Iron Drumbeat Chapter 14

Got some inspiration, and I was in the mood for a dystopia that actually has the aesthetic to match.

The fog finally parted before our very eyes, and was replaced by a dull greyish brown sky. Some might not have considered that an improvement, but to an understreets kid like me, it was a breathtaking sight.

Sure, I’d seen the blue-brown sky of Earth once or twice, between the huge buildings, but to see so much sky just… up there. It was amazing.

Just below the sky, we saw a building — a rundown concrete and steel thing with mounts for automated turrets, all of which were empty. It had abandoned military outpost vibes. Someone had made an attempt to shine it up a bit though, with a shitty white paint job. And a welcome sign painted across the top concrete lip of the roof.

The building stood on ground that was only marginally better than the perpetual gravel and wet, lifeless dirt of the foglands. Out here, beyond the fog, the ground was dry as a bone, and thin brown plants attempted to colonise the otherwise bleak, dead landscape.

Not that I knew what that looked like. I'd only seen craggy, rolling hills like these in fictional media. Now, though, even the most desolate shithole in a movie was beat by this place, where the only interesting feature we could see through the windscreen was the rundown building in front of us.

A tap on my shoulder brought my attention down, and Tink signed, “Can we go back into the fog? This place looks like shit.”

Laughing, I shook my head and gestured to the sign directly under the welcome sign.

Fogbank 4 Waystation Gate. Fuel. Food. Net connection.

Tink let out an audible sigh and shifted the Scarabass forward again, sticking it into cruise as she did so. “Okay. But you're talking. That's human words. It's probably humans in that concrete hovel.”

I nodded. It was fair, especially since it would be tough to find someone who spoke her version of sign.

Giving one of her ears a playful flick, I squeezed myself out of the bridge and headed for the crew quarters. Inside, I grabbed my big heavy, baggy leather coat and my boots. Inside, I wore a thin sleeveless hoodie and cargo pants. At my hip, a black plastic holster carried an old pistol — one of those clunky laser ones with the boxy frame and the exposed yellow battery plugged into the back. It was, unfortunately, the best weapon we found still in working order. Everything else needed work, and what hours we had between us, Tink and I threw at keeping the Scarabass moving.

Armed and armoured, I went down the passage to the airlock. I could hear the squeaking of oil-parched mechanisms moving as Tink extended the gangway. I slammed a fist sideways into the heavy button that was supposed to open the airlock. It didn't budge. With a grimace, I stepped up and heaved at the rusty wheel that opened it manually.

My first breath of this world's air was surprisingly refreshing. I guess there must be somewhere on this rock that had plant life? That's how it was supposed to work, right? Unless the whole planet was running on oxygen converters like in the lower city.

Someone exited the front door to watch as Scarabass pulled up beside the building. He was a thickset older man in stained coveralls and a beanie covering messy grey hair. He carried a large rifle on his back, and a big coilpistol at his hip. Ho-boy. This man better be nice. That aesthetic could be a real toss-up.

Before the gangway had finished lowering, I leapt out of the airlock and let my legs break my fall. It was only a couple of metres, and I was impatient to talk to another human.

“Hey,” I called, raising a friendly hand. “You sell, uh… I think we run on F-8-A?”

“We got a barrel of it, yeah,” the man called back, eyeing our huge transport with suspicion while his hand followed suit by resting on the grip of his pistol.

I nodded, like he'd just said something way more polite. “I'm Nirad. Can you tell me what world this is? We've been lost in the fog for ages.”

“Ruik,” he said, dropping down from the two foot high concrete loading platform. “Shithole frontier mining world. We're about five transfers from Port Calloway.”

“Port Calloway…” I muttered, trying to remember…

He stopped his approach to stare at me. “Jesus, where the fuck are you out of that don't know Port Calloway?”

“Earth,” I said, shrugging. “I'm from a city called Cascarton.”

“Never heard of it,” he said, turning his attention up to the looming Scarabass. Tink’s little face was just barely visible up in the window of the bridge. “Earth, though… you're a long fucking way from home.”

That was when I remembered Port Calloway, or more accurately, what it represented. It was supposedly a massive, massive city built in the foglands, inside a pocket of stable air. It was a crossroads between a whole bunch of Earth's old colony worlds, including a bunch that were set up using those big generation ships they sent out into space before the fogfall.

