The mountain of metal pressed toward them with impending imminence. Geoffrey and almost everyone aboard braced for impact as they continued to maintain course toward the unstoppable thing, as any sane person would presumably do. Except Koff and Joel who seemed exceptionally contentment to accept whatever hand fate would deal them. He manage to scan the rest of the crew to see their reaction. 3 of the engineers had firmly clamped their grasp on to the side of their seat, including the man who was flung from his seat earlier, who had now locked himself into a ball on top of his chair with his head locked between his knees. Curiously the one-woman engineers also seemed un-phased. “Interesting. Was she as nihilistic as the others, part of some doom cult? Maybe not.” Somehow the spark that flew threw her eye earlier made her seem too lively to be like them. Her face did stiffen, became more absent as she leaned forward resting her forearms on her thigh’, mimic Joel’s Vacant stare. She was somewhere else. A realm Geoffrey could not access as they did, he was too electric, too rooted to the present, to alive to be anywhere else in his mind right now.
“This Is your captain speaking, ummm…, we are expecting some minor turbulence, please retrain from moving about the cabin. Thank you.” Said Chashe over the intercom. This absolutely did not make Geoffrey feel an ounce better. Chashe sounded worried, nervous, but he also seemed the type sound like that on purpose. A world class actor who saw the world as his stage to lay on the sarcasm extra thick, for an elaborate dramatic test under duress that really only he, and those who knew him could appreciate.
The wall metal came careening toward them, they had just driven past a man to their right who had already died it within his body, a stagnant ghost, upon recognizing his fate. The Menace of Greif pulled hard to the left like a massive galleon doing a sharp turn amidst as misshapen wave ridden sea.
It was not enough to avoid collision entirely, but the maneuver was just enough to avoid massive integrity damage to their tank. The Initial impact shot a massive quake through the cabin. The screeching eek of metal scraping metal pierced the ears of everyone but Geoffrey. The cabin lights went out, the muddy green light from outside was easily overpowered by darkness created by the slicing impact what seemed like a subway train’s impact at full speed. Sparks sprayed nearly perpendicularly from the blacked window slits as the two vehicles ground against each other in opposite directions. Many along the row of seats of Geoffrey’s newly occupied side of the cabin were thrown face first on to the ground. The woman’s hair was ignited by the sparks, and burned for nearly a minute until the commotion had ceased, and she could furiously smother it out. Her long waves of rolling blonde hair, was now only long on one side. Her flame exposed hair was now a two-toned fringe flared in a bouquet of needles. Ranging from black to its original blonde, with shades of dark brown splinters erupting from the black burned ends.
“Fucking shit.” one of the burlier loading men said having realized he had cascaded on to the floor with the rest of ,who he presumed to be “weaklings”.
Geoffrey casted to the floor with the rest, laid there for a moment, not as shaken physically as the others but more mentally accosted, stricken with intrigue. He studied those before him as he laid on the ground with his helmet toward the cabin, feigning the significance of his affliction from the impact that was absorbed by his suit, as he studied them, their faces, their reactions to trauma. He was mesmerized by them, the denizens of the lower half of the ship, their grit, their imperiousness to be overcome by the world that seemed to so casually smother its inhabitants with perpetual impending doom. Specifically, the woman whom he could see on the other side of the cabin over the heads of everyone else on the floor, staring back at him, or rather staring through him with a vacant stare, calmly taking deep breaths after frantically defeating the flames. But she was staring at him, for at least half of the time. She stared into his black visor wondering who he was. “A man from the bridge that had been sent down to help them.” a whisper she had heard ruminating a day prior to the expedition, that seemed like a preposterous cruel joke at the time. He stared back snared in her near back eyes, wondering who she was on the other side of them. Her face once again hardened with focus her eyes darted away, to look a the ceiling, or anything but him. She was staring a little too long, In her opinion, pushing herself up from the ground to her knees with her hands pushing back against the floor.
Geoffrey figured it out, what he saw in her was a reflection, she was him. Him without his years of insulation he had painstakingly earned for his dedicated service on the bridge, him without a suit to soften the bestial world, him left to his own feral devices in the bottom half caste of the ship. But maybe there were just pros and cons. He compiled, what he lost in aggression, determination, grit, which were his strongest attributes anyway, he gained in balance, calmness , clarity and wisdom. Maybe they had a lot to learn from each other.
“Edrith Ayelle.” The name came to him in his mind with recited by an internal voice that was not his.
“What the fuck?! Did I take a blow to the head? Is this schizophrenia?”
“That’s her name.” the voice said.
“How?! what going on with me how did you know that?! are you me?” Geoffrey Interrogated the voice inside of him.
“No you’re you, I’m me. Kinda busy now. We’ll talk later I’m sure.”
