DECLASSIFIED
DATE: SEPTEMBER 21, 2213, 19:53 UTC
DEBRIEF LOCATION: FT. NAKAMURA, RIDE, VALLES MARINERIS PARATERRAFORMED ZONE (I.A.N. CONTROLLED)
The following is the post-defection debrief interview of NRR Second Lieutenant Mikhail Stakhanov (henceforth MS) of the 4th Guards Heavy Infantry Division , which operated M-94 (IAN reporting name: Marble) Supplemental Powered Armor (colloquially known as “Mechs”), of which one Lt. Stakhanov defected to North American Federation forces with. It is the first fully operational example of the type available for evaluation by IAN forces.
This interview was conducted by Maj. Oluremi Cruz (henceforth OC), Aitken Republic, on behalf of the Interplanetary Alliance of Nations.
<OC>: Good evening, Lieutenant Stakhanov.
A translator is present and begins to repeat Cruz’s words in Russian. Stakhanov cuts them off.
<MS>: Don’t worry, a translator will not be needed. I lived on Luna growing up, I speak Lunar English well enough. And please-call me Mishka.
<OC>: Very well. Cruz gestures for the translator to leave the room. Well then, Mishka— first off, one Lunan to another, I must congratulate you for brave defection.
<MS>: I know I’m a defector, but please don’t patronize me and act like this was some magnificent political act of defiance. I received enough of an earful from the political officers about that sort of shit shit to last a lifetime.
<OC>: Oh, Jesus, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m speaking practically. For one, managing not to get hit by your own comrades once it was obvious you were defecting. For two, managing to not then get yourself killed and successfully surrendering by the American Marine battalion you managed to run into. Those anti-materiel ETC rifles are mean. Frankly—one mech pilot to another— the way you made that Marble dance was impressive.
<MS>: You’re a mech pilot? You look and dress like an Alliance Intelligence officer.
<OC>: Was a pilot. Was actually an early recruit for Aitken’s Man-Tank project! Managed to fuck up my neural implant in ‘41 pulling too many gees on a test run, but Alliance Intelligence decided they could use a jumper-jockey like me—and hey! My pay got a bump!
But at any rate: As much as I’d love to ramble on, and trade war stories at some point, I was ordered to actually ask you questions. Not much of an interview otherwise.
<MS>: Alright then. What is it that they say in Aitken? “Shoot?”
<OC>: “Shoot”, yeah. Anyways, I’ll start with something broad. Why did you choose to defect?
<MS>: Food.
<OC>: Food?
<MS>: Fucking food.
<OC>: Fucking food. Were they starving you? I knew the NRR’s logistics and supply situation was bad, but…
<MS>: No, no, not at all. None of us are hungry. Stakhanov mumbles. Though I’d rather go hungry than eat some of the [unintelligible] they give us.
<OC>: Cruz leans in. That last bit. Care to expand on that?
<MS>: What they give us is food in the technical sense. Half the time, it’s tasteless nutrient bars that feel like you’re biting concrete. The other half of the time, it’s ancient rations. And I mean ancient. I don’t know how the logistics officers found some of it. But hey! Battalion commanders can report their troops are eating properly!
<OC>: I mean, I’ve eaten decade-old MREs before. A bit stale, but… how old were they?
<MS>: I shit you not, they gave us Chinese rations from the Second Sino-American War. Svetlana ate one before reading the date. I still have nightmares about the scene in the base toilets.
<OC>: How the fuck? For one, they’d be more than a hundred years old! How did they get to Mars? When? How?! I refuse to believe you.
<MS>: From what we pieced together? Some logistics officer was selling off his supply—I have no idea who would want our regular rations in the first place— and replacing what was missing from a bunch of sources, including, apparently, a dilapidated warehouse somewhere outside Chengdu. I kept a label as a souvenir. Take a look. Stakhanov hands a piece of cardboard to Cruz.
<OC>: Oh my god. *Cruz begins to laugh. Oh my god. Cruz stops to calm down. So, then, we’ve got a damn good motive. An army marches on its stomach, even if the legs are mechanical these days. What was the catalyst, then?.
<MS>: Ironically, a successful attack.
<OC>: Oh?
<MS> This was several months ago, during the attempted push further west down the valley. We’d overrun a small Alliance forward base; caught them “with their pants down”, so to speak. They were on low alert and actually about to serve dinner for the troops. Took the base with surprise and few casualties, theirs or ours. Sorting out the prisoners was more work. So, anyways, we waltz on to base, smell something good, and head towards the source of the smell…
<OC>: I see where this is going. Continue.
<MS>: Pizza. Good, Neapolitan pizza. I ate an entire pie by myself. A forward base with maybe a hundred men, more of a camp than anything else, and they were being served fresh pizza. You have the resources to make fresh pizza on the frontlines of a war. I decided right then and there I needed to defect.
<OC>: So you defected for pizza.
<MS>: I’d rather you not phrase it in such a… crass way, but yes. I defected for fucking pizza.
Stakhanov was resettled in the Aitken Republic, Luna, after the Marianas War, under the name
ARCHIVIST’S NOTE, FOR PUBLIC RELEASE: Stakhanov and Cruz later connected after the war and became lifelong friends, until Cruz’s death in 2299 at the age of 143. Stakhanov’s current identity has been redacted and will remain so for the rest of his life to protect him from reprisals by NRR-loyalist actors.
Okay, so this is the first time I’ve written anything creatively since, like, middle school, I’m open to comments and critique, the concept felt like a good prompt to me and I wanted to see how I’d do.
