Chapter 13

The Badlands Desperados Main Camp

Jon awoke in a forest green tent. The soft scrape of sand against his skin carried along on a breeze brought him out of unconsciousness. As his senses returned to him, the environment didn’t look entirely real, either. Tiny hints of code and cyphers ferried back and forth became visible if he stared at them hard enough. He was inside a construct, and not one he was familiar with. In front of him sat Alek on a chair.

“Easy friend. You collapsed when I picked you up. Best guess is heat and radiation poisoning. Brought you back to treat your injuries. You’re on a medbed right now, but we jacked you into our network so we could chat without the data overload, nearly killing you yet.”

Jon sat forward on the air mattress, a bit of brown dust gathering in the rumpled folds of the white sheet. He gestured to the tent and ground. “And all this? Is this where we really are?”

“In a manner of sorts. The details might change, but we’re always in the badlands. We don’t go into the cities unless it’s sending runners for work,” Alek said.

Jon propped himself up on his elbows. He could see out of the tent now.

“It’s our complete camp. We felt something tangible would be less disorienting, and the inclusion doesn’t put us at any risk, since this is a closed network. Welcome to the home of the Desperados.”

Alek stood, waving for Jon to follow him outside. The Desperados’ main camp reminded Jon of what a used car lot in the middle of the badlands might look like. Ten or Fifteen dusty cars and pickups ringed up like old Conestoga wagons or herd animals protecting young from predators. The interior of the camp was a mix of tens and trailers that were opened up. One trailer housed a bar, another held a mobile command center, and the other was a signal trailer.

“Nice camp,” Jon said.

Alek nodded as they strode towards the core of the camp. “Took us a while to build the camp up this far. The Desperados aren’t one of the original tribes. We’re kind of the outcasts of the outcasts. We banded together and made each other our own family.”

“You guys don’t seem like push overs, fight other tribes much?”

“Rarely. But sometimes Outcast mobs try an steal supplies,” Alek said.

“Outcasts, what are those, exactly?”

“Yea, Outcasts are Outriders ejected from their tribe. Because they’ve committed some kind of heinous crime or action, the tribe can’t back or condone.”

“But you just said the Desperados are a group of outcasts?”

Alek frowned. “Not everyone gets outcast for the right reasons. Sometimes there’s family politics and power plays.”

Jon frowned, unsure how to feel about knowing that even out here, corruption and greed still manipulated human evolution. “If the crime isn’t severe enough to merit being outcast, we typically take those wayward souls on. But the ugly ducklings that don’t repent? We won’t deal with.”

“Ah. So everyone here is the black sheep of their tribes.”

“Basically, yea. That’s why we called ourselves the Desperados. Being kicked out of your tribe as an Outrider in the badlands is often meant a death sentence. No family, no home, no supplies.” Alek shrugged at a passing thought, “Now days? Less so. We do pretty well for ourselves. But it was those uncertain and desperate first few days alone that bound us all together.”

Alek led Jon around and up to the Mobile Command center trailer. Stepping up a small set of metal steps into the trailer, he glanced around and found a woman sitting on a metal folding chair turned backwards. She had auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail, dark almond eyes, modest cheeks, and a slender jaw that framed small lips. She didn’t wear makeup, unless you counted the small smear of oil and dab of grease on her ear that was easy to miss in a mirror.

“Dez, this is Knight. Needs a ride back east once he’s healthy enough to leave.”

“So you’re the wonk that put on the light show for us last night?” she asked through narrowed eyes.

“Yea. Was me”

She nodded, rising slowly like a big game cat stalking prey. “Thanks to you, we’ll have to pack up camp and move to put some distance ‘tween us and that old factory.”

“Why?” Jon asked.

“They’ll be lookin’ fer whoever zeroed that factory. Since we’re in the area, they’ll probably try an’ hang it around our necks.”

Jon cursed under his breath, but Dez’ brow cocked at the reaction.

“So you didn’t plan on us catching the fallout?”

“What? No. Course not,” said Jon.

“He didn’t know we camped here. Brought him here after he zeroed his own ride.”

“Glassed your own ride, eh? Outriders don’t work so candidly with their rides. It’s our lifeblood out here.”

“The situation didn’t lend itself to consider consequences.”

Dez’ brow arched curiously. “So you’re a shoot first think later type?”

“Not always. But the job was to take the factory down. Conventional weapons would only take it down for a few months. Maybe a year or two.”

“Ah. So you leveled the whole site so they couldn’t spin it back up again later. You could have died.”

He shrugged, rubbing his tricep absent mindedly. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“So I see. Look like you’ve been blown half to hell once. Why try to go back?”

