Living Metal

Chapter 1: Between a rock and a hard place“You are listening to K-98, the Number One radio station here on Mars. We would like to welcome all of our new listeners near Valhalla Point. It was one of the remaining battle sites of the Great War between our now good friends, the United Earth Government. Speaking of Earth, we are going to celebrate the treaty between our grand worlds, which was signed a hundred years ago this weeken…shhhhhhhhh!” An unexpected explosion obliterated the newly built communication tower on a large mountain formation called Valhalla’s Point, shaking the planet with a fiery roar. Anything within a thousand meters from ground zero instantly vaporized. From its wake, a mushroom-like cloud formed. Out from the raging fire came a police truck desperately trying to escape the flames of the horrendous explosion. It was just outside of the zone of obliteration. But this was to no avail. The truck was now enveloped in the fiery explosion. No sooner than it would appear to be lost for the person inside the truck, that another explosion shook the landscape. Luckily, the shockwave sent the truck soaring away from destruction, brutally landing onto the rocky surface of Mars. Inside the vehicle, a woman was attempting to control the steering wheel as the vehicle fishtailed to the right and quickly to the left. She was coming up fast to a cavernous ravine. But the driver, with a tight grip on the gears, recovered in time. Only her hubcaps of her vehicle fell off into the ravine. The woman could stay here as the burning rubble from the explosion started to pulverize her escape route. This left her nearly blinded to the oncoming rocks. However, she continued to focus on the task at hand. Up ahead to her right she saw the road and made a break for it. The sky-blue eyes of the woman gave an expression of relief as the blast radius quickly subsided. But her relief did not last long as anxiety seemed to set in. This was not over. From the rearview mirror, she saw a flash of blue light radiating from ground zero of the explosion. The driver was far enough to be safe from the detonation, however not far enough for what came after the blast. Within a second, a secondary explosion came forth, blasting white fire into all directions. The intensity of this shockwave pushes everything in its path. This time, there was no escape for the woman. The wave of fire smashed into the truck. Only her driving skills somewhat kept it under control, or so she thought. Left with no other choice, the woman gave up the struggle to save the truck. With a single kick to the door, she scarcely dove out of harm’s way, tumbling hard into a ditch below large enough to keep her somewhat safe from the coming fire. Behind the blinding fire quickly came another shock wave. The magnitude of the wave forced the truck to barrel out of control, its velocity launching the truck into the air and straight into a set of boulders. From the combination of the truck’s speed and the force of the explosion, the front of the truck smacked hard to the top part of a jagged boulder, causing most of the fuel cells to explode on contact. Like a newly lit roman candle going off into the night sky, the vehicle blasted further in the air. The driver could only watch as her truck slammed into the mountainside. Once the ground stopped shaking and the wind died down, the woman climbed out from the ditch. The female driver took off her helmet, her long, flowing red hair falling out. Her protruding ears popped up and out from each side, twitching a bit from being cooped up in the helmet for so long. The fiery chaos unfolded around the driver reflected off her crystal sky blue eyes. Her long red hair glimmered with scorching yellows and oranges of the flames dancing around the newly formed destruction. Because of the explosion, the heat was stifling. She unzipped her armor-plated jacket, the insignia of the New Dicon Police Department on each side of her shoulders. Her badge pops out from her left front pocket and revealed her name as it opened up, Officer Anna Matrix. Anna, five-foot-five with a light muscle tone frame, showed no signs of injuries, only an expression of exasperation of what had just transpired. She picked up her badge and placed it in her back left pants pocket. Luckily, Anna felt that her gun was still in her holster that was connected to her back pocket. Anna looked around at the destruction. From the point of the detonation in a two-mile radius, everything inside was completely obliterated by the blast. She took off her jacket to show off her light aqua tank top that she normally wears under her officer shirt. She was sure whoever did this wanted her dead with extreme prejudice. The list of adversaries in her line of work was a mile long. Anna was worried about how far they were willing to go. Her assignment was to check out the communication towers on the outskirts of New Dicon City of a possible terrorist attack by the local cyber gangs that plagued the highways outside of New Dicon City. Anna believed that the bomb was military grade. If this had been in the middle of a populated area, many innocent lives would have been lost. Fortunately, the communication towers were unmanned and no one was around. “Damn, the first day I was assigned to this truck and it gets destroyed. Chief is going to be mad about this,” she said to herself as she turned around and walked away from the flames. Just before this assignment, Anna was suspended with pay due to a pending investigation with her partner. Her commanding officer, Sergeant Simms, supported her through the investigation and helped her to be acquitted from her partner’s action. Because of her last partner, Anna had to go to angry management class before she could come back to work. It was something that she couldn’t get out of. Due to Anna's rough landing