Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2)

by T W M Ashford

  “Adeona? How will you fare in a sandstorm?”

  “Functionally? No problem.” The ship sounded proud of that fact. “Might need a new paint job by the time you get back though.”

  “Take us down, then.” Jack nodded slowly. “But be careful. We may need to make a quick getaway.”

  “Understood, Captain,” said the Adeona, igniting her thrusters.

  As Rogan suspected, the Mansa fleet was not looking for the Adeona. They passed the orbiting military barricade without incident.

  “I really hope we haven’t started something bigger,” Jack said, as he watched small cargo and transport ships ferry supplies and troops from one battleship to another. “Like an interplanetary war, or whatever.”

  Rogan didn’t say anything.

  The airspace above Ankhir was being battered by the outer edge of an enormous hurricane tearing across the surface of Paryx. The city felt none of its fury, protected by its tall exterior walls and impervious floating buildings, and no doubt other technologies unseen. But the desert outside – it swept up a sandstorm, disguising its dips and dunes. The Adeona shook as the winds pummelled her hull, threatening to push her off course. Nobody aboard could see more than a few metres past her windows. Luckily, she could scan the terrain without them.

  A rocky outcrop shaped like a giant shark tooth stuck out from the shifting sands. There was shelter from the winds in the shadow of its white, hooked peak – comparative to everywhere else, at least. The Adeona used careful blasts from her thrusters to set herself down.

  “Great job, Adi,” said Rogan. “I don’t think we could have got any closer to Ankhir without their ground control picking us up.”

  Jack clapped his hands together.

  “Okay. Everyone ready? We’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

  Tuner wandered into the cockpit. He tossed Jack a pouch similar to the one hanging from his hip.

  “Grabbed some rations for you and Klik. And I made a scarf out of some old scrap, in case Klik needs to shield her face.”

  “Very thoughtful of you. Thanks.” Jack’s expression turned quizzical as he clipped the pouch to his other hip. “Are the two of you going to be all right in all that sand? You won’t… you know… break down?”

  Rogan laughed.

  “The machines on your planet must be terrible.” She put a reassuring hand on Jack’s shoulder. “We’re built to last. A bit of grit won’t be a problem.”

  “What about a lot of it?” asked Jack, but Rogan’s incredulous expression was all the answer he needed.

  “Okay. Let’s see if we can rouse Klik from her quarters and then get moving. With a bit of luck we’ll reach the city before sundown.”

  Tuner hurried off towards Klik’s room and Rogan left for the loading bay. Jack turned round to speak to Brackitt, who remained sat at the ship’s controls.

  “Be ready for anything,” said Jack, his voice low. “And keep an eye on—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Brackitt, waving him away. Jack reckoned he would have added a knowing wink if he’d had any eyes. “I remember what we talked about. Now get going. Oh, and Jack?”

  Jack paused just past the doorway, at the top of the stairs leading down to the cargo bay.

  “Hmm?”

  “Try a little harder not to get yourself killed this time, all right?”

  9

  Death and Sand

  Jack stood a little ahead of the others, protected from the sandstorm by the same towering rock that sheltered the Adeona. His suit and helmet made it a relatively comfortable experience – regulating his temperature and shielding his eyes from dust – but did little to improve his visibility.

  It was like staring into a wall that wouldn’t quit building itself.

  Rogan and Tuner gathered up the last of the overnight supplies behind him. Hopefully they wouldn’t need any of it, but, given the increasing severity of the storm, Rogan had warned that the trek might take longer than originally predicted. Given how recent events had played out, Jack felt inclined to listen to her.

  Klik wrapped Tuner’s thin, makeshift scarf around her head like a bandage, then pulled up the hood of her cloak again. Her feet were bare, as they had been the entire trip. Jack hoped they wouldn’t burn on the hot sand.

  “Sun’s not getting any higher in the sky,” said Rogan across their radio comms. “We’d better make a start.”

  Jack nodded. He checked the virtual compass on his helmet’s heads-up display.

