StarDestroyer.Net BBS

This is just something that I decided to piece together after playing too much Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. This story is filled with typical Capcom styled madness, but also with Ford Prefect patented 'scientific accuracy'. *cough*

Hopefully, you enjoy, and hopefully my use of the present tense works; this is the longest piece I've written using it, and I'm worried that it will sound bad.



The world is white.

With the distant sun overhead, the terrain collapses into a featureless, infinite and indistinct horizon. A deceptively flat white floor beneath an azure dome of sky; so ungodly bright as to make the sight wince in pain. Marring this machine-like perfection is a single jab of darkness; a stray drop of pain from the artist’s brush, rushing across the white void of canvas. It is this movement that gives texture to the blinding terrain, throwing up a powdery trail that stretches back for a mile or more, becoming ever more whispy as time goes on.

It would seem that the screaming bike can not have a destination, and that its rider, clad in a green jacket and goggled helmet is just riding for the sake of riding. This is not the case; the rider is on a deadline, one that is defined by survival. Buckled as firmly as is comfortable to the small of his back is a darkly steeled canister; it is marked with numbers and a tiny warning, and through geometrical fissures, it glows with a wonderful warmth. It is the rider’s life and truth be told, the rider is not pleased with how full it is. With every passing moment, the world seems to be growing colder and vaster still. The rider’s hand twitches on the accelerator, as though an itch had struck his palm. The fingers refasten themselves to the handle, and there are no more attempts to increase speed. Not yet.

The bike crests a snow drift and is airborne for a glorious moment. The rider rears up to better appreciate the vista below him: the landscape snatches his breath away, with the snow plain giving way into the darkly red remains of a city, and beyond that, a brooding bubble of steel. It was difficult to judge the size, but it would almost certainly swallow the remains of the city before him and still be unsated; then the bike hit the slope, the tires altering in shape to become wider, grasping at the steep incline. The rider did push for speed, slashing his path through the snow and rocketing into the city limits. The engine’s drone echoes back from the walls of the stone, mostly windowless buildings, dropping piled snow and cracking fingers of ice from the edges of rooftops. Rounding a corner, the rider let off the accelerator and drifts forward, glancing at the ‘balconies’ lining the street. One of his fingers taps out a rapid beat on the accelerator, then the engine roared and he rides up a set of stairs, coming to a halt just as suddenly. The rider swings himself from his vehicle and pushes up his apparently lens-less goggles. Boots crunching in the thin carpet of ice crystals, he approaches what is seemingly a thick cylinder that comes to about chest height. He kneels, then works some mechanism on its side, a handle which he pulls out, rotates a hundred and eighty degrees, then shoves it home. He repeats the act several times, until the device cranks itself into life, snapping and clacking, unfurling plates and extending a piston which reaches to a point just above the rider’s head. He notes with good humour that the steadily, if slowly, falling metre on his wrist has stopped falling; the datapost would transmit power to him, pulled from its own reserves, so long as he stays within the range of its microwave transmitters. It was quite a clever system, but more important was his vibrating PDA.

“Scorpio.” He says, after pulling away the mask over his nose and mouth. Every mouthful of air cuts into his lungs like a shower of razor blades.

“I see that you have made it to Luxus. Good.” Replies a male voice, ripe with class and power.

“City of bridges.” Scorpio agrees, moving to a stone rail glistening with frozen water. Over head was a vaulted construction of stone, connecting two buildings; one of very many. “I’m surprised that they’re all intact, to be honest.”

“We do not have the time to discuss the city’s architectural heritage, Scorpio.” The voice continues, though there is no trace of annoyance in his voice. “However, consider: have you encountered anyone, or anything in this area?”

“Can’t say I have. It’s rather refreshing.”

“That is the reason. Luxus is devoid of life. The only thermal signatures are the few remaining reserves of phlogiston in the city.” There is a pause, marked by a dry sucking sound: the man behind the voice is taking a drink. It makes Scorpio reach for his canteen. “Look to the dome. I would suggest you stock up on as much fuel as possible; the warmest parts of the dome are forty degrees colder than the ambient temperature outside.”

Scorpio almost drops his canteen at this point. The ‘ambient temperature’, if you could call it that, is currently negative one hundred and twenty four degrees Celsius. “You know, that’s fairly important information that I would have liked have known before I left.”

“Check your account, then call me back.” Scorpio rolls his eyes and then starts jabbing on the appropriate points on his PDA’s screen. Through the datapost, he is able to connect with the heavy network that humanity has managed to string together, and accesses his bank with it. His eyebrows jiggle for a moment, before he jabs – angrily – at his phone functions.

“I’m convinced. Though you better hope that the computers you want me to access are in the warmest parts of this dome, or there’s enough fuel around to warm them up.”

“They are not, nor is there likely to be enough phlogiston for that purpose. However, I sent you here at a very specific time for a reason. The computers you will be able to access will be on the top twelve floors of the building at the very centre of the dome, and beneath an opening in the roof. At the right time, the pitiful sun will be over head. The building will be warmed sufficiently that it will operate.” As the man details his plan, Scorpio shakes his head. Relying on their sun for anything has never struck him as being a particularly good idea. “There will be a minimum of phlogiston inside the dome. You must start moving soon: the sun will be in position in approximately twenty two minutes.”

Scorpio pockets his PDA and then slaps his forehead. He had intended to ask why the interior of the dome was so cold; such a low temperature was unnatural, even on this world, given that this continent was in – he shudders as he considers it – high summer. He pulls on his mask, and the air he breathes is … not exactly warm, but it doesn’t feel like drinking paint stripper. He trots over to the datapost, pauses a moment, then follows a thick conduit that is firmly smashed into the cobbles. It runs around a corner, before connecting to a heavily armoured tank twice as tall as Scorpio. He checks a gauge on the side, tapping it a few times, then grins and scuttles off, before returning with his bike.

He removes a series of canisters similar to the one on his waist then connects each in turn to the larger vessel. And, in turn, life flows from the tank to Scorpio’s canisters; the only boon this frozen world has ever offered to humanity: phlogiston. It is a lambent fluid that flows like water, quite unlike anything that had ever existed on earth. On this frozen world, it is this liquid that is most prized. An energy source beyond what mankind can harness, though the harvesting is … unique.

However, Scorpio does not dwell on the vagaries or history of the phlogiston. All that matters to him is that he has some, for the journey across the plains was taxing on his supply. As he figures it, there is enough fuel in the tank to fill his canisters a hundred times over; and even if he can’t return to refill, so what? He didn’t run out on the way in, and he won’t use that much more on the trip back to matter.

The bike leaves Luxus in a sudden burst of quiet, as the noise of the engine finds no cluttered surfaces to bound back from. The dome is ahead and massive; a metallic boil on the face of the world. Scorpio pulls out his PDA as he makes his approach, setting it to transmit the programs that his employer had provided him with at the outset. As a solid wall resolves itself, Scorpio considers that any place this cold might not actually respond at a pace above ‘sluggish’. He shrugs off the thought and lowers his goggles into place; ahead, a thick shutter begins to lift out of the way, clanking stoically into its housing. Again the world is noise as the bike powers into the tunnel, and as he advances Scorpio can taste a drop in temperature. Strips of light flicker weakly, trying to illuminate this trespasser with all the right codes. As he travels further in, more doors unlock and rise; it is less than a minute before he is in the dome proper. And when he is, his eyebrows leap up the curve of his forehead.

