Desert Stars

by Joe Vasicek

  Desert Stars

  by Joe Vasicek

  Copyright © 2011 Joseph Vasicek.

  All rights reserved.

  Editing by Josh Leavitt.

  Cover art by Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, organizations, or events is purely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Copyright Page

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Book I: Dome and Desert

  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

  Book II: Sand and Stars

  11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22

  Author’s Note | Acknowledgments

  A TALE FROM THE FRINGES OF AN INTERSTELLAR EMPIRE THAT HAS FORGOTTEN ITS HOLIEST LEGEND: THE STORY OF EARTH.

  He was the sole heir to the Najmi camp, a young man raised by tribesmen after falling to the desert from his home among the stars. She was the sheikh's most beautiful daughter, promised his hand in marriage—if she can convince him to stay.

  Together, they must travel to a land where glass covers the sky and men traverse the stars as easily as tribesmen cross the desert. Here, at the ancient temple dedicated to the memory of Earth, they hope to find the answers that will show them the way home.

  But when love and honor clash, how can they face their destiny when it threatens to tear them apart?

  Prologue

  The boy felt scared, more scared than he had ever yet been in his young life. It was because of the strange noises in the bulkheads and the way the walls and floor shook. But mostly it was because everyone around him—even his parents—were scared, and he didn’t know why.

  The lights in the hallway flickered as he wandered out of his cabin, and the whine of the engine rose higher and higher. It wasn’t especially loud, but it didn’t sound right; the boy knew that much at least. On the other side of the corridor, a door hissed as it slid open. The boy turned and saw his uncle and three of his cousins come running out of the bridge, eyes wide with fear.

  “She’s gonna blow,” shouted his uncle. “Let’s move!”

  The boy stood rooted to the spot, his legs frozen in terror. He watched as the crew ran to the emergency escape chutes—the ones his parents had adamantly told him never to play in—and dove through.

  A groaning noise came through the bulkheads—the terrible sound of metal on metal. He closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands, and the floor itself dropped out from under him. For a frighteningly disorienting moment, gravity vanished, leaving him floating, weightless, in the corridor. The taste of vomit filled his mouth and he screamed in fright, but without gravity he could only kick his legs uselessly beneath him.

  The moment passed, and he fell to the hard tile floor. Tears of terror clouded his vision, and his arms and legs shook so badly that he hardly noticed the floor shaking underneath him. The ship lurched, sending him sprawling on his hands and knees.

  Hands grabbed him underneath his arms, lifting him up and carrying him away. He glanced up and recognized the face of his mother, pulling him towards the escape chutes.

  “Mommy,” he cried, “I’m scared.”

  “I know, dear,” she told him. “Mommy needs you to be extra brave right now, okay?”

  The boy nodded. Though his mother tried to soothe him, he could tell that she was just as frightened as he was. That terrified him more than even the loss of gravity.

  “Come on!” the boy’s father shouted, further down the corridor. “Any minute now, and—”

  The lights flickered again, and an explosion sounded from deep within the bulkheads of the ship. A low hiss erupted behind them, and not from a door opening.

  “Oh God,” the boy’s mother cried. “Is that—”

  As if in answer, a mighty wind howled through the ship, filling the boy’s ears with its roar. It whipped at his hair and tugged at his clothes, sucking him away like a monster from the bottom of a giant drain. Somehow, he knew that in only a few moments, they would all be dead.

  Hands grabbed him, lifting him up toward the escape chute. He screamed, but the roar of the wind was so loud he could barely hear his own voice. His mother slipped something around his neck, and suddenly he was falling through the chute, into darkness.

  He came to a stop in a snug little space, closed in on all sides like a glove for his body. A holoscreen lay in front of him, with a pair of flight sticks and a miniature control board. The boy gripped the flight sticks with his hands and stared dumbly at the screen, barely able to process anything that was happening.

  A distant puffing noise sounded through the ultra-soft walls, and then he was falling again—only this time, he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was locked into position, cushioned on all sides and only able to use his hands.

  Fighting back panic, he watched as the holoscreen flickered and came to life. It showed an image of space, the stars spinning wildly as noiseless flashes of light burst into being before fading into after-image amid the blackness of space. He squeezed the dual flight sticks and moved them like he was playing a computer game, but it was no use—he couldn’t stop the spinning.

  “Mommy!” the boy cried. Panic swept over him, and his hands and arms began to shake. He screamed, but in the tightly enclosed space, there was no one to hear him.

  The glowing orb of a planet came into view, filling the screen with its brilliant light. The boy squinted as the display adjusted, showing a brown and yellow landscape framed by a curved horizon. It danced with the spinning stars, moving so quickly that everything was a blur.

  A red light started blinking in the corner of the screen, and words flashed across the display. The boy didn’t know how to read yet, but he knew it was something bad. He tried again with the flight sticks, but that only sent him spinning in a new direction.

  Without warning, the screen switched off, and the entire capsule filled with thick, pink foam. The boy gasped and tried to shield himself with his hands, but before he could cover his face it hardened around his body, freezing him into position.

