THE VASTLANDS
Under an indigo summer sky, a dust devil twirls flotsam across an endless expanse of broken concrete. The only structures to break up the flatness are low-lying, pyramidal desalination treatment facilities; rusty, dusty, and dead for generations.
The dust devil dissipates; all is still; all silent. Then—movement; a rustle in the high weeds. An emaciated and miserable-looking scavenger creature emerges: a skreazle. The frame is squat, low, and quadrupedal, with the side-to-side movement of a reptile, yet more slender, with the nimble flexibility of a rodent. Where a healthy breed might sport lush, orange, and black-striped fur, this one suffers from autoimmune alopecia. The fur is patchy, sections of the skin scabby; perhaps due to stress or poor diet. The skreazle crests a knoll and descends a vast concrete slope, revealing a hidden world.
AQUADUCT RUINS
Concrete aqueduct channels are carved deep into the surface of the land; multi-leveled and labyrinthian, expanding to all horizons. Massive and dense jumbles of iron tubes and rubber wires, long dormant, run along the channels. Colorful cacti, wild weeds, and the groping tendrils of blood ivy burst forth from the cracked lanes and broken slopes.
In some long-forgotten past age, these vast aqueducts were used to channel and filter rising tides of inland flooding saltwater. But the waters, having receded many generations prior, have left the channels long since reclaimed by nature.
The skreazle slinks along the top of a de-generator, darting its nose into nooks, seeking the protein of a mite mound or vampire flea colony. Or if especially fortunate, a hidden nest of juicy teron eggs. Suddenly, its head pops up; eyes gazing down the still corridor. A sound. At first a soft hum, then a rumble. The sound quickly rises to a fever pitch; the whirring fwip-fwip-fwip of a Magno-Drive engine. The skreazle scampers out of view as a levitating skimmer roars past, sending up a trail of dust in its wake.
The skimmer vehicle is nine feet long and rectangular, with a steel roll cage protecting the top half. It’s war-torn and world-weary, a hodgepodge of materials and textures, built up and altered over many years in some scrappy garage hangar bay. The custom crimson paint job near the nose is chipped away, revealing the dull gray metal below. Custom stickers and stylish, hand-painted graphics, and even some children's oil stick monster drawings adorn it randomly. A few cracked sections of the polyurethane body have been bandaged with strips of neon green hive-thread tape. The left side of the front grill cage rattles, slightly loose. But it’s got power where it counts; in the heart under the hood, where four Gammatron reactor cells power a sixteen-cylinder Magno-drive engine, and it grumbles with ferocity.
INSIDE THE SKIMMER
Within the cockpit, a pilot in a vermilion leather jumper reclines, the high neck lined with thick padding to protect against whiplash. Atop the jumper suit is a homemade armored vest, shoulder and elbow pads, and fireproof gloves.
The helmet, made of flexible, microfiber polypropylene, has a stylish graphic painted upon the side: a speeding swallow, trailing fire and smoke. The goggles shimmer with iridescent colors the carcinogen-filtered breathing apparatus is switched off. Running from the sides are electric nodes to two antennae, then another thin wire extending down the mouth; a commlink microphone.
In front of the pilot sits a jumble of monitors. A central dash screen dominates, rectangular and curved, showing a wire-frame 3D render of the surrounding landscape thirty meters out. LIDAR radar energy rays continuously emanate out, scanning the topography for obstructions or heatwaves of lifeforms. In the lane up ahead, little clusters of tiny heat signatures scatter from the oncoming vehicle. The pilot glances down the blurring surface six feet below. Dark forms darting away. More skreazles.
Smaller surrounding screens relay vehicle diagnostics: speed, distance covered from origin, distance left to destination, and GPS route coordinates. A smaller screen to the left sits dead and black; a sad frowning-face drawn with a finger in the dust.
Another screen, hive-thread tape stretched across a crack, relays biological readouts of the pilot: heart rate, blood pressure, hormone levels, brainwave activity. The same biological readouts are mirrored on a monitor on the pilot’s left forearm glove. Below her left arm is a small metal flip-up cage, and within; a giant red button with an exclamation point curiously painted atop.
