Chapter 3 A Silent Desert
A Silent Desert
The transfer skimmer cut through the upper atmosphere as the planet’s semi-arid beauty spread unfurled beneath it in a vast, raw expanse.
Far above, a massive medical transport capital ship began to reverse thrusters, moving up and away from Tansinia Minor’s orbit and onto the next drop-off.
Sheba’s new home for the foreseeable future rose to meet her, gorges carved deep into the land, the Silent Desert pale in the east, the distant sea catching light at the horizon.
The planet appeared unyielding and unpretentious, stripped of the blare of traffic and the glare of neon.
Stripped of faux pretension, it was perhaps the best place to lose herself in work, where she’d forget the hot mess of her personal life.
Without warning, the atmosphere around the flyer fractured.
The hell?
Pressure shifted as light bent and fractured around a silhouette suspended ahead of her craft, drifting against the sky itself, not falling, not flying, just hovering before her.
The giant form burned with molten-gold brilliance, then vanished in an explosion of gold motes.
Her soul jolted as the craft got hit with a violent shudder.
Its engines coughed, and the dashboard erupted in erratic symbols and warning tones as systems failed in a cascade.
Her stomach dropped as panic cut clean through her chest.
‘What in Abbadon’s inferno?’ she hissed, reaching for the controls as the craft pitched hard and began to lose altitude.
She seized the manual override, hands white-knuckling the yoke, but it bucked, resisting her.
The craft fought hard, as though another will held the small ship in a firm, unyielding grip.
The nose tipped downward.
The ground rushed up to meet her; dunes rolling in pale arcs beside a savage strip of beach, an ocean surging beyond it.
She gasped as gravity took full possession of her trajectory as it struck the sand hills with bone-rattling force.
Metal screamed, and the cabin snapped and spun.
Her body slammed into the restraints, breath ripped from her lungs as the world fractured into sound and impact.
Darkness closed over her in a single, merciless wave.
High in the mountains that overlooked the Silent Desert, Idan worked the fence line that ringed his hut.
His hands moved in a steady rhythm as he set wire and stone back into alignment.
The endless cutting wind carried grit and heat, scraping across his skin.
He paused mid-motion when a violent psychic surge struck him, a pressure behind the eyes piercing enough to wrench his focus inward.
His head lifted, and his muscles stilled.
He turned toward the horizon where the arid land thinned into pale dunes and the sea darkened into a hard, shifting line.
A tight coil developed beneath his ribs, and he took a ragged inhale.
A rush of terrified emotion, not his, flowed over his senses.
He caught the impression of an unmistakable scrape of lungs desperately pulling for air, followed by a brutal impact and then nothing at all.
Silence fell.
Idan straightened and drew a deep breath, the world narrowing to a single point of intent.
The fence, the hut, and the mountain plunged away from relevance.
He stepped forward and then broke into motion, turning into a streak of force and purpose, racing toward where an explosive impact had just swallowed a scream.
Sheba woke with a jerk, choking on salt and grit, chest spasming as she dragged air back into her lungs.
She twisted with the effort, muscles screaming as she knifed upright, hands clawing at nothing.
Glass fragments and sand spilled from her curls and scattered down her shoulders.
She coughed until her vision steadied, then forced herself to take stock.
She was alive; however, she was also half sunken in a dune.
Damn.
As her fingers skimmed over her skin, she encountered bruising across the forehead and arms.
The skin was tender and already swelling, but nothing appeared broken.
She saw no blood beyond shallow cuts. Neither were her limbs injured, nor was there any internal pain agonizing enough to ring alarm bells.
A concussion, however, hovered at the edges of her awareness, a dull pressure at the back of the eyes, throbbing through her skull.
Where was she?
Sheba touched the ground around her with tentative brushes, and her palms encountered cool, wet seashore.
She scrambled and pulled herself out of the heavy sand covering her feet and lifted her head.
Foaming waves rolled in before her, the sea darkening as the day star slid toward the horizon.
The beach stretched before her, expansive and empty, dunes rising in pale ridges behind her.
Where the hell was her flyer?
She twisted to look around and almost fainted.
Silhouetted against a dying sun was a figure.
One larger than life and crouched atop a high cresting dune, their shape in relief bounded by golden light, making them appear somewhat divine.
Below the hillock lay the wreckage of her skimmer, torn open and scattered across the seashore, metal panels half-buried, engines shredded beyond recognition.
