Prometheus110's Random Garbagè

[prometheus110]

It was an Italian postman and part-time planet-spotter who first noticed that there seemed to be less of a bright side to Iapetus than the last time he looked. He had logged his observations onto a handful of astronomy forums, fought off the deluge of interlopers keen to question his competency, and then promptly forgot about it as COVID-19 ceased being a Chinese concern and rapidly became global. The data had lain dormant for months; then, when it began to provoke gossip, had drawn professional ridicule until someone dared to sneak a peek with Mauna Kea. While the professionals argued and theorised, sixty per cent of Iapetus's surface turned a black so dark it was almost total.

This could no longer be ignored. Projects were cancelled, time slots reassigned, dollars and cents scraped together from a hundred different sources. Hubble and her sisters were swung back to Saturn and a constellation of astronomers bemoaned the James Webb's tardiness. What they saw when the first images came back made the lead on news networks all over the planet, reporting on COVID kicked to second place for several days as people focused on Iapetus' illness. Social media took over as the initial reports fell to the wayside in favour of death tolls and Presidential insults, and countless YouTube channels were created to track the march of darkness on a daily --even hourly-- basis.

Ten days after the first images hit the screens, all that remained of Iapetus' icy surface was a speck of white fifty kilometres across; surrounded by night-black darkness. A Scottish-American worked out that it was advancing across the moon at a rate of roughly ten kilometres a day, a calculation proven correct when five days later Iapetus was just a black dot occluding the stars and planets beyond. Fifteen minutes after the enclosure, a user on Twitter pointed out that Hyperion, another of Saturn's moons, had also vanished. Totally. Instantly. Inexplicably.

Hundreds of terabytes worth of telescopic imagery were examined over the next few days as governments and citizens alike raced to understand what had happened. In secret data centres and personal computers across the planet, the digital equivalents of fine-toothed combs pulled flecks of gold from mountains of garbage until, at last, a video a little over thirty frames long erupted onto the internet. For twenty frames nothing happened. In frame twenty-one, Hyperion seemed to throw off its surface like the peel from an orange. Light glowed from the cracks and fanned from the torn open ridges and shattered hills. Frames twenty-two to thirty-two were white. Pure white. Frame thirty-three was nothing. Just space and stars without any sign of the several trillion tons of rocky ice called Hyperion.

From start to finish, the clip covered four point three eight seconds.

As if in response to the extraterrestrial interloper, Covid launched a fresh assault on nations across the globe; outbreaks erupting in a dozen nations to once again drag the attention of the human race towards more terrestrial matters. As countless millions panic-bought food and water and toilet paper to wait out the inevitable lockdowns, governments invested in long-neglected space-watching systems and began preparing space probes to launch towards the Saturn system. Two months after Hyperion's disappearing act, a month after it had vanished from mainstream media in favour of pro and anti-plague reporting, the first bolide was detected by Earth's hastily assembled Spacewatch network.

Roughly the size of a motorhome and moving at eleven kilometres per second, the rock was unremarkable save for making three complete orbits before entering its terminal phase. Threading the needle between Antarctica and Australia, it left an ion trail more than a thousand kilometres long as it streaked above the Indian Ocean. Having bled off most of its speed, a rock that could have killed a city when it started struck the Kibo cone of Mount Kilimanjaro with the celestial equivalent of a love tap; storms nonetheless closing off the mountain for three days and leaving disappointed tourists stuck in the nearby city of Moshi.

Perhaps twenty years ago the Tanzanian government could have kept what they discovered a secret for a handful of months. Perhaps even ten years ago the stories that came out of Moshi would have remained in the realm of rumour for more than a month. But in 2019, with the internet and social media permeating every aspect of life and high-quality cameras with telescopic lenses in the hands of tourists eager to discover why they couldn't climb the mountain, the secret didn't last a week.

Something was growing up there.

***​

A helicopter hammered away as you waited at the sunbleached table, the unseen machine passing low enough that the thunder of its passage sent beer dancing in glasses and teeth-rattling in skulls. Glancing seaward, you caught sight of the bulbous aircraft as it banked to the east; its purple and yellow chagaflague was almost comically ineffective against the blue of the clear sky. Soaring low above the water and framed by an empty playground, it would have made for an excellent cover shot if you had the energy anymore. When you'd first arrived in Darwin you would have snapped a dozen pictures, maybe spun a few lines about how it felt to see such a machine used in a first-world nation, but as it was you just didn't give a shit anymore.

"Fuck me," grunted Bruce a moment later, the heavy clunk of a full glass bringing you back to reality as he sat down opposite. "Some poor bastard's gonna get it."

