them, a kind of moral grime that clung. I did not open it. Instead, I pressed it under my arm as I moved through the access bridge.

As if the fascination I had felt for it all those years had never even crossed my mind. Not even once. Not even at all.

My boots dragged heavily, the silicone soles thudding against the clanking metal and aluminum beneath me. Each step stirred a thin, tawny fog of soil that, despite my fitted helmet, I could have guessed tasted like iron.

There was no escaping the iron in that place. That city. It clung to the skin, the water, the very breath you drew, unseen but felt. But as I stepped into the spacecraft and the hatch sealed behind me, I kind of missed the rusty tang.

“Storch, you’re late.” A flat voice called from the cockpit, and I groaned. Of course, they sent O’Shea to supervise the task. ‘Big Man’ O’Shea.

“Cut me some slack…” I muttered under my breath. He wouldn’t hear me, and even if he did, it wouldn’t matter. O’Shea wasn’t the kind of man who gave slack. He seemed to thrive on nitpicking and taunting others for every little thing. It was his way, his ritual, ‘tough love’ as the man called it. I called it ‘bullshit’.

I slid into the copilot’s seat, buckling the harness, and my eyes flicked to his profile, the shadows etched into every crook of his face. If you squinted, if you blurred the edges of your vision, he almost looked like a good man. The badly trimmed beard faded, and the amber eyes lost a great part of their nastiness. I wondered, not for the first time, if I would wind up like him in a few years; Barking orders at wide-eyed recruits who didn’t know any better.

The radio crackled and, shortly after, a voice began. There was no warmth in it, nor was it even human. Just the same rote recitation of facts and figures. Only the numbers changed.

“Initializing long-haul transit. Projected duration: three hundred and sixty-four days. Three. Six. Four. Crew assigned: Commanding Officer Micah O’Shea. Second-in-command, Aria Storch. Compliance with safety protocols is mandatory. Remember…”

“…We are watching for safety.” I finished the line, mirroring the mechanical cadence of the communicator. It was a phrase I had heard a thousand times before. In classrooms, on the news, at the academy… The same good, old, hollow reassurance. For me, however, the word ‘safety’ had become a euphemism for control, surveillance.  The more they repeated it, the more it sounded like a threat.

A countdown began, and I closed my eyes. I remember that moment vividly— The way the seats shook, the rattle of my bones, the fleeting memory of my grandfather. But the moment passed, and just like that, I was thrust back into the present. The robotic voice fell silent, leaving only the hum of the ship and the silence of the universe. A deafening, swelling crescendo.

We could only wait. I held the yellow book in my hands, turning it over carefully. The cover was blank, the back equally bare, save for a single word: ‘Somewhere’. Looking at it carefully, I concluded it was unremarkable, indistinguishable from the countless other books back home. Plain, utilitarian, no ink wasted on flourishes. Yet, it had meant something to him, overwhelmingly so.

I glanced at O’Shea. His eyes were closed.

Finally, I opened the first page of the book. It was a photography book, but unlike any I had ever seen. Gone were the harsh lights, the sterile structures, the rusted edges and maroon palettes that defined our world. Instead, the images were alive with color, almost violent in their brilliance. The people looked like us, but their clothes were absurdly intricate, with hues and patterns that seemed impractical. The creatures were stranger still: human-like figures draped in thick fur, their fangs sharper and longer than ours, their bodies unashamedly bare. Some of the plants I recognized. Cresses, potatoes, lichens, moss… A world that mirrored ours. But so much of it was a vision of a place that couldn’t possibly exist. A utopia.

For the next two days, I studied the images obsessively. I hid the book from O’Shea, not because it was illegal, but because something about it felt dangerous, heretical. I was lost in its pages when the man himself spoke.

“Planet sighted at five kilometers. Unregistered.” His tone was clipped as his fingers danced across the controls.

I unbuckled my harness and floated toward the rounded window, drawn to the view of the planet below. It was mostly blue, with patches of brown soil breaking through the expanse of water.

“Weren’t all the planets in the Milky Way registered as unlivable?” I asked, turning my head toward the control panel. O’Shea shot me a brief glance and nodded curtly, as though the question itself was an affront to his authority.

