Futuristic Riders on the Storm

[xuanan]

ANDREA VASQUEZ — PILOT
Harsh winds whistled across the frozen landscape of Ganymede’s surface, carrying with it shards of ice and rock. They left an erratic pattern on the fresh snow as they skipped against the tundra, finally laying to rest in crevasses and caves before they were so unceremoniously brought back out again by the winds. One of these jagged shards of rock flew past a lone figure stumbling in the cold. They were haggard and moved in an unpredictable manner, but their outstretched palms were wrapped around a rusted pickaxe. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that this thing was a human being. And this human being was Andie Vasquez.

That morning, Andie had left in a peculiar hurry from her Junktown perch, recalling the warm garbage fire that lapsed in and out of her view when she groggily opened her eyes and put on her fielding suit. She took with her a handheld railgun, strapped clumsily to her back, and a heavy steel alloy pickaxe, a gift from her late grandfather and one which had gone through a number of near-death situations with her. Maybe it was the excitement that struck her veins like a silver bullet. Or maybe it was something else– fear, anticipation perhaps– which caused her to rush the application of her fielding suit, hop into her wretched and sputtering little field vehicle, and blast out into the white horizon, deep into a storm. Ice fields on Ganymede were something to be weary of, and Andie wasn’t a very attentive woman. So when she realized her suit had somehow sustained damage, a small pinprick of a hole just beneath her ribcage, she didn’t think much of it. It was something for her to think about later.

The only issue was that it was now later, and Andie was in the worst predicament she’d ever encountered on an ice fishing mission.

Cold air filled her suit and heat was rapidly seeping out. Mere minutes ago she had been comfortable, but now she was in the shivering cold, gritting her teeth and desperately clinging onto that pickaxe as she fumbled toward her ship. She was at least a half-mile away from it, that much she knew due to the markers she’d left in the ice. This was an error not of circumstance, but of Andie’s own negligence. And now it would kill her, she thought, as she pitifully scrabbled on the ground like a desperate lemming at the edge of a cliff. The temperature was dropping. Her lips had turned a dangerous shade of blue, and although she couldn’t see her hands, they were barely able to clasp around the hilt of the pickaxe, trembling and weakened from the icy cold. She could hardly hear her own thoughts over her teeth chattering loudly in her frozen-over helmet.

Andie had sent out several distress signals moments before from her suit, when she had the mobility to do so. She wanted to inhale sharply, to gasp for air, but the air burned her lungs everytime she breathed, so she kept her breathing shallow even as her lungs begged for air. Now she sent out one final message.

“A-Andie Vasquez, in. In Surface Area Four ice fields, unsure of coordinates. I need help. Suit has… suit has been punctured.”

The blue roostwyrm she’d carried on her back was long abandoned, and she looked behind her, craning her neck to the azure nebulous creature she’d hauled up out of the waters of Ganymede. Its spines stuck out from the snow now, wrung out and gasping for air just like Andie was. But the beeping in her helmet and the frayed static felt like a heartbeat now, a pulse to some larger machine that would inevitably come to her aid. She recalled the frigid corpses, frozen and curled up, rigor mortis clenching their tiny swollen fists shut as their mouths gaped open, filling with sleet from the incoming storms. They were sometimes brought into Docktown, where funerals were held, closed-casket, to protect the peering, nervous eyes of children who would eagerly pace the wooden planks of the platform to get a glimpse of a sailor who hadn’t come back alive.

The remorseless swing of the reaper’s scythe held Andie in its talons. The ice in her lungs felt like a fistful of razors weighing heavy within her chest, and each shuddering inhale only brought another spike of pain. Her extremities were numb now, fingertips blue and purple like a nasty bruise. She could only hope there would be a moment of solace, a brief second of painlessness, before that scythe came down on her. Death came so quickly. And all for one stupid mistake! She chided herself internally, then she noted that these would not be her final thoughts. What was something nice to think about before she met her fate? The only thing that went through her mind was the cold.

The radio in her snow-pelted helmet crackled to life.

 

[caYabo]

Stoker Hunt’s heads up display began to glow under accumulated frost. His reflection in the iced glass revealed a heavily bearded thirty-three-year-old man with strong Anglo features and a fit countenance, as most Anatians operating outside the crater had to be. A few annoyed moments passed before he wiped the readout clean with a gloved thumb… though, of course, some moisture remained. The familiar klaxon of a triggered beacon repeatedly cycled its wails. A few instants of time observed him fingering the heads up display with celerity and then pinpointing the location of the distress signal. A quick glance at his notes told him that a week, one day and one-half hour had elapsed since the last time he’d left the Anatian crater in pursuit of an emergency beacon. Oh boy.

To soothe himself, he recorded the information in his notes… the solace was niggling but still required. Later, he revved the engine of his enclosed snow speeder and then let it idle to warm the engine. Mechanical cold starts are impossible beyond the rim of the crater… after all. A quick review of his first-aid equipment satiated his need for preparation and the enclosed speeder spewed snow as it roared off, headed towards the coordinates proffered by the recently elicited beacon.

The message that volumed the cab of his speeder was full of both desperation and material, which caused Stoker to turn the handle that controlled acceleration a little more. Seconds passed and he yanked the mic up, “This is dustoff, your snafu is a good copy, dustoff is in route for evac, disregard any other communication, over” static was his only response, which made him uneasy and expectant of disaster.

In his experience, the presence of voice and consciousness was as good as proof of life, which only served to increase his urgency, and premonition that someone was in distress in the very unforgiving beyond. Motivated thusly, he leaned a little more into the cockpit and reduced the throttle to nothing. Snow, ice, and vapor begat the entirety of his vision as his speed increased. The blankness of the snow in his purview was like a question soon to be answered… will you, or your patient, survive?

Desperate minutes passed in a washed-out frenzy of chemically altered hydrogen and oxygen. Eventually, Stoker arrived at the approximate location of the beacon and was able to locate the prostrate body of the young woman who’d initiated the signal. Stoker wasted no time in dragging her failing body into the cramped passenger cockpit area of his snow speeder.

A quick look around the vicinity revealed the recently frozen corpse of a Roostwyrm nestled in the snow, not far from where the young woman had collapsed. Stoker sighed and dropped his helmeted head slightly. The circumstances of the need for rescue were usually apparent, especially for someone like himself who had only survived by the fruits that lay beyond the crater. Impulses begged him to stuff the kill into his speeder, but practicality assured him that the action was impossible. Stoker, warring with his instincts, eventually reassumed his position as the pilot of the snow speeder and gripped the steering handles. Snow decorated the countenance of the air as the vehicle sped into the distant plain.

**

Stoker was busy slapping away at the keys to his journal. His latest rescue lay prostrate on the couch in his small outpost den. His post was well known as one of the least funded… as he was in one of the most remote areas of the fringe of the Anatian crater. The tattoo ululated by his typing stopped momentarily as he supped a cup of hot coffee. A glance towards the single couch in his stead elicited a profound sigh. The woman had been poaching, which was also his job to regulate, but also a fundament of law in which he did not believe in. After a moment of unsured glaring, he returned to his journal and began to pull up media regarding the recent political unrest among the solar system.