Chapter Text
The Nomad convoy drove through the night, headlights cutting through the road dust and kicking up more behind them.
They raced to a delivery job in Reno, perfect for a group their size. The payout would keep the clan supplied for months if they got there first. In the Badlands, timing was everything. Price was a close second.
Eight vehicles, made of mismatched parts and held together by stubborn pride, tore across the badlands, carrying the clan’s hope. At least, hope enough to get to the next one.
Jonathan Kent drove a beaten but purring Thornton. He knew how to make machines do what he wanted. Used to be, he did it for Militech. Now he did it for himself, and for the family that he’d found.
His wife, Martha, snoozed in the passenger seat, the bumpy road as comfortable to her as a mother’s arms.
Then the night split. An object screamed out of the sky, at low angle, glowing with the heat of reentry.
It buzzed the convoy with a deafening scream and slammed into the earth less than three hundred yards off the road, kicking up a geyser of dust.
Radio chatter flared
“We should check it out.”
“Gotta be corpo shit, they’ll come looking for it.”
“They won’t even expect to find all of it. That thing crashed hard.”
“I’ll go,” said Jonathan. “My baby can catch up anyway.”
Bill Ross chimed in. “I’ve got your back.”
The two vehicles peeled off towards the crash site.
As they pulled to a halt alongside the crater the object now sat in, Martha stirred.
“Hm? What’s going on?”
“Something came down,” Jonathan said. “Probably a corpo drone, we’re going to check it for salvage and catch up.”
The object was maybe ten feet long, four feet wide. It looked like some kind of rocket, likely from a test launch. The metal surface gleamed, white and strange, almost glowing in the dark.
But not with the heat. Tentatively, he reached out a hand. It was already only warm. Jonathan had seen some unique alloys in his time but nothing like this.
It didn’t look like it belonged to the Badlands. It didn’t look like it belonged…here. Jonathan wondered if even Arasaka could make this.
It took several minutes of work to leverage it out of the dirt. No clear branding. No serial numbers. Nothing except a symbol on the rounded front that looked like a stylized letter S, inside a shield.
No logo Jonathan had ever seen before.
Sovoil? Softsys? Nothing that started with S made sense for the line of work. One thing was obvious: whoever put this mark here wanted it to be seen.
Martha climbed out of the car and stepped forward for a closer look. As she approached, a chamber at the center on the pod hissed, adjusting pressure, then opened.
Inside was a baby boy, wrapped in a blue blanket, with red and yellow ones underneath.
Martha didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward, reached in, and lifted him out. Clenched in his tiny fist was a simple medallion or pendant, the same shield shape and S symbol as the rocket, on a silver chain. Broken clasp.
“What the hell? A Baby?” said Ross.
“Gotta be some kind of corpo experiment,” Jonathan muttered, equally aghast. “Space flight…prototype escape pod, gotta be. Or maybe… maybe it’s the kid himself.”
Jonathan looked at Martha. She was already cuddling the child, cooing softly. The boy looked just as happy to meet her.
“We obviously can’t leave a baby out here but we gotta take the rocket too. Pretty sure your truck can haul it, Ross.”
Jonathan looked out across the dark and silent badlands.
“We’ll figure out who he belongs to once we stop next. Or at least, who’ll be looking for him.”