DAY THREE - Plentitude
They’re going to kill
me. Whether it’s Saleen itself or one of the primitive madmen that
scrabble out their wretched existence here, I’m sure this
place will be the end of me.
Let me start at the
beginning, though. My name is Tybaino Erinlas. (Most people just
call me “Ty” but since you’ve found this little diary of
mine, I’d prefer “Tybaino” on the headstone.) I came to
this forsaken planet on, and at the expense of, the Commonwealth freighter Plentitude. We
all half-ass knew what to expect when we signed on with Captain
Domillo. It seemed reasonable to us that selling a freighter full of
supplies in this nastiest of the nasty sectors of the galaxy would bring us
all home
with bags of money. We are (or were) a hard and experienced
crew. We’ve navigated turbulent space and hot lanes before but none of us were
prepared for what the Badlands have to offer. It’s no wonder
no one tries to come out here anymore.
Battered and tired, we arrived in the Cynther
system and promptly got the hell off-ship. Some of us got left
behind on the first rebuild shift, giving the maintenance nanites a helping hand. Some of the crew
were given leave on-planet. The trading teams were
dispatched to the patchwork space station and various little
backwater towns on the surface to convince the locals to pay far
too much for our cargo. I
think it was actually one of the trading teams that brought the saboteurs
back to the Plentitude. At least I assume it was sabotage,
though it all happened so fast it leaves me a bit baffled. All I know for sure is that I was on a
cargo shuttle on my way to the town of Kanduambet when the com went nuts. It
just sort of all happened at once… warnings and broadcasts
from the Plentitude started filling the Intellignet channels,
filling my head with desperate screams and streams of data about
system shutdowns.
I’ve been over and over the recordings on my Data Follow and it’s
just plain madness, like something out of one of those cheesy,
mass-marketed simcasts.
 |
People
all over the ship began screaming about monsters and devils
tearing the ship apart. Systems failed, one after the other, and
from what’s stored on my interface there was no single reason
for it. The shield systems and security stations seem to have
been torn violently apart, the weapons systems completely
defeated all their safeties for no apparent reason and started
blowing like delbugs after mating season, and the drive systems
seem to have just instantaneously vanished. It’s like this
place just decided that the Plentitude needed to die.
|
Our shuttle was next. We flew
low
over the desert, running mapping algorithms as we approached
Kanduambet. As the chaos on the Plentitude began, our grav drive
burped and reversed flow, popping the caps and completely
torching the reactor. Needless to say, we went down hard. The shuttle itself is
scorched metal
in the sand now. The rest of the crew died on impact.
| Me, I
survived without a scratch. Not a scratch. To be honest, it's
kept me awake at night when the screams of the desert predators
haven't.
How the hell do I live while they die? Am I alive at the
whim of mercy or spite? Or is it just stupid luck? Maybe it's
just shock and isolation but the rotting feeling in my stomach
tells me it's not luck. In many ways I feel like a beraku and
this place is one big shanoden playing with its prey.
|
 |
You know what the worst
part is? It’s my interface. It’s so quiet. There’s no
background chatter, no feeds from a ship or repeater, no
Intellignet to consult, and no contact with fellow crew. I feel so
alone. You take that neural feed of yours for granted, you know. You have
no idea how much security that constant flow of information
brings. I might as well be deaf and dumb.
At least I have this pen
and paper. Trust that the fellow I found it on doesn’t need it
anymore. His remains also yielded up a tattered backpack, a
crude hammer-triggered firearm, and some cooking gear. Add that to
my own disruptor pistol and I might yet make it across
this wasteland.
And so, I know that
Kanduambet is off to the west somewhere across this hot, hard
desert. I’m hoping that if I walk far enough I’ll run into
someone who’ll take me there, or at least give me a damn drink
of water.
DAY
FOUR |