“Yeah, I am,” I agreed after a couple seconds had skipped past. “How much for the fuel? We have a bunch of old shit to trade, but I think we have some chips if you just want cash.”

He gave me an amused look. “Where the hell would I sell scrap? Nah, I'll take Slip.”

Oh boy. This wasn't in the understreets anymore. “Slip? That what you call money?”

“It's what everyone who ain't from bumfuck nowhere, Earth, calls it, yeah,” he laughed. His amusement was kinda tough to get a read on — I couldn't figure if he was laughing at me or with me. “Yeah. ORD-Chips, if you want to be all official about it. It's ten K for the barrel.”

Fucking hell. Ten thousand chips. That was enough to… well, I don't know what that could do, because I'd never seen that much used. Measuring worth in steamed buns from the food cart on the corner seemed weird, but I could buy five thousand of them with that much. I really hoped it was a big barrel, because Scarabass was a thirsty creature.

“Well,” I said, like I was chewing on mouldy sour candy. “I'll go see what we got. Hopefully my friend Tink picked up more chips than me, because I sure didn't find ten thousand.”

“Picked up?” He asked curiously while he gazed admiringly up at Scarabass. “You took this thing into the fog to find, what, scrap? Salvage?”

“Nah, me and Tink, we found it in there and rode it out before the pocket collapsed,” I said, enjoying the way he admired our new home. I was pretty proud of our huge transport. We put a lot of work into getting it running.

“You and… just two of you?” He asked, a weird, almost disbelieving tone in his voice.

I realised my mistake right as I heard the rasp of gunmetal on plastic. Scarabass was scary as fuck, but only if she had a full crew. Parked on his doorstep like this… well… ripe for the picking.

Bang — his first bullet caught me in the side, and I stumbled back, gasping as the impact shocked the air out of my lungs. The second bullet got me in the arm… and the third blew my head off right as I looked into his greedy, apologetic eyes. Fucking cun—

—t. My breath came into my lungs wet and heavy, while my brain tried to make sense of a body that was still forming out of the fog.

Anger filled my veins before any blood did, and my first footfall only partially convinced the gravel beneath it to shift. This motherfucker shot me while I was just trying to buy gas! Nah. He was going to live just long enough to realise how bad he'd ruined his own day.

I began to run, still trailing fog, and drew my pistol. Scarabass was blocking my view of the bunker, but even now Tink was raising it up while the gangway retracted back into the hull.

Before our transport took a step, a loud boom echoed out over the rocky hills, and one of the four legs on the vehicle buckled. If I wasn't angry before, I would've been right then. I was, though, so yeah, I was enraged.

Still at a full sprint, I ducked under Scarabass’ sagging form and slid to a stop in the dry dirt out front of the building. The guy who shot me was getting ready to climb up the ladder to the still open airlock while another dude dumped a spent anti-vehicle weapon and drew a pistol of his own. Behind him, a third dude was emerging from the bunker.

“Hey!” I shouted, raising my pistol towards the goon who broke my transport's leg.

The sizzle-crack of a laser punching through flesh, then bone, pulled the fuckwit up short, right as his boot touched the first rung.

His eyes went satisfyingly wide, and he let out a high squeak of fear. Both of us looked over at where my previous body was just finished fading into fog, forgotten by him and his boys. In the moment of stunned silence, I shot his second friend. This time, I missed his head and tore a hole down the side of his neck instead. He screamed, and blood burst out between the cracked, cauterised flesh there.

The asshole-in-chief didn't wait until his turn, and his powder-and-lead belcher bucked in his hand. At the last moment, I jerked my head to the side — the bullet missed, but he hadn’t been aiming there. It slammed into my arm, blowing a chunk of it away and leaving a trail of fog in the wound. With pain sizzling up my arm like electricity, I whipped it around, and with a sharp pop, his gun went flying as I burned a hole through his arm in return.

Through the pain, I grinned at the poor, stupid sucker who'd just picked his last fight. “Sorry mate, but you ain't nearly rich enough to get away with greed like that. Better luck next life.”

My pistol hummed a third time, and his head rocked back with a new hole between the eyes.