Three Suns in the Sky

As soon as the ship landed at the remote desert base on Sian Elchee 8, Wharton Asp lit a tac-stic and sucked in the smoke greedily.

Damn hangover, Asp thought to himself. When traveling thirty six hours in a small A3 Archwing ship on autopilot with your shadow as your only passenger, sometimes there's nothing else to do but hook yourself up to a whisky IV and let the time fade away. But he must have entered in the wrong drip amount because a headache like this one only comes after a fight against a heavily armed Malhuiian in a contaminated air field.

By the time the computers confirmed that air quality and ground temperatures were stable and the back hatchway opened with a hiss, Asp was on his second tac-stic. They weren't really helping, but they momentarily took his mind off the earthquakes in his head.

And the earthquakes had to take a back seat now. He wasn't paid to drink, smoke, or feel like death warmed over. He was paid to solve problems or make problems, find people or lose people, retrieve this or destroy that. An intergalactic bagman of epic proportions. One of the finest private dicks this side of the AL6 Long-form cluster.

He was here – on this barren windswept sand dune of a planet – because of a woman. No surprise there. The money she offered to find her kidnapped child was paltry. Even the story was full of holes. But Asp had a hard time saying no to a woman, especially one who could slam back shots of rye the way this one could back at the office. Plus her hair. The silver in her hair captivated him whenever she turned her head.

'What she didn't do enough', Asp mumbled as he slipped a small breathing mask over his face and stepped out of the ship.

The air wasn't a danger on Sian Elchee 8, but the sudden sand and wind storms could make breathing a troublesome task. Not only breathing, but walking in general, as Asp almost went head over heels as soon as he began walking down the runway, sand rushing across the ground like crashing waves.

It was a classic sandstorm, with visibility cut down to about one hundred lengths. Asp could barely make out the small terminal building in the distance.

As he walked over, he remembered what she told him. She didn't mist up right away. He liked that, but it made him suspicious.

They took my boy. They said he was going to be the new messiah. Perfect death so others may live. I tried to stop them...I'm all alone here...please...

Asp walked to the entrance door but it didn't open for him. He ran his hand over the door to find the manual touchpad, but instead he pushed the door right over, it keeling down dead directly in front of him. Before he could take a step, the swirling sand rushed in first. Asp scrambled inside without much thought and propped the door back up, but it didn't stop the sand from pooling at its edge.

Asp turned to apologize to whoever was manning the terminal, but surveying the small office before him he quickly realized that a sudden blast of sand was not going to be of much concern here.

Everything was a mess, tables and chairs destroyed, liquid screens smashed and kicked into corners, papers and rivlets strewn under and over everything. It was a magnificent trashing, as if the sandstorm had not only stopped by but started here.

Noises stirred from behind a shut door to his right. Asp walked lightly over a chair and opened the door, ready for anything.

A fat local Drium was stuffing his face with bagged sugar food while gazing into an old tele-box-monitor. He turned to look at Asp at the door. His eyes widened in happy surprise.

'Helta!'

'Yeah, helta', Asp replied, 'you work here?'

'Oh yes! Yes I do.'