Short and fat with skin like leather and thinning hair the colour of steel wool, Bruce twisted in his seat and gestured after the war machine with the cigarette clamped between his nicotine-stained fingers.

"Third one today," he added. "Ask me, someone's gone and done something bloody stupid."

"Seems like," you replied, noncommittal.

Still tracking the machine as it bucked and weaved, Bruce let loose a grin you grew familiar with long ago. You saw it in Syria, Iraq, and now Australia. Always on the faces of those on the side with the guns, it was boyish and cruel and delighted in the promise of violence.

Ignoring the urge to snap at the man, you instead took a pull of your beer and fought off a grimace as the bitter liquid hit the back of your throat. A year here and you still weren't used to the swill they served, but meetings everywhere had their own language and Darwin's involved day drinking at 10 am.

Taking a drag from his cigarette, Bruce turned back to face you and blew the smoke between clenched teeth.

"So why's a seppo like you want to go into the Chaga?" He asked baldly. "Your camera'd get fucking munted in there."

Why indeed?

Maybe it was because you were three months into your two-week stopover to a city swollen twice its normal size with refugees. Maybe it was because someone, desperate or greedy, had stolen your passport days after you'd bribed your way in. Maybe it was because the dead-eyed fucks who manned the US consulate remembered the photos you took in Kenya. Maybe it was because the owner of the US' largest media conglomerate had told you that the only hope you had of getting out of Darwin was to find his daughter and bring her back. Or maybe, just maybe, it was all of the above.

Disguising the flash of anger that flooded into you with a cough that was only half-faked thanks to Bruce's smoking habit, you tilted your head to the side and rested a hand atop your schooner.

"It's not a photo job this time," you told him mildly.

A long drag of his cigarette. "Writing, huh?"

"Something like that."

"Gonna shack up with a chagarunner?" He asked, his eyes glittering above the rim of his glass.

"We'll see," you replied before pulling out a silver cigarette case from your breast pocket and laying it on the table between you.

It had taken a long time to find Bruce. Longer than you'd thought it would in a city facing death, anyway. A chagarunner, he took people into the alien jungle for a price. In this case, an antique cigarette case packed with hundred-dollar bills. US, naturally.

It was a farce, of course. A glance around the pub showed you in an instant that the ADF was nowhere to be seen; the only witnesses to your transaction were a dozen old-timers who looked like they'd been drinking here since Australia was a colony. Still, it was the done thing.

Clamping the already half-finished cigarette between his teeth, Bruce picked up the case with one hand and peered at it with an expert eye. He grunted.

"Impressive." He said as he offered it back to you.

An absolute farce, you thought as you raised a hand to stop it.

"Keep it, I'm trying to quit."

You'd never smoked a day in your goddamn life.

With acting worthy of a telenovela, Bruce shrugged and pocketed the silver rectangle.

"Well good luck with that, mate," he said abruptly as he got to his feet, the rotund man downing the rest of his glass in a single pull and dropping the burnt-out stub of his smoke onto the table.

Shock stopped you as effectively as any bullet, righteous indignation rising in time with the heat that spread across your face. Before you could even squeak out your disapproval, Bruce stepped past you and clamped a hand to your shoulder; the crinkle of paper only just audible to your ears.

"The Chaga's a dangerous place, mate," he growled, "all sorts of crazy shit happens in there." In the corner of your eye, you saw him shake his head before, without a word, he left; the piece of paper he clamped to your shoulder fluttering down into your hand.

Hand clenched and resting on the table, you took a long slow drink of your beer and waited for what felt like a lifetime before unclenching your fist and smoothing out a scrap of paper. Ten digits. faded but legible and printed neatly in a line like they were from a flyer. A cell number.

You were going into the Chaga.

***​

You are Leopoldo 'Leo' Isaacs and you are a freelance photojournalist specialising in conflict photography and embedded reporting. It used to be called war photography way back when, but twenty-five years of security operations, undeclared conflicts, and the 'War On Terror' had a way of smoothing down terms like war into something you could say live on the 7 o'clock news. In your decade-long civilian career, you've patrolled with US Marines in Iraq, squeezed into trucks with the French Foreign Legion in West Africa, and shot the shit with Ukrainian militia as they awaited the inevitable Russian invasion.

The story of your latest job began, as they often did, with a phone call.

The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar but recognizably male. They had a strange accent, European, and short, clipped vowels that felt rushed to hear despite his languid cadence. Still half asleep and hungover from another night spent bingeing on whatever rotgut you could find, it took you a moment to place the voice; the cold shock of recognition sobering you up as effectively as any pill as you realised you were talking to Rémi Villeneuve.

