POV Call Sign: Plumb Useless Grim Sleeveless

POV Unit Type: aspiring kernel engineer (currently unassigned)

ONE OF THE FEW BENEFITS OF LIVING AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF ALL CIVILIZATION is that there are no bedtimes anymore. I’m a man’s man. Always have been, always will be. I sleep when I want.

Yup.

After watching the send-off, I sped down the corridors of our ship at top speed, looking good, feeling great, not ashamed who knew it. Heading to my pocket of hidey-space everyone else calls a hellhole but I know affectionately as:

Home Sweet Home of the He-Man Future Kernel Society!

With my lucky hand I reach up and touch the sign that reads just that, then push open the wedge that blocks the entrance to my fort.

At the same time with my missing hand I snap a proper salute. Just because it’s not there doesn’t mean I’m not doing it!

First order of business is to take a picture of myself with my warpaint.

Ayoooah!

I strike a couple of poses and then fiddle with the lighting a bit. In the right light I have a six-pack like Omen. I’ve got good news, I’m still handsome!

I’m so excited I fall to floor and roll back and forth across the rotten lumps I pretend is a bed and call my sleeping pallet. They stink a little bit like rot and mildew and a little bit more like something I can’t identify though it sure does smell bad but I’m too excited to let that get me down. I kick my feet in the air and thump my lucky hand into the roll of metallic shielding I use for a pillow.

Next to the bed is the sheet of unrecycled scrap mirror I use to keep score:

Team Kills/Bites PLUMB USELESS I RATS IIII

I cross out “Plumb Useless” and update the board with my new callsign. Grim Sleeveless.

Woo-hoo-hoo—ayoooooooah! I can’t believe my luck. I finally have a callsign. A real one. And I didn’t even have to ask anyone for it. I can’t help but get bubbly in my tummy when I think about it. I always knew things were going to get better, but this?

I’m moving up in the world! Wow. Just wow!

Without thinking I rub my arm where while I was sleeping the rats had bitten me last time. It’s stopped hurting for the most part and Whitechapel said it wasn’t infected but still… Those rats are getting ahead of me. Can’t have that. I need to get a joss piece.

And sleep lighter.

I live down here in the engine ward near the hazardous waste recyclers. It’s great, we get plenty of warmth when the recyclers are operating. And steam. And on the weekends if I wake up early enough I can usually get some water. The air is pretty clean considering how close we are to the engines and their waste recyclers and it doesn’t smell that bad. And best of all I can connect to the ship’s computer at almost full speed no problem and read the Apocalypse as much as I want.

Sure, my space is small and everyone laughs at me and say I smell bad because a raw sewage line runs overhead and tends to drip all of the waste in my sleeping pallet, but I still love it. It’s long enough that I can almost stretch out my legs without touching the walls. And it’s wide enough I can roll over twice. I can’t stand up though, but if I bend my back and neck I can usually sit up but it’s too uncomfortable to stay like that so I seldom do it. Mostly I just lie down in the sleeping pallet and read the Apocalypse and dream.

It’s pretty astonishing reading all the things the guys have to say. I can just lose myself reading apocalypses and hours will pass and I won’t even know where the day has gone. Sometimes, the best times, it’s like I’m there with them. On the battlefield fighting the Krag (Kapow!) or alongside the kernels trying to keep the machines working. It seems everyone is always doing exciting things, brave deeds, acts of heroism. Whatever it takes to keep humanity’s chance for survival alive. One day my turn will come and I’ll join them in the fight.

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It’s a great life! What more could a man want?

Well. Maybe proper radiation shielding. I get sick a lot down here, but whenever I do I just go to Whitechapel and he takes care of it. He says he is a sucker for a one armed bandit.

That’s me!

Yup, some guys get all the luck. Ha!

Anyways, the stuff we picked up when we salvaged The Good Shepherd is pretty amazing. There’s no way they’ll ever let me anywhere near any of that.

Not that I mind. I’m a pathogen fan myself.

Yup, a man’s gotta follow his heart and I love this stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s in the blood.

I never knew my parents, but I like to think they were kernels. Maybe Dad designed the clever catch-and-release mechanism that holds the gencels in a holocauster. Nobody ever thinks about stuff like that, but I bet my Dad did. He was just that kind of guy.

