Kat Ballou

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“Land ahoy!” Tatyana shouted, violently waking up all the breathless occupants of the ship bathing in foul air; except for Pierre, still in a coma inside his sealed bloody bag.

Curled up in the pilot seat which was nothing more than a metallic frame, Miles stretched and winced. Beside him, an overexcited Tatyana left her navigator station to Fate, until then busy fixing the coolant system around the tired Baltimore engine.

“Are you sure?” the Techno-surgeon asked. Clicking on the dashboard to display the local map on the screen, she probed their surroundings.

The teenage nurse stuck her face between the scrawny headrests. Her lips covered with greenish nutrigel, she had taken advantage of the night to stuff herself with half her survival rations. “Sh’yeah! Norse Group. Irregular retrograde satellite with the right inclination. But there’s a problem with the diameter…” She then pressed a bright button on the front of Miles’ armrest. A sizzling ghost representation of the moon appeared before them, dazzling the pilot. “This piece of rock is uber-weird, mein Generaloberst! It glows. As if reflecting all of Saturn’s light.”

“Nothing to do with your hologram,” Miles grunted, massaging his eyes. His vision remained blurry. “Check at the surface. Looks like Mimas”

And indeed, as their ship flew closer, Saturn LXIII’s shell appeared to be as smooth as a mirror. The entire moon hadn’t been covered by litter, but instead concealed beneath an outstanding glass armor; like a greenhouse.

“This is dumb!” Tatyana reacted. “The slightest cosmic pebble would easily shatter one of the panels. Making this whole veil as useless as a ham sandwich at a Bar Mitzvah! I wouldn’t want to be the space engineer running this joke of a place.”

Remembering their trouble before Old Dodge City, Mikes asked: “Still dreaming of being a space engineer, Fate?”

The surgeon heaved, wringing some Blue from her scrubs. “I also never wished to be a field doctor, but here we are…”

Near the most outlying pole, Miles spotted a metal landing pier. When the ship docked on a double pair of clamps, the platform unfolded two transparent half-domes. They slowly enveloped the craft, and a whirring sound indicated the equalization of pressures. The bubble filled with fresh air. And oxygen.

Following Tatyana, Miles unbuckled his harness and stood up. “Time to go see what’s going on Ballou-land!” he uttered.

But no sooner had he jumped out of his seat than the spacecraft spun over. The lack of gravity made him stay put, yet his two buckled fiends appeared upside down.

“Psych!” Tatyana hissed. She floated down to him. With a flick of her pelvis, she turned to the windshield. “We’re behind the mirror hull now!”

Accustomed to dead gray stars battered by solar storms, Miles was stunned to see what Pierre’s family had done with Saturn LXIII. A lawn so tightly maintained it seemed artificial covered Ballou.

“This satellite… Why carpet it with bluegrass?” Fate asked.

“Why not?” Tatyana reacted.

“You wouldn’t even imagine how much Pierre loves his turf,” Miles said.

“It’s kinda pretty!” Tatyana opined, pointing to the lonely hill in the distance. A fine dew shone near the narrow round windows dotting it. “Let’s check it out! But before…”

She headed for the transport compartment. With Fate’s aid, she examined Pierre’s condition. The bag had turned slightly brown. Clots built up against the transparent blister.

The Techno-surgeon’s following prognosis remained more than reserved: “This is bad. We need to intervene once we get down there,” she declared, unzipping the half-empty bag. “Miss Zelensky? Help me get him out.”

“Rad! It’s mega-gross!”

“Tatyana…”

The girl huffed. “See, Mr. Slim Jim? This is why I called her the way I called her…”

“I’ll go check if Pierre’s sister’s down there,” Miles said before a strange heated argument in Japanese started.

The pilot headed for the airlock’s hissing panels. A draft blew in his face. Propelling himself through the frame, he dived into the weightlessness. The veil reflecting Ballou’s green meadow concealed a humid and warm atmosphere. Breathing was hard; but at least, it was possible to do so. High on oxygen, he began rejuvenating.

Yet his smile faded as quickly as a bullet grazed his crotch.

Miles swore, mechanically turning his head towards the celestial mirrors. If one of them were to break, he would be sucked into the void and asphyxiated in less than a minute. Fortunately, the so-called “glass” appeared to be a polymer which absorbed the projectile before spitting it out on the other side of the veil. The tiny hole then plugged itself back up.

