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lilulicious · 2 months ago

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Chapter 2: The Future is Now

THEN:

Slate: UC SYSDEF/AEGIS UNSUB #54387XYEE455

Aegis Agent [REDACTED]: "Tell me again where you came from?"

Unsub: "I told you already. Five times. What I'm really supposed to tell you, by the book, is my name, rank and serial number. But from what I'm seeing, all bets are off here and no one is coming for me, so there's no point in playing around anymore. I will tell you this: I am a US Army Sergeant assigned to 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta. I was in a chopper with a Ranger detachment, we were going to meet up with another G Squad Delta at Naval Base Kitsap when we.... I don't know... we hit some sort of electrical storm and turbulence. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before, like a tunnel of electricity, sound, bright light, almost like... a wormhole but not like what I'd seen in the sci fi movies. And a sound like screaming, I can't even describe it."

Aegis Agent [REDACTED]: "Uh-huh."

Unsub: "*snort* Yeah, fine. Well, anyway... The helo lost power and we went down into some sort of bog. I thought maybe we'd gotten off course in the confusion and crashed into Lilliwaup Swamp over by Lake Cushman. It wasn't until you all showed up that I realized you weren't the Army or Navy or even the goddamned Coast Guard coming to rescue us. And then I realized there wasn't even an 'us'. It was just me, and part of the wreckage. You still haven't told me if there are more survivors. Are there? Did anyone else come out of that swamp?"

Aegis Agent [REDACTED]: "I don't have that information and even if I did, it would be classified."

Unsub: "Of course it would, you're a good little spook, aren't you? Well, that's all there is, you know the rest because your people have been here the rest of the way. You've had me locked up in this cozy little holding cell for like... forever it feels like. Judging by the meals and lights out, what, 3 or 4 days? I appreciate 3 hots and a cot as much as the next girl, but isn't there some sort of due process in this place. Who are you people anyways? What is the UC? Are you Americans? What is this place? Can I call an attorney? Don't I have Constitutional rights here?"

Aegis Agent [REDACTED]: "US Army. So you're implying you're from the United States. As in Earth. The same Earth that has been uninhabitable since 2203."

Unsub: "Uninhab...What the fuck? What are you talking about? What do you mean uninhabitable SINCE 2203? What fucking year are you going to try to tell me it is now? Oh, I can't wait to hear this."

Aegis Agent [REDACTED]: "It's 2330".

Unsub: "Fuck you, man. Let me out of here. You're full of shit. I don't want to be hearing this. No way. No. When I left home, it was 2025. 20-fucking-25. So, what, I'm 334 years old now? Am I under arrest or am I free to go or what the fuck happens now? LET. ME. OUT!!"

NOW:

So, it was day 3 working for Argos Extractors on Vectera, but Lilu felt a bit of anticipation. Lin said a special contract was on the menu today, a rare mineral for a collector who would be flying in to pick it up later. And, more encouragingly, Lin thought that she, Lilu, would be perfect to try out something a little more specialized. Lin, being a veteran herself of this Colony War that Lilu knew so little of, had been entrusted with some of Lilu's UC-classified history as a condition of this secret, time-traveling Earthling being placed with Argos, and perhaps she could see not only the potential in her new miner, or "dusty" as they were called as a colloquialism, but knew that if she couldn't keep Lilu engaged, it wouldn't take long for trouble to start brewing. Lilu liked Lin. She was no-nonsense and easy with which to relate. And she appreciated someone who finally seemed to be in her corner. Yeah, yeah, she knew never to really trust anyone she was assigned to by total strangers because who knew their motivations, but she had a good feeling that Lin was not the duplicitous sort.

And so it was, as they travelled down the elevator into the mine, her, Lin, and that wiseacre Heller, she pondered this change in fortune. Or was it a change in attitude? Acquiescence? Look, she had realized several weeks ago there was no going back. Moving forward and making a new life was the only thing to do. Maybe some military operation somewhere could find a use for her eventually, or maybe there could be use for a merc, but she'd have to work her way loose from under the UC's watchful eye. Her "freedom" to work with Argos was conditional upon Lin's custody, as it were, and it was subject to reports back on her progress and whereabouts.