I checked the screen, where a green dot marked our approach to the unknown mass. The trajectory was a simple elliptical orbit, clean and precise. We were close, so close, and the planet looked fine. Promising, even. My eyes darted to the atmospheric readings. “The air’s less toxic than home, iron-wise. And there’s water. We should check it out…” The suggestion slipped out before I could bite my tongue.

O’Shea made a dismissive gesture.

“Should we, now? Didn’t realize you were calling the shots, Storch.”

“Well, no, I just—”

“Prepare for landing. And save your breath for something useful. Keep this up, and I’ll have your credits docked for insubordination. You’ve already taken too many liberties bringing that book on board.” He paused, a smile curling on his lips as he noticed the surprise on my face. It was a small, vicious triumph, the kind he seemed to live for. “You think I didn’t notice you scurrying around with it like some kind of parasite? Distractions feeble the mind, Storch.”

Fuck you. The words itched in my tongue, but I kept them there, locked behind clenched teeth. I settled back into my seat, gripping the controls as I guided the shuttle toward the planet’s surface.

It didn’t take much effort to land, and the ship settled onto the surface with a soft thud. When the door opened, we stepped out, helmets secured, into an atmosphere that felt strangely alive. The oxygen levels were the highest I had ever seen. Higher than the readings back home, higher than anything I’d encountered in training. It was almost too much.

And then I saw her. At the edge of the horizon, a faint blur, the statue of a woman holding a torch, weathered and cracked, eroded by the passage of centuries. I didn’t recognize her from memory, but I knew her. I had seen her before, in the pages of my grandfather’s book. The same figure, the same pose.

“Lady Liberty,” I whispered. A hand clamped down on my shoulder, intense and sudden, and I turned to see O’Shea staring at me, his expression unreadable, his eyes probing.

“Talking to yourself already, Storch?” he said, his voice laced with mockery. “Didn’t realize you’d gone off the deep end this early.”

I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. O’Shea watched me for a moment, his eyebrow arched, before shaking his head with a derisive snort.

“Pull yourself together. We’re leaving,” O’Shea barked. His grip tightened around my arm like an iron vice, yanking me backward. “This planet’s air is too thick. I’m not staying to admire the architecture and risk oxygen poisoning.”

Right. I must have imagined it. He hadn’t even seen it. I laughed quietly, a hollow sound that echoed in my helmet as we trudged back to the shuttle. And then it hit me. ‘Architecture’? My gaze snapped up from the ground, slow and deliberate, settling on O’Shea’s back as he marched ahead. He had seen it too.

He had seen her.

If he took me back, if he spoke to the officials, it was over. I’d be executed, erased from the records just like this planet had been. The thought coiled around my chest, tightening with every step. My breath came shallow, my hands trembling inside my gloves. Before I fully realized what I was doing, my hands were moving. I reached for the neck ring of his helmet, my fingers fumbling with the latch. O’Shea froze, his body stiffening as he felt the pressure release. He turned, but it was too late. I yanked the helmet off, the seal breaking with a hiss.

I stood there, frozen, watching as he collapsed to his knees, his body convulsing. His hands scrabbled at the ground, fingers digging into the soil as if he could anchor himself to life. But there was no anchor. No salvation. His movements grew slower, more erratic, until finally, he slumped forward, his face pressed into the dirt. His body twitched once, twice, and then no more.

I made it back to Mars. The journey was a blur, my mind numb, my body moving on autopilot. I told them it was an accident. Hyperoxia, a tragic mistake. They nodded, their faces blank, their questions perfunctory. I thought I had gotten away with it. I thought I was free. Then, one of them slid a tablet across the table, the screen glowing with a single video file.

At that moment, pressing play felt useless, but I did it anyways.

The footage was grainy but unmistakable. Me, standing over O’Shea, my hands fumbling with his helmet. A small camera in our suits? Of course there was.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. Laughter was the only weapon left to me. But even then, I knew. Laughter, too, was a kind of surrender. It came unbidden, sharp and grotesque. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. The cruelty, the mockery, the sheer, unrelenting hopelessness of the situation.

I laughed because there was nothing else to do.

“I get it,” I said, holding my head between my hands. “Watching for safety.”

One of them leaned forward, his hands clasped neatly on the table, like a man who had mastered the art of appearing reasonable while dispensing violence. “Now,” he said, his tone measured, “we decide what to do with you.”

They always decided. Safety. Control. It was all the same thing.

I had never been free.