Horatio clambered onto one of the small boulders and lay flat to stand watch. Gizmo landed on another boulder across from him and pointed its cameras across the plains in the opposite direction.
“Are we going to take turns standing watch?” Rhea asked.
Will shook his head. “Horatio and Gizmo are equipped with regenerative power sources. They can keep going all night.”
“I can, too, as far as that goes,” Rhea said.
“No, you need to rest your human brain,” Will told her. “It’s no different from an ordinary brain in that regard. Without a good night’s sleep, you won’t be able to function tomorrow. You need less slumber than me, of course: the energizing vat of chemicals your cerebrum floats in will let you get away with four to six hours, whereas we real humans require six to eight. But I digress. Eat, then get some shut eye. We set off again at first light.”
Rhea sat between the rocks for cover and downed a couple of fat pills with a sip from her self-refilling canteen. The latter had been extracting moisture from the air throughout the day and would continue to do so all night. She rested it on the ground beside her so the canteen could cool—eventually water vapor would condense on the surface, increasing the amount of moisture extracted.
Will lay back against one of the rocks. He was a dark silhouette in the night, but a quick mode adjustment on her HUD caused that silhouette to become outlined in blue. Gizmo, Horatio and her own body became similarly highlighted.
Will popped a pill and drank from his canteen, then his breathing shifted subtly, indicating repose.
Rhea didn’t feel the need to sleep just yet, so she retrieved the inert pistol Bardain had gifted her and activated the target practice app via her HUD. She used AR-VR mode: a virtual environment overwrote her vision entirely, but it was based upon her actual surroundings—courtesy of a snapshot generated before the light levels dropped to zero. There was an option to use LIDAR bursts to update the virtual environment in real-time based upon her surroundings, but that would serve only as a beacon to any bandits watching the horizon nearby.
She programmed the virtual environment to mimic the real-world object for object, as per the aforementioned snapshot, with the only difference being that everything was lit up like daylight.
The spherical targets appeared, floating in the air around her; staying seated, she spent a good half hour practicing her aim. When the session was done, she finally felt like going to sleep.
Over the next few days, they passed through the occasional abandoned farmstead, usually finding at least one or two items of some worth. In the evenings, Rhea continued to practice her aim. Horatio often joined her in virtual scrims against bandits or bioweapons while Will slept, and they would play late into the night, using AR-VR to emulate daylight. Gizmo kept watch when Horatio was thus occupied.
About two days into the journey the landscape subtly changed. The small boulders scattered across the terrain began to harbor small drifts of black and grey sediment. Always concentrated on the eastern side, the drifts were subtle at first, burying the bases of the boulders up to Rhea’s ankles, but as the party progressed, the drifts became higher, until eventually they reached to her knees and sometimes beyond, depending on the dimensions of the boulders and surrounding terrain. The rock shelves that frequently dotted the landscape also had black sediment collected in drifts at the base, as did the hollows and mounds of the ground itself, with the sediment always forming piles on the eastern side. There was also a thin layer of grit coating the terrain in general—about half a finger’s width.
“What’s with the drifts?” She kicked at the pile next to a small boulder, and the sediment scattered like so much dust.
“Gritstorms,” Will said. “Didn’t Bardain mention them?”
She nodded. “He did.” Gritstorms were restricted to the Outlands. Essentially massive dust storms, they kicked up small particles of dirt and rock and carried them over large areas. It was something that the party would have to tolerate, from time to time, while out here.
“I guess I thought the sediment would settle once the storm ended,” Rhea continued.
“This is settled,” Will told her. “It doesn’t get much better than this. Earthquakes and bioweapons help disperse the latest storms. I’ve seen it really bad at times, where you had to wade through sentiment reaching up to your hips in places. And at other times, the landscape has been scrubbed completely clean.”
“So we didn’t see any drifts until now,” Rhea said. “I’m guessing that’s because a storm transferred all the loose grit somewhere else.”
“Not quite,” Will explained. “Weather control restricts the storms to Outland areas that are well away from cities. The High Council doesn’t really care if Gritstorms run rampant here, since there are only bioweapons and bandits in the Outlands anyway. But letting a Gritstorm get close to one of their precious settlements? They’d never allow it. Not that the residents wouldn’t be able to handle it—they’d have to cloister up for a few days. But can you imagine the cleanup effort afterward? Not something that cities like to budget for.”
Rhea saw subtle signs of the Gritstorms thereafter, with drifts affecting objects to varying degrees. Even the farmhouses had small piles collecting next to them.
A week into their trek west, the party came upon an abandoned farm that was roughly thrice as big as any encountered thus far. It was set amid a large clearing in a forest of dead trees. Small drifts covered the eastern bases of the trees in said forest, while even smaller sediment piles had collected on the farm buildings, no doubt thanks to the forest, which had obviously served as a catch for airborne sediment in the last storm.
Three towering grain silos squatted on the perimeter, but the trapdoors on all of them were open, the grain within long since looted—perhaps by men, perhaps by