It is a city set into a bowl that must be miles across. Skyscrapers stand tall in concentric circles, stepping down to the centre, and at the centre is a tower, a glassy black cylinder that is certainly eight hundred metres tall. Though most of the sky is obscured by heavy steely curtains, the tower is illuminated by a shaft of natural light coming from above. Scorpio does not immediately race down the sloping road before him. Instead, he slides around a corner and begins to move around the circumference. He knew that this was a habitat dome, designed to provide a liveable human environment even without the help of the weakling sun, though this one was second in size only to Elevator City. That it is empty is disturbing; Scorpio knows that it should be teeming with human activity.

The automated city is still alive, even if the long decades of cold has rendered it slow to react. Clearly it cannot be mechanical malfunction that drove out the inhabitants. And how could it have been battle? There is no visible damage, and Scorpio knows that is inevitable in conflict. As he rounds another corner, he finds his initial assumptions incorrect: there was an attempt at conflict though it apparently never lasted very long.

Before him is a full sized diorama of a battle, etched out in ice. Scorpio screeches to a stop and sits upon his idling bike, staring at the scene quite literally flash frozen in time. He switches off his transportation, then swings out of the saddle for a closer look.

The most striking ‘pieces’ are the bestial Akrid, as always. So imposingly inhuman, with their claws and legs and lobster-like chitinousness, they locked in the motions of attack; some splintered remains show Scorpio that some had even been in the process of leaping at the human defenders. The mercenary stops by one statue, thrice the length of his bike and lays his hand against it: solid ice, for the confusing Akrid biology relies almost entirely on the presence of phlogiston in their bodies for survival in the extreme conditions. He peers at the shape hulking over him, one of its massive forelimbs attempting to piston out and crush a human soldier to paste. How sudden it must have been: one instant alive, moving, an incredible killing beast, the next nothing more than arctic curiousity. Well, that’s the trade-off for relying on phlogiston so heavily; if it leaves the body, they’re deader than dead.

At which point Scorpio notices that there is still the telltale glow of life inside the ice. He takes a step back, laces his fingers together, just to bring both fists down upon the creature’s huge, rounded forehead. There is a terrific, ear-splitting noise and the perfect icebound beast is broken apart into a mess of irregular pieces. And amongst the ice-shards there is a shower of pale gold. Droplets of fluid skitter towards each other, collimating into larger and larger groups, each sphere breaking into a larger one until they are too heavy to maintain the shape. There are a dozen, most small enough that Scorpio is able to cup them in both palms. There is one much larger though, from the dead Akrid’s primary store.

Scorpio whirls around to look carefully at the other members of this frigid spectacle. Upon a close inspection, they all appear to have sizeable quantities of phlogiston on them; personal reservoirs are not only unmolested, they are sizeable. Staring up at the mechanical presence of a Vital Suit, coated in a glistening sheen of frost, Scorpio is aware of how cold the air feels in his lungs, despite the warming mask. He is also acutely aware that the cold gripping every part of his body is not merely a result of the temperature. He returns to his bike, starts on the first turnover, and rides past. He does not look back, and resolves to take a different route back to the entrance.

The main tower has a front door, curved like the rest of the building. Through it, Scorpio sees an obsidian lobby, run with pillars that look like miniature renditions of the tower itself. Above the glass of the doors there is a name written in brass letters:

NEO VENUS CONSTRUCTION

The name is not familiar to Scorpio and he lives in a society dominated by a variety of large corporations. Of course, the very dome he is standing in was not known to him until extremely recently, and it is almost five kilometres wide and almost a kilometre tall. He approaches the doors and waits to see if it was open for him; it does not, so Scorpio produces a knife and works it into the almost invisible seam, leveraging it open enough that he can get his fingers inside. With a laboured creaking, Scorpio forces the inches thick ‘glass’ – a heavy duty carbon composite – apart. He then rolls his bike inside, and approaches one of the many lifts. He jams one of his fingers into a button for up, but like the front door, it does not respond.

Scorpio turns his head towards the door at the far end of the lobby, the one marked ‘stairs’. Then he turns his head to his bike and scowls. He has fifteen minutes until the world has made enough of its orbit to be warm. He has a liquid cable launcher mounted onto his wrist, but he does not have almost eight hundred metres of cable to winch himself up an elevator shaft. He heads to the stairwell and slings his bike over one shoulder.

With a few minutes to spare, Scorpio bursts the wooden doors off what he presumes was the office of the CEO of this Neo Venus company, showering the floor with wooden splinters. A hinge bounces from the far window, and Scorpio dumps the bike just before the desk; he appreciates perhaps for the first time that it is constructed from relatively light weight composites. After all, it is considerably taller than he is tall.

Placing himself in the big chair behind the desk, Scorpio begins meddling with equipment and discovers that the computer was still able to warm up. His PDA provides all the right algorithms, and the entire network is open to him before he can put down the hand-held computer. Unfortunately, the ‘entire network’ boils down to a single terminal and minor extraneous functions. Examining one of those functions, Scorpio discovers that the main archives, a collection of monstrous, though quite primitive, server stacks, only need about ten degrees of warming before they will be active. Pleased, Scorpio lifts both boots onto the surface of the desk and pulls out his canteen. The water is starting to freeze despite the warming function, but Scorpio is not concerned – not until the water almost strips the skin from his throat and sends him into a coughing fit, and the air he tries breathing proves to be just as bad. Rubbing his neck, he looks around the office for a coffee machine that might still be able to work.

The sun drifts into place overhead, and its weak radiation attempts to give warmth to the building beneath it. On his monitor, Scorpio follows the rise of the server temperature, until it reaches a point where he can access the endless petabytes stored within. His instructions had been rather enigmatic: he was told to download all information regarding something called the ‘Frontier Project’. Quickly, he taps out a search and waits the handful of seconds it takes to return all results. There is only one object found, a seven hundred and thirty six terabyte file which Scorpio copies to the desktop PC. As he gently pulls a hair-thin optic cable from his PDA, he wonders what is inside the file. The file transfer takes only a fraction of a second, and Scorpio spends even less time considering whether he should really be snooping around.

He double-clicks on the little icon he made. He knows there will be too much information to fully peruse, though he will undoubtedly make a copy of the file and read it at a later date in search of profit. For now through, he just wants a cursory understanding of what it is he is fetching.

One of the first things he discovers is that Neo Venus Construction dates back a long way. His eyebrows crash together like icebergs as he reads that the Neo Venus corporation was the brainfather of the entire colonisation effort; though he knows that the colonisation was funded by private corporations, Scorpio also knows that Neo Venus Construction is not counted among them. He is concerned but then he smiles beneath his mask. This information isn’t just potentially profitable, it’s practically priceless. Forget the history books folks, the United Corporates have gone and made a whole lot of shit up. As he flicks through more of the information, he knows that if this is true, then the corps must know, because they’re listed as having worked with Neo Venus back on Earth: Tourbit Aerospace, the Baumann Corporation, the Musseau Management Group, James Technologies, Watson Environmental Design, Converse National Laboratories (which he assumed became Converse Interstellar Laboratories after coming from Sol) and the Symon and Bellfield Funds Management Commission. There were other names noted as well, the most important seeming to be the ‘Antarctic Regional Terraforming Project’ and the Eisenberg family, the latter of which sounds delightfully identical to that of his employer.