Lilu was clearly no longer considered to be a serious danger to the "Settled Systems" as they were called, but the UC still was either a) not completely sure about her yet or b) the most likely scenario, they thought maybe she could be useful at some later juncture. Apparently, historic US government and military archives, being computerized, had been saved but needed to be decoded. The UC was eventually able to verify not only her story about her mission, but the DNA records that the US military started keeping back in 1991 to identify remains was also able to identify her. The nature of the work she did for the US government and military, however, seemed to make them nervous.

In any event, she wasn't completely free to roam the galaxy. And she wasn't knowledgeable enough about it, other than learning it was not some far flung galaxy far far away, like that famous space movie with the Princess and the Scoundrel, but instead, it was humanity's old friend the Milky Way. Nevertheless, she was no astronomer to try to escape and hide somewhere. Because other than Jemison, and the now dead Earth, Vectera was the only other planet she had been on in her life.

Lilu was instructed by Lin to grab a cutter, and she snapped out of her reverie. Lin said she should mine what minerals she could whilst they waited for Heller and another "dusty" (really, folks thought of the most reductive nicknames for people who did the grunt work that powered the world, Lilu thought) to use the big continuous miner machine to chew through the rock into the chamber that they were after. Lin's scanner and gravity readings suggested the contract rare minerals were located somewhere inside that chamber, so boring a hole into it was priority one. The other dusties were hard at work trying to squeeze what bits of "shine" they could from that mine, but it was clear there wasn't much left and whatever real money was in that operation, or at least in that almost tapped-out vein, was going to be in that special contract.

Suddenly, Lilu's comms buzzed in her spacesuit helmet. Wow, spacesuit helmet. Still hard to wrap her head around the fact that she was on a planet with no breathable atmosphere, that she was wearing a SPACESUIT, and once outside the base habs, one slip up and it might be all over.

Lin's voice crackled through her doomsday musing: "Get up here, we're ready."

As quickly as Lilu could move sheathed in several layers of insulation and what felt like aluminum foil, she worked her way up to where Lin and Heller were standing past the continuous miner machine. The giant, rotating drum covered with great, angry teeth had bored through the rock and broken through to what looked like an endlessly black void. She could see Heller's face through the visor of his face mask. He was looking at the readouts on his scanner and frowning.

"Lin," he said, "there's something seriously effed up about this."

Lin glared at him and then turned to Lilu and said, "Ok, dusty, you're up, it's right through there," and she gestured across a dark land bridge across and even darker and more terrifying chasm that plummeted to unseen depths. The land bridge led to a smaller cave opening that probably housed carnivorous alien creatures that would likely tear Lilu limb from limb. Great, she thought. Just fucking great. Survive a chopper crash to be eaten alive. "If anything goes wrong," continued Lin, but Heller jumped in.

"What could go wrong?" he asked.

"Just shut up, both of you!" Lin was annoyed but looked a bit anxious, which did nothing to calm Lilu's nerves. "Client is on his way, just do your damned jobs."

Lilu took a deep breath, turned on her flashlight, and started across the bridge to the narrow opening. As she entered the cave, she could see a glowing blue light ahead. It wasn't terribly unlike the one that surrounded the electrical storm and the weird portal that took the chopper that night, but there was a weird, harmonic, musical tone coming from the direction of the glow. That certainly hadn't happened during the chopper crash. And there were rocks floating in the air as if no gravity existed in the cave, but she wasn't floating. This was the strangest thing, ok maybe the second strangest thing, she'd ever seen.

In the middle of the cave was a pillar of rock covered in a crystalline material, and underneath she could make out something silver and forged into some sort of shape. She pulled out her cutter and started carving at the crystallized rock on top of the object, and it popped and sizzled away until the strange, curved item was laid bare. It had some faint etchings on it. It looked as if it could be just pulled free. Lilu reached out her hand to grab it. Lights and music overwhelmed her. It was the last thing she remembered.

