Mariners Trail - Surface 25 Cap 2182 ~ 09 Jun 2182 ~ 31 Aug 2001 Mariner's Trail extends for approximately 20 miles along the canyon rim. There are no markers or signs - just the tracks left by the thousands of tourists who make the trip each year. Some come in rovers, others by foot, but they all come for the best seats in the house for a view of the Valles Marineris canyon. Occasionally a dust storm will obliterate the trail, but then you can just follow the canyon itself. The trail itself is relatively flat, but the terrain around it sports a combination of rocks, mesas and dunes shaped out of the rust-red Martian sand. The area is not entirely unlike the deserts in parts of Earth (such as the Grand Canyon or Australia), but there's no sign of life. No scrub brush, no cactus, no lizards - nothing save the domes of the city you've just left behind. --- "You don't have to look at it, love," says Daisy mildly, muffled and tinny. They're both bundled up to the point of ridiculousness, and the rebreathers make their faces look strange and impersonal. Daisy, entirely unaffected by notions of fashion or seemliness, also wears a pair of ancient flight goggles over her eyes. Dust bad. She stands, adjusting a final joint once more and shutting a side panel, which reactivates the robot. The bot itself is quite large, as these things go - roughly the size of a really big horse. Honestly, though, it's beautifully designed - made for sampling, it has storage areas closer to the ground, and drills and scoops and assorted other tools on rotaries attached to a couple of appendages. It moves rather like a Daddy-Long-Legs. No, they don't bite. Yes, that's important. The girl glances up at Matt and grins behind her face apparati. He's not looking at it. Not only is it a robot, it looks like a spider and he's not overly fond of spiders. And look at the size of it. It's like a really huge desert spider. Dessert spider. I'm hungry. Matt meets Daisy's glance and shrugs apologetically. "It's weird. Not as weird as the pink sky and the blue sunsets, but weird." He scuffs a foot in the red dirt. "Actually it reminds me a little of my cousin Jerry. He said it was glandular. We knew better." "Not a spider," shudders Daisy, shaking her head quickly. "Daddy-long-legs. They don't bite. They're harmless, like fireflies and ladybugs. Stop with the spiders. I keep thinking there're going to be some in the fines, like at a beach." She's suddenly a lot colder, and bites her lip, thumbing the control deck she's just picked up. Silently, the well-oiled machine glides gracefully into motion, then pauses and wheels an appendage around to eye the two humans. A synthesized voice notes with a certain amount of sarcasm, "Now that you've seen me naked, I might as well leave. You'll never respect me in the morning." The big robot turns its limb back around and minces off smoothly. Daisy smirks behind her mask. "What makes you think I respect you now?" is Matt's automatic response to the robot, before he actually processes what just happened. He eyes Daisy. "Do you program all your robots to be wiseguys?" Too distant to be heard from any proximity to the dome, an ATV trundles along the canyon's rim. Its route is too seldom-travelled for there to be any semblance of a path, so it tends to meander. At the wheel, within the vehicle's oxygen-filled interior, Oz Quinn puffs on a fat cigar and murmurs to himself, "..the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed." He squints through the dust-scratched windshield at a shadow of movement in the distance. A convenient dune sits in the middle-distance between Oz and the dome-dwellers. "And on the pedestal these words appear: Jesus Fucking Christ!" The ATV comes to a dead stop, and a moment later the door opens, cigar smoke billowing out around Ozymandias as he fits his rebreather mask into place, rifle slung over one shoulder. He knew it. They're out there. And now one of them's heading toward the dome. Daisy blows the robot a kiss as it trundles off, then turns and blinks innocently at Matt, keeping a straight face for a full five seconds before beaming. "You've -got- to admit it gets marvellous reactions." A quick glance at the readings the control deck displays, and she steps a little closer to Matt, grinning. "Besides," she says only just loudly enough to hear, "you know how I love wiseguys." "At the risk of bringing to mind unfortunate mental images including monkeys - any which way you can." Matt reaches to tug Daisy's hood a little further forward. "Aw, look at you. Like a little cyberpunk Eskimo." Oz is simply not yet noticed. Of course not. Because he is stealthy, like.. well, a big hairy old man trying to manage a cane, a bum leg, a rifle, and a half-worn rebreather all at once. Not very stealthy. But he's still behind that dune, so it's a moot point. He hobbles through the ankle-deep regolith, attempting to rush to the peak of the small hill. Once there, he drops down onto the soft red earth and readies his rifle. He murmurs to himself around his own hard breathing. "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings." He peers into the scope, which tunnels his vision too much for him to see Matt or Daisy, and watches the arachnoid thing through the centre of the crosshairs. