“She’s alone.” The larger of the two men said as he watched through the viewer. The readout on the left of the image pinpointed her as a little over three g.u’s away, putting the hunters well out of potential discovery.
“Does she have it?” A smaller man beside him asked.
“Can’t see.”
“Confirm her ID…”
A button on the viewer activated the facial recognition software and the unit cycled through its database.
“…We don’t want another snek-up like that Baer trash.”
“It won’t be.” The larger man answered distractedly.
The woman walked through the small camp she had made, searching for something. Something caught her eye, and she leaned low to pluck a small portable terminal from the sand, silently she cursed and brushed the sand from the unit before blowing the vents cut into its side clean.
The large man watched all this intently.
“So, she’s expendable?” He asked.
“Yeah, the client just wants the artefact.”
“Hmm.” The larger man turned his attention back to the woman as her long legs carried her from the camp and down into a nearby pit dug into the sand.
He dropped the viewer from his eyes and blinked as the desert sun dazzled him briefly.
“We have a while to wait then.” The smaller man said, his arms folded behind his head as he sprawled on the sand dune. He wore a large hat that he pulled down over his eyes.
“Keep your eye on her,” he concluded, “I’m gonna nap.”
The large man watched his companion for a moment, then pulled his hood up to protect from the baking sun.
A second later the viewer was back in front of his face, and he watched for the re-emergence of the woman with an unsettling smile of anticipation on his lips.
Satine was irritated at herself for leaving the portable terminal out where the sand could get at it. Not that this mattered really, the sand got everywhere: she felt it against the sole of her feet and resting on her eyelids, it turned the creases of her knuckles a dirty yellow and she could feel it crusting the fabric of her underwear.
It got everywhere; and she loved it.
She jumped into the pit she had dug beside the camp, its walls supported by the inflated barriers she always used for her digs as she left the influence of the sun the temperature dropped suddenly as the slightly damp sand leeched away any remaining heat.
The tunnel through the sand created by the arch of plastic led downward, the sand beneath her boots clumping and gouged into furrows by her heels.
There was water somewhere down here; she had to be careful. She turned on the portable terminal and waved the sensor embedded in its corner as she descended.
The terminals terrain sensor saw nothing but sand in all directions; but then she neared the end of the tunnel and the terminal screen showed something she had not encountered before.
The slight curve of wall she had discovered buried in the sand reached from sandy floor to ceiling. It was made of stone that was the same colour at the sand surrounding it.
On the monitor a curved graphic represented the wall and beyond it, where Satine expected to see more sand, was nothing; a void where the terminal flashed a single word: Error.
Satine slid down to one knee and unfastened the tool pouch from her hip, the click of the fastener seemed too loud as she unrolled the dozen or so tools into a line in the sand. The metal glinted in the light emanating from the support structure that held the sand at bay. She selected a small pick that looked exactly like a shovel made for a child’s doll and ran it along the wall.
The fine edge of the toughened metal pick clicked in an invisible groove a hands-width from the wall of the tunnel and Satine turned her attention back to her tools for her marker.
With her pick in one hand and marker in the other the young woman followed the tiny groove on its journey around the strange construction, the markers glowing paint etching a cursive series of arcs and swirls.
Satine would not know how long the process took, once her head was buried in the process of discovery time ceased to exist for her; and covered by the tunnel of sand she could not see the sun had long since began its journey back behind the horizon. When she was finally finished, she stood back and surveyed the results of her labour.
Where the grooves in the stone (if that is what it was) were deeper the marker took on a deeper hue and this often made it easy for Satine to pick out hidden mechanisms or doorways. Usually that was the case at least, today things were slightly stranger.
The etched curves and swirls twisted and intersected like two dozen deep sea squids at a family gathering and though the result was beautiful there would no discernible pattern apparent if it were not for the marker. Hidden amongst the pattern were nine solid circles all unequal sizes that seemed to have been dotted randomly. On the far left was the largest, so large in fact that only the barest curve of it had been excavated from the sand, of the other circles a few were so tiny that without the marker they would have been invisible, and even with it took a trained eye to notice them.
