The Trash King, Omendy and Me Pt 1
Here I am, rolling through Stret West Bank; my Chilled Metaplast Helmet next to me on the seat of my Kodiak. That’s the seat that Omendy used to ride in...you know, before that "thing" happened. Now the only thing it holds is my scratched up helmet with the frayed chin strap, and the occasional (allright, frequent) case of cold beer. The windows are down, and I'm passing all the people standing at mission terminals, where the powers that be tell us what we can have the pleasure of doing for them. I see new people everywhere; it seems that Rubi-Ka is being overrun with them lately, all trying to get a piece of that pie. Ever since the city in the sky was discovered (how the hell did we miss it all that time anyway?), people are comming from all over, and settling here. Some die, some don't...most will at some point in the timeline.
I can smell the cooking Bronto Burgers comming through my open window as I stop for a moment to let a parrot and a Leet cross in front of me. The smell is intoxicating, reminding me I haven't eaten since I wandered out to the Wartorn Valley yesterday to fix a radar display for some company that was paying right and paying right away. It takes creds to keep gas in the beast, ya know?
I'm about pull in next to the Reet Retreat; Bronto Burgers and cold Plumbo on my mind when I see her. She's dressed in red leather. "Just like Omendy wore", the voice whispers to me; that voice which haunts my dreams. She's climbing into a Yalm, a dark purple one. "Omendy had a purple one", the voice says. "Shut up", I tell it. Not even realizing I’m speaking out-loud. A young looking Doctor walks past my door on the way into the Retreat giving me a strange look. I don't even notice. The door on the Yalm shuts, and all I catch is a glimpse of the raven black hair before it closes. "Omendy had..", I mentally choke the voice off, quick fast and in a hurry. "SHES BEEN DEAD FOR THREE YEARS", I scream. The voice silences itself, but the damage is done because I feel the memories comming.
It's the truth about her being dead. She went down inside the Temple of the Three Winds and never came back of her own power. I was busy fetching some piece of trash for the Omni Bastards. I had told her not to go there alone, she wasn't strong enough yet. I think she took it as an insult, because before she picked up her sniper rifle she could do anything without hesitation; but the role of Agent was a new one to her repitior. The story I heard from the Soldier in her party that had made it out alive (albiet barely) was that she sent everyone to run while she picked things off and tried to get them to ignore the others who were bloody and moving like hell for the entrance.
She had done her job, and stood her ground like her training taught her. The rest were eaten alive as they ran from the Inner Sanctum to the exit, the soldier made it by a hair and a breath; and I thank him to this day for living to tell me the tale.
She might have died with honor, but honor couldn't save me from the dreams. It didn't stop the drinking, and not even the drinking could quiet the voice. It was my conscious, because I both blamed myself and hated her. I hated her for dying, for sticking to that damn code. She should have run, she was a good runner. She could have beat them all out, let someone else die. But that wasn't her style, and I knew it. Even as I knew it, I hated her for it; although it was why I loved her in the first place. She stuck to her guns, and never backed down, no matter what the odds.
I blamed myself for not being there with her, to not lend my pistols to her aid; I could have saved her, but we needed money. So I went to work for the day. I knew I shouldn't have, I knew I should have taken her out there. She had been begging for weeks. "Not yet hunny, maybe in a few more months", I would tell her, and she would always scowl at me. So in the end she went anyway, just to prove me wrong.
I sat there, in that parking lot, watching the Yalm go north out the gates. My head told me to forget about it, dark haired women in red leather were common nowadays. So were purple Yalms, like a Leets in the junkyard. "But are they Endon, no really...think about it, are all those things so commond?", the Voice pestering me again. The one that only started talking after I went into that horrible place and pulled her battered and destroyed body out. After I put a clip full of bullets into anything that moved and I had pulled the tiny corpses off her body so I could looked at her.
Reloading. She had been in the middle of reloading her X-3 on the cold hard stone floor when they overwhelmed her. Her faceplate had broken out of the helmet she wore, exposing dead greenish blue eyes. I layed my fingers upon those eyes, closed them and shouldered her body for the long walk out. The voice spoke then, and it hadn’t shut up since.
...See Pt 2
