THE BUG EATERS

Heavy metal footsteps obliterated rocks and rubble as they tore a path through the desert wasteland. They belonged to a large bipedal mech, well over five meters tall, running at a brutal, destructive pace. Beneath a thick coat of grime were countless scratches and dents, showing that it had come out on top in no small number of serious firefights. Aside from the cosmetic ruin, it was still in peak working condition, and its hydraulic limbs surged with raw, mechanical power.

A trio of scavengers were almost crushed into a fine paste. The machine paid no attention to their presence, neither adjusting its path away from them nor aiming its weapons towards them. They were simply insignificant to a machine like this. Its journey kicked up a blinding wall of sand, forcing their eyes and mouths shut as they stumbled to an abrupt halt.

“What a fucking cunt,” Jazael wheezed. He was coughing and spluttering, his deeply lined face shriveling up like a sun-dried prune. “I swallowed so much fucking dust!”

“Whose mech was that?” asked Faina, her voice muffled behind fabric. She had been a lot faster than the other two in pulling her mask up and over her mouth and nose.

“DNA or KA, most likely,” Tulio said, running a hand through his dark hair in a futile attempt to brush away some of the grit. “They’ve both been pretty active in this area lately. Just small skirmishes so far, but I’m betting on something much bigger soon. Things are going to get nasty.”

Although she could tell from their voices that they were fine, Faina instinctively glanced over at her companions to confirm. Tulio was putting on his usual stoic act. His hawkish eyes were fixated on the silver-gray titan as it disappeared over the horizon. Jazael, by contrast, seemed quite agitated. He wasn’t coughing anymore, but his rage was still bubbling to the surface. Faina knew that it was healthiest to just sit back and let him express it.

“Who gives a flying fuck whose mech it was? They’re all the same brand of bastard,” he grouched. “They ride around like maniacs in these ridiculous killing machines without a second of thought to the destruction they cause. They’ve got no interest in the lives of ordinary people, let alone scavs. We might as well be insects!”

“Is that so?” Tulio feigned curiosity as he waited for Jazael to launch into the latest variation of an inevitable rant that he had already put his team through so very many times before.

“If any of these factions had good motivations at all then they wouldn’t just be wasting bullets on each other,” Jazael growled, kicking a lumpy stone across the sand, “they’d be making sure we had stable houses, clean water, and some decent fucking food. They’re totally lost, man, it’s all a game to them now. A vapid power struggle that’s never going to end! And they’ve been at this for how long? A fucking century?”

“Who do we even have? DNA, VMA, PLM? It’s nonsense! Fascists, mercenaries, and bureaucrat creeps. Fifty years ago we had a different lot of acronyms and it was no better. RNA, HRT, MRI, they all came and went. These clowns don’t grow or improve, they just pillage and ruin until they run out of bullets and someone else takes their place to do the same damn thing.”

“I’m pretty sure half of those were never real factions,” replied Tulio, raising an eyebrow.

“Point is, it doesn’t even matter!” Jazael waved a gloved hand dismissively. “Nobody can remember the name of every pack of armed goons who staked a claim here. It’s a waste of mental energy trying to keep track of their miserable little war because it’s never going to change in a way that matters for people like us. I’m not going to care about it and if you were being smart then you wouldn’t either! The only thing that should matter to us is staying alive and getting to Lamplight. Once we make enough to buy our way out of this hellhole of a country, I swear I’m never going to listen to another word about the war ever again.”

“I think the differences matter,” Tulio said. “The DNA’s kept the capital standing, at least, and it’s good to know whether we’re at risk of rubbing up against a disciplined army or a guerilla one.”

“Well, we’re not fighting a fucking mech either way, are we? Whenever we see one, there are only two outcomes: it either kills us or it chooses not to. That’s getting lucky or it’s greasing its joints with whatever’s left of you, and the bastard hiding in his air-conditioned cockpit doesn’t give a fuck either way.”

“Okay, old man, that’s enough,” Faina cut in, sighing a laugh. “I know they’re all rotten, I was just curious. You really don’t have to get so riled up about it all of the time. You’re getting out of breath.”

“Alright, alright, I was done already. I’m done! They just piss me off, you know? The bastard almost flattened us! That, and I think I’m just sick of walking in this awful heat. It never used to get quite this hot back in the day, and there weren’t so many mechs either, there’s two things that have changed and both for the worse.”

