Two hours later, Ali and I were aboard the Kitty.

“The reactor’s gradient looks good. The fresh welds will hold until Jupiter if we don’t do anything wrong,” I concluded as the control computer gave its assessment of the system.

“Then we go for it,” Ali answered me while finishing calibrating the railgun’s power supply. The wound at her neck had reopened despite Yaan-ze’s stitches. Yet my copilot didn’t care. “Fly close enough to their fucking ship when we see them. They’ll have to chase us. And if necessary, we’ll zigzag through the cluster to lose them.”

“What if they call for backup?”

All I got was the railgun’s arming sound as an answer.

We left the electromagnetic dome and its artificial atmosphere. It was really a remarkable job. On the other side, the refuge of the exiles mimicked a simple crater. But we didn’t have time to be ecstatic. The control computer quickly alerted us to an enemy’s presence on the main monitor.

“Take the bait,” Ali prayed. “Come on! You’re here for us, aren’t you?”

We swerved towards the Interceptor to shake it. And it immediately inflated its turbines. Shortly after, the Kitty slalomed between two drifting celestial bodies before diving straight over its target. The Swallow flew like never before. Everything seemed so smooth. Beek-sun clearly resurrected her.

“I’m going back to send them a 40 mm squirt and quickly dust off!” I said. “It will be for Yaan-ze.”

I looked up at the ceiling. The constellation of the dove I had brought shone above the front cockpit windows. In a squeak, the two machine guns of the Kitty armed their band of cartridges.

“Keep the ammo!” Ali shouted from her post. “They’re gone!”

“What? How come?”

“Watch your six! They’re heading back towards the crater!”

The instruments confirmed the new position of the enemy ship. “These scums!” I cried out. “Why are they letting us leave?”

“Wanna bet? Their little risky vendetta no longer interests them,” said my sapiens through her mic. “This band of psycho-murderers found an easier target to bully and earn a nice Martian reward for it!”

That meant that, despite our escape, Beek-sun and his tribe were once again in danger.

An explosion prevented me from answering. The Kitty had been clipped beneath the hold. But it wasn’t a shell hit. It was a floating mine! Radar and IR detection were ineffective for such small bodies. The Interceptor had left us surprise gifts all over the perimeter. “Bloody bastards! I can see another one just below us! Ali? We will be toast if I keep moving! We’re trapped here!” These tricksters thought that we would take advantage of this to flee and run straight into their explosive charges.

My sapiens had turned back. She had boldly climbed to the cockpit from the Swallow firing post. “What should we do?” she asked, looking for mines through the windows.

I glanced at the celestial pebbles upon my head. “They killed Yaan-ze.”

My partner smiled. She came by my pilot’s chair and kissed me on the forehead. She knew I was sad. A sentiment I would never imagine feeling for a human. Well, except for her.

“The Interceptors have reflective plates at the front but a light shield at the rear around the main turbines. Is that right?” she pursued while going back to the gunnery station.

“They’re birds of prey. Not designed to be hunted,” I replied. “The Kitty is undetectable for their equipment, which gives us the element of surprise.”

“Perfect! Let’s fry those motherfuckers!”

I made a loop, brushing against some mines without activating them. The swallow was chasing the falcon. In a heartbeat, our ship was plummeting towards the illusory veil. When she was finally in firing condition, the steel bird of prey had just passed through it. A few rockets had broken off from its wings in the attack position.

“Fire in the hole!” Ali shouted as we entered the atmosphere.

Enemy torpedoes destroyed a farmhouse, but this was their last damage. The railgun and our machine-guns fire blew up half of the Interceptor’s turbines and it had to stall. As we passed over it, it braked suddenly and hovered.

“They’re landing!” I shouted to my partner.

She was back at my side in the cockpit, her jet-pack from Yggdrasil in her arms: “Imma jump. Take it out before it pulls off.”

“You’re wigging out, Ali! I’m not sure if this old equipment works,” I mumbled. I heard the airlock alarm as this lunatic leaped out for the most carefree glide in our history.

Anyway, she had given me an instruction. Well… it was just some friendly advice. I was the captain and I didn’t take orders, let alone from a human XO. Regardless, it didn’t matter! I had a mission to fulfill. And it included the two things I liked to do most in the world besides eating: flying and killing sapiens.

I quickly engaged a spin that stretched my vertebrae and removed any residual pain. I felt the blood rising to my ears and my guts weighing down on my stomach which hadn’t finished its morning crumpets.

The Interceptor had finalized unloading its thugs and was again in visual contact just below. I fired a salvo, but the Customs vessel was unfortunately too well-equipped. The 40 were definitely unable to pierce the hull.

I couldn’t stop my course and stalled towards the lake. The pilot was smart enough to let me conclude my maneuver and rushed behind me. We were in the same configuration as two days before but this time I was alone. And as an alarm rang, the control computer warned me that my beautiful Swallow was being locked. “Well… that’s not reassuring!” I shouted to myself. A countdown had appeared on the left CRT screen. A Ludgren warhead has been launched from the Interceptor. This was a death sentence. Even worse; it would chip my beautiful Kitty’s coating off. I couldn’t allow that! I had to dodge it at the last second.

Alas, I knew deep in my soul it was nearly impossible. The Swallow was an old ship and couldn’t be that reactive. “If there is a real God, Goddess or Great Manitou may one of them show up quickly!” I firmly grasped the stick, ready to span on the left at the last moment. But before I could contract my muscles, the Kitty swirled; out of control. Before my eyes, the missile brushed off the cockpit’s windows. “What the—Kitty, did you—” Impossible.

