Story Seed - Life From Death

Image Source: http://simonfetscher.deviantart.com/art/Forgotten-Sphere-486971784

The remains of the city were quiet. The only sounds came from the whistling of the wind through the canyon streets as it blew across the broken windows of the buildings. Those buildings, their broken facades grinning like skulls or slumping into the streets in defeat, were a potential source for all manner of pre-war tech. A lucky scav might find a working domestibot, or a high capacity fuel cell that still functioned. Far more common were the bits and pieces of broken tech that could be salvaged. A good techsmith could turn junk in any number of useful items, and they were always in need of parts.

Kcal lifted the small EMF scanner and flipped the toggle. There was a low hum as the green display brightened, showing distance rings around a central bright dot. She waved the device about for a few minutes, but got no response. With a click she snapped the toggle back down to conserve power. With no active power sources in the area she wasn't going to score any functional tech, but she also wouldn't need to worry about any warbots left over from the Scorch. She hoisted her pack up onto her shoulders and looked to the intersection ahead. She could move down either of the side streets, or continue down this main avenue.

Kcal made her choice and started forward, picking her way around the larger pieces of rubble and debris, and keeping her eyes roving and her ears alert for trouble. The crunching of her boots was quiet, and could only barely be heard above the sound of the wind. She turned left and started down a wide street littered with the metal hulks of burned out autos. Their metal had the tell tale twisted and melted look of a plasma bomb. Some part of the back of her mind thought they looked like wax. Thankfully the plasma weaponry didn't leave any bones, so she didn't need to see the dead. Up ahead she could see an open space to the right, a plaza of some kind she thought and she made her way towards it. The plaza would make for a good base point to search from.

As she got closer Kcal could see that the plaza was broken, the sythstone cracked and buckled from some long ago impact. Curious she hurried forward hoping to find a downed combat drone, or possibly even an aerial fighter. Instead, as Kcal entered the plaza she was confronted with a large sphere partially embedded into the broken synthstone. It looked like an undetonated plasma bomb, probably dropped at the same time as the others that had slagged the street and the autos. Atop the crumpled weapon a tree grew out of the broken casing, its roots twining around and into the weapon and down into the earth between the cracked paving. All around the object short grasses grew, healthier and more vibrant here than elsewhere in the city or beyond.