Quin
“I promise you - just look for yourself,” Gref insisted as the squeak of the monitor accompanied his voice, “all there, and it looks pretty big. Plenty of opportunities to find whatever you’re looking for.” Gref’s mouth curled into a grin that showcased his crooked teeth and stressed the creases in his homely sun-burned skin. A crackle came from my helmet - beneath the noise lay my mirthless chuckles.
“Fine, fine” I asked as my voice was tenuously doubled through two channels, “How old is this thing? I don’t really want to dig through a rusted bucket again”Â
“At least a century, so any fuel-fires or fumes are bound to have gone out by now. If you’re so worried about it, just toss a match down before you go spelunkin’.”
I turned my head and mulled over the perpetually decent finds Gref had “found” for me over the past few months or so. “Sure,” I shrugged, gesturing to the antiquated speeder-bike that Gref had been eyeing since I arrived, “you really want that, huh?” With a nearly wordless exchange, I traded the speeder that had surely seen better days for a chance at finding something worthwhile. At least more worthwhile than a Vekog Mk. III Gravbike.
The sight was something to behold if you hadn’t seen the work a scrapper does almost weekly: a massive freighter-ship the size of a tower dug deep into the earth perpendicular to the ground. It awkwardly protruded from the ground laden in a rust and moss. Despite Gref’s description, very little paint survived the century (at least) of storms and meteor-showers. Its nose was lost to the earth, leaving the majority of the vessel beneath the cracked earth. Quin wasn’t a tourist; they knew better than to waste time sight seeing. I didn’t let myself get distracted by such an uncanny scene. After my first few months out here, I pushed the thoughts of the poor souls that perished here. Gref told me not to be too upset about it. They were a bunch of rich people from a “lost civilization of terrible proportions that were slain by the mighty LLF”. He knows that the thought of those bastards makes me itch, but he thinks he’s funny and I won’t take that away from him.Â
After getting a lay of the land, I pried my way inside of the beast after taking a torch to this damaged port a story above the ground. Inside was musty as I expected. Stale air couldn’t touch me beneath the helmet. The floor was at an angle, leaving me hanging on door frames like a ladder for a giant. As I slowly made my way deeper into the belly, the glow of my headlamp kept things mostly visible until I encountered a map on the wall. It was one of those maps that had the big “you are here” thing on it, but that didn’t help a whole lot considering I had no clue where the hell I was to begin with. Seemed I was near the back where the engines died. That’d explain the stains on the wall and floor. Despite the age, I was surprised how untouched everything was. The doors I managed to get open (or the ones that were already open) lead to nothing impressive. I found a few thousand in a currency I’ve never heard of and metal jewelry. A jumpsuit with a label on the breast that was probably a name and number. Despite how much I’ve scrapped through ships like this, I don’t think I’ve ever been this disoriented. Seeing beds flipped and against the wall made my stomach churn. Damned if I knew why. It just did.Â
The deeper I went, the harder it was to see. Something lingered in the air. Some sort of gas. It had a color like mud and the density of moderate fog. I descended further and yeah, still plenty of this gas. Paranoid thoughts about the filters on my helmet filled my mind. I couldn’t remember the last time I changed them. Last week? A month? Fuck, I hope it hasn’t been a month. What else had I not ran diagnostics on? My feet. My feet hit the bottom. The side? The side was the bottom in this case. I’m breathing to much. I need to breathe. I can’t breathe. Am I choking? Choking on nothing. Choking like a baby on spit. Fucking mercy. My head hurts. Like someone stuck jumpers to my temples. I can’t. I can’t, I can’t. My head is heavy. It’s full of the charge from the jumpers. The jumpers that the baby choked on. I reached the side only to choke on the bottom.
What the fuck happened. One minute I was running diagnostics and the next my mind went from solid to liquid out my ears. Splitting headache. I’m on the floor looking up at the fog that became harder to see through. Not even my lamp helped. I was the last bean in the can and there was only a fart from what was already eaten above me. Never thought I’d feel so small yet so big at the same time. I have all this space to move around yet nowhere to go. I’m not standing up. I’ll just crawl. Yeah, what could go wrong? Crawl on the bottom (side) of a totaled ship that had sharp rock and glass all over the place to grate me like cheese.
Left, right, left, right. My head was pounding. At least I could feel something in my head. The rest of my body tingled with the frigid chill of ice water, but it was something. Something was better than nothing. A box. The thing of my search. A fucking box. I reached for it with my stiffened arms to grab it. Click. It opened. Small tubes with clear liquid. A small container full of sterilized needles. Some other bottle of liquid. Good enough. Meds. Gref will know. Gref. Is he even alive? How long have I been down here? Fuck. Maybe I’m dead. Maybe I died after that fall. Come to think of it, I never actually reached the bottom. Did I fall? I need to get the hell out of here.
I fell asleep, but only for a few hours. My blurred vision cleared around the center, leaving me with two inconvenient tunnels of perception. Yeah, I must’ve fallen. Whole body hurts and it hurts to stand. There’s a particularly bad pain in my back, but it isn’t stopping me from trying to climb out.Â
The walls down here weren’t like the ones up a ways; they’re rusted and dented down here. Wrapped around the earth like tinfoil. The rest of the ship seemed inaccessible from here. There is far too much in the way for me to ever possibly dig through. Fucking Gref. I guess I can’t blame him for my stupidity. I don’t know why I go on these dangerous dives in the condition I’m in. I guess a greater part of me wants to make sure the old bastard doesn’t worry about me. I don’t know why. I don’t have anything to prove. Hell, maybe I do. I’ll be damned if I tell him about what happened though.
I’m lucky to be alive at this point. I just rested as much as I could before I began to climb with my hook and cables. With all the things that happened here, I wondered why I hadn’t seen a body yet. There’s no way that someone survived this crash. Stop. Stop. Left, right, left, right. I’m not fucking falling again. Left, right, left right. The gas is thinning. It’s easier to see. Left, right, left, right. I can see light. How long was I - No. Left, right, left right. I finally sat myself down near the port I burned through to get in. I threw my helmet off and finally took a drink and had another sawdust protein-bar. Last thing I wanted to do at the bottom was have to inhale all that shit when I was trying to eat this garbage. That’d really make me sick. Just seeing light eased my pain. The pain in the head, I mean. My back still hurt like a sonuvabitch.
As much as I wanted to rest, I didn’t want to stay in this metal tomb for another minute. Even the smallest pebble made a deafening echo as it banged against the metal on the way down. It didn’t bother me at first, but my amateur scrapper was showing. I was honestly disheartened and afraid. Helmet on. Hooks and ropes are ready to go.
I hopped on my bike, looking up at the thing that nearly killed me. I coughed, looking at the box I found before tucking it away again. I had at least two weeks. That was good enough. Despite getting what I was looking for, that wasn’t worth the scare. I drifted with great speed over the craggy landscape. The last thing I wanted was a ship like that to be my over-sized titanium casket.
-Note from the Author-
Hey there! My name is Redemption (Red for short), and I’m a writer and aspiring voice actor. The kind of things that I’ll be posting here are going to vary. Some stuff may be more silly like outtakes and what have you and others may be like this; short stories or even multi-part stories. Please let me know what you lot would like to see in the future. Thanks!
Link to my Fiverr page (I use this as a portfolio since I can’t seem to get any orders anymore): https://www.fiverr.com/share/plxaDZ