Suddenly the LIDAR radar screen goes fuzzy with interference. The pilot taps the side of the monitor, but the interference remains. The pilot shakes their head with annoyance, looks around, and, up above edges of the trench, they spot the tip of desalination pyramid rising out of a dense thicket of overgrowth.
The skimmer uses Mag-lev tech for plasma-tron acceleration thrusting. Upon the floorboard sit pedals in a cross pattern; along a vertical and horizontal axis. These are tied to four thrusters installed on all four sides of the vehicle. The lidar screen blinks with an upcoming obstruction in the lane: the rusty scaffolding of an ancient watchtower. The Pilot, keeping the right foot upon the top pedal for forward acceleration, taps the left foot to the left pedal, igniting the thruster on the left, which side-dashes the skimmer to the right.
Not far ahead, the embankment is free from debris. The pilot's extended arms, grip separate steering "sticks," which, although joined at a central Y-axis, can be manipulated separately to change the angle of direction. The pilot pulls the left stick back, the left flap opens on the side of skimmer, creating a drag, which turns the skimmer angle towards the right. The pilot rotates one of the "wrist-twist" handles, turning the roll angle of the vehicle along its longitudinal axis. The Skimmer deftly climbs the embankment, rolling and dashing with the grace of a gliding dancer.
Reaching the surface, the skimmer slows and enters a dense thicket, passing under the shadows of a jumble of dilapidated freight containers, hardly discernable now, having been long since reclaimed by generations of cinder willows and spiny spore caps. The vehicle stops, the rumbling engine goes silent. The pilot swivels the steel roll cage up, pulls a blazer rifle from a hidden nook, and hops out.
The pilot levels the rifle, scanning the surroundings for any sign of danger. The movements are that of a seasoned outrunner-holding a mastery over the vastlands. All is still but for the incessant buzzing of horned locusts.
The pilot checks the Lidar display readout on their forearm for atmospheric toxicity. Levels are normal. The pilot removes the helmet, revealing Kazoomie Rao; a petite, middle-aged woman with two calculating black irises set within a petite face of powder white. Under the cap, wet, silky strands of her platinum white hair stick to her cheeks and neck. Her face bears the mileage of a well-worn Outrunner: sun-kissed skin, premature crow's feet, bags under her eyes, and a curious scar on her lower lip. Upon her head is a sweat-stained leather flight cap, with chin straps dangling loose and a comm-link mic sewn in
A DEADLY ENCOUNTER
She turns toward the base of desalination pyramid looming above the brush, and nimbly creeps between freight containers. Reaching the base, she places the rifle strap across her chest, securing the weapon to her back, and begins the climb. Arriving at a spot where the concrete steps have been broken apart by thick tangles of spider vines and silk spheres, she reaches high and grips a root overhead, lifting her boot up into a crevice as a foothold.
Just as she is about to pull herself up, Kazoomie stops. From the shadowy void beneath the roots, the ominous head of a giant, red kreepler emerges, the long antennae tendrils groping the air. Her free hand, turned out of view, slowly moves to her sync-blade sheathed at her back hip. The kreepler slithers out further, revealing its segmented, undulating body, and countless crustacean claw-legs. The tiny black thorns along its exoskeleton shell already secrete yellow poison pus in anticipation of immobilizing its prey.
Kazoomie prays not to be discovered. If injected by the poison, she’ll be immobile, but conscious for the "dissipation," where the kreepler mounts atop the victim, secreting an acid from the underside that slowly eats away at any organic material, consuming it over a period of days. All while the victim lays rigid and helpless, yet awake to experience inconceivable pain.
Out of view, her hand moves to sheath at her hip, and the handle of her sync-blade as she starts to draw it out. The kreepler stops, sensing a disturbance in the air. Kazoomie pauses. The tendrilled head darts in different directions, the antennae going wild. Kazoomie doesn’t breathe.
