The strangers who had descended from the sky in their garish, buzzing contraptions were, as it turned out, telling a sliver of the truth. Trade was indeed on their minds. The three gyrocopters—flimsy, open-frame things with a single main rotor and a pusher propeller—had carried a crew of six. Their point of origin, as the gnomish pilot named Angiv reluctantly revealed after the heavy machine gun was grudgingly swiveled away, was a settlement nearly two hundred kilometers to the southwest: Karatown.
Old Gimpy, when consulted, confirmed this with a nod, his memory stirring like dust in an old attic. He'd spent half a year there in his younger, more mobile days, he rasped. It was the farthest southwest he'd ever ventured. Beyond Karatown, he knew only rumors—a scattering of other hamlets and outposts, each dozens or a hundred kilometers apart, fading into the dangerous, unknown margins of the Great Barrens.
According to Gimpy's recollection, Karatown was built on the shores of a vast, stagnant lake. Its lifeblood and primary source of wealth was a massive, pre-Collapse water purification system that still, miraculously, chugged along. It produced enough clean water daily to sustain a population of nearly two thousand souls. The lake itself, though murky and likely irradiated in parts, yielded fish that, with careful trimming of heads, tails, and organs, were deemed safe enough to eat. Compared to the parched, struggling existence of the former Cinder Town, Karatown was a veritable paradise, boasting a population and strength several times greater.
It was also, Gimpy noted with a hint of old resentment, territory monopolized by a different trading caravan, one with far more muscle and reach than the late, unlamented Hawke's outfit. Old Hawke had never had the clout to crack that market.
The gnome, Angiv, with his impressive russet beard and a stature that just cleared four feet, was a new face to Gimpy—a transplant to Karatown within the last decade or so. He presented himself, with a craftsman's pride that seemed inherent to his lineage, as Karatown's "chief mechanist." The purpose of their daring aerial foray, he explained, was simple: Diesel fuel.
The profligate use of diesel by Michael's convoy during its recent wide-ranging sweeps had not gone unnoticed. Scavengers had eyes, and word traveled on the dry, whispering winds of the Barrens. Rumor had solidified into accepted fact: the upstart leader of the renamed Sweetwater Gulch had a secret, reliable source for the precious liquid. No one in their right mind burned diesel so casually without a hidden wellspring. This rumor had eventually drifted to the ears of Edward, the de facto mayor of Karatown. Hence, Angiv's mission. The gyrocopters, a small fleet salvaged from some forgotten bunker, were potent aerial assets—but only if they had fuel. Without it, they were so much sculptural junk.
The initial hostile posturing, the aggressive flyover, the pointed rifles—all of it, Angiv admitted with a shrug that spoke of deep-seated Wasteland pragmatism, was standard operating procedure. The first language of the Barrens was intimidation. If you could cow someone with a show of force, you took what you wanted. If you couldn't, you traded. And if you were the one cowed… well, you just hoped the trade terms weren't too ruinous. The sight of the 12.7mm DShK had been a very clear, very final word in that particular conversation. Karatown's envoys had swiftly transitioned to Option B: Polite Commerce.
An hour later, the tension of the landing field had been replaced by the clatter of plates and the low murmur of conversation in Michael's third-floor office. A feast, by Wasteland standards, was laid out on a salvaged door laid across two sawhorses. There were plates of smashed cucumber in a sharp, vinegary sauce, stir-fried green peppers and eggs that were a vibrant yellow, thinly sliced dried tofu stir-fried with precious slivers of preserved pork, and a soup with dark, leathery strips of seaweed and tiny, briny dried shrimp. The aromas—of garlic, vinegar, soy, and unfamiliar spices—filled the room, a tantalizing promise of a world not defined by dust and deprivation.
The six visitors from Karatown, seated around this improbable spread, tried and failed to hide their awe. Saliva was visibly swallowed, eyes widened at the colors and textures. Michael, playing the magnanimous host, waved a self-deprecating hand. "Please, eat! It's nothing special, really. You caught us unprepared. Just some simple fare to welcome you." He raised a chipped ceramic cup filled with clear, potent liquor from a large, unlabeled plastic jug. "Ganbei!To new… acquaintances."
The baijiu, the clear, fire-breathing spirit of Michael's homeland, was a new experience for the Wastelanders. They followed his lead, tossing it back. The effect was immediate and spectacular. Angiv's face turned the color of a boiled crawfish, his eyes watering violently as he gasped for air, a strangled cough erupting from his throat. The others fared no better, a chorus of choking and wheezing filling the room. But as the initial inferno in their chests subsided, it was replaced by a warm, buzzing glow and a profound appreciation for the liquor's purity. Unlike the harsh, often toxic moonshine of the Barrens, this left no chemical aftertaste, just a clean, smoky heat. Mugs were raised for a second, more cautious toast, this time with genuine enthusiasm.
