Although the midday heat slackened a bit, the dust-filled air burnt the lungs. With her feet raking up the sand, she toiled along what used to be called a street. She had to get as far as possible from the smoking aircraft before she could fix up the wound. She gave a farewell look at the wreckage of her combat aircraft she had already become one with.
Ragged rifts were seen all over the aircraft body. Over there, in the warped metal pile, Eol, her Artificial Intelligence friend and navigator was left. His body was not fit for relocation, and so she was unable to save him. The navigator was obviously damaged or shattered as he failed to response to her calls.
There is a first time for everything. She had never believed the worst before, but now it happened to her. She was knocked down. She was wounded. And still she could not escape the feeling that the whole thing was unreal.
Her arms still remembered the hand wheel jarring before catapulting.
She was playing back in her head the fight details: the aircraft shaking under shell attacks, emergency mode lights flashing on the control panel, a smell of burning wiring.
Her worn outdated multi-purpose fighter was finished off by a missile from one of the enemy military groups deployed in the quarantine zone of the Wastelands. The flight had already accomplished the combat mission on ground targets and was proceeding towards the turning point, when suddenly the radar displayed missiles on pursuit course. Then the fighter shook up a few times, and everything changed. She even managed to divert the out-of-control fighter and retrace its course. The once obedient hand wheel was now trembling and raging in her arms, the engines capacity dropped sharply. At a critical height close to the ground surface, she had to catapult from her doomed "brother in arms".
Now her task was to reach an old radio tower located in the east. She knew that a reconnaissance unit was still operating in that area and hence a life-support shelter was supposed to be there, but she did not know for sure where it was. Then the “Red Wolves” squadron operator
would track her down and send help to the navigator Eol. That’s how things were meant to be according to the instruction, but in reality this is usually not the case.
The situation was aggravated by her bleeding wound and dizziness after hard landing.
It was forbidden to use in-flight safety belts in the Wastelands, since their ion radiation was easily detected by patrol drones, which reduced chances for survival to zero. Now she had to find a safe place. And the main thing was not to panic.
Having summoned up all her strength, she headed to the north-east, where in two hundred meters the town ruins boundary ended up. The sand-colored flight suit with heat control function effectively protected the pilot against overheat in the Sun or overcooling at high altitude. This time, the system was working sustainably, preventing body dehydration. A multi-purpose communicator on her left hand sent a slight vibration signal. She looked at the display. The Communicator’s Artificial Intelligence showed the body health condition: decreased bioenergy potential, light wound in the stomach area. In the opinion of the “Personal Physician”, she could sustain high physical activity for some forty minutes.
“That will be enough,” she decided, “outside the town I will find a sheltered place and heal the wound. And then we’ll see. I’d better steer away from the walls”.
GMA or genetically modified animals, dwelling in this place, attacked silently, in packs and usually from behind.
Pilots normally fit out their standard flight suits with complete emergency sets by themselves. But with her it was a different story. She never really though all these "indispensable devices" were any use, especially, taking into account their huge weight, which only hindered movement. For that reason, most of her emergency set was simply missing.
To distract herself from monotonous motion, she began recalling all staff in her possession: soft water bottles fit into the rear of her suit close to the kidneys; flexible electric battery inside the rear part of the suit, that was presumably charged and securely embraced her back, protecting the spinal cord; however medical capsules for a multipurpose injector built in the suit were missing, as well as a nutrient gel, which she never took along. The pistol inside the pants holster with ammunition was there!
Having reached the town boundary, she looked around watchfully for any motion or danger. Everything seemed to be stiff, only the aircraft body was emitting smoke two kilometers behind. Suddenly, she saw two fresh deep dents on the plane sand surface, which meant that someone had been there not long ago and watched her from that point.
The girl grew wary. Having followed the direction of movement, she detected a two-fold trace going off the side and then abruptly turning towards the north-east. Judging by the distance between the traces, that was a huge animal moving in big leaps.
"It’s a GMA,” she thought, “Good thing that’s not a pack. I wonder why it is alone.” The genetically modified animals were known not only for the large muscle mass, but also for their highly sophisticated predaceous mind. The presence of a sole species could mean only one thing: she had been hunted by a highly dangerous enemy.
Having passed about a kilometer from the town boundary, the girl decided to finally fix her wound. For that purpose, she climbed to the top of a small hill which provided a good view of the surroundings. Wrinkling, she slowly set down, once again looked around the stiff landscape and started examining the contents of her emergency set (first aid for light wounds healing).
She immediately caught hold of a nano-gel barrel for quick healing of light wounds. Having unclasped her suit, she saw an open rough-edged wound that she had received while being carried by the parachute canopy along ragged iron pieces sticking out of the sand. Wasting no time, the girl applied some gel from the barrel on the wound edges and then began waiting. Undoubtedly, the wound had already got infected, and the gel could only stop the bleeding and relieve pain for a while. But that was not too bad either. By nature, she was a buoyant optimist.
"What if I find a medical capsule? But then again, I don’t have a slightest idea of how to get into the abandoned base’s biological unit.” She could not let go of thoughts about the animal and its traces. “Some monstrous beast has gotten hung on me, and – to make matters worse – seems to be moving in the same direction as I am.”
In forty minutes, the pain remitted and the wound stopped bleeding. The girt clasped the suit, took out a water tube nozzle from the collar. The sweetish fluid contained a stimulating agent. Having made a couple of large gulps, she took a deep breath and exhaled so as to increase the blood oxygen level. Now she could go further. She thoroughly fished trough her pants pockets and, having found her hair fixer, she combed her golden sand-colored hair with her fingers and scraped them into a ponytail. While doing her hair and adjusting her suit, she noticed some movement on the hill at a distance.
"The beast might have holed up and is watching me. It’s best to walk in an open terrain. I wonder what such a huge beast feeds on. And why didn’t it attack me in the town? It was the right place for that. And how come it does not attack at all?” she was thinking.
She abandoned her first aid set as no longer useful to free her hands. She took out a pistol, pensively weighted it up in her arms, but her face noticeably darkened as she envisaged the beast’s size corresponding to the trace. She looked at the communicators’ display. The "Personal Physician" suggested injecting an ultra-antibiotic to clear out her blood from infection. The living indicators were slightly below normal. But that was not too bad in her position.
"The rebel base. Direction,” she ordered to the communicator in a calm voice. The latter switched into the “Guide” mode. A pulsating spot on the display located the destination point in some three kilometers to the north-east.
The terrain was predominantly flat with small hills. The once fertile lands were increasingly turning into a desert, and the dull landscape evoked despair. Still it was the beast that she was concerned with.
“The beastie should be smart. I think