When she woke up, she was in the medical bay in the Argos Extractors base, with Lin and Heller looking down at her. Apparently, they found her passed out with this piece of metal clutched in her hand. She was... smiling, inexplicably. She told them that she heard music, saw lights, visions, a man she didn't know but felt like she knew, if she was religious she would have sworn it looked like Jesus, and she laughed. But they stared at her and she realized they probably didn't know who Jesus was in this new society, she certainly never saw any crosses in New Atlantis. Lin sat her up and made sure she was ok, gave her a juice pack. She felt like a school kid being looked after by her mother again. And then Lin got a buzz on the comms that the contract buyer was on their way to Vectera.

"Our Constellation buyer is on his way," she announced. Heller scoffed.

"Constellation? The explorers?! I didn't know they were around anymore."

Lilu had zero idea what Constellation was, but she wanted answers about this... thing... she plucked out of the rock. Maybe this buyer could help tell her what was going on here. There was a tiny but nagging sense... or was it a sort of pull... that either this object or something about the experience was related to how she had gotten to this space and time, but she had no idea what it was yet. The more she could learn, the better. So, she put her helmet back on and followed Lin and Heller outside the mining hab into the sunlight. A ship was landing and Heller was again poking fun at this Constellation group because of the supposed dilapidated state of the vehicle. She didn't know ship from Shinola. Did this bode well?

A man in a red, white, and blue spacesuit emerged from the craft, which she would later learn was named the Frontier, followed by a large, bipedal robot. The man, handsome, older, and Black, had his name on his suit breastplate: Barrett. The robot was Vasco. Lilu knew her history: Vasco de Gama, the Portuguese explorer. Constellation was an explorers group, the humor was not lost on her. Her attention turned back to the conversation that was unfolding around her. Immediately, Barrett had greeted Lin with a warmth that was not returned in kind. There was clearly some unpleasant history between those two. It didn't seem romantic, and Lin really seemed like a straight shooter. Maybe this Barrett fellow bore watching, smooth and good-looking though he may be. It was always that kind of guy, wasn't it?

"The new girl found it," said Lin, gesturing toward Lilu, "and no, Barrett, not cool, she passed out, woke up saying all sorts of crazy stuff."

"Is that right? Went on a trip, huh?" said Barrett.

Lilu felt intensely uncomfortable. How would he know about that? What else does this guy know? Could he identify what or who she saw in the visions? Still, best to play things close to the vest for now. "Yeah, you could call it that," she said, tightly.

Barrett laughed. "That fun, huh? Not the best..." But he was cut off as the robot, Vasco, said, "Barrett, there's a ship coming in hot from orbit".

"Damn, I really thought I had lost them," said Barrett.

"Barrett..." said Lin. And then...

"Oh shit, that's the Crimson Fleet!" screamed Heller.

Lin yelled at her to grab a gun. Finally, something she absolutely knew how to do. Be a soldier. She ran up to a mining bin that held a semi-automatic pistol called an Eon, and some 7.77mm ballistic ammunition. How in the universe that, 300 years later, ballistics were still a thing was beyond her comprehension and vision for what she thought the future would be like, but she was deliriously grateful for it now. There was no learning curve to master. Chamber a round and shoot until the clip is empty, reload, and go again. She sprinted towards the pirates' ship and crouched behind a metal barrier, waiting for them to tumble out of the ship's hatch.

It didn't take long. The poor miners, most of them were armed with only cutters against pirates who, typical to most outlaws, couldn't shoot for shit, but were still armed with what looked like submachine guns. The miners bore the brunt of it but Lilu breathed steady, sighted in, and started picking off pirates one by one. She could see Lin out of her peripheral vision, doing the same. The woman was a warrior, no doubt about it. Lilu could see some of the miners had obviously been killed, others had been wounded and crawled away to safety, and yet others had run to hide. Who could blame them? They weren't trained soldiers, they weren't paid to fight, and they were hoping for the best from their colleagues who were fighting for them.