He spoke quickly and softly, your last employer's boss' boss' boss promising to use his influence with the UN to get you a one-way ticket out of Darwin in exchange for one little favour. A man who could end homelessness state-side multiple times over, you had no doubt he could arrange a path out of a dying city with a snap of his fingers. All he was asking for, all he wanted, was for you to find his daughter and bring her back to him safely. Stuck in a city on the brink of being consumed by violence and Chaga, you did the only thing you could do and accepted; an action you immediately regretted when he explained that his daughter worked for the UN.

Aside from a name, Margot Sykes, and a destination deep in the Chaga, a place called Marrakai, he'd given you precious little to go on. What she was doing in the Chaga despite the UN's official stance against a human presence, why he needed you specifically to get her out, and why the UN hadn't gotten involved yet were all questions he'd left unanswered. You were no private eye or mercenary, you'd only done a single TOS in the US Army, but apparently, you were at the top of his shitlist.

 

[prometheus110]

The Denver skyline smoulders a sullen orange as you run through the ravaged mall, the light of the noonday sun a hellish orange-red courtesy of the thick layer of haze that fills the air. As you flee through the abandoned concourse, the signs of chaos and terror are visible all around you; shattered windows and spilt goods hinting at the wave of looters that had struck as order broke down before the swarm. An instant later, you leap to clear an overturned bench and hiss as you hit the ground with a stumble, the force of your landing sending a blazing bolt of pain lancing up your left shoulder.

Clenching your robotic fist tight and gritting your teeth, you recover just in time to slew around the corner and into a maintenance corridor, the clatter of armour on concrete ringing out as you shoulder-check the wall and bounce off in vaguely the right direction. Twenty minutes ago, it'd have been the electric thud of your energy shields, but the ambush had put paid to that life-saving system, so now you were down to composite and metal. Legs pumping, you race down the corridor as something roars in the skies above, shrieking like a dying dragon, plaster dust from the ceiling swirling about you as you barrel through.

It takes a dozen heartbeats before you reach your destination, the door highlighted by your Focus slamming open with a crunch as you plant a boot into it, a hasty recovery seeing you spill into the opening beyond. Gasping for breath, you pause to review the map that appears in your mind's eye before setting off eastward, the walls of the maintenance tunnel almost claustrophobically tight and covered in a galaxy of holographic notices.

Goddamn Faro, you snarl as you advance down the tunnel, the brains-up display your Focus provides unerringly guiding you towards the far side of the mall.

You'd started out as a scratch squad only a few hours earlier, you and seven rookies from the Civilian Guard thrown together to make the numbers meet even as the world fell apart. In a couple hours of combat, you were the only one left alive and kicking, the mission plan in your Focus the only thing you had left. Pushing the deaths of your one-time comrades from your mind, you slew to a halt as you arrive at your destination, the door to the mall's historic clock tower all that stands between you and your mission. Stepping forward, you frown as some unseen sensor registers your approach and triggers the door's dissuasion protocol, a cartoon cop's face flaring into view above its otherwise bare-steel surface.

Like the world's most annoying metronome, the stylized head shakes back and forth, a red stop sign pulsing in and out in time with its motion.

"Unauthorised persons detected," the cop grinds out in both the real and virtual worlds, the fractional time delay between the two lending its voice an irritating quality. "Due to the historic nature of this location, only maintenance personnel rated class three and above may enter."

Rolling your eyes, you ignore the message as it begins to loop and scour the area around the door for signs of a control system, grinning a moment later as you catch sight of a plastic case attached to the wall. Two blows of your rifle's stock later, the white shell pops off to reveal a decidedly ancient-looking control board, all jade-green silicon and gold wires.

"2030s shit," you mutter as you pull a breacher from your left gauntlet and slap it against the silicon board, the nanites in the coin-sized device bonding with the slab as if they'd always been one piece.

It's the work of moments to force the door to your will, a few quick hacks convincing it that you have every role and permission in the book —even the contradictory ones. As the cartoon cop vanishes in a flicker of fox fire, you pluck the silver disc from the board and spare it a glance. Though invisible to the naked eye, the thick disc swarms with the same tech that lets Scarabs slave other machines to their will, the countless nanites granting their owner direct access to every part of whatever they infect.

Distantly, your aunt's voice echoes forth from your memory.

"The master's tools," she mutters across an ocean of time, the ghost a smirk accompanying the words.

For an instant, amusement wars with grief before both emotions die away as you gird yourself. She lives in D.C, you remind yourself. If she's not already dead, she will be soon.

They were harsh words for what had once been your last link to your parents, but what choice did you have? The best you could do for her was to kill one bot after another until you either ran out of FARO bots or died.