Satine sat back on the slightly damp sand and raised the portable terminal so that its sensor could measure and record what she had revealed. She quickly isolated the circles, virtually completing the half-finished larger one before setting the terminal to scan her libraries for some correlation.
The terminal reported the database was 5 per cent scanned; displaying the categories and sub-categories it had searched in a steadily growing list.
Satine stared at the rock wall, listening to the odd muted clicks the terminal habitually made when it searched.
Placing the terminal on the sand Satine rose and let her gaze play out over the swirls and circles, her attention drifted over and through the image as if rising to a different state of consciousness by the attempt to decipher it.
The terminal readout reported 15 per cent completion.
As if her eyesight had been brought into sudden focus Satine saw that the swirls were not random, and they were not merely swirls; they were object paths. The circles were themselves caught in larger circles and some of the lesser markings were larger circles still.
Instantly she understood.
The terminal reported 30 per cent completion.
They were orbital paths, and the circles were planets. So, was this a chart of some kind, a location marker? Or a ceremonial chamber of some sort?
45 per cent completion was reached.
No, that wasn’t it.
Satine moved closer, something tugged at her attention, but she couldn’t for the moment see what it was. She was missing something.
50 per cent completion was reached.
55.
60.
65.
Satine saw it. The circles, the planets, were not all etched at an equal depth; the marker was darker in some places and lighter in others. It was clear to her now and without thinking she strode up to the rock wall and pressed the planets in as if they were huge buttons, which is exactly what she suspected they were. Third circle from the left, fifth circle from the left and finally the fourth circle from the left.
The terminal reported 80 per cent completed but Satine had forgotten about it and by the time it reached one hundred the rock wall had already parted, curves of stone, half-moon slivers folding away as if they had not really existed at all; revealing an artfully uneven doorway through which Satine climbed.
A moment later the doorway was no longer there, the markings were no longer there and all that proved that Satine was ever even in this subterranean place was a portable terminal gently ticking to itself.
Despite it making no rational sense, she knew that what she had just stepped through was no doorway, at least not in the traditional sense. The dampness on her backside from where she had sat on the sand suddenly felt much cooler, indicating that it was suddenly warmer wherever she had found herself; her body temperature rising more quickly than the dampness would dry. Satine knew from ingrained experience that if anything it should have been cooler, the rock acting like an insulator within the vast insulation of the sand itself.
But that wasn’t the only reason for her certainty.
Somewhere she could hear the breathing of a sleeping animal.
The darkness around her was nearly perfect, when she raised her hand to her face, she thought she could see a slight image of it, but she was aware this may have just been her imagination.
She did not move her feet, wherever this sleeping animal might be she was absolutely certain she did not want to inadvertently wake it.
She closed her eyes, which made no difference, and considered the situation.
Calmly she searched her packs and pockets and found one of the three items her father always insisted she always carried with her.
The pocket lamp was small but surprisingly powerful, so she twisted it to its lowest setting before triggering the luminous fluid it contained.
In a small circle around her she could see a pool of the palest blue light, only visible to her because her eyes had adjusted to its complete lack.
She stretched the flexible tube of light around her neck like a necklace and fastened it; it flattened and would have sat against her throat comfortably if it weren’t for the cumbersome, though small, adjustments dial at its one end.
Her hands now free she reached into her pocket for the second item her father always insisted she carry.
The hold out blaster was intricate and if it were not for the danger it presented, she would have happily worn it as jewellery its craftsmanship was so exceptional. A ring perfectly fit over each finger and her thumb, and a bracelet wrapped around her wrist. The dangerous end of the blaster sat on the back of her hand and all she had to do was squeeze her fist hard enough for it to trigger the bolt of energy it produced that would stun an opponent to unconsciousness.
Satine remembered her seventeenth birthday when her father had given it to her and despite her situation she smiled. One day she would have to track down that young boy her father had been so worried about and thank him.
Now she felt armed and more than a little dangerous as she surveyed her immediate surroundings.
To her left was a wall of metal that was etched with pictograms so complex she could not entirely make them out in the dim light, the floor was metal also, dimpled in an irregular pattern of wear that had become something of an art form. Behind her were a doorway, closed and undoubtedly the one she had just entered through; but in front of her and to her right was raw darkness.
