Norman steel
IMPULSE
no signal, just survivors
War...
War changed the world.
It lasted seven days, but its aftermath destroyed civilization. Electromagnetic pulses, neutron bombs, and nuclear strikes destroyed 98% of the planet's electronics.
The pulse plunged the Earth into chaos. Technology survived only in shielded bunkers deep underground.
Transport froze. Communications were interrupted. Industry ground to a halt.
Thus began 2132—the Age of Darkness.
Part 1. Chapter 1. Rusty Waves of the Wasteland
The Seven Days of Death are a thing of the past, a nightmare from which it is impossible to awaken.
They erased the faces of cities, scorched the soul of civilization. Now the world is a Wasteland.
A Wasteland breathing rust, radiation, and despair.
The EMP strikes didn't kill humanity—they turned it inside out. Cities became shells filled with dead machines, radiation, and despair. Technology that was once a god became a curse, a fragment, or a sacred relic for fanatics. The sky, eternally obscured by the ash of burnt-out microchips and the fires of the Wasteland, no longer knew the pure blue. It was crimson at sunset and a dirty gray during the day.
The capital of humanity's surviving people wasn't a capital before the war. It was simply the Giant Plant No. 7. Now it has become everything: a fortress, a source of life, the last bastion of reason in a sea of chaos. Its walls, welded from the armor of pre-war tanks and the hulls of wrecked ships, rose toward a sky shrouded in eternal soot.
At the center of it all, like a true heart, the sole surviving thermonuclear reactor, the "Steel Heart," pulsed and hummed. Its warmth and dim light were the Technate's lifeblood and breath. Pipes like arteries radiated from it, carrying steam for the machinery and meager electricity for the shielded control systems. The air was thick, permeated with the smell of machine oil, hot metal, and eternal dust.
The year was 2142. Ten years since the onset of the Age of Darkness.
Gromov squatted among a pile of scrap metal in his small room—a former spare parts storage room on the third level of the Industrial Zone. In his hands, he fidgeted with the charred casing of a pre-war "Voice-7" radio receiver. The usual chaos reigned all around: shelves crammed with incomprehensible junk that only Maxim could discern; schematics drawn in charcoal directly on the wall; a few functioning shielded lamps powered by a tiny steam dynamo. But Maxim didn't see disorder. He saw an aura.
Even dead, burned-out electronics left a trace in his perception – a ghostly flicker, a faint pattern of energy lines frozen in the moment of death. This "Voice-7" was almost intact. Its aura, though ravaged by the EMP, still pulsed with a faint but stubborn light. Maxim's fingers, covered in fine scars and ingrained dirt, deftly rummaged inside the casing. He replaced blown fuses with homemade ones, desoldered dead microchips whose auras had faded forever, and soldered in surviving ones found in the most unexpected places in the Wasteland. His face, furrowed with premature wrinkles and perpetual fatigue, was focused. His usual smirk had now given way to a rare seriousness.
He connected the makeshift antenna—a piece of rusty wire threaded through a narrow opening in the ceiling. He turned on the power. The indicator light flickered a weak yellow. The speaker began to hiss and wheeze, like an asthmatic. Maxim tuned in, turning the tuning knob, his inner vision catching faint bursts of ether amid the noise.
And suddenly—a voice. Distorted, intermittent, but a voice nonetheless! A female voice, filled with an unnatural enthusiasm from a long-gone past: "...and remember, citizens! Responsible energy consumption is the key to a brighter future! Switch to energy-saving bulbs from GlobalLight! Your comfort is our concern!"
Maxim snorted. "GlobalLight." Those corporate idiots probably sponsored the first EMP tests. The irony was as bitter as desert sagebrush. But he kept listening. The commercials were followed by snippets of news: something about environmental protests, about supply disruptions... Then the hissing swallowed everything. Maxim turned off the radio. Voices of the past, stuck in the air like ghosts. His only consolation in this shitty world. And a reminder of how stupidly everything had been broken.
The closet door creaked open. Skinny Lenny, the messenger boy from the Communications Hub, stood there. His face twisted with fear.
"Maxim! Trouble! Near Ashgabat... his 'Buzzer'... It's gone! In the Rust Zone, at the foot of Titan!" The Order... they say it's the work of the Children of Fire or the Reapers... Ashgabat is rushing in there, alone! They'll kill him!"
Maxim sighed heavily. Ashgabat. A mutant guide. His "Buzzer"—a tiny repair drone—was more than just a tool. It found caches of food, medicine, and spare parts. For many in the lower levels of the Technate, it was a matter of survival. Including him. It was Ashgabat that brought him a rare shielded transistor six months ago, when his own transmitter was on the verge of death.
Duty? Such a word isn't used in the Technate. But some notions of honor still remained even here.
And the Children of Fire... Fanatics with torches. Or the Reapers of Silence—they would slit throats for even mentioning the word "microchip." And the Order of the Iron Core won't hesitate to take advantage of the chaos to claim the Sector.
"Damn it, Lenny," Maxim muttered, standing up and grabbing his worn leather coat and long-barreled "adapter"—a shotgun-rifle hybrid cobbled together from what was available. "Tell Ashgabat to sit like a mouse in a hole. I'll handle this. And don't bother me."
