2. Jax
JAX
T he desert teaches you early that nothing is free. Not water. Not shade. Not mercy.
The sun is already high enough to hurt, a white, merciless disc that presses down on the land like it’s trying to grind it flat.
Heat ripples off the sand in visible waves, turning the horizon into a lie.
Every breath I take tastes of dust and iron, dry enough that my tongue feels like it’s cracking when I pull air in through my teeth.
I keep moving anyway.
The seedlings ride strapped across my back and flanks of the crawler, bundled in layered wraps of treated cloth and polymer casing, sealed tight against the heat.
Sacred cargo. That’s not hyperbole. Sweetwater needs these—drought-resistant, gene-stable, coaxed and guarded through three generations of failure so the next one might live.
You don’t rush that kind of thing. You don’t get sloppy with it.
I adjust my scarf, tugging it higher over my nose, and mutter, “You’re welcome in advance,” to the empty desert.
The crawler hums beneath me, low and steady, its treads chewing through sand and broken rock with patient determination. I keep my posture loose, eyes scanning, not because I expect trouble but because assuming you won’t get it is how you die out here.
My water gauge blinks amber.
“Yeah, I see you,” I tell it. “Relax.”
The gauge doesn’t relax.
I downshift speed slightly, conserving fuel and water both. Sweetwater’s still a half-day out if nothing goes wrong. If something does, well—plans are aspirational at best in places like this.
The desert smells hot today, which sounds stupid until you’ve been here long enough to know the difference. Hot metal from the crawler’s exposed plates. Alkali dust. A faint, sharp tang like ozone, carried on a breeze that doesn’t cool anything it touches.
That’s when I hear it.
Not the wind. Not the crawler. Footfalls.
I don’t turn right away. I let my hands drop casually from the controls, let my shoulders stay loose. The seedlings shift slightly with my movement, their weight familiar, grounding.
“Afternoon,” I say mildly, pitching my voice to carry without sounding like I care too much. “If you’re thinking about selling me something, I’m not buying.”
Laughter answers me. Rough. Dry. Too close.
“Water,” a voice calls back. Male. Young. Trying too hard to sound mean. “And the ride. Then maybe we let you keep walking.”
I sigh. Actually sigh. “You know,” I say, “it’s always water. Never food. Never shelter. Always water. You’d think you people would diversify.”
That earns me more laughter. Three sets, maybe four. I clock their positions from the sound alone, the way the echoes bounce off rock. They’re spreading, trying to flank.
I turn slowly, finally, letting them see me.
They’re bandits in the way bandits always are—patched armor, mismatched weapons, eyes too hungry for comfort. One’s got a rifle slung sloppy across his chest. Another grips a blade that’s seen more sharpening than cleaning.
The one who spoke first grins at me. “You talk a lot for someone about to die.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I get that a lot.”
He squints at the bundles on my back. “What’s in there?”
“Plants,” I reply. “And before you ask, no, you can’t eat them. Believe me, people have tried.”
The man with the rifle snorts. “Water first.”
I glance at my gauge, then back at them. “Tell you what. You walk away, you live, and you don’t have to find out how bad today’s already going for you.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Then the rifle comes up.
I move.
The first step is sideways and forward, a pivot that brings my body off the crawler and low. Sand sprays as the rifle cracks, the shot going wide where my head used to be. Heat kisses my ear.
“Bad call,” I mutter.
I close the distance before they can react properly. The man with the rifle fumbles, trying to realign. I slam my elbow into his throat, feel cartilage give, his weapon clattering uselessly to the ground as he drops, gagging.
The blade flashes to my left. I catch the wrist, twist, hear bone snap with a wet, ugly sound. The scream is sharp enough to cut through the desert heat. I don’t let go. I pull him in and drive my knee up, once, twice, until he goes limp.
Someone shouts behind me. Boots pound sand.
I spin, already moving, grabbing a fistful of grit and flinging it blind into a pair of eyes. The man howls, clutching his face. I take his legs out from under him and bring my heel down on his knee. It bends wrong. He doesn’t get back up.
The fourth one hesitates.
I see it in his posture, the way his weight shifts back instead of forward. Smart. Too late, but smart.
“Run,” I tell him.
He doesn’t.
He lunges, blade high, sloppy and desperate. I sidestep and redirect, catching his arm, using his momentum against him. The blade skids across my forearm, heat and pain blooming where it cuts skin, but I don’t slow. I twist, hard, and drive him face-first into the sand.