Somewhere in that darkness a beast slumbered.
And it sounded like a big beast at that.
Satine checked her footing, a habit from many years of working in digs, and slowly moved to her right until she saw the far wall come into view. She checked left and could just see the wall so with a twist of the dial on her pocket lamp the light grew bright enough to comfortably see both.
Silently Satine moved deeper into the unknown.
For the second time that day Satine lost track of time, she had grown accustomed to the darkness enough to see the ceiling above her and a good distance into the long unwinding corridor in front of her. Oddly, the creatures breathing that had struck such fear into her had become something of a comfort, its even and never changing rhythm hypnotic.
The strangest thing was that the breathing had not grown either louder or quieter, and one would have expected, and Satine theorised that either this corridor had acoustic that carried the sound or that the sound was being broadcast over hidden speakers.
The idea that the corridor was not a corridor, and she was walking around inside the beast itself had occurred to her, but she pushed the idea aside as fantasy. She ignored the start of sheer terror the idea produced in her, pretending it did not occur.
If Satine had taken the time to study the pictograms that decorated the corridors walls another idea would have presented itself, something far closer to the truth of what was happening but the creatures breathing had so captured her imagination that such thinking was beyond her.
Which had been a plan designed for her before her birth.
The corridor around her suddenly disappeared and Satine’s heart was in her throat. She stopped in her tracks and tried to calm herself. She could no longer see the walls; she looked up and found that she could no longer see the ceiling. She looked at her feet and was comforted slightly by the sight of the scarred steel beneath her.
Her brain rushed through a series of scenarios that in more familiar surroundings she would have dismissed as magical thinking; the kind of thinking produced by a tired and frightened mind.
The corridor had broken out into a large room, which was all that had happened but for the moment at least the long trek down unchanging corridor coupled with the hypnotic breathing had lulled her into a state where anything seemed plausible.
She reached to the light at her throat and turned its brightness all the way up and immediately part of her wished she hadn’t.
“It is a beast” was her first thought; “it could gulp me down like an oyster” was the second.
Both were true, as well as completely false.
The Beast slumbered like a guard dog; its massive head resting on the steps leading up to what looked like a throne. Its nose nudged slightly to the side as it pressed against the base of the elegant artefact.
There was so much to take in.
She was stood between two arching tables that followed the contours of the large circular room; behind these tables were seats, a dozen in all, six to a side. There was the throne at the head of all this, directly facing the corridor from where she had entered, and then there was the Beast itself.
The Beast made her think of the dragons of myth, smaller than she would expect perhaps but no less formidable. It had a long muscular tail and a long snout but the more she studied it the more she realised she could just as easily say it looked like a gigantic wolf, or even a bear. The only thing she was absolutely certain of was that its tongue would be a mattress made for two.
Then mercifully something else caught her eye, something lay on the thrones seat less than an arm’s length from the Beasts nose. It was the only thing in the room, apart from her and the Beast, which was not fixture or furniture and anyone who knew Satine would instantly know what she had to do.
Though her body wanted to do the exact opposite she took a silent step forward, then another. With control that belied the utter terror she felt the young woman climbed the steps and the closer she got to the throne, and the Beast itself, the more she realised that this creature was far larger than she realised.
Most of it was disguised by the darkness around them, its head, and the tip of its tail the only things clearly in sight.
She stepped onto the wide steps that led to the raised throne.
She counted them. Thirteen steps to take, each one only a few inches high but two-foot lengths deep.
She took a step.
In the silence every movement sounded like the dragging of furniture over a tile floor, and the beating of her heart progressed from a muted thump to a drum in an empty auditorium.
Through it the beast slept or seemed to.
She took another step.
She could feel the warm air being expelled from the beast’s nostrils; she saw them flare with each exhale.
She took another; and then another.
She was beside the beast’s cheek now, its lips shuddered as it breathed, revealing a red stained tooth longer than Satine’s forearm.
She tried to take another step, but her legs refused to move.
Instead, they shook under her and for one terrifying moment she knew she was going to topple as they failed, she knew that she was going to fall on the beast’s head, and she knew it would wake in a rage; and she would be bitten in two.