Shaking your head, you open the door with a gesture and recoil as a wave of ash flows around your feet and the noise of combat batters against your helmet, gunfire, explosions, and the endless schretch-schretch-schretch of rampaging FARO machines drowning out all else. Glaring through your helmet cameras as the dust dies away, you step into the slightly roomier confines of the clock tower and look up towards its apex, a frown tugging the corners of your mouth as you catch sight of the stairs. At nearly a hundred metres tall, some quick math told you there'd be almost four hundred of the fucking things between you and your destination.

"Fuck me," you mutter as you shoulder your rifle and start moving.

Spiralling around the clock tower's staircase like an antique spinning top, you swiftly rise above the sounds of gunfire, the clunk-chunk of the clock's mechanisms growing louder as your breathing grows more ragged. Even with your armour's servo system doing most of the work, your limbs swiftly grow heavy, and your hair slick with sweat. An eternity later, or a couple minutes, depending on your point of view, you reach the tower's apex and stare through the clockface's shattered portal at Denver's burning ruins.

Once upon a time, Denver must have been a pleasant enough place to live, with tree-lined streets and parks visible in all directions and century-old buildings standing shoulder to shoulder with gleaming spires of glass and steel. To the west, the stolid shapes of the Rocky Mountains loomed over the city, while to the east lay the Great Plains, though the Hot Zone Crisis in the 40s had done a number on them. The south wasn't bad, either; the region's water cycle restored to something approaching normality during the lean decade of the Clawback.

Now though, Denver was dead. A corpse of a city awaiting its inevitable consumption and decay. Despite the countless centuries of toil and sweat poured into constructing its grand structures, its artworks and its parks, all were now rendered insignificant and meaningless.

From your vantage point a hundred metres up, you could spy the last tattered shreds of Denver's air bubble waving in the air, the mass-produced nanomaterial popped by the swarm's first barrage and allowing the planet's toxic atmosphere to flood inside. Despite the ferocity of the swarm's attack, there were no fires anywhere in sight, the atmosphere so oxygen-deprived that even that struggled to live. Instead, all you saw was a reddish-orange haze that clung to the ruins like a burial shroud, the ashes of eight billion murdered souls filtering out what sunlight made it through until it seemed like you stood at the bottom of a Martian sea.

Slowly, you unsling your rifle from your shoulder and advance towards the edge of the clock face, trepidation that has nothing to do with the horde of robotic monsters popping into your mind. Cautiously, you grab at the iron frame that once held the clock face in place and lean over the edge, a wave of vertigo smashing into you as you catch sight of the street below. Fighting off the urge to pull away, you hiss as you spy a river of metal flowing down the distant street, countless black-hulled Scarabs and Khopeshes rushing around hastily assembled hardpoints like water around a stone.

Sighing, you lick your lips and pull away from the edge; all you can spare for the scene is a muttered, "Fuck."

Looking out over what had once been Denver, you scan the horizon for your target, streamers of tracer fire and the occasional flare of a missile telling you that at least some part of the air force remained operational. A year ago, you would have been moved by their bravery in the face of the swarm's overwhelming firepower. Now, you can't help but feel that the human race is casting pebbles against the tide.

Activating your Focus with a thought, you order it to scan the skyline for signs of your target before kneeling and examining your weapon.

Lethally sleek despite the odd shape imposed by its nature as an electromagnetic rifle, the Arclite-11 rests lightly in your hands, its off-white composite body bearing scuffs and stains from a year of near-constant use. The premier combat weapon of merc companies the world over before the war, your Arclight boasts best-in-class optics, full AR integration, and steel rounds able to shred armour and flesh with equal ease. With a thought, you could see through its gunsights, view its ammo count, lase a target, or diagnose a fault. Compared to the trash you had back in the 50s, it was as if Smith, Wesson, and Colt had descended from the heavens to give you their latest and greatest.

Unbidden, the memory of your last day as a soldier rises to the forefront of your mind, the ghostly sense-memory of mist brushing against your skin despite your armour's protection.

It had been an unseasonably cold spring morning for Georgia —in as much as 2055 Georgia could be said to have a spring— and the early morning mist had clung low to the ground despite the blazing sun overhead. You'd been called for a general assembly on Donovan Field before the mess hall opened for breakfast, you and eight hundred nervous-looking, hungry fuckers standing at attention before a stage the Sparkies were still assembling when you arrived. No one had bothered to explain why the assembly had been called, but six months out of basic training, you weren't gonna do anything that'd get you NJPed, so you stood there like a 'bot while the rest of the battalion murmured to one another.

Thirty minutes later, your stomach growling and your legs starting to ache from holding position for so long, Fort Stewart's commander, a balding fifty-something with the last name Henderson, comes jogging onto the stage. He hadn't looked young when you first arrived at the fort, but on stage, it seemed like he had aged ten years in a day, creases marring his dark skin and sweat prickling his brow despite the cool morning air.

