Sun and Hope

A DesertPunk story by jinnis

1 - Falling Star

The day of the falling star, Ninn left the camp in the early hours. Dawn was the best time to hunt for scuttlers, and he had observed a widespread colony for several days. Today, he would put his stalking skills to the test and surprise his tribe with a fat quarry.

In the cover of a pale blue dune, Ninn sneaked up from the downwind side, an arrow already notched on his longbow and adrenaline boiling in his blood. Within range of the burrow, Ninn stopped, taking aim at the watcher. If he killed this one first, chances were he would get two or three others before the mother-mind registered the danger.

Only a heartbeat before he released the string, the magnificent scuttler lifted its nose, twitched its antennae, and with a rattle of the scaly tail, it disappeared in a burrow. The others followed its lead, and Ninn lowered the bow, disappointed. What chased his prey away? He squinted, studying the surrounding dunes' crests, but couldn't find any sign of other predators.

Frustrated, he shoved his arrow back into the quiver when a hum in the sky made him glance up. There, above the purple clouds announcing the sunrise in the east, a bright light glowed and grew. A shooting star? In the lore of his people, they were said to bring luck. Although some insisted on bad luck, his grandma for one. Ninn snorted. He wasn't religious, as far as he was concerned, things just happened.

The fiery mass approached, the hum now loud enough to rattle his teeth. Within moments, the star became too bright to look at. Ninn shielded his face and watering eyes with a hand. The heartbeat in his chest drummed a too-fast rhythm, but he wasn't a coward. His lips pressed tight and his bow ready, he stood atop a dune, determined to find out what the star would do. But as the heat and light became almost unbearable, an unexpected gust of scalding wind tore at his dust-cloak. Ninn staggered back and fell.

Behind the crest of the dune, he dropped onto his belly, pressing his face into the cool sand while a searing heatwave washed over his back. The ground shook, and a fierce thunderclap popped his ears. In an avalanche of blue sands, Ninn tumbled down the dune and slid to a stop in the next dip.

Shaken, he buried his face in his elbow, pulling the hood of the dust-cloak over his head. The wind tugged at him even down here, and despite his momentary deafness, the hum resonated in his skull. It felt like an eternity until it faded. His hearing returned—at least in parts. Sand had buried his cloak and found its way into his collar. The desire to flee this place contended with his curiosity to investigate. The latter won.

But when Ninn peeked over the rim of the dune, he shied back. Only a short walk away, a Vessel of the Gods had settled in the sand. The still-glowing hull outshone the red sun that now peeked from the dust haze obscuring the horizon.

2 - The Landing

Mei overheard the rumours about the imminent landing while queuing for breakfast.

"We will reach the Tàiyáng's destination within days now, my brother-in-law said." The woman in front of her seemed excited.

But her companion shrugged. "Someone always says we're going to land tomorrow. It's all wishful thinking."

Mei picked up her coffee and tuned them out. It seemed impossible the Tàiyáng's journey could end during her lifetime. The ship had travelled through deep space for centuries, all the routines aboard were well-honed, and nothing was left to chance. Why should things change now? Besides, she had to prepare for her upcoming lessons.

While she walked the short distance to the classroom, her hands clamped around her cup, Mei's thoughts were preoccupied with today's subjects. Some of her pupils needed an extra push if they wanted to pass the finals in maths and physics. Mei sighed. She loved her duty as a teacher, but this class challenged her patience. At least, she could start the day with a lesson in Earth history, her favourite subject and guilty pleasure.

The classroom was still empty, and she had ample time to log into her teacher's account and call up her materials. Although she had never seen the planet of human origin, Mei loved everything related to Earth. She even studied foreign languages, aware she would never use them where the Tàiyáng was headed.

While the pupils trickled in, she called up a picture of the ship leaving Earth orbit, ready to start her lonely journey. Right with the bell, her last student settled into his nook.

"Good morning, children. Let's begin the day with our very own history. Do you remember when the Tàiyáng left the home planet, Jian?"