She closed her eyes.
She remembered the fields of her home, the eastern ones that would be first kissed by the rising sun. She remembered how the golden crops that the local farmers grew there would be doused in a pink glow each morning. She remembered that boy who her father had been so distrustful of and how they would sometimes walk in the early hours through those fields.
Satine felt her breathing slow and her heartbeat soften.
The fields would continue until they met the stream that bordered the farmland, in it they would watch fish as they seemed to dance in the clear waters. She remembered how the boy would sometimes try to hold her hand and how she would avoid it, she remembered her father’s distrust and his assumption that she was somehow the one that needed protecting.
She smiled; she had never needed protecting.
When she opened her eyes, she saw the room in a new light.
The fluffy creature that lay at the foot of the throne was just like any animal awaiting the return of its master. Its warm breath was contented, and the shuddering of its lips brought a smile to her own.
She turned and walked the remaining few steps that took her to the throne and looked at the artefact she had glimpsed that lay there.
Instantly she was captivated by it.
The sword was slightly shorter than many she had seen, its ornate hilt built for someone no bigger than herself. She reached down and grasped it. It was light in her hand, but this did not surprise her. The bulk of a swords weight was in its blade, and the blade of this sword was anything but common.
It was made of some translucent material that was brilliant green crystal; but it could not have been. Crystal was far too brittle a substance to make a durable cutting edge. This sword was either of ceremonial use or was of some material with unknown properties.
Satine lifted the sword and investigated the blade; through it she could see the throne in front of her, but she could also see the ghostly image of her own face staring back at her.
And the eye of the dragon as it blinked.
Satine froze, she felt the dragon’s breath on the nape of her neck, making her hair flutter around her face. The beast’s breath was sweet, and Satine fancied she could smell berries.
She turned to face it.
The dragon’s fur was a pale grey that was matted to a black around its huge maw of a mouth. Its mouth was closed, and its nose twitched as it sniffed her,
Each nostril was big enough that Sabine could have comfortably reached in to scrape mucus away.
She didn’t try.
She just stood there and watched.
The beasts head shuddered, and it slips curled back to bare its teeth.
Still Sabine watched.
Her eyes were drawn to the dragons’ eyes, they were as green as her own, as green as the sword in her hand. Its large eyelids fluttered, and its mouth opened wide, incredibly wide, baring a million thick sharp teeth.
But still Sabine watched.
The dragon yawned, and its lips smacked closed.
Sabine smiled, and she could have sworn the dragon smiled back.
The sands began to cool as the sun dropped over the horizon and the larger man had grown tired of waiting. The wind that had swept across the desert had started to cut through him even through the insulated clothing he wore.
It was beginning to get difficult to see the target area and switching over to heat sensitive just showed the rapidly cooling sand and little else.
He looked over to his sleeping companion and considered waking him for a moment, but this thought was quickly replaced with a second far more sinister one.
They did say that the girl was expendable.
The large man considered this for a moment more and then climbed to his feet. Silently he moved over the dune and made his way quickly towards the abandoned camp.
Even trudging through sand, he made good time, reaching the camp while there was still just enough light to see it by. He surveyed the settlement, taking in the small squat tent and the deactivated heating circle she used as both a campfire and for cooking. Everything was cold and she was nowhere to be seen.
He had not missed her, and his attention moved over to the pit in the sand nearby.
He made his way over to it.
The pit was about waist height, but the ground sloped downward until it dropped off into a low tunnel of sand under which he had to duck. Inside it was even colder and he could see his breath in wisps of condensation. The support columns that stopped the tunnel from caving in under its own weight glowed, bathing the tunnel in a soft white light that illuminated the length of the tunnel well enough for him to see that it was empty.
He sat on his heels; his forehead creased in consternation.
Where was she?
He moved deeper into the tunnel, noting a wall at the far end that was decorated in a series of swirls and circles; on the ground near it a portable terminal glowed, text blinking on its small screen.
He picked it up and glanced at it.
The screen was filled with a list of variables that meant nothing to him and he tossed the terminal down onto the sand.