out of the vehicle, the communication device inside her helmet visor was fried. The secondary communication earpiece wasn’t responding either. There was no way of contacting the command base for assistance. For now, she was stuck in the middle of nowhere at least thirty miles away from New Dicon City. Just as she took her first steps the other way, the remaining fuel cells from the truck exploded. But Anna neither flinched from the sound nor from the blast. Smirking from the situation that she got herself into, Anna just continued to walk away until one of the burning tires from the truck landed a few inches from her feet. As she watched the burning rubber at her feet, she tightly held onto her helmet. The smell of burning rubber reminded her of her bad luck. Anna whipped around and tossed the helmet out of frustration into the burning debris, then sat down while slowly gazing up into the starry night. The twin moons of Mars prevailed over the plush red landscape. Anna watched the last of the flickering flames on the desert’s surface. Suddenly, the communication unit in her ear started to beep. “Anna, are you there?” “Yeah, Serge, I am here,” said Anna. “Shsss…We can’t get a fix on you. What is your…shssss.” “Just perfect,” said Anna. “Whoever did this had to take out the only freaking communication tower out here.” There was no response. Her protruding ears twitched from frustration. Anna got back up and dusted off the dirt from her pant legs. She could not afford to wait there any longer. Ever since Mars lost the war with the Earth a hundred ago, the United Earth Government had limited Mar’s military to the point that only Mar’s jurisdiction was in the major cities. Outside was under Earth rule. This was to make sure that Mar’s would not rebuild their armies. Even though it has been a hundred year the old, Earth's sanctions were still enforced by Earth security forces. Parts of Mars were left ravaged by the war and never really had a chance to heal. Because of that, cybernetic gangs rose up the ravaged lands to assume control and made their own turf to control. To battle this, the Earth security force needed to separate the civilians from the criminals and created these sanctions. Unless in the main cities of Mars, no one including the local law enforcement would not be permitted to travel on the highways at night. Only with proper clearance would be able to travel. Anna will not have anyone looking for her until morning. Reluctantly, she started down the only road out of Valhalla’s Point. On her way down, Anna noticed a makeshift sign of old armaments, an old Earth’s Regulation billboard with words spray-painted on it, “Welcome to the Badlands, population, minus 1500.” Badlands, huh, she thought. Anna grinned at the joke and started to walk away from the sign. The remains of her old truck started to slide down the mountainside, crashing hard onto the road behind her. The impact caused another tire to pop off. Her elongated ears perked up at the sound of smoldering rubber. With a blank expression, she just watched as the tire hit the signpost. Anna shook her head and laughed. The dusty winds gently blew across Mars’ cold landscape. Anna continued her way down the isolated road thinking about the days before coming to Mars and her decision to go. This was about seven years ago. Three year prior to leaving Mars Anna was founded by a geologist named Allen Richardson who lived on an Asteroid mining colony called Carlson city. Anna was without memories of how she came to be there. Allen took pity on her and gave her a room in his home with his daughter, Millie who gave Anna her name. It wasn’t too long afterward that Anna realized that she was no ordinary human as she has the abilities to fuse and manipulate metal. Since Anna was in a mining colony and away from a large population of people, she was able to get some what control over her powers. However, controlling her abilities did not come without consequence. Anna was always grateful for Allen’s charity and did not get him involved. She had no choice but to leave from Carlson city to start a new life on Mars. Anna hoped that Allen and Millie would understand. Anna’s thoughts of the past were broken by road forking into two directions. Puzzled by which way she needed to go, Anna stopped in the middle of the road. Since she never had to travel outside this far from the City with no active GPS to follow, Anna was clueless as to where she was. At times like this, Anna would take out an old earth coin given to her by Allen, an old 1975 US half-dollar coin. It was the only thing that she had to remember him by. “Ok,” said Anna, “Heads I’ll go left, and tails I’ll go right.” The two moons of Mars raced across the skyline, giving the surface an eerie red radiance and making her more visible to any onlookers. Anna was about to flip the coin when she noticed a parked vehicle not too far from her. It was on top of a hill a half mile away from her. If she went left, she would run right into it. It did seem strange for someone to just be sitting on top of the hill, especially after the explosion. Her first thought was to go up there. However, Anna decided to take the road to the right, away from the vehicle. It seemed obvious that they had something to do with this situation. Anna slowly walked away in the middle of the road, making sure that the party inside the parked vehicle easily saw her. If they did not react or take the bait within a half of a mile radius, she would head back the opposite direction. So far there was no action upon the hill. Anna looked around to see that this road way she was on would be a great place for an ambush. The area around the road going up to the hill where the vehicle was at had a lot of boulders littering the area. Anna hoped that the vehicle was abandoned so she could get the hell out of this place.