The southern ridges of the mountain range cut the horizon like the serrated edge of a broken hull plate. Yesterday they had been nothing but wind-blasted stone and the low, metallic sigh of the Warden’s failing atmosphere recyclers. Today a perfectly rectangular entrance yawned in the cliff face, edges mirror-sharp, as though the Warden itself had exhaled a secret and then forgotten it had done so.
L’Uomo Prime’s detector legs clicked once as he crossed the threshold. Infrared painted the darkness in shades of murder: a coiled shape, low and heavy, tentacles swaying like blind serpents above a ridged skull. A Green Hisser, positioned exactly between the entrance and a second door of ancient duralloy set flush into the rock.
The Reclaimers paused, the old calculus of survival flickering between them. Steve’s heightened vision caught the ripple of muscle beneath scaled hide. Henry’s radiated eyes narrowed. Sheik’s talons flexed. Half of them already wanted it dead; the other half remembered how many debts the wastes had already collected. D’Can’Tr stepped forward, silicone teeth clicking, and reached out with his mind. The beast stiffened, eyes glazing into a glassy trance. Thirty seconds. After that, its meager brain would simply stop.
D’Can’Tr held the creature in place while the others slipped past. L’Uomo led, stepping through the inner door into a sudden, absolute zero-g. Everything inside drifted: crates, cables, droplets of condensation turning into slow-motion pearls. He oriented, used his strength and the faint magnetic grip of his cyborg limbs, and glided forward toward the larger chamber beyond.
They moved like ghosts. L’Uomo led, his magnetic adhesion pads locking and releasing in precise micro-bursts, letting him glide through the zero-gravity that slammed into them the instant the inner door hissed open. Sheik was less fortunate. The chicken-mutant shot upward, slammed into the ceiling with a wet crunch of feathers and bone. Henry rose after him, grappling, hauling the rooster down while Steve lingered at the threshold, unwilling to trust the treacherous air. D’Can’Tr remained outside, focus locked on the dying Hisser.
L’Uomo drifted deeper and felt his stomach tighten. Inside the main vault, orange tanks drifted like forgotten moons, strange hazard glyphs pulsing faintly. Behind them, the female waited—larger, furious, guarding a clutch of glowing green eggs that throbbed like diseased hearts. L’Uomo’s quiet warning came too late. The male outside convulsed and died; the psychic backlash hit the dam like a plasma torch.
The eggs detonated in mid-air, erupting into blistering clouds of acid that ate through L’Uomo’s cerametal and plasteel frame and left smoking black scars across Sheik’s plumage. The dam came after them like a living storm—whipping tendrils and primal maternal rage—her paralyzing neuro-lashes cracking across both in a single heartbeat. For one frozen, horrifying instant the two of them hung helpless, seconds from being dragged into the dark as the next meal for her glowing clutch.
It was ugly, necessary work. Henry’s life-leech field flared from the doorway, sucking the creature’s vitality in pale, flickering streams, while Steve Austin’s laser rifle shot punched a clean, glowing crater through its ridged skull. When the monster finally convulsed and went still, the silence that followed tasted of bile, scorched meat, and cold ozone.
The facility revealed itself in stuttering strips of emergency lighting: a forgotten cryo-stasis annex, long abandoned yet still dreaming in the dark. At the end of a long corridor, lights flickered on as though recognizing old crew. In a sealed glass jar floated the severed head of Dr. Cardunkle—eyes sharp, skin preserved, smile thin as a scalpel.
“Gentlemen,” the head said, voice calm through the speaker grille. “I require transport. One of you will serve as interim chassis. Cryo Facility B awaits. There I have a body prepared. Deliver me and I will give you the Golden Bracelet—the master key that will burn every lock between you and escape from these Silver Wastes. Including the Great Mirror itself.”
No one volunteered. Cardunkle’s gaze slid across them. “Animal-folk or cyborg frames are incompatible. Humanoids and plant matter, however…”
D’Can’Tr exhaled through misaligned teeth. “I will carry you.”
Mechanical arms unfolded. Glass parted. In the sterile glow, Cardunkle’s head was grafted to the silicone stem of the plant-mutant’s body. When the procedure finished, D’Can’Tr rose taller, eyes now mismatched—one the calm green of the Warden’s original crew, the other the furious black of a survivor who had watched a settlement burn on Deck 14.
L’Uomo floated close. Creator and creation regarded each other across centuries of betrayal and radiation. While they spoke in low tones, the others found a full medkit, a handful of useful scraps, and a slim wrist unit—the Vessel Positioning System. Cardunkle recited coordinates: Deck 12, X-3.64:Y50.84, Cryo B.
They still had a prisoner to deliver.
Another day’s march across the burning dust brought them to Me Depot. The bunker squatted behind its nest of wire and scrap like a tumor the ship had tried and failed to excise. The orange sign still screamed its half-forgotten name. A sniper round kicked dirt across their boots.
“GOBBLE! STATE PURPOSE OR BECOME EGG-MEAT!”
Plissken’s frantic gobbling bought them passage. Wooden planks clattered down, forming a swaying bridge. Weapons were surrendered at the gate—“No boomers inside the nest!”—and they were ushered into the crumbling foyer that served as throne room. Stone slabs formed an oversized seat fringed with improbable green grass and tiny flowers. Upon it sat the largest armored Turkeyoid they had ever seen—eight meters of scarred muscle and blubber plate: Gobble King Gorgo. Flanking him stood his son, Gobble Lord Gravo, four hulking Butterballs, and a score of lesser warriors.
Plissken yelled, “King Gorgo! These land-dwellers got me home—reward ’em big!”
Gorgo’s scarred beak curved. “PLISSKEN SPY? GOOD! YOU BRING GOBBLE-BROTHER BACK. WHAT WANT?”
They asked for the Fabricator Core. Gorgo scoffed. The device that could print anything from scrap was not given lightly. Gravo leaned in, whispered. Gorgo’s eyes widened; a crooked smile split his beak.
“Gobble Lord Skravo scouts the Black Tower in the wastes, a place lost in the wake of Nanite ghosts. Bring back his head, and you will get the Fabricator Core.”
They tried to negotiate. They failed. They accepted.
As they turned to leave, Sheik spoke unexpectedly. “Take the spy with us, Majesty. Let him report back truly should we fail.”
Gorgo considered, then nodded. Chains were loosened. Plissken stepped forward—and with him, one more Turkeyoid was loosed within their ranks, this one chosen by the king to ensure the bargain was kept.
The Reclaimers walked back into the Silver Wastes with not one, but two Turkeyoids in their midst. Behind them the bunker’s guns tracked their retreat. Ahead, coordinates burned on a wrist display and the Black Tower waited like a promise the Warden had never intended to keep.
D’Can’Tr felt the old memory stir again: androids swarming, the cyborg wearing a friend’s face, the vow of revenge that had already cost so much. Another debt. Another corridor deeper into the dark. The ship turned, indifferent, carrying them all toward whatever waited beyond the next bulkhead.
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