Chapter 2
The flyer streaked over the desert, the sand rolling beneath it in a sea of blood.
The alienness of it never got old. It was vastly different than the non-gratas encampment Alex was raised in bordering a densely wooded swamp.
She gave herself a moment to savor it before opening the flyer’s comm system to the passenger bay.
Immediately, the holographic screen opened above the controls so that she was looking directly at Vi as the woman lifted her head and met her eyes.
“What is our present location?” Vi demanded.
“Two hundred kilometers out on the red,” Alex replied in the standard jargon for the desert. “We passed the Aglatha cave system a short time ago. Now, would you like to tell me where we are heading?”
Vi nodded grimly and rattled off the coordinates. Alex plugged them in and then frowned when the holo-map adjusted, showing the dark rise of the mountains as their destination.
“Is this... right?” she asked uncertainly. “We are going into the mountains?”
“The Zir Mountains,” Vi remarked flatly. “Or at least that is what Lori called them when we last received communication from her. Those are her last known coordinates.”
No one needed to tell Alex who Lori was.
Although the woman had been an unknown from the time of her arrival, her return with the Seshanamitesh had skyrocketed her to something of a legend far beyond Vi’s long-term ball-buster reputation.
Something that the other woman surprisingly didn’t appear to hold against her friend.
Keeping the comm open to facilitate easy communication with the passenger bay, Alex mentally dismissed its presence from her mind as she focused on the long stretch of seemingly lifeless desert stretching out ahead of them.
The vivid red of the sand had always struck her as somewhat creepy—as if the desert was nothing more than a wasteland of blood and death.
And in the distance, the so-called Zir Mountains rose on the horizon like a grim shadow.
Alex shook her head and laughed a little, dismissing the absurd thought.
Her imagination was bound to spook her out at the wrong time one someday.
There was no terrible misfortune awaiting her.
The sun was shining, and the low drone of conversation between Vi and Ehsash was nothing more than a comfortable background sound as the flyer zipped across the desert.
They didn’t seem overly worried, so why should she be?
She couldn’t clearly hear their words, but their expressions remained relaxed, conveying to her that there was truly nothing to worry about.
All she had to do was remain on course so that Vi could reassure herself about Lori’s situation and then fly back to Raza. Simple.
Yawning, she leaned back and kicked her feet up so that her heels rested on the edge of the control panel.
Frankly, this was the easiest assignment that she’d had in a while.
It certainly wouldn’t hurt her to catch a wink or two while the flyer was crossing the distance to the mountains.
She glanced curiously at the control panel—estimated time of arrival in five hours.
Cool. With the coordinates locked in, she wasn’t even necessary unless there was an emergency that demanded that she take control of the flyer.
Seeing how their equipment could even detect storms long before they arrived, with the exception of the random freak super-storms that came out of nowhere, what was even the chance of that happening?
A glorified babysitting trip was what this was for her. All the same, she hoped that Vi paid her well for the effort.
Stretching, she settled back further into the pilot’s seat, and her eyes slid shut as she released another huge yawn.
At least the flyer’s AI autopilot would do the majority of the flying for her.
The flyers were designed to fly long distances on autopilot.
The flyer could practically fly itself. The presence of a pilot was more for the minimal “oh shit” possibilities that might crop up.
“System, initiate autopilot and alert me if anything comes up within the flight path,” she mumbled tiredly, rubbing her eyes.
“Confirmed,” the mechanical voice replied, and a quiet ding echoed through the flight deck as the autopilot came online.
Turning back toward the comm, she reopened the line. “Hey Vi, I have autopilot on. I’m going to close my eyes for a bit. Notify the flight deck to reopen the link if there is anything you need.”
Vi’s lips twitched, but she nodded. “We should be fine sitting tight back here so long as Ehsash doesn’t provoke me into murder. Go ahead and grab some rest. And if you hear of any commotion from back here—just remember that you know nothing.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Alex replied, choking back her laughter.
Disconnecting the link, she tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Some rest would be really damned good. It should be an uneventful enough flight across the desert. They usually were.
Alex was sleeping soundly when she was jerked abruptly awake by the sound of a siren screaming loudly throughout the flight deck. She shot up in the pilot’s seat as the flyer rumbled loudly, her eyes flying open to stare in horror at the whirling cloud of sand heading directly ahead.
A sandstorm, and not a little one by any stretch of the imagination.
It rose into a high wall that dwarfed even the more regular, average-sized storms that routinely tore over Raza and brought down flyers as if they were nothing more than paper planes.
This would not just crash the flyer. A storm of this size would easily obliterate it.
This... this was very bad.
“System...”
A crackle over the comm confirmed her worst fear. The sand was already working its way into the flyer. If she didn’t manually override the autopilot to land the flyer safely, it would be torn apart in the air like a rag doll.
Alex vaulted from the chair and rushed over to a series of controls as she tapped in the sequence of codes necessary for overriding the autopilot. How the fuck had a storm of this magnitude been missed. The weather models should have predicted signs of days ago.
The comm system dinged loudly as she furiously input the codes.
“Alex!” Vi shouted. Alex glanced up to see her passengers jerking violently within their harnesses. “What the hell is going on out there.”
“Freak sandstorm, class C,” Alex shouted in reply, her eyes darting worriedly at the view of the encroaching sandstorm swallowing the viewing screen. “I’m overriding the autopilot and landing us. Vi, if anything happens—”
“Autopilot successfully terminated,” the system intoned
The storm collided loudly with the flyer, sand scraping violently over its metal body as the wall of wind and sand enclosed it entirely.
The flyer pitched sharply, throwing Alex off her feet with so much strength that she collided with the pilot’s seat.
Groaning loudly, she winced as she struggled up from the chair against the violent motion of the flyer.
If she survived, that was going to fucking bruise.
She pulled herself along the chair, her hand shaking with effort as she strained and reached for the controls that would allow her to finally initiate the landing sequence.
“Come on, you ridiculous bitch,” she cursed, her fingers inching over the panel as gravity suddenly dragged her at a sharp angle as the flyer began to roll to one side. “Come on. Come on.”
“Alex!” Vi shouted, but her voice was drowned out, and the comm connection terminated completely with the sudden, ear-shattering shriek of metal being torn apart.
The flight deck vibrated violently, and the flyer rolled, tossing Alex from the seat into the wall.
Her head fell back, striking the control box.
Stars exploded behind her eyelids, and the world pitched around her in an endless roll that dragged her off the wall before throwing her into another surface.
Over and over again the flyer rolled, somehow easier than before, and the wind sounded louder and angrier as sand swept inside and scraped over her skin.
Every blow against her body drove deeper into her until she was tumbling limply with the force of the flyer’s roll.
Everything felt surprisingly weightless, even as her skin burned and wept from its punishment.
Agony screamed through her, unable to escape from breathless lips, until, mercifully, the flyer came to a sudden, violent stop.
She dropped like a dead weight, her head cracking against something hard.
Pain shattered through her temple, but a sigh of something almost like relief escaped her as she sank into a black abyss within her mind.