  “Ankhir is that way,” he said, pointing into the storm.

  “Then that’s the way we’d better go,” said Rogan, pulling the strap of their overnight bag over her shoulder.

  They stepped out into the whirling sand. He may as well have been in a diving bell for all the difference it made to Jack. He could hear the grains scratching against the visor of his helmet, though. And each step was almost as difficult as the ones he’d taken on top of the Mansa supply ship. Otherwise, he felt fine.

  Nervous to the point of nausea, but fine.

  Despite the storm, the winds were far less violent at ground level than up above, so Tuner wasn’t at much risk of being blown away. Even so, they all kept close together as they travelled. Klik walked with her arms crossed and her head down, her cloak billowing around her feet. She still wasn’t speaking to Jack following his accusations about the heist, but it would have been no use anyway. Given the volume of the storm, he could only communicate to Rogan and Tuner via their comm channels.

  They pressed on, barely a word spoken between them.

  If the sun was getting any lower, Jack couldn’t tell. There was only the endless golden-brown wall crashing endlessly all around him and the occasional rock for him to stumble and bang his shin against.

  It wasn’t the heat, or the wind, or even the uneven surface of the sand that was getting to him. It was simple fatigue. Three months of sitting in bars and his captain’s chair hadn’t done him any favours.

  And the worst thing? After his meeting with the resistance, he’d have to make the same journey back again.

  “How far have we still got to go?” he asked.

  “If you’re struggling already, you might want to turn back.” Rogan’s voice sounded calm and clear over the comms, even as Jack watched her almost lose her footing in the shifting sands. “We’re still much closer to the Adeona than we are to the city.”

  As if he was going back. He’d travelled billions of kilometres the past few months, searching for an answer across countless star systems. An answer he’d begun to believe didn’t exist. Now that answer hung in a pouch off his hip. A simple transaction away, nothing more. Go back. Huh. He would keep walking across that desert until his legs gave out from under him, and after that, he’d crawl.

  And then, if he asked really nicely, maybe Rogan would pick him up and carry him.

  It was hard for Jack’s mind not to wander when faced with an environment so devoid of features or scale. There was only the endless brown blizzard through which he pushed. Too many conflicting emotions rose in his heart. He felt hopeful, yet confused.

  There was excitement, yes. An excitement that bubbled and threatened to spill over. The thought of seeing Earth – that beautiful, blue, dying marble – and its scores of Ark ships. The thought that he might, with the right technology or information in hand, be able to save his species. The thought of finding Everett Reeves, grabbing him by the shoulders and telling him his stupid machine had worked. And most importantly, of course, coming home to Amber – to find her and hold her and tell her he wasn’t some deadbeat disappointment, that he’d got them tickets on the Ark, or on the Adeona, or some other ship, and that their lives together were just beginning, no longer sentenced to end on some dead and forgotten home world.

  But there was fear, too. Fear that Sek would go back on the deal. Fear that there was no deal in the first place, that in their desperation the Krettelians had used Jack’s worst fear to manipulate him. Fear of fear. And even if Sek and his contacts
really did know how to manufacture a wormhole with Earth’s coordinates, the thought of being thrown through it… it was almost enough to stop Jack in his tracks. He’d barely survived the first time. He presumed many of the other test pilots hadn’t. What was the point in all this if he arrived back home in multiple body bags?

  Still, he couldn’t give up. He couldn’t go back.

  He looked up and realised he’d strayed from the others. Not by much, but by enough that Klik was only a dark shape amongst the sandstorm. He quickened his pace as much as possible, given how deep his boots sunk into the soft, fine sand, and tapped her on the shoulder.

  Klik spun around with her arm raised, as if expecting something worse. Jack recoiled but Klik quickly dropped her arm and squinted at him through the gap in her scarf.

  He shot her a thumbs up, asking if she was okay. There was no way to speak to her with words. She studied the alien gesture for a moment, then nodded and continued walking in Rogan and Tuner’s direction.

