You Are Not The Jumpmaster

[Mad Maggie]

"Ey, bruddah, you ready?"

What kind of question is that? Would I be here if I were not ready?

Gibraltar laughed at my non-response and clapped his shield. "Just like you, doctor! Heheh!"

Simpleton.

The ship blares an alarm, and I tense in my seat, adrenaline flooding my glands. I enjoy the drop. I only feel truly alive when hurtling towards my imminent death. Something feels different this time, though. I taste static in the air and feel heavier than normal as the retro rockets flare into life to slow my descent.

King's Canyon is laid out below me, the wind streaming through my hair. My mask protects my eyes from the harsh winds at this altitude, and why some of the other Legends did not take this precaution is a thought that confounds me still. Such stupidity. Even Witt and Silva, the two most Cro-Magnon of the lot, wear goggles for the drop.

My musing distracts me from my role as the Jumpmaster, and I focus in on the crater where Skull Town used to be. A reliable drop site. Increasing my descent, my vision wavers.

And the landscape changes.

No longer am I falling towards King's Canyon. An endless red desert stretches for miles around, water merely a memory. My brain begins to return biochemical transmitters for panic, but I ignore them. The reason I feel heavier, to my complete non-surprise, is that my jump pack is gone. I am falling.

The ground rushes up to meet me, and I enact a desperate plan. Reaching behind to my personal bandolier, I produce a yellow disk and untwist the safety. The vinyl membrane inflates with my Nox Gas, and I hold on to the inflated barrel for dear life. I must confess a smile came to my lips as I punctured the membrane and angled it upwards, using the pressurized agent inside to slow my descent to nonlethal levels as I hit a thick dune of sand and go rolling limb over limb down the slope.

It's bright. Arid climate. One settlement within a day's travel, noted in the last moments of descent. No supplies.

At least my weapons are still firmly holstered. I have my chemicals, my skills...

And my genius.

 

[Mad Maggie]

Location: Unknown
Time of Day : (est. Mid morning?)
Objective: Locate shelter and supplies


It was slow going over the sandy terrain. My boots were more than capable of handling slick mud, or icy frozen ground, but thick sand dunes like these were much more challenging to navigate than the micro-climates of the Apex arenas. Cresting the largest dune I encountered so far, I hear the familiar sound of humans shouting in pain and excitement. As well as the sharp cracks of firearms and the shuddering of motors.

A dusty swirl marks the site of the battle, the vehicles obscuring any meaningful identification of the combatants. I survey the field, the outline of ruined, stone buildings and canvas tents starting to unfold into a workable testing environment. I hadn't been noticed yet, but that would soon change. Stealth was a fool's errand, and my time in the games has taught me that extremely loud and incredibly close are two modifying factors that increase FoF response exponentially...which would be the perfect biochemical state to test my most recent improvements to my personal formula.

A lone war engine peels off from its fellows, clearly hoping to execute what passes for tactics out here. I run down the dune, dropping to my knees and sliding down the sandy slope before leaping off and onto the passing truck.

The driver turns, holding an aerosol can in one hand, silvery coloration coating his teeth and lips. "You ain't one of tha boyz!" He croaked, his scalp bald and pitted as he brought an ancient looking pistol up to bear.

I reach forward and slam his head hard into the steering wheel, dizzying him and making him focus on controlling the vehicle. Pulling a gas trap from my pack, I toss it onto the seat and it activates, enveloping the vehicle in a greenish trailing cloud.

Dispersal pattern is optimal. Coloration is too visible.

I shift my mask for a moment and stick out my tongue, feeling the chemical agent burn it slightly before reaffixing. The hapless war boy coughs up bloody phlegm onto the steering column, his eyes leaking as the silvery paint coating his mouth oxidizes from exposure to my Nox Gas. "Breathe it in...." I encourage him, clapping him on the back and watching him struggle to breathe.

The vehicle was starting to stray from the fight, so I hastened his end with a point blank round from my Wingman pistol. The bullet ripping through his frontal cortex gave him a more merciful end than choking on his own fluids would, but there was no time for an extended study. Shoving the corpse from the driver's seat, I took command of the vehicle and pointed it away from the site of the conflict. Being a Legend teaches you many things, the first of which being: safety in numbers.

