Berto's flitter stunt through the rock fissure for a bet

Berto Gomez’s flitter stunt through the rock fissure for a bet turns a display of piloting skill into a test of judgment under the colony’s emergency conditions. Berto threads a Flitter through a gap that nearly closes at its top, wins 3,000 kcal from his wager, and then faces discipline because the maneuver risked both his life and scarce equipment.

The Wager and the Ridge

The story comes out over food at a table in the back of the dining area, where Mickey Barnes and Berto Gomez can feel Security watching them. Berto asks Mickey to recall a ridge about twenty klicks south of the dome. Mickey’s memory of the trip is blurred: he initially nods along, then admits he does not remember the formation. Only after Berto describes it does the place seem familiar. Mickey had once thought it might be suitable for bouldering, before the creepers changed the circumstances around the colony.

Berto describes a granite spike about thirty meters tall, with a slightly shorter slab leaning against it. The opening between them is about ten meters wide at the base but narrows to nothing at the top. In the weeks before attempting the flight, he had been telling anyone who would listen that he could get a Flitter through. Even with the aircraft rolled ninety degrees, he estimates that the clearance near the top would be only about half a meter on either side; initiating the roll would require timing within roughly a tenth of a second. The difficulty is not incidental to the wager: it is precisely what made other colonists consider the idea too dangerous to be plausible.

The Flight and Its Payoff

Berto confirms that he did make the attempt. He had been collecting bets from people who thought the maneuver impossible, and says that he won 3,000 kcal in total. Mickey’s response is not admiration but alarm: Berto could have died. Berto acknowledges the risk and points to the outcome—he did not.

Marshall’s office later supplies the visual record behind Berto’s account. A grainy, distant clip shows the Flitter diving toward rocks at the crest of a snowy ridgeline. From the camera’s angle, the triangular gap between the slabs appears too narrow to admit the aircraft. Berto levels off about a hundred meters away, adjusts his altitude, and rolls at the last instant. The Flitter passes through without even scratching its paint. The recorded sequence makes the stunt’s precision visible, while also clarifying why Mickey, already aware of its success, still feels his stomach tighten as he watches it.

Scrutiny and Punishment

The footage is evidence in Marshall’s questioning of Berto, not simply a record of a spectacular flight. Marshall explains that the colony is on heightened alert because people have been lost and few remain to spare. Security is monitoring activity closely. The maneuver therefore risked more than Berto’s life: Marshall identifies the Flitter’s two thousand kilos of irreplaceable metal and electronics as an equally serious stake.

Berto sits silent as Marshall confronts him over the wager and the regulations he has violated in the preceding two days. Marshall says he cannot afford to ground him, even though grounding would be the least severe response, and notes that flogging is not permitted under standard Union guidelines. He turns to Mickey for a suggestion; Mickey offers none. The exchange leaves Marshall to impose a punishment that preserves Berto’s usefulness as a pilot while making the cost of the stunt harder to ignore.

For the next five days, Berto must cover Nasha Adjaya’s shifts aloft in addition to his own. Marshall also cuts Berto’s rations by a further ten percent and blocks him from accepting transfers from other personnel, anticipating that he might otherwise continue to scam his fellow colonists. When Berto begins to protest, Marshall cuts him off and warns that pressing the matter could force him to consider more radical solutions.

Risk, Scarcity, and the Colony

The episode sets Berto’s technical confidence against the colony’s precarious arithmetic. The stunt succeeds cleanly, and the 3,000-kcal payoff confirms that the wager was real; neither fact cancels the possibility of losing a pilot or a costly aircraft when personnel and equipment are scarce. Marshall’s response is correspondingly practical: he does not remove Berto from flight duty, but assigns him more of it, while restricting his food and access to transfers.

The scene also turns a private story into an officially observed act. At the meal, Berto recounts the flight to Mickey; in Marshall’s office, the distant recording allows the authorities to reconstruct it and judge its consequences. What Berto presents as a completed dare becomes, under surveillance, a breach of responsibility. The immaculate passage through the rocks proves his skill, but in the colony’s emergency it cannot by itself justify the risk.