...an adventure I failed.
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The breeze, however gentle, felt crisp, cold, and harsh. Especially when you have woken up in a cold sweat in the back seat of your truck.
That sudden lack of oxygen...that breathless feeling as thoughts of the night invades your peaceful sleep with images you tried so hard to burn out long ago. The sudden thumping and thumping of your chest when you realize it all came back and again, it will take you a long, long time to heal. The sorrow that makes you cry through your skin when you refuse to do so through your eyes.
It took Will another breeze to get a bigger realization of his real-life surroundings and not his nightmarish ones. The nightmares were all memories. In a single night, he had relived the past two years, and in a single night, his mind had given him a scenario where he was sucked back into the past.
He shivered and groaned, cursing himself that he didn't grab a blanket before he, somehow, managed to pass out in the back seat. He also cursed himself that he didn't roll up the windows because the sopping wetness on the edge of the seats told him that it had rained overnight, that and also because his head and feet were completely soaked. Also due to all the sweat, his whole body was covered in some kind of water. He made a sharp inhale and sneezed. He smelled terrible.
Another nipping breeze shocked him upright, and he immediately went for all the windows in the truck, rolling them up with irritation flowing through his veins. He then turned the dial on his dashboard to put the heater on full blast, sitting still until he felt reasonably warm and then some. He groaned while he waited but said nothing. He thought nothing. He did his best to clean off the water but the heat had a side effect on his sweat, causing it to become sticky. He cursed again.
Isn't there a freshwater river nearby? I could use that to wash myself off.
That seemed nice, but then he realized that he didn't want to be freezing again.
"¡Ah, Maldición!"
He stayed in the vehicle until it grew too hot and sticky for him to bear. He opened the front doors with his toes and kicked it open, only to be greeted by a blast of wind, causing him to wince. Continuously cursing, he then kicked open the back doors and melted out of the seats, right onto the hard white gravel that served as a place to park on top of a rise of land. Every side of him was surrounded by trees, save for one side looking south which was clear of growth. The breeze blew in from that direction and carried the scent of salty and watery air.
He took note of the day's full miserable overcast and tiptoed back to the bed of his gray truck. He carefully squeezed in between it and the trailer pulling lumber behind it, ripping off a black tarp to reveal miscellaneous supplies like tools and...
"Ay, hey there towels."
He picked a plain white towel up and pulled a bag of clothes from the passenger seat, as well as a strange box he kept underneath it. With his items in hand, he made his way west and down from the gravel patch. Dried, tan tallgrass curtained his path, and his feet met the small sharp roots as he crushed them underfoot. He cursed the whole way as splinter after splinter dug their way into his heels until he reached the forest line, where there was, indeed, a creek bubbling by.
He set aside his items on the base of a nearby tree trunk and dropped to his knees on the side of the riverbank, feeling the chill rush underneath his tight t-shirt that just had a little too much breathability than he would like at that moment. Preparing himself for the worse, he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and grabbed a fistful of ice-cold water, splashing himself in the face and scrubbing away as much of the sticky sweat-water as he could.
"I am an atomic mistake among God's dark stars," he said to himself through chattering teeth and splashed himself again.
He then took off his shirt and dunked it into the water, using it as a rag to clean off his torso and legs until all feeling of bitter stickiness was washed away. The motions of it reminding him of his bad dream overnight. He didn't want to think about it. But there wasn't much else to do by himself at that moment so he gave a depressive sigh while he shivered.
"Whatever."
He now felt like an iceberg with the amount of chill he was enduring. He dried himself off and pulled a spare shirt from his bag, one he made sure had long sleeves. Now that he was properly cleaned, he could finally begin what he set out to do that day...right after he picked the dried grassroots out of his lightly bleeding feet.
He took his items and instead of going back to his truck, went southward towards the ocean. The salty breeze grew stronger as he reached the soft sands. He took a moment to appreciate the gray skies so the sun couldn't cook the beach beneath his feet, it allowed him to fully appreciate the sight before him as he continued down to the shore.
How lucky was he to find such a remote place on this planet? Out here, he could live and die alone and in peace. To be away from everything and everyone. He was looking forward to the life ahead.
The cold no longer affected him as he slowly became more numb. He let the ocean waves kiss his feet, then turned west to walk alongside the beach to his destination.