Scorpio is a mercenary, a corporate soldier, and can often be … exceedingly paranoid at times. However, in all his sudden explosions of armed activity over seemingly minor things such as shifting snowdrifts or, more recently, frozen men and monsters, he has never once considered a world-wide conspiracy involving the most powerful of the corporations, those with permanent seats on the Board of Colonial Governance.

“Life just got really interesting, old son.” He says to himself, moving to copy the Frontier Project file to his bike’s computer. However, as he stands a nervous shudder runs through the spine of the building. He pockets his PDA and clicks one of the locks on the bike weapon rack, choosing his fully automatic rifle. More shakes grip the building, and he dashes to the window, trying to spot anything moving. He spots something.

It comes through the building directly opposite the Neo Venus tower, a massive shape leaping amongst hundreds of tons of flying steel and glass. Debris hits the window like sheets of supersonic hail, almost deafening him and making him take a step back. The unlucky skyscraper is collapsing, cut in two, and the beast lands massively before the tower, half filling the open space on the ground floor with its emerald body. Every organ in Scorpio’s body begins to shift positions, and his eyes practically leap out of his head: a Category G Akrid, and this one is more than a hundred metres in length. It doesn’t do anything, and Scorpio dares to allow a squeaky sigh, at which point the many harlequin eyes fix on his window. The green eyed Akrid unleashes a tumultuous, window-cracking roar and one of its limbs lash out, scything through the building somewhere seven hundred or so metres below. Mere moments later Scorpio can feel the tower begin to shift.

Begin to fall.

It is times like these that a man discovers what he is truly made of. Whether he falls with a building and dies a horrible, crushing death, or whether he gets on his motorcycle and attempts something drastically badass. Scorpio has no intention to die, so he vaults the slipping desk and pulls the bike onto its wheels. Scorpio mounts up and slips his rifle back into its housing. Then the beast strikes again, and the angle of the fall changes, and the speed of fall increases. Scorpio cannot help but let out a high, girlish scream as the room tilts wildly. He punches it, and the bike comes to life so quickly that he would have sworn that the starting motor did not even finish turning over. Phlogiston begins to flow, the smart-wheels bite into the navy floor and the bike races up the ever increasing slope. Scorpio’s bike hits the window at almost two hundred and fifty kilometres per hour, and if it weren’t already damaged, he would have undoubtedly crumpled messily against it.

Not now. The composite bursts outwards, like an explosive going off beneath the surface of a lake. Scorpio glances beneath him and wishes he had not, for it seems to be running in slow motion; the tower, not just falling but also rotating; further down the heavy metal chaos of the break, twisting, screaming, snapping girders, showers of glass popping like chaff clouds amidst an aerial duel.

And waiting at the base of it all, the Akrid. The green eyed Akrid. Green Eye.

And them time is flowing normally, and the bike’s rear wheel catches on the glass surface. Scorpio throws his life to the wind and opens the throttle till it has no more to give. Cracked windows burst in his wake, whipping around in his jetstream. Half the building whips by him in less than four seconds, and he realises that at this rate he is just going to die faster. Green Eye is waiting, and more damningly, Green Eye is smiling. Sneering. Vapour hangs around its mass, and in a flash of intuition he unfurls a weapon rack and snatches out his snubby, automatic grenade launcher. He squeezes a shot off ahead of him, and almost outruns it before it explodes.

Though not quite.

At this point, the Neo Venus Tower is on an angle about six and little bit more times more severe than that of La Torre di Pisa. An antipersonnel cluster grenade has just penetrated what used to be the window of a lower level accountancy office, and is in the process of detonating. Green Eye is unleashing a terrific roar, and the pressure wave from the grenade throws Scorpio into the air amidst a cloud of glittering shards, legs stinging but essentially undamaged. Beneath him, the entire structure of the tower is frozen instantly along its length, stress causing it to crack and rupture into a storm of house-sized, icy meteors.

The monstrous Akrid snarls as though in annoyance, then settles back on its many haunches, before leaping. The already tortured ground essentially explodes from the force of the creature hauling its obscene bulk into the air. Scorpio is screaming as the Green Eye draws ever closer, its slavering jaws snapping like the gates of Hell. It comes short, and sparks flare as the bike clashes against the unusually green carapace. Scorpio zips across its freezing back and once again enjoys the experience of freefall, before making an almost hydraulics shattering landing. Green Eye makes a shattering landing as well, smashing the remainder of Neo Venus Tower into proverbial matchwood. It hauls itself around with seemingly impossible speed, its incredible bulk flinging ten thousand tons of material into the air. Scorpio glances back and finds that the bounding Akrid is actually keeping pace with him.

But Scorpio also has a head start. Stupidly fast for a creature the size of a building Green Eye might be, but Scorpio is able to see that it will not catch him at this rate. He takes a corner at full speed, moving onto one of the roads ringed through the city. He’s safe now, he knows it. He can escape. He has the advantage of agility, he has a few hundred metres between him and Green Eye. Except that Green Eye is not limited to following the roads, and the actual distance is much shorter when it begins to burst through every skyscraper in its way. Windows all along the street bulge from their frames, bursting and raining down to the road in an orchestra of chimes.

Despite the gargantuan killing machine only a hundred and thirty metres behind him, Scorpio feels the breath in his lungs ripping and clawing like a caged animal. His thermometer is not working. He has no idea how far below two hundred and ten degrees it is, though he realises wryly that he now knows the secret of the cold dome: the Green Eye is the cause. It is living cold.

And as if reiterating this fact, the creature lashes out, and a solid line is drawn through the air a few metres to Scorpio’s left as oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen is frozen. He does not stop to consider the thermodynamic madness any longer. Instead he clicks open one of his expanding weapons racks and selects a rifle, quickly fitting together the barrel assembly then rotating around to get a bead on Green Eye. Akrid, despite being incredibly tough, are weakened by their most incredible advantage. The phlogiston in their bodies would actually cause them to, remarkably overheat, and the most common adaptation to mitigate this is by having reservoirs of the stuff beneath less armour. Even most Category G Akrid tend to have these ‘weak spots’, which means that the amount of firepower required to kill them is lessened. Fight smarter, not harder, the United Corporate Armed Forces say.

Only …

Only Green Eye doesn’t seem to have them. Scorpio, steering with his legs, changes tactic, and places the dot on his scope over one of the glowing eyes then pulls the trigger. The kick of the weapon is ferocious, the stopping power of the 12.7mm HEIAP round legendary. It pings worthlessly against the Green Eye in a burst of flaming tears. Scorpio rapidly dismantles the rifle and open the weapon rack. The hilt of a weapon which would probably do more damage is well within his reach, but Scorpio has no desire to get that close to the Green Eye. Killing it is obviously beyond his abilities.

All that matters is escaping, but those frightening beams of cold are only missing by virtue of the bike’s agility. They slice deep into hides of skyscraper and rend enormous wounds into them. Two begin to fall in the distance and Scorpio grits his teeth. They slam against each, raining debris, crushing together overhead. Leaning heavily into turn, Scorpio barely makes it around onto another street as Green Eye shoulders its way through.

