In the broken-up world of 2055, megacorporations rule the worlds of Vanet and Krenn.
Urban explorer Trent Derrewick is tasked with investigating an abandoned facility of DCC when an unfortunate mishap leads to a Bounty Hunter being hired on a kill m...
After about two hours of whistling and walking in circles, Trent decided to explore the void. He started walking away from the set of chairs and only walked a few meters before walking into a seemingly invisible wall. Walking to the side Trent discovered a glitched section in the wall. A long broken up corridor appeared to be on the other side. He walked through this and was engulfed in a glitchy darkness before becoming aware in the real world. He was in a sort of chamber with a small, roughly cuboid piece of fogged glass allowing him to look out and just barely read on the wall:
THE SERVER STASIS ROOM XIII
The chamber opened and Trent fell out and landed on all four paws on the floor. He got up, dusted himself off and looked around the dark, dusty, endless tunnel in which he appeared to have been transferred to. Wires hung and dangled overhead, their sparks flying down onto the floor, linking all the different chambers and server blocks throughout The Server. Trent looked up, the room reached endlessly into the darkness in every direction as he passed through an intersection. He picked a random direction and walked on. Making sure to stay in the shadows (not that there was any light) in case there were people or drones anywhere in the building. Somehow he had to know where he was, at least how high up he was.
Suddenly he realised the units either side of him had disappeared and Trent was walking in a massive open space.
Something was just visible in the distance, walking over to take a closer look he noticed that it was an old T-30 Wheeled Shunter. One of the few remaining locomotives from before the Light Wars. The locomotive was a futuristic-ish looking locomotive with one leading axel with the pistons in the front and one driving axel with the drive rods at the back. Nuclear power was all the rage back then and people were finding new and exiting ways to use reactors. This was the first, and last, locomotive of its type. He knew how to drive it, everyone did (apart from really stupid people. But I don't tend to count them as people much), it drove itself. The turbines fired up as though brand new and Trent soon had it travelling at a relatively high speed down the darkness and, without warning, out of a tunnel. For a few seconds Trent could see The Spire, a five thousand kilometre high super skyscraper on the Insurgency's side of the Denton Wall, before being swallowed by another tunnel.
The train had a small carriage behind it and a caboose. The carriage built with passengers in mind, evidenced by the seats against the wall on either side and a large atmospheric regulator fan at one end, it's control panel sparking slightly. Trent's tail swished slightly from side to side, he forgot he had one of those, Engineering was is specialty. The panel needed fixing if the train would need to travel through an ash storm. Getting a spanner and soldering iron from a neat little toolbox in the locomotive, he set to work clipping and soldering cables, bolting the whole thing shut to finish it off. Dusting his paws off he admired his work. 'Not bad.' He said. His voice sounded different, almost boy-ish but with a slightly darker tone. He realised that he had never spoken in this form. He had spoken to Mr C back in the Server but the simulation made him his past, more human, self.
The train's rattle echoed through the tunnel until, it stopped echoing. Trent looked outside to discover that he was travelling through a massive open area with seemingly floating lights like orderly arranged stars doing nothing to light up the room. Then, row upon row of thousands and thousands of BiRail carriages, locomotives and cargo could be seen in the dim light. This train appeared to be used as a service vehicle to travel between distribution yards for the Transport sector, travelling on the old "railway" that still ran all over the planet but was never used. Looking down off the footplate Trent felt the water vapour blast against his face as a BiRail locomotive ran slowly underneath and into one of the many tunnels at the ends of the depot.
After staring for a second it dawned on him that he would have to put coordinates in the trains onboard computer if he didn't want to go anywhere the points were facing. Trent went into the train's map and selected a city called Torrenholm, a prosperous fishing city to the far south of the continent. The train raced out of the tunnel again and Trent found himself travelling along one side of a large fjord. As the train travelled along the top of one of the ranges flashing lights and distant explosions could be heard. Sonic booms flashed across the sky and streaks of light soared through the sky and crashed down in the distance. This was it. What Trent was witnessing was a full scale attack from the Insurgency first hand.
Dark plumes of smoke rose up from the horizon as the train thundered towards Torrenholm. The thundering grew stronger and a Draeg escorted by 3 BiCopters flew overhead. The fjords gave way to stretching marshlands. The train rumbling along one continuous wooden bridge.
♦️ ♦️ ♦️
Crystal leapt from a rooftop, effortlessly landing on two paws, her glaive swung behind her. She set off, sprinting, the hover-traffic of Nanotech racing past as gunfire followed from behind. Crystal was a fox anthropomorphic with natural blue highlights, large tail and a fluffy white chest and she was carrying a computer of great importance to these people.*
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A small explosion set off and a fire engine raced past. Other citizens, Human, Anthropomorphic (aka Pureblood Valeirians (foxes, wolves and dragons)) and hybrid species, walked by on the streets in their hundreds. Superscrapers towered above into the clouds and below into fog, such as the aesthetic of a Gen-3 City Planet. Crystals pursuers were close behind as she made a break for her ship; Benchy, she had called it, as she had built it herself and was the first of its kind. A small freighter/fighter with a vertical hammerhead-like shape. She tapped her wrist device (her only item of clothing as she is furry all over) and Benchy detached from the side of a building and opened its ramp for her to jump in, hovering just above the street. Crystal jumped and pushed off the wall with her paw to leap nimbly into the back of Benchy. She reached the cockpit just in time for her pursuers to miss the ship and land on the platform below. The Dragons weren't going to give up yet. They flew up after the ship, as high into the atmosphere as they dared before giving up and flying home. Probably to go get their pilot friends. But she would be long gone then as she readied her Dark Drive and shot into Darkspace.
*picture not made by me. No pictures in this book are.