It was an odd-looking little place by the treeline. Quite barren except for the alien palm trees, of course, as well as tall instruments that spiked out of the ground. A few of these instruments were fans that twirled about with the strong breeze, threatening to teeter out of the ground. Others encased large blue material to capture the sun's rays, useless at the moment, and also facing the danger of uprooting. The thickest of these was a wide wheel that seemed to drill into the ground, but upon a closer look, it was made clear that it spun around and around with a fast-flowing river.
It was a neat little energy plant, but it didn't seem to be collecting energy for anything except for a small little building that looked like a cross between a shack and a cabin just along its outskirts. The stout little building's wooden walls weren't even painted, but still had plenty of sand to cake it. Its windows were also wide open. The only way to close them was through thin sheets of transparent plastic, which was attached to the window sills by single strong pieces of cord threaded through the corners, causing the plastic to dance and flip in the wind when not in use.
It definitely wasn't the fanciest thing in the universe, but he never needed much anyway. As long as he was comfortable, then that's all that mattered. And he worked really hard to get this kind of comfort.
He popped open the door to his little hut and immediately was greeted by a small room with a reclining chair and a television screen sitting on the floor all janky-like. The only other things in the place being a lamp and a cooler to hold all his drinks. At first glance, it seemed hardly livable, but through a window on the backside gave a view to something else.
The treeline the shack rested on gave way to a path through the dense underbrush, and just barely visible on the other side was a large clearing. Poking out of the ground were large wooden stakes, held together by more wood that crisscrossed, making a frame of something that looked more like a proper house.
He had been working on it for a month or two now. Day after day he studied, week after week he built. He didn't think he had accumulated more small cuts anywhere else before he started building it, and he's already lived a pretty dangerous life so far.
But that's what happens when you decide to become a hermit, he guessed. The house itself was by no means big, but it was still a large undertaking for one guy. He only wanted just the bare necessities, really, but it was the convenience aspects that were tricky. Like setting up electricity and plumbing.
He couldn't wait for it to be done.
He dropped the towels and clothes in a corner and dropped the strange box next to his seat where he crashed down. He took a couple of deep breaths and came to realize what a mistake he made.
The quiet stirred up his memories of the nightmare once more, causing him to cringe and his heart to sink through the dirty floor. His eyebrows furrowed far enough for him to see only black and his hands crossed upon his stomach. He'd been like this plenty of times before. Submissive, willing to succumb to the darkness in both mind and body and falling into its depths. He never really managed to get up and keep going from it, but he did crawl little by little.
And he kept being put back. He sighed.
"Oh well."
In a flash, he forced himself off of the seat and out the door, minding to take the strange box with him. He had a house that needed building.
The thoughts didn't cease, but the movement kept him focused which in turn made them easier to bear. Once he was back in his truck, he turned it on and carefully backed out from the gravel patch, making sure the lumber he had carried from a faraway town would not fall into the ditch. With his successful maneuvers, he drove back down the pathway until he found an obscure turn off the main road. He took it, and the palm trees on either side led him back to the forest treeline on the beach.
He liked this way of getting home. It was secretive. Even if someone had found the road, the trees made an extra layer of cover for his house when they reached the end. Not that it wasn't impossible to find from that point on, but it kept the house safe from distant prying eyes.
He parked by the wooden frame of his massive project, eager to get to work. He picked out two solid board pieces from the trailer and turned to the house, only to realize he had no idea where to start. It caused him to groan, his motivation gone. Still, he needed something to do to keep himself occupied.
He looked down at the boards.
"How much wood can Will...would will...if a Will could...will wood."
His eyebrows furrowed in concentration as he tried to put his own twist on the classic tongue twister.
"How much wood can Will would wood...will...Ah, fuck it. I got work to do."
BOOM.
Will nearly gave himself whiplash as his neck snapped to the noise coming from the sky, and was puzzled as he saw nothing disturbed within the gray. It sounded almost as if the noise had come from...everywhere.
He peered out onto the horizon. A flash of lightning touched the ocean. He waited a few seconds. A boom had sounded again, but much quieter, and followed by rolls of thunder. He dropped the planks and grimaced. In a few swift movements, he had reclaimed his strange box.
Lightning flashed again, and a much bigger boom sounded, similar to the initial one. It was too loud, much louder than it should've been for lightning barely visible on the distant ocean.
Perhaps he was looking in the wrong direction. He analyzed the clouds all around him and waited.
And waited.
Nothing.
He gave a deep sigh. Perhaps he was just hear–
BOOM.
