Somewhere, Out There
by Cynical Chaos
Disclaimer: Zone of the Enders: 2nd Runner is owned by Konami. I do not own or profit from the use of this game nor the use of the Orbital Frames, LEVs or any character from the games.
They were laughing at me again. Always laughter. Or covert glances at me when my back is turned. Or a hundred other things. And all of them, more or less, directed at me.
"Hey Dim!"
Again with that ridiculous name. Just because my reactions are slower than usual or because I happen to like tasting every nuance of a new idea. My way of idea tasting, so to speak, just makes me a better tactician, or so I'm told. Told every time my squad comes out on top in practice or whenever one of my "messmates" is drunk enough to try and recount, in slurring fashion, what's come to be known as the "Crevice Battle." A place where anyone drunk enough to forget their hatred and jealousy of my successes will tell you how I racked up over 150 kills. Kills made of the frame parts of various Leoprados, Raptors, and Naritas. And how none of my team mates lost their lives or even had their LEVs badly damaged. But they only say such things when they're drunk. The rest of the time the just gossip about me. Me and my reflexes. Me and my drugs. Me and my outstanding scores. On and on, it goes on and again, round and round, it goes on and again, no I can't get it out of my head. And believe me, I've tried. Which is why I have drug "problems." They aren't problems for me, but everyone, from superiors to "friends" has stigmatized me. I don't get weird, like drunk or withdrawn, but I'm still avoided. No one likes me, they simply tolerate me.
Too much of a sob story? This is life, so get used to it or get out. I could care less. Cynical you say? This me. If you were me, you'd probably kill yourself or end in a mental institute from the information overload. What can I say? That I'm crazy? It's true. Anyone seeing or hearing the things I hear and see everyday would say that I'm a fraud. Even in this day and age of scientific marvels, true psychics are considered fakes. No matter what the psychic says, no one believes him. Which is why I don't say anything. The only people who know about what I do as a normal part of my day to day life is the doctor who gave me my physical and the parapsychological specialist who performed the more extensive tests on me to determine just what I could do. I only thank whatever gods give a damn about me that the man listened to my suggestions rather than trying to make me make the little line on the computer screen jump. I mean, he did at first, but he kinda stopped that after the computer fizzed out. I'm not cybekinetic, so I can't control computer operations with my thoughts. I'm just a telepathic, telempathic, precognitive psychometabolist. Which means that I hear thoughts out loud, and feel emotions as colors. I react faster than I should and I only experience the benefits of whatever I'm on at the time. Oh, and if I'm drunk, then I sweat a lot. The sweat is my body's way of getting rid of the poisons of the drinks and suppressants. And now you're wondering why I even do drugs. Cause I can't shut the thoughts out of my head and the feelings interfere with my ability to live. Just think about that for a sec, will you? If you're feeling whatever everyone around is, then that just screws around with you. You can't tell what's your feelings and what is everyone else's. And all the thoughts . . . You just want to tell them all to shut up. But they don't, so I drink. And use Sol. Which is expensive, I must say. But the dealer owes me.
"Dim?"
Same person as last time and I still hate that name. But I suppose I should answer.
The man turned, sighing as he did so.
"Well this is a change. A woman actually talking to me. And without a usual sneer. What does the commander want?" She was surprised. They always are. Suppressed my abilities may be, the thoughts little more than a dull murmur and gray blurs the colors in my mind of the various emotions, but they're still there. But she recovered her initial calm and answered me.
"The commander needs to see you in his office."
Her thoughts were about how I was going to be let go. Her emotions were (factoring out how smeared they, and I, were and the grayness coating them) green disgust (at me being drunk) and yellow wariness (her being informed about my telepathic abilities, me having read her mind just now and how I, as a drunk, would react to the thought-information of being discharged).
The man's inward musing faded as he turned and walked past the aide, down the hall and headed to Commander Jonathan Orwell's office. The aide stood still for a moment behind the man as he walked away, then shook herself out of her reverie and hurried after him. As she caught up to him, the man smirked. It wasn't a mean smile or a particularly sarcastic one. It was a slight quirk of the lips that was equal parts bitter resignation and general exhaustion.