Bizarrely, Scorpio does not feel like continuing like this, even though the tunnel exit is only a few hundred metres ahead. He grabs his weapon, and the EMF blade hums into life, particles hitting the edge splitting into pale blue light. He pushes away from the bike, and Green Eye hits him. He brings the high-tech sword down connecting with shower of sparks. Scorpio puts all his strength into sawing at the Green Eye’s green face, until it bunches up its neck and launches him forward. Scorpio hits his bikes and is sent skidding up almost a hundred metres of the entrance tunnel. The EMF blade bounces and cuts through the floor before coming to a halt. It jumped almost three feet into the air as the Green Eye crashed into the too small opening.

Scorpio rises into a crouch and watches as Green Eye backs up and hisses. Vapour begins to condense around the beast and Scorpio’s eyes widen. Letting out a string of colourful expletives, he rushes to his fallen, growling bike and mounts up. He accelerates away, leaning down to snatch up his fallen sword and sliding it home into the bike. Green Eye unleashes its rage as Scorpio comes within scant metres of the final exit.

The world is ice.

Not bad. Scorpio seems like a badass character, using a freaking sword to attack a 100+ meters long monster.

Sidewinder wrote:Not bad. Scorpio seems like a badass character, using a freaking sword to attack a 100+ meters long monster.

I like to think that he just snapped at that point, given that he jumped off his bike while making something like 400km/h to do it. High-tech vibrating super-sword or not, that was just insanity on his part.

Which is why he may in fact be dead.

What? Dead?

Anyway, I leiked it. Much coolness. And, man, giant bugs. powered by PHLOGISTON!

Shroom Man 777 wrote:What? Dead?

Maybe.

Anyway, I leiked it. Much coolness. And, man, giant bugs. powered by PHLOGISTON!

Originally, it was 'thermal energy' that was inside the Akrid, but that seemed just a bit odd a name for a clearly liquid fuel.

He's not dead. He crouches and cusses the monster, gets his gear and walks away.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:He's not dead. He crouches and cusses the monster, gets his gear and walks away.

Shroomy, did you miss the end of the chapter where Scorpio could have easily been frozen to death?

Oh

Well, a second chapter. To be honest, it's kind of transition-y from the action packed first chapter to the main plot, but hey. Also, a minor change to the first chapter: it is now the 'Eisenberg Foundation' as opposed to the Eisenberg family.

The sky is blue.

A clear, perfect blue that is currently devoid of clouds. Scorpio feels a tingling sensation crawling through his skin and he forces himself into a sitting position, groaning all the way. Pushing up his goggles, his squints at the dome than hoots triumphantly, thumping back down into the snow. After some minutes, he feels that he can get to his feet and move; he staggers for a moment, trying to work some proper feeling into his … his everything, really. Scorpio stumbles across his bike and inspects it from a curiously bent standing position.

He toes it with the metallic briar of spikes strapped to his boot and frowns. It looks alright on the outside, though the state of it on the inside is another thing. Deciding to ignore that for the moment, the mercenary instead turns his mind, and body, towards the dome. It is serene, the same bubble closeted by square kilometres of metre thick armour plate. There is no indication that within there is anything within, let alone the scenes of immense destruction and chaos. The Luxus Dome is once again nothing more than a curiosity; Scorpio recognises that if his employer were to have orbital surveillance focussed on the dome, which though not impossible seems unlikely, he would have noticed seething going on, such as the change of temperature inside as the Green Eye moved throughout the city, or Scorpio’s escape.

“Actually.” he says to himself, eyeing the hundreds of metres between himself and the dome. He does not say what he’s thinking: how did he survive? Some sort of bizarre atmospheric effect caused by the rapid cooling of the surrounding air? A sudden burst of unexplainably impossible speed from the bike? Unable to find any sort of satisfying answer, Scorpio writes it off as being a result of skill, and finally manages to move enough to get his bike on its wheels. It does not come to life on the first turnover of the engine. Nor the second. Knowing it is futile to continue, Scorpio slowly begins to wheel the bike back into Luxus.

Slumped against the datapost, Scorpio taps his PDA against knee. The situation is considerably more problematic than it was ten minutes previously, as he has been able to determine that whatever problem his bike has is beyond his ability to actually determine. He knows that the option is there to just call up for a lift, but he also knows that it will cost him – especially if he turns to his employer for that assistance. Walking back is an option, though a problematic one. His phlogiston supplies will last for several days, as will his food and water, so he is not worried about that. He is worried about the reason why Luxus is so empty. Green Eye is not the only Akrid in the region, and Scorpio is not in the condition to fight or run from them.

Like a waiting predator, Scorpio’s finger is poised over the easy to access distress button. Numbers run through his head, and beneath his mask his mouth twists into various permutations of the same grimace. It is as he is unwisely considering the sanctity of his bank balance over his survival, he gradually becomes aware of a high pitched whining. Scorpio turns and walks towards the road, leaning onto the stone rail.

After no more than twenty seconds, a shape which Scorpio instantly recognises as a Vital Suit zips into view amidst a swirling of dislodged snow. The sound is tremendous, and Scorpio is thankful for his ear protection, as otherwise he would be left with ringing ears for weeks. He doesn’t get long to thank, as the VS zips past as a blur of steel, bringing with it a sucking wind and a tail of particulate ice that leaves half of Scorpio white. Suddenly light flares at various points over its body and changes direction, sliding until it – and the two six barrelled guns mounted on its frame – are in front of Scorpio.

At this point, Scorpio is able to deduce a variety of useful information: the model of VS is a GTF-11 Drio, about fifty years older than the mainstream used by big players, while the modifications that it sports are seemingly aimed for endurance over sheer performance. Scorpio hazards what is a very accurate guess: the suit belongs to a nomadic Snow Pirate.

Of course, now his questions is much harder to fathom out; he can’t see any clan markings, so he has no idea if he’s about to get turned into a rather diffuse mist or not.

The twelve barrels start spinning with an electric hum. Scorpio takes a step back and removes his mask. “That might be a little drastic.” He says with a smile. “I’m wounded and poorly armed.”

There’s a moment where the barrels don’t stop spinning, and it is a moment which lasts far too long for Scorpio’s tastes; though when the guns do halt their whirring revolutions he heaves a sigh of relief. His elated feeling of survival lasts about as long as it takes for the cockpit to split open like a dropped egg and release the pilot and the rifle in their hands. For Scorpio’s tastes, it has not lasted long enough. The gun jerks upwards a couple of times, and Scorpio lifts his hands into the air.

“I think it should be fairly obvious,” she says, keeping the rifle trained upon his chest with a frighteningly unwavering aim. “That moving would be further detrimental to your health.” Her eyes roll. “And if you be a good boy and don’t move, my friends will come and help you out. But before they get here, I have some questions I want to ask you.”

“Shoot.” Scorpio says.

“Your name.”

“Mustafa Scorpio. I’m an Independent Military Professional. What about you?”

“Why are you here?” she continues, seemingly oblivious to his line of questioning.

Scorpio considers scratching his temple, but is unsure whether that would be grounds for immediate evisceration or not. “I’m not usre I really have to answer that. My business and all that. I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me why you’re here.” The woman flicks her finger against something unremarkable near the business end of her gun. A squeaky voice in Scorpio’s ear alerts him to the presence of laser targeting on his person. “Right you are then. I was paying a visit to the dome. I’m a mercenary.”

“Paying a visit to the dome …” she muses, and quietly enough that it doesn’t leave her mask. Her comm.-bead beeps and a male voice speaks with its usual air of subtle confidence.

