SWN Cameos

IN GAME:  MULTIPLE		REALITY:  9-26-2016
CHAPTER III

3-16-2659 CE
	Heather crouched down behind the smoldering couch, clutching her plasma rifle.  Waves of heat rippled off the end of the gun, and her skin glistened with sweat.  She was a bit chubby, even after the grueling terror of these past five months.  She could hear the revolutionaries marching past.
	"H-Heather," a weak voice came from behind her.
	"Shh!" she hisses back.  Stress and fear, like usual, creeped into her tone.  She can't help it.  All the kids, and he was the last one left.  Her thoughts briefly dwelled on happier days.  She hadn't followed politics.  Why care?  The Terran Mandate was countless light-years away, and she was doing good work on these peripheral frontier worlds where they didn't have access to things like gene fixing, or even sometimes for good medical care.  She was the caretaker of a dozen disabled kids.  She loved each and every one of them, and one by one their parents came to take them away when the riots started, and then the bombings, and then the revolution in the streets.  But Clyde didn't have any parents, and Heather loved him all the more fiercely because of it, because he was hers and hers alone.
	The news called people like Heather counter-revolutionaries.  Heather just called herself a survivor.
	The enemy eventually past, and Heather whirled around and crept behind the half-ruined wall where she'd put Clyde's wheelchair.  He'd been the oldest when the care center was still around, on account of the lack of parents or anywhere else to go.  He hadn't been very sociable until Heather came along, always tap-tap-tapping away on his computer, engrossed in and enamored by a world far larger than he could ever reach, and he dreamed of the stars above and inner systems where he could be fixed and walk and run like everybody else.  But he was on a frontier world, far away, where people still drove ground cars and used manufactories, instead of hovercraft and psitech.
	She pushed the wheelchair through the rubble.  Clyde held on.  They had to move on to a different part of the city; this one was overrun.

4-12-2665 CE
	The years slid by, and the unrest just grew and grew.  And then, things started to go ...wrong.  The revolutionaries had broken down into countless fractal groups of wildly differing ideologies.  There wasn't enough left of the government to take advantage of that.  People were seen acting like wild animals, losing their words, turning feral, turning to cannibalism.  Everyone became harder, gained a sharp, cynical edge.  There was no central government, and hardly any organized settlements even.  The rare and precious interstellar news that came through indicated this place, and other nearby frontier worlds, were the hardest hit.  But the entire Terran Mandate was in disarray.  Why?  What was happening?  Heather almost didn't care anymore.  She was a wraith on the ruined city streets, skipping between flickering shadows cast by hungry fires.  She was gaunt now, and fondly remembered the days of plenty when she had fat to spare.  But she scavenged through that ruined city, and gave the best of what she had to Clyde, and Clyde helped her break into the sealed vaults and security systems of a bygone age.
	They made a hell of a team.  Would've been better if Clyde could walk, but beggars can't be choosers.
	Heather always made sure to trade with the nearby Celestial Bank Settlement, settled in the abandoned building of its namesake.  The people she and Clyde spoke to there kept them sane.  You had to have a measure of civilization to balance it out.
	And, occasionally, during her nighttime travels, she would see the Observer.  This was one such night.
	She was watching two hungry men--more animal, now--crouching over a fire.  They were feasting on a third.  Heather had a gun on her hip, but only three bullets left.  She had a machete she retrieved ages past from a hardware store, but that was far riskier.  On the other side of the barbarians was a grocery store.  The exterior had been looted, but deep inside the storeroom was locked by computer controls.  Most things would be spoiled by now, but if Clyde could break in, they could feast like kings on canned goods.  But she had to do it tonight, because the Boschki Clan moved through here tomorrow at dawn, and would break in by force, and take everything like a swarm of locusts.
	As she weighed her odds, carefully balancing that familiar equation of survival, she saw the Observer once again.  He wore a bowler hat and a bowtie, like always, and, like always, looked so out of place in this city of liars and survivors.  They were far enough away from the feral men to not be noticed.  Curiouser and curiouser, Heather suddenly thought, dialogue from a pre-war world coming unbidden to her mind.
	"Heather," he said, approaching her and tipping his hat.  Heather recoiled, suddenly afraid at this bizarre change of behavior.  The Observer had never interacted with her before.  Or anything.  He observed.  Heather wasn't even sure if he was anything other than a bizarre hallucination.  She didn't want insanity to encroach upon her senses.  What would happen to Clyde?
	"As I'm sure you're aware, I've been watching you for some time.  I was sent to this region to find any salvageable survivors.  Anyone who's resisted the induced madness for this long has great value to us."
	Heather watched and waited.
	"Wouldn't it be nice to not live on the line between life and death any more, Heather?  I'd like to make you an offer.  You can even take along that kid of yours."

