Recruitment Failed

[panggul_mas]

The last thing I remember?

I remember Kel.


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"WE DO IT NOW GODDAMNIT."

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She was once so beautiful.

During the good old days I used to fantasize about us ending up together. She was young, intelligent, funny. When it was just the three of us it felt so good, just me, her, and Shae, crash landed on a new world full of possibility. We'd sit around the fire talking about our old lives, make plans for the settlement, tell jokes. That was after the realization that we weren't going to starve to death, but before the raids. But then the raids.

They took their toll on all of us, but it showed on Kel the most. Struggling to stay upright on her peg leg, leaning against the table with her bargain basement prosthetic arm, the arm I insisted we buy from that trader, even though it cost us the season's cotton yield. And her face...her sweet face.
She pretends not to be vain, but you can tell the effort she put into that strand of hyperweave covering the gaping hole in her face where her eye used to be. The stitching on the seams. How she arranges it just so. She cared. She wanted to be pretty. The scars still peeked out though, from when she dug the bionic eye out with a shiv in a panic one night. I told the doc it was a bad idea.



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"Half the settlement is at the mines, they'll never make it back before the shelling starts."

"TO HELL WITH THE SHELLING, GET THOSE PEOPLE BACK HERE NOW."

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The passion she was showing that night, it reminded me so much of the carefree spirit she used to be. If there wasn't so much on the line I might've broken down into tears right then and there at the thought of it.



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"There's only about a dozen of them, if me and the boys swing around the back and pull the bait and switch we can take them down without-"

"WE'RE NOT LOSING ONE MORE. NOT ONE MORE. WE LEAVE TONIGHT."

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Launch had been delayed twice in as many months. The first time it was the Claymores again. We chased them off without any casualties but we got banged up bad. Nelson lost an arm, and Butterfly, our "resident artist extraordinaire", will probably never walk again. That lazy tub of lard never lifted a finger to help anyway, just sat there all day carving his "figurines." Between them and a few other injuries, medbay was full for weeks, and "no cryosleep with open wounds", doctor's orders. That cut down on the labor pool too, and we had the mines going 24/7 to haul enough plasteel for the last few pods.



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"If this is about Redfield, then honestly I don't want to get shot out of the sky just because your boyfr-"

"REDFIELD. SHAE. BRIANNE. BANZO. SUPPY. COOPER. GNU. PORTHOS....NOT. ONE. MORE."

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When we were just about back on our feet after the Claymore pirate raid, the Mechtoids came. It wasn't the first time we fought them, but it was Redfield's last.

He was the first stranger to join us, honestly the first human we saw in those first few months that didn't try to kill us. He survived the crash like us, but had been on his own all that time. He was a soldier from some long forgotten war, so he took to the survival setting effortlessly. And he was so confident. No wonder she loved him. And he loved her too. Probably better than I ever could have. After that syther nearly tore her apart, he never left her side in the medbay, and never stopped calling her his treasure. He was everything to her. I think she just couldn't spend one more day on the planet without him.


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"SHIELD TEAM B, YOU'RE ON ESCORT DUTY FOR THE MINERS, EVERYBODY ELSE GET TO THE PODS. THIS IS NOT A DEBATE."

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The ship was her baby. Besides leading town hall meetings and recruiting prisoners, she spent the better part of the last four years in her research shed, reverse engineering pieces of wreckage from our transport, trying to get us off this rock. We all thought it was a pipe dream, but then, here we all were, standing in front of her dream, ready for launch.

The rain that had just been a sprinkle a few minutes earlier turned into a deluge, and with it the intense lightning we'd all grown so accustomed to. If it wasn't for the ground shaking, we might have confused the first shell for another lightning strike. It landed in the fields, wiping out the devilstrand we'd spent years cultivating. They aimed better on the second one, and landed square on the communal barracks, the first structure we built. That we built together, me and Kel. We didn't really panic though until the next shell landed 20 feet from the launch pad.


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"This piece of junk is never going to take off! I'd rather go back to the Claymores then-"

"YOU HAVE TO TRUST ME. THIS IS OUR CHANCE. THIS IS YOUR CHANCE."

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She had such a way with words. She'd convinced pirates, tribals, wanderers, such a bizarre collection of humanity inhabiting this rock, to not only join us, but to join together. At first she charmed us with talks of building a utopia. And once things got bad enough, she convinced us salvation was back among the stars. Our faith in her all came down to that moment, when it was all on the line. I didn't dare mention what only I knew. That the ship wasn't finished yet.


The last ten, fifteen minutes were all a blur. The mortars were coming faster now as the last few stragglers from the mines came running through the northern gates. Only two of us stayed behind on the battlements, just me and the housewife-turned-sniper Jenz, as the rest of our community crowded around the launchpad, at various stages of the cryosleep initiation sequence. When I heard a commotion I knew what must be happening; some of the pods weren't working.

I left Jenz behind and ran towards them just as Grogar was pulling a gun on Kel.



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"This crazy bitch is trying to kill us, I knew it! This piece of garbage is a tomb! You're all fools!"

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I knew if I killed him Kel would never forgive me. So I landed square in the back of his neck with the butt of my charge rifle. I never did learn to shoot straight with that thing, at least it did me some good for once. Two of his buddies came after me with their hulking sandstone clubs, they'd have crushed my head like a melon, but Lancaster had my back. With one of them knocked out and the other two tied up, we threw them in the closest working pods we could find (took a few tries) and started the initiation sequence. I never did like them. It felt odd to be saving their lives.

