Desert Stars
Authors: Joe Vasicek
Tags: #love, #adventure, #honor, #space opera, #galactic empire, #colonization, #second chances, #planetary romance, #desert planet, #far future
Desert Stars
by Joe Vasicek
Copyright
© 2011
Joseph
Vasicek.
All rights reserved.
Editing by Josh
Leavitt.
Cover art by Lorenz Hideyoshi
Ruwwe.
This is a work of fiction. Names,
characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual
persons, organizations, or events is purely
coincidental.
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Table of Contents
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A TALE FROM THE FRINGES OF AN
INTERSTELLAR EMPIRE THAT HAS FORGOTTEN ITS HOLIEST LEGEND: THE
STORY OF EARTH.
He was the sole heir to the Najmi
camp, a young man raised by tribesmen after falling to the desert
from his home among the stars. She was the sheikh's most beautiful
daughter, promised his hand in marriage—if she can convince him to
stay.
Together, they must travel to a land
where glass covers the sky and men traverse the stars as easily as
tribesmen cross the desert. Here, at the ancient temple dedicated
to the memory of Earth, they hope to find the answers that will
show them the way home.
But when love and honor clash, how can
they face their destiny when it threatens to tear them
apart?
Prologue
The boy felt scared, more scared than
he had ever yet been in his young life. It was because of the
strange noises in the bulkheads and the way the walls and floor
shook. But mostly it was because everyone around him—even his
parents—were scared, and he didn’t know why.
The lights in the hallway flickered as
he wandered out of his cabin, and the whine of the engine rose
higher and higher. It wasn’t especially loud, but it didn’t sound
right; the boy knew that much at least. On the other side of the
corridor, a door hissed as it slid open. The boy turned and saw his
uncle and three of his cousins come running out of the bridge, eyes
wide with fear.
“
She’s gonna blow,”
shouted his uncle. “Let’s move!”
The boy stood rooted to the spot, his
legs frozen in terror. He watched as the crew ran to the emergency
escape chutes—the ones his parents had adamantly told him never to
play in—and dove through.
A groaning noise came through the
bulkheads—the terrible sound of metal on metal. He closed his eyes
and covered his ears with his hands, and the floor itself dropped
out from under him. For a frighteningly disorienting moment,
gravity vanished, leaving him floating, weightless, in the
corridor. The taste of vomit filled his mouth and he screamed in
fright, but without gravity he could only kick his legs uselessly
beneath him.
The moment passed, and he fell to the
hard tile floor. Tears of terror clouded his vision, and his arms
and legs shook so badly that he hardly noticed the floor shaking
underneath him. The ship lurched, sending him sprawling on his
hands and knees.
Hands grabbed him underneath his arms,
lifting him up and carrying him away. He glanced up and recognized
the face of his mother, pulling him towards the escape
chutes.
“
Mommy,” he cried, “I’m
scared.”
“
I know, dear,” she told
him. “Mommy needs you to be extra brave right now,
okay?”
The boy nodded. Though his mother
tried to soothe him, he could tell that she was just as frightened
as he was. That terrified him more than even the loss of
gravity.
“
Come on!” the boy’s
father shouted, further down the corridor. “Any minute now,
and—”
The lights flickered again, and an
explosion sounded from deep within the bulkheads of the ship. A low
hiss erupted behind them, and not from a door opening.
“
Oh God,” the boy’s mother
cried. “Is that—”
As if in answer, a mighty wind howled
through the ship, filling the boy’s ears with its roar. It whipped
at his hair and tugged at his clothes, sucking him away like a
monster from the bottom of a giant drain. Somehow, he knew that in
only a few moments, they would all be dead.
Hands grabbed him, lifting him up
toward the escape chute. He screamed, but the roar of the wind was
so loud he could barely hear his own voice. His mother slipped
something around his neck, and suddenly he was falling through the
chute, into darkness.
He came to a stop in a snug little
space, closed in on all sides like a glove for his body. A
holoscreen lay in front of him, with a pair of flight sticks and a
miniature control board. The boy gripped the flight sticks with his
hands and stared dumbly at the screen, barely able to process
anything that was happening.
A distant puffing noise sounded
through the ultra-soft walls, and then he was falling again—only
this time, he couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was locked into
position, cushioned on all sides and only able to use his
hands.
Fighting back panic, he watched as the
holoscreen flickered and came to life. It showed an image of space,
the stars spinning wildly as noiseless flashes of light burst into
being before fading into after-image amid the blackness of space.
He squeezed the dual flight sticks and moved them like he was
playing a computer game, but it was no use—he couldn’t stop the
spinning.