6-30-3157 CE
	Heather woke with a jolt from a centuries-long cold sleep.  Fatigue clung to her limbs like she'd been awake for all these past years.  But she's alive, they promised her that much.  They promised her eternal life, for as long as she wanted.  She just felt so foggy right now...
	She barely managed to lift her head and sees Clyde awakening next to her.  That's enough for the moment, and she collapsed and let the doctors come in and take care of the rest.
	Some hours later, she was brought to a meeting-room.  She felt a little better, but only barely.  Both her and Clyde were put in wheelchairs.  He smiled at her with grim humour, and the joke between them was comfortable, like home.  Things are going to be okay.  In the meeting-room, the Observer waited for them, in a different kind of suit.  It had a small triangle path on the left shoulder, a tan pyramid-and-eye set on a green band set on a black military uniform.
	"Welcome back to life, Heather.  This cell has been inactive for almost 500 years, but is now being reactivated by central command due to the rise of interstellar nations in the region.  Out of the list of potential agents, you and Clyde have been selected for your skills and your ability to cooperate as a team.  You've already been told about the Scream.  Well, this sector contains a central Empire that controls two systems, Alpha and Beta Draconis," he said, pulling down a map of the region.  "Its primary opponents are Astral Alacrity and Gate.  There are numerous other minor system, but we can get into the specifics of that later.  Our primary objective is to gather information and influence in the Draconis sector in preparation for the return of centralized administration.  To this end, your first mission is to travel to Beta Draconis.  Heather, your name has, regrettably, become unfashionable, which is paramount at this location.  You'll need to choose a new one.  Clyde, we have an alternative solution for you..."

12-11-3199 CE
	Bonnie looked at the familiar machine hulk next to her, and nodded.  Clyde shot her a text via her HUD.  [Lux Eterna, huh?  You excited?]  She looks at him and nods, feeling that familiar rush before the new mission.  She'd not aged a day since she awoke from that cryochamber, and Clyde's brain, safely ensconced in the machine, was just as lively.  He was promised a quantum core and an Eidelon hull after 50 years of service.  They were so close!  Only 8 more years to go, and then retirement.  They'd already picked out the resort on Beta-D, a perfect island home.  The Observer would keep them on call for further missions if needed, but finally, Bonnie would be able to embrace Clyde again.  Theirs was a peculiar sort of love, now decades hold, and steady through trial and fire.  She didn't know how she'd feel when Clyde was (mostly) human again, but it was hard to wait.
	Bonnie strapped herself into the crash couch as the Frontier Panstellar vehicle descended, and flashed Clyde across the room a smile.


IN GAME:  9-22-3200		REALITY:  9-22-2016
CHAPTER II

A behemoth of a man wakes up.  Muscles ripple underneath his heavily scarred skin.  Blue and black tattooed meander across his back and arms.  He coughs, hacks up a glob of phlegm, and spits it into a crumpled water bottle nearby.  Groaning, he pushes himself to a sitting position.  He rubs his crusty eyes and tries to will away the dull, throbbing pain behind his eyes.  He grabs a steel flask on the bedside table and takes a swig before pulling himself to his feet and wading through the piles of beer bottles, empty chip bags, heroin needles, and a vast assortment of other implements for general debauchery.  The two women on the bed stir softly as he gets up.  The digital clock on the bedside table says 15:33.

An hour later, the man is extremely late for a 4 o'clock appointment with his agent.  He's wearing khaki shorts, a Hawaiian t-shirt, dark sunglasses, and a pained grimace.  His agent is wearing a suit.

"Good God Benjamin, where have you been!?  I've been waiting half an hour for you.  Do you know how close to the edge your career is?  I've got 12 lawyers chowing down on my ass, I've got the director for that stupid TV show says you were a no-show for the session last night, I've got a this reporter that wants to interview you tonight and I've left a dozen phone calls on your phone, what, something something ramble blather," his agent went on.  Maximum Fatality stops listening to him after a while and stares into space while sipping his drink.  It'll pass soon enough.  This life, day by day, is like water running through his fingers, like all these years on Beta Draconis were but a particularly surreal dream.  Like that one painter, yeah, Salvadore Dali.  Maximum Fatality knows a lot about painters.  It's not something very many people know about him.