I shouted for Jenz but she couldn't hear me in the storm. I bolted for the battlements, and as I got closer, I realized she had stopped shooting and was just frozen, staring out over the walls. I shouted again, but it wasn't until I climbed up to grab her that I realized what she was staring at. It wasn't just a Claymore siege party; it was their whole goddamn civilization, and they were sprinting towards us. This wasn't a raid. They had come to destroy us once and for all. Even with all our turrets functional and our best marksmen out and in ideal conditions we couldn't have held them off. In that moment I felt the fear that had paralyzed Jenz, but I snapped her out of it and we ran for the ship.

Only Kel was left on the launch pad. How did she know? Was it a coincidence? Intuition? Or did she gleam some hints of this plan from all her time with our Claymore prisoners? Whatever the reason, I knew in that moment that she had saved us. Well, almost.

Jenz jumped into the nearest open pod which luckily seemed to be in working order. As I got closer to Kel, I couldn't believe what she was doing. She was still building the ship. While shouting commands at the AI to initiate launch sequence, she was putting all her weight into tightening a bolt on the aft support beam. Jesus.


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"GET TO YOUR POD!"

"What about you!? Kel, they're coming. Right now."

"ALMOST THERE, JUST GET IN YOUR POD. DON'T WORRY, EVERY ONE OF US IS GOING TO MAKE IT, I PROMISE."

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My gut instinct was to trust her, it always had been. And when she said "I promise" her expression had softened, and that look melted my resolve as it had so many times before.



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"NOT THAT ONE! THIS ONE!"

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As I ran for what was seemingly the last functional cryosleep pod, the AI narrated the launch sequence subroutines in a cheerful valley-girl voice. Kel had programmed the voice as a joke, she always had a sense of humor, but in the moment it felt grotesquely out of place.



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*totally initializing antigrav thrusters!*

"I'm not sleeping until I see you in your pod!"

*like, releasing landing clamps, or whatever*

"THAT'S IT! WE'RE READY!"
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I could hear the first wave of Claymores facing off with our south gate turrets, and the familiar *fzzzzz POP* sound as the turrets blew, in rapid sequence. Once the raiders learned to avoid our kill room off east gate, they always went for the south gate, less well defended. Their shielded strike team ran right past the turrets though, and there were dozens of them, running right for us, almost close enough for me to see the bloodlust in their eyes.


As soon as Kel grabbed the railing on her pod, the ship lifted off with a jolt. She almost lost her grip, but the prosthetic hand locked on, and she pulled herself in. As the lid of my cryosleep pod closed, and the familiar stink of the preservative gasses filled the chamber, I could see her staring down at the raiders, laughing maniacally. And just before I blacked out, I swear I saw her hold up her prosthetic middle finger at them, and shout in a voice I could hear through the translucent plasteel of the pod, "FUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOUUUUUU!"



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




You asked me what's the last thing I remember? She's the last thing I remember. Kel. I remember so well its like it was just last week. And do you know why? Because to me, it literally was last week, I haven't even been awake for ten days. And if what you tell me is true, then that was what, eleven? twelve hundred years ago?

So as I continue to rot in this cell, and you come by for these little "friendly chats", I want you to remember that everyone I ever knew or loved is dead. I've done the colony thing before, and I'm done with that game. Everybody dies eventually anyway. So quit dragging it out and harvest my organs, or let me go, because I'm not joining your little community. I'm done talking now.

recruitment failed, 2% chance

[snipes]

this is beautiful

[tylers2001]

to be perfectly honest i can see this becoming a short animation for a Rimworld movie. You honestly have such a way with words in this it makes me imagine a man sitting down in front of me talking to me with his battle scars and the anger on his face. I absolutely loved it. I hope you make more for this this is "your little treasure."  And at the end Recruitment failed 2% just ties the entire thing together.

[Adamiks]

Wow. It's makes Rimworld so deep. I never thoughts about prisoners and about what they talking.

[Covered in Weasels]

This was an enlightening read, never again will I yell at a prisoner for rejecting recruitment. Maybe there's a reason he/she doesn't want to join us

[MeowRailroad]

Maybe they don't join because they only have sleeping spots, and that I just put plant pots in the jail to make it look better. When I cleaned up the blood*, the prison made people HAPPY to be in because it wasn't ugly.



*and removed the prisoner who was a victim of medical malpractice

[killer117]

So awsome

[killer117]

Sooo awsome

[Levin]

That was a really good read! I mean it, gave the rimverse a deeper, grittier dimension. A depressing "all this has happened before, all this will happen again" kind of feel. Sort of like Fallout too.

Well done!

[MeowRailroad]

Rimworld is an endless, inescapable cycle.

[A_Soft_Machine_Man]

Now *that's* a first post! If this is your typical storytelling, I'd love to see more from you

[skullywag]

I LOVED that ending, well written and compelling, more pliz.

[milon]

Now *that's* a first post! If this is your typical storytelling, I'd love to see more from you

+So much!

Hope to see more from you, panggul_mas!  First post was epic, would read again.  (No pressure to out do yourself though.)

[Fruit loops]

Pretty damn good. 

[Axelios]

Incredible short story!

Bravo, well done!