Dr. Wyntrmn Flztril Ibrdrm sat there on the scorched computer console, panting and wheezing as the fused scraps of conductive plastic crunched under her tremendous weight.

It just didn't make sense, little over a month and a half ago she was leading Sharon Salvage and Research teams out into the deepest reaches of the Great Eastern Debris Heap, one of the vast continents of starship debris that blankets much of Jarbdy.

She pioneered new routes through the downed starliner's radshadow, discovered and disarmed numerous buried store rooms of space age artifacts, slagged countless ancient defense systems before they slagged her crew... now she can barely make it down the scuttled battleship connecting the River of Flame's survey post to the staging area without doubling over, exhausted. The expedition hadn't even started, and here she is, utterly winded.

Course, she was about twelve hundred pounds lighter back then.

Sharon Salvage and Research, as the name implies, explores the Great Eastern Debris Heap for anything that can be brought back to the city of Sharon for salvage and research. It's a very lucrative profession, the ancient machinery and supplies buried within the Heap are, on average, technological wonders far beyond anything possible nowadays.

It's also unbelievably dangerous. Take the River of Flame, for instance. Several miles north of the survey post, atop a mountain of corium, lies a shattered orbital fuel station, all of it's stored reactor material long since leaked out and caught on fire, snaking along lasercut valleys, forming a river of flame. That's also radioactive. And probably poisonous.

The Heap is also alive. Whoever built all these spacemachines apparently made them to last, as much of the debris still work, albeit not quite as well as they used to. It's not uncommon for a survey team to walk into a dark corridor, only for it to spring to life and gun them down, or serve them drinks, or just burst into flames trying to do either.

As a result, it's distressingly common for veteran Surveyors to end up butchered and disfigured. For instance, that boob cat I keep meaning to draw more of, the one with, like, one and a half limbs? Yeah, she was one of them, bits and pieces of her whittled away over the course of several unlucky expeditions until she became physically unable to continue.

Same for Dr. Wyntrmn Flztril Ibrdrm. Little over a month and a half ago, a medical kiosk ambushed her team and dosed them with some kind of chemical that, over the next few weeks, left them massively obese. It's also how she lost her eye, fun fact. It wasn't a good day for her.

Life turns on a dime for Surveyors. One moment they're hauling back much needed medical supplies, the next they're a fluffy potato pinned under their own flesh. At least the pay's good.

Dr. Klrmtref Ilnm Twqunm Ilnmpj adjusted the pressure regulator on Dr. Flztril's plus-sized toxi-suit. Maybe some extra oxygen'll help get her back on her feet, at the very least long enough to return to the survey outpost. There's no way she'll be be able to hoof it to the Boxcar Vixens like this.

Poor Dr. Flztril, Dr. Ilnm thought, she wanted so badly to come on this expedition and go back into active survey work. She begged the coordinators day and night, she built her own massive toxi-suit from scratch, she tried (and failed) to complete the physical fitness tests, just trying to get back some form of normalcy to her life.

And poor Dr. Ilnm, she's not looking forward to convincing her to head back.

--

Special thanks to Ken Perlin for the algorithm that makes things look slightly better.

Posted using PostyBirb