The boy looked at her with wide brown eyes. She picked him for a reason. Jian had imagination, contrary to his classmates, and Mei believed to observe a spark of interest when she talked about their origin. He didn't disappoint her. "The year of the tiger, 2058?"

Mei smiled. "Right, Jian, we left Earth as the first generation ship of the Eastern alliance. Do you also remember who captained the Tàiyáng?"

The boy remained silent, and her other pupils stared either at their hands or into thin air. Mei suppressed a sigh. As much as she loved history, most of the children didn't understand why they had to bother with it. For once, she was almost relieved when a general announcement interrupted the awkward silence.

"Worthy citizens of the Tàiyáng. After four centuries and forty-five years, our ship has reached its destination. We entered orbit of the planet TOI700d, where we will build the first human colony in outer space. Please return to your living quarters and follow instructions as we continue preparation for landing. This is a historic moment, citizens, and..."

Mei stopped listening. The words of the announcement drowned in the cheers of the children hustling out of the classroom. But her gaze was captured by the first images of their new world, now appearing on the overhead screen. Deaf to the commotion surrounding her, she inhaled these marvels like the scent of roses. The red sun just rose above the rim of the planet, shrouded in purple clouds.

Like all non-essential personnel, Mei spent the landing in her cot, strapped in and under drugs. They were meant to loosen the muscles and guarantee passengers wouldn't hurt themselves if the landing got tough. She didn't complain, caught in the moment's excitement.

When she awoke, nothing much had changed, and Mei wondered if she had imagined everything. But the pictures on her screen convinced her otherwise: Toi was a world in shades of blue and red. Soft turquoise hills stretched away towards a hazy horizon where a giant red sun rose from purple, orange-rimmed clouds. The young teacher stared at it, enraptured.

Her old life was over, and a new, exciting one was about to begin.

An incoming personal message called her out of her reverie. She had to read it twice to be sure she didn't misunderstand.

Applications are now open for exploration teams. Due to your scientific background, you, Mei Zhao, are invited to apply. Your health examination is scheduled at 15 hours.

A radiant smile spread on her face. She would walk a planet, be part of the grand adventure of building a colony. Not in her wildest dreams could she have hoped for such an exciting opportunity. Perhaps there was life out there to be explored. If the planet turned out to be a desert, the ship carried the means to turn it into a garden. And she, Mei Zhao, would be part of it.

3 - The Vessel of the Gods

Ninn left the camp before sunrise like each morning, long before the others were awake. His steps led him to the Vessel of the Gods, although the scuttler colony in its vicinity was destroyed. The delicate animals hadn't survived the heat of the falling star. But today, he didn't come for the hunt. Today, he wanted to witness the interaction between the people's emissary and the gods.

The elders had forbidden the hunters to approach the place and meddle with the newcomers. Soon, the tribe would leave this place. Only the annual gathering at the holy shrine kept them for a while longer. Ninn ignored the order, aware he'd be in trouble if he got caught. But wasn't he one of the best stalkers of the tribe? And weren't the gods his discovery?

He searched for an observation spot on a dune. As soon as the red light of the sun flooded the plains, the gods left their home. With their body-fitting white-and-silver suits, they stood out in the desert like the intruders they were. Ninn studied them with squinted eyes, torn between fascination and anger. They invaded his hunting grounds and took away his freedom of movement. And now, they started building an enormous rock out of a strange, transparent material. He had seen something similar only once, in the sacred halls.

Concentrated on the construction workers, he almost missed the approach of the emissary. The council's choice had been Shal, a wise woman, who had been a counsellor as long as Ninn could remember. A fair judge and a gifted hunter, her task was to establish a first contact.

From his vantage point, Ninn watched her leave the dunes and approach the building site with slow, measured steps. The gods interrupted their work, some running back to their vessel, a few heading towards the lonely, blue-clad figure. The soft tone of Shal's cloak stood in stark contrast to the white attire of the two gods approaching. They met halfway between Ninn's dune and the territory claimed by the newcomers, the emissary of the people towering over their figures. For the first time, Ninn wondered why the gods weren't more impressive.