Under the steady, purposeful application of food and this liquid courage, Angiv and his men began to loosen up. Guarded answers became more expansive. Michael, Old Gimpy, and the hulking Minotaur, Broyo, listened with the attentive ease of seasoned fishermen, gently reeling in information.
The price of diesel was the first big catch. Karatown, Angiv slurred slightly, was prepared to pay a staggering thirty gold coins for a single fifteen-liter jerry can. And the further west one went, towards settlements with even less access, the price, he hinted with a knowing look, could climb even higher. Michael's mind, ever calculating, filed this away with a quiet thrill.
But there was more. Angiv, his tongue loosened by the unfamiliar alcohol and the unexpected hospitality, began to paint vignettes of the wider Barrens. Each surviving settlement, he explained, had its quirk, its reason for clinging to existence in the hellscape. There was a place called Ironhold, a mobile fortress built upon and around a still-functioning, massive steam locomotive that crawled along a ruined stretch of track, its inhabitants living in its swaying cars. Another, Xika, was whispered to be the largest slave market on the continent, a festering pit of misery and commerce. The most outlandish tale was of a place a thousand kilometers to the west—a true oasis in a sea of sand, its waters miraculously pure and drinkable. It was said to be ruled entirely by women, a fierce, isolated matriarchy that slaughtered any man fool enough to approach.
As Angiv spoke, Michael felt a familiar, restless itch stir within him, a longing that transcended the immediate concerns of irrigation ditches and compost piles. The Great Barrens, in these stories, was not just a wasteland to be endured, but a vast, broken tapestry to be explored, full of bizarre wonders and terrible secrets. One day, he promised himself silently, when this place is secure, when the fields are green and the walls are high… I will see these places for myself. For now, the ambition extended no further than the horizon of his responsibilities. The thought of traversing the entire ruined continent, let alone the globe, was a dizzying, impossible dream.
By the time the unlabeled plastic jug was half empty, the Karatown delegation had succumbed. One by one, they slid from their stools, ending up in a snoring, baijiu-scented heap under the table. Old Gimpy, Broyo, and the others, now seasoned veterans of Michael's "hospitality," were merely pleasantly warm, their eyes sharp and clear.
As Broyo effortlessly hauled the unconscious visitors away, two at a time, to be deposited in a spare room, Old Gimpy sidled up to Michael. He picked a strand of pork from his teeth with a fingernail, his expression shrewd. "The gnome was playin' possum, boss," he muttered, his voice low. "Wasn't near as drunk as he made out. Hagglin' tactic. Even at fifty gold a can, they'd likely pay. Desperate for the go-juice, they are."
Michael nodded, appreciating the old man's street-smarts. But his response was unexpected. "We're not selling it for fifty," he said calmly. "Or even thirty. We sell it for ten. Ten gold coins per fifteen-liter can. To anyone who wants it, in any quantity."
Old Gimpy blinked, his wrinkled face a mask of confusion. "Ten? Boss, that's… that's givin' it away! We could get thirty, easy!"
Michael just smiled, a cryptic, knowing smile. It was a matter of market cultivation, a concept as foreign to the Wasteland as the baijiunow warming Gimpy's belly. Sell high, and you sold little. People hoarded, used it sparingly. Sell it cheap, make it accessible, and you created dependency. You fueled an economy. The demand would skyrocket, and the gold would flow in a steady, broad stream, not in occasional, painful drips. He didn't explain. Some lessons were better learned through the accumulating weight of coins in the strongbox.
Instead, he changed the subject, his gaze drifting to the window, as if he could still see the gyrocopters sitting in his field. "Old friend," he said, his voice thoughtful. "Say I could get my hands on a few of those 'sky-trikes.' Enough to form… an air patrol for Sweetwater Gulch. Could you keep them flying? You're our best tinkerer."
Old Gimpy's chest puffed out immediately, his earlier confusion replaced by grizzled pride. "That half-pint gnome? Pah! If he can keep the wobblies in the air, I can do it in my sleep! Gimpy's Garage'll have 'em purrin' like kittens, you'll see!" The title was a grand one for his ramshackle workshop, but the confidence was genuine. A dreamy look entered his one good eye. Him, soaring above the Barrens, the wind in his few wisps of hair, master of the skies… He imagined the look on Elsa the bear-blooded widow's face. She'd be so impressed, she'd… well, given her substantial frame, perhaps he'dbe the one swept into a bone-crushing embrace. The thought was not unpleasant.
Both men, one dreaming of economic conquest, the other of aerial romance and a widow's formidable bosom, were blissfully ignorant. They saw the gyrocopters as tools, as symbols of freedom and power. They did not yet know, as Angiv the gnome certainly did but had seen no need to mention, that the skies of the Wasteland were not empty, nor were they safe. The heavens held terrors that made ground-based mutants seem tame, and the fragile, buzzing trikes were not just vehicles, but potential meals for predators that had long forgotten the taste of anything that walked upon the earth. But that was a lesson for another, likely more terrifying, day.