My vision is clear.

 

[Mad Maggie]

Location: Planet Designate "Mesa Roja" (dialect)
Time: Midday
Objective: Navigate to the Capital City


The appropriated conveyance from the war boy was apparently a common sight around this area. As soon as I drew close to what looked like a small village, the ping of a ricochet swam around my ears. From the sound, it was a low caliber bullet fired from a well used carbine. Stopping the engine, I placed my hands above my head and exited the vehicle. A threat like this was easily handled with violence, but what I needed was information, and the fact I hadn't been immediately shot in the head through the missing windshield belied the fact that the inhabitants were commoners. And locals obviously knew about their environment. I could procure supplies as well, and all it would take was a modicum of politeness.

"I'm not a threat. I'm carrying two firearms and my own personal defense apparatus, but I come with no ill will. I'm a lost traveler."

That would defuse any tension. And now to ensure my acceptance.

"I'm a doctor as well."

They were all smiles after that, the lone guard peeking out from a crate atop a roof. Now I could see him, the man was old. Mostly likely older than myself. He climbed down laboriously, and extended his hand to shake. Gingerly, I gripped it, and asked him if he could spare supplies for a few days travel.

His face darkened, and he led me inside one of the huts to a bed where a small child lay. His skin was pale, and racking coughs disturbed the boy's rest, a pair of female relatives sitting vigil on either side of him. The man wanted me to heal his son in exchange for the supplies.

I simply asked him for a knife, and his eyes went wide. Shooing the women out, I knelt by the boy's side and watched his chest. He would die if untreated. He would have died, had I not been marooned on this planet. For all the lives I've taken, they have all been for the greater good. Preserving life for the greater good feels much the same. Almost eerily so, as the man returns and I begin to operate.

My personal chemistry kit provides alcohol for sanitization, as the knife makes a small incision into the boy's chest. He screams weakly, but I hold a hand over his mouth as his father reacts angrily. Holding a finger up, I tell him to either leave or render his son unconscious. He cannot argue with that, and turns away to let me continue with the impromptu surgery. Another cut creates an incision wide enough to insert a section of clear tubing (from my kit as well) deep enough into his chest cavity to submerge into the fluids obstructing his breathing.

Using my siphon assembly to get a vacuum established, I drain the boy's lungs into a bowl provided by his family, then set to the task of a quick patch with cauterization and dressing of the wound. Standing up, my advice is to keep him elevated and to make sure he stays out of the desert at night. It would seem illogical that desert dwellers could catch pneumonia, but the chill air can seep into the human body as effectively as poison.

Please, don't read into this log too deeply. To slaughter the community would have been a waste of resources and time, nothing more. An isolated village of subsistence farmers would make for a fine crop of test subjects, but without my lab that would have to wait. Instead, for the price of mininal effort expended, I recieved everything I needed to continue onwards in my appropriated conveyance.

I leave a blister pack of antibiotics from my medical kit behind as well, in return for something much more valuable: water, fresh food, and a map, to the capital city. A place called Karim.

 

[Mad Maggie]

Location: City of Karim, Mesa Roja
Time: Late afternoon
Objective: Find temporary lodging

This time, I pull the vehicle to a stop out of view of the stately watchtowers adorning the city's walls. The journey towards Karim was marked by an increase in greenery and vegetation, the air growing substantially more humid and tropical. Scrub gave way to low sprouting oasis vegetation, the land directly surrounding the settlemenr lush and fertile.

The reason for such was readily apparent. Even outside the walls, the massive plume of a geyser was visible cresting high above Karim's domes and spires. Already, several theories and possible research opportunities started to form in my mind, and I filed them for later. I'm sure anyone reading these notes already has a basic understanding of my inclinations, so I won't bother detailing them. Suffice to say, the poetic despair of a source of life becoming corrupted with its opposite presented many study opportunities...

In any case, I enter what seems to be a marketplace. Outfitted only with my battle gear for a round of the Apex Games, I have no currency. Even if I had currency, it would be useless. No one seems to have heard of Gaea, Solace, Harmony, or even Hammond Robotics or the IMC. I am systems away from home.

