Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The warm evening breeze curled around Eos. She stood on the peak of a sand dune and looked at a night sky packed with stars and a brilliant view of Amoris and its stunning rings.
It would have been peaceful except for the roar of the mag-lift.
Above her, the Infinitas hovered with its exterior lights illuminating the area below in a wash of bright blue-white light.
A huge magnetlike device on the belly was directed downward and a large twisting column of sand rose up toward it like some giant serpent.
Every few minutes, Zayn would swing the ship away and dump the sand nearby.
Niklas and Dathan stood on either side of the whirling sand and directed Zayn through their Syncs.
She watched Dathan as he waved his arms in the air, muscles flexing.
He stopped to shout something at Niklas.
He didn’t look like the irresponsible adventurer she’d assumed him to be when they’d first started out.
There was much more to Dathan Phoenix. More than he let most people see. She ran her hands up and down her arms. He was proving to be just as powerful a lure as the ruins lost beneath the sands.
She forced her gaze back to the shifting sand, waiting to see if anything emerged from the depths.
She’d thought discovering Star’s End and its treasures would complete her.
Would finally fill that void that her mother’s death had created.
She looked back at Dathan. He crouched, studying the sand before standing again in a lithe move that made her mouth water.
Now she was afraid that it would take much, much more. More than this man was willing to give her.
She realized he was waving at her. She lifted her hand, and saw him point to the ground.
Some sort of spire speared out of the sand. Her heart leaped into her throat. She skidded down the slope.
By the time she reached him, the mag-lift had pulled more sand away and the ruins of a building were visible.
Incredible. Her heartbeat pulsed. It was impossible to tell what style of architecture yet, but there was something here.
She laughed, and Dathan picked her up and spun her around. Once she was back on her feet, he leaned down, his lips pressed to her ear.
“You were right, Dr. Rai. Congratulations.”
She gripped his hand. She knew she could never have come this far without his help. Having him by her side to make this discovery seemed right.
“All right, let’s keep at it,” he said.
They worked into the night.
They formed new dunes with the discarded sand, and soon a good portion of the colony was uncovered. By midnight, they shut down the mag-lift. Tired but elated, Eos watched Zayn land the Infinitas on a flat section of sand between two dunes.
With an ion flashlight, Eos walked through the buildings.
She couldn’t say for sure they were Terran construction, but they looked right.
Simple structures expected of a colony. They had no idea exactly how old Star’s End would have been.
But looking at these buildings, they’d been here long enough for the inhabitants to evolve a certain style.
She laughed, excitement like a strong drug in her system. She wanted to spin in a circle or run down the empty street.
Something moved in the shadows and she started. Dathan walked out from behind a column.
She pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re far too good at creeping.”
“Occupational habit. Pays to have light feet.” He smiled at her. “You’re practically vibrating.”
She spread her arms. “It’s just so exciting. I’m never the first one on a dig. Usually my team comes in at a later stage.”
“So, enjoy the moment. This sure as hell isn’t an Institute dig.”
She choked on a laugh. “No, it isn’t.” She let the laugh loose this time and did a twirl.
Dathan smiled and then waved her over. “Come look at what I found.”
She followed him to an arched doorway.
“Look.”
She gasped and crouched. “Oh my Suva, he’s so well preserved.”
The body of a man, lying on his side, arm curled protectively over his face, lay on the sandy floor. His skin looked like leather.
“The sand’s preserved him.”
“A mummy,” she whispered. She shone the light farther into the room. “Look! Two more.”
They got close enough to see, and her throat closed. A mother and child.
The larger figure had strands of long black hair. She was curled around a small child, possibly a boy.
“It’s like they just lay down and died.” Eos turned slowly, noting the many artifacts scattered around the room by the receding sand. Furniture was still in place. “What the hell happened here?”
“They didn’t abandon the colony.” Dathan picked up an object, a frame that might have once held a holo-picture.
“No, something catastrophic happened.” She looked over at him, then down at the bodies at her feet. Damn, she needed more light to inspect them properly. “The residents here never left.”
“Then there’s a good chance any treasure they had never left either.”