His thoughts wander further out, and briefly, he's back on that spaceship on that fateful day...

"Are you even listening to me!?  Hey!  Hey!  Benjamin!" His agent is snapping his fingers in Maximum Fatality's face.  Briefly, the ex-Murderball champion considers grabbing his agent's hand and breaking every bone in an iron grip, but instead he sighs and takes off his sunglasses, rubbing bloodshot eyes and fixing his weary gaze on the man across the table.

Later that night, he stumbles his way through an interview while moderately buzzed.  He probably makes an embarrassment of himself but he gets fucked up that night with his friends, like last night, and like the night before that, and like every night; he doesn't even remember any more.  But just before dawn, when everyone is asleep again, he wakes up.  Most of the drugs have already made there way through his system.  He disentangles himself from the usual pile of limbs, and, naked, he makes his way to the roof of his penthouse.  The stars are fading and the second moon is setting.  On one end of the horizon, the rich blue-black darkness is bleached to light azure shades.  In a few minutes, the flat grey cirrus wisps bleed scarlet red.

Maximum Fatality looks at the other end of the sky to the last few fading stars.  He remembers then, remembers the desperate flight of the escape pod and his smoldering anger against Admiral Guinevere.  He clutches a bracelet with string old and frayed, from which hangs five wooden charms: one of an oak leaf, one of an elm leaf, one of a maple leaf, one of a hickory leaf, and one of a sword.

This world is like water to him.  It means so little.  He belongs to the stars, and when the time is right, he will go back.

He was a bandit, once.

He was a Prince.

He looks at the last few fading stars.  Soon, he will return.


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IN GAME:  9-12-3200		REALITY:  8-5-2016
CHAPTER I

	The president was gone.  With shaky hands, she reached towards her pocket for cigarettes, only to remember for the hundredth time that day that she quit years ago.
	Three hours before, she'd been given an apology and a slip of paper that told her her husband was killed.  He was in Rio, wasn't even near the fighting or the orbital bombardment, just doing some sort of aid thing at an ad hoc hospital.  He was going to call her about it that evening.  A truck backed into him.  When she first read it, she wanted to reach through time and space and grab him by the bones and say "You IDIOT!  There's a war going on!  You can't die like that!"  Then the magnitude of what had happened began to sink in.
	Her aides were very supportive.  They gave their condolences, she graciously accepted.  Someone called her, she wasn't sure who--maybe the Secretary of State?  Everything was starting to streak in gray and black at that point, when she tries to remember it.  Maybe she hung up, or dropped the phone.  She wasn't sure.
	Then she locked herself in a janitor's closet and sobbed into her arms for fifteen minutes.
	Her aides were very worried when she came out.  Someone gave her a glass of water.  It helped--briefly.  But then, just ten minutes ago, she'd been handed a warning and a slip of paper that told her that the president was captured.  Good God, she wanted to say, who cares?  My husband's dead.  My son is 200 kilometers above the surface of this planet, boarding Draconis warships in some of the most dangerous fighting yet seen in the war.  Some of those units were formed just a couple months ago and they already have three, four hundred percent fatality rates.  I pushed him into this!  There's a good war coming up with Alpha-D, I told him two years ago.  If there's a war, you have to be there; you won't get anywhere in politics by sitting in the sidelines.  Of course, she didn't say any of that.
	Christ.  Her son was going to die and it was going to be all her fault.
	Her aides are all around her now, fluttering.  She can barely focus.  They carefully apply the finishing touches of makeup for the cameras.  Your eyes are red, here's some eyedrops.  You've got bags under your eyes, we're putting down some foundation.
	She hadn't slept at all in the past 48 hours.  Christ.
	Someone hands her a slip of paper.  Some notes and half a speech.  Is that the best they can do?  She can barely read it, her hands are shaking so bad.  They usher her towards the stage and the dizzying array of reporters, microphones, and flashing camera lights.  Some of them looked like they expected her to break down on the stage, the brats.
	"And now, a moment with Vice President Charlotte Gladstone," some distant voice announced.  She walked onto the stage, shedding her burdens.  She was a pillar of solemnity, a bastion of strength and stability and solidarity.  She glanced at her speech one last time and discarded the paper.  Her hands are steady as a sharpshooter's.  Her voice rings loud and clear.

	Later, Charlotte watches herself on the television.  Damn, I looked good, she thinks to herself, fighting back the tears as she pours herself another drink.