He watched the back and forth between Shal and the strangers. The wind prevented him from hearing their voices, but both sides used gestures that became more and more agitated. When the emissary turned away, tossing her hand in frustration, one of the gods pulled a stick-like weapon and shot her in the back with a lightning bolt.

Shal stumbled, but caught herself and, quick like the sand-slider she was named after, she dashed back into the protection of the dunes. Her steps whirled up a cloud of dust, obscuring the sight of her pursuers. When it settled, Shal's dust-cloak had already blended into the landscape, and even Ninn had trouble spotting the hunter-turned-prey.

The gods gave up the search fast enough and returned to their building site. As soon as they retreated, he dared to search for the tribeswoman. He found her near the abandoned scuttler burrow, short of breath, and so pale he could see the dark veins throbbing under her sunburnt skin.

"Shal, are you all right?"

At the sound of his voice, the hunter opened her pale eyes. "Ninn. I... should have known you were around." She closed her lids, her breathing ragged and shallow.

Ninn kneeled beside her, listening for the sounds of approaching steps. But it seemed the gods had given up the hunt. "Shal, can you walk? We have to bring you to the healer."

"Aye." She struggled to get up, and with his help succeeded to sit. Ninn cleaned the sand from her bleeding shoulder and bandaged it with his woven belt when a whirr disrupted the silence. He reached for his bow and yanked an arrow from his quiver. Over the next dune, a fat flying bug hovered, not unlike a dawn-shimmer. Ninn pulled the string back to his cheekbone, took aim, and with a whoosh, the arrow pierced the foreign beast. It tumbled from the sky a few steps from their hiding place.

It took only a moment to collect his unusual prey and stow the dead metal bug in his hunting pouch.

"Let's move, Shal."

The wounded hunter grasped his hand to stagger up. Ninn supported her as well as he could on the long walk back to the camp. But for the last few miles, he half-dragged, half-carried her.

It took all the healer's skill to save Shal. For several days, she walked the line between life and the eternal dream. Ninn passed a lot of time in the dunes, observing the gods pursue their projects. After rescuing Shal, no one scolded him for returning to the Vessel of the Gods. When the hunter recovered, he was allowed to visit.

"Ninn." She was still weak, but the spark of life had returned to her clear eyes.

"I'm glad you feel better."

"Thanks to you, Ninn. Have you visited the scuttler plain lately?"

"Every morning. The gods build a new vessel now—or something like a rock. It's transparent, like the artefacts in the holy shrine. And it's going to be huge."

The old hunter leaned back on her cot. "So they are gods, after all, and they are here to stay. It might be time for our people to move on."

Ninn agreed. "There are too many to chase them away. They swarm over the plain like a herd of stingy teasers, deaf and trusting on their spikes more than observation." He rubbed a hand over his chin, remembering what the weapons of the gods could do. His arrows might kill a metal shimmer-bug, but they were no match to the god's bolts of power. "Retreating into the mountains will be the wise thing to do. The world is big, we will find another hunting ground."

But the elders hesitated. The upcoming festival in the Shrine of Origin was important. They planned to call on the old gods for help against the new. Shal told him to remain patient, if only for half a double moon.

Restless, Ninn settled into a new routine. At the end of each hunting trip, his steps led him to the dunes above the fallen star. The construction of the gleaming rock advanced fast, and more and more gods walked the scuttler plain, claiming it as their home.

Today, he was about to leave his viewpoint when a movement at the foot of the dunes caught his attention. Less than an arrow shot away, a god climbed the dune he was resting on. The white-clad figure stopped every few steps to look around or scan the ground, stooping to run a handful of blue sand through a five-fingered glove. Five fingers, two legs, two arms. The gods were not that different from people, after all. Only the transparent, round head seemed too big for the short body. It glinted in the sun, and he shielded his eyes.

Flat on the ground and camouflaged by his dust cloak, he observed the stranger's progress. Closer up, he recognised a transparent orb protecting a head with near-familiar features. A nose, even if it was small and stubby, a pinkish mouth and two eyes. On top, a black, fuzzy mop covered it, resembling  a scuttler's antennae. He wondered if it served the same purpose: to connect the individual to the mother-mind.

