The Dead Bunch
----------------------------------------
It took nearly three days for the prison freighter to reach the Inuit moons from Mimas; and another two for its final destination, Kiviuq, to appear clearly on radar. The irregular satellite Saturn XXIV had recently been hosting a separatist boot camp in an old mining facility.
Like the other death row prisoners, Miles hadn’t been allowed to eat for the entire trip, nor to visit the bathroom. The week before, General Bragg had given all those poor souls a choice: fight for the Cause, or swing in low gravity. Few had preferred a senseless campaign against Mars and its powerful Techno-Marine to the sweet relief of death. Even fewer still breathed when Kiviuq appeared through the thick, ice-encased portholes doting the walls. The ship’s dark and moldy hold had been turned into a morgue.
“I heard…” began a toothless old-timer with sick yellow eyes, as he grabbed Miles by the arm from under his shabby blanket. Every night, he’d say the same thing: “I heard… lads like ourselves are being herded ‘to cannon fodder units like the ‘Dead Bunch’. And that we’re the first to turn to cosmic dust under atomic fire on unnamed moons!”
“Not again!” intervened a muscular woman waving an orange Tandberg transistor. As she moved closer, dodging the corpses piling up against a makeshift stove made of a broken nuclear battery, Miles deduced from her greasy overalls that she was a disgraced roustabout from the oil fields. “Nobody lands on unnamed moons! The flash offensive on Jupiter’s a complete failure! Admiral Pennsylvania’s being blown to pieces before even setting foot on Leda. The entire Callistoan fleet’s falling on him as we speak!”
“Has the T.M.S. Africa joined the battle?” questioned a skinny teenager poking a radioactive coagulated charcoal jumping from the ripped battery.
A guard shouted from the stairs leading to the main deck, asking for silence. Judging by the grinding running across the hull, the ship started slowing down and caught a new world’s gravity.
Miles left the scarred old man with dementia. Leaning on the wall between two empty grates of nutrigel, he glanced at the only remaining functional control screen. Hanging from the ceiling above the sea of agonizing conscripts, it displayed through static the rusty armored rear being clamped to a large cell bay.
“Line up, filth! And quickly!” the same guard shouted. The hand over his optics, he prodded the first prisoners walking towards the main airlock in front of the hunched Alliance man.
Most of Miles’ companions remained on the ground, their faces as blue as the lost seas of Earth. They had succumbed to the cold. Most of them hold between their fingers a loved one’s crinkled picture or radioactive shards glowing in the darkness like unnerving will-o’-the-wisps.
The soldier continued after waving to the security cameras: “When you get down, immediately follow the red visible holo-line towards the sterilizing showers. Hastily undress on your way. No talking. No fucking talking.”
“You want me to walk naked around the base?” the oil worker asked as she lined up under the gaze of other armored guards who came in as reinforcements.
The only response she received was to be kicked through the airlock as the doors slid. Yelling, she fell two meters below on the dusty concrete floor. The prisoners, like the sentries and the load-bearing androids on the dock burst out laughing.
“You ain’t no better than a snail-heating Martian until you graduate alive from Fort McCausland!” the offended guard uttered from inside the ship.
Jostled, Miles descended with his mutagenic flea-ridden blanket over his shoulders. After an android in uniform scanned his FID, he was thrown against a tile-covered wall down the path, and stripped from his dirty clothes. Another robot looking like a turtle hosed him, and he collapsed under the pressure. Someone caught him before his jaw hit the ice-cold puddle. Holding her bloody nose, the giant oil worker silently strengthened the ex-Alliance man with her left hand before accompanying him towards an implant archway-detector.
The humming tunnel crossed, a short woman with tired eyes tossed Miles a gray conscript uniform, still stained with the blood of his previous owner. Once dressed, he picked a bag on a shelf. The latter contained the classic equipment of the infantryman, namely a dented canteen and its aluminum utensils, a dingy towel and two pairs of additional socks. A small unblemished notebook listed the good practices of the Rings’ gentleman, but here again, plasma had fused half the first pages together.
The oil worker behind him appeared to be luckier with her gear, and even found a folded Hustler poster of Erica Boyer inside the spiral-bound book. “Pretty neat. Too bad she’s wearing a windbreaker…” she laughed before handing the picture to Miles.
Miles didn’t take it. A non-commissioned officer with a broad bicycle handlebar mustache called him from the other side of the hangar through a megaphone a robot held to its mouth. “Miles Villanueva?” he repeated before the concerned party was jostled away by the fresh arrivals coming from the degrading showers.
Miles dragged his new weighted boots along the path marked on the floor by the flashing hologram. He stopped in a semi-attention position before the mustached NCO, General Bragg, and a captain with a bushy black beard supporting a severe gaze. A deep scar ran across the third man’s right cheek before falling on his throat beneath his yellow foulard.
“May you find in front of you the finest specimen, Captain Stuart…” Bragg said, introducing the Forlorn pilot to the laconic officer wearing two silver bars. “Drafting him in the Mimas Tigers or the Plastic Boys would be giving jam to the pigs. That’s why I’m leaving him between the poly-alloyed hands of yours.”
Captain Stuart nodded.
“But if he attempts the slimiest cowardice action, don’t hesitate to demote him to the pigsty.”
The officer nodded again, less firmly.
