I hate my father who is a jerk just like the rest of them. Never quite became shop foreman. Never quite able to buy his own house. Never quite saved enough to move his family to Saturn's ring where the real boom took place. And always so damn preachy to me and the younger kids. And my mother disgusted me too for just sitting around and taking it all those years.
"What are you doing here?" my father demanded. "You're supposed to be on your way to Mars."
"Vera, what happened?" my mother whined. "Why aren't you on the ship?"
"I need a little more money. Seventy-five solars."
"What do you mean, a little more money?" said my father angrily. "What happened to the money we gave you?"
"And the tickets," my mother, anxiously. "You promised me you'd go to school. What did you do with the tickets?"
"Don't worry. I got a refund. It's all in a safe place."
My father got menacing. "Say, just what are you up to? You haven't gone back to that gang by any chance?"
"I need seventy-five solars," I repeated calmly. "Are you going to give it to me?"
"Answer me!" my father roared. "Have you gone back to that gang?"
Infuriated, he started towards me. "No daughter of mine is going to talk to me like that. I'm going to give you the spanking you've had coming for seventeen years."
I drew my whip and slashed him down the side of his face and chest, cutting his shirt half open. He sat down with an unbelieving expression and fingered the red welt. He looked at me through glazed eyes, almost in a state of shock, as I rewound my whip.
My mother broke the long silence. "Here, Vera. Here are your seventy-five solars. We never want to see you or hear from you again."
News of our gang wars rarely appears in the adult press. I guess they're afraid the publicity might encourage more teenagers to join up. But the colonial struggle with Sirius had ended, and there wasn't much else happening in the Solar System just at that time, so our raid on Io made the headlines.
GIRLS BLAST BOY HIDEOUT Callisto fleet bombs, strafes Io base in bloody juvenile gang war
Humiliated Ios vow retaliation for fifty-ship sneak attack
We were received as heroes by our gang. Even the inaccuracies in the news story contributed to our glory--the Ios being ashamed to admit all the havoc was the result of only one solitary girl ship. Our hussies and aides greeted us in the First Hall with a wild cheer, crowding around us to beg for details.