  That he could even see the two automata was good – it meant the storm was growing thinner, less intense. He was under no illusions that they’d somehow pushed through it to the other side. But the hurricane – or whatever it was – must have drifted further away, and now they were suffering the gales left in its wake.

  “The storm is clearing,” he said, for the sake of making conversation.

  “You’re right.” It was Rogan who replied. “But look up. It’ll be dark soon. At best, we probably have an hour left before we need to stop somewhere.”

  Jack raised his head to face the sky. It was still a challenge to catch more than a glimpse of it beyond the swirling sand, but of the heavens he could see, it bore little resemblance to the summer blue he’d seen during his last trip to Ankhir. The sky was burned with auburn scars.

  Dusk had started to fall. Jack had a hunch they wouldn’t want to be stranded outside come the night.

  “How about that?” Tuner pointed at a jagged rock formation similar to the one under which the Adeona had landed. “Could we rest up there?”

  The sandstorm had thinned enough that they could make out the landscape a hundred or so metres ahead, but not much further than that. For the most part, all the receding winds had revealed was more sand. The onset of darkness wasn’t helping, though they each possessed their own way of dealing with that.

  The four of them looked down at the rocky outcrop from the top of a nearby dune, its sand slowly adopting the colour of silvery midnight-blue. Jack noticed Klik suppress a shiver, and then remembered how cold deserts could get at night. Inside his suit, he couldn’t tell.

  “It’s not ideal. Sand could build up.” Rogan shook her head, but Jack could tell she was coming around to the idea. “I suppose if Klik huddled with Jack for warmth, she would be okay.”

  Klik looked at Jack with thinly-veiled disgust, as if he’d been the one to suggest it. He wasn’t exactly all that keen on snuggling up with a grumpy teenage insect either.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he said, laughing. “Besides, I’ve got my suit. You’re the one who’ll freeze to death.”

  “I’m not cold,” she said. “I’m scared.”

  Jack went to ask why, but an exasperated Tuner interrupted him.

  “Well, we need to do something.” Tuner approached the tip of the slope. “You guys keep watch. I’ll scout ahead, see if this spot is any good.”

  “Tuner!” Rogan went to grab his arm but missed. “For the love of bolts, stay—”

  It was too late. Tuner managed a grand total of three steps down the side of the dune before losing his balance. He slipped onto his back and carved a long groove through the sand, then somersaulted the rest of the distance. He let out a series of panicked beeps the whole way down.

  “For God’s sake,” snapped Jack, rushing after him. Rogan and Klik tried to follow, but he waved them back. “No. I’ll get Tuner. You two look for someplace less treacherous to spend the night.”

  He didn’t wait for their reply, which in Rogan’s case he imagined to be rather colourful. Descending the side of the dune was a less graceful experience than he’d hoped, though at least he managed to stay upright the whole duration. He found Tuner half-submerged, but otherwise unscathed, under a heavy blanket of sand at the bottom.

  “You’re an idiot,” he said, pulling Tuner out.

  “I know. Sorry.” Tuner brushed the sand off his arms and legs. “Oh, bolts. It doesn’t look half as welcoming up close.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Jack stepped cautiously towards the rock formation. “But it looks exactly like that one we saw before. Odd, right?”

  Even though the daylight was disappearing fast, Jack could make out dozens of thick cracks running across its cold, black exterior. Like the other one, it rose to a curved point dozens of metres above the surface – a hook raised in salute to the starlit sky.

  The sand shifted beneath their feet. Only a little, but enough for them both to notice.

  “Well, not exactly.” Tuner looked back up, his head tilted at an angle. “Wasn’t the other rock white?”

  The sand shifted again. This time Jack could have sworn the rock trembled, too.

  “That’s because it wasn’t a rock,” he said, taking a step backwards towards the slope. His mouth turned as dry as the desert around him. “It was a skeleton, bleached by the sun. And that means…”

  “This one isn’t a rock either,” said Tuner.