“Or to the automated firing squad,” Bragg snapped before taking a step back to pick up a missive brought by a wheeled legless soldier. His crazy eyes flashed as he read the first few lines. “Gentlemen,” he growled before bolting away.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
Stuart saluted the general and, without further ado, grabbed his recruit’s hand to examine it. Grumbling through his beard, he rolled up the sleeves of Miles’ uniform to follow the pink scars along his skin. “Been gutted like a salmon.” Stuart released Miles’ arm, and judged him again from head to toe. “You really Red Swan?” he asked after a long, awkward silence. “The Red Swan of Canyon Creek?”
“I was,” Miles replied without regard to protocol.
The ever-present NCO wanted to reprimand him, but Stuart waved his hand to keep him quiet. Brushing his beard, he mumbled: “Pity…”
“Why is that?” The mustached NCO glared at Miles again, and the latter man rolled his eyes. “Why is that, sir?”
“My son and I saw her on Canyon Creek. Ten years ago. The Red Swan, swiftly cavorting in the starry skies. T’was her first rodeo. She was magnificent,” Stuart explained. He took a deep breath before motioning for Miles to follow him towards a wide corridor that was supposed to connect the barracks. “My son fell in love with your ship that day. He fell in love with flying, even harder in love than I was. Because of the Red Swan, he joined the Techno-Marine and became a wonderful pilot.”
“Is he still in the Corps.?”
Stuart stopped in front of large armored doors painted in red. “No,” he said. His voice quavered, eaten by sorrow. “Passed away.”
When Stuart entered the room, a bunch of officers munching raucously stood up from their benches at attention. No more noise could be heard, not even the buzzing of flies or the AC.
Captain Stuart mumbled something through his black beard, as his boots clattered on the concrete. His gold spurs glinted under the halogen lights.
“Sir!” answered the soldiers.
Their officer waved his hand, and the table sat back down, scraping their bench. They ate but didn’t resume their conversation.
“We’ll provide you a bed. Two daily meals,” Stuart said. “You’ll join the training. But you really need to eat first. Could hear your stomach growling so loudly through the corridors I thought a thermobaric attack was ravaging the surface.”
Miles turned to Stuart, who gave him a shy smile. “I won’t be a good infantryman, sir. Like you said, I’m a dead fish. The moment the vial fused in my chest-box empties, I’ll flatline out of this system.”
Stuart frowned while rounding the table. Followed by Miles, he walked over to a soldier with a white tank top sitting on a Formica chair and polishing a MacNaughton hunting rifle. He was a large mustached redhead, with bright blue eyes.
“Monsieur?” the man said, straightening.
“Miles Villanueva of Mimas,” Stuart went on. “Lieutenant Miles. Second Lieutenant Pierre ‘Shrimp’ Candide. Shrimp’s our best Wizzo.”
“Wizzo?” Miles noted.
“Weapon Systems Officer,” Candide replied. He handed him a piece of pie he snatched behind him; which Miles promptly stuffed into between his cracked lips. It was a sweet potato pie. With a hint of anise.
“You’ll be working together,” Stuart explained.
Miles raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand…” he said through his mouthful of crust.
“You’re a goddamn pilot, Red Swan…” Stuart angrily uttered before the whole room became silent again. “So you will goddam fly. With the best the Rings has to offer.” Noticing that Miles’ FID turned gray, Stuart spoke: “Officially integrated into the 1st Cavalry of the Inuit Moons. Training starts at 2 p.m. Mart—10:00 Saturnian time. Sorry—force of habit. The Academy…” He lost himself in a mumble. “Dismissed, gentlemen.”
“Sir!” replied Candide and the other NCOs, saluting him.
“Ah yes, Shrimp?” Stuart said. “If Bragg points his drunken nose. Tickle our new friend. He’ll need some bruises to display. We’re supposed to kill him—a ridiculous story.”
As Stuart left, Miles huffed, before eyeing at Pierre Candide who cracked his broad shoulders. “Easy with the face.”
“You already look like shit, mon ami…” the WSO retorted, turning around to lock his rifle in a suitcase. “Don’t need me to look like a walking corpse… like the captain.” And he headed towards the fridge.
Drifting to the bathroom, Miles did indeed feel the weight of recent events on his shoulders. Stuart could be a decent officer and Candide a brave fellow, his artificial heart’s supply of painkillers and Edith’s special anticoagulants appeared to be at an all-time low. Miles knew he wouldn’t make it out of the first year of this conflict alive. Whether it was a rocket or his gut, the Sword of Damocles danced over his head.
“I’ll die even before I can master a military starship implant-free…” he heaved in front of the broken mirror.
“Please don’t…” someone said in his back.
Holding a large boombox and sipping a root beer with the same arm, Candide was lying against the frame.
Miles coughed. “You’ll find another pilot, Shrimp. A one with top gears and lungs able to pull a multiple g run.”
“I don’t need a cyber-airman. I need hope—we need hope. We need Red Swan. Even ten percent of him would fit.”
“Who really needs this cursed name? The Cause?”
“Fuck the Cause!” the WSO said while walking towards the shower. Stretching, he put his soda brick and boombox on top of the low wall. “I just want my Cajun ass home. C’est tout.”
“Steal a Hummingbird. Desert.”
Candide threw his clothes on the wet floor. Turning on the cold water, he answered: “I wish. But they’ll find me—we were like you, you know? Prisoners or wanderers. Like the Martians, Douche-Bragg wants us biting the dust. That’s why they staffed us with the ‘invincible’ Captain Jeb Stuart. Since he lost his only kid, it’s suicide missions after suicide missions—a real kamikaze. That’s how the 1st earned its beloved nickname, you know?”
“Nickname?”
Grinning, Candide poked his head and arm out of the shower. Pressing the Play button on the boombox which started spitting Danger Zone, he said: “Welcome to the Dead Bunch, mon ami.”