“Luka, I heard what he said, and I want you to bring him to us. If he has already investigated the dome, then our lives just became a whole lot easier.”

“I don’t trust him, Yuri.” Luka remarks, rather more conversationally than would be expected normally.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else. However, I think he looks interesting.” There is a pause, as though Yuri is allowing for some retaliation. Overhead, a bird-like silhouette banks and wheels. Luka does not speak. “We are parked a few hundred metres to the south east at Independence Square. Rick is currently setting up sentries; if you give him a few more minutes, he will be finished.” His line cuts out with a static hiss.

Luka keeps the rifle trained on Scorpio’s chest for a few seconds longer, then lowers it. Nimbly, she leaps from her perch atop her Drio and approaches the mercenary. “That’s your bike?” she asks, and Scorpio nods. She trots past the datapost, pausing only long enough to turn it off, before grabbing the bike and dragging it towards her VS. Before long, she has it strapped to one ‘shoulder’ with its anchors and jerks her head for Scorpio to clamber on. As she does not close the cockpit off, Scorpio is able to see and appreciate her smooth handling of the controls.

“So,” he begins and Luka shakes her head.

“Don’t even bother.” She tells him, her feet working peddles and her fingers and thumbs dancing across twin sticks. The VS moves naturally from its loping gait into a jet assisted slide, skating across the road as if on ice. Scorpio sighs and leans back, resting against one of his bike’s rear tires. Above, the bird-shape swivels and circles like an electronic vulture. Straining his eyes, Scorpio is able to spot another drone in the distance, and he guesses there are still more covering the city. Paranoia is, as always, a defining characteristic of Snow Pirates.

The actual layout of Luxus is not known to Scorpio, beyond what he has been able to grasp from the architecture; for example, the sparsity of windows and – rather more obviously – the complete lack of a habitat dome, shows that Luxus was designed to be cheap. Heavily insulated, sealed buildings, as opposed to relying upon orbital mirror arrays and ‘greenhousing’. Knowing that, he wonders just why the city has such a large, open square. Perhaps it had been sealed once; he is not sure. Throwing quiet gazes towards the rooftops surrounding the place, he is able to spot all manner of compact, automated defenses. Rather worryingly, some of it is clearly directed at him.

At least the cannon atop their Winnebago isn’t pointed in his direction. The big linear accelerator wouldn’t even have to hit him to kill him, and would be deadly effective even against some of the larger Akrid that scuttled amongst the wastes.

Scorpio attempts an assessment of this group: to begin with it is blatantly obvious that there are heavily equipped. For one, they’re tooling around in a GAB-23 Elephant, a hulking command/artillery support vehicle equipped not only with the linac, but also with an array of VLS cells and powerful phased array radar systems. The even larger support trailer is also likely to be equipped with a variety of ingenious weapon systems. All of this is natural of course; one did not successfully defend against serious Akrid attack with a few chumps with rifles, but rather with missiles mounting thermobaric MIRVs, Vital Suits, tanks and coordinated airstrikes. Preferably lots of them, but something Scorpio can’t help but notice is that there are not lots of people moving about the strongpoint. There are only two, and neither of them are moving. Scorpio makes a final assessment: there are only three people in this company. He outright dismisses the idea that there may be more aboard the four-cee vehicle. He knows there are only three.

And one of them is still a teenager, or at the very least plagued with an extremely youthful appearance. The other is taller and more reserved, though the difference in age is not that significant; Scorpio presumes that the man with short white hair is biologically close to his own age, namely mid to late twenties. The kid approaches as the VS skids to a halt, and after she shoves Scorpio from her vehicle’s shoulder, she leaps down in order to embrace him. A family?

“Welcome,” says the young man in the knee-length coat, half-startling Scorpio. He has a gloved hand extended, and the mercenary takes it. “I’m Yuri Solotov, and I understand that you’re injured in some way? Follow me, and we’ll get you treated.”

*

“Minor tissue damage throughout your body, consistent with high-impact concussion weaponry and high-impact low temperatures.” Solotov reads off from his light-board, as Scorpio flexes reddened hands. Yuri pushes them both back under the warm soup. He shifts the slate computer to Scorpio’s head and pushes that back under as well. “Low level bruising and frostbite, though we knew that before we did the scan. Nothing really dangerous given your environment suit was working as advertised. We’ll just keep you in the bath for a while longer until it’s all cleared up.” He sits himself upon a stool and plants both boots on the edge of the tub. “However, I find it interesting that you have full body frostbite considering you’re fully suited … and that your suit is still operating.”

“Funny things happen sometimes.” Scorpio replies, and the mic in his oxygen mask sends it directly to the bead in Yuri’s ear. “Though I have to say, if you intend to head to the dome and I’m pretty sure you plan to, there’s an Akrid in there.”

“Just the one?”

“Category G. Also extremely green.”

Through the work of the repairing bath, Scorpio can see Yuri rub his smooth chin with thumb and forefinger. He is staring at something on the floor, though judging by the glaze, it isn’t very interesting. “So the rumours surrounding Green Eye are true then.”

“I don’t think they mentioned its mastery of freezing shit,” Scorpio shrugs. “But yeah. Green Eye is real, and living in the city beneath the Luxus Dome.”

There is a clumping of shifting stool, muffled through the soup. Yuri rests himself over the therapeutic pool and stares down through to Scorpio’s face. “I’m not sure what to make of you, Scorpio.” He says. “Not yet. We will have to speak further on this matter of the dome. Not yet.” He straightens and shakes his head. “I’ll let you rest.” He turns on the heel of one tall boot, leaving Scorpio to stew over.

*

It is early evening when the computer chimes that Scorpio is as healthy as it can make him, given its limited medical budget and lack of nursing staff. The tub is drained away, leaving Scorpio essentially dry. With the medical equipment still whining in electronic chitters, Scorpio dresses and attempts to walk out the door. He fails utterly and sighs. After a few minutes, the kid opens the door and introduces himself as Rick. From the outset, Scorpio decides that he likes the kid, given his positive attitude. In a way, he is somewhat saddened to see that Rick’s harnesses are not just covered in tools and gadgets, but also weapons, such as grenades. A Snow Pirate, yes.

“Yuri sent me to come get you,” he is saying as they move down the narrow passageways of the Elephant, before clanking across to the trailer. Before entering, Rick leans conspiratorially close to Scorpio. “Truth is, he needs someone to keep an eye on you while he and Luka decide what we’re going to do with you.”

“I guessed as much.” Scorpio replies with smile, following Rick inside. From the outside, it had been difficult to guess exactly what was going on inside, though now Scorpio can see tat for the most part, this trailer is designed for the maintenance and launching of cruise missiles. Scorpio takes a moment to stand beneath one of the launchers and resists the urge to shake his head. He had heard of large Pirate clans having heavy duty missile armament such as this, but two guys, a girl and an Elephant did not a large Pirate clan make. However, Scorpio did shake his head when he discovered that Rick had managed to reveal a remarkable spacious machine shop.

“It’s a tight fit, but you can actually fit two VS in here.” He says, walking towards Scorpio’s bike and kneeling before the front wheels. “But right now, I’m all over this baby. I mean, how did you even get a Bugatti Pegasus? Bugatti went out of business more than half a century ago, and stopped making these long before then.” He looks up at Scorpio, who lays one hand upon the left handlebar. “I know there are collectors, but convincing them to sell … and the price … it would have been a small fortune.”