  The foam covered his mouth and face, but was just porous enough to allow him to breathe—in short bursts, however, because his stomach was severely pinched. The spinning grew worse, until he wanted to throw up. As if from a great distance, he heard a muffled roar through the walls around him. His little capsule grew increasingly warm, until he began to sweat. He tried to open his mouth to cry out, but his jaw was locked too tightly in place—he couldn’t move anything, not even a finger.

  Mommy! he mentally screamed. Where are you?

  As if in answer, something popped behind him. Inertia threw him forward, but the foam held him in place, so that all he felt was a tremor through his body. Gravity returned, so that he felt as if he were dangling upside down from his feet. Blood rushed to his head, and he swooned, redness clouding his vision.

  Then, like a punch to his face, the shock of impact hit him, causing his bones to shudder. He spun even faster than before, but the foam still held him. It felt as if someone had turned him inside out, though—as if his stomach had swollen and turned to mush.

  As the spinning gradually came to a stop, tears streamed from the boy’s eyes. The roaring had died down, leaving him encased in near-absolute silence. That frightened him almost more than the noise.

  A sharp hiss filled his ears as the foam grew sticky and gelatinous all around him. He thrashed against it, pulling his hands and arms free as the foam turned into a sticky, foul-smelling soup. Behind him, a hatch opened, and h
e struggled toward it, spitting to get the nasty taste out of his mouth.

  He crawled out and rose to his feet, blinking in the harsh light of a foreign sun. The hot wind bit him as it blew in his face, stinging his face with sand. He raised a hand to his eyes and looked around him at the alien landscape.

  A lonely, rust-red desert extended in all directions, with nothing but sand and rock and distant craggy peaks to meet his eye. The sky shone a hazy yellow, completely unlike the clean white light of his family’s ship. A new fear passed through the boy—the fear of being alone.

  As he stared at the land around him, he reached down to see what his mother had slipped around his neck. It was a pendant with a little black case at the end. He felt it between his fingers and knew somehow that he would never see her again.

  Tears clouded his eyes, and he screamed and wailed for someone, anyone—but in the harsh desert waste, there was no one to hear him.

  Book I: Dome and Desert

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  The desert wind howled across the barren, unforgiving landscape, threatening a magnificent sandstorm. All along the horizon, great craggy peaks towered like rows of misshapen fingers, thrusting upward from the rocky, lifeless ground toward the hazy yellow sky. From his perch atop the mountain overlook, Jalil scanned the rust-red desert with his binoculars. The hot desert wind pelted his face with sand and dust, making him pull his checkered headscarf tighter over his mouth and nose, but still he stood watch, searching for any sign of humanity—welcome or otherwise.

  “Jalil!” called out his older sister from behind him. “What are you doing up there? Storm’s coming—let’s go!”

  “What?” Jalil called back, still scanning the landscape.

  “I said, Let’s go. Yallah!”

  Jalil lowered his binoculars and glanced over his shoulder at Tiera. Her long black hair tossed wildly in the wind, tied back with a simple gray bandana. The lack of a veil or a headscarf made him a little uneasy, but she was not the kind of girl to cumber herself with such things when there was man’s work to be done. With a look of impatience, she squinted her eyes against the wind, one hand on her hip with the other clenched at her side.

  “Just a little longer,” he said. “We’ve got time—they might still make it.”

  “We need to break camp,” she shouted against the wind. “By Allah, we’ve been here for days, and with that storm bearing down on us we’ll be lucky not to spend another.”

  “Ten minutes,” he said. “Just give me ten more minutes.”

  Tiera clucked irritably and shook her head, but she offered no further protest. Jalil turned and resumed his watch while she climbed back down to the camp.

  With his binoculars, he scanned the valley below, ignoring the numerous dust devils dancing across the sandy wash. The pass was just out of view on the right; anyone coming through the mountains in this direction would first have to pass over the wide open valley before him.

  Inevitably, however, his gaze drifted to the horizon. On a clear day from this ridge, it was possible to see the wreckage of the starship that had brought him to this world. Desert tribesmen had long ago scrapped every useful piece of the derelict for parts, leaving only the sun-bleached hull. Jalil could see it in his mind even now, the wreckage jutting out from the desert like the fossilized ribs of some impossibly huge creature. Sometimes a trader passing through would ask him about it, and his answer was always the same: Only Allah knows.

  And in some ways, perhaps that was true. He remembered precious little of his life before the desert, and what few memories he still possessed faded ever faster with each passing year. But in other ways, the wreckage proclaimed a truth that Jalil could not ignore. He sensed it in the way that men of other tribes eyed his too-fair skin and bright blond hair; the way that traders and overland merchants asked him where he was from, as if the desert were not his home. And indeed, that was the truth that the wreckage proclaimed—that he was not from this world.

  Distracted by his idle thoughts, Jalil didn’t notice the rising column of dust until the first rover dashed out across the sandy wash.

  A bolt of fear and excitement shot through him like an electric shock, and he dropped to his stomach, keeping his profile low across the ridge line. Another vehicle darted out from among the rocks—and another, and another after that. Together, they fanned out and began their climb toward the pass. Though the magnified field of vision danced before his view, he saw enough to identify the shapes as caravaneers—long range, micronuclear-powered dune buggies built to carry entire tribes across the desert.

