Thrill of the Rescue Part III
Captains log — 5
— The following Data excerpt was salvaged from a large cluster of floating debris and damaged satellites in the outer reaches of the unmapped and unruly High Risk Zone. In accordance with MUD Governance Code #32334, this information is highly classified. –
Log ID: 260195
Captains Log: 005
Enlisted Days: 21
ATLAS payload: 1390
Ship: VZUS Opod
Consumed Units Food: 74,397 Toolkit:48,223 Fuel: 58,549 Ammo: 34,436
Captains log: Cort and I set out on the Fimbul Airbikes just before nightfall. As Derranis had promised, the bikes kicked with remarkable force as we hurtled westward across the Tellus flats. We covered twenty five leagues before the planet’s singular small orange moon had loomed directly overhead, though its light shone as meekly as the stars.
According to the corporal, high-ground was essential for reconnaissance, so we found a smattering of tall, flat faced rocks that leaned against one another like a card-house. Cort scaled the rocks nimbly and procured a pair of thermal-oculars at the summit. She scanned the five-or-so leagues ahead of us, in the direction of the calico rescue pod.
‘There’s a faint heat signal, dead ahead… though it’s waning fast…’ she said in a whisper just loud enough to catch. I asked her about resistance, and she was quiet for a few moments as she scanned the horizon.
‘Nothing,’ she said finally, though she sounded as unsettled as I felt.
We stared into the darkness a while longer before mounting the airbikes again. The whoosh of the rear thrusters threatened to break any covertness we were trying to maintain, though Cort reminded me that any sound seemed ear-shattering in a desert at night. I told her it was good to have a real soldier with me — I may be unwaveringly courageous in space but planet-side, it paid to have her confidence.
We hid the Fimbuls behind another card-house of flat rocks, about a league from the signal. As we crept on foot I felt a yearning for the comfort of the ship — her polished, sturdy walls, her mess-hall filled with a yapping crew, the captain’s quarters with its sizable, private observation deck that looked out on the cosmos. I was deep in reverie when the corporal hissed at me to stop moving. She was holding her oculars with one hand and ushering me to duck down with the other. A moment later, she stooped down to whisper that the heat signal had completely faded from the ocular. No trace.
I swallowed and flicked the safety switch ‘off’ on my holstered pistol, its small plasma chamber whirring. Corporal Cort already had hers pointing ahead. We walked in a crouch for several more yards, the soft red glow from our pistols bobbing like phantoms.
We found the grounded Calico rescue pod in a sandy clearing beside a deep and wide ravine. It was half-submerged in a ditch, scratched and corroded from a sketchy atmosphere entry, though its solitary safety light still blinked a bright yellow. The crash site was lit like a crime scene.
The capsule cockpit had been wrenched open, it seemed, and glass crunched underfoot as I approached with my pistol raised. Corporal Cort busied herself scanning our rear with the oculars for any sign of the missing pod occupant.
A loud voice penetrated the darkness so unexpectedly, I jumped and slammed an elbow into the Calico pod’s underbody. Before I could snap around to find the source, a distant crack echoed through the ravine and a white-hot tracer round sizzled past my nose to catch my pistol squarely in its chamber. I yelped and dropped the weapon a moment before it exploded into blue flame. Less than a second later, another flash and Cort’s pistol caught its own round before bursting into a meteor shower of sparks. She cried out in pain as shrapnel chewed through her glove and blood sprayed in a black mist.
A booming voice, enhanced by some means of techno-projection, cut sharply across Cort’s groaning and my startled breathing.
‘Flat on the deck, Captain Beaumond’, the voice said calmly. ‘And you corporal, flat on the deck’, it demanded of Cort, who swore as she cradled her scorched and sliced right hand. Cort reached for her boot knife with her good hand, and I reached for the penny pistol I kept in my own boot before a sudden zipping noise followed by a loud hiss made me catch my breath. That sounded like Forvik weaponry -
My thoughts were rattled out of my skull as Cort and I hit the ground hard, spasming from electric assault. I barely had time to register the clattering of my teeth and the great, heaving pain in my right leg before another zip and hiss echoed from above and Cort screamed again.
‘I said flat on the deck dammit!’ roared the voice from somewhere high up.
Corts breathing became short and ragged before stopping altogether. Though I couldn’t move, couldn’t even turn my head to see if the Corporal was alive, I managed to squeeze out a plea to the assailant,
‘Wait! We yield! Let her go!’ I croaked.
A moment later, Cort’s breathing returned, harsh and punctuated by sobs of pain.
‘What a fantastic weapon,’ the voice said from above, weirdly disembodied,
‘It’s a Forvik Tayerulla M5. You know a little about these numbers, don’t ya captain? They have a ‘surrender’ function. All I have to do is just click this little…’ -
It was my turn to cry out, as the Tayerulla’s wireless taser sent an overwhelming surge of electricity down my leg and through my body, halting my breath to a total standstill.