The little aide walks by my side, though she doesn't know why. Maybe, for her thoughts revolve around damage control, she just doesn't want to be blamed for not doing her job if I do something rash. Like beat someone to death. But her thoughts become less of a jumble as we, singularly and in our own fashions, approach the Honorable and Decorated Commander Jonathan Orwell's office.
The aide lengthened her strides to beat the man to the door as they approached. She stood to the right of the door and pressed her hand against a small panel next to the door, in the wall. A line appeared on the panel and swept her hand, scanning it, and the door opened. As it opened, a voice, worn and tired, called out.
"Captain Toldren? Please come in."
Captain Toldren did as the voice bid him to and stepped into a small office, dominated by a huge desk of dark wood, which was covered in paper and small nick-nacks.
Mahogany. That's expensive. Maybe it was a gift from a higher up for services rendered. Or maybe the guy's just rich. Weird stuff too, on that desk of his. Why anyone would have such junk...
Commander Orwell spoke again. "Please, James, take a seat."
Captain James Toldren did not. Instead he remained at attention and snapped off a salute that would have been seen as sarcastic by any commander that didn't know James very well. As it was, Commander Orwell simply sighed and returned the salute. "Very well, remain standing. We both know that you won't be here very long. I'd offer you a drink, except we both know that you don't accept drinks from anyone."
James had lowered his hand and had been staring at a place somewhere north and west of the commander's right shoulder. Not quite startled, but not fully expecting the commander's words, James looked at Orwell.
He hides his thoughts well. They're just a gray soup rather than any color coated with gray.
James spoke for the first time since his encounter with the aide in the hallway.
"Respectfully speaking sir, I wouldn't accept you offer of a drink even if I didn't take drinks from anyone. There just isn't the need."
Orwell nodded. "Yes, I know. You've already had your quota for the day, haven't you?"
James nodded, lapsing back into silence. Orwell looked at the papers in his hands, shuffled them and sighed again.
He hates dealing with me. He always has, simply because he never knows what I'll do.
"But down to business. You are a decorated war hero, James. And a bit of a thorn in the sides of those ranked higher than you. You always turn down or flat out refuse promotions, and we had to force the medals for the Vascilia battle on you. You're the best LEV runner the Space Force has every seen and on top of all that, you're a drunk. And a perpetual user of Sol. And what rankles the higher ups is that despite all that, despite the fact that you're chronically drunk, you are still the best pilot we have. The higher ups want you out. They've told me to discharge you. And I can't go against their commands. No matter how many times I tell them that we'll never see a runner like you again, they want you out."
James looked at the commander. Looked at him and pitied him.
Caught between me and my success and his commanders.
"James, I suppose what I'm asking is, do you want to leave? I won't stop you, and if you want to stay, then I'll come up with something. But if you stay, then I can't guarantee that you'll stay a LEV runner."
James looked and thought.
I can't do that. Freedom is the only reason I stay here and accept whatever they throw at me.
"I can't do that sir. If I stay, then I want to pilot. I want to run LEVs. It's the only place where I can be alone. Where it's just me and my thoughts and the navicomp. And comps don't have thoughts that I can hear. In the LEVs I can be at peace."
He thought and came to a decision.
Something we can all be happy with.
"Put me on an archeological dig somewhere. Out in the Jupiter area. Someplace where no one comes in contact with anyone else for days at a time in the middle of a dig operation. Someplace where it can just be me and the LEV I'm in."
James, as he spoke these words, had finally come alive, so to speak. He was leaning forward, slightly, and his eyes seemed to surface from the dull luster they usually showed. Orwell, seeing these signs and hearing James' words, considered these things and found this solution acceptable.
He smiled.
"Ganymede. You can go there. Big ice ball, the geologists and terraformers work in areas measured by kilometers. I'll pull some strings so you can sign on as a LEV pilot. Will that work?"
And so I was on my way out and about.