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." A single report rings across the Martian landscape as he squeezes the trigger. "You bastard! I am not! And besides, cyberpunk stopped working as a genre when--" Anything else the girl was going to say, vehemently and indignantly, is cut off by the sharp and abrupt sound that cuts through the air with all the violent precision of a blade and all the speed of fire. Daisy freezes, eyes wide and horrified, and all of a sudden she spins away from Matt, looking at her graceful and efficient creation. It's just in time for her to see something tear through the robot's sleek black metal hide and rip it all up, headed straight for the fuel tank. "My spleen!" shrieks the big Daddy-Long-Legs. Well, it starts to, anyway. Gets as far as 'splee', and then there's a really big boom. With heat. And flying sharp things. The robot's creator just screams. "What - " Kaboom. Matt dives at Daisy, fuelled by pure instinct and a sudden slap of panic, with the intention of knocking her flat and then covering his hands with his head in order to scream like a girl. "Nothing beside remains." Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. Oz ponderously lowers the rifle, then considers the Martian's reaction to being shot. Boom. Animals don't go 'boom'. Insects don't go 'boom'. Nothing in nature goes 'boom'. The suspicion that he may have made a mistake begins to creep into Quinn's mind, given a great boost by the sudden presence of citizens not far from the blast radius. Trying to quickly get to his feet, the former Marine entangles his cane with the strap of his rifle, pulling the former out from under him as he attempts to shoulder the latter. The end result is that he falls sideways and tumbles down the steeper-than-it-looked-a-moment-ago regolith dune, cussing all the way down. "Oh my god oh my god oh my god," is the hyperventilating litany that pours forth from the prone and flattened Daisy when she finally stops screaming. She doesn't want to look. She has to look. She doesn't want to look. Well, she can't look. Matt's on top of her. No, she can look, all she has to do is lift her head up and - her hand feels really cold. Why is that? Who cares? Where's Daddy Long Legs? "Matt - Matt? Get up. There's someone falling down the hill and my glove is gone somewhere and those ratfuck /weaseldick/ COCKSMOKERS *blew up* my /ROBOT/!" Get up? Not any time soon. Matt rolls off Daisy but remains curled into a protective ball, breathing hard and fast, uninjured but badly shaken. "Oh, God, oh, God." He's never been that close to an explosion like that. And he never wants to again. Yikes. It's really a rather pleasant trip down the regolith dune. Regolith is soft and rather like fine snow, considering the temperature. A tumbling slide is all Oz faces, cushioned with each bounce by the gentle red earth. Thing about the Martian landscape is, it's got rocks. Not on dunes, because they're all dust, but at the bottom of the dune, rocks aplenty. Thus Ozymandias' pleasant roll down the hill ends in a rather jagged bit of Martian mineral piercing his right thigh. He grits his teeth and bellows agony, muffled only slightly by his half-askew rebreather mask. It's not the explosion that bothers her. It's that it was her robot that exploded. Daisy takes this as a personal affont, and she's all aggrieved as she pulls her bare hand into her sleeve and starts running at the cussing guy, and then running faster when he gets to the bottom, and then she stops short, almost falling over; catching her balance, she begins backing off, all the color gone from her face. "The bastard has a *gun*, Matt, he *shot* Daddy-Long-Legs!" If he'd shoot an innocent robot, think of what he'd do to a well of turpitude like Daisy. Yeah. But even if that's a silly exaggeration, that's still a goddamn gun, and the girl wants there to be something to hide behind that isn't Matt. Something filters through the bright haze of