“Something like that.” Scorpio agrees, then kneels down himself. “Though it’s not working anymore. I dabble a little in machines, but I bet you’ve got a whole lot more skill with these sorts of things. Think you can handle it?”

“I’ve already started.” Rick grins and Scorpio automatically reaches out to ruffle the kid’s ridiculous hair.

*

“His name is actually Mustafa?” Luka says, her chin almost slipping from her fist. Yuri nods.

“I looked him up on sofdan.net. Mustafa Scorpio is a registered trademark belonging to an Independent Military Professional who matches this man.” Luka cocks an eyebrow, and Yuri shakes his head. “It’s not just his face, which could be faked. His genetic information is online, and I was able to compare. I suppose that could also be faked, if you really wanted to, but the chances are that if someone went to all that trouble of making a fake Mustafa Scorpio, they would not send it after us.”

Luka takes her weight off the map table dominating the centre of the CIC, and leans back in her chair. Every screen ringing the room is aglow with data fed in from the considerable sensor network at their disposal, from the overflying drones to the eye-pikes to the auto-guns. Luka’s eyes are lingering upon the one screen dedicated to tracking Scorpio; she watches him chatting with her brother, before shifting her gaze to Yuri. “Are you sure his name is Mustafa?”

The white haired man shakes his head with a small smile. “I’m sure. SOF-dan doesn’t say whether it’s his birth name or anything of course …” Yuri flicks the corner of his tablet computer. “Or many other details of that nature. It’s just his mercenary details, such as what he specialises in, his prior experience, customer feedback on his performance etcetera.”

“Does it mention him being filthy rich?”

“Pardon?”

She points, regardless of its rudeness, at the Scorpiowatch. Yuri queries with a deft movement of his brow, and she jabs her finger. “I know you’d have no idea, but his bike would have been hideously expensive. The Pegasus series was built in a limited run over half a century ago. When they were first built, they cost seven hundred thousand marks. Now, you could only get one from an avid collector who has gone to a lot of trouble to keep it in working condition.” She pauses, rubbing her lips with the pad of her little finger. “It wouldn’t have for less than seven hundred million marks.”

Yuri squints with one eye. “Well, we can determine one thing about him: he has no idea how to spend his money.” Luka opens her mouth, and as though sensing her protest ahead of time, Yuri heads it off at the pass with a whisking gesture of one hand. “For the moment, I have decided not to trust him and I have decided not to fear him. He is carrying a considerable volume of data, presumably from his trip into the dome and presumably at the behest of his employer.”

“And until you find out what the data is, and who his employer is, you won’t make any further judgements?”

“Precisely,” Yuri confirms, sitting opposite the young woman. “And though I currently have some brokers working on the later information, the former is proving much harder to crack. It is very well encrypted, beyond our automated algorithms’ ability to crack.”

Luka leans forward, leaning all her weight onto the map table. “Is it really that important to us?”

“Somehow, I have a feeling it is.” He leans forward himself, covering his mouth with one hand. “In fact, I have a very strong feeling that this data of Scorpio’s is closely linked to our own goals. In fact, I’m almost certain that he has saved us a trip into that dome.” He pokes the tablet with a gloved finger, dragging up the encrypted file into illuminated prominence. “We need to be able to see what’s in here. I could get this far, but we need Rick to look at it.”

The thin computer makes barely a whisper as it slides across to Luka’s side of the table. “I’ll see what I can do.” She says. The screen glows blue.

A good chapter, but will you ever explain how the hell Scorpio survived the Green Eye's freezing attack? Is the merc a pyrokinetic or something?

Sidewinder wrote:A good chapter, but will you ever explain how the hell Scorpio survived the Green Eye's freezing attack? Is the merc a pyrokinetic or something?

He got frostbite all over his body from it , so you recall? So He probably dodged just enough for it not to kill him.

Still nice chapter Ford, I like where this is going. Mustafa Scorpio: Man Of Mystery.

Sidewinder wrote:A good chapter, but will you ever explain how the hell Scorpio survived the Green Eye's freezing attack? Is the merc a pyrokinetic or something?

I can't actually come up with a satisfactory explanation involving the rapid change of temperature forcing him out ahead of the 'cold wave', but I discarded it for being too silly. Which might sound odd given the self-same story involves a motorcycle going down the side of a falling skyscraper and a Godzilla sized beast with cold lasers capable of running at four hundred kilometres per hour, but it's 'by degrees', if you'll excuse the pun.

Oooh, another fic to add to my reading list!

Great story, just needs more

Ford was wondering what Scorpio's first name was gonna be. I gave a suggestion. He didn't take it.

Xon wrote:Oooh, another fic to add to my reading list!

Great story, just needs more

HANK! SCORPIO!

Xon wrote:Oooh, another fic to add to my reading list!

Excellent! Another reader.

Great story, just needs more

Yes. Yes it does.

Oho! The plot thickens my hapless reader-ites! Behold, the next somewhat exciting chapter of Lost Planet: An Exercise on How to Be Needlessly Ambiguous and Cyberpunk Similtaneously!



The breadth of the incredible city is dark and scattered with oh-so-many glittering pinpricks of light. From his vantage point it seems so small, like a handful of diamonds haphazardly sprinkled across black silk.

He knows that in truth that Elevator City rivals most every city that ever existed upon Earth before the Diaspora in size. He knows that it is only his lofty vantage point that makes the urban tapestry of Elevator City seems so tiny. For Daniel Eisenberg stands upon an observation deck some tens of kilometres above the surface, and though he is so very high, he also knows that only a tiny fraction of the elevator is below him. Tapping the lip of his stubby glass, Eisenberg leans against the window and considers the scale of this thing; its sheer vastness, starting from the base below the size of a mountain range, up ten thousand kilometres of super-high tensile, low weight materials, to the Counterweight Station, where all true power remained.

They plan to build more. This is no secret, and in some places, new Elevator Cities have been seeded. The chances are that the first tether will be dropped before Eisenberg returns to the reefer and blinks away another few decades. Much of his time alive this time around has been to do with insinuating his company into the heavy duty work surrounding this project. It will be a pity to not see the actual progress in action, but Eisenberg has made such sacrifices before and will continue to make them until time finally claims him, despite all his best efforts to prolong it.

Though before he returns to the cold embrace of reefersleep, before his tenure as CEO of one of the biggest rising stars in the corporate world is up, he has another task. A private task, beyond the call of duty as CEO. Something-

“My,” says a rich female voice. “Your face is one of great contemplation, Mister Eisenberg.”

He turns, sweeping back his blonde-brown hair in the same movement. He eyes the woman, beautiful though almost certainly not natural, and tries to place her in the hierarchy of things. A quick consultation of his PDA through the radio link gives him a name and position: Demeter Heliad, a relatively minor UC functionary. The name seems familiar ... perhaps he has met her in a previous generation.

Regardless, he switches his drink to his left hand, then extends the right. “Please.” He begins his a flashing smile. “Call me Daniel.”

“Please,” she repeats, taking his hand in a rather limp grip. “You’re one of the big names on Eden right now. Big Black has grown impressively since your shift came up three years ago. You are most certainly Mister Eisenberg.”