There was a sound and his eyes moved to the far wall. It sounded something like stone grinding on stone and it took him a few moments to place it. Amid the swirls and circles that decorated the wall a small indentation grew deeper. Inside a circle of stone corkscrewed inward, then stopped with a click. Nearby another circle followed suit, then a moment later another. The whole wall then shifted, breaking away into slivers of stone that slid away to reveal a circular doorway through which he could only see darkness.
He hadn’t thought of drawing his side-arm, but it was in his hand anyway, its safety off and its first charge primed. Years of experience had made so much of what he did automatic that he barely thought anymore. It was as if he was merely an observer now; just watching the brutal acts his body committed and enjoying the spectacle immensely.
In the darkness inside the doorway something glowed a brilliant green; the man raised his side-arm to shoulder height.
“Okay, step into the light.” He barked.
For a moment, the green light didn’t move, and then it started to sway slightly as it grew larger.
The first thing he saw of her was the green cast of the blades light across the leg of her plain clothing. The man backed off a few steps as she stepped into the light of the tunnel.
Satine looked up into his eyes.
For a moment he was unsure, there was something wrong here, but he couldn’t place it. The sword in her right hand was the artefact they had been sent to recover; there was no doubt of that, but the darkness from which she stepped had be too complete; too dark to be normal; and the look in her eyes, they looked as if she had seen things he wouldn’t comprehend.
He did not admit to himself that she scared him; but he still felt it.
“Drop the sword.” He ordered.
He knew she wouldn’t comply; he knew that this wasn’t going to unfold the way he had thought. He raised the gun further, pointing at her face.
“I said drop it.”
She merely stared at him.
“There’s no reason you can’t get out of this with anything more than a bruise or two, but if you make this difficult you just won’t be worth my time.”
Again, his instinct kicked in and he knew that she understood it all as much as he did. She knew that he would leave her with far more than just bruises if she let him have his way. She knew that if she dropped the sword she wouldn’t walk out of this sandy grave.
Decision made he squeezed the trigger.
A moment before the energy beam sliced through the air Satine dropped to the floor, rolled, and ran. She completely ignored the man, setting her eyes on the mouth of the tunnel and bolting for it.
He turned and followed her, leading her a little in preparation. In his haste to target his prey he didn’t pay any attention to where the bolt of energy hit, Satine knew this tunnel, she had spent many weeks here examining it and she knew exactly where the beam of energy would intersect with the inflatable structure that held the many tonnes of sand above at bay.
The beam exploded as the compressed gasses inside erupted into the tunnel, the structure collapsing. Above sand dropped down like a solid mass, driving the man to the ground. Satine did not look back; she dove through the mouth of the tunnel into the starlight beyond.
Inside the man did not suffer, the weight of sand had driven him to the ground so forcefully he lost consciousness, and the tonnes of weight crushed the remaining life from him.
Satine collapsed on the sandy floor of the pit; the sword lay beside her. She stared up into the starlit sky. She had seen enough tunnel collapses in her time to know that few survived them and those that did only managed it with outside aide.
The man was dead, or as good as.
She felt no pity for him; she knew that this would’ve been her fate if she had allowed him to take the sword from her. Her deeper self knew that it would have been worse than that, but she pushed the thoughts away; she had survived and that’s the fact she should concentrate on.
She rolled over and pushed to her feet, the sword glowed on the sand beside her right foot, and she leaned down to pick it up.
It was this that saved her life.
From the darkness somewhere on the desert plains a shot rang out and a beam of energy cut across her scalp, the force of it lifted her from her feet and span her in mid-air.
She slammed against the side of the pit and the sword span from her hand. It came to rest against the wall opposite, half buried in the sand.
Satine screamed in pain; her head filled with more stars than the night sky. The shot had partially cauterised the wound and the there was little bleeding, but there was still enough to cloud her vision, intermittent as her vision seemed to be.
Over the crest of the pit, she saw a figure, a long rifle in its hands as it paused on the edge of the pit. Her head swam; she raised one leaden arm and wiped the blood from her eyes.
It’s another man, smaller than the first. At first his words meant nothing to her, they sounded nothing more than a garbled mess of syllables through her pain. Slowly the words began to make sense, letters gradually making words and words sentences.
