Sands of Fate II: Void Dream
A dark robed figure stood out starkly against the blanched pale of the sands that stirred around him. Wind lifted and moved grains in vicious gusts that threw grit in every direction, pawing at the being’s robes as he leaned upon a staff that ground its point into the sands beneath it. The staff was a strange thing; solid, yet somehow fragmented, as thin and slight as its bearer, and the same color as the silt on the ground and on the wind, it seemed hardly capable of holding anything up at all; and yet it did.
The Keeper stood still; holding some silent vigil beneath the sinking sun. As that solemn ashen orb eventually made way for three moons, each one a distinct gray, the figure finally moved, bent low and arose with sand in his hand. Manipulating it carefully, with both hands, the staff in the crook of his elbow, he fashioned it into an orb that inexplicably held its shape, in direct and open defiance of the malleable nature of its medium, even when the Keeper affixed it to the top of the staff. Another moment later, just as night had truly fallen, it began to glow with a faint, wan light.
Still, the Keeper watched.
Time passed as ever time did in that place. Features concealed in shadow, it was nevertheless obvious that something had changed, for the way the Keeper’s hooded head moved indicated he was watching for something in particular. His free hand rose, extending, wraithlike, from the confines of his ebon robes, forefinger met thumb, a single grain of sand caught between them. He gazed upon it or a moment, before holding it to the light of his staff to tell its tale; one of hope found in hopelessness, a glimpse of everything beneath the dread black cloak of nothingness.
***
Aition. A planet of moderate size, and habitable climate. Home to a race of beings who, after many thousands of years of evolution and technological advancement, had conquered space. They could move freely enough through their solar system, but anything further off remained beyond their grasp. There were no other planets in their system that were habitable, or even any that could be made so with any amount of ease. There were, however, many that were rich in mineral resources, and that constituted the bulk of the spacefaring activity for the people of Aition.
Such things were not easily accomplished, and the men and women who worked in that field were undercompensated for the risks that they took. The political climate on the planet, one of capitalistic elitism, generally assured that most people of insufficient means found their way to the space trades; working tireless and risking all for a pittance and the betterment of the citizens that owned or worked for the massive conglomerate megacorporations that retained the mineral rights to the various planets and lived lives of unending luxury.
Ships came and went around the planet with varying frequency, but the orbit was far from bustling with activity; any space vessel was prohibitively expensive for all but the most elite, there were not so many as to be overly common. Stations and sensor arrays were abundant, but at this particular time, there was only one ship in orbit on the side of the planet that faced the system’s central star.
It was a medium-sized craft, an ore-hauler called Evening Star. It had just unloaded its cargo and was preparing for another run to the planet closest to Aition, one with abundant supplies of a type of soil that contained pigments coveted in the cosmetic trade. It held its orbit only because it needed some minor repairs attended to, some minor recalibrations made to some of the sensors before it would be ready for interplanetary travel.
To this end, a man was tethered to the craft, a thick and sturdy cable leading from his envirosuit to the airlock from which he initially emerged, and he was held fast to the outer hull by virtue of magnetic overboots. His steps were slow and tedious as he made his way to the area of the ship that required the work he had set out to render, and he was completely unsurprised when he heard the familiar hiss of radiation interference over the communication device inside his helmet. He did not need instructions; he had performed similar repairs and recalibrations many times. He paid it little mind as he bent to his task, just as insignificant an endeavor as the lack of communications was a problem. The tool in his hand heated the alloy of the ship’s hull, allowing the patch he was applying to hold firm over what had previously been a weak spot in the metal.
He was paying no attention at all until the first of many pieces of asteroid struck the craft.
This ship, as all were, was equipped with rather sophisticated shields, but as they did not mix well with organic anatomy, they had been switched off in order to facilitate the repairs that needed to be done, so that first blistering fragment left a significant hole in its wake. The man standing on the hull managed to ward off panic, if only just, and began to go frantically through motions he had heard described thousands of times, but never actually performed. He pressed the release on his tether, and pushed himself off the hull, leaving the magnetic overboots behind, so that he floated slowly away from the ship.