A rustling in the brush further down the pyramid draws the creature’s attention, and it scuttles away to investigate. Kazoomie drops her head and takes in the breath she had been holding in, sliding the sync-blade back into its sheath. She ventures on, ascending the pyramidal structure. Reaching the top, she drops to her stomach and leopard-crawls to the far edge to get a clear view of the vast, unfolding northern landscape. A shadowy atmospheric bruise obscures the horizon. Right across her route.
She removes a battered omni-scope, other wise known as a “sky finder” from the fanny pack at her hip, and puts it to her eyes. She clicks through magnified views. Within the bruised purples and greys of the toxic dust clouds, sporadic, salmon-hued ionized energy bolts crackle from deep inside.
She sighs. “Drat.”
The cause of her LIDAR radar interference was just as she feared: an ion storm. Colossal roaming electrical storms with enough charged ion radiation to burn any exposed organic material to charred chalk within seconds of exposure. Some call them "dead zones" for their inability to sustain even the most microscopic of lifeforms. Others deemed them "Shadow realms," as the interiors are rumored to be black as sin; not that any outrunners have ever been fool enough to enter one to find out, even in protected skimmers and suits. Some even say the storms are sentient and seeking prey, but she knows those are just old outrunner tales. Either way, this storm could out her behind schedule, and time is of the essence.
She zooms in further, carefully scanning from left to right, seeking... seeking.
Yes! Her pulse quickens. The storm is actually two separate storms. Examining the gap, she estimates a space of 2 to 3 kilometers between them. She watches the western edge of the front Ion cloud creeping across new terrain.
“Lead storm... eighteen knots,” she mutters.
Her omni-scope scans to the second cloud. She pauses to count. “Rear storm... twenty-three knots.”
Her heart drops. The rear storm is gaining, and will catch up and blend into the lead. That gap won't last long. She lowers the scope, and her dark irises, like two black coals, survey the unfolding landscape leading north west towards the storm, running the calculations.
“Distance to the storm... about eight kilometers... skimmer speed at ninety kilometers per hour... so in about fourteen minutes I'll be...”
Her eyes move to where she estimates the gap to be in that time. She’ll have to adjust course, but years of overland travel tell her if she makes haste, she can clear the gap.
RACING THE STORM
Her retreating descent back down the opposite side of the pyramid is a blur of adrenaline. Caution is a luxury time doesn’t permit now. Sprinting back through the cargo crates, she slams down her cockpit roll cage, dons her helmet, and blasts away; her purpose singular. As she winds her way through the channels, her comm-link crackles with static. A gruff man’s voice rings out, faint and distorted.
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“Comm-link check to Outrunner 73. Kaz—you got ears on? It’s Caleb. We need—”
Her hand darts to the side of her helmet and she flips the comm-link switch off. The static and voice go silent.
“Sorry, Chief,” she mutters. “Time for hyper focus.”
As she zips through the channels, the surging storm clouds loom ominously near. She ascends an embankment and smiles. Straight ahead, a large strip of the sky is clear and blue. Before her is the gap. No time to waste!
“Let’s catch the wind,” she says, smashing her acceleration petal down. Her skimmer leaps ahead, a blurring projectile.
The skimmer zooms along, deftly winding its way around sharp turns, zig-zagging under massive, crumbling concrete bridge arches. Where debris blocks the path, she raises the steering sticks, and the Magno-drive engine whirs louder, gaining altitude to climb over, then dropping back down.
She pushes forward into the heart of the gap, the dark atmospheric clouds now buttressing on her on all sides. She tries to swallow. Her throat is dry. She’s never been this close to an Ion Storm before. Is it her imagination, or does the filtered air within her oxygen mask hold a slight metallic, ozone flavor?
No room for error here. If her skimmer were to fail or wreck, she would be engulfed within crackling clouds of ion radiation. Her suit and air tank might protect her- for a while. But once her oxygen ran out... well, she, would likely pull off the helmet in desperation, gasping for breath, and the charged ion radiation would burn and melt her exposed skin off her skull like hot wax. She shakes her head to push that thought out, and glances down at the red button with the exclamation mark drawn atop. No. Not now. Don’t waste it.