Fokkinhellshit.
Her eyes tracked back to the still, silent silhouette.
The profile, decidedly male, surged to his feet.
The wind caught his long strands of hair and flung them about as he descended the dune with measured strides, boots scarcely sinking into the sand.
Sheba knifed up to a seated position, pulse hammering as he rippled through the fierce heatwaves rising from the dunes.
The world was a spinning tilt-a-whirl of red dust and vertigo as the silhouette approached her.
‘Stay back,’ she croaked, the command thin and whispered, overpowered by the pounding ocean.
Whoever he was, he ignored her and just kept coming.
Each step brought him into tighter focus until the light resolved, and her breath locked in her chest.
Panicked, she scrabbled in the sand until her fingers locked around a chunk of basalt.
She pulled herself into a shaky crouch, swaying as a fresh wave of concussion-induced nausea hit her.
She raised the rock, ready to launch it at him, but her hand felt strangely heavy.
The man stopped a few paces away and arched a dark brow, his expression amused.
With zero warning, the rock in her hand dissolved, crumbling into a fine, slate-colored powder that sifted through her fingers like hourglass sand.
Sheba stared at her empty palm, her mind short-circuiting. ‘The hell was that?’
Her new companion folded his massive arms over a sculpted, sinewed chest.
Starlight over Atlas, he was beautiful.
His height alone altered the space between them, his shoulders broad and dense.
She had never seen a man built on such a scale, yet with such grace.
Her head tilted to take in all of him: a physique heavy with strength, chiseled as if by an artist, his forearms and limbs substantial, every movement carrying stored force held in check.
He wore a burnished leather vest with a stunning vista sculpted into its lapels, accentuating his wide, bare deltoids.
His bare torso was washboard flat, muscles shredded.
Below, a thick, scarred belt cinched battered leather trousers to a narrow, driven waist.
His thighs were vast and solid, tapering into massive moccasin boots planted with certainty in the sand.
His skin had the sheen of burnished caramel, warm even in the fading illumination.
Dark and gold sigils crossed his neck, arms, and hands, interwoven with scars that spoke of violence survived.
On one side of his chest, an inked eye shifted, unsettling and alive.
She blinked, once, then again, her senses struggling to keep pace.
The impact deepened as he took more strides toward her.
His hair fell in a long spill of deep black threaded with flashes of sapphire and aureate, catching the light as they moved over his shoulders.
The same metallic hues traced his dark beard, framing a strong jaw and a mouth shaped with unguarded intent.
High cheekbones cut clean lines beneath a broad brow shadowed by dense, uncompromising brows.
Then his eyes met hers.
They arrested her outright, their depths silver flooded with gold, lit from within by arcs of contained power.
Their heat swept across her skin, traveled down her spine, and settled in the core of her body.
The hell?
Her heart kicked hard against her ribs as she scrambled to her feet, sediment falling away from her in sheets of red and gold sand.
She stepped back on instinct, wavered, then steadied herself, not wanting to fall flat on her face.
He narrowed his eyes, a flicker of roiling energy sparking in their depths.
She raised her eyebrows right back, matching his intensity with a glare that she hoped hid the fact that she was seeing two of him.
They stood locked in a silent, high-stakes stand-off, the desert wind whipping between them.
He held her stare with a terrifying patience until finally, the exhaustion won.
Sheba let out a long, ragged sigh, her shoulders slumping.
She was stranded, concussed, and outgunned by his massive forearms alone.
His lips quirked into the ghost of a smirk, and he slowly raised his hands in mock surrender, palms open and exposed.
Fokk! Was he surrendering to her? Sweet mother of Pegasi.
Without warning, her vision clouded as shards of pain skewered her psyche.
Her balance failed, the world tilted, and her knees buckled.
He caught her before she hit the sand.
The contact sent a shock through her system.
His touch was calloused, warm, steady, unyielding, closing around her arms and back with a control that spoke of restraint rather than possession.
Her body reacted before her mind could intervene.
Her breath hitched, skin tightened, and pulse spiked.
Her awareness narrowed to the breadth of his chest, the scent of sun-warmed leather and smoky, manly, musky scent, the thrum of his heart beneath her palms.
He was also having a visceral reaction to her, she noted as her experienced nursing observation skills kicked in.
His pupils flared, his exhalation deepened, muscles locking.
Jerking upright, she took a deep inhale.
‘Get it together,’ she muttered, more to herself than to him.