Good Morning for a Hanging

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Miles’ nose whistled with each snore. Broken during his lynching by the Separatist League rebels a few days earlier, it has since remained congested with clotted blood.

Such a disturbance didn’t seem to bother the cute gray mouse sleeping on his shoulder, curling up against a fold of his grimy yellow sweater. Dimitri was the name he gave her—like the main character of the TV show he used to watch when he was a child.

That cold morning, lying on the creaking steel bed without a mattress, Miles dreamed of the Tales of Chestnut and Mechanic when Dimitri jumped. Feeding on the few breadcrumbs usually brought to Miles when the time-locked artificial cycles switched, the little animal squeaked before standing up on its hind legs, sniffing the air. It had heard the guard unlocking the bulletproof magnetic door.

A bearded man with a craggy face and a black hack gilet passed through the buzzing metal detector of the death row. That day, he didn’t carry a plate of moldy hoecakes and a glass of unfiltered water. Instead, a dirty plastic bucket dangled against his thigh; the content of which landed seconds later right in Miles’ still-sleeping face.

Scared, Dimitri had gone to hide in its hole near the Turkish toilet against the brick wall.

Coughing, Miles sat up. From his filthy hair and the tip of his sore nose tasted a mixture of urine and old oil. A new humiliation imagined by the night shift sergeant before heading back to his trailer park.

“You ain’t got no right to do that…” said a feminine voice that Miles recognized.

The guard cleared his throat before turning to the small figure hitherto in his large shadow. Spatting a brown gob on both the floor and his protuberant chin, he muttered: “You told me to wake the jailbird up. I woke the jailbird up.”

Miles painfully opened his eyes, running the back of his wrist against his cheeks and forehead to rid himself of the smears. Squirting, he witnessed Clover Watercress in her flamboyant Pinkerton uniform pitting herself at the lawman: “Clear off!”

“You have no authority over me, Pinkerton,” the prison guard growled as he tapped his upside-down police badge over his heart.

“Clear off, I said! Or I’ll give you Jessy!” The rabbit-freak vehemently insisted, drumming her fingers on the guard’s belly until he fearfully backtracked towards the exit. Once the door closed and left alone, she turned to the caged pilot. Sticking her wriggling pink nose between two rusting bars, she didn’t seem to mind the smell. “Howdy, Mr. Villanueva!” she uttered.

Miles cracked his sore shoulder. “Clover?” Pressing one nostril with his thumb, he blew a clot out of the other. The effort made his head spin. “Sorry about that…”

“Don’t you worry.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Visiting this ace-high place. It reminds me of where I was born.”

Miles coughed. “An underground prison cell?”

“Yep.” She withdrew her snoot from between the bars, and grabbed a wobbly stool to sit on. The scrape woke up the other inmates at the end of the corridor. Clover resumed without even paying attention to the racist slurs and threats: “The local police had a lead on Poncho—turned out to be a hoax to drive me crazy. So I came to remind them what happens when you play a trick on a vengeful rabbit.” She paused. “They were boasting about you, you know—down the hall. After kicking the right guys in the corn sacks, they allowed me to check on you—for my case, I let them believe.”

Miles smiled to reveal a broken canine. “The Nouvelle Patrie Police Department is as incompetent as stupid. They would give access to the precinct’s data-core to a data-thief for a strawberry beignet.”

“True.”

“Speakin’ of data-thief, do you want a tip on Zéphyr, the Data-Maiden?”

The rabbit almost fell off her stool. “Stop the taradiddles! Would she be on Mimas too? In a place like this?” Frowning, she moved closer to the cage. Her blue eyes glimmered from anger. Her nose wiggled. “Are you mocking me too?”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure?”

“Mimas seems to be the center of the solar system lately.”

Noise sounded on the other side of the heavy door. Behind it, the police station in the Martian Quarter of New Patrie and the finest of the local peacekeepers appeared to be making a din. Loud slams made the bars tremble.

Clover pointed to the swinging metal detector with her thumb. “Your old buddy—the racist commissioner—is utterly pissed.”

“Wayne?”

Miles had met Armand Wayne on his very first day. The Superintendent was a former Ganymedian bounty hunter with a long history of blunders. The Alliance of the Auxiliaries of Justice had sent Miles to the Jovian shattered moon to report on the man’s most recent misbehavior. The investigation didn’t go very well, and Wayne threatened to kill the debuting administrative assistant. Luckily, Wayne’s suspension had been enforced on the spot by a local auxiliary—a rogue MK called MarKus—who broke the man’s knees during a fierce duel in the streets of Ganyville.

“Gimpy Wayne bears you a grudge,” Clover resumed.

“Whatever.” Miles spat, but the gobble got lost over his sweater.

His pitiful look earned him a grimace from the Pinkerton detective. “What happened to those soldiers in your hotel room?” she asked.

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“You probably read about it.”

“What’s your side of the coin?”

“They slipped and fell.”

Clover sketched a smile before frowning. “Obviously! I saw the bodies in the morgue. Kevlo-teflon lining, military grade Panasonic optics, micro-layered memory modules with more explosives intermingled than a thermonuclear missile… These guys were as much Separatist soldiers as I’m a Welsh pastor. You killed corpo-thugs. Not rebels.”

“Wayne’s doesn’t care.”

“Let me guess. He made it personal?”

“Twice rather than once.”

“That’s unprofessional.”