He grins wryly. In truth, Eisenberg had only been following on from the work of his predecessor; he could not claim that he had changed the company’s fortunes overnight. “Well then,” he says, leading her by hand back into the party proper. “I’m Mister Eisenberg.” She laughs with him, a sound as manufactured as her entire body. He is not fussed about that. He dismisses any idea of ulterior motives on her part, and merely concerns himself with his own.

In hours at most, when they are making love in her home somewhere else on the stupidly vast elevator, Eisenberg finally dismisses his concerns over Scorpio.

*

“This is insane.” Rick says suddenly, throwing up his hands. His sister pulls her nose out of An Introduction to Basic Information Security, the novel she is ‘reading’. She cocks an eyebrow, a query which Rick interprets correctly. “His computer security. It is really, really good.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be really, really good?” she says teasingly, placing down Rick’s textbook and crossing his room. For whatever reason, Rick has chosen to set up his home near the phlogiston tanks; she rises from the hammock he has strung up and moves to his side. The place is probably too cramped to be healthy for Rick, and Luka is considerably taller. She stares down as the screen of his laptop and squints. It’s jibba-jabba.

Rick sighs suddenly, rubbing his eyes. “Maybe. But whoever set Scorpio’s ICE up is better than me. I’m almost afraid to push too hard …” he rubs his narrow chin nervously, and Luka knows enough about the world of information warfare to know why: ICE has killed people. And knowing that, she isn’t so sure she wants Rick to delve any further. “I would have to try on an isolated network, so any damage is limited … but I need to test the limits of this stuff. Might try calling in some favours. Make a new ‘breaker …”

Luka hunkers down further and puts a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “Do you think you can get through?”

The young man looks from his sister to his computer and back again. “I can try.” He says finally.

“That’s all we can ask for.” Luka smiles, before standing slowly. “But don’t you dare put yourself into contact with this stuff, you hear me?”

He waves one hand dismissively, crawling off to some unknown nook to fetch another computer. Luka lets out a long, slow breath through her nose and leaves him to his work.

*

In all the life he could remember, Scorpio did not think he had seen such a concentration of surveillance devices in such a small area. Short of coating the whole square in sensor dust, Scorpio is pretty sure you couldn’t possibly get a better picture of a whole lot of nothing. Certainly it only seems good enough for stopping him leaving; the moment he had stepped across an invisible perimeter, an auto-turret had regretted to inform him that if he took any more steps, he would be shot, and if he took any more after that, he would be shot a second time.

“I also regret to inform you,” the turret says in a sweet, sing-song voice as Scorpio poked it with one finger, “That the Musseau Management Group will not be held liable for any injury or trauma, psychological or otherwise, caused by the operation of this unit.”

Scopio pats the little machine and rises to his feet, brushing off the knees of his chaps as he does so. Arms crossed, he surveys the Elephant. Undoubtedly one of them is probably watching him. He does not think of himself as a prisoner, not yet, but he also knows that their current ‘relationship’ isn’t exactly positive. They still have his PDA, for one; he isn’t sure what to make of that. They could have stopped him communicating through electronic means if they wished … though admittedly, just not letting him have communications equipment is slightly less system intensive.

It is at that moment, when Scorpio is considering why they’re keeping him around, that Yuri is doing precisely the same. His contacts had done good work, though for a considerable price, and he now knew that Scorpio’s current contractor is Daniel Eisenberg of Big Black, Inc. In one fell move, a single e-mail has flipped Yuri’s world upside down. The data in the PDA is almost certainly what they needs. Though is Scorpio really what they need, if he is working for Eisenberg? It would be all too easy to just say the words ‘open fire’ and let his turrets chew Scorpio into paste.

Yuri Solotov is not that sort of man. Not yet, anyway.

Fingers dance against one glove, and Yuri speaks, his voice carrying from one of the talky-turrets. “Scorpio, could you come here please? I’d like to speak with you.” The man bends down into the view of an optical sensor and holds up his thumb. Yuri waits, watches his progress across the square, then through the Elephant. He almost bumps into Luka, but a quick stroking of his palm slides the right door across. Neither notices. When Scorpio reaches the CIC, Yuri does not turn his head.

“You wanted to talk?”

“Yes.” Yuri confirms.

There is a silence. After a few seconds, Scorpio holds up his hands. “So are you going to actually say something or do I have to spontaneously develop telepathy?”

“Mustafa, at some point in your life, have you been put into cryogenic suspension?” Scorpio blinks, then blinks again when he realises his face is up on one wall, expanded to enormous size. “For a lengthy period of time, I mean. Fifty or sixty years, perhaps.”

Eyes narrow on the screen, pupils constricting. “Yeah. I have. How’d you know?”

Yuri shrugs. “Your profile on SOF-dan does not contain a date of birth. Your bike is obscenely expensive for a middling level IMP today … but not so when it was first produced.”

Scorpio presents the palms of his hands again, as though proving he has no change, or more accurately, no clue. “So I’ve been through a few decades of reefersleep. Lots of people have. There are thousands of corporate executives using reefersleep to cheat Father Time and enjoy more of their money. Tens of thousands even.”

“Is there any particular reason as to why?”

“What?”

At this, Yuri finally takes his eyes from the screen, currently showing a hideously inflated view of Scorpio’s ‘what in the hell’ face. Turning, he places both hands upon the map board. He gracefully arches one snowy eyebrow; his skill at the gesture is more developed than Luka’s, and he uses it to phrase a statement. “Look, I don’t know, alright!” He whirls away, before turning back. “I wake up one day in a reefer-clinic with a whole bunch of amnesia and a bill slightly more massive than the combined annual military spending of Old Earth in the twentieth century. I only managed to pay that off by suing everybody who had ever been involved in any fashion with the clinic for being total bastards.”

“A strong legal defense.” Yuri notes, before looking back at the screen. Scorpio’s eyebrows are quivering and the nostrils of his narrow nose are flared. “I wonder, Scorpio.” Yuri continues, clicking a finger against his palm. The screen blanks. “Do you think you could help us with something?”

*

There is a species of Akrid on Eden of such incredible vastness that they could swallow Yuri’s Elephant whole almost accidentally. They are the Undeep, writhing tunnelers that can reach lengths of almost half a kilometre. Their bodies, like many Category-G Akrid, are living colonies for smaller creatures, symbiotic hives where whole generations live and die. Economically speaking, Undeep are much prized, for their bodies contain seas of phlogiston. Conversely, they are of such size and unlikely power that killing them is an incredible effort. Undeep hunting involves careful planning, emplaced artillery, fast response attack units and orbital attack craft, and almost never involves attempting the kill in a location where more than one of the worm-things congregates, such as the snow plains near Luxus.

Yuri wants Scorpio to break through the snow plains outside of Luxus. The Elephant is only capable of speeds approaching one hundred kilometres per hour, which is not nearly fast enough to escape the ravenous maw. Upon this suggestion, Scorpio’s face manages whole new geometries never before conceived of by Euclid. “Well,” Scorpio manages after remoulding his mouth into a shape suitable for human speech. “You don’t ask for much.”

“I believe in taking the most direct route between two points.” Yuri says, as though totally oblivious to the sheer madness of his statement.

“I believe that taking the most direct route through worm infested territory is probably pushing that a little too far.” Yuri waves a hand, the gentle sweeping motion totally failing to swish away the obscenity of his suggestion. Scorpio shakes his head. “No, seriously now. I can’t just grab a couple of hooks and make one of these things my pet. Undeep are killing machines. They can level cities and shrug off everything short of nuclear weapons.”