The knowledge is comforting. After all, what could someone who has...inconvienient secrets to hide want more than a completely new galaxy to operate in. No one needs to hear the name Alexander Nox ever again. The thoughts drop from my mind as I begin to draw up a research plan, starting with offering my services as a doctor at the local clinic.

Mindless busywork, but I do manage to gather all of the information abiut my location I was hoping to discover. The planet's name is Mesa Roja, only one of several in the local system. One or two mentioned pique my interest, but for later studies. For now, I needed a lab and a steady supply of subjects. Both of which could be sourced from variables somewhere in the city. With a pocket of coin earned from the day's work, I travel to the nearest lodging house and begin studying local maps and regional news bulletins.

 

[Mad Maggie]

Location: Traveling
One Week since last report.

I had to....change my setting rather rapidly this morning. The local constabulary are starting to get suspicious about the recent spate of break-ins and thefts. I spotted two of them hassling one of the local merchants in the square where I was working at the clinic, and he gestured vaguely towards the neighboring district where I stayed. Not an outright betrayal, but I did not fit in.

I looked down at my clothing, the bright yellow a perfect eye catcher for a televised bloodsport. Not for attempting to stay unnoticed on a foreign and unknown world. The meager earnings I'd managed to collect for now would have to be repurposed towards passage out of Karim.

Luckily, I had a destination in mind already. Word had started to seep into the city's common spaces and noticeboards, merchants and laborers and other hopeful refugees beginning to seek out a place called Uruk. Apparently, it was being rapidly constructed by a company called Syntech. I recognized the name from the radio broadcasts of their recent entertainment offering, and resolved to eventually attempt to find out more about them. They seemed remarkably similar to Hammond and their "Dante's Comet" competition was an even more grueling version of the Apex Games. A brand new arena to test variables in...

The zing of a bullet whizzing past my head brought me back to the present, ny hands tightening around the throttle of the sand quad I'd bought for my journey to Uruk. The vehicle was sturdy, and would serve as a an alternative to traveling with the human chattel in a caravan. However...the flats were full of bandits in the more remote regions. I vaguely recalled the group I'd encountered the day of my arrival, and looked back to see the same style of conveyance trailing my small vehicle.

I had taken too much risk acquiring the materials for the most meanly equipped mobile lab on the planet, and if these bandits managed to rupture the large trunk strapped to the back of the trike....I did not want to think about the prospect of arriving in a new city and having to start from a completely blank slate. All the adjustmental data for my latest iteration would be destroyed.

The trike sputtered under my urging grip, smoke and sparks shooting from the exhaust as the engine overheated and slowed to a crawl. Substandard fuel. I could smell the impurities burning in the sir as the machine coasted into a small valley fed from a narrow trickle of a stream. The marauders were seconds behind me, so I shut down the engine and tossed two gas traps into the foliage surrounding the idling vehicle. Sprinting towards the surrounding rocks, I slid behind a boulder and drew my R-99, loading and centering the pop up sight. Holding my breath, I waited as the two trucks pulled up ten feet away.

Of course, the fools saw the boxes strapped to the back and shrieked with glee, assuming I had been chased off to die in the desert. The waxy state of their skin and the cracking of their lips gave away the reason for their aggression. Sun madness. No matter.

The traps activated with a high pitched beeping and a whoosh, the surrounding air turning into poison and creeping into lungs, up nasal passages, clinging to mucus membranes and coalescing to burning acid inside bodies. I raised my weapon and emptied the clip, spraying bullets at the choking quartet. Eyes streaming with tears, the first reaches blindly for me as I shatter his hyoid with a punch, pushing his soon to be corpse to the side into his fellow.

The man stumbled and dropped his friend, just in time to catch half a magazine up his torso, leaving messy exit wounds on his clothing as he pitched backwards lifelessly. Swapping to my pistol, I draw a bead through the greenish haze. A fist is stopped nearly three inches from my head as I raise an arm to block the swing. One of them was surprisingly more resilient than first appeared, his friend the opposite as he lay dead on the ground, lips foaming as the life left him.

