Episode 9: Coffin of My Making

(Music: 200 years ago on a Icy Planet)

(Heavy rain, distant storm, traveling, sfx according to terrain)

There are a handfull of things a person notices first when they're in The Redline.

First, there's the lack of oxygen. I've trained all my life, with flesh grown from an aborted corpse, modified to withstand even the most rigorous of condiitons but even this altitude challeenges me.

The second thing is the silence. No animal, insect, or any sign of life besides the thrum of my reanimated heart is to be heard. It is only the soft sound of gravel ubderfoot, the boom of the storm, and the pittering of the rain that accompinies myh lonely trek.

Thirdly is the strain of ones muscles, searing, sulking, settling with the fact that I have made bedfellows with the discomfort. I can hardly run for nearly everystep is dogged with razor stones waiting to slash through my shoes. The mountains, a blasted furnace with only a tuft of reedy grass here or there, rises and descends in such a manner that traversing one mile takes the time of four.

I travel up, I switchback down, though the way forward is net rising. I pass withered forests of what once might have been trees petrified to short stocky rocks. I cross stream beds, the water a murky grey. I pull my survival suit closer but th thick material can never keep the cut of the wind without. The first night I make camp in a shallow aclove, shelktered from the always draining skies. Sleep comes fitfully and its sometime in the early hours of the morning, I wake from a fitful frenzy of dreams. My hands quiver undoing the sleeping sack that doubles as my tent. A short breakfast, cold from a stasis can, and then I'm on my way, follwoing the map and compass, step by step coming ever closer to the crash. . . and my freedom.

The second day brings more of the same. I can feel the radiation burning within me, like a fire slithering through my veins. I am slowing and I remeber to take the rad-meds. One injection later and I the buzz in my head seems to settle, just enough to keep moving forward—though it does nothing to stop the thin drops of scarlet falling from nose. Travel continues you on, wet, draining, and uneventful—sound of bot husktaker coming near scanning.

I leap into a cover a small gulley, watching as a white pixelated scan line traces the place I had been almost a second ago. The Husktaker approaches and I press myself into the hollow of a long dead log. The sound is muffled but to me it is as loud as the gong at the bell lap. I slither backwards as it comes closer, beeping, whirring, its weapons clicking into place. I feel something solid against the back of my foot, but I am so squished in this log I can hardly move. If it finds me where will I go? I can't even get the gun out. Shit, shit chrome dome. Idiot. Everyone surely has felt it right? That moment they realize they put themselve in their coffin.

Closer. . .

Closer. . .

I squezze my eye's shut, my head practically pounding within, my breath held tight in my lungs.

(bot noise and then disarm and leave, Kal lets out a breath, noise of him pulling himself out, opening his bag, drinking, and stabbing himself with medicin. and contininuing on.)

It's at the setting of the sun, a faded dollop of light mired in a roll of grey and black clouds, that I finally see it.

Scattered, a mettalic wreakage litters the land. A pummeled line driven in the scorched ground from the impact of the vehicle. I shake partly in releif and partly because I can't get the image of what I had found in that log with me. A figure dressed in pilot orange's, the skin about the skull shrivled like melted plastic, the body dotted with bullet wounds—each punture the size of my fist. Immediatly I rush to the base of that cliff, intent on getting of this alive. Free. (Sound of river and waterfall). The ewyeh is easy enough to find. Still protected in their bubble canistars, I pack what survived the crash into my bag, and then I see it. . .

Under the curving hull of the ship, in a hollow just out of the rain, I see a white human lenghted tube. Scorched, dented, dinged, and splattered with muck, I instantly recognize the Hybe chamber. Approaching I see that it is somehow still intact, the life saving plasma water within still structured, still preserving the life within. I make to open it but it becomes apparent it is mechanized and will require booting up the computer attached to its side. Licking my lips I remebr the Huscktaker, knowing full well that it will be drawn to the electrical impulses. Carefully I watch the skies and only then, only when I am certain none of those drone war machines are nearby, do I boot it up. I mean to open, to get the girl, sling her over my shoulder and run, but nothing in her file is locked. And my eyes catch a word here, Ghoul there, and I can't help but test the limit. After all what could one of the Three Amigos want with a little girl. . .