  Entire tribes—or roving bandit armies.

  “Tiera!” Jalil called out loudly. “Someone’s down there!”

  “What? Where?” In only a few seconds, she was at his side, panting slightly as she reached for the binoculars.

  “Here,” he said, handing them to her and pointing at the rising dust columns. “See that? Down there.”

  “How many are there?”

  “I don’t know—at least four.”

  Tiera grunted. “Probably more, though. You think they’re the Jabaliyn?”

  “That, or bandits.”

  She returned the binoculars. “Try to reach them on the shortwave. I’ll finish packing our supplies.”

  “Right,” said Jalil, rising to his feet. Together, they raced down the rocky path to the narrow landing where they’d made camp.

  “Storm, eh?” came the shaky voice of old Zeid as Jalil stepped inside the dusty, sun-faded camp tent. “Storm coming—feel it in my bones, I do.”

  “Has anyone called over the shortwave, Uncle Zeid?” asked Jalil. Wrinkled, toothless, and half-blind, there wasn’t much old Zeid could do except listen for chatter on the radio—that, and act as their chaperone, which he did with all the vigor that his ancient body could muster.

  “Shortwave?”

  Jalil ignored him and grabbed the transmitter, crouching down on the old, tattered camp rug to adjust the receiver frequency. The wind made the fabric of the tent ripple with wild abandon, but the sound of static drowned out the wind as the green and red bars danced across the ancient equipment’s dusty interface.

  “Hello?” Jalil called into the transmitter. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  “—you hear me?”

  “Yes,” said Jalil, fine tuning the receiver to get a clearer signal. “I am Jalil Ibn Sathi Al-Najmi.”

  “And I am Abu Mahdi Hamza Al-Jabaliyn. May the peace of Earth be upon you.”

  “And upon you as well,” said Jalil, reciting the traditional greeting of the desert.

  “Are you on the pass?” Hamza’s voice cackled. “The storm is on our heels—we cannot make it to the Najmi camp without your guidance.”

  “Forgive me, brother,” said Jalil, “but how do I know the truth of what you say?” In the deep desert, where strength was the only law and tribe the only universal bond, honesty was sometimes nothing more than a luxury between friends.

  The wind howled as Tiera opened the tent door and stepped inside. Without a word, she picked up a pair of old, rusted camp chairs and hastily rolled up the stiff rug beneath them, hauling them out as she broke camp. She’d already packed the cots, mattresses, and stove—only two small chests remained, besides the shortwave and some other assorted electronics.

  “What can we offer as proof?” Hamza’s voice came over the wind and static. “We have come to wed our son Mazhar Ibn Amr to your sister, Lena Bint Shira.”

  “Indeed,” said Jalil. “And where is the tent you have prepared for her?”

  “We have not prepared any tent,” said Hamza. “Mazhar is to stay in the Najmi camp, until the question of her father’s inheritance has been resolved.”

  A smile broadened across Jalil’s face at Hamza’s words. Normally, the bride moved in with the family of her husband; however, because Sheikh Sathi of the Najmi camp had only daughters and nieces, special provisions had been made. Few things were normal in a camp without sons.

>   “Indeed,” said Jalil. “Wait for our signal on this frequency, brother. We’ll meet you on the other side of the pass.”

  Tiera parted the tent door and stepped inside, letting in another gust of dusty wind. “Is it them?” she asked.

  “Yes, it is,” he said, switching off the radio as he rose to his feet. “They’ll meet us on the other side of the ridge.”

  “Well, let’s move then. Yallah!”

  She closed the camp burner and hauled it out, leaving the tent door flapping in the wind. Jalil chuckled as he collapsed the antenna and packed the shortwave in its ornately painted tin box, fingering the pendant he always kept around his neck. Soon, he told himself, his grin widening with anticipation. Soon, and I’ll be on my way home.

  Home—wherever that may be.

  * * * * *

  The wind picked up as they rode across the desert, blasting Jalil’s face with oppressive heat. The open-air caravaneer was more frame than solid metal, with dusty blue tassels dangling from the bar above the windshield and a sun-faded red arabesque rug stretched across the dash. Tiera drove hard and fast, making the cracked leather seats bounce and the tassels dance. As the rust-red landscape sped by, Jalil squinted against the wind and held onto an overhead bar. Nearly a dozen caravaneers from the Jabaliyn convoy followed behind them, racing the coming storm.

  After nearly an hour of riding across the rocky plain, the camp gradually came into view. At first, it appeared as nothing more than a single bump on the horizon, surrounded by flat, empty desert. As they came nearer, though, the outline of familiar structures gradually took shape. First came the top of the camp’s windmill, the ten-foot blades spinning as fast as Jalil had ever seen. Next came the colorful tents; though the fabric was faded by the harsh desert sun and caked with dust, their fanciful white and red designs still stood out against the rust-red rock and dusty ground. Last of all came the low heaped-stone wall that circled the camp, with the small, portable gun emplacements in the corners. Nearly a dozen people hurried about covering the weapons with heavy tarps, their dark robes billowing in the wind.