Charlie's Journal - Long range recon: Days 9-12

Days 9-12

We started out the next morning, with a half charge, and with a broken wheel, though at least it rolled.  Much slower goin' than before; took us four days to cover the same ground as in two days at the start.

When we was in range, Panky started reporting back.  Radio was in and out, not sure why.  We took the same route home, but avoided the radland, and stayed further away from the known settlements.  We didn't want no more trouble with the Goat limpin' along.

After a couple of days, we was startin’ to worry, ‘cause the front wheel on the goat was making some noise when we were movin’.  Sam suggested taking it apart, but warned that we might not get it back together again.  Panky decided to just run it as long as we could, and deal with it, when it stopped rollin’ or fell off or whatever.  Other than that we moved along, just went kinda slow.

Spent half of each day recharging, and found places to hide the goat along the way, especially at night, we did short watches at night, Panky thought we'd be more alert.  I'm not so sure; kind of messed up my sleep.  Panky also ran the drone out in front of us as a scout, pretty boring watching its feed,  made her more of a bear to deal with than usual.  I traded off with Panky on the drone watch  a couple of times, but mostly she wanted to do it herself.

Sam's leg was starting to heal up.  Looked okay, but was going to leave a big scar.  Said she'd just add it to her collection.  She showed me a couple of the greenies she had drawn in her journal.  Gave me chills.  

Most of the trip back, Panky was pretty quiet, worried-like.  But on the third night, Panky seemed to lighten up a bit, so I asked her if we had achieved our goal.  You know, found what we were supposed to find.  There was a long pause, but finally she said yeah we did.  

It turns out that we had two objectives in mind for the mission.  The first was see if we would find greenies; see if they was real.  And as bad the rumors said.  So yes, and yes.  The second was to find how far east the boundary of Texian land was.  We found the United States of Colorado first, which she said was just as good.

I told her I noticed the gun that the guy had back at that blockhouse, a las-rifle.  Same type as a couple of the guys from the gang we ran in to just after we started the mission.  Told her I thought maybe they had scouts further to the west, closer to home.  She said maybe, but maybe the gang just took 'em from USoCs that they killed.  Could be, but odd weapon to carry, when you got no recharge for it in the wastes.  Them things don't just fire forever.

After we got back, we was debriefed at some length, giving every detail that we could remember, 'specially about the greenies and the blockhouse.  It was not a real pleasant experience, what with the major trying to rip memories out of our head, that we didn't know we had, and sometimes didn't.  Then we were told not to talk about the greenies or the USoC.  Its kinda funny though, as I told my story to the major, I got the feeling that he already knew about the USoC.

Afterward, we all went and got some chow, talked a little about our trip, and then went to do our own thing.  I found my bunk and got some sleep, happy to be home again.