Luckily her estimation on route and timing are accurate, and her piloting skills serve her well, and her skimmer exits the gap with some room to spare. She enters a long, straight lane buttressed by the remnants of vast radar dish fields, the cylindrical dishes crumbling and askew, and covered in dense blood vines and neon green bio-forge fungi. She glances in the rearview mirror to see the two storms melding together. She breathes a deep sigh of relief. Never need to do that again.
COMMUNICATION RESTORED
Still passing through the radar dish fields, and now gaining distance from the storm, her LIDAR screen un-fuzzes and recovers its display. Kazoomie flips the comm-link on her helmet back on. The sound of static returns, then a click.
“Ears on high, Chief,” she says.
A pause. Then Caleb’s voice crackles through, gruff but familiar. “She lives...” The sound of a chair scooting. “What happened? I lost you.”
Kazoomie chuckles. “Awww, Kawaii Caleb is worried for the little sparrow? Comm-tech went haywire.”
“I’m getting some feedback echoes on your end. Can you confirm your GP?”
“Must be interference from the dead zone,” she replies. “Switch over to 27 MH. Might clear up some static.”
Kazoomie switches frequencies.
“Now?” Caleb asks.
“Loud and crispy,” she replies.
A brief silence. Then Caleb’s voice grows suspicious. “Wait... dead zone? You skirted an ion storm?”
“Stars no!” she lies. “My code aint that corrupted! And certainly not after what happened to Kael Varen.” Kazoomie looks down at her cockpit diagnostics, changing the subject. “Ok, GP. So I just crossed into E-8. Groundspeed is at... 128 kph. Distance to Colony 48 is... 31 KM. So ETA is in... 47 minutes. Making good time here.”
“How’s that left turbine holding up?” Caleb asks, “still wobble-wobble?”
Kazoomie smirks. “Everything on this old girl is wobble-wobble these days.”
“Weather diagnostics still out?”
She taps her knuckle on the black screen to her left. No response. “Dead as a skeazle on a spit.” With her fingertip, she draws two X's over the eyes of the sad face in the screen dust. “Speaking of skeazles,” she adds, “if I gotta eat one more of these stringy northern breeds. Must be something in the water.”
“What ain’t in the water out there?” Caleb replies with a chuckle.
Kazoomie grins. “Ping-pong!”
The tone of Caleb’s voice lowers to a whisper. “Listen—dial in now. It’s getting worse here. The fuzz is spreading double quick. Three more downgraded to critical, and two more colonists diagnosed. I’m sorry to tell you... one is your sister.”
Kazoomie’s breath catches. “Fiora?”
“Yeah. This is red-zone, Kazoomie. If we don’t get that vaccine back here soon, the fuzz could take down the entire colony.”
“No pressure at all,” she mutters dryly.
“When you get to the colony, snatch the package. Zoom-zoom back first thing.”
“You know me, Chief. The Sparrow never dallies.”
A pause. Then Caleb’s voice softens. “Good girl. I’ll keep the tar-tea on the burner for you... and for what it’s worth, regardless of the infighting, I’m glad you were the one chosen. I believe in you. Always have.”
Kazoomie blinks rapidly, her stark irises glistening. “Tell Fiora…” she pauses, “…tell everyone to hold strong. I’m coming back. Keep your eyes on the northern horizon in two days’ time. There you’ll find me.”
“I know we will,” Caleb says. “The wind at your back.”
“The wind at my back,” she echoes. “Sparrow out.” Kazoomie toggles off the comm-link and wipes away the tears with the back of her glove. The sun grows ever higher.
The LIDAR screen shows a vast architectural complex approaching. This section of the route is familiar. She dips down into a side chasm that leads to a secret hole in the overgrowth. Entering here, she zips through a long corridor of rusted, vine covered turbines as the the sun pours down in sporadic light rays. At the end of the corridor the light is blinding and a deafening roar grows. Kazoomie Emerges into the brightness of a massive, crumbling hydroelectric dam complex, once a marvel of engineering but now a ruinous labyrinth of crumbling concrete and tiered waterfalls cascading down the rubble. The skimmer is dwarfed by giant walls still marked with faded numbers and words, perhaps delineating instructions or maybe posing a warning, but who can say? The letters aren’t decipherable to Kazoomie, the culture that wrote them long since lost to time.
