Incident at Paaliaq Hill

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A blaring buzzing rang out in the F.L.S. Chickamauga, dusting the wavering three-rings Freedom League’s flag under the speakers.

“Time to go! Check your suits!” Captain Stuart announced to the pilots crowded into the hangar. Besides him, his aide-de-camp closed the holo-map and folded his files.

Jumping on his feet from a giant ammo crate, Miles gathered his gear and helmet before securing his oxygen mask. Thanks to three months of training and mega-protein nutrigel, the ex-Alliance man has regained most of his old strength. But his heart and lungs remained weak, as Edith’s last vial reached the hazardous drying zone. New piloting implants bio-linked to his gray overall barely compensated for his failing organs but kept him alive despite the high-g runs.

By Miles’ side. Second Lieutenant Pierre “Shrimp” Candide prepared for battle. Squeaking the security latch of his helmet, he also picked up his paper maps and beloved Dan Cooper Trapper Keepers. From the metal box hanging from his shoulder, he swallowed two chalk-like pills which made him shiver.

After a quick look at their sugar level, the two conscripts headed for the Flicker-XIV starfighters lined up near the jump docks, zigzagging between the robot technicians busy winding the Blue lines onto a bobbin.

“You know the TMC developed new Hummingbirds, that if you puncture their ass, they repair themselves with some kind of nano-shits?” said Apache, the pilot checking the twin-turbine of the Flicker-XIV next to them. “Just heard that from my load toad.”

“Your stevedore’s full of crap…” reacted Shrimp as he climbed the ladder leading to the higher backseat of the two-seat spacecraft. Miles’ wizzo didn’t like Apache much, especially for her political views on the Rings. “Still. Our ponies look like duct-taped potato sacks with goldfish bowls as canopies!” Typing on his keyboard, he deployed a set of rungs so Miles could join him in the seat at the front of the headless, featherless animal.

“What’s a ‘goldfish’?” someone asked.

Adjusting his large glasses, Elias “Baron” Szut was helping the mechanics to disconnect the diagnostic computer from his ship. He was the fourth pilot of the Dead Bunch’s Second Air Reconnaissance Unit.

“The animal Japanese folks stuffed on sushi before 3D printers and nutrigel,” Miles replied. From his position, he saw the dust riddling the jump dock’s windows as their carrier entered Paaliaq’s airspace. “A real fish. But gold-colored. Hence the name.”

“Gross…” Apache grunted through the radio.

“I don’t know. Nothing can be worse than nutrigel, right?” Baron said, settling on his seat.

“Put on your seatbelts, ladies!” Shrimp intervened, closing the canopy. Immediately, the pressure equalized. “We’re running late chit-chatting like bikini-babes. Y’all sound like my cousins...”

Around the reconnaissance unit, the ground forces had all joined their Walkers—giant ostriches able to jump other trenches, and Armadillo tanks—six-legged armored vehicles belatedly loading the remaining footmen. With the career deceleration, many of the latter struggled to stay afoot.

Stuart climbed onto his Walker—specially designed to be single-seater, at the end of the hangar. He has been denied being part of the air reconnaissance squadron. On the animal’s buttocks flew the flag of the Rings and his family herald. Both were blackened and tattered.

“Ready for your first rodeo, Red?” Shrimp asked, after checking the instruments again.

“Don’t call him that. He gotta earn that nickname,” Apache groaned.

“I think he won it on Canyon Creek,” Baron intervened.

“Hush up, Baron!” Apache scolded him. “You ain’t being shot at on a fucking circuit.”

Miles silently glared at the stragglers who fell backwards as the giant ship deployed braking flaps. But he had no time to bark admonishments, for the spacecraft swung sharply into position half a kilometer above the surface.

The airlocks opened, and both the Flickers and the Walkers jumped out. Carried along by the weights attached to their legs, the latter landed hard against the satellite’s meager gravity. Once on the ground, they shed some of their restraints, and began dashing towards the foremost subterranean dwellings. Meanwhile, Miles’ air unit crossed the dark skies along with the first reconnaissance team which quickly diverged to the East.

“Clear,” Shrimp said as he looked at the radar to his left, between his root beer bottle that had frozen because of the pressure and his paper map held in place by clamps.

“Clear,” the other pilots replied through the white noise.

Paaliaq was a modest world of barely 22 kilometers in diameter. From the low altitude, one could see the curvature of the near horizon, and from time to time small mounds of brown earth appeared over the coppery mist converting its surface. Settlers landed on this Inuit moon about twenty years earlier, and started cultivating poppies for the production of high-g bars.

“What the hell are we doin’ here?” Baron whined. “Paaliaq’s supposed to be neutral. They don’t fight for Uncle Cheney.”

Miles twirled to survey the area around an underground settlement. Behind, the Walkers began moving forward. Each of the machines’ feet kicked up a cloud of dust that was lost in space. The Armadillo tanks were soon going to land.

“Securing the hydroponic farms,” Shrimp said.

“But what for?” Baron asked. “Food?”

“Besides the g-bars, you can synthesize morphine and some medical stuff with those flowers. But labs can produce synthetic sugar and meds on Venus as well as in the Rings,” Shrimp explained. “Paaliaq’s as strategic as a two-legged stool in zero gravity.”

“Good one…” Apache went on.

Baron laughed, before Stuart invited himself onto the unit’s chat channel: “Shrimp? Remember there are mountains to the east? On the other side of that gravel we dare call ‘moon’.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Candide said, glancing at his paper map.

“Go take a look at them. I’ll gather my platoons near Khōst, the biggest underground farms—Baron? Inspect the ice collectors to the west.”

“Roger that,” they both replied.