“Later?! Hell no, you stay out of my mind you fucking ghost!” Geoffrey thought it as angry and loud as he could make it seem in his mind. He waited for response from within, but nothing spoke to him. Whatever “It” was had walked into his mind uninvited. He did not like this, he preferred to keep his cards close to his chest. “That’s a pretty drastic invasion of privacy at the minimum.” he thought trying to calm himself and be logical about the situation. “Can it feel what I feel? Or just read my thoughts?” Geoffrey thought assuming the power must have some limit, and if it did, he would figure it out. He was not a superstitions man, though he did believe in some sort of spiritual realm beyond the living present. Was he now some sort of spiritual medium? Could he use this power to his advantage somehow? Either way he knew the girl’s mane now. But it would probably be better if he pretended, he didn’t. He considered these things. “Damn didn’t think I’d have to deal with ghosts on this mission, and how could one be busy? The only thing I’d like less than being contacted by a spirit, is being contacted by one that’s still alive, with an agenda. I don’t even know where to begin looking for the captain. I’ll have to sneak away at some point, unless I can mange at the same time. For a mission seemingly simple mission, It just keeps getting more complicated. What in the world did Greis put me up to?”
The Menace of Grief had surprisingly survived like some routinely battered bastard of a witch that could not be completely killed by bludgeoning of hanging despite a feverous gratuity of attempts by the rabies maddened townsfolk. It took minimal damage from the glancing brush of the titan. Against the passenger cabin, there was now a silver streak where the dead rust metal had been sliced off, like a cardboard box having been stricken by a giant match. Additionally, one of the rear treads had been disfigured but was still easily being dragged along by the rest. Their machine kept creeping forward along the bridge resuming it’s pilgrimage, uncertain if it was a one-way journey or a round trip, with the realization to their exposure to the outside elements now in full effect, away from their metal cocoon of safety The Mordant Despair. Their maiden vagabond excursion truly, officially underway.
Their tank crawled across the bi-directional dirt path running along cliff side that had a hole punched through it by the Trample Forge. The path barley accommodated the large body of their medium sized tank, one group of scavengers scaled up the jagged cliff side, clinging to it as they passed by. The dirt path along the ridge seemed to narrow and widen at will as they traveled along it, with some sections being only wide enough to fit half of the tank. It carved into the ledge wall with the hook teeth of it’s treads, gouging sheets of slate from it’s surface, like a black spew of razor hail being ejected from it’s continued propulsion, as the vehicle hung more on the wall than the path at times. Slowly they sank further down the path, that was a durk jabbed into the light consuming litany of trees in the ‘corpse yards’ of the Humbolt Toiyabe National Cemetery. The aquatic green light was now a dark dusk green, only noticeably somewhat green because of the true black of the atlas tree bark. The light blue fog had followed them in, becoming a victim of the darkness, transforming into thick gray smog that would make a lit cigarette smoke seem almost white. By now some time had gone by the everyone had collected themselves into a calmer relaxed demeanor, the boredom had coaxed even the introverts into fluid conversation. Geoffrey had integrated himself into the group of engineers still not allowing his true face to be seen or true voice to heard through his helmet. He would feed them bits and pieces of who he was, enough to satisfy them but nothing to deep, the managed to keep the conversation flowing on surface level, spicing it up with a lie that would be nearly impossible to disprove every so often, mostly trying to hide his real age and lack of experience.
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“Yes, I've been aboard the Mordant Despair, going on… ugh I think it’s been 6 years now! 5 of which were on the top deck in Darden Hurst.” Geoffrey Extolled. “Quite a place actually. But it just never feels real to me, like I don’t belong there, truth is I like it back down here in the grit, the mean rub of rust in my nostrils. Not enough high stakes gambling up there for my taste, really takes the edge out of life. I've really forgot how much I missed it.”
“You’re from Darden Hurst? Don’t normally get there without some sort of exceptional ability or usefulness. For what I heard it was all suit wearing computer jockeys and pretentious aristocrats that dress like wizards.” Said the elder engineer who had fallen victim to intrigue during Geoffrey’s fantastical accounts.
“He’s really not wrong.” Geoffrey thought, agreeing with the man in his mind even if it didn’t fit the narrative he was broadcasting out loud. “You’re not far off but even aristocrats need a hired gun to escort them through the ship from time to time, and when they do, they might as well hire the best of the best. They call me Mean Jean Jackson: The Machine” Geoffrey bluffed Implying that he was talking about himself, giving himself a hyperbolic alias and title. Usually a strict idealist of truth, he was now fully enjoying concocting his entertaining ruse, with his underlying reason being motivation. “Motivation mean confidence, confidence is your best bet at success.” his own motto had flashed through his mind.