Spying a calm pool with space to land, she brings the skimmer to a halt and steps out, radiation scanner in hand. Approaching the water's edge, she holds her breath and waits for the device to crackle. Nothing. The waters are clean. Kazoomie dips and fills her reserve jug as Gamelan crabs float away, the soundwaves of the falls echoing off their patterned shells creating subtle pings and pongs of music. She stows the reserve away in the skimmer, and dips in and tops up her personal canteen, pausing to take a quick sip. From the bases of different falls, mists waft up as light shimmers through, creating a playful dance of sparkling glitter. The flutter of wings draws her attention as a group of insectoid glass-mantids hover past, the sunlight shimmering off their purple and silver iridescent exoskeletons, surrounding them in halo rainbows.
Normally, she might linger here a while, letting herself revel in the idyllic charm of the falls. Not today.
She climbs back into the skimmer and the Magno-Drive engine growls to life, and she presses on, navigating past more waterfalls until the streams peter out and she finds herself clear of the complex. Here she crosses into a land of vast, charred black terrain of rising Obsidian spires. She lifts the entire Y-axis of her steering sticks to enact the mag lev thruster below, gaining the max elevation of around 60 feet. Just enough to clear the noxious gasses emanating up from the obsidian spires. Too much direct exposure would corrode the metal and send her plummeting down into a landscape of acidic mist.
Beyond this she passes over countless rolling hills of undulating corral fields. Fuzzy and iridescent coral like vegetation that strain and stretch letting out bursts of air, creating pockets of air lifts that Dryft wyrms; those floating ribbon like parasites, with their shimmering fin wings, gracefully ride. But on this day Kazoomie doesn’t slow to appreciate the kaleidoscopic colors. The wyrms, sensing her mag thrusters in the atmosphere, easily part from her path, making her route clear as she races on.
Now the natural landscape give way to more broken concrete aqueducts ditches and crisscrossing lanes and ruins of broken bridges. Her LIDAR screen blinks and beeps. On the monitor, a small digital icon of her skimmer moves along a 3D-rendered map route toward its destination ahead: a massive, centralized structure labeled "Colony 449; destination 1.3 km."
Her heart lifts. Once she arrives and snatches up the vaccine, her mission will be halfway finished. If the return trip is as uneventful as her approach, her colony will be saved from “the fuzz”.
APPROACH TO COLONY 449
Rounding a bend, Kazoomie enters a long, straight lane leading directly to the colony gate. She toggles her comm-link to the local frequency.
“Colony 449. This is Outrunner 73, currently logging in at 1800 and 043 hours, approaching southern gate for the scheduled snatch and grab,” she announces.
The frequency responds with static, then the shuffling of a microphone.
“Layna?” Kazoomie tries again. “You got ears up? Can we make this a quick grab and dash?”
The shuffling stops. A deep male voice she doesn’t recognize answers, “Outrunner 73... uh... confirmative. We... got you on topogro-scope.”
Kazoomie frowns. That isn’t Layna’s voice.
There’s a scratching sound, as if someone is covering the microphone, followed by the muffled arguing of distant voices. A moment later, the same voice returns, sharp and decisive.
“Yes... you are authorized to proceed. Over.”
Kazoomie hesitates, her instincts prickling. Something is out of sync. She considers asking about Layna but decides against it. No time. Get in quick. Get the package. That’s all that matters.
“Roger that,” she says, her tone uncertain. “Coming in hot.”
Kazoomie peers above the cockpit as the blunt, fortress-like wall of the Colony looms ahead, its colossal iron doors bearing painted numbers: "449."
The skimmer rockets down the lane, a blur against the jagged terrain.
Pairs of looming electro-towers line both sides of the straightaway, their brass filaments glinting in the sun. These towers are the colony’s first and strongest line of defense. If an intruder were detected, the colony could flip a switch and send enough ropes of electricity across the lane to fry even a heavy freighter and barbecue any passengers inside.
