So, I’m out here in Hellbound Canyon, taking a shortcut to Bigville: yeah, that’s what some knucklehead named it. So anyway, I’m enjoying a ride on my hover-bike when the damn thing breaks-down again. This is not the best place for a break-down really, it’s okay to ride-through fast in the daytime, but it’s not a good place to be, come nightfall. There’re bandits out yonder and some big beasts too that I don’t want to come face to face with alone. All I got is this half megavolt pistol, that will kill a man but it’s just gonna piss-off some of the big critters out here.
“Deadeye, run a diagnostic, let’s see if we can’t fix this right quick.” I says to my hover-bike’s artificial-intelligence assistant, her name is Deadeye, because that’s what I named her, see.
She says back to me, “power levels dropping quickly, there is not enough time or power levels to comp-.” damn thing beeps and power’s deader’n-shit.
“Well, son-of-a-bitch!” Might be this-here shortcut wasn’t the best of ideas, most folks take the long way ‘round ‘cause it’s safer and such, but I was fixin’ to save me some time. I figure it’s my power relay, I’ve been meanin’ to get a new one… It’s either walk 15 klicks back or 20 klicks forward or thereabouts, and I got no comms out here, ever since the damn United Systems assholes blew up the Mitchell Relay Station, they always bustin’ our balls out here ever since they discovered rare earths on our lands. What a shit-show.
It was maybe an hour or so into my walk, in the sweltering, red light of Forsaken, when I see three hover-bikes in the distance, fast approaching. This might be good, or it might-could be bad, because I don’t recognize the makes and models of their rides. I place my hand to my pistol handle as I watch and wait for them fellas to ride on up. Outside of town, you don’t know what kind-a folk you're gonna run into, at least in these parts. United Systems have made things hard on Blasted Lands, driving some folks to do some nasty shit to each other… Hell, I might have even ‘liberated’ a thing or two, here and there, but never from folks that are hungry.
I start to sweat a little more, ‘cause I’m no dunce with a pistol but one against three, not good odds, especially since they are probably sportin’ illegal cyber mods. On top of that, they probably got a spotter out here with a long-range rifle… I ain’t got much, but they are probably going to takes it from me, “mutherfucker.”
So, they cruise on up to me without their pistols drawn, like they ain’t got a care in the world, ‘cause they know they got me. They pull up ten paces from me, two of them look about normal-size fellas, one wearing a red vest, the other has his hair slicked back and looks greasy, faces covered but I can see mods on the parts of their faces and heads I can see, the third is a big ugly bastard that looks half cybernetic, could probably pull my arms out my sockets and he isn’t even bothering to cover his face. He obviously spent all his money on strength mods and none on making him look pretty. I don’t recognize him from these parts, they might be a gang from Bigville, maybe the Big-Dawgs, but I’ve never seen them out this far.
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The fella in red says as he casually draws his pistol, “hey there boy, why don’t ya’ takes off that fuckin’ gun-belt, nice and slow-like, and don’t do nothin’ stupid… or we’ll kill ya’ dead, boy, ya’ hear?”
He slowly looks over to his right, acting tough, like he doesn't even have to looks at me, but I see right where he’s lookin’, he just made his spotter, as I see a glint of light off of their rifle about 200 paces out in the brush. I figure this is a straight ambush, they saw me a long way off and set this up, and I walked right into it. Now I got some mods, all legal of course, but I have them illegally tuned, but if-in these bastards are Big-Dawgs, they’s known to be illegally modded as all get-out and shit.
“Okay, okay, just be cool, I ain’t about to fuck with y’all, but what makes you think I got money?” I says, as I slowly start to unbuckle my gun-belt, I figure they takin’ my money and shit, the only thing left to do is not get busted-up or dead.
Red says back to me, “look-here, boy, we ain’t dumb. You headin’ to town, so you gots money, or you wouldn’t be goin’ to town. And we’ll be taking what parts we please off of your piece-of-shit ride too.”
Big bastard chimes in, with a surprisingly high-pitched voice, and nodding his big ugly-ass head as he licks his bottom lip with sweat dripping off his face, “yeah, he gots money, I knew it! Didn’t I tells ya, he gots money, Big-Red?”
“Shut up dummy, and don’t say my name or nothin’ neither, now we gots to kills him!” Big-Red says growling at the big, ugly dummy.
This just went from better, to bad, to worse, I figure. So, I only have a fleeting moment to make it out of this alive. In less than a blink of an eye I pull my pistol and shoot Big-Red right in the face because I figure he’s the calmest, most level-headed and therefore the most dangerous. The laser that discharges from my pistol isn’t enough to kill a man, but that isn’t what it’s for, it ionizes the air so a half-megavolt electrical arc can shoot straight down the beam to the target at the other end in about a millionth of a second or so: And that is enough to kill a man.
I drop to the ground and roll up next to Big-Red’s ride, putting it between me and the rifleman. I can’t get a clean shot from my angle on Slick, but I can shoot the hover mechanism of his ride, causing it to drop hard to the ground. Fortunately for me, this makes him smash his chin on the windshield of his ride, this makes him bite off the tip of his tongue and drop his pistol that he just drew. I was hoping for any such result that gives me more time.
The next thing I see is a big foot kicking me in the side of the face, that big, dumb bastard was a lot faster than I thought he would be. It knocks my face right to the dirt, then he proceeds to stomp my head into the sand, hard enough to kill a man. Everything goes black.