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- Babylonia
In the handful of weeks (months?) since she’d taken up the posting in Babylonia’s makeshift ‘embassy’ in the world’s de facto capital city of Karim. While she had feared originally that King Gilly would make her be their chief diplomat as some sort of gag, PJ had been pleased when he clarified that her role was ‘chief security officer.’ From what he knew of the city and its politics, Gilgamesh figured that someone who could hold their own in a fistfight should be assigned to guard his more ‘egg-headed’ public servants.
Before crossing whatever veil separated the Crossroads from her own reality, PJ had been a commissioned military officer, even if she’d been pretty terrible at that job. A lifetime of having her humanity ground out by people more interesting in abusing her mind and trying to assault her body had left her jaded even as the promotions eventually arrived at her desk from reluctant superiors. Try as she might to sabotage herself by being crass and mostly unliked by the more thuggish elements of her world’s industrial military complex, she had one thing going for her—she lived and others died.
Then again, if she had still been a lieutenant, would she had been forced to board the frigate that morning when it departed to the Frost #213? Had her knack for avoiding bullets led her to boarding a giant metal bullet and winding up in this quaint little corner of the cosmos?
She shrugged at the reflection in the jeep’s driver side window. At the time, the crew and she had mistaken Inverxe for the Frost planet and would anyone have blamed them? Both were terrible, frozen hellscapes than no one in their wildest dreams would select for a vacation destination.
“And now I’m here,” she muttered as she glanced through the windscreen at the sprawling desert of Mesa Roja. Since it was the weekend, she had decided to take the ‘company’ car out on a drive into the wastelands that surrounding Karim. A few hundred miles from the planet’s capital and everything looked mostly the same. The sand out here looked the same as the sand that stretched for miles around Gilgamesh’s palace town.
Leaning back in the driver’s seat, PJ unscrewed the lid to her canteen and sipped on some of the cold water. Try as he might, Gilgamesh was just never going to uncover springs as nice as the ones that were found within the city of Karim.
As she imagined the gilded monarch once again fuming at the ‘insufferable metals’ that he could still taste in the local waters even after a few rounds of purification and distillation, PJ found herself drawn from the amusing fantasy by the reality of a ship crashing into the desert a few miles to her west.
“Well, that’s new,” the woman muttered as she shifted the jeep into drive and started in the direction of the crash site. By the time she had arrived a few minutes later, the fires had mostly died out—a testament to the desert’s often intense, sand-laced winds. As she approached the site, PJ frowned at how utterly devastated the vessel had been. While she couldn’t tell much from the wreckage, it was clear that whatever had crashed would not be heading back into the sky anytime soon. Warped, charred chunks of metal dotted the landscape for at least a solid hundred meters in both directions, and the woman in the jeep was fairly certain that this was immediately a lost cause.
That is, until, the other woman came shambling out from behind a twisted husk of ship and nearly collapsed in front of PJ’s jeep.
“Son of a,” the redhead yelped as she mashed the brake.
Muttering something, the other woman craned her neck and stared at PJ. Dark skin and dark hair were encased in what seemed to be the remnants of military fatigues. Eyes a bit wobbly in her own skull, the crash survivor slowly lifted a weapon, and while she initially recoiled, PJ soon realized that the assault rifle was half-melted.
“Well shit,” the other woman groaned as she collapsed against the hood of PJ’s jeep.
Before crossing whatever veil separated the Crossroads from her own reality, PJ had been a commissioned military officer, even if she’d been pretty terrible at that job. A lifetime of having her humanity ground out by people more interesting in abusing her mind and trying to assault her body had left her jaded even as the promotions eventually arrived at her desk from reluctant superiors. Try as she might to sabotage herself by being crass and mostly unliked by the more thuggish elements of her world’s industrial military complex, she had one thing going for her—she lived and others died.
Then again, if she had still been a lieutenant, would she had been forced to board the frigate that morning when it departed to the Frost #213? Had her knack for avoiding bullets led her to boarding a giant metal bullet and winding up in this quaint little corner of the cosmos?
She shrugged at the reflection in the jeep’s driver side window. At the time, the crew and she had mistaken Inverxe for the Frost planet and would anyone have blamed them? Both were terrible, frozen hellscapes than no one in their wildest dreams would select for a vacation destination.
“And now I’m here,” she muttered as she glanced through the windscreen at the sprawling desert of Mesa Roja. Since it was the weekend, she had decided to take the ‘company’ car out on a drive into the wastelands that surrounding Karim. A few hundred miles from the planet’s capital and everything looked mostly the same. The sand out here looked the same as the sand that stretched for miles around Gilgamesh’s palace town.
Leaning back in the driver’s seat, PJ unscrewed the lid to her canteen and sipped on some of the cold water. Try as he might, Gilgamesh was just never going to uncover springs as nice as the ones that were found within the city of Karim.
As she imagined the gilded monarch once again fuming at the ‘insufferable metals’ that he could still taste in the local waters even after a few rounds of purification and distillation, PJ found herself drawn from the amusing fantasy by the reality of a ship crashing into the desert a few miles to her west.
“Well, that’s new,” the woman muttered as she shifted the jeep into drive and started in the direction of the crash site. By the time she had arrived a few minutes later, the fires had mostly died out—a testament to the desert’s often intense, sand-laced winds. As she approached the site, PJ frowned at how utterly devastated the vessel had been. While she couldn’t tell much from the wreckage, it was clear that whatever had crashed would not be heading back into the sky anytime soon. Warped, charred chunks of metal dotted the landscape for at least a solid hundred meters in both directions, and the woman in the jeep was fairly certain that this was immediately a lost cause.
That is, until, the other woman came shambling out from behind a twisted husk of ship and nearly collapsed in front of PJ’s jeep.
“Son of a,” the redhead yelped as she mashed the brake.
Muttering something, the other woman craned her neck and stared at PJ. Dark skin and dark hair were encased in what seemed to be the remnants of military fatigues. Eyes a bit wobbly in her own skull, the crash survivor slowly lifted a weapon, and while she initially recoiled, PJ soon realized that the assault rifle was half-melted.
“Well shit,” the other woman groaned as she collapsed against the hood of PJ’s jeep.