First message
Late afternoon turned into evening and the pink sky from the setting sun faded to purple as a miniature cyclone of sand dissipated and fell onto the great porch that dominated Old New Mexico Outpost. The porch, no doubt a remnant of many a dead civilization bore the anachronistic architectural stylings common to old world ruins littering the dunes of Apoc. The porch was sturdy, made from metal and wood that no longer existed in this part of the sector. The ore extracted and the timber felled to be sent back to some capital city on…wherever. It formed a bulwark for the outpost providing a lookout for the guards on duty and a place for weary prospectors to relax.
Madeline sat on the porch alone after a long stretch of prospecting. She’d been able to salvage enough scrap from the Renraku Technologies ruin to barter a few nights at the outpost as well as rations of clean food, water, two bottles of whiskey, a few sarsaparillas and basic smithing to her gear and weapons. As she sat gazing upon the purple sky she thought of the life giving Purple Giant that tinges the cosmos for light years around Warsaw 12. She shuddered, took a pull straight from the open whiskey bottle and wondered if she’d ever return. As Madeline sat mixing the sarsaparilla with shots of whiskey and reviewing her remaining haul she mentally marked another day off the calendar,
“haven’t seen a jump ship headin’ for White Gar Canyon in weeks. How the hell long will I be stuck on this wasteland planet.”