"The Pentagon's run the numbers," Henderson had said after an apology for his tardiness. "Human combat forces are being disbanded."

You didn't take in much after that. There was some shit about the human costs of war, the value of fidelity, and the human spirit, but it was all a fucking joke. In less than an hour, everything you'd worked towards since your childhood in El Paso had been trashed; some bean counters in D.C. deciding that drones were the way forward. With the click of a button, you were screwed, and a million more people were put on basic in a country whose economy was in its second once-in-a-century recession this century.

'Course, a decade later, FAS had their little accident, and the US government came crawling back with hat in hand. You'd been tempted to tell them to eat shit when they messaged you, your last three years having been good to you, but damn it, Herres had been convincing. You'd been proud to serve in the US Army, and all his talk of pride and duty had struck a cord. The better pay, amnesty for participation in Combine wars, and guaranteed citizenship were nice, but Herres' words were what sealed the deal.

A sudden tremor rumbles through the clock tower and sends a wave of limestone dust spilling from the ceiling high above you. Shaken from your reverie, you gingerly wipe the gritty material from your rifle's laser lens and bring the weapon to your chest. As another faint tremor passes through the building, you take a deep breath and scour the ash-cloaked city for any sign of your target.

Time flows from one moment to another with a languid grace as you wait in the tower, the subtle tremors growing stronger by the second and a noise like distant thunder slowly swelling around you. Staring out into the red-orange haze, you watch as the all-consuming dust begins to stir in sympathy with each rumble, the mountainous body responsible for the earth-shaking steps pushing a wall of air before it like the bow wave of a ship. Seconds drag into minutes as the footsteps continue their inexorable approach, the beat of your heart, once quiet, now thundering in your ears.

Without warning, an obsidian splotch suddenly appears past a complex of ash-swathed buildings identified by your Focus as the Denver Performing Arts Centre, the up and down motion of its steady approach sending fingers of ice around your heart.

Horus! Screams the lizard part of your brain as it recognises the danger. Horus. Run! Death! Run.

Frozen in fright with all your bravado and protective cynicism stripped away, you can only watch as the world-ending machine continues its approach, the patch of darkness swelling in size as a fel red light grows at its heart. Mere moments later, the shadow solidifies into the familiar form of a Horus, the light of its quantum processor blazing in the ash cloud like a beacon of evil as dust slips from its hull. Advancing with the same implacability with which the swarm killed the world, the Horus doesn't bother slowing as it slams into the performing arts centre, its four drill-tipped tentacles ploughing through brick, glass, and steel with equal ease before shovelling the ravaged matter straight into its fanged maw.

As you shiver, your hands tightly clenching around your rifle, you can only watch as a fresh batch of machines joins the throng scurrying around the feet of the Horus. A moment later, a bone-rattling groan rings out from the factory machine and light flares across its back. Like shooting stars filmed in reverse, a stream of missiles launch into the sky on pillars of smoke and fire, the death sentence of unseen comrades shaking you from your stupor.

Nervously, hesitantly, every instinct warning you not to do it, you raise your rifle to your shoulder and aim it towards the still-distant killing machine. Heart pounding in your chest, you think the order to activate your laser pointer, the hope that someone, somewhere, can kill the Horus before it sees you racing through your mind. A fraction of a second later, your UV laser designator flicks on and a pale dot appears in your augmented vision at the arch of the Horus's spine.

---

The missile flies without compunction, concepts like morality, hatred, and revenge non-existent in its supremely limited world. It does not care that it was launched by a desperate collection of men and women whose nations were slaughtered to the last in a desperate attempt to buy time, that its target rages at the heart of a city whose inhabitants could not possibly flee, or what warhead lies somewhere deep in its core. All it cares about, in as much as it can care about anything, is the dot that only its one-track mind can spot. Heartlessly, coldly, the missile aims its nose towards the dot, brains of silicon and carbon juggling a hundred different variables as it cuts through the air without a ripple. Clad in a metamaterial shell and held aloft by tough and flexible wings whose surfaces are constantly adjusted for maximum lift, the missile races towards its target like an owl hunting a mouse.

A carrier-killer design borrowed from what was left of the Chinese military, the missile makes it to within five hundred metres of the Horus before being spotted, the swarm's grossly expanded sensor network hampered by Denver's ruined skyline and their own toxic ash cloud. Without panic, without fear, without haste, the swarm reacts; more than a thousand quantum processors work together to identify the exact make and model of the inbound missile from the size of the air distortion, the speed of its passage, and countless other factors. An instant passes, then another, and then the swarm reacts, the Horus behind the dot spewing countermeasures and counter-missiles into the air while laser CIWS begin to track.