His face became an impenetrable mask, but a spark lit in his eyes. Justice? Or simply unwillingness to lose a useful mutant and his drone? Technate made no difference. He stepped out into the noisy, soot-smelling, sweat-scented corridor of the Industrial Zone. The rusty waves of the Wasteland called.
They erased the faces of cities, scorched the soul of civilization. Now the world is a Wasteland.
A Wasteland breathing rust, radiation, and despair.
The EMP strikes didn't kill humanity—they turned it inside out. Cities became shells filled with dead machines, radiation, and despair. Technology that was once a god became a curse, a fragment, or a sacred relic for fanatics. The sky, eternally obscured by the ash of burnt-out microchips and the fires of the Wasteland, no longer knew the pure blue. It was crimson at sunset and a dirty gray during the day.
The capital of humanity's surviving people wasn't a capital before the war. It was simply the Giant Plant No. 7. Now it has become everything: a fortress, a source of life, the last bastion of reason in a sea of chaos. Its walls, welded from the armor of pre-war tanks and the hulls of wrecked ships, rose toward a sky shrouded in eternal soot.
At the center of it all, like a true heart, the sole surviving thermonuclear reactor, the "Steel Heart," pulsed and hummed. Its warmth and dim light were the Technate's lifeblood and breath. Pipes like arteries radiated from it, carrying steam for the machinery and meager electricity for the shielded control systems. The air was thick, permeated with the smell of machine oil, hot metal, and eternal dust.
The year was 2142. Ten years since the onset of the Age of Darkness.
Gromov squatted among a pile of scrap metal in his small room—a former spare parts storage room on the third level of the Industrial Zone. In his hands, he fidgeted with the charred casing of a pre-war "Voice-7" radio receiver. The usual chaos reigned all around: shelves crammed with incomprehensible junk that only Maxim could discern; schematics drawn in charcoal directly on the wall; a few functioning shielded lamps powered by a tiny steam dynamo. But Maxim didn't see disorder. He saw an aura.
Even dead, burned-out electronics left a trace in his perception – a ghostly flicker, a faint pattern of energy lines frozen in the moment of death. This "Voice-7" was almost intact. Its aura, though ravaged by the EMP, still pulsed with a faint but stubborn light. Maxim's fingers, covered in fine scars and ingrained dirt, deftly rummaged inside the casing. He replaced blown fuses with homemade ones, desoldered dead microchips whose auras had faded forever, and soldered in surviving ones found in the most unexpected places in the Wasteland. His face, furrowed with premature wrinkles and perpetual fatigue, was focused. His usual smirk had now given way to a rare seriousness.
He connected the makeshift antenna—a piece of rusty wire threaded through a narrow opening in the ceiling. He turned on the power. The indicator light flickered a weak yellow. The speaker began to hiss and wheeze, like an asthmatic. Maxim tuned in, turning the tuning knob, his inner vision catching faint bursts of ether amid the noise.
And suddenly—a voice. Distorted, intermittent, but a voice nonetheless! A female voice, filled with an unnatural enthusiasm from a long-gone past: "...and remember, citizens! Responsible energy consumption is the key to a brighter future! Switch to energy-saving bulbs from GlobalLight! Your comfort is our concern!"
Maxim snorted. "GlobalLight." Those corporate idiots probably sponsored the first EMP tests. The irony was as bitter as desert sagebrush. But he kept listening. The commercials were followed by snippets of news: something about environmental protests, about supply disruptions... Then the hissing swallowed everything. Maxim turned off the radio. Voices of the past, stuck in the air like ghosts. His only consolation in this shitty world. And a reminder of how stupidly everything had been broken.
The closet door creaked open. Skinny Lenny, the messenger boy from the Communications Hub, stood there. His face twisted with fear.
"Maxim! Trouble! Near Ashgabat... his 'Buzzer'... It's gone! In the Rust Zone, at the foot of Titan!" The Order... they say it's the work of the Children of Fire or the Reapers... Ashgabat is rushing in there, alone! They'll kill him!"
Maxim sighed heavily. Ashgabat. A mutant guide. His "Buzzer"—a tiny repair drone—was more than just a tool. It found caches of food, medicine, and spare parts. For many in the lower levels of the Technate, it was a matter of survival. Including him. It was Ashgabat that brought him a rare shielded transistor six months ago, when his own transmitter was on the verge of death.
Duty? Such a word isn't used in the Technate. But some notions of honor still remained even here.
And the Children of Fire... Fanatics with torches. Or the Reapers of Silence—they would slit throats for even mentioning the word "microchip." And the Order of the Iron Core won't hesitate to take advantage of the chaos to claim the Sector.
"Damn it, Lenny," Maxim muttered, standing up and grabbing his worn leather coat and long-barreled "adapter"—a shotgun-rifle hybrid cobbled together from what was available. "Tell Ashgabat to sit like a mouse in a hole. I'll handle this. And don't bother me."
His face became an impenetrable mask, but a spark lit in his eyes. Justice? Or simply unwillingness to lose a useful mutant and his drone? Technate made no difference. He stepped out into the noisy, soot-smelling, sweat-scented corridor of the Industrial Zone. The rusty waves of the Wasteland called.
Contacts:
NormanSteel.info@gmail.com