She mentioned a war of sorts with the military. He could guess how well that had gone. Back then, the mechs had worked a lot better. Taking their things? "Yeah, they did a lot of that after the... event." Finally though, his almost trance-like state began to lift, whatever thoughts that had taken over him being pushed to the back of his mind once more.

He snapped out of it completely when he had the chip back in his hands.

"Yeah, well, I suppose I didn't [i]plan[/i] on getting you killed. No accounting for stay bullets, though." If they [i]didn't[/i] get shot at at least once, he'd be astonished. "I'm Maedoc. And I was [i]shot[/i] by my ex-partner's psychotic girlfriend, err, wife? Let's just go with insufferable bitch who I plan to pay back at some point. I teamed up with their crew to acquire-" Well, why lie at this point. "Ahem, [i]steal[/i] the chip. I was able to trick them, but I still got shot. My armor had a duel with her bullet and lost after a valiant fight." Valiant enough to at least keep him alive at least. "They're the people we're racing against, to be clear.

"Now, none of what you want is going to much matter if we don't beat them there. So we really need to work on that shopping list I told you about." Shopping list, stealing list, same difference. He pushed himself to his feet, but nearly collapsed immediately, legs wobbling and knees knocking. The pain had almost been gone too... until he'd stood. "Survey says that's gonna be mostly your job..." he whimpered, eyes watering. "Transport would probably be a good start." He took a deep breath to steady himself. "Makes getting everything else easier. Especially if we need to run afterward..."

She'd said she wanted horses. Horses existed, but they were at a premium. They weren't native, and it was hard to breed them with so little native vegetation. They were also usually very skittish and trained to run home at the first opportunity. Kept losses to a minimum...

He'd have preferred some sort of ATV, like a truck... but those were loud, required fuel, and could break down. And in the desert, they weren't necessarily faster what with the sand and rough terrain. But at least they couldn't argue with you. Of course, his ability to argue with her hadn't improved in the last five minutes, so his opinion didn't have much weight he was guessing.