Miles stood up to limp closer to Clover. She could smell the urine and the bruises that thinned the skin on her arms and face. Only half of the injuries were from his arrest. The rest he owed to Wayne’s night warden.

“Highly unprofessional…” Clover corrected.

“You’re far from Ceres standards here, Pinkerton …”

“Saw that. Also, I wasn’t the only one who saw the bodies. Half the town rushed to the Monteleone when the police stored the cyborgs in the coroner’s van.” She turned her head towards the bulletproof window leading to the street above.

“Great.”

“Half of Nouvelle Patrie wants you hanged after a fair trial. You. The great Miles ‘Red Swan’ Villanueva—a Techno-spy flirting with Matahari. Even the last remaining Alliance officials left town to avoid being dragged through the dirt with you.”

He coughed as he sat back down. Lifting his drenched sweater, he checked his sizzling artificial heart. The skin around it was turning white. Blisters full of pus dotted his sternum and ribs. “What a circus…”

“A darn zoo, even!” She tossed him a painkiller she grabbed from her empty holster on her belt. “From Edith. The marijuana-smoking pharmacist.”

“Give her my thanks. Can’t look like shit if she shows up at the trial.”

Behind the Freak-rabbit, the door flew open and the limping commissary burst in, his obnoxious bolo-tie making the metal detector going haywire. “Trial? You ain’t going towards no judge, Miles Villanueva!” His voice occasionally went high, from a velo-speed bullet that had left a gaping hole shaped like a rectum under his thyroid. “Sons of whores like you swing from a rope.”

Armand Wayne joined Clover before ordering the two guards following him to move her aside so he could open the door.

“Good tidings…” Miles spat. “I grow tired of your lunches as filthy as your free morning pee-showers.”

“Superintendent Wayne!” intervened Clover, struggling. “Back off!” One of the day shift wardens was kicked in the privates while the second was bitten on the cheek. Panting, she resumed while waving her stool under their bleeding nose: “You know damn well that—” Alas, too small to be a threat without her Smith & Wesson, Clover was slammed against the wall by one of Wayne’s goons

Laughing, the chief of police opened the magnetic door and the other guard went to cuff Miles. “Pinkerton, when we need advice on countryside cottages—or stews, we’ll come and ring your ears!” he spoke.

“Say that again and see!”

“Clover…” gasped Miles as the irons crushed his wrists. “Go away…”

The first warden put the rabbit back on the ground.

Glaring at Wayne’s men and the superintendent, Clover readjusted her padded vest, furiously wiggling her nose. After a deep breath intended to calm her nerves, she spun to the chained Alliance man. “Adieu, Mr. Villanueva.” Then, she took the direction of the door.

Wayne followed her with his eyes before lingering on her rabbit tail swaying to the rhythm of her steps. When she finally left, he whistled before turning to Miles. “Jesus fucking Christ… She’s madder than a wet hen! If the Jovian Freaks possessed half her temperament, the Technos’d have a bigger problem than the Cause.”

Miles stared at him wordlessly as he was jolted outside his cage.

“Why the long face, Miles? Aren’t we old acquaintances?” Wayne then drew a handkerchief from his pocket and spat in it. He proceeded to clean his prisoner’s face, pressing his swollen nose the harder he could.

“Fuck off.”

“You sure? Because believe it or not, I’m willing to offer you a way out!”

Miles snapped, pulling himself free: “What’s the catch, Wayne?”

“I am the catch, Red Swan.”

A new man had decided to make a dramatic entrance.

Miles recognized General Bragg, another roughneck with a face covered in frostbite from a faulty spacesuit. Bragg was a former Techno-Marine admiral, a graduate of the Academy but last in his class. Prior to his defection to the Separatist Army, he had been assigned to the New Worlds, where he had suffered debacle after debacle against Lady Goldsun’s pirates, before being relegated to his adopted home world of Thetys.

“You’re in the army now, Miles,” Wayne sneered, stiffening the pilot’s collar.

“No, thanks. Why would I fight for the Rings? Am I not accused of espionage?”

“The General Staff is aware of your background… and your talents,” Bragg expounded, slamming his boots on the leaden floor. “Seeing you dangling at the end of a rope in low gravity would be such a waste for the glorious Cause of the Rings!”

“Not so much,” interjected the police captain.

“This man ain’t no traitor. Yet, he’s a dead man. I know you’ve had your differences—that ridiculous story on Ganymede with a contemptible bot. But Mr. Villanueva’s certainly a patriot, as we all are. He deserves to fight—in your place.” With a nod, Bragg pointed to the steel leg of Wayne.

“As long as he suffers,” the latter growled.

“He’ll suffer, Mr. Superintendent!” Bragg beamed as he laid his hand on Miles’ shoulder. “That’s the way of the hero. And Red Swan fighting for the Cause ain’t nothing less than a gallant crusade!”

Miles glared at Bragg and hardly managed to sustain his bovine gaze. “And if I refuse?”

“If you refuse?” Bragg smiled. “Well, Mr. Superintendent and his men are quite imaginative…” He then turned to the door. “They built a wooden gallow, you know? On Jackson Square. From real wood. You may not pass the night, but your friend the Freak may offer an entertaining Friday evening to the crowd of New Patrie.”

The Forlorn pilot coughed.

“Was that a yes or a no?” Bragg asked from the metal detector.

Miles spat on the floor—and on Wayne’s boot. “I’ll be your damned pilot…” he concluded.