The Hunt part2
Stefi, or more formally, Senior Tech, Enriched Food Imports, I-377-B-940-P-101, was involved in an accident on her way to work ….
Stefi woke, hurting all over, to a silence broken by the ticking of hot metal and the dripping of liquid. She was surrounded by what looked like a red pulp with partial limbs projecting from the mess. She pushed herself to her feet, feeling the warmth of mush beneath her hands. Her foot caught on something. She looked down on the face of P-338; there was no sign of the rest of her body.
As she worked her way towards the torn side of the shuttle, a tidal wave of the liquid fertiliser swept through the compartment, dragging Stefi out into the sunlight and a pool of processed excrement and blood that was collecting in the gouges in the earth.
She crawled out of the pool of filth, vomited and passed out.
*****
“Here! This one is still alive!” The voice of a man. The thought that the recovery party must have arrived caused Stefi to open her eyes. It was as much as she could do; every other muscle in her body hurt too much to move. Even breathing hurt. Now the bright light caused her to wince with pain.
“Turn the lights off, please,” She croaked. Stefi was relieved to hear her own voice, even if it was harsh and weak.
“Sorry, I can’t do that. It’s the sun you see.” The male voice sounded reassuring, competent even. He had to be one of the recovery team. The members of her food production unit would have been so far out of their competency set that they would have been panicking. “We will get you moved to somewhere out of the sun in just a moment. Can you waggle your fingertips?” It hurt like crazy, but Stefi managed to move all ten digits on her hands. “That‘s good, now your toes?”
“What does that mean?” Stefi asked after being told that all was good too.
“No bones broken, now we can move you into the shade. It is going to be a long day!” Another man had arrived. Between the two of them, they picked Stefi up, despite her cries of pain, and carried her towards a stand of tall plants.
There was so much Stefi didn’t understand: these plants, the foul smell, the sun, and who were these people? She would ask about them later, when the pain had gone away.
“Here, chew on these.” The man must have read her thoughts; he was holding out a handful of leaves. “They will help ease the pain. Then we will get you cleaned up.”
Stefi looked down at her tight-fitting black and green uniform, which was covered in brown gunk; it had been torn or split in places.
“Slurry.” She rationalised. The second impact, they had been hit by a Waste Out Tanker. That would explain the foul, nauseating stench. Getting cleaned up would be a wonderful idea, but where were the showers? She could feel the air moving. The light that hurt her eyes was sunlight, according to the man. She must be outside.
She opened her eyes wide and looked around. Beyond the tall plants, were they the trees she had heard about? There was an area of open ground, sparsely covered with low-growing plants. She had heard of deserts, places where it was too hard to grow food, along with what little she knew about trees in school.
Further away from where she sat was an open expanse of the crop plain. She had no difficulty recognising the plants that streamed before her eyes, hour after endless hour. Yes, for the first time in her life, she was in the Outside.
A shout drew her attention back to the mangled wreckage of three shuttles, the pool of black slurry and the six people moving through the devastation.
A scream rent the air and, almost instantly, cut short.
“We lost him. His back must have been broken.” The search continued.
*****
“Are you able to stand yet?” Stefi’s rescuer was back. She had watched the group searching in vain for other survivors for some time, then fallen asleep. She had no idea what the time was, nor how long she had been asleep, but the sun was lower in the sky.
“Maybe, if you can help me up.” He took her arm in one hand and put his other arm around her back. It hurt in places Stefi didn’t know it could hurt, but she was standing and able to stagger.
“Let’s get you cleaned up. It isn’t far.” His hand applied pressure to her lower back, easing her into taking a first step.
“There are showers? Here? In the Outside?”
“So, you’ve worked out that we are in the Outside, have you, girl?” His hand gently pressed her forward into taking a second step. “Well, we don’t have showers, but there is a stream a little way off with a natural shower. We can all rinse this stinking effluent off when we get there.”
*****
It took twenty uncomfortable minutes for Stefi and her escort to reach the promised shower. A torrent of cold water cascaded over the side of a small cliff; people were standing under the falling water, rubbing muck from their hair and bodies.
A few hundred metres away, maybe another dozen people gathered around a pile of flaming bits of what she had accepted as being trees.
“As soon as the fire has died down a bit, we will make you a hot drink. You will need one. The water here is quite cold, compared to the showers in the Buildings,” Her rescuer explained to Stefi. “Meanwhile, do you need help getting those rags off?” He indicated what had been her clothing.
“I think I can manage.” Stefi reached for the fastenings and started to work her way out of the coverall she had taken clean and fresh from the wardrobe hatch that morning. As she peeled the top half down, she noticed the rigid segment that normally rested beneath her left arm, next to her ribs, was missing, as was the small metallic lump it rested against. No wonder it felt sore.
Her rescuer hadn’t been kidding. The water was very forceful and exceedingly cold. As it washed the filth out of her hair and off her body, it made her skin tingle. She felt awake, and all the cuts and abrasions she had hardly been aware of started to sting. A large but shallow wound on the side of her chest started to bleed.
The Legal Bit
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