Kiruna

Kiruna is a place on Midgard that anchors several of the novel’s most personal memories of life before the Drakkar expedition. For Mickey Barnes, it is both an ordinary home—associated with an unfashionable apartment and familiar cafés—and a bright patch on the night side of Midgard, glimpsed from orbit just before he leaves. The contrast gives Kiruna a double significance: it is a lived-in setting for friendship and precarious ambition, and a vanishing point for a departure that its residents understand differently.

Setting and everyday life

Mickey Barnes is living in an unfashionable apartment in an unfashionable part of Kiruna when Berto Gomez, already selected for the crew of the Drakkar, tells him that he is considering one last run at the spring pro-am tournament. The two are sitting in Shaky Joe’s, drinking tea and waiting for a ball game to appear on the screen above the bar. The setting is casual, but the conversation carries the weight of what is about to change: Berto expects to leave for the unknown, and imagines that one final trophy could make his sporting reputation last for generations.

Kiruna also enters the story from far above. During Mickey’s training, Jemma takes him outside onto the hull of a station orbiting Midgard. In their suits, they practice using recoilless wrenches, and Mickey points out a bright patch below as Kiruna. The city is not described in detail from orbit; what matters is the recognition. It is a familiar place made visible at a distance, just before it slips out of view.

Berto Gomez and the pro-am return

Berto’s relationship with Kiruna is bound up with the memory of his extraordinary talent. At fifteen, after only a few months of practicing pog-ball against the wall of an administrative building, he joined a school team and entered a pro-am tournament. He finished second in his age bracket that first week, won the amateur division the following year, and began playing for money after graduation. Two years later, when he left the game for flight training, he was the tenth-ranked player on the planet.

Nine years after setting his racket aside, Berto considers returning for the spring pro-am before departing on the Drakkar. Mickey recognizes the gap between the remembered prodigy and the competitor who has not played seriously in years. Many people in Kiruna, however, still remember the young Berto who defeated seasoned professionals and seemed not to break a sweat. Mickey does not tell his friend that the long absence may end in an embarrassing first-match loss. Instead, he encourages him to enter, helping sustain Berto’s hope of turning a final tournament into a lasting legend.

Berto follows through, and a news feed picks up his entry. Its interview is paired with footage from his last tournament, which he won without dropping a game. The publicity revives the image Kiruna retains of him, even as Mickey privately doubts that the old record predicts the outcome of a new contest. Mickey then spends every credit he has—and more than he has—betting that Berto will lose his first match. The wager grows out of his lack of employment prospects and dread of living indefinitely on a basic subsidy; it turns the city’s sports memory into the setting for a consequential financial risk.

Departure and the view from orbit

Kiruna is also the place from which Mickey’s route away from Midgard begins. He applies for a Security position, but the rejection arrives almost immediately. There are only eighteen berths, and they mostly go to applicants with relevant qualifications and political connections. Mickey has neither; reading extensively about the Battle of Midway does not count as military experience, and Berto’s fame cannot secure him a place. The next afternoon, at Shaky Joe’s, Mickey shows Berto the rejection notice. Their familiar meeting place becomes the scene where the ordinary route off Midgard closes and the prospect of a dangerous Expendable berth becomes more important.

Later, during the station-hull exercise, Kiruna appears as a bright patch beneath the two suited trainees. Jemma observes that the colonists are leaving forever. She admires the project of spreading humanity widely enough to make it more resilient against disaster, while admitting that she could not make the same departure herself. Mickey presents himself as an explorer, but Jemma responds with disbelief. They remain outside in silence as Midgard turns beneath them and Kiruna disappears over the horizon. The moment gives physical form to the separation: the place is visible, recognizable, and then gone from view.

Narrative significance

Kiruna gathers together the novel’s pre-expedition pressures without making the place itself an abstract symbol. Shaky Joe’s links Mickey and Berto to friendship, sport, and the routines they share before departure; the apartment points to Mickey’s constrained prospects; the swiftly rejected application shows how little influence Berto’s celebrity can buy. These details make the choice of an Expendable berth legible as a response to limited alternatives rather than as an uncomplicated appetite for adventure.

The later orbital view changes the scale of the same setting. At Shaky Joe’s, the future is discussed over tea and tournament footage; outside the station, Kiruna is reduced to a bright mark on a turning world. Its disappearance coincides with Mickey’s irreversible departure from the life he knows. Kiruna therefore serves as both a social home recalled through specific places and a point of departure whose emotional force comes from its distance, not from any detailed account of the city itself.