Boundless

Mercenary

"I'm too old for this shit", grumbled the Girl while taking off the armored chest vest. She placed it carefully by her side, on the dusty-and-earthy floor. Anchoring her back against a stone wall, she closed her eyes listening to the howling winds - and thanks to the labyrinthic structure of the canyons, the sound had a ghastly quality to it (to be fair, the whole scenario was pretty macabre during the night hours).

'Canyons' was a kind way to describe it. A good portion of the planet was covered by mountain ranges and vast canyons. However, after being heavily explored by the predatory Mining Industry, that part of Thesus still resembled Swiss cheese.

Terraforming efforts covered most of the damage in most regions affected by miners, but it changed the climate in some places and affected how the native fauna and flora were going about reestablishing their domain over the planet's surface.

Some godforsaken places in Thedus were still 'in the project pipeline' for restoration. However, it would take more than terraforming efforts to solve the problems in some still dilapidated regions.

A few had been invaded by the homeless and poor families. Those were close to highways and cities. These places housed more than 200,000 inhabitants of the planet nowadays, so before the restoration process could take place, they would need to find a solution to a more immediate problem. And all budgets for social projects were currently being placed elsewhere by the Thedus government.

But that was not the case for the Girl's current location, no. She was in a very, very remote sector of the planet. At an abandoned mine (yeah, hard to believe any mining company would leave behind mines before completely depleting it). This region was so damn isolated, the climate so terrible, that the mines were abandoned before being fully explored (yes, as in more than one). At some point, the amount of material left for extraction didn't cover the cost of keeping the activities ongoing. The harsh weather and conditions would damage the equipment rather quickly. Which led to accidents. Which led to legal nightmares. Once a proto-colony confirmed larger reserves elsewhere, the Mining companies quickly retreated.

The place was so horrible that they even left behind some equipment and infrastructure. Can you imagine? It was better to leave behind expensive equipment to not accrue more damages and infinite costs of trying to operate in such a place.

No wonder a mercenary's trade point had been established there. The government would never be able to fund any decent patrolling effort in that region.

"Owww...", the Girl groaned in pain, while touching her ribcage. She didn't need to look to know  she was injured (the pain was quite telling), but took off her shirt anyway, to determine 'how bad'.

Her left side was black and blue. She kept poking at her body, wincing and cursing.

"Motherfucker... at least nothing feels broken", inhaling deeply, the Girl started to change the settings of a small gadget placed in her gauntlet. It was the receiver of her communication device - tuning it to a specific frequency before opening a channel.

(She had it syntonized to the mercenaries' frequencies while on the field. It would be good to monitor them and get an idea of when they were alerted about 'her activities').

"Fer-de-Lance to the Cradle. I've reached the checkpoint. Cradle, do you copy?"

"Mordred to Fer-de-Lance. We are copying. Proceed with the status report. Over", the voice of the synthetic answered in his courteous tone.

"Assignment completed. Over", she reported the result first.

"Copy that. How's Trance? Over", the answers were coming with a certain delay and some static. The loud wind was also not helping.