But Kazoomie is expected. She is an ally. The towers remain silent as she zips between them. Or they should. A vibration rattles through the skimmer. The electrode nodes on the towers begin to hum ominously. Kazoomie glances in her rearview mirror. Sparks crackle along the brass filaments.
“What the—? No!” she shouts, her heart pounding.
She slams the comm-link switch. “Colony 449! Stand down electro-towers! Repeat! Deactivate towers!”
Static hisses back at her.
It’s too late. Behind her, giant beams of electricity shoot out across the lane, forming a deadly, shimmering barrier. Kazoomie’s instincts take over. She slams the acceleration sticks forward, the skimmer lunging ahead. More towers light up behind her, the energy barriers closing in. The hum builds to a deafening roar. At this speed, stopping in time isn’t an option. She has to clear the final pair of towers near the colony wall. It’s her only chance.
“Arghhh!” she screams, pushing the skimmer to its limits. The world blurs around her as she approaches the final towers. The electrodes spark, and the energy beams extend toward the center of the lane. The skimmer rockets through just as the beams meet behind her, the force reverberating through the vehicle.
But now a new danger. The colony wall rushes toward her at breakneck speed.
She grips the power brake with her right hand and yanks back on the left acceleration stick, pitching the skimmer ninety degrees to the left. The plasmatron energy buffer activates, creating a cushion of force against the oncoming wall.
But her piloting skills have found their limit. The wall approaches too fast. She screams out in despair, bracing for a deadly impact. This is the end.
Just then, a multilayered rubber web-net springs out from a trigger in the ground, entangling the skimmer in its elastic grip. The net absorbs the vehicle’s momentum before it can smash against the wall, stretching to its full extension before violently whipping the skimmer backward. Kazoomie slams against the roll cage as the skimmer flips and tumbles, finally coming to a smoking halt near the base of the gate.
ENSNARED
The skimmer lies on its side, smoke billowing from its engine. The acrid scent of burning polypropylene plastic fills the air. The trickling sound of a stream of plasma-petrol drips onto the broken concrete. From the corner of her good eye, she spies blurry silhouettes of a few figures high upon the tower wall parapet. A voice chuckles.
Kazoomie groans, her body aching from the violent crash. From the corner of her good eye, she spies blurry silhouettes high upon the colony’s tower wall parapet. A voice chuckles faintly, carried down on the wind.
The colossal iron doors of Colony 449 groan open with an agonizing screech. The edges of the rubber net shift along rails, dragging the skimmer out of the harsh sunlight and into the shaded chill of the colony’s interior entrance.
Kazoomie’s left eye is swollen shut, and blood trickles from her temple, leaking into her right eye and blurring what little vision she has left. The rows of neon lights lining the interior runway swirl in a nauseating kaleidoscope. She moans, her head throbbing like colliding tectonic plates.
Footsteps approach. Two voices, out of view, banter casually.
“Hooya!” a young male voice exclaims. “I told you she’d outrun the beams. Twenty credits, sucka. Pay up.”
“You got lucky, chump,” a female voice replies, unimpressed. “One millisecond longer, she would’ve been charred to chalk by the electro-towers.”
“And you ever seen a bozonkers maneuver like that? Hot damn, she’s got moves!” the young male voice counters, enthusiasm undimmed.
The female voice scoffs. “The netweb saved her skin. Otherwise, she’d be a mosquito stain on that wall out there.”
Another voice, older and gruff, calls from farther away. “She alive?”
The neon light upon kazoomie is broken up with a shadow as a figure leans in close.
“Barely,” the female voice says. “Her face looks like bona fide splatter batter.”
“Is it her?” the older male voice asks.
A hand reaches through the netweb, tilting Kazoomie’s head to the side, exposing a circular circuitry ID barcode tattoo on her neck. Another hand enters her field of vision, holding a circuit scanner. A blue light ray sweeps across the tattoo, the device beeping in confirmation.
“Yep, it’s her,” the female voice confirms.
“Yank her out and cinch her up,” the older man orders. “We’ll stow her down deep with the other prisoners.”
Kazoomie struggles to speak, but her lips only manage to mouth a silent word. Her head lolls to the side, her vision dimming. All fades to black.