“Qui êtes-vous? Qu’est-ce que vous venez faire ici?” shouted a brisk voice from below.

It belonged to a woman near the hill. A bioengineer judging by her gritty outfit, bio-seeds bags and computer hanging from her belt. Beside her stood a small lawn mower robot on wheels, feverishly holding a custom Springfield that had seen better days. They had come out of a floor through a camouflage hatch leading to a staircase.

“You guys live here?” Miles asked, raising his arms while turning upside down.

The machine silently cocked the gun again, and Miles lowered his arms higher. His abrupt movement caused him to topple backward.

“Shit…” he mumbled, as gravity always seemed to find a way to make him look stupid. “Attendez! Wait! Lost parts of my French since I left Mimas.”

“You speak Français?”

“Un petit pas beaucoup.”

“We can speak Solarian English.”

“Appreciated,” Miles went on, still twirling. “You Kat? Pierre’s sister?”

“Who’s asking?” the robot questioned this time in its digitized childlike voice.

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The bioengineer motioned for him to lower his weapon before talking again “My brother? Where is he?” Her blue eyes were filled with concern.

“Did you find the family?” Fate inquired, pointing her nose out of the airlock. She held Pierre’s naked body against her.

“Oh mon Dieu! Pierre!” Kat reacted. She leaped into the air to join her dying brother. “Pierre!” Miles fluttered aside as best he could to let her pass, or she would have crashed into him. “What happened?”

“We’d better get him inside,” Fate replied, promptly escorted by Tatyana, struggling against weightlessness to wrap the IV tubing around his left arm. “He needs urgent care.”

Kat inspected her brother’s bruised face before stroking his cheek. She then shifted her gaze to his missing leg and gasped. “Vite! Suivez-moi!”

Miles gave way to Kat again, who, after tapping the heels of her heavy metal boots together, was drawn to the ground. Fate and Tatyana could join her, and they all disappeared through the closing trapdoor.

The pilot found himself alone waltzing in the weightlessness. Until he remembered about the robot down below.

“Little help?” he asked the little gardening bot that came rolling under the upside down pier.

The automaton awkwardly jumped thanks to his thrusters, and clung to the control console of the rotary airlock. Pulling on various rusted levers, he activated the plastic dome, enclosing the spaceship in its hermetic bubble. A discreet alarm sounded and the three-compartment platform swung open again, allowing the vessel to return outdoors. In its place, between two pairs of clamps in better condition, sat Kat’s American FlyCatcher still wearing the USAF colors.

“I’m Beau,” the robot replied, falling to the ground with a can of Mobil oil dropped from the pier. “Pierre and Kat’s nephew.”

Welcoming the android between his arms to come down with him, Miles raised an eyebrow. “Nephew? I mean—I’m Sl—Miles.”

Once on the grass, the little automaton abandoned the weight and handed him his paw crowned with four gum-coated fingers. “Enchanté. The real Beau passed away at an early age. So did his mother—Pierre’s other sister. Her husband conceived me to… overcome his grief. But he died too. Killed by Pukes—border ruffians. I was left behind. So… I’m still here.”

“I see,” Miles responded. “Will you show me around? Pierre’s between good hands—and I’d like my mind to be… occupied.”

“Okay. Mind the step.”

Despite his four somewhat cumbersome drive wheels, Beau managed to descend the stairs leading to the underground dwellings. The cozy rooms bathed in the glow captured by the polymer veil and transmitted through a network of mirror wells dotting the surface. Beneath, Ballou occurred to be a huge farm spread out over different levels that became narrower. Each level appeared to be circular, resembling a disk. The top ones welcomed wide greenhouses where a multitude of colorful vegetable species were growing on smartly-organized shelves. On some floors, the green libraries even housed sprawling fruit trees adapted to the weak gravity.

“Is everything automated?” Miles asked as he faced a concrete column sheltering tomato plants among wired alveoli.

“That depends on whether I’m counted as an automated system,” the android responded as it headed for a pile of pots held together by a net.

As he approached the pillar, Miles saw that one of the highest pots was slowly sliding out of its sensor-filled socket. Using a steel clamp, he tried to adjust the plant back into its designated space. After a quarter of an hour fighting gravity, he finally succeeded. The patient robot congratulated him by offering him a perfectly round tomato.