“…Done with him?”
Satine tried to move but the pain drove her to the ground.
“I said, what have you done with him?”
She gestured clumsily towards the collapsed tunnel and the man laughed, doubling over for a moment with his hands rested on his thighs.
“You buried him?” He laughed again. “You buried him! Well, don’t feel bad; he’d have done worse to you.”
He hung the long sniper rifle on his back and slid his blaster pistol from its holster; he checked it and clicked off the safety.
The sound was deafening.
“Well, thanks for the sword; it’s going to buy me a comfortable retirement on some distant world.”
He raised the gun.
Satine couldn’t move, she knew she was not badly hurt and given time she would be able to climb from the pit and patch it up; but time was not on her side. She sighed and looked over at the sword with the green blade, then back to the man on the edge of the pit.
A moment later the ground behind him erupted, a geyser of sand thrust into the sky as if from a cannon. The man screamed in surprise and covered his head. He didn’t see what appeared behind him and Satine was grateful for him. As the sand settled, she could see two large green eyes through the debris, a curling grey body twisting into the sky behind him. There were no wings, and nothing carried the creature aloft, it defied Satine’s understanding.
The dragon twisted in the air in elegant spirals, gaining height with a speed that was baffling. Then it dropped, diving earthward.
If the man would have looked up the last thing, he would have seen was a gaping maw with a tongue the size of a double mattress and teeth as long as a young woman’s arm bearing down on him. He did not look up, so he did not scream; but the dragon gulped him down anyway.
It was then that Sabine passed out.
No more than a few minutes had passed but the silence that greeted her when she came to made her think the world had come to an end around her.
She opened her eyes, and the stars were so bright that she immediately closed them again. A moment later she tried again, this time winding her eyelids up a notch and squinting into the light through her eyelashes. For a long moment she didn’t move, the bed beneath her was warm and soft and she wondered whether she had been found by someone or whether the whole thing had been an incredibly vivid dream; either seems equally likely at this point.
She lifted her head from the pillow slightly, experimentally, and felt the stars above her spin a little so she lowered it again.
I’ll have to take this slow, she thought.
The warm breeze that caressed her face was sweet smelling and it reminded her of her childhood, specifically of the homemade candies that was the staple of so many children in the farmlands where she was born. Her mother would make them on a large skillet that would heat up in the sunlight, radiating and redistributing the heat in such a way that the candies would cook and dry in an entirely natural process.
Satine had found the process impossible to replicate, and these candies were one of the many things the loss of her mother had stolen from her.
Her eyes had begun to adjust, so without moving her head she looked up into the sky above. The stars were bright, impossibly so, but they were bearable.
Something fluttered across the edge of her vision, and she tilted her head slightly, again the move pushed the world out of focus for a moment and what she took as dunes in the distance seemed to have something moving on them.
As her vision found its focus, she realised that they were not dunes.
The dragon’s side rose slightly as it breathed, causing the thick hairs on its hides to move in the breeze. Its warm breath washed over her and for a moment she thought it was sleeping; but it wasn’t, it was watching.
One green eye was open and looking at her.
She watched it right back.
The bed that she thought she was lay on was the creature’s tail, which was wrapped around her, its tip under her head. The dragon had circled her with its body in what Satine thought of as an unmistakable protective gesture.
Awkwardly Satine pushed up onto her elbows and the dragon lifted its head to watch her. She then rolled to her feet, and it lifted its head a little more, turning it to face her.
Dragon watched woman, and woman watched dragon.
“So”, Satine began, “who is whose pet here?”
The dragon seemed to smile.
Satine reached out with her right hand, the dragon moved its head closer, her fingertips brushed the fur just below the dragon’s nose, and it was smooth and soft.
She had travelled to this desert world to find an artefact, chartering passage transport to transport across half the Outer Rim systems to get here. She had no ship of her own and no means to purchase one. Satine looked at her new-found friend.
“So,” she asked, without expecting an answer, “where do we go from here?”
New days bring new possibilities, she thought, so let see what the morning brings. In the meantime, the dragon watched her; and for the time being she was satisfied with just watching it back.