A burst of pain and blood exploded out of her left shoulder and she realized one of those goddamned pirates had come up and tried to plant an axe in it. It was a glancing blow but it was still incredibly agonizing. Lilu swung her pistol around and ended the pirate, and shot two more before she realized that was it. It was over. She fumbled in her hip bag for one of the med packs she had been given and injected it into her arm. Well, she thought, I guess the future has some perks, because as she watched, the bleeding in her shoulder slowed and it seemed as if everything was knitting from the inside out. She had thought a hole in her spacesuit would doom her, but apparently not this day. She would later learn that the spacesuits of the age were "self-healing", and the med packs themselves were so powerful that if you popped enough of them fast enough, you could bring yourself back from the brink of death and exsanguination. Medical miracles.

She went back to where she saw Lin and Barrett standing, towards the landing pad where the Frontier was sitting, undamaged and serene. The robot, Vasco, was still there, as well. Barrett praised her.

"Now that was some fine work under pressure," he said. "You're coming with me to Constellation, you're a part of this now."

Before Lilu could protest, Lin spoke up. "Oh no, Barrett, no, you don't think you can just leave after all the mess you made."

Barrett considered this and said, "Oh yeah, right, I guess I did put you on the Crimson Fleet's hit list. How about I stay and I send your dusty here in my place? I know, I know, but she's not just some miner anymore, Lin."

Lilu felt her heart skip a beat. Was this her ticket out of here and out from under the UC's custody? Or at least a step towards that eventuality? If so, she'd gladly take it. But she felt a pang of guilt, too. Lin had been really good to her in the brief time she had been there. It felt faithless to just desert her and Heller and what was left of the others like that.

"Fine," said Lin. She turned to Lilu. "Get out of here, dusty, you're on to bigger things."

Lilu swallowed hard. "Are you sure? I mean, what about the mine, won't you need me still?"

Lin said, "Are you kidding? Our job here is over, we have to pack up and evacuate before more pirates come. But..." and here Lin lowered her voice and spoke in an aside to Lilu, "I am going to have to let UC SysDef know where you'll be, it's still in their territory, you understand. They'll probably contact whoever is in charge of Constellation to let them know, too."

Lilu said, a little disappointed but understanding, like soldiers do, about the requirement of doing ones duty: "Of course. I understand. Thanks for everything, Lin. I mean it."

"Get out of here, dusty, before I say something I'll regret," replied Lin, but Lilu could see the warmth in the older woman's eyes. Lin didn't know Lilu that long to put her reputation on the line to vouch for her by letting her off her leash unreported, but Lin was still good people.

"Now that's settled," Barrett said, "Take this, you'll find it extremely useful." He handed Lilu what looked to be a watch, which she strapped to her wrist over her spacesuit. "Heyyyy, would you look at that, it fits you perfectly. And it even tells the time." He turned towards the robot.

"Vasco, get her to the Lodge, Protocol Indigo. And Vasco! Don't let her break my ship!" yelled Barrett as he took off with Lin towards the mining buildings.

Lilu turned and ran towards the Frontier. Looks like she was about to be a starship Captain. At least, with the help of Vasco. But she was going BACK to Jemison, and New Atlantis, the place she'd just gotten out of less than a week ago. But this time, it wasn't to a glorified holding cell meant to look like quarters. It was to a place called the Lodge, to join Constellation. She hoped they had good coffee. No one in the future so far seemed to be able to make any that was acceptable. Lilu took one last look back towards Lin, Barrett, Heller, and the Argos Extractor base. And then she climbed the ladder and passed through the Frontier's hatch.

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Chapter 2 Song:

"I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world, I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog, and my home. Yeah, I'll miss the boredom and the freedom and the time spent alone. But there's really nothing, nothing we can do, love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew."

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NOTE: Apologies that this segment was so long. I wanted to get off Vectera but I wanted to add some more worldbuilding. Rather than break into a third chapter, I opted to make everyone suffer instead (lol?). I'll try to pace these a little better in the future. This is my very first time writing fanfic and I can get wordy. Also, TIL there are two hashtags in use for Sam Coe/Starfield fanfic writers, I will use them here even though I have not gotten to Sam yet. But we're gonna get there hopefully by Chapter 4, no later than Chapter 5. Thanks for your patience if that's what you're hoping to read!

#roleplay #starfield #fanfic #sam coe #coemancer #the coemancer crew #bethesda #romance #video games #Spotify #female protagonist #starfield fanfiction #video game #fan fiction #women writers

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