As Miles proudly judged his prize to appreciate its texture, Kat appeared from the spiral staircase leading to the apartments below. A roasted nutri-sandwich and a carton of water in her osier basket.

“The taciturn little teenager told me about you,” she said, stepping around the plan. She then handed the food and water to Miles. “Thank you… Thank you for bringing Pierre back here. I am so relieved… despite everything.”

“He’d have done it with or without me. He’s pretty tough and very attached to Ballou. Understandable after the visit your… nephew gave me.”

“Beau isn’t—” Kat’s gaze fell on the little droid inspecting the foliage of a sweet potato plant, and she pulled herself together. “This moon is all we have. It’s our legacy. We are indeed very devoted to it.” She then extended a shy hand towards Miles. “I’m Kat. Kat Candide. Although we are more commonly known as the Ballous—the name my grandfather chose for Saturn LXIII after the Hard Reset…”

“What does Ballou stand for?”

“Old Cajun. I don’t even remember…” She smiled sadly.

“I’m Miles,” the pilot replied. “How’s Pierre?”

“His condition isn’t great but he does seem stable. Your two friends chased me away when I brought them to our emergency module. They told me it was for the best… The following hours will be critical. And quite horrid to attend, according to them.”

“The crazy little girl lured me back from the dead. As for the surgeon… Well, let’s say my comrade’s skill range is pretty impressive for a runaway yakuza.”

“Yakuza?”

Miles bit his tongue, crunching on his fruit. “—God Darwin! Is a tomato reckoned to taste like this? That’s strange!”

“Yes…” Kat replied, still visibly intrigued about the Japanese mob story.

“How?”

“—the chemicals spicing industrial nutrigel are closer to cheap gasoline. The sugar dosage is supposed to burn your taste buds beforehand. So you won’t tell the difference.” Kat pulled herself together, biting her lower lip, she looked down at her magnetic boots covered in dirt. “Sorry. I’m not very good at making conversation. Living here alone with Beau, with only a few trips to the local orbital station on market days, doesn’t make me an ideal host.” She lifted her head before Miles could respond. “Would you like anything else to drink? Something hot to eat? Perhaps you would like to rest? You look very tired and—” She gritted her teeth, judging his last words. “Sorry. Didn’t want to be rude.”

“How does this hydroponic farm work?” Miles asked. “Growing stuff in micro-g must be thorny.”

Another fleshy tomato in the mouth, he sat against a huffing pump. A click startled him and water splashed down his crotch and back.

Kat rushed forward to deactivate the automatic sprinkler. After ordering Beau to go check if Fate and Tatyana needed assistance with the module, she turned to Miles. “Vertical agriculture is about growing crops in upwards stacked layers. Like the one you were examining. Our goal is to control the environment which aims to optimize leaf development. But this isn’t a hydroponic farm. It’s aeroponic.”

“Oh yeah? It flies?”

“No,” she laughed. “Silly… It means that unlike traditional hydros and shrimponics, aeros don’t require any liquid or solid medium to grow greens.”

“Then, what tried to spit at my face?”

“A solution with nutrients. We mist it in the air chambers where the plants are suspended. By far, aeros are the most sustainable soil-free growing technique as it uses up to 50% less water than the few conventional hydroponic systems you can find on Mars. Or even Titan.”

“How?”

“Aeroponic structures adopt a vertical design, which further saves energy as gravity automatically drains away excess juice.”

“But this moon doesn’t have much gravity,” Miles said, trying to sort things out.

“Yes,” the woman replied. She seemed to have all the answers, and did enjoy sharing them. “With earth-related gravitation we could use even less water. Here, we still have to deploy some pumps like the one you… sat on.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” she smiled. “It’s not ideal but… But you—we eat real, almost forgotten vegetables instead of the megacorps’ cockroach juice.”

“What? Roach juice? Nutrigel’s made of tholin and worm protein, right?”

“Maggots…” she corrected him. “Bio-roach’s maggots. Still cockroach juice. Sorry.”

He laughed, but didn’t feel very well.

“I don’t know what your plans are. But if you want, you can stay for a few days,” Kat offered. “I think Pierre would like to thank you when he wakes up. You, the teenager and your friend… the yakuza—is she dangerous?”

Miles swallowed his tomato core. “If I say no I’d be lying…”