  The third time, the sand didn’t just shift – it quaked. Something was stirring beneath the dunes, waking from its daytime slumber.

  “Run!”

  No sooner did Jack and Tuner start running back up the dune than an explosion of sand and rock went off behind them. Pebbles bounced off their torsos like pellets. Tuner slipped, but Jack reached down and pulled him to his feet again.

  As he did so, he risked a glance back at the not-rock.

  He wished he hadn’t.

  A colossal spider the size of a football field emerged from its subterranean bed, its fat head raised towards the green glare of Paryx’s only moon. What had once been a rock was now clearly some form of crest – a hardened carapace like the horn of a rhinoceros beetle. Its pink-brown body was pocked with rock-like sores. It raised itself up on its titanic rear legs; the six that wriggled in the air culminated in digging claws. What it lacked in eyes it more than made up for with a mouth large enough to swallow small aircraft whole. Not that it would ever need to, given its concentric circles of razor-sharp, outward-facing stalactite teeth.

  The sand rushed past their feet as it was sucked down into the enormous chasm the spider left behind.

  “Go first,” said Jack, pushing Tuner up the sand. “Hurry!”

  He tried to run faster, but the sand kept trying to pull him downwards. His boots sank as if he was walking through wet mud. Tuner crawled up the slope more often than he walked.

  Yet somehow in their panic they were making progress. The withered husk of a tree stood a short way beyond the summit – with each desperate, scrambling second, a little more of it came into view.

  They were almost at the top of the dune – almost able to reach out and grab the lowest of the dead tree’s branches – when the spider came crashing back down.

  It felt like a power plant had been demolished only inches away from them. The noise alone was brain-rattling, despite the sound being muted by Jack’s helmet. A thick cloud of sand burst up all around them, obscuring their vision and throwing them forwards through the air. Jack landed on his side and smacked his skull against the back of his helmet. He sat up with a stinging headache and looked back down the slope.

  The spider was burrowing towards him, gnashing blindly at the sand with its grotesque, grinding maw. Jack sat there and stared at it, petrified. A gelatinous arachnid of flesh and stone was coming to eat him, and…

  …and where was Tuner?

  That snapped him out of his stupor. He caught sight of a mechanical hand flailing at the top of the slope, clawing f
or purchase where they was none. With each outburst from the spider, the dune fell further away.

  Jack dived towards the edge, his hand outstretched.

  “Grab it, buddy,” he said through his comms.

  Tuner reached up for his hand…

  …and the sand slipped from under him.

  “No!”

  Rogan’s arm shot past Jack’s helmet so fast he thought he was about to get speared. She caught Tuner’s hand by the very tip of his tiny interfacing finger, lifted him up to get a proper grip on his arm, and then violently wrenched him upwards. Klik caught up and helped drag Tuner over the edge.

  “Don’t stop, you moron!” Rogan picked Tuner up and started running back in the opposite direction, Klik in tow. “This way!”

  Jack got to his feet and chased after them. Already the dune was growing smaller, swallowed by the burrowing bug behind them. Though the sandstorm continued to weaken, it was still hard to make out where Rogan was leading them.

  Another regretful glance over his shoulder revealed a sandscape torn asunder, swelling and sagging as the spider continued its subterranean attack. Its rocky horn carved through patches of cracked earth like a shark’s fin through choppy ocean waves.

  Whether it wished to devour them or they were simply obstacles in its way, Jack couldn’t tell… but it was gaining.

  “Please tell me we’re running to something, not just away from that thing,” he rasped across their comm channel.

  “Straight ahead. Two hundred metres to the north-east.”

  At first he couldn’t see it. His vision shook as blood thundered through his temples. Dust and airborne sand still stained the air a faint golden-brown colour. He wished he had access to all of Rogan’s different sensors.

  Then it crept into view. A cave mouth in the side of an actual rock, this time – a hillock of familiar grey stone. Unless the cave was actually the eye socket of a titan the size of a small battlecruiser, there was hopefully little chance of this one waking up and wandering about.