Desert Creepers: Captain Arlon Stoddard Adventures, #4

By Sean Monaghan

Captain Arlon Stoddard, hero of the spaceways, tackles anything thrown his way. Even simple mysteries on backwater planets, like Souoria.

Meanwhile, Emme Jonette, vagabond, opportunist, thief, roves Souoria's scorching desert hunting down mythical Zeytana artifacts. With even more desperate thieves on her tail.

Simple mysteries can turn into collision courses with devastating consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Jan 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393930105

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

Chapter One

Emme Jonette crouched in the shade of her scrappy old lander as the noon sun attempted to scorch everything. The two-person lander—the Grey Ax —was a ten-meter long aluminum-hulled near-wreck she'd traded for a couple of fake Zeytana artifacts which she'd in turn won at hand of poker against a guy who should have known better.

Emme—Emily by birth—should have known better herself. At least to come out here to the desert.

The planet Souoria lay just a little too close to her star. A standard, middle-aged yellow red sun that blazed across the surface relentlessly.

There were plenty of planets like it around the Orion arm. Hot and burning right around the equator, but with temperate zones north and south, with lush rain forest and small bands of tundra which gave way to tiny polar ice caps.

Plenty of those were inhabited, with cities and governments and infrastructure.

Souoria was, to all intents and purposes, uninhabited. Out on the fringes, too hot for most and resource poor. What would be the point?

It did have pretty standard gravity—about one point one—which was comfortable, and lots of xenon in the atmosphere. The oxygen/nitrogen/CO 2 proportion was pretty right though.

The day came in at twenty-two and a half hours, standard, and the axial tilt was only about four degrees. Short days and practically no seasons.

The air was dry to the point that Emme could practically feel her skin exfoliating.

She wore loose fitting muslin clothing that was all cinched and joined at the waist and ankles and wrists and neck. She'd picked it up at a Bedouin stall at a trading market on Angheest. Cali, a teeming city at the edge of the relatively small Parkpe desert. Just a hundred thousand square kilometers, with many return-to-the-roots tribes playing nomad.

Sand still found its way into the clothing. Amazing, since there was basically no wind here in this particular desert right now.

Something like ten million square kilometers of dunes and salt pans and craggy mountains. And that was just here on this continent.

Emme had a scarf around her head, and circular goggles with full analytical displays showing her the lay of the land.

Emme figured waiting a couple of hours for the sun to drop lower before she started looking for the ruin properly. She sipped from her nutrient bottle. A light concoction of protein, vitamins and other essentials that was supposed to supplement her strength and hydration. The fluid was pretty tasty too. She'd stocked up at the same market.

She needed to make sure she drank when she was thirsty. Her sweat evaporated almost immediately, leaving her skin feeling clammy.

To the south and west stood ragged rocky mountains, reaching high. There were probably some ten thousand footers in there. Even a few signs of ice in the higher, more shaded valleys.

The goggles' analyticals showed little legends with the height, and the composition of the ice. Water, mostly, with some dust and some vegetable material. Pollen.

Emme had landed about thirty degrees north of the equator. The desert petered out about two thousand kilometers to the north, but it wrapped around the continent to the east three and a half thousand kilometers, and west, six hundred kilometers, right to the ocean edges. The continent went on south beyond the equator. The land's very southern tip had some peninsulas that stretched out into more favorable climes. There were forests and prairies down that way.

But that wasn't why Emme had come.

She'd landed at this very precise location for a very precise reason.

Actual Zeytana ruins.

Emme stood and shifted along in the shade. She spread out her inflatable tent and activated the mechanism. The tent hissed and creaked as it unfolded. In moments she had a two-meter high red-transparent dome pegged out on the sand.

She would have rested in the Gray Ax's cabin, but that would drain the system's battery as she tried to keep cool. The lander had excellent insulation systems, but in the beating of the direct sun, it was just better all around not to push those.

Besides, she kind of liked camping. Almost roughing it. She could grab a couple of hours sleep before beginning her spiral walk to pinpoint the ruin.

This was a long-shot of course. After some nasty deals from her now-deceased business partner, Emme had lost the little freight-hauling empire they'd been amicably building.

All she'd come of that mess with was the Gray Ax, a dumb skip vessel, and her old database.

From back in the time when she'd fancied herself as a tour-guide and explorer. After all, she was well-traveled, had a double degree in archaeology and she got along well with folks.

The Zeytana were an ancient race that had left behind just a few tantalizing artifacts. Some stone disks, some technology that remained uncrackable and very very few actual sites with structures.

Probably this one was a bust anyway. Emme had poured over some old papers and made some comparisons. Helped along by some very slick AI systems. And all that suggested that right here on Souoria there might just be something. A pyramid or burial tombs or even just a stone house.

Almost a century back, Aidmen Mundler, a researcher from Toogal, had spent the last years of his somewhat checkered career believing that there were ruins here. He'd exhausted his finances and his health in the investigation. Mundler had died before he could make it out to Souoria.

But skip travel was a whole lot more affordable now. It still had a cost in time, but the drives were so efficient that fuel and a ship wouldn't break the bank, the way they could back in Mundler's time.