She nodded. It would take a full team from the Institute years to study the site completely. She needed to get to work, and do what she could with her limited resources. Just being here, on a site no one had stepped foot in for maybe thousands of years, had blood pumping through her veins.
The melancholy of finding the dead was buried under the weight of excitement. So much to study. And still the greatest treasure in the galaxy to find.
“Can we get some lights down here? And I need my kit from my cabin. I can start—”
“Doc.” Dathan gripped her shoulders. “We’ve had a pretty big couple of days. We can’t do any more tonight.”
She shook her head. “I can start on the—”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to find the treasure?”
“Of course I do. But even I know the benefits of a good night’s sleep and starting out fresh.
” He turned her to face the distant glow of the Infinitas.
“Come on, Z is getting a fire going and Niklas, funnily enough, is a hell of a campfire cook.” They walked through the silent streets. “You ever slept under the stars, Doc?”
She was still feeling peeved. “Why would I want to sleep under the stars when there’s a perfectly good bed in the Infinitas?”
He shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re missing, trust me.”
She raised a brow. “Is anyone crazy enough to trust you, Phoenix?”
He shot her a smile. “Hey, I got you this far, didn’t I?”
She looked around the eerie buildings just visible in the shadows beyond the flashlight. “Yes, you did.” She turned her face up to him. “And we aren’t finished yet.”
He tugged on her ponytail. “Not by a long shot.”
Times like this made life seem good.
Dathan leaned back in the sand, a bottle of ale dangling from his fingers. He’d learned—even in the middle of a treasure hunt—to take his downtime where he could.
Niklas had cooked up a feast of some desert-dwelling animal BEll had assured them was edible.
The stars were out like a thick, studded blanket, and there was treasure waiting somewhere in the ruins below.
Nik was off poring over his records, and Z was fast asleep somewhere in the Infinitas—he’d never trade his ship for the sand and stars.
The beautiful woman added something to the ambience as well.
He watched Eos under his lids. She had her legs curled under her on the blanket they’d laid out. The firelight set her golden skin aglow. He wished she’d let her hair down, but tied back, it did accent her high cheekbones and beautiful features.
He’d wanted women before. Taken them easily to his bed and left them smiling several hours later. He’d never worked side by side with one, especially one as smart as Eos Rai.
She made him want things he could never have. He had nothing to offer a woman like her. Like it or not, his father’s blood ran through his veins.
“You’re staring,” she said.
She was watching him through the flames, one finger stirring through the sand.
“You’re easy to stare at.”
She snorted. “Bet you say that to all the girls.”
He stared off into the desert night. “Yeah. Right.”
“Where do we start in the morning?”
Right, the hunt. Exactly what he should be thinking about. Not licking at the luscious spot where her neck met her shoulder. “We’ll divide up the ruins into quadrants, and each take an area. Search it systematically.”
Her lips quirked, softening her face. “You’ve completely ruined my image of the rogue treasure hunter. I imagined the legendary Dathan Phoenix storming through ruins, dodging booby traps, and scooping up the treasure.”
He took another swig of beer. “That’s how my father liked to do it. I learned what not to do by watching him.” Brocken had wanted the rewards for the least amount of work. “He lusted after Terran artifacts. Especially the Mona Lisa.”
“Is that why you want it?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He didn’t want to look too hard at his reasons. His eyes narrowed. “I suppose you also imagined me stomping historic artifacts under my feet, destroying history in my path.”
Her smile dissolved. “Yeah, I did.”
“Reality rarely lives up to legend.”
“You think the reality of Star’s End will prove to be a disappointment too?”
He hoped for her sake it didn’t. “First, we have to prove this is Star’s End.”
She stared down at the ruins, like she could see the residents still moving through the buildings, living their lives. “It must have been hard to leave your planet behind, abandon everything you knew.”
“I don’t know. Their world was tearing itself apart.
No one agreed on anything, views had become polarized, countries were fighting over the smallest things.
By the end of the war, the entire northern hemisphere had been decimated by nuclear weapons.
Just a few survivors held on in the south until they too were destroyed in the final battle of the war. ”
“You know your history,” she said. “But still, to leave loved ones and your planet behind and cast off into unknown space…”
“I like to think of it as starting afresh, discovering new and exciting things.”