"Bigger than your friends. Bigger than the average size in this environment." He fakes a haymaker and elbows me in the gut, my chemical rig bending dangreously as he follows up with a heavy body blow. My mask hisses as the air is forced from my lungs, but I have endured far worse. Catching his next blow in my hand, I squeeze and twist into the crook of his elbow. Taking advantage of the momentary shift of his gravity, a well placed stomp to his instep brings him to his knees, swearing. I smash the butt of my Heavy Pistol into the base of his skull, knocking him unconscious.

The thug wakes up, eyes swiveling and scanning the darkened sky for any hint of salvation. Instead, he was met with the sight of a damp trail in the sand, landing at an empty can of fuel in the dirt near my feet. I had chained him to the hood of his truck, parking the other one right against it as well. "Now...we shall see if your miserable little band of rabble accosts me again." I point to the flattest surface of rock wall nearest to the truck. There is a green marking that is the closest I could get to my gas's formula on the wall. I do enjoy theatrics from time to time, but only as a tool. These savages would only respect strength.

"Now...I leave you with your choice of punishments." I produce a magnesium light from the now much fuller cargo box of my vehicle, light it, and drop it on the damp trail. It sparks violently, a licking flame beginning to travel towards what the marauder must realize is an accelerant soaked vehicle. Next comes my final trap, landing next to him and beginning to inflate. "My gas is corrosive to even metal. Which means....if my calculations are correct....you will be able to free yourself from those chains before the flame reaches you. However...." I allow myself the satisfaction of getting on the quad before finishing. "Whether or not your lungs will allow you to speak afterwords depends on your...hearty constitution."

The thug's screams and choking coughs fade into the night behind me under a spray of sand from the rear wheels.

 

[Mad Maggie]

Time: doesn't matter
Location: who knows
Continuation of scientific logs: useless

I stare up at the blazing sun, reconsidering my decision to continue on with a broken conveyance. The ATV couldn't keep up the pace for more than 30 seconds, and i'd made it just far enough into the desert to die. During my encounter with the bandits, it seemed stray gunfire hit my supplies, and my precious water had been leaking out of the case for the last portion of my journey.

Wasted on the thirsty sand of the desert, I goaded the struggling ATV forward with no clear purpose, finally allowing it to stutter to a halt and die. Leaning backwards, I look up at the sky and blink at the point of light descending from orbit. A care package? There could not be enough luck in the world. As it grew larger, the light split into three greenish plasma streams descending less than forty meters away from me.

Raising a hand to shield my face from the whipping winds of the vessel (for it was clearly some sort of boxy vessel) as it landed. Starting the motor of my vehicle, I watched the dark metals of the ship unfold to reveal....a garishly decorated square building. Red, orange, and green lettering spelled out " 7¹¹: Interplanetary Convienience/Conveyance".

Parking, I pushed open the doors to the new establishment. Already, I could hear the sounds of motors in the distance, coming to investigate. Perhaps this shop's visits were a regular occurrence.

A woman dressed in red blew a pink bubble as I stagger to the back and throw open a standing cooler. Draining the bottle in two swallows, I tuck the empty plastic under my arm before filling a red plastic basket with more bottles of water, preserved meat, energy bars, and other easily transportable rations. Bending over in front of a shelf, I grab a turquoise can and inspect it. Beans.

"Carbohydrates..hhkkk, koff." I bring my purchases up to the girl at the counter and she begins to ring them up. "Do you accept Mesan dinar?" I ask plainly. She nods and holds out her hand for the payment, which I place directly onto the counter and slide across to her.

"Transit's in half an hour, if you want to buy passage to somewhere else." She says in a bored tone of voice. She obviously had to offer every customer for some corporate nonsense. I looked at the board behind her head, marking the travel times to other worlds in the system.

Did Mesa Roja hold any particular interest for me? Baking in a desert while desperately trying to scrape together enough coin to establish a lab? Uruk seemed farther and farther away, and truth be told I did not relish a society that lacked the capacity for widespread central air conditioning.

Another world, then. But where?