Un-Named ("a" part)
The girl half crawled, half dragged herself towards the empty shop container. Loosely attached to what remained of her lower left leg was a mangled lump of plastic, metal and alloy so crushed that it was barely recognisable as the shin guard it once was and, like the rest of her armour, trying to identify its type or make would have presented a futile task. As well as a severely knarled left leg she was also suffering from a lethal gash in her side, the protection of a broken harness having done little to prevent the final critical blow before the unexpected detonation of the decoy charge which had miraculously saved her life. She couldn’t believe she was in this situation yet again, mining in ‘trax land… considered, not so much ‘fool hardy’ but more ‘sheer suicide’ by all save for the most skilled and experienced in the field and even then, the risks were accepted as dangerously high. Three years on Calypso, three years, and not once had she even been within spitting distance of an ore extractor so what then? What had possessed her to blow everything she had left on an extractor, detectonator and as many seismic bombs as she could afford then head out into some of the wildest country on the planet in the hopes of…? striking it rich???
She collapsed momentarily against the ground and stared off through the long grass towards the setting sun, its cool blades pleasant against her cheek but doing little to offset the pain from her side or slowly numbing left leg. Three years. Had it really been that long? Three years since her first faltering steps off the space ship that had brought her to this new and unforgiving world and, since that time, life had just felt like one mistake after another each time the stakes just growing larger and the falls prompting more and more reckless behaviour which had brought her now to this, an endeavour, verging on the suicidal. Suicide? Ha! Maybe she did want to die, but dying was of course impossible or rather, she mentally corrected herself, dying with any consequence was. It was a lie though. Her own stubbornness told her that much. Despite herself she didn’t want to die at all as death without consequence was still death and, beyond death, she feared failure more than anything which was why she’d do anything, anything at all, even crawling on her belly through scrubland for five miles just to stay alive. She wanted to live.
Raising her head again she saw the shop container was not far now and, grunting against the pain, in one final effort she covered the remaining ground, dragged herself up the incline and fell gasping to the grilled metal floor. “Pathetic!”, came a voice from above. She was not alone!
“Absolutely pathetic. Did you really think you could march out into the toxic zone, build yourself a drill tower and have a picnic while you wait to get rich???” It was a woman, black armour clad sporting a powerful looking hand gun and jet black hair shocked with streaks of white. “Heh, if it hadn’t been for that Atrax, I swear I’d have finished you off mysel… HEY! Are you listening?”, she yelled delivering a brutal kick that elicited a sharp cry of pain from the girl. The woman dropped to her knees grabbing the girl by the throat and squeezing, the pistol held menacingly against her temple. “Listen you stupid little bitch, my family invested a hell of a lot of money in gear so I could work this territory. They didn’t invest it for shits like you, with more luck than sense, to waltz in and take what’s mine. Now here’s what’s gonna happen. You may have made it this far and for that, I grant you, I’m impressed but now I’m gonna take that little compression unit of yours and send you hell back to the nearest RT where you belong!”. The girl whimpered, trying to bite back the tears. She’d gambled everything on this last attempt for survival and now she was about to loose it all. The pain was becoming unbearable and she just didn’t care anymore. She closed her eyes, wishing it would all go away and that she was back at her camp east of Tethys when the ear splitting shot rang out, echoing round the container with deafening finality.
The girl opened her eyes, squinting against the light as a dull sound came signalling her aggressors demise and, across her vision, a silhouetted man extended his hand speaking softly, “Hello Wistrel”.
END (of this part)
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Well... its been a long time coming as I think I started this possibly over a year ago but hey, thats life. I always said I'd only ever do stuff like this for myself but I did get several nice comments about the last one so apologies that this isn't as good or very long again but hey, I enjoyed writing it so thats all that counts really.
The good news (well I think so) is that I
have already written the next part (funnilly enough I finished it before this part
) and I'll be putting it up once I've finished copying it cause I use that old biro technology to write stories and that means some typing
The bad news is, I guess, that I've only done 2 parts. I don't know if I'll ever do more but certainly I'd call this something of a middle of a story... and I have a fairly good idea of whats gonna happen immediately after the next part and then some ideas of what happens much later and then much farther down the track (MUCH farther) is where "Girl" would fit in.
When, or if, any of this will ever get written of course is anyones guess and also, some rather "unusual" experiences in game this week have given me a fairly strong idea for a story thats completely unrelated and would be based half in the real world and half in the game (yes I'm getting inspiration from "Another Birth"). Still all this is purely speculation and I really do wish I had the ability to write stuff quicker.... or with a definite plan... or with some ordered coherancy... ... but I don't.
I'll try and get the next part up some time this or next week.
Wistrel