Maybe Emme was being as foolish as Mundler. Exhausting the last of her own money and energy on this trip. Maybe.

Emme had spent the time on the skip out going over the data, and reading old letters from her sister. Martie had died, along with her seven year old daughter, just a few months back.

A stupid accident. They'd been walking and Annalise had slipped and fallen into a stream. Martie had gone in after her. All logged in their handhelds. That data didn't help them.

The bodies had washed up on the coast a couple of days later.

Emme was doing her best to deal with it.

Reading old letters probably wasn't the best for that. Or perhaps it was. Who knew? Who knew the best way to deal with that kind of thing?

She focused back on the matters at hand.

Souoria's planetary surveys were very limited and very low resolution. Emme had managed to cadge some time on one of the few satellites and examine this particular region. Half data, half hunch.

If she was honest, it was more like one tenth data and ninety percent hunch.

Not like she had much to lose. And, as the saying went, everything to gain.

The tent creaked one last time and gave a quiet peeping sound. Ready to be occupied.

Emme stretched and yawned. Surprised, actually, by how tired she felt. The flight in and the landing had been fine. But skipping across the light years could take it out of you.

The light that had left when she had, and the radio communications, wouldn't reach Souoria for decades. It was a long way out from Gateworld 17, her starting point. And the gateworlds themselves lay a long way from the densest parts of human-occupied space.

A rest would be good, and made sense. She could catch up in the cool of the tent. Go over her notes, and then start in on her searches in the cool of the evening.

The tent's door folded open at her touch and she slipped inside. The air inside was chilly for a moment. She sucked a deep breath. A slight lemon scent to it. Designed, probably, to cover the odor of the unfolding of stored vinyl and polypropylene.

The floor had gone rigid. It felt as hard as tiles below her boots.

The door closed up behind her. It was darker inside. Part of the wall, at eye level, had gone transparent, giving her a window. The view looked out under the Gray Ax's fuselage and out toward the mountains. Puffy clouds rode along the distant horizon.

From the tent's floor a chair and a small desk had inflated and gone rigid. The tent wall directly above desk had formed into a display, with full access to all her data.

Thanks, Emme said. Don't need it right now.

The side of the display had direct access to the tent's controls. She tapped and waved to deflate the furniture and inflate the bed.

With clicks and hisses, the chair and desk folded away, vanishing into the floor and wall. The display remained. Another part of the floor adjusted and a low bed formed up. From the end a double-layer of soft cottony fabric whipped out, slipping across and over the swelling the served as a pillow.

As she moved to lie down, Emme glimpsed something through the window. Just in the periphery of her vision.

She shifted upright and looked out, half-expecting to see some camel-like animal striding along. Despite the blasting heat, there was still a solid ecosystem at work here. A camel would be a pretty big animal to see—mostly she was expecting nothing bigger than a wumpel or a rat.

But as she focused through the window, she saw that it wasn't a camel at all. Nor any kind of animal.

It was another ship.

Maybe four or five kilometers off. And maneuvering in for a landing.

Chapter Two

Captain Arlon Stoddard hung in the cool forward observation deck of his ship the Bright Edge as it swept into orbit around Souoria. Arlon gripped one of the deck's maneuvering loops and pulled himself closer to the window.

The planet, from this aspect, looked like one vast desert.

Arlon sipped from a water bottle, as if some unconscious reaction to the huge dry down below. It would be tough going once they got planetside.

Finding black-marketeers and catching them red-handed. Always a big ask. Like trying to catch and hold an eel with your bare hands.

The observation deck was the size of a regular bathroom, with glasseen windows all along the floor—at least what would be the floor if the ship set down. Up here in zero gravity, he could float above the windows as if he was in a suspended swimming pool.

A chime sounded by the door to the observation deck. A reminder to him that it was time for the crew's arrival meal. It had become something of a ritual now. Well, at least over the last few missions. Getting together for a good roast meal while the ship began its orbit of whichever planet they'd been sent to.

It was a good idea. They'd exited the supra-light skip journey, which often took a couple of weeks, and were about to take one or more of the Bright Edge's skiffs down to the surface. The meal made a good transition from day after day of reading and board games and generally being introspective, to the intensity of the mission.

Mostly that involved meeting high-ranking officials who were baffled at to the presence of Arlon and his crew and genuinely didn't see what the problem was.

The Authority, Arlon's boss, on the other hand, usually saw a raft of problems.

This mission would be different though. Less diplomatic and more investigative. The kind of thing he preferred. And it would be a small point to say that crew really preferred that too.

Two bodies had shown up, pushed out through the base of a glacier. Which was unusual in and of itself; Souoria was dominated by desert. A glacier was unusual, and it was very unusual for people to visit them.

The bodies had to have been coming down through the ice for fifty years.

Morbid, but definitely the kind of investigation his crew would appreciate.

Action ahead of talk. That was them.

The planet really was quite beautiful. Streaks of cloud rode over the desert, as if tantalizing the barren ground with the possibility of rain. There were deep valleys and rugged mountains. To the north, at the edges of the world's curvature, there were hints of green.

