Chapter 143: PB - #19 The Dead Bunch

The Dead Bunch

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.

“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!”

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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“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…”

“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.

“Miles Villanueva of Mimas,” Stuart went on. “Lieutenant Miles. Second Lieutenant Pierre ‘Shrimp’ Candide. Shrimp’s our best Wizzo.”

“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.

“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.”

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.

“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?”

“Steal a Hummingbird. Desert.”

“Nickname?”