Radiation, part one.

Luminaire

Caldari Prime

Somewhere in the Kaalakiota Mountains.

Aprox. 16 km from Wreck of Shigeru

17:50 hours

Aracturus was doubled over on his side inside the small shack he had decided to take shelter for the night in. The Radiation Shield Projector he had set up to shield the bombed-out shack was holding - not that it mattered, he thought to himself as he ran his hand over his now-bald head.

Already he had received a fatal dose of Radiation. His medical scanners told him that already. He'd be dead in a few days regardless of anything anyone could do. He cursed his rotten luck as he rolled over in his bedroll, in immense pain.

He began to wonder what possessed him to come here in the first place, and so he played the hike over in his mind once more.

He had come to Caldari Prime as a Pilgrimage of sorts. In the southern portion of the Kaalakiota mountains there was a shrine to Mountain Wind. But recently, the Shigeru, a massive titan-class vessel, once the pride of the Caldari State, had crashed down nearby, and while the Shrine was nearly 15 kilometers from the crash site, the sheer size of the wreck caused debris and radioactive material to rain down upon it. Many of the waypoint markers on the path to the shrine had been damaged or destroyed, and the monk who tended the shrine was killed. It was for this reason, Aracturus told himself, that he had come here - to repair the shrine and it's waymarkers, but no - there was something bigger, more important drawing him - calling him - pulling him, to the mountains.

There had been a village at the start of the path - Kaalia - once a quiet hamlet through which only the occaisional pilgrim passed, now a hub of activity as mercernaries had set up a landing pad there for the recovery and clean-up effort. They had given him strict instructions to not venture within what they called the 'exclusion zone' - a no-mans-land stretching 15 kilometers in all directions from the forward half of the Shigeru's wreck. Even outside the exclusion zone, radioactive debris had fallen to the surface, in the form of unexploded nuclear ordinance, fuel from her auxiliary reactors, and tritanium alloys from her superstructure. The whole area was dead. Lifeless. Background radiation had forced him to wear radiation gear during the hike.

Things had went well the first day of the hike -  he repaired a few of the waypoint markers, and altered the path in some places to go around radiation hotspots, and encountered no debris.

The second day of the hike, though... he encountered a large pile of fissile material - debris from the Shigeru's arsenal - in a small crater next to the path. He had no choice. He called the Mercernaries in charge of the cleanup, and waited for the drone to arrive to take charge of the material.

It was about an hour into the wait when he noticed a metallic taste in his mouth, and a feeling like pins and needles on his face. In horror, he looked at his radiation shield that went over his radiation gear, and saw that it had failed. He was being irradiated! he scrambled to restarted the shield, and sighed in relief when it shimmered into life around him. Then that sigh turned into a cough. And then another.

Aracturus felt a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, one he wasn't entirely sure whether it was knowing he had just been irradiated, or the effects of radiation poisoning. Later that evening, as he was taking shelter in a small cave, he checked his dosimeter - and his heart sank at the reading.

187 rems.

He was going to die.

He was only three days from the shrine.

Aracturus carefully pulled himself up and walked to the window, the gap where the glass had been at some point long ago replaced with the shimmering field of the radiation protector. He looked out across the mountainside, seeing the dull orange-and-blue glow illuminating the immense column of smoke on the horizon - the Shigeru. It was then that he heard something. At first he thought it was his name.
But that was ridiculous. 

Probably my imagination, he thought.

A wind began to blow, and he heard it again.
He was sure of it this time.

The wind began to pick up, even higher this time, until the shack groaned and strained against the wind which battered it. Frightened, Aracturus stumbled and crawled into his safety-bag - a radiation-proof sack which was designed to be hid in in the event of fire, radiation, etcetera, until rescue could come. He had almost closed it, when he heard a soft voice whisper in his ear.

Do not fear.

Aracturus stopped dead, his eyes wide, his head spinning and dizzy as he looked around for the source of the voice.

But the voice was gone. 

The wind died down, but still remained, as a new thought entered his head.

Mountain Wind.

Aracturus' eyes rolled into the back of his head and he knew no more.