panic. Ozymandias can really give a good bellow when he wants to, and Matt uncurls and scrambles to his feet, standing there uncertainly and staring around at the desert as if he's never seen it before. He takes time out to gape at the burning wreck of the spiderbot, then breaks into a shaky, uncertain run towards the others. "Daisy - Daisy, put your hand inside your sleeve." The thought 'he's got a gun' is weighed against the thought 'he's hurt' and is found lacking. The doctor comes to a stop next to Daisy and reaches a hand for her shoulder. "Hey," he says to Oz, "throw that thing away." You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands. The catechism is quickly rejected as the flow of blood from Oz's leg warns him that said prying might not be far off. The wounded man squints up at Matthew even as he begins to unfasten the UCMC buckle at his own belt. Tourniquet. Pretending to give it a moment's more consideration than is truly necessary, Quinn wordlessly uses his good leg to kick the rifle away. And Daisy takes this moment to viciously yet carefully kick the Damned Thing even further away. Other than that, she's not touching it. It might bite her. Or kill her. Or something. Then she comes back and *glares* at Oz, her hand balled up into a fist inside her sleeve, and her gloved hand visibly violent-looking. "You daft prick, I spent *months* designing him. And the better part of a week building him! And look what you've done! I hope you're bloody well satisfied with the colossal wreck you've made of my work." She stamps her foot, free to be positively furious now that the gun is over *there*. "You unthinkable bastard!" Dropping to his knees in the dust next to Oz, Matt looks up at Daisy and says in quiet, lethal tones, "Daisy. Shut up." He looks back to the wound again and after a moment's consideration pulls his own gloves off to help Oz off with the belt. "Hi, Matt Pierce, I'm sure I've met you before but I'm afraid I was incredibly drunk at the time and I don't really remember. Still, nice day for it, do you always renew acquaintances this way?" The sensation of lifeblood seeping invisibly into the red soil of the planet combines with the strange synchronicity of Daisy's choice of words with the poem of Oz's life to make the old man's head spin slightly. He continues to squint at Matt, recognition striking as he hands the man his belt. Right, the alcoholic who was, coincidentally, drunk. "It was an accident. I.." For a moment the weathered Marine is a feeble old man, having felt sanity slip briefly from his aged grasp. His mouth opens and closes, words failing him, before his expression becomes set and unreadable, lips pursed tightly. The girl's expression closes and she takes a step back, obligingly falling silent. And as Matt's attention is on the bleeding man, Daisy turns around and begins to walk back to the dome. No - not to the dome. To the wreck of the Hesperus over there. And then she stops in front of it and picks up the control deck, which she'd dropped, stares at it for a moment, and hurls it with every ounce of rage and strength and hurt and frustration and destruction and stupidity that she can muster. Half a second later, it shatters on the smoking carcass of the previously graceful machine. Wordlessly, she walks back to the two men a bit - she was just going to leave. Go back to her flat and rip things. But no matter how angry she is with the two of them, this *is* Mars' great outdoors, and she doubts Matt can lift Oz by himself if he ends up having to. She doesn't get real close, though. And it's a good thing her mother can't hear the words Daisy's using in her head. "It's all right," says Matt, accepting the belt and cinching it around Oz's leg with hands that are already beginning to feel the pinch. "It's all right, don't worry." The blood's warm though, which helps - and he has to close his eyes for a moment and deny that it ever crossed his mind. Brr. "Daisy, I need you to help me lift him up and then run back to the dome and have someone from the LMC meet us at the airlock." He looks up again to meet her eyes. This is Not Good. "Please." -------Later that day. Daisy's door slams shut, and the click of the lock is deliberately, painfully obvious. Her silence on the other side says much more eloquently than words that she is indeed shutting up. That she will continue to do so for as long as her resolve or her anger hold out. That she'd much rather spend time mourning her exploded arachnid and conversing with her inhuman extensions of self than Matt, at the moment, thank you so very much. Oh, sure, *right*. Matt stalks up to