I didn’t have to know him, I can just feel it in me.

You know, like.. woooo, you just know these things.

Sometimes I think I’m just like my dad, you gotta have an eye for the little things that everyone else is overlooking.

And Mom must have been something cool, too. Like in the good old days before I was born, when Fleet still had a fleet to command. And together The Darkness and The Light fought against the enemy, waging war across the galaxy.

I bet Mom was a real hero, like Lansing. She was probably an expert on light and physics too but just like Lansing she chose to become a kernel instead of a rationalist. And she was probably real good at designing space interceptors. And before important missions Fleet and The Light would ask her for advice. And she would tell them and then they would win.

That’s my mom for ya. I never knew her either, but that’s okay. She was one of the best, I’m sure of it.

Sometimes I think I’m just like my Mom. Looking at the big picture, sharing it with everyone else. I bet she smiled a lot too. What a great Mom she would have been.

Anyways…

I’ve been looking at everyone’s pathogen armor. Poring over everything in the Apocalypse I can find on them. Why is Omen so much stronger than everyone else?

I’ll tell you why!

Someday. As soon as I manage to figure it out.

This stuff is pretty complex. But I’m sure I will figure it out if I just don’t give up. Grandma always told me, I shall not be daunted, and I won’t!

The problem is Omen is so quiet. I’ve read everything he’s ever written but he hardly writes anything in his apocalypses. I think his longest entry was “Everyone else is dead, I’m pushing on.” It doesn’t exactly give me much to work with.

I can’t wait to see if Six-by writes more in his. Before I go to sleep tonight I need to bookmark all of his apocalypses.

I wanted to watch the send-off so I really haven’t had a chance to read anyone’s apocalypse from what happened on Tranquility’s End, but did you see how bashed in they looked? Six-by looked like he’d been on fire.. Half his armor was the color of charcoal the rest of him was as splattered with Krag ichor as Omen was.

They looked like they took a shower in it before they came home.

I wish I’d had something to measure them with. I would have loved to trace those indentations on his face plate and neck guards—those are some of the biggest bite spreads I’ve ever seen.

I wonder what kind of Krag unit he was fighting? It must have been huge. If it was a Srpaery he might have set a record.

You can’t fight hand to hand with a Srpaery that size and survive. No one has ever done it. How did he survive something that big?

It must have been a great fight. And he walked away alive. Well, maybe I should have used a better choice of words. But even if he didn’t exactly walk away at least he’s still here though!

Just for giggles I pulled up the schematics on Six-by’s armor. It was definitely a non-standard design. It looked like a Gen2 or Gen3 era build that had been heavily modified.

No two pathogen suits are truly the same. Back when we had pathogen armor specialists in the kernels they would individually tailor each holocauster-pathogen combo for the marine it was issued to. Sadly most of the experts on that weapons system are long dead.

Well that’s not true. Not most of the experts, all of the experts. We really took a beating in the Vulban Contingua operation. They say we’ll never really recover. Which is really scary, because the holocauster-pathogen weapons platform is one of our most important defenses on the battlefield. So who’s going to support it?

Good news! Don’t worry everybody! Grim Sleeveless is on the job. Every night and every day I’ll learn everything I can about the suits so that one day we can have a pathogen armor specialist in the kernels again.

Hmm, just giving Six-by’s pathogen armor a quick look over, I notice he has more black boxes than usual. Not real black boxes, of course. Just cryptic stuff that’s I’ve never seen before. Well, there is a lot of stuff I haven’t seen before. But anyways, someone spent a lot of material and energy modding that thing.

Just fascinating. I could study this stuff forever.

Did you see that look on his face when Deamos was staring at him?

Oh, man, epic!

Deamos! You know what that means.

The personification of fear and terror on the battlefield.

They say after you’ve been on the battlefield you get the deadeyes, and Six-by just stared at him like he wasn’t even there. That might be the scariest thing I’ve seen in my life.

Well, no. Not the scariest.

I doubt anyone’s reading this but I really miss my Grandma. I think I’ve always been an orphan, but she was the one who raised me. I remember when I used to run and jump in her lap and she would catch me. We had such fun together. Until one day…

One day…

…

I think maybe I had better get back to the suits.