He doesn’t move after that.
The desert goes quiet again, broken only by labored breathing and the soft hiss of the crawler idling.
I stand there for a second, chest heaving, pulse roaring in my ears. My arm burns, blood seeping through the tear in my sleeve, warm and sticky against skin.
“Idiot,” I tell the bodies, not specifying which one.
I crouch, wipe my blade clean on a scrap of cloth, and scan the horizon again. No more movement. No witnesses. Good.
The smell of iron is stronger now.
I straighten and roll my shoulder, testing it. Everything works. The cut stings but it’s shallow. I’ll live.
My first real worry hits me then, sharp and immediate.
The seedlings.
I move to them quickly, hands suddenly careful where they’d been brutal moments ago. I undo the outer wraps, one layer at a time, fingers gentle despite the adrenaline still buzzing through me.
“Okay,” I murmur. “Okay, talk to me.”
The inner casings are intact. No cracks. No breaches. I crack one seal just enough to peer inside. The seedlings glow faintly, bioluminescent veins pulsing slow and steady, leaves uncurled and healthy.
Relief hits me hard enough that my knees almost give.
“Good,” I breathe. “You’re good.”
I reseal everything, double-checking the straps, my hands steadier now. Sweetwater will get what it needs. The desert hasn’t won today.
I’m fastening the last clasp when the sky changes.
The desert goes still again after violence, the way it always does, like it’s waiting to see if you’re finished embarrassing yourself.
Bodies cool fast out here. Blood darkens the sand and vanishes into it, swallowed without comment.
I stand there a moment longer than necessary, listening to my own breathing slow, the adrenaline bleeding off in a familiar ache behind my eyes.
The seedlings are secured. Sweetwater still exists on my internal map.
My hands are steady again. That’s usually the point where I move on, leave the dead where they fell, and let the land erase the rest.
The sky refuses to let me.
Light fractures above the horizon, too bright, too violent to ignore.
A streak burns across the upper atmosphere, tearing through the blue like something flung by an angry god rather than guided by intent.
The air trembles a heartbeat later, a deep, distant concussion rolling across the dunes and settling in my chest. I turn slowly, tracking the arc until it disappears beyond a line of rock, smoke beginning to coil upward where nothing should be falling from the sky at all.
The smoke leads me in before I ever see the wreck.
Black, greasy, wrong against the pale sky, it curls upward in a column that refuses to disperse, as if the desert itself is holding its breath around it.
The crawler bucks beneath me as I push it hard, suspension groaning in protest while the heat climbs with every kilometer.
The air smells scorched now, layered with burning fuel and melted composite, sharp enough to sting the back of my throat.
“Hang on,” I mutter, though I have no idea who I’m talking to yet.
The ground changes as I close in. Sand gives way to fused glass and shattered rock, the aftermath of something hitting fast and angry. I slow, not out of caution for myself, but because debris litters the path ahead in jagged arcs that could shred a tread if I’m careless.
The wreck comes into view in pieces before it resolves into a whole.
The ship—if that’s still the right word—lies half-buried in a shallow gouge torn into the earth, its hull split open like an animal gutted mid-run.
Fire crawls across exposed plating, licking at twisted metal and collapsed framework.
The sound hits me next, a low, hungry roar layered with sharp pops as something inside cooks toward failure.
“Damn it,” I breathe.
I bring the crawler to a stop upwind and jump down before it’s fully settled, boots hitting the ground hard. Heat slams into me immediately, waves of it rolling off the wreckage in suffocating bursts. My eyes water, smoke blurring the edges of everything.
“Hello?” I shout, voice rough. “Anyone alive in there?”
No answer.
I move closer, raising an arm to shield my face as another pocket of fire flares. The hull plating is wrong. Too smooth in places, too angular in others. No local build yard would produce something like this. Off-world, without question.
Trouble, then. The kind that never travels alone.
A sharp hiss cuts through the roar, higher-pitched, urgent. My pulse spikes.
Fuel cells.
“Shit,” I mutter, breaking into a run.
The cockpit sits canted at an angle, canopy cracked but not fully breached. Smoke pours out of a gap along the seam, thick and dark. I can hear alarms inside now, muffled but insistent, a dying animal’s last protest.
I reach the canopy latch and grab hold, metal burning through my gloves. Pain flares, bright and immediate, but I don’t let go. The latch resists, warped by heat and impact.
“Come on,” I growl, planting a foot against the hull for leverage.