Cold Spot

By Tyro (Tyrammafar)

A/N: I tried describing things as vividly as I could…I might have overdone it; I can fix it properly once everything is down.

Takes place in the year 2263 C.E…two-hundred years after World War III started. For reference: A ‘Slick’ is a unit of currency, similar in value to the dollar. A ‘syncan’ is a storage container for water and other liquids. The phrase ‘fact go false’ means ‘to make non-existent’ or ‘to destroy/kill’.

Thick, sooty clouds lay like a blanket of suffocating death on top of the glowing energy shield that protected the city. Every now and then it would swirl as shifts in the air temperature above caused the wind to gust or change direction. The dim, yellow-tinted light of the sun could barely penetrate the smog, and so the neon-orange glow of the Shield was the only light the city had; for safety reasons, all other lights had to be turned off during the day.

This summer, like so many others, was black and frozen as a mummy encased in ice. As much life stirred in the city of Dalarion, formerly known as Dallas, it might have well been a mummy. Sometimes the great Shield, which spread for many miles, would fail in places, letting the air from the Outside drift through into the world Inside, heating the air and melting the snow that continually fell during both summer and winter.

The great Shield was selective in what it allowed to enter the city; water in all forms could pass through, but air (usually) could not. Sometimes the odd stone, blown by hurricane-strength winds, would pass through to tumble through broken skyscrapers…some of which pierced the orange dome in places to be ravaged by the forces that dominated the Outside. Other than the odd Solid Form that passed through, the Shield was safety manifested as pure energy that crackled and snapped and growled like a protective family pet.

But sometimes the smog above would be forcefully shoved out of the way by the smaller cousins of the great Shield; little bubbles of glowing orange energy, some vibrant and bright and others sickly and weak. Within these bubbles floated the Airships, the only method of travel to other cities like Dalarion. The land, too torn to be traveled across, could be safely bypassed aboard an Airship. The Shield was designed to let these bubbles through, when they arrived.

One of these bubbles was arriving just now, barely visible as a glowing disc through the hazy Death that lay beyond the Shield. It was an ancient space-shuttle, turned almost brown and pitted with black by the forces on the Outside. Hundreds of tiny gray ovals were attached directly to the hull of the shuttle, emitting beams of orange particles that grew brighter and spread to form the shield that protected the craft from the Outside.

The shuttle’s shield met with the orange dome of the Great Shield with a crackle and a shower of electric-blue sparks, which rained down like glittering stars towards the ground below. For this brief instant, the shield on the shuttlecraft failed entirely, overpowered by the Great Shield as it attempted to bring in Inside. The orange bubble flared and ripped apart like a thinly stretched sheet of tissue, and the massive engines coughed and died on the polluted air of the Outside.

For a full five seconds as it passed through the Great Shield, it dropped like a stone. A stone made of titanium, friction-resistant ceramic, and iron fittings and couplings that attached the engine cylinders to the craft. The green lights of the engines suddenly snapped back on as the shuttle regained power, and they tilted downwards so that the Airship could drift down towards the pitted gray landing pads on the edge of the city.

A bright finger of white shot up from the tower that reeled drunkenly on one corner of the massive landing pad, trailing over the side of the Airship. It hovered still for a moment, illuminating the faded and scratched logo of NASA, and the black block letters that named the craft.

A broken, monotonous voice spoke through a massive speaker mounted on the side of the tower, also broadcasting on the area’s aircraft frequency. “Air Traffic Control to the Airship ‘Dawn Chariot’, hold altitude at one-hundred meters above the platform and await clearance.”

The Dawn Chariot suddenly rattled to a halt over the landing pad, the engines flaring brighter as they increased in power. Green trails of energy from the cylinders, mounted near the tail and the nose, licked at the cracked asphalt that made up the pad. It drifted slightly in different directions; sometimes it would be over the landing pad, sometimes over the tower, and sometimes over the tarmac of what used to be an airport some two-hundred years ago.

The broken voice spoke again: “Air Traffic Control to the Airship ‘Dawn Chariot’. You have limited clearance. Land now, disengage engines, and leave your craft.” For several seconds the Airship drifted about, attempting to center itself, before it steadily floated downwards to the asphalt. The green flares of energy heated the asphalt almost molten, before they crackled and lost power entirely. The ancient space-shuttle slammed onto the asphalt with a bang and a loud snap; the sound of its weight cracking the now quickly cooling landing pad.