“Well, we still have a lot of distance to cover,” said Tulio. “The best way to speed things up is to complain less and walk faster. Don’t waste energy on idle rants. Sure, it sucks out here, now practice what you preach and focus on the job.”

“Yeah, yeah. Mind on the money,” grumbled Jazael.

“We’ve been doing well recently,” Faina offered, trying to lighten the mood. “I think we really came into our own.”

“We’re effective,” Tulio said. “My last group, not bad guys, but they would want to turn back home as soon as they scrounged up enough scrap metal to buy a bottle or two of vodka. Sometimes I’d be the only one who wasn’t hungover when we went out again. This has been great, even if I have to listen to the mad ravings of an old fossil.”

“The mad ravings of an old friend, you mean,” Jazael said, clutching his chest as he feigned offense.

“Of course.”

“I think the most important part of a good team is that they have shared goals. I’m a wise and sagely influence, I know, but what matters even more is that we all want the same thing, to get the hell out of here.”

“Wise and sagely, huh?” Faina said.

Jazael only nodded, a crooked smile on his face. He adjusted his cap to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. The faded ink on his hands, stretched out and bled over decades, looked almost like black bruises on his weathered skin.

“What do the tattoos on your hand say? I don’t remember if I ever asked about them before,” Faina mused.

“Oh, these?” Jazael took a second to look at them. “89 and 92, they’re the years my parents were born. They’re supposed to be, well, ‘stylized’, but they just look kind of fucked up now.”

“The 20th Century? That’s such a long time ago. I can’t even begin to imagine what life here was like back then.”

“Fewer ruins, I’m sure, but they too lived their entire lives in wartime. There were a lot of desert towns that held out all the way until that, ah, that weird lab explosion. We felt it, you know? The vibrations in the ground. It was a scary day to be a kid.”

“I find it really strange that nobody seems to know much about what they were actually doing there, even in Lamplight.”

“There was no real investigation. Most people just wanted to get the hell away from whatever happened, stay ahead of the fallout, and it was far from being anybody’s only concern. Even today, as the buildings fall apart, that whole area is just as dangerous.”

“Time buries everything, I suppose.”

Lamplight was a small town in the shadow of a very large mountain range. It was founded just over two hundred years ago as a mining village, but spent the last hundred as a home for mercenaries, criminals, scavengers, and the occasional refugee caravan. It was lawless, seedy, and one of the only settlements in Daybreak to have generally remained outside of the control of any of the major factions without getting completely flattened. There was nowhere else quite like it in the world.

For a few hours, they trudged over a great expanse of dull, colorless hills. They were all wearing thick military surplus boots but were still keenly aware of the damage being done to them by the miles of stoney sand. It always drained them of their energy and enthusiasm surprisingly fast. Faina imagined herself trudging through an ocean of television static, a ghost image on gray canvas. Rest couldn’t come soon enough.

The weathered cliffs in the distance were probably breathtaking tourist attractions at some point in the distant past, but in this era of war, it was only possible to see them as oppressive. Their rocky outcroppings were jagged, rippling chaotically in the monochrome sky like thousands of improvised knives. It was almost as though they were placed there as a warning. Keep out of the desert, said the mountains, or you’ll get what’s coming to you. Some of the rocks on the hills had similarly violent shapes.

This area was called Smoke Desert because of the numerous coal seams that lay just beneath the ground. These seams were so close to the surface that the constant fighting would often ignite them, resulting in thick clouds of smoke. The wind on this day had been kind to the trio, and they had lengthened their walk somewhat by avoiding known fire hotspots, but that didn’t make them safe. The air here was never good enough that it wasn’t slowly killing anyone who breathed it in.

“Finally! I was starting to think we’d just be walking forever. It’s like the desert gets bigger every time,” groaned Jazael as iron roofs and dull yellow lights started to come into view.

“Let’s get to Crumb’s right away. I need to get this weight off my back or else I’m going to collapse,” said Faina, adjusting the strap of the haul bag on her back.

All three of them were looking forward to selling their loot and getting some rest. They weren’t expecting huge profits or long downtime, but they were getting very welcome respite nonetheless. Lamplight was their oasis in this desert. Whatever small luxuries it could provide to them always felt amazing after a walk of any length through the desolation that surrounded it.