Two hundred metres from its prey, electronic eyes coolly watching its own demise approach, the carrier-killer realises that it won't quite reach its target before being intercepted. Coldly, dispassionately, it runs through its available options and makes a choice. A fraction of a second before a counter-missile can strike it, a trifle longer before a laser CIWS can spear it, the missile activates its payload and a Light blooms over Denver.

---

Pain greets you like a lover as you return to consciousness, its electric caress brushing your legs, arms, and chest, heat flaring through every cell of your body. You try to move, but your arms feel like they're made of lead. You try to open your eyes, but they feel glued shut. You try to think, but your thoughts flow like sand between your fingers.

Fear shoots through you as the idea emerges that you might be blind, some hidden part of your brain screaming indecipherable warnings at the thought. A moment later, a moan escapes your lips, the very act sending a fresh flare of pain across your body. Dimly, you realise you can smell the acrid scent of metal and ozone and that the taste of blood fills your mouth. Lost and alone, you cling tight to these senses like a rope in a storm, a mind filled with a lifetime of experience struggling to piece together the recent history of you.

Time passes fluidly as you lie (Sit? Stand?) there, moments flowing together and apart with equal ease as your thoughts slowly marshal themselves into something approximating order. Gradually, the chaos subsides, and eventually, after minutes, hours, or days, you're unsure, you open your eyes.

This is a mistake.

Your head, blessedly free of pain until this moment, is suddenly struck by a pickaxe as you expose your eyes to the light of day, the silver steel of a blade tearing through skin and bone and brain matter with equal ease. Tears emerge an instant later, boiling hot beads of water that blind you again. Groaning, you force yourself to blink once, twice, three times, the third attempt finally wicking the hateful tears and restoring partial sight.

Blurry and distant but still clearly visible against the powder blue sky and past the blurry text that scrolls past your vision, the skeletal ruins of an ancient building loom over your head like a tree from a haunted forest; gnarled fingers of steel stretching out in all directions. Partially reclaimed by nature, sheets of moss and thick ropy vines hang from every surface, some unfelt breeze stirring them gently in the soft, warm morning light. Lying still and staring up at it, you can't help but feel a sense of profound wrongness, some corner of your mind jabbering unceasingly about... something.

Electing to ignore it, you try to lift a hand to your face only to stop as some sense of resistance winds through your battered nervous system. Glancing down, itself a superhuman feat given your current state, you frown as you spot a thick blanket of furry moss covering your arms and body from the waist down, strands of the most brilliant emerald and jade green clutching tight to your armoured body.

Grunting from the effort, you slowly pull yourself out of the mossy blanket one limb at a time, a million tendrils clinging to your armour as if trying to keep you anchored to the ground. As you rise, your body protests every movement, every joint and muscle screaming with pain until you stand on unsteady feet. Feeling bold, you take a step forward only to stumble, ancient concrete crumbling under your gloved hand as you catch yourself.

Breathing as deeply as you dare, you blink owlishly at your surroundings and struggle to take the slowly sharpening image of the world that forms. Everywhere you turn, the world is alight with the soft, golden glow of the early morning sun, long shadows as black as onyx cast across the mossy ground. Aside from your huffing, the air is still and quiet; the only sounds you hear are the rustling of vines and the occasional chirp and warble of unseen birds.

All at once, you realise that you stand amidst an ancient urban jungle, the twisted metal and concrete ruins of a once-great city stretching out in all directions. A forest of the dead. Twisting in place with the grace of a car crash, you realise with a painful start that the ruins are not merely abandoned, but are being reclaimed, a sense of great age slowly settling upon your mind as gently as a gossamer cloak. Everywhere you look, moss, vines, and countless other plants cover every hint of human civilization; a field as green as any you've seen stretching out in all directions.

Straining to recall who you are, where you are, and how you got here, a sudden wave of disorientation washes over you, and you sink to your knees, the world fading to black once more.

 

[prometheus110]

The stars gleam like cold toys against a velvet-black sky as you step into the town hall, the upturned faces of colonists, new and old, flicking your way for a moment before returning to Moralez as he speaks on the stage. Grunting an acknowledgement at the nearest colonist, you let the door slide shut behind you and half-sneak your way to the low wall that divides the annexe from the hall proper, the airless room thick with the perfume of sweat, dirt, and metal. Letting your gaze scan over the crowd as you lean against the wall, it only takes you a moment to realise that they aren't buying what Moralez is selling, loud grumbles emerging with every word that leaves his mouth.