“Well certainly glad to have you aboard, wouldn’t reckon we be lucky enough to get someone so established! Even if there is only one of you. Can’t really afford for things to go wrong. Must be hard though, being a trained killer? I couldn’t Imagine it myself; I have a gun with me, never had to use it on a human before, you know but it’s a piece of junk, thing could probably only hold a charge for about three shots.” The elder engineer retrieved his blaster from his brown leather strapped holster wrapped the leg of his jumpsuit. He plopped the rusted brown pistol on his thigh pointed down the empty aisle, for inspection. “damn thing might not even burn a clean shot through the target.”
“Well, if you land all three shots in the same spot it should be enough to get the job done.” Said Geoffrey touting a feat that he had never accomplished that seemed improvable to all but elite level marksmen.
“So if you don’t mind me asking. , just for my own curiosity. How many men have you killed is there a number in the ‘community’ that’s generally accepted as a professional killer, or uh, ‘Keepsafe’.” The elder man lean in and lowered his tone as he asked the prying question, hoping to get some vicarious excitement from the details of such a grim life. Geoffrey paused as the question burned in him for a while, the other man reclined back to his seat unsure if what he said had upset the man who had seemed so eager to share the account of his exploits. The question rattled Geoffrey for a second, resurfacing some of his buried past. He had indeed killed a man, but only one, if he could even be called a man anymore, and not just a bloodthirsty thrall suffering from communion withdrawals in the Texas Exodus. He remembered the clean shot he sent through the man’s skull, just after the man went from who he was, to something else, losing the battle with madness, and a bodily autonomy. Then the worst of it came back to him, a demon he thought he had exercised from his mind had somehow completely regenerated from it’s enteral residue. Heaps of mounded flesh that had to be burned, killed with fire or some equivalent of submersive enveloping plasma. The humans that were either dying in a feral rampage, until they feed, or emaciation takes its toll on them. Or worse the ones that lived, survived long enough to coagulate into an amorphous hive mind beast that could metastasize limbs and shift forms at will, with it’s size being it’s only limiting factor determined by those unfortunate united with it.
He snapped back from the hell pit he kept locked in a dungeon in the bottom of a trench in the most secluded sector of his mind, if he could not delete his memory, he could at least imprison it. “Yeah, around 10 for sure, but talent is talent. There's no real way to qualify someone as a processional Me personally, I've probably put down around 50 people myself, but once you get to double digits you really don’t keep track anymore if they’re intent on keep their sanity.” Said Geoffrey selling his fake career so well that he was even almost buying into it.
The other man reclined back against his seat almost as if he had suddenly become more anxious at his response. “Well safe to say we’re in competent hands.” He said holstering his beard in his hand.
“killing is an unfortunate necessity out here sometimes. Not even someone you hate, maybe just someone working against you. Sometimes people just kill each other over petty annoyances just because they’re having a bad day.” Said the half-burned hair woman staring into Geoffrey’s mask with a soft nearly flat smile and raised eyebrows, as if trying to pry into his opinions on the matter. Her face also show that she had wholeheartedly accepted the way things were nowadays, that the would not be taken advantage of by the human yearn for naivety. If the world would resort to primitive savagery, so too could she adapt to that, scoundrel behavior was not beneath her even if she wanted better for the world.
“Yeah but there is a lot of the death in the world, even as professional I’d like to think of it as the last line of communication, when nothing else will get the job done and all reasoning is off the table.” Geoffrey tested seeing how much sway a contrary opinion would have.
“Hmmmm a pacifist assassin? Wouldn’t have taken you for a softie. A killer with a conscience, must be a hard line to walk. But then again, I guess we all have our ‘two selves’ who we broadcast to the world, and who we really are, and I guess if you’re getting technical you could say there are three if you count who people paint you to be in their mind.” Edrith asked as her dark rolled up toward the ceiling as she tried the best mechanical description of her interpenetration of psychology.
“No not really. There’s no duality to it for me, no side of me torn with remorse or whatever. It’s just an efficiency thing, you know, how can you do the most good. The world is like an engine, and it’s got to keep on running, sometimes if it’s not broke don’t fix it. But if someone’s throwing a wrench in the gears, maybe it’s better without them. Preferably just by ostracization, unless killing is absolutely necessary, then killing. Keep the machine running clean you know? But even good logic is a slippery slope in the messy affairs of humanity, could be misappropriated with enough delusion to justify mass genocide. I mean look at where we are now, how the world is these days. So what the hell do I know really?” Geoffrey dug deeper in his soul for the answers than he thought he would have to, to the core of what he actually believed. A thought exercise that he had never attempted to verbalize before, that in some way felt therapeutic to put his true feelings into words.
“Oh so you’re a ‘Warrior Scholar’! What a curiosity you are.” She said with a thicker grin than before, as if she was amused by his answer, with complex anxious pause she detected as he struggled to assemble the right words. A sign of truth, That a sociopath wouldn’t be capable of. As she tried to distill his whole identity into a term she just coined