Lost in his observations, Ninn jerked up when a well-remembered, piercing pain shot through his ankle. He had been stung by dream-weavers before, and he knew he had to get rid of the poison as fast as possible. If it reached his heart, he would lose consciousness and become easy prey for the creature. Unsheathing his knife, Ninn pulled the blade crosswise over the spot marked by the seven black needle points. Then he massaged his thigh to make the blood flow. The crimson liquid would wash out the poison fast enough.

"Nǐ hǎo."

Ninn froze before he looked up into two dark eyes behind a transparent shield. His hand cramped around the heft of the knife, ready to throw it and pierce the stranger's heart. But the god just stood there and smiled, the hands lifted in a non-threatening gesture. Ninn hesitated. Sitting on the ground, he was at a disadvantage. If the god decided to pull one of those shooting sticks, he would be an easy target.

But the god, the she-god to judge by the fine features and the body shape accentuated by the tight white suit, didn't move.

"Nǐ hǎo," she repeated.

Ninn frowned. Was she offering a greeting? Perhaps it was worth the risk. Deliberately, he sheathed his knife and lifted his hand. The she-god mimicked the gesture, and her grin broadened. Ninn took it as an invitation to stand up. Erect, he towered head and shoulders over his new acquaintance.

The she-god's smile faltered as she took a step back, lost her footing and sat down on her bum. Now it was Ninn's time to grin. To his astonishment, the expression of terror on her face faded into another smile.

At this moment, Ninn decided they were not gods at all, but people. Different, but capable of humour—helpless, perhaps, and clumsy. His curiosity awoke.

4 - Truth

A few days later, Mei rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and checked her duty plan. When she left her new quarters in the growing dome minutes later, she almost skipped. She would see Ninn today. Like every other day for the last week. He would appear like a ghost out of nowhere when she walked the dunes, and Mei suspected he was waiting for her. So, she took every opportunity to volunteer for collecting samples of the local minerals and wildlife.

When an officer of the guard crossed her in the aisle, she straightened her back and suppressed her smile. During the morning briefing, the instructor showed them the enlarged, blurry picture of the alien again. "This is what they look like. We don't know much about them, but they might be extremely dangerous. Don't try to interact, shoot. If you can, stun them, if not, kill. We need one of them to study at all costs."

Mei shook her head. In her opinion, the footage of that first, ill-fated encounter only proved that the human guard shot the alien in the back. She despised the rumours about the potential cruelty of the natives, but she knew better than to voice her opinion. The officers wouldn't believe her, anyway. Ninn was not a savage, and she couldn't imagine his people being dangerous. He showed her how to move in the desert. And their communication got so much better these last days.

She took her time and followed a circuitous route to approach their first meeting place, picking up samples on the way to avoid suspicion. Ninn waited for her at the foot of a dune, his slim form almost invisible, his blue cloak blending with the sand. Beside him lay the corpse of a scaly animal.

"Ninn, glad to see you." Mei smiled and waved, aware body language was her best bet to make him understand. "Is this your dinner?" She pointed at the multi-legged body.

Instead of an answer, he held out his prey to her. She was tempted to ask if he would allow her to take it back to the dome, but it would be hard to explain how she caught it without betraying her illegal contact with him. There was no way she could have killed one of these reptile-like beings. They were said to be shy and hard to catch. The science team learned about their existence when a survey drone managed to film a group before they disappeared simultaneously in their burrow.

"Scuttler."

Despite Ninn's help, she struggled with the pronunciation of the foreign sounds. They both laughed, and he picked up his prey. When he took her gloved hand to pull her deeper between the dunes, his broad grin betrayed he had a plan for today.

Torn between curiosity and apprehensiveness, Mei followed him towards the foothills of the mountains. From time to time, he pointed out features in the landscape that meant nothing to her. Mei had never been so close to the mountains, and she suspected they were well beyond the area considered safe by the Tàiyáng's officers.