Freedom is a word that few on the Inner Planets truly appreciate. It is a word that all accept and few understand. It isn't about what someone can and cannot do within his or her country. It's about not having to worry about such things because they simply don't matter. Here on Ganymede, I'm free. There isn't any thoughts that I have to contend with, so my performance has increased as my body rids itself or the last vestiges of the various poisons that I've taken over the years. I'm a LEV runner, so I can still be as far away from whatever counts as humanity out here as I roam the various glaciers hunting for whatever base camp wants, or just hunting. What I'm looking for, I haven't figured out. Well, figured it out so far. I just feel like heading west more and more these days. The maps in my navicomp say that there's nothing but a huge monolith like glacier out west, but I feel compelled to go to it. Who knows, maybe this compulsion will fade once I reach it. It should only take a few days.
The LEV is a standard mining machine: simple, rugged and tough. Designed for hard knocks, long falls, and operations in harsh environs, it is a faithful machine. Though the designers of these mass produced LEVs deliberately made them to be modified by their owners to better suit the owner's specifications or whatever circumstances the LEV and it's runner found themselves in, it is doubtful that anyone could have foreseen the modifications that James Toldren had made to his Dune Stalker type LEV. Replacing the standard biped legs were four legs set equidistantly around the pelvis area. The hips protruded out and away from the body and were capped with large harpoon launchers. These acted as grapnels, fired whenever the navicomp deemed the slope the LEV was on was too steep or that it's rate of descent was too great. The body was more squat and stockier than standard models and featured thicker burly arms. Which ended with simple, though powerful, grasping claws as well as featuring a banks of plasma torches set in the palm. The stunted wing-like jump jets had been replaced by a series of mortar-like launchers rigged to fire priming explosives so that large glacier-faces could be set up for a faster and easier demolition.
It was in this machine that James traveled west in, towards the monolithic glacier. It was a long trip, with out the jump-jets it would be even longer, but James felt at peace. Or what passed for peace. His trip was made in utter silence, as he had turned off the navicomp so that he didn't have to listen to it's squawks about how he was long past due for checking in at the camp. He didn't care much about checking in at the base, as it just generated an excess amount of headaches due to an information overload. But that wasn't on his mind now. Not much was. He just journeyed west, making course alterations as he neared the monolith.
It's been six days. Much more than the "few" I had optimistically hoped for. But here I am. At my destination and wanting so much more. I'm here, but what exactly is "here?" A huge building inside several hundred tons of heavily compressed ice. Which means that to be able to just see the door or whatever passes as an entrance, I'd have to use nearly all my explosives. Not that I mind. It's just something to do, while I wait for my brain to come up with what to do next.
The face of the monolith is covered with small blinking dots of light. These are, of course, the linked explosives. Once they go off, there will be a fair sized crater in the glacier's face, after which James, in his LEV, will attack the ice with the plasma torches situated in the hands of his LEV.
Nine hours. Nine hours of nothing more exciting than keeping the torches pressed in to the ice and occasionally moving forward. There's at least another thirty meters of ice to go.
The last bit of ice sloughed off, revealing not a door, but a gaping entrance. Not a hole, it was too regular and neat to be a hole. There was a harsh shriek, loud enough to be heard past the sound dampening systems inside the LEV. James flicked on the light systems to full illumination. They still didn't penetrate the darkness inside the building very much. All James could see on his monitors was a flat metal floor that went on for a few meters past the doorway then dropped off suddenly. He sighed and cursed himself for his curiosity as well as offering a few choice words about his abilities as well. He flipped off his restraints and turned the LEV around so that he'd have a shorter walk when he opened the hatch.
Something I've learned while on Ganymede - I hate the cold. Which is one reason I spend as much time as is physically possible inside my LEV. So I hurried as fast as I could into the structure and out of the wind. It wasn't any warmer inside, but there was no wind actively driving snow and sleet into my face. I grabbed my glowtorch out of my jacket and turned it as high as it could go. Well, I was here, so all I could do is go forward. I entered, turned to the left and started walking. I ran into a stairway a few dozen steps later and took them. Close to ten minutes later and two minor hitches in my legs, I reached the bottom. And was awed. A machine, far larger than any LEV, rested in a large vat of faintly glowing liquid at the bottom of the stairs. I couldn't make it's form out very well, but it didn't matter, I already knew what it was: it was an Orbital Frame.