Led by Miles, two of the F-XIV, turned east. They went around a crater, recently left by a meteorite. They progressed slowly below the radars over the desolate, atmosphere-less star, avoiding the steepest slopes and the largest clumps of rock where their starfighter could crash at such a low altitude.

“This is a waste of our time…” grumbled Apache after a couple of minutes. The pilot was slumped at her post. Out of boredom, she controlled her skiff with the handle of her ice pick.

“Still better than getting your ass punctured over the OMs,” Shrimp reacted.

“How can you say that? It’s our homes that are burning!” snapped Apache, twirling her spacecraft and speeding it up to catch on Miles’.

Miles’ wizzo sighed. “Et c’est reparti…”

“It’s our duty to defend them. It’s our duty to defend ourselves! The Rings are ours. And the Technos can go fuck themselves!”

“Ours? Weren’t you a worker on Enceladus before? The ice mine wasn’t yours. Your colonial rabbit cage wasn’t yours either. The Rings belong to the oil, plastic, and protein corral tycoons!”

“So what?” Apache continued. “Someday I’ll own a corral too, once the Technos kicked out all their way to Mars! And if I ain’t finding my fortune in the Rings. Imma go to the Kuiper territories—even Planet Nine. I work hard for it, just like my boss worked hard before me—back in the colonial times.”

Shrimp burst out laughing as the first foothills of Paaliaq Hill loomed in the distance. “They didn’t wank shit! The robots did everything. Without workers and mechanical slaves, your boss’ nothing. Another proof? We’re the ones getting chopped in orbit or in the mud again! Not them.”

“You’re a fucking commie, Frenchy. You’ll change your mind when a Martian comes buzzing on Ballou’s door. Burn your ranch and rape your inbred cousins—but, what about you, Red Swan? You’re a child of Mimas, and don’t talk much. What d’you think of all this?”

Miles remained silent at first. Under the canopy, he looked up at the stars and remembered the plastic coffin surrounding his home world. “It doesn’t matter now. We’re buried deep.”

“He’s right,” Shrimp said. “But if I had druthers, I’d be home on Ballou.”

“Y’all a bunch of fucking pussies…” Apache grumbled. “You—”

A rocket ricocheted off the steel of her wing and interrupted her populist tirade. The impact was so violent the left turbine dislocated. The pilot’s screams punctuated the communication channel.

“Holy shit!” Shrimp went on. “Contact!”

“Buckle up!” ordered Miles as he slid towards the ground. “Apache?”

The silence of Apache that followed didn’t bode well.

Pierre gasped for air, turning his head searching for the down ship. “Can’t see her fucking Flicker—already hearing Amazing Grace.”

“Focus, Pierre!” Miles yelled. He straightened, disappearing intentionally in a cloud of dust before stalling.

“Got a bogle up there. By the big rock,” Shrimp said, panting. His thermal imaging program tracked the target through the grime veil that enveloped them. When he pressed a small button above the lenses, the information was relayed to Miles with a slight delay.

“It’s a mountain, Pierre… Got a lot of big rocks.”

“This one is bigger. You have the feed? Fucker’s maneuvering some yard sale DCA. It’s grounded. No need for corrections.”

“Yes. Disable the gadget. Going all-organic once the cloud disperses,” Miles explained, loading the machine guns.

“Maverick’s fucking cocky for his first real mission?”

The billow floated away, and Miles rushed towards the target. The sad mountain finally appeared, revealing its gray dunes and a few bunkers on the hillside. Both the airmen hit their backseat before their F-XIV fired.

“Got it?” Shrimp asked.

“There’s a guy.”

“Shoot the fucking guy.”

“Don’t want to shoot the fucking guy.”

“Aim for the fucking ammo crates, then.”

Miles fired one last time, overheating the M-61. “Target destroyed,” he concluded as Pierre scanned the outskirts of the casemate. “See anything that might be trouble?”

“Non. Ain’t nothing more than underground farms around.”

A bullet ricocheted on the ship’s right, causing a spark near Miles. “Got stung,” the latter grunted.

“Saw the ‘squito?”

“Over yonder.”

“If he keeps firing, Bragg will napalm the whole mountain from orbit.”

Miles shot again, hitting around the anti-aircraft gun’s position to scare the sniper away.

Immediately, Pierre informed Stuart. “By the way, you found Apache Sir?” he then asked.

The radio sputtered static and a young corporal replied that Apache had crashed in a protein pool nearby. She survived with only a piece of shrapnel in her thigh and a couple of worms down her throat.

“She survived?” Miles asked.

“Fucker’s tougher than my grandma’s cookies.”

Meanwhile, the mountain disappeared in a rain of fire. Without oxygen, the flames died almost immediately, leaving only a charred mess for Stuart’s ground platoons to inspect as a formality.

“Is this even legal?” Miles noted as he hovered the fuliginous aftermath.

“No bunkers. No Technos…” Pierre sighed. “Bragg’s a criminal.”

“These were farms. And sharecroppers…”

Pierre concluded, looking at the feed: “May Darwin have mercy on our souls.”

In orbit over their head arrived the Free Hyperion fleet under Bragg’s command. A new message from Captain Stuart informed the unit that an offensive on Skymir was imminent. And the 1st of Cavalry will be in the frontline. As always.

“Meeting Baron at the coordinates I just sent you, Red,” Shrimp went on.

The airship shook before diving. Dazed, Miles clutched his chest-box. An alarm coming from his dashboard made him jump.

“Miles?” the WSO asked, peaking over his friend’s headrest. He saw him tilting towards the stick. “Shit, Miles! Are you okay?”

“Let’s head home…” the pilot concluded, flying the ship back to the F.L.S. Chickamauga despite a blurry vision.