“This is not a surprising trait for Category-G Akrid.” Yuri notes, with the air of a man mentioning his new footwear. “Nor am I particularly concerned. Historically speaking, Undeep avoid each other, and avoid the bodies of their slain by an even greater amount.”

“I’m not sure you’ve caught on yet Yuri, but the problem here is killing one of these things in the first place.” Scorpio holds up his hands and turns about the room, attempting to find something to gesture towards for emphasis. He settles upon Yuri, who stands with one white eyebrow curved smoothly with incredulous amusement. “What exactly do you expect me to do? Ride my motorcycle down its throat and cut it open with me sword?”

“That is exactly what I expect you to do.” Yuri replies, cleaning imaginary dirt from beneath a thumbnail; an act which is impossible, given he is wearing gloves.

The muscles controlling Scorpio’s eyelids undergo a variety of simple movements that reduces his vision to a slit. In this way, he hopes to ascertain whether or not Yuri is actually insane. Despite taking several steps forward, Scorpio can find no signs of actual madness. “Are you serious?” he finally asks after several moments.

“Completely.”

“Right.”

“We do not have the firepower to eliminate it conventionally, thus we must work unconventionally.” Yuri waves a hand and the screens flicker to a variety of short, looped videos showing a worm-like vastness writing in different configurations; an almost hypnotic sway that is not lessened by the flaring sparks of exploding ordinance. “Originally, we sought to circumvent their durability by attacking their internals directly.” A dirty white contrail suddenly arcs up from invisibility, curling around towards the Undeep’s cavernous mouth with whiplash intensity. Scorpio understands the simplicity; a detonation inside the Undeep’s body would cause significant damage to fuel flows and sub-dermal storage, killing it slowly, but cheaply. Of course, Scorpio also knows why the tactic does not work: the recorded missile encounters a wall of effective flak fire that tears it from the sky.

Yuri waves his hand towards the screen, clearly deciding that further explanation is unnecessary. Scorpio crosses his arms across his chest and squints one eye. “There is currently no missile in production that can bypass the triple-A around an Undeep’s mouth. It would take a Bifrost IL-94 to even make it seem feasible. A man on his bike is no match for the most agile missile system currently on the drawing board.”

“Ah, but no missile can claim to shoot down anti-air Akrid, can it?” Yuri quips, a finger against his nose. He drops it to point at Scorpio and smiles. “And speaking of your motorcycle, it reminds me about the bill.”

“The bill?”

“For repairs of course.” Yuri clicks his fingers and the videos are replaced by a dizzying array of numbers and diagrams of the Pegasus. Scorpio has seen more confusing displays, but they tended to involve space flight. Yuri smiles benevolently. “Your bike’s mechanical problems were minor, and Rick had them cleared up in ten minutes. We’ll let those slide. However, the damage done to your phlogiston related equipment was rather … unusual.”

“Unusual?”

“Thermodynamically impossible.”

“Right.”

Yuri twirls his hand around and the diagram of the bike joins it. Instead of demonstrating anything to Scorpio is makes him slightly dizzy. “We were able to put together something satisfactory, though we’re really looking at about twenty three thousand marks.” Scorpio blinks slowly, and peers at the report on the screen, trying to search for some reason why it would cost so much. There’s no visible reason; in fact, looking closely, there doesn’t appear to be any information trapped within the matrices of mind-bogglingly dense gibberish. He remembers dimly that much of the separatist sentiment amongst Snow Pirates comes from dissatisfaction with the hyper-capitalist system perpetuated by the UC.

Clearly they are not above bleeding him free of money. He sighs in abject defeat, and turns from the screen, only to find Yuri standing before him, a smile plastered across his dial, and Scorpio’s PDA, already displaying the log-in page for his bank account.

*

The breadth of the sky is breathtakingly dark and strewn with endless whorls of distant stars. Luka sits sprawled atop the Elephant, drinking in the astrological vista. From here, she seems so small, like a flake of snow lost amidst the white gauze that covers her universe. In truth, she is small, insignificant in comparison to the vastness of existence; everything she does, everyone she knows, every act, every word, every feelings ultimately transient and meaningless in the face of the rotation of the galactic disk, the expansion of space itself. Luka likes this feeling, one that comes when she watches the stars. There is an illusion of permanence and order that is lost when humans come into the equation.

She is startled from her silent reverie by a sudden muffled thud. Blinking, she looks over the edge of the Elephant, and finds Scorpio brushing his backside free of powder. She scowls, for if anyone can seemingly disturb permanence and order, it is Mustafa Scorpio. Luka caresses the corners of her eyes for a moment, then leans back over. “Are you alright?” she asks, and he waves his hand in an attempt to assuage her concerns. He grabs a hold of the access ladder and clambers up.

“Stupid thing.” He says, rubbing his gloved hands together. He cranes his face towards the star-spangled sky and smiles. Luka half expects him to say something like ‘nice night’ or ‘the stars sure are pretty’, or something equally cliché. The surprise which follows, where he does not speak, is unpleasant: it simply means that he is harder to predict than she initially thought. The Snow Pirate makes an internal note on her PDA to not make this mistake in future. She smiles benignly as he sprawls himself across the roof. Luka shifts how she sits, allowing her to pull the trigger of her handgun and nail Scorpio in the head with a dosage of APHE without having to upholster the weapon, should the opportunity present itself.

They are silent, for a time, when Scorpio finally speaks, though he does not take his eyes from Eden’s night sky. “What exactly are you people trying to do?” Luka cocks her eyebrow, and Scorpio’s experiences with Yuri serve him well. “I’ve had run-ins with Snow Pirates before, none of which have ended well. Snow Pirates tend to have goals that can be boiled down to ‘survival’, ‘freedom’ and sometimes ‘fighting the UC’, though it all sort of blends together really. Your goals are different.”

“Well, if you know they’re different,” Luka begins, suddenly intrigued by the depth of his deductions. She does not move the aim of her sidearm. “Then perhaps you could tell me what they are.”

“I couldn’t make any specific guesses,” Scorpio says, rolling his eyes to lock on to her. “Buuut, I’m going to guess that it has something to do with an Akrid hive beneath a city which I happen to know is going to be on our travel plan. After all, Yuri believes in taking the shortest route between two points.”

Luka smirks. “Our travel plan?”

Scorpio rears up so their faces are level. “Absolutely. I just got roped into paying twenty three grand just so I can get up close and personal with an angry worm almost five hundred metres long.” He shrugs dismissively. “There’s no way I’m not in on this. Whatever this actually may be.”

With a purposefully audible sniff, Luka sits back. She considers the man propped up before her, and sighs quietly. Looking up at the night sky, she notes to herself that it will be aurora season soon. “Beautiful night, isn’t it.” She says.

Yuri is such a dick. Such. A. Dick.

And I really like the last part. Aw, it's so cute!

And, man. HANK SCORPIO!

Undeep. It Spits Out Monsters!

And Scorpio, man. He's slightly dim.

I like these folks. Luka's a hot chick who knows how to position her body right. So she can shoot a dude in the head better.

Hank Scorpio's a slightly clueless but badass and yet also smart merc knee deep in shit he doesn't know, forced grudglingly to do obscene feats of badass.

And Yuri is such a dick.

That automated gun turret is badass.