On the way out, he'd made an effort to read up on Souoria.

Very much a frontier world. And likely to remain that way.

Only around one thousand inhabitants. Mostly clustered in a series of very northern fishing and farming villages. The communities were tightly knit. Jorgnheim was the largest, with some centers called Nordfoldt, Crusse and Apollo.

Nordfoldt was where the bodies had shown up. It would be the crew's first port of call.

Hey! someone called from the companionway beyond the observation deck. Let's eat.

It was Eva Strong, the Bright Edge's navigator-slash-pilot. As she usually did, she'd plotted them a course to arrive neatly in orbit around their target. A tricky thing. Navigating through skip space was always difficult.

Settling into a position within a few hundred thousand kilometers after skipping across light years was always a feat. Most trips would be plus or minus a couple of million kilometers.

Eva had brought them in within three thousand kilometers.

She popped her head in through the observation deck's circular access. Eva's hair was a short mass of lemon-blonde, with a single dark streak starting just above her left ear. She had a pair of slitted nav goggles pushed up onto her brow.

Gonna hang there gawping at the desert all day? she said. Let me tell you what's coming up next. Sand. And then, more sand. Sand, sand, sandy mountains, sand, sand, sand. For the next thirty minutes of our orbit. Come eat.

Arlon smiled. His crew consisted of six members, including himself. They'd been together a while now.

Eva was the navigator, but sometimes fell into the role of first officer. Personality ahead of rank. His real first officer, Marto, a Crested Daison, never deferred, but was much quieter. Eva would never overrule him.

Somehow it all worked. Not a democracy—Arlon would always have the final word—but not a straightforward structure that the Authority would approve.

Gawping at the desert is fine with me, Arlon said. And, before she could argue, On my way.

He tugged on the loop, angling himself toward the entry.

What are we eating? he said, as Eva moved back out of the way.

Duck. Crayfish. Caviar.

The usual, then? The Bright Edge's food dispensers were pretty versatile, but Arlon doubted they had ever produced any of the three dishes she'd listed. More like chili or hearty soup or roast and three vegetables.

The fancy dishes they got enough of when they had to attend Authority functions.

Right now, the vague smell drifting up through from the mess was something like a curry. Maybe something Holly had chosen, full of garbanzos and lentils, with rice on the side. Smelled pretty good to Arlon.

The usual, Eva said. And, I didn't want to disrupt you, but we spotted two vessels. Maybe three.

Our quarry? Arlon let himself drift along the companionway. It was oval, a meter and a half high—which meant walking stooped on the rare occasions when the vessel had to set down on a planet—and a meter wide. There were hermetic doors along each side. Their private cabins. Each a nice practical shoebox size.

Maybe, Eva said. We've got a big ship in orbit. About twice our tonnage. A second vessel just landing about a thousand kilometers back from our current position. Still pulling up data on them.

Connected? A skiff from the big vessel?

That's my assessment. Still analyzing the vectors there. Not much data yet.

Good. And the third vessel?

"Something on the ground already. Near where the other one is setting down. Just got a quiet transponder ping. The Gray Ax. It's a little skiff, but it's been here a few hours already."

From the big vessel too?

Unlikely.

Local? That seemed the most likely answer. Souoria might be remote, but it wasn't primitive. The locals had access to all the equipment they needed.

Still checking the databases, Eva said. But it's close to the other one, so I have my suspicions.

Suspicions of?

I—

Come on! Olivia interrupted from farther along the companionway, head poking sideways from the mess. Dinner's getting cold.

Olivia wore a peaked cap with the word Oh! stencilled in yellow on the crown. A joke. She had a broad face and a hefty build. Bit of a cliché for a ship's engineer. And it always surprised Arlon how easily she was able to squeeze her way through between conduits and pipes to get things repaired.

We're coming, Arlon said.

Olivia scowled. "Are you two working?"

I'm just updating him, Eva said.

You shouldn't be working. This is our celebration. Twenty-six days lost in the skip and we're finally here.

We weren't lost.

Olivia smiled. Figure of speech.

Eva smiled back.

Arlon grabbed another loop to slow himself. He swung around into the mess.

The other three were there, seated around the small table, little lap harnesses holding them in place.

Holly Blaise, his second officer and current girlfriend—though that had been going on for quite a while now—grinned at him. Her hazel eyes sparkled.

Next to her sat Marto with his huge crest and huge shoulders and just general hugeness, and next to him sat Kilo. An above average sized man, Kilo still looked small next to Marto.

What kept you? Marto said.

Planet gazing, Eva said. As usual. When do we not arrive somewhere and he's got to go to the observation room and just stare at the place?

Arlon slipped in next to Holly. She took his hand and squeezed and gave him a warm smile.

I like to know the lay of the land, Arlon said.

Also, Olivia said, working. She threw a look at Eva.

What was that for? Eva said, but with a smile. Arlon always liked the way the team could bait each other with friendly banter. It was good for morale and kept tensions at bay.

In the table's center stood a bowl of thick curry. Tendrils of steamy vapor wafted from the surface, unsure what to do