His eyes locked to a dark shadow that swam above the clouds like a massive whale in the ocean, followed by intermittent flashes of orange light like small suns exploding. Will's neck ran a different kind of cold, and he stood rock solid as it came closer and closer, almost as if it was heading straight for him. He couldn't possibly think of what else he could do.
Something finally erupted from the sky from beneath the shadow. White metal had dipped into view, causing clouds to part as more of the unknown fell into the atmosphere. Brilliant blue and majestic purple greeted the gloomy and shocking day as the fire from the strange vessel burned up the gray.
The unknown ship was crash landing, clearly. And for a brief moment, Will feared it was going to obliterate his little place on the beach, and all his hard work.
But the ship, a frigate by the size of it, careened over his head, much to his relief. But not much relief to his ears, because the loud roar in his eardrums made it feel like they were going to burst. He watched the hulking mass disappear behind the trees of the clearing. The noise died down. Then erupted again as a crash-landed further up the peninsula. Dirt, sand, and fire rose high into the air, as well as the loud snaps of trees that accompanied the whole crash up until the very last boom of the ship as it came to a full stop.
He sighed in despair as it only now came to him that he finally recognized the ship, or rather, what the ship belonged to.
Goddamn IMC bastards!
The strange box fell to the ground, opened and empty. Its contents were acquired immediately. Something ticked in Will's mind, coming from that little contraption attached to his brain. The next thing he knew, he was back in his truck, had a colorful P2016 pistol in his hands, and was on his way to engage the enemy.
MEMORY SYNC INITIATED.
Open log L-1...
Convert...
Completed...
Sync...
POWER LOW...18%
Engaging optics...
Calculating planetary time...14:14 AM.
WARNING: NEARBY HAZARDS DETECTED. EXTREME HEAT, DEBRIS, STRUCTURAL COLLAPSE.
SUGGESTION: Disengage from the current situation.
PILOT: Absent.
Searching for...PILOT.
PILOT: Unassigned.
Disengaging from the current situation.
DETECTED: Obstruction.
DETECTED: Life signs. 1.
DANGER?
ACTION: Feign non-functionality.
Detected the door of the bay opening. Life sign approached. Life sign under distress. Life sign proceeded to interact with a nearby terminal. Protocols wiped. Unknown file received. New protocol is given.
PROTOCOL: WARN-
Life sign ceases to interact with the terminal.
DETECTED: Life signs. 2.
Will had stopped his truck at the base of a hill that he was on top of, where he was scanning the crashed frigate. The whole ship was torn up, and the smell of smoke was becoming overwhelming when combined with the salty air. One of the major parts of the ship that could be considered a wing was totally severed, and there was a large hole in the fuselage that rested in a deeper part of the land. The thrusters were still aflame, which caused an uneasy feeling that he was in the presence of a ticking timebomb.
So far he had not seen any survivors, but he wasn't about to make a bet that they all died in the crash just yet. Whatever reason why an IMC ship had crashed onto his little place in the universe was still unknown, and quite worrisome. The number of problems he could imagine started to arise and he felt bitterness in his stomach. What if it was the Militia that shot them down? He sure as hell wouldn't want to be caught in the same place as an IMC frigate if that was the case. He could only imagine the questions he would be asked, and that is if he wasn't shot on sight.
There was that, as well as all the bad memories he had of the Militia. That would be the last thing he needed on his mind. Especially after the rough morning he had.
Well, whatever was going on, he needed to figure it out swiftly and get out as if he was never there.
Or I could just let them be. They don't matter to me anymore. None of them do.
Backtracking, it was a nice thought in theory, but either way, he was at risk of being discovered by either the IMC or the Militia now whether he investigated them or not. And he always found that at least having some information was better than not having any at all.
Get in, kill everyone, find out what happened, get out. Alright, and...
He peered into the gray clouds once more, expecting another ship to enter the atmosphere in hot pursuit. He took a step down the hill, hesitating. After a few more steps he finally committed to an investigation and ran for the large hole in the ship's fuselage.
...break.
The damage was uglier up close. Wires spewed out and sparked, and metal plates were falling down in every which direction. The bullet holes that littered the side of the vessel was evident enough that it indeed had been shot down, and the metal had elongated stretch marks. Perhaps the frigate couldn't jump away fast enough before it's drive got destroyed. It was a quick theory, but the evidence pointed to that being the only reasonable explanation he could think of. He was surprised that the ship even stayed in one piece, mostly.
But it also meant the Militia was probably en route. A notion that caused him to groan immensely.
Might as well loot it for all it's worth before they show up. The IMC usually has some useful tech lying around.