The uneven pair climbed a rise and stopped in a circle of grey, angular rocks. They protruded from the sand, disturbing in their splintered and jagged alienness.

Mei swallowed, her stomach in a knot. "Where are we, Ninn?"

Her companion tapped his lips with a slender finger as if he wanted to ask her to stay quiet. Mei frowned and took a few more steps towards the nearest rock, reaching out to touch its surface, when the sand beneath her shifted. She stumbled and lost her footing. In an uncontrollable slide of crumbling sand, she was swallowed by a hole opening in the ground, her anxious shrieks resounding in her helmet.

When the movement stopped, Mei found herself in a cave on her back. Red sunlight filtered through a jagged crack above her head, painting purple patterns onto the floor. She sobbed, her breathing shallow and her limbs hurting. Why didn't she follow the officer's order? It was her own fault she was trapped and lost on an alien planet she didn't understand.

"Mei." Ninn's voice echoed in the cave's emptiness and sent a shiver down her spine. Torn out of her self-pity, she scrambled to her feet, ready to defend herself.

Ninn landed in a cloud of sand at her feet, a deep frown etched on his forehead. When he saw her, the folds evened out, and a smile formed on his lips just to be blown away a second later. He dropped to his knees and reached for her left leg.

Mei gasped. Her suit was torn by a splinter embedded in her thigh. Dark red blood ran down her leg, and only now she felt the pain of the injury. But this wasn't the worst. "Ninn, my suit. I'm going to suffocate."

Of course, the hunter couldn't understand. With gentle hands, he helped her to sit down and picked the thumb-long splinter from the wound. Mei took it from him, studying the sharp piece of metal in her shaking fingers. "It's... Ninn, I am afraid."

His finger examined her injury and bandaged it with a strip of blue cloth. Mei stared at his hands, moving in swift and gentle expertise until his crystal-clear eyes found hers. "Mei."

He took her hands, and she studied his lean face, the bald head, the skin crisscrossed in a marble pattern of blue veins. His brow-less, lash-less blue eyes held her gaze and spent her support in the moments of panic. The seconds ticked by, and she continued to breathe. "The readings. One of our environmentalists. She said the atmosphere should be almost breathable, that we might survive it for a short while." Her voice sounded squeaky in her ears, and her throat felt as if filled with desert sand. "Ninn, I'm alive."

With a single, determined motion, she freed her hands and unlocked her helmet. If she was going to die, then without the cumbersome weight of it. Ninn's eyes widened, and she sucked in the dry air. It was cold and tasted a bit metallic. But this was perhaps just an illusion.

Ninn reached out to touch her face, but Mei had no time for his wonder. No longer obscured by the tinted glass of the helmet, the angular walls of the cave caught her attention. A vague sense of familiarity washed over her. "Ninn, what is this place?"

He had no answer, but his hand held onto hers while she stood and limped to the next wall where an engraving marred the even surface. Almost reverently, her gloved finger traced the ancient inscription. Everything fell into place: this monument of torn and twisted metal, his eyes, even her unease each time the fearsome aliens were mentioned.

The theories of space travel had fascinated Mei since she was a child. Now, she looked around, taking in what she knew was impossible yet true. The Tàiyáng left Earth in 2058 for a journey of centuries. Thus, the generation ship became a time capsule: it's technology outdated the moment it took off. It reached its destination in the year 2503—to find it had been overtaken in the race to the stars. The Tàiyáng had lost a race its crew didn't know they were engaged in.

Mei's voice sounded hoarse in the dry desert air when she tried it on an old Earth language. A language she learned out of curiosity and had never thought she would ever use.

"To the heroic crew of the first FTL-ship, Hope, who carries the hopes of Earth's inhabitants into outer space. The President of the New United Nations, in the year of True Peace, 2079."

And beneath it, scratched into the ship's wall with a sharp edge, "crash-landed on TOI700d September 2081. May the gods of this desert guard our souls—and give us hope."

Mei swallowed a lump of awe and anxiety. But then her gaze wandered from the inscription to Ninn's scarred fingers, intertwined with her own, and to his human eyes. There was always hope.