The craft would need to reactivate its shields to prevent further damage and depressurization. If he would have remained on the hull when that happened, he would have been not only damaged by the shield itself, but flung away from the ship in a much more forceful and much less predictable fashion. As it was at the moment, he was moving away from the Eastern Star relatively slowly; and he had a brief moment of panic when he remembered the communications were down. He quelled that quickly, however, reassuring himself that they would reactivate their shielding and send one of the smaller, detachable craft after the tracking signal his suit provided. It had been almost a minute now, and there were no signs of the shields coming back online; but this man had no time to consider what could be going on aboard.
Several more fragments struck the ship; with no way of guiding himself, the lone spacefarer could do nothing but watch and hope for his own safety. He had moved a considerable distance from the vessel by now, and he was surprised when the comm in his helmet suddenly crackled back to life, if only in time for him to hear desperate intelligible cries from the commaster and those on the bridge alongside him.
The ship had been completely riddled. The explosion was blindingly, violently spectacular.
***
When he woke, it took a considerable length of time to remember what had happened, even with the various safety sensors on his suit buzzing, beeping and flashing in dire incessance. It took him some time more to overcome the disbelief that he was still alive. He inspected the displays on the inside of his helmet to discover that his suit had a few minor pressure leaks, but nothing major. Certainly nothing as concerning as the fact that his oxygen supply was over three quarters depleted. About four hours’ worth, if he measured and controlled his breathing. He had been, up to this point, been considering how fortunate he had been; the initial fragments had missed him, and the shock from the ship’s explosion had sent him far enough away before the shower began in earnest. But now, especially considering the issue of the oxygen, he was reevaluating his perception.
His only hope would be another spacecraft finding him; but considering the very little time he had left before asphyxiation and the fact that other ships on the planet and everywhere else outside of whatever radiation had caused the communications on the Evening Star to go dark would be fully aware of the meteor storm and avoid this place for some time to come.
Floating freely, there was still a slight amount of force from the explosion that hadn’t faded, even as he fell into the orbit of the planet below. As such, he was rotating slightly on a vertical axis; he was just coming into a position where he could see the emerald and sapphire planet he had called his home. His benumbed mind was slowly processing the various realities of his situation. He would never feel the ground beneath his feet again, nor the warmth of a woman’s touch, or a stomach full of drink, or the empty, idle musings of a head full of smoke, or any of the other pleasures he sought any time the Evening Star was at port.
For a long, deeply considered moment, he wished he had chosen another life for himself. One that wouldn’t have ended this soon, or in this fashion.
Then he came to his senses.
There had been no other course for his life to take. He had very little choice in it; a man from a poor and common family, a spacefaring life was his only option. If he hadn’t have gone to the ships for work, he’d have already died, broke and hungry somewhere on that planet below him. That brought another realization; that planet was never his home. He had spent more time in space than on the ground at this point in his life. It was that planet, or at least those in charge of it, that had forced him into this hard life, and soon it would come to a merciful and suitable end.
That thought stilled his soul and he accepted his fate, just about the time his sustained motion turned him away from the planet below, and his slow orbit took him around the curve of the planet itself, and he saw the true source of his entire misfortune.
A massive asteroid loomed, moving nearer and nearer to the planet below, its impact certain, its size leaving no question of its aim of total annihilation.
He smiled. Damn Aition and its politics; its oppression and its class warfare. Few could hope to fare better in this than he; a death by asphyxiation, a few tense moments before eternal sleep, free of flame and tribulation, brimming with some semblance of satisfaction at this cosmic justice.
As he watched, an entire planet’s worth of military might attempted the thwart the coming doom to no avail; flames blossomed across the rock’s surface as missiles were fired against it, he could see ships braving all hazard to attempt to combat the coming destruction, all for naught.
His laugh was hollow and it reverberated within his helmet, but it was cut off by the skull-ringing blare of his oxygen monitoring system.
He greeted the void as an old friend, and fell asleep to smile forever down upon the wreckage of Aition.
***
The tale told came to its end, the light from the Keeper’s staff faded, and soon after, the staff and orb atop it turned back into the sand from which they were wrought, the grains falling back into the endless Sands of Fate, save for the one bearing the grim tale of the demise of Aition and its spacefaring people, somewhere worlds away.
No, that grain was kept, tucked away, as the Keeper pressed on with his journey.