As quick as he needed to be, he wasn't going to throw caution into the wind. As he approached the hole in the ship, he had put on a suppressor on his pistol and made sure to keep low, keeping his head on a swivel for any potential targets. So far he had seen nobody around, not even a single dead body. Which either meant everyone was still alive, or something truly strange was happening.
He peered inside, it looked like a bay of some sort. Chains and racks lined around the corners of the massive chamber, raising another suppressed memory.
It was a bay specifically for Titans.
He noted how eerily quiet it was once inside, the only noises being the raging fire and the occasional drop of metal that echoed from somewhere on the exterior of the ship. His foot found a metal plate that jutted a little upwards and it creaked loudly. He cursed himself in his head. Carefully and silently putting another foot forward, he found that he was on a catwalk looking over the bay. But since the ship was lopsided, the bottom of the bay was now nearly level with where he was standing.
Something scurried.
He heard heavy breathing echo about. Someone was alive.
He hopped over the catwalk and landed softly on the wall. He followed the noise carefully. There was...typing.
He moved about some misplaced crates, and he found something he hoped he would've never seen again.
A Vanguard-Class Titan. The prize technology of the frontier, the face of the Militia. The same Militia that left him for dead. He couldn't tell if it was worse now that the IMC had their hands on it.
It was hanging almost upside down, giving Will a clear look at some of the modifications. There was a battery port on top of its head now, and the three battery ports that were usually underneath the arms were now bolted. Technical differences aside, it was also painted an interesting black and hot magenta color scheme.
And just below the Titan was a lone man, typing away at a terminal.
"Come on," he hissed. "Wake up buddy, I'm going to need you to get out of here."
Without thinking, Will stepped up, his pistol firmly aimed at the back of the man's head. A surge of adrenaline coursed into his body.
"Excuse me, sir!" He announced. "I'm going to have to ask you to stop what you're doing." He tapped the pistol to make known that he had a weapon.
The man froze, his fingers ceased typing and his arms swiveled outwards. He was already speaking before his hands rested behind his head.
"What do you want?" He bit angrily. His voice was gruff but not too old. Like he was a seasoned soldier who was only just starting the highlight of his career.
"I wanna know what the fuck an IMC frigate is doing on my goddamn land!"
The man twisted suddenly at those words, almost causing Will to pull the trigger. Out of the shadows, his head showed a helmet, with an all too familiar visor glowing blue.
¡Mierda! It's a pilot!
"So you're not one of them?" The man asked, a sound of relief in his voice. "Good."
"You mean Militia? No, but you're gonna wish I was," he hissed, raising his pistol at his face.
The man sighed, "Trust me I do."
"What's that supposed to mean, asshole?"
The pilot ignored him and went back to the terminal, closing it and hefting it underneath his arm. Upon seeing it, Will took a great interest in it.
"Tell me, do you have a place for us to stay? To hide out in?" The pilot asked, brushing past him towards the exit in the ship. He hopped over the catwalk and looked outside, peering into the sky. "I can explain everything once we're away."
"I have a place," Will slipped accidentally, causing him to curse again. He was puzzled by this pilot's casual lack of acknowledgment that there was a gun trained on him.
"Good," the pilot replied as he hopped back down and brushed past him again to the Titan. "Let me just wake my friend up here and we'll get a move on."
This whole time Will still had his pistol directed at the man and his intent on killing him was growing by the second. "I don't think so."
Letting an unknown and potentially dangerous pilot regain access to their Titan could mean a lot more trouble than what he bargained for. His location was already compromised, and a million questions were running through his mind. The longer he waited the more at risk he was of being either backstabbed by this stranger or confronted by the Militia or the IMC, or both.
He reminded himself of the terminal.
That's where he can get his answers.
"Listen, buddy," the pilot started without turning around. "I don't–"
He never finished.
Will's intent had reached its climax, and he had already calculated and fired two shots. One to weaken the integrity of the Pilot's helmet, and another to send straight through his skull, killing him instantly. Mercifully.
The terminal fell from underneath his arm, hitting the floor, and his body hit the ground almost on top of it.
Unceremoniously, Will nudged the body off of the computer, causing it to slide slightly down the lopsided wall that was now the ground. He raised the terminal and gave it a once over, dusting it carefully. He had what he came for, now it was time to leave...And to hope nobody will come looking for the crashed ship.
He turned to leave, but was suddenly bathed in a soft blue glow. Something began to whir behind him. He groaned internally as he knew what that could only mean.
"Pilot?"