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2503.02 — Rights #Writever CW: Fictional Violence

May Ri clanged the arm of the mining exoskeleton into the wall of the habitat, drawing sparks, blocking the onrushing man, cutting him off when he tried to dodge under—before flipping him backwards back down the corridor. Blood gushed from his nose to match what stained his hands.

"I have the right!" he yelled, arm across his face to stem the flow. "She's my wife!"

May Ri's footsteps clanged as she stomped forward. He slid himself back on the floor as the other women in the Vigilantes caught up. They'd used the ugly word, Vigilante, intentionally; women weren't allowed but needed to police their domes, or risk injury from stronger men who suddenly got ideas.

She said, "Your wife is an import, like me? You left her to give birth alone, to raise her daughter, and now you want to take that daughter away? To sell to your boss? Really? Your right?"

She looked at the harried women, some breathing hard, sweating. Faces gone pale in fear, others with wide eyes trying to process how cruel reality had once again smashed all sense of security. May Ri understood: if they kept the male returnees from the inner belt disaster locked out of the habitat long enough, they'd have to capitulate. However, if she failed to demonstrate now that the Vigilantes could hold firm when a man broke his wife's arm, beating her to have his way—

He yelled back, "Marrying her off to a better life? Yes! Who are you to argue a man's God given right—?"

"Really?" she interrupted. Women had never had reliable rights, if you trusted history hadn't been rewritten. She didn't. She'd read books made of paper, yellowed, that smelled of centuries past! Her five kilogram gauntleted hand already in motion, she screamed, "Mars is not Earth! It never will be!" #RSMarsNeededWomen

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

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