His character, Glenn, is a teamster who has learned about mechanical repair and driving to make a living, and art and mysticism out of an unpractical passion. He has one mercenary-statted buddy, Asher, a marine specialist armed with an SMG. Asher constantly checks and re-checks his gear, counting and recounting magazines, grenades, stimpacks.
Glenn and Asher have a job from Friend to take a large box from Bixby to Lyons, heading North up the old 11B route in the night. Glenn'll be paid 45k for the work if it's done fast, with less money coming to him the longer the job takes.
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| Desert Night by Etwoo |
Cresting a hill in their Grizzly ATV, a large flash of red looms out of the darkness, a lumpy mass that Glenn tries to brake and steer around. The ATV goes over the mass with a series of bangs and wet snaps, and a a soggy feeling to the controls implies a ruined tire. Glenn pulls to the shoulder and looks about for more animals or living beings. Seeing only the desert, lit by the moon and the softly glowing band of shipbroken starships in orbit, he and Asher dismount.
Glenn and Asher shine flashlights under the Grizzly. Dripping gore coats its undercarriage, and behind the front-left tire, they see legs twisted and a spine jutting from a dead creature. The front-left tire has what looks like a curved stick protruding from one side.
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| Alpha Skag from Borderlands. Imagine it in pieces. |
Asher pulls sentry duty as Glenn works to change out the tire. The curved stick is a bloody rib from the roadkill. It is heavy and clanks against the cracked concrete like metal. They stow the pierced tire in the Grizzly, and Glenn drags out rope and cable to pull the carcass from under the car, lest its strange bones damage the ATV further. Glenn asks Asher to go under the Grizzly and tie it up.
"What? No, man." Asher doesn't look away from the landscape. "Fuck no. I'm not getting paid to crawl under there. You go under, I'll cover it with the SMG from a different angle so I won't hit you if it's still alive."
Glenn crawls under the Grizzly. Gore drips down onto him. Disgust racks him but he tamps it down. The creature is still, it's legs splayed about, and Glenn begins to wrap the rope around it. It's not something he recognizes - its maw is like an inverted V, beneath which is a beaklike lower jaw. Atop its head, covered in blood but recognizable, sits a terminal jack. The same as what is at the base of Glenn and Asher's heads. All colonists had gotten them and cybernetic brain prosthetics installed when they came to Crashland... All children get the same installed in the present, thanks to the remaining corporate infrastructure relying on them. But the Company never put them in animals. Shaken, Glenn crawled back out and told Asher, who looked scared at this news.
"Let's just pull it out, and, and get the hell out of here."
The two pulled the creature out from beneath the Grizzly. Glenn took a look at it, recording visual data to his cyberbrain, but could not recognize the remains. He mounted the Grizzly, sealing himself within. Its AC blew like a feeling of normality returning, and he pulled away into the night.
In the rear-view camera screen, he saw the remains of the creature pulling itself into the desert. He clenched his jaw and drove away faster. Its blood hadn't been pumping, it's open dead eyes had stared, it hadn't moved or twitched while he was there.
Two hours later up 11B, Glenn was feeling the full workday he'd put in at Bixby. He opened the glove compartment and pulled out an amphetamine lozenge, gaining advantage on the next few tests and a mild addiction to the drug.
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| Art by William Bennet |
He crested another hill and looked down at a collection of shipping containers and concrete structures, a refueling pump and plastic tables, surrounded by 4 auto-turrets. Roland's Bait Shop. The console radio crackled.
"...need to get us out. We bunkered down and are currently stuck. Can discuss reward with anyone who can help out, we are armed, so don't try anything stupid." Sara Jeffers' voice on the comms, Roland's daughter. Glenn had been up before and talked to them both. Sara had a real affinity for the turrets.
Glenn got on the horn and identified himself. Sara sounded relieved to hear a friendly voice.
"My folks got a strange reading on a bioscanner, and had me and Ranlo get into this bunker, this panic room thing we have. I always thought it was so stupid... but now it seems like my folks are gone. They're not responding, the door is jammed shut somehow. I can't deactivate the turrets from here either..."
Glenn, though no hero, figured he should try to aid them.
The 7-11 was in a bowl-shaped depression in the arid grassland. Four turrets stood at the Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest, with overlapping fields of fire. Wrecked cars and signs warned of the weapons, as did pock-marked boulders.
Glenn took stock of the surroundings. Asher talked about the potential dangers of throwing grenades at the turrets. A narrow dry-riverbed-looking valley lay North of Roland's. To the South, a low-hanging green gas drifted at shin height. To the East, an ancient airlock was nearly horizontal, its surrounding bulkhead embedded in the scree. Glenn drove the Grizzly in a wide arc to it.
Dismounting, he's able to repair the airlock external controls and it squealed open slowly. A 40' drop led into the command module of an old ship, lit in dim, flickering red light. It's single command chair has been shot up from behind.
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