“
Mommy!” the boy cried.
Panic swept over him, and his hands and arms began to shake. He
screamed, but in the tightly enclosed space, there was no one to
hear him.
The glowing orb of a planet came into
view, filling the screen with its brilliant light. The boy squinted
as the display adjusted, showing a brown and yellow landscape
framed by a curved horizon. It danced with the spinning stars,
moving so quickly that everything was a blur.
A red light started blinking in the
corner of the screen, and words flashed across the display. The boy
didn’t know how to read yet, but he knew it was something bad. He
tried again with the flight sticks, but that only sent him spinning
in a new direction.
Without warning, the screen switched
off, and the entire capsule filled with thick, pink foam. The boy
gasped and tried to shield himself with his hands, but before he
could cover his face it hardened around his body, freezing him into
position.
The foam covered his mouth and face,
but was just porous enough to allow him to breathe—in short bursts,
however, because his stomach was severely pinched. The spinning
grew worse, until he wanted to throw up. As if from a great
distance, he heard a muffled roar through the walls around him. His
little capsule grew increasingly warm, until he began to sweat. He
tried to open his mouth to cry out, but his jaw was locked too
tightly in place—he couldn’t move anything, not even a
finger.
Mommy!
he mentally screamed.
Where are
you?
As if in answer, something popped
behind him. Inertia threw him forward, but the foam held him in
place, so that all he felt was a tremor through his body. Gravity
returned, so that he felt as if he were dangling upside down from
his feet. Blood rushed to his head, and he swooned, redness
clouding his vision.
Then, like a punch to his face, the
shock of impact hit him, causing his bones to shudder. He spun even
faster than before, but the foam still held him. It felt as if
someone had turned him inside out, though—as if his stomach had
swollen and turned to mush.
As the spinning gradually came to a
stop, tears streamed from the boy’s eyes. The roaring had died
down, leaving him encased in near-absolute silence. That frightened
him almost more than the noise.
A sharp hiss filled his ears as the
foam grew sticky and gelatinous all around him. He thrashed against
it, pulling his hands and arms free as the foam turned into a
sticky, foul-smelling soup. Behind him, a hatch opened, and he
struggled toward it, spitting to get the nasty taste out of his
mouth.
He crawled out and rose to his feet,
blinking in the harsh light of a foreign sun. The hot wind bit him
as it blew in his face, stinging his face with sand. He raised a
hand to his eyes and looked around him at the alien
landscape.
A lonely, rust-red desert extended in
all directions, with nothing but sand and rock and distant craggy
peaks to meet his eye. The sky shone a hazy yellow, completely
unlike the clean white light of his family’s ship. A new fear
passed through the boy—the fear of being alone.
As he stared at the land around him,
he reached down to see what his mother had slipped around his neck.
It was a pendant with a little black case at the end. He felt it
between his fingers and knew somehow that he would never see her
again.
Tears clouded his eyes, and he
screamed and wailed for someone, anyone—but in the harsh desert
waste, there was no one to hear him.
Book I: Dome and
Desert
Part I
Chapter 1
The desert wind howled across the
barren, unforgiving landscape, threatening a magnificent sandstorm.
All along the horizon, great craggy peaks towered like rows of
misshapen fingers, thrusting upward from the rocky, lifeless ground
toward the hazy yellow sky. From his perch atop the mountain
overlook, Jalil scanned the rust-red desert with his binoculars.
The hot desert wind pelted his face with sand and dust, making him
pull his checkered headscarf tighter over his mouth and nose, but
still he stood watch, searching for any sign of humanity—welcome or
otherwise.
“
Jalil!” called out his
older sister from behind him. “What are you doing up there? Storm’s
coming—let’s go!”
“
What?” Jalil called back,
still scanning the landscape.
“
I said, Let’s go.
Yallah!”
Jalil lowered his binoculars and
glanced over his shoulder at Tiera. Her long black hair tossed
wildly in the wind, tied back with a simple gray bandana. The lack
of a veil or a headscarf made him a little uneasy, but she was not
the kind of girl to cumber herself with such things when there was
man’s work to be done. With a look of impatience, she squinted her
eyes against the wind, one hand on her hip with the other clenched
at her side.
“
Just a little longer,” he
said. “We’ve got time—they might still make it.”
“
We need to break camp,”
she shouted against the wind. “By Allah, we’ve been here for days,
and with that storm bearing down on us we’ll be lucky not to spend
another.”
“
Ten minutes,” he said.
“Just give me ten more minutes.”