The Ludgren had narrowly missed us and got lost at the bottom of the water. The electromagnetic dome flickered before returning to a stable state. The nuclear reactor was hit.

Despite my reluctance, the computer abruptly unfolded the brake fins at full speed, making the hull shriek. The beak of the Interceptor struck the Kitty’s single turbine, bending the fork tail. The collision was so severe that the control panel embedded itself into the illuminated dashboard. I had found a name for this stupid and dangerous maneuver: a Yaan-ze!

The Blue tank had burst on impact, spraying coolant all over the Interceptor cockpit. My paw slipped to reactivate the engine at full power as we were both close to the water. The end was a gigantic explosion and a “perfectly handled” landing on the outskirts of the village. The swallow had struck down its predator, henceforth lost at the bottom of the lake. “That’s how we do on Titan! You corrupted mucky belters!”

The joy was sadly short-lived. When I reached dry land, limping more than walking, most of the houses were burning. Thick black smoke covered the bank. The streets were littered with mutant corpses. Nevertheless, a few Customs officers were also lying on the ground. They didn’t expect Beek-sun’s heavy weaponry.

“What does all of this even mean, stupid covetous humans?” I asked, briefly examining a steel breastplate scorched by a corrosive gel. “This is a disaster… Why can’t y—”

An exchange of gunfire took place not far from the ice well. I heard Ali’s pistol detonate and a man screamed of agony through the smoke screen.

Not very far, Beek-sun stood against the circular wall, a gaping gash on his belly. The poor boy tried as well as he could to compress his wound, but the blood was flooding the orange sand beneath his baseball bat. I saw him struggling to talk to me and I only answered with a sad smile that he gave back.

“It—it’s nice to feel the freshness,” he stuttered. “On Venus, it was a—a dreadful furnace.”

“I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t. Besides, you taught me to forget the pain…”

“Rambo III,” I sighed, a tear in the corner of my eye.

Beek-sun laughed between two coughing fits. He contemplated his devastated village without seeing it. “Thank you for coming back, my friends. I hope the Kitty is flying well. There’s a part of me in her now. A part of Yaan-ze too…”

When he died, the dome disappeared for a second like it was mourning its master. The black smoke was sucked up from the heights before falling back on the hamlet. Beek-sun vanished in the dark swirls.

It was just before I was grabbed by the throat. Someone was crushing my snout. Without being able to defend myself, my assailant pressed cold metal against my ear. The copper-shouldered NCO shouted: “Where’s your whore? Where’s that fucking bitch that—” A round pierced the black smoke and hit her in the knee. A .50 caliber bullet rarely does things by halves. That thug could say goodbye to her left limb.

To hold her remains of bones and ligaments in place, the brute threw me against the well. Fortunately, she slipped and I landed between her severed leg and Beek-sun’s burning baseball bat.

When I turned back, another shot tore off most of the NCO right hand. She dropped her .32 which fell next to me. When she tried to grab it with her poor stump, I bit the last of her fingers as she screamed in anger: “I’m an officer! I’m a fucking Customs officer—soldier of the Technocratic Marine! Don’t you compute what you’re doing?”

Ali leaped through the smoke screen with her jet-pack. Her face had no expression. A few light wounds were scattered across her torso and a blade was stuck in her thigh but she casually walked towards the NCO before aiming her gun at her. Seconds later, the hot cannon was against the soldier’s forehead.

“Ouch! Okay—okay—let’s forget about this FID story on Las Pallas and that captain you spaced,” she pleaded. “She had it coming. She—she was a greedy cunt!”

“You don’t say…” My partner calmly holstered her gun and I heard the officer sighed. The human seemed relieved but with sweat drops in her eyes she didn’t see Ali reaching for Beek’s bat with her foot.

“Let’s talk, okay? We can split the mutants’ reward. God Darwin be damned I won’t snitch about the captain—I won’t—”

A drop of blood landed on my nose; then a second; and eventually a third after a wet crack noise. The headless NCO remained on her knees, immobilized in the mud by the weight of her own red armor.

My partner finally let herself fall by my side. She moved back before leaning against the well, next to Beek-sun’s body and rested her head on the dead young boy’s shoulder. “Did you shoot down the Interceptor?” she asked.

“With a bodacious maneuver worthy of Maverick,” I replied, still thinking about the Kitty’s odd reaction before the last words of Beeks’ came to my mind.

Ali spewed. “Good.” Blood ran on her chin.

“It shouldn’t have occurred,” I cursed myself. “Did any of the villagers survive?”

“I don’t think so…” my copilot answered while taking me in her arms.

“Shame. This is Yggdrasil all over again… Even worse I would say.”

She sighed then quoted me from our time under the big white tree: “You know… ‘these kinds of things just happen’.”

I chuckled nervously. “It seems to be a common element to all of this,” I conceded as she was the one giving me a lecture this time. “This is—” It was too much. I couldn’t hold this one and only teardrop. A tear mixing sorrow and exhaustion. “This is so unfair! I liked being a cat again. Even for a couple of days.”

“I know,” Ali answered. “I’m sad too.”

“Because of the mutants?”

“Maybe… I don’t know,” she pursued before brushing my forehead with her nose. “This world sucks. I’m just glad we’re together.”

“So do I, my dear.”

I concluded with a wet nose kiss on her left cheek that came along with a hug. We retreated into the pink grass, letting the flames devour the former colony. There, I understood what Ali was really sad about. I recalled having the same view a decade ago, the night we lost everything we loved.

 

Back to business…