the door and hammers on it with an open palm. "Daisy! Daisy, come on!" Grrr. There's no answer but the buzz of machinery and the ringing thud of a beer bottle forcefully set upon the counter. In the back of her head she doesn't even want him to see her because she knows how fucking cute she is and once you see it, it's hard to take her anger seriously. "I didn't - you were YELLING at him! He was hurt and you - I didn't mean to sound - will you just come out here?" Matt exhales and leans his forehead against the door, shoulders slumping. "Oh, -now- you want me to talk, is that it?" Oh sarcasm. Oh *biting* sarcasm, that tone. She doesn't go near that door, not yet. Fucking -Matthew-. "I -like- robots. Doesn't mean I -am- one. You can't turn me off when you hear something you'd rather not. He wasn't going to up and bleeding -die- on you!" The door is thumped. Matt seethes. "He was HURT!" That's it, as far as he's concerned, that's the whole point. "I'm sorry your damn robot got killed, but he was *hurt*!" *Now* the door is unlocked, angrily, and thrown open, and Matt's faced with Daisy's red, puffy, sticky, crying face. And she -yells-. "No, you're not sorry! If I were a painter and the paranoid old twat took napalm to my originals, -then- would you understand? If I had a notebook full of beautiful music I'd written and he shot it to bits, would you know why I was upset? Would you take it so bloody personally if I screamed at him then? He wasn't going to -die-! If he were in mortal danger I'd've let it be. But he wasn't, and I'm *FURIOUS*, and *YOU* told me to shut my fucking *MOUTH*." He takes a step back, despite himself, blinking in the face of her fury. Matt is lost for a reply. Oz was injured. Confused and unhappy and needing protection, and Daisy was attacking, and the eminent Dr Pierce has only one response to that situation. But now, confronted with her grief, he feels his resolve crumble and blow away like dust in a hurricane. Blue eyes are wide and stung, his expression close to falling apart. "I..." Look how bad she's hurting, look what you did. Crossing her arms protectively, tightly, over her chest and taking a step back, the girl looks almost curled in on herself. She only takes an arm away to rub viciously at her eyes with a sleeve that's too long. "I'm sorry if my priorities seem fucked to you. I'm sorry if I care about my handiwork. I'm sorry if I made a judgement that made no sense to you. But I'm NOT sorry I made him understand what he cost me. Do you have the slightest clue how proud I was of that machine? I *designed* it, I *built* it, and it had the potential to help make a truly significant difference in the cost of living here. Which can only help the poor sods living in the Wasteland. I'm not playing with *toys*, Matt." She wasn't looking at his face before - more sort of absently staring at his shoulder - but now she looks totally away from him and her face crumples. "And I know I made you angry, but you told me to shut up. And the way you said it..." It made me feel like I was a thing to be coddled when entertaining, and pushed away when irritating. But there aren't words for that. "I'm sorry," he says, miserably, ducking his head and closing his eyes. "I had to protect him. You were attacking him. I didn't think." I never think. Matt shifts his weight. Look, Daisy, he's apologizing. He's not angry anymore. Come to think of it, he wasn't really angry after she stopped yelling, either. He's just sorry. Incredibly sorry. He's trying to explain, but he knows it doesn't work out in words the way it worked out in his head when it happened. No one's ever been -sorry- before, for speaking to her like that. No one's even said it, nevermind meant it. "You didn't think," she agrees softly. "And you -are- sorry. And I can make another robot - it's more work and it won't be the same, but I can make another." The unspoken tag to that is she understands: even though he wasn't mortally wounded, the potential was there, and you couldn't make another Oz. She bites her lip and steps away from the door, leaving it open in a wordless forgiveness. And, unconsciously, invitation. Matt lifts his head, surprised and uncertain at her change in tone. He takes a step forward and rests one hand on the doorway, and there he hesitates a long moment, doing the work of pushing the residual upset and shame to the back of his mind. He takes a deep breath, and lets it out as he steps over the threshold. Daisy says, "Is that a close, or do we want two more? They probably end up bonking like randy rabbits in cathartic sex, anyway." Matthew says, "Yeah, it's a close.:)"