Tall, broad-shouldered, and covered in a head of hair with more salt than pepper in it, Victor looks more like a Core World politician than the leader of a wildcat colony; his blue jeans as clean as the day they came out of the printer and his white collared shirt freshly pressed.

"I'm not saying we should invite the corps in," the thin-haired man all but barks from behind his podium, "but if we want a better world, we should consider expanding who we sell to. We nee-"

You don't even bother fighting the urge to sigh, the roar of disapproval from the packed crowd covering for you nicely as incredulous colonists shout at the so-called governor. Self-appointed as such by virtue of being the first man to sell goods to an independent trader, Moralez had his eyes on the prize since before you met him and had never let it go. Wildcat colonists, you may be, but the man wanted the good life, and the good life took greenbacks.

All at once, a voice rises above the din, its diminutive owner rising to her feet as she shouts, "Mierda!"

"If we invite those corpo bastardos here, they'll never leave. It'll end like Hadley's Hope all over again." Her face flushing red and her brown ponytail swaying from side to side, Eva Suero doesn't hold back, each sentence punctuated by an approving murmur from the crowd as she lays into the man.

Short, compact, and almost permanently exhausted, Eva Suero is the colony's best —and only— vet, doctor, and surgeon; the woman responsible for saving more lives and delivering more livestock than you could ever be in a dozen lifetimes. Equally important, however, is that out of everyone you've met while acting as the colony's sheriff, Eva best represents a leader of the colony's technically educated class; the woman keeping up with their problems and helping you to smooth out any disputes. Long since used to the arguments between the colony's supposed governor and its vet/doctor/surgeon, you barely listen as she lays into every one of Moralez's flaws, the same list you have spilling out her mouth —albeit punctuated by the occasional burst of rapid-fire Frontier Creole.

"Eva, please," Moralez pleads as the acerbic woman sinks back to her seat like a smouldering flame, hands clapping her on the shoulder until the shifting mass of bodies blocks her from view. "Think about what we could do for your surgery, for the people, if we sold our products to corporations like Weyland-Yutani."

"If we sold ourselves, more like!" Someone shouts back from the crowd, ugly laughter rippling out after it.

His face screwing up like he could smell a spiger three weeks dead, Moralez glances away from the crowd and probes the back gallery of the meeting hall, blue eyes settling on you a moment later. Irritation flashes through your mind as you realise that he expects you to help, and you give a minute shake of your head instead, a frown flickering across the man's face.

The last time was the last time, you think to Victor as he returns his attention to the boisterous collection of colonists before him.

"The doc's right," a familiar voice rumbles to your right, a respectful silence falling over the crowd as the words fade to nothing.

Already suspecting what you will see, a quick peek over the dividing wall reveals Alan Woods and his boys clustered together with the other dock workers; bright white eyes peering out from behind grime-stained faces and boring holes into Victor. A big man, Alan Woods —Al to his friends— would dominate any room even without his baritone voice and force of personality; arms thicker than your legs and a barrel chest deeper than yours is wide combine to give him a certain je ne sais quoi. As it is, Alan has a baritone voice and an indomitable personality, all of which conspire to explain how he became head of the colony's first —and so far, only— union, United Dockworkers controlling all goods in and out of the spaceport.

"She's right," he repeats, not bothering to stand. "Half my boys came from corporate docks, and the other half worked docks that went corporate."

"We invite Wey-Yu or Seegson or what, and they'll make themselves nice and comfy and fuck us over for a goddamn percentage."

Before you can help it, you let out a grunt of agreement at Woods' words, a response echoed by every person in the town hall alongside calls to fuck the corps back. For a fraction of a second, you feel a spark of pride in how the colony can come together before a sudden outburst punctures the thought like a balloon.

"Enough!" Moralez roars, his shout shocking the crowd into a sullen silence.

"Enough," he repeats as he hesitantly raps a clenched fist against the podium, sweat gleaming on his brow despite the cool night air.

Without warning, something shifts in the crowd's mood, an almost imperceptible ripple of tension running through its varied members like a cat twitching its fur. Instincts muttering a warning, you quietly straighten up and lock your gaze on Moralez, a thin smile crossing his face as he spots you watching him. All at once, he's back to being Victor Moralez, the salesman. His affect now cool, calm, and collected.

"We've had a passionate discussion," he begins as if he hadn't just shouted down the town, "and I appreciate the diversity of opinions. But if we are going to debate the future of this community, I reckon that it's only right that we hear from our sheriff."

You recognise the preparations a moment before he commits to it, memories of the last time he foisted a problem onto you flashing through your mind. Sweeping a hand through his thinning hair, Moralez smiles broadly and gestures to you, the crowd smoothly following his motion and pinning you in place with their smouldering gaze.