“Unsettled biz.”

“With Haltech?”

He didn’t respond verbally, but Dez caught the hard look in his eye. She leaned back, appraising him silently. After a tense moment, her lips cracked into a smirk.

“You did us a favor there, actually. That factory would send out their little bots to harass us routinely. Figure Haltech thought they could use us as test dummies for their war toys. Now they won’t be a problem anymore.”

“So you’re not pissed about having to move?”

Dez brushed the matter aside. “Eh. We were due to pick up and shift sites soon anyhow. We don’t stay in any position for too long. Not our way.”

“On account of resource scarcity,” Alek added.

“We don’t welcome outsiders into our family. But when an outsider space lasers a corpo factory that’s been hounding us for months and taking a toll on our supplies and people? Well, that gets your friend status at least, right Alek?”

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“Sounds right to me,” Alek said.

Dez stood up and patted him on the shoulder where she touched him, a Desperados patch etched itself into his arm like a brand into the surface of the black polymer. He traced a finger over engraving. It reminded him of a unit patch from his military days. He knew he wasn’t one of them. But it was nice to have friends, at least.

“Thanks. I don’t know what to say.”

“Nothing. You say nothing. It’s us who should thank you. Once you’re healed up, consider that ride home sorted. And uh, if you ever be in the job market out this way, let me know. We could always use a guy with your skills.”

Dez turned to leave, and her body decompiled into glowing bits of code and cyphers that tumbled to the ground before disappearing. Jon turned, and Alek gave him a friendly nod.

“The medbed should finish soon. Once you’re healed up, we’ll get you rolling back home.”

Jon thanked Alek, and then Alek decompiled too, exiting the mental construct, leaving Jon free to poke around and explore the digital playground for a while as he waited for his body to recover.

#

The Badlands

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‎ His drive back home was a little faster now that he knew the route and had a faster set of wheels. Turns out the Desperados aren’t big fans of Haltech, and when they found out, he glassed an entire facility into the sand; they gave him a set of wheels to get home. They even called him a friend, which was pretty rare for the nomadic tribes of Outriders to do with an outsider.

The radio played an aggressive tune by some band called Angry Ronin, a classic from the 70s. His left hand unconsciously tapped out the beat of the drums on the door while he steered with his right hand. When he first left the area, he could see a few Haltech VTOL Tacteam craft deploying to where the former factory used to be. He grinned, knowing they wouldn’t find anything of worth there.

The endless brown expanse of the Badlands stretched before him. He was too young to have seen it, but he heard stories from older generations that the badlands used to only stay on the left side of the Rockies. Now they reached out to the edge of the sprawl of East City. Used to be two disparate groups that argued about how the Earth was going to change, but no one cared about doing anything to stopping it. The only interest was where to assign the blame, natural or artificial. By the time they acknowledged it was changing regardless, the plains became a part of the Badlands. The populations of the central states embarked on the great exodus. To the east they filled up East and Capital city. To the west, they filled up Coast and Vice cities.

Right now he was using the major highway that carried those former residents to East and Capital Cities. The road was weatherworn, and barely visible beneath the powdery brown sand dunes that gusted across the highway. He looked behind him in the rear-view mirror at the lazy cloud of dust kicked up by the car from the highway. He caught sight of the laser etched Desperados patch the Outrider clan had stenciled onto his shoulder.

Tracing the grooves in the polymer, he thought absently about being thought of as a friend to a group like the Outriders. It occurred to him he didn’t really know too much about them. They were odd survivalists that prided themselves on living on the land and road, what little it had left to offer. They hated the Corporations and made the conscious choice to reject where the country was heading. That resonated with him, and he figured they recognized that within him.

He checked himself in the rearview mirror again. He couldn’t tell the difference. Alek told him he suffered some pretty nasty burns and rad poisoning. They treated his injuries and even given him a ride back home without asking for anything in return. Flattening the factory was apparently payment enough.

Opening his contact list, he called Nomad. Nomad’s holo-id icon popped up, a lone figure in a vast open expanse. The system rang twice and then answered.

“Knight. Good to hear from you. The news is buzzing with reports of your handiwork. Quite thorough. The client is very pleased. I’ll close the contract. Payment is being processed as we speak.”

An instant later, Jon received a notification that a hefty credit deposit just hit his account. That was better than working on fumes. His good mood spoiled, though, when he noticed a few alert notifications. His prosthetics weren’t happy with him about his stunt at the factory. It never occurred to him he might need to conduct some maintenance on his chrome.

Chrome. He sighed, catching himself. His augmentations. Chrome was slang that implied that he wanted them.