When air returned to my lungs and I came to, I could hear a distant rumbling from within the canyon beside the dead Calico vessel.
Somewhere, an impulse engine roared to life and the strange, whizzing mechanisms of Oni engineering buffeted up and out of the abyss. Through my half-closed eyelids I could make out the shimmering form of a Busan Thrill of Life rising ominously from the darkness. Its body rippled as its shield generator powered down and it glided ghostlike out of the ravine. The fighter touched down with a metallic clunk several paces from where Cort and I lay in the dirt. Just enough moonlight spilled onto the Thrill of Life to reveal a blue and black signet just below the cockpit. A fist before a dark moon.
‘You can come down, Tet’, said another voice, this one from the ship. There was no mistaking the tenor. It was the steely voice of the infamous Jorvik freelancer, Captain Tusk.
The scurrying of footfalls descending a rock behind us marked Tet clambering down from his secret vantage point. He chuckled menacingly as he walked past me and toward the fighter’s cockpit, where Tusk disembarked to meet the tall man. The two exchanged quick words, but Cort’s ragged breathing was the only thing I could hear clearly.
I tried to mumble some sort of assurance to her, but it only came out as a splutter. The paralysis had faded enough that I could just wriggle my arms, and still face-down, I made to scramble toward her. I stopped suddenly when Tusk warned me with a clear and sharp ‘uh-uh’. She tutted right behind my head, leaning over my useless body like a vulture.
‘Let’s make this all amicable, yes captain? Sinnoren here is a surgical shot, and thus far he has avoided any…unnecessary injuries,’ said Tusk. Her boots loomed inches from my face, and they smelled like sulphur and blood.
‘You call this necessary?!’ I barked, pointing a weak finger in Cort’s direction.
Beside Tusk, Sinnoren Tet sighed. He squatted down and patted me on the shoulder, as if I were a sad dog.
‘There, there captain. I was just clipping the bird’s wings, as you do. Wouldn’t be much of a prize canary if she managed to escape,’ he said with twisted sweetness.
Tusk laughed with a closed mouth — a fake, grating sound, and I heard Cort grunt and swear beneath her pain.
‘What do you want?’ I asked Tusk desperately.
‘ATLAS? The Shinobi? You can take all that I own, so long as the crew remains unharmed,’ I managed to say with some conviction, though strength seemed to be ebbing away by the second.
The Fovrik captain remained silent for some time. I could hear only Cort’s coarse breathing and the menacing hum of Tet’s rifle .
‘I do not need ATLAS, Captain Beaumond. Raiding in the HRZ has given me all the liquidity a pirate could dream of…,’ she said faintly, sounding distant.
‘No…no, I think you’ll be tasked with a far more important mission, Beaumond. It’s your POLIS I need,’ she said, with more resolve.
‘POLIS? A Fovrik mercenary wants…POLIS?’ I asked her, incredulous.
‘You’re a respectable man of respectable means, and inscrutable ability. Surely you understand that not all currency is just… money,’ she said flatly.
‘You’re seeking… governance? A career in politics? You… a Fovrik pirate, trying to sway legislation? ’ I asked, half-laughing in bitter disbelief.
‘Something like that. Though you won’t be disheartened if I choose to keep the intricacies of my grand vision to myself. Yes?’
I didn’t bother to answer.
‘I hope only that you will be around to see what I build, captain. Regardless… it’s data no longer for you and your crew. New beginnings!’ she said with sickening joviality.
‘You’ll have to brush up on some of those old raiding tricks, captain. You’ll be working for me now,’ finished Tusk, and I heard her boots crunch gravel as she turned to face her ship.
I cleared my throat to refuse, but before I could usher out a single word, Tet’s M5 shot another jolt of electricity through my searing leg. I screamed and bit down on my tongue, blood filling my cheeks. My vision ebbed as shock snaked its way to my cloudy head.
When I could finally see again, Cort was being dragged feet-first by Sinnoren Tet toward the ship. She clawed at the ground with her left hand and snarled at Tet, who simply clocked her on the head with the butt of his rifle, looking mildly irritated. Her body went limp and he dragged her onto the Thrill of Life.
‘Corporal…’ I said weakly, before fading out again.
I awoke sometime later, bleeding heavily.
The lonely Calico safety light still blinked on the grave scene. Blood glimmered like black tar on the patch of earth where Cort had been laying, and along the shallow trails in the sand where she had been dragged away. I held back a whimper, but a stifled, raspy cry forced its way out anyway. I let myself sob for a small moment, before sitting up and wiping my face.
I thought of the corporal’s face, and cleared my throat forcefully.
She was alive.
Pull it together I told myself once, and it was enough.
Coughing and heaving, I dragged myself the league back to the airbikes, leaving a thin trail of blood in my wake. I struggled into the cockpit of the Fimbul, hiking chunks of dirt and clay onto the leather seats. Half awake, I raced back toward the Shinobi, leaving Cort’s Aibike abandoned in the cold, empty desert.