"Now sheriff," he hollers at you, his voice deafeningly loud in the hall's sudden quiet. "What do you think about our little debate?"

The son of a bitch, you think as you fight to keep your face impassive.

Caught in the vice of public view by two hundred pairs of eyes clouded by wary suspicion, your mind quails. For a moment, just a moment, you want to take the middle road; of recusing yourself or equivocating and letting the anger die down. Just like the last time Victor pulled this move. Then, gazing out across people assembled before you, at the exhausted, weathered faces and tired eyes animated solely by anger, something within you snaps.

"No," you say, surprising yourself.

Heart beating like a drum in your chest, you swallow thickly and keep speaking, turning your attention to the suddenly curious crowd as you try to ignore Victor's volcanic expression.

"No," you repeat, "I think inviting corporations here is a stupid fucking idea."

Somewhere in the crowd, someone shouts, "Hear, hear", and another gives a shrieking whistle.

You shrug as best you can with the weight of so many eyes on your shoulders, "They're going to fuck us. Most of us, anyway."

"Sure, some of us would make out well enough," you continue with rather more courage than you feel as Moralez glares daggers at you from his stupid little podium, "The people with the land, the ones who get in on the ground floor and sell out quick. But what about everyone else?"

"Yeah," shouts Eva from somewhere out of sight, "what about everyone else, Moralez?"

As you speak, slow as the rising tide but just as inexorable, a murmur forms deep within the crowd, muttered agreement and grumbled concessions filter into the atmosphere of the packed town hall. Unused to the attention, it lifts you like a warm wind. Fills you like a bright light. And without warning, things you've wanted to say for years spill from your lips.

"I mean, shit, Vic," you continue hotly, "We aren't stupid. We know how the corps act, how they treat the little guy. We were lucky enough to find a place they don't want to spend the money on, and now you want to invite them in so you can make some extra cash? Hell, you thought I'd support you... just because? I mean, Jesus."

As you finish your tirade, Woods lets out a sudden loud guffaw, and you glance away from the crowd to catch sight of Moralez glaring down at you with murder in his eyes, his red-flushed face marred by an apocalyptic expression. For an instant, you pause, seizing the moment to take a single deep breath before-

A man coughs from behind you, the quiet sound underscored by the hiss of the hall's door sliding shut. Twisting in place, you blink as Rustam Wibawa steps forward, the leather-face man sparing you a nod before glaring at Moralez.

"With what our sheriff said," the older man begins as he steps past you, his voice the same gravelly drawl it always is. "One wonders why you're our leader."

Tall and wiry with steel-wool hair, tan leathery skin, and eyes a brown so dark they are almost black, Rustam Wibawa is an odd sight to see in any colony meeting; the man usually too busy managing his homestead to bother. The man all the other homesteaders and farmers look to support their interests, you've had some frustrating run-ins with him in the past, though you suppose the same could be said about many of the people currently crammed into the building with you.

"Rustam," Morale hisses venomously, his eyes mere slits that flicker between the two of you.

Wibawa nods absently. "Victor."

"What do you want?"

The old homesteader smiles thinly, "I heard some damned idiot was proposing we trade with Wey-Yu and thought that was so stupid I had to see for myself."

Incredibly, Victor Moralez seems to grow even angrier at the man's unfiltered words, a vein on his neck throbbing to some crazed beat.

"But like I said," he continues as if having a friendly conversation. "I wonder why you are our leader if this is your bright new idea. I sure as shit didn't vote for you."

Without warning, the relative silence of the crowd shatters, and an explosion of noise erupts around you, buffeting you like a howling gale.

"Vote now!" someone cries.

"No," another voice shouts overtop. "An election!"

A woman cries, "Fuck you, Moralez!"

"Quiet!" a half dozen throats roar together, and with a start, you recognise that your own was one of them; the crowd suddenly staring at you as if you hold all the answers, and Moralez's red face raging like a beacon in the corner of your eye.

Ahh shit, you think to yourself as you realise what you have to do next.

"We'll organise an election," you say quickly, patting the air for calm as you try to figure out just how the colony will do this. "Right, Victor?"

For a long moment, it looks as if the self-appointed governor of the colony will resist, pure hatred pouring off him as he glares at you and Rustam and the rest. Then, as his eyes track across the gathered masses before him, something seems to click in his head, and he all but visibly deflates; his shoulders hunched and hands grasping the sides of the podium with a white-knuckle grip.

Slowly, spitting between his teeth, he nods, "Right."

Nodding yourself, you slowly pan across the crowd and continue where you left off. "For now, we'll just get a list of nominations. Then we can organise the actual vote."

"So," you add lightly. "Who's the first nominee?"