He shot Raven a text, “Might need that tech to give me a tune up.”

She’d be in the office right now, so she wouldn’t answer until she got off. That worked out fine. He was still hours from the closest edge of the sprawl of East City. That gave him some time to reflect.

He shouldn’t even be sitting here right now. That stunt with the satellite should have barbequed him in the desert along with that factory. He owed his continued existence to the augmentations. He didn’t want them, but it didn’t mean he didn’t have to appreciate what they gave him grudgingly.

He fell into a contemplative serenity for several hours as he drove. Exhaustion exerted its routine toll and a yawn crawl forth from his lips. A roadside hotel sign grabbed his eye. He expected it to be seedy as hell, but frankly, a nap in the dirt was appealing by now.

Eventually he saw the muted yellow and orange glow of the few functional street lamps left in this area, casually mixing with the black of the night sky. The hotel seemed to double as a low-income apartment for some, and an off the beaten path escape for others.

The parking lot was sand kissed and sun faded. The yellow lines marking spaces to park in faded with years of neglect and extreme weathering. The outside of the hotel sported a general state of neglect. A theme that seemed to carry through much of the badlands. It was very much a case of what you see is what you get vibe. He sighed. Even by the low standards his new place set, this hotel was scraping the bottom of the bucket.

Rodents scurried for cover when he exited the car. A racoon toppled a metal garbage can nearby, scavenging. Insects chirped in the night, and the moon stood high, casting a soft white glow. Following the sidewalk up the steps to the second floor, he found a bar counter with a few regulars well into various stages of inebriation.

“What can I do for ya?” the barkeep said, scrubbing a glass clean. The servos in his silver right arm whirring with each movement.

“Just need a room for the night. Just me. How much?”

“300 credits.”

Jon suppressed a sigh. That was almost robbery out here, but the choices were in this hovel, or the dirt. And he didn’t want to take the chance that scavs or outcasts might chance upon him if he set up a field bivouac. Reluctantly, he swiped the credit transfer to the barkeep.

The keep slid him a gold card. “Room 212.”

Jon picked up the card, turning it over in his hand a few times before saluting the barkeep with it. Checking on the room, he keyed it open and found it horrifically abysmal. He doubted anyone cleaned in here in quite a while, the roaches in the corner evidence enough of that. But the bed looked more appealing than a dirt hill did, at least.

He ran a hand through his hair tiredly and debated grabbing a beer. He turned for the door; the tv winked on and he paused. Black and white static played across the screen for a moment before it went black. Then it put his name up “Jon.” The name flashed plaintively several times.

“The fuck...”

He tried to change the channel or turn it off, but it continued on. A synth voice spoke through the speakers, saying the name on the screen.

“Jon.”

He flinched, recoiling at the weirdness of whatever was happening. With no way of shutting the tv off, he smashed the screen in with his fist using the strength override. Smoke from a few stray sparks coughed from the mangled maw of the old television. He dragged his fist back, shards of glass and silicon entangled in his fingers.

Shaking the debris free, he made for the door before stepping outside. Relief wouldn’t find him here, though. Walking to the bar, every car he passed turned its headlights on him one by one until he ascended the stairs. He paused midway up the stairs to scan around to see if he could find a NetRunner fucking with him. But he came up with nothing. This only unsettled him further.

Sliding onto a stool at the bar, he ordered a beer. As the keep popped the lid and slid it to him, the keep gave him an inquisitive nod.

“You look pale, like you just saw a ghost.”

“Yea. Something like that.”

He couldn’t explain what it was, but he knew someone was watching him. Haltech maybe? Did they track him down that soon? He picked the bottle up and hesitantly lifted it up. The fizzy fluid slid down his throat and after a few sips, the welcome numbness settled in.

He didn’t think whatever was calling out to him was Haltech. They’d be more apt to make the room explode and just kill him than they would play head games with him. No, whoever it was, had something they thought he needed to hear. He didn’t want any part of it, having had his fill of dangerous life altering secrets.

Stress. Maybe it was just stress, and he needed to just get home and unwind. It seemed to be a repeat pattern in his life that he threw himself into dangerous, life-threatening situations repeatedly. He sighed, wishing he retired and just grabbed that villa in Italy after all. But no, he had to stick his nose in places it didn’t belong, and get involved in shit way above his paygrade.

He flicked a tip to the keep and drifted back to his room. The lights didn’t act strangely, and no further incidents jumped out at him. Just the same old normal trash life. Drifting onto the bed, he turned the light off and let blessed unconscious overtake him before his mind sobered up enough to think too hard about ghosts, real or digital.

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