The pitted hatch on the side of the airship gave a loud hiss as it opened sideways, dropping a ladder made of pipes and steel cable; a much more durable form of rope-ladder. The last several rungs clanged hollowly on the wet pad…which was already freezing over as the summer chill attacked once more.

“This is Captain Jackson, of the Dawn Chariot. I read you loud and clear, ATC. Standing by to meet with groundlings.”

“Affirmative, Pilot.” The computer controlling the landing pad said. “If you are armed…disarm immediately. No further warning will be given.” It paused, and then gave a late greeting. “Welcome to Dalarion City, ‘Dawn Chariot’.”

The captain of the Airship stood framed in the open hatch in the side of the Dawn Chariot, lowering his gloved hand from the red and white headset he wore around one ear. The microphone extended downwards from the earpiece right into the black cloth of the man’s face-mask, which had tiny holes through which the pilot’s green eyes glittered. His flight-suit was all one piece; red and gray (what once had been white) over black underclothes….over another layer of gray underclothing. Even with all of this, and massive black boots, the man shivered in the summer snow.

Captain Alexander Jackson grabbed the metal handle on the ceiling, turning himself around and stepping down onto the rungs of the pipe and cable ladder. Dirty, ashy snow swirled all about him, driven by powerful winds stemming from the temperature difference between the air Inside and the air Outside. The ladder would normally have swayed terrifyingly in the gusts, but the last several rungs were already frozen to the asphalt below.

As Captain Jackson stepped from the ladder to the ice, his boot began to slip; he put his weight back onto the ladder, glancing down at the place where he had stepped. The ice was almost an inch thick already. The man grunted through the face-mask he wore, slamming his boot down and cracking the ice with his heel. The sharp knobs of metal on the bottom of the boot held fast in the cracks, and it allowed him to finally dismount from the ladder and turn towards the tower.

A tractor-like robot, painted florescent orange, was trundling through the ice and snow towards the Airship, smashing through a dirty snowman some foolhardy child has risked their life to construct. The coal mouth of the snowman rattled against the red cameras that made up the robot’s eyes. Behind it were several men dressed in various shades of blue and green, trudging across the ice with nail-boots.

One man rode on the side of the tractor-bot, and as it slowed to a stop he jumped off, raising a short double-barreled shotgun to point at Captain Jackson’s chest.

“You realize how long you’ve been gone, kid?” the man yelled through his own green face-mask, trying to make himself heard over the wind. The other men slowed their advance and stood some distance behind him; they too were armed with various weapons.

“Two years, six months,” Jackson responded, raising his hands to show he was unarmed. “You still owe me forty-thousand Slicks, you know.”

The armed man glanced back at the hazy outline of the ATC tower, and then turned back to Jackson. “And you’ve come to collect?”

“Among other things…”

The armed man tightened his grip on the weapon he held, putting his other hand on the underside of the barrel to steady his shivering hand. “You know better than anyone I don’t have that kind of money, Alex,” he said, coughing. “Most, including me, thought you kicked the syncan back in London!”

Captain Jackson sighed. “Kick the bucket. The phrase is ‘kick the bucket’, Charles. Now set down the pepper-pot and shake my hand like a real man.”

“You devil…don’t try and scare me like that!” The armed man motioned for his followers to return to the tower, and they gratefully did so…moving faster in returning than they did when venturing out in the cold. “Come on, Al…you have too many warrants out for your arrest to be standing around out here; I’ll tell you what you missed since you ‘died’ when we get inside.”

Jackson shook his head. “Can’t stay long, Charles; too many people wanting to make my fact go false.” He said…then shrugged and smiled under the mask when Charles had already turned and started the trip back towards the leaning tower. The robot that had brought the man to the ship spun around with its ice-encrusted tracks, quickly retreating towards its storage shed while Jackson pursued his old friend.

“How’d you get that airship through the Shield in one piece?” Charles yelled, resting the barrel of his ancient weapon on his shoulder. On the end, two small covers snapped closed on the barrels, preventing the ash-filled snow from entering.

“You know what they say; Shields only let the worthless things through.”

“That says a lot about you, Jackson!” Charles smiled and slammed his shoulder against the door at the base of the tower, breaking the thin coating of ice that had built up around its edges. A blast of hot, stale air escaped before both men managed to slip inside to the red-lit room. “Just don’t get yourself killed again.”

Captain Jackson smiled. “I don’t think I’ll be dying any time soon. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

With that he closed the gray steel door, locking out the freezing summer air, snow, and deadly smog…