Lady of the Sands

  Lady of the Sands

  Divine Space: Book 3

  Fuad Baloch

  Copyright © 2018 by Fuad Baloch

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Illustration © Tom Edwards — TomEdwardsDesign.com

  Editing by Bodie D. Dykstra

  Note on Styling:

  Divine Space series utilises British English conventions. This means some words might have different spellings (colour vs color), and the vocabulary might be slightly varied (holidays instead of vacations), etc.

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  The bomb is ticking. The one she planted.

  For the past five years, Ruma Nuway has been plotting to leave Doonya, the human planet.

  Now's her chance, as she stands over the bound Zrivisi crew, the alien ship at her complete disposal.

  When the captain refuses, and her companion goes past the edge, she faces impossible choices.

  Let me know where you’d like to receive the short story and I’ll be happy to send it to you.

  http://fuadbaloch.com/free-ebook/

  Contents

  1. A New Dawn

  2. On the Brink

  3. Time

  4. Lurking Monsters

  5. Beginnings

  6. Truth and Falsehoods

  7. Challenges

  8. The Sight

  9. Awakening

  10. Plans

  11. The Old World

  12. Easy Decisions

  13. The Return

  14. Meeting History

  15. The Long Marches…

  16. The Prophecy

  17. Towering Figures

  18. Realisations

  19. The Mysticism

  20. The Night

  21. Bloody Escapes

  22. Madness

  23. The False Dawns…

  24. Friends

  25. Best Laid Plans

  26. Ways of Men

  27. The Dream

  28. Mirrors

  29. The Reflection

  30. Confrontations

  31. The Intrusion

  32. Ramifications

  33. Crossroads

  34. Old Friends…

  35. Capitulations

  36. The Shard

  37. Those who Unite

  38. The Misguided

  39. The Eyes

  40. Admissions

  41. The Lady

  The story continues…

  About the Author

  One

  A New Dawn

  Pain.

  Blinding. Searing. Shards of pain lancing through her body.

  Ruma tried opening her mouth but found it impossible even as another wave of pain washed over her. Hands over her stomach, she gritted her teeth. No pain lasted forever. Something her subconscious remembered even if coherent thoughts proved too hard to form.

  Long moments passed.

  Cautiously, Ruma reached out a hand, flexed her fingers. Her joints creaked, protested, but the pain was manageable. Next, she forced open an eyelid. The sun hung directly overhead, a bright orb of brilliant yellow in a sea of blue, its rays warm against her clammy skin.

  “Where the… frack am I?” she croaked, her tongue swollen inside the mouth. They were aboard ARK Tafloon, a small frigate Yaman Nuway, her father, had managed to procure through his connections. They had just jumped through the Shard, her last memory that of being safely cocooned in her crash gel harness, en route to the Hengoli sector.

  What had happened?

  Where did all that pain come from?

  Clenching her fists, Ruma forced herself up on her elbows, looked around. Unending sand dunes spread out to either direction, the scenery as unchanging as the clear skies overhead.

  Anxiety gripped her stomach as she tried getting to her feet.

  “Argh!” she howled, doubled over as another wave of agony crested over. Not one to give up, sucking her teeth, Ruma forced her protesting body upright, took another look around.

  Warm air blew against her face, setting the ends of her hair fluttering behind her. She raised a hand, tucked away the pasty red locks that had fallen over her left eye.

  Again, she looked around. This time, not even the pain was enough to arrest the urgency of her movements. Where was her father? Had something gone wrong and they had to crash-land onto a planet’s surface? If so, where was the ship? Oh, Divine Lady, what’s going on?

  She looked down at her clothes. The drab brown Arkos mechanic’s uniform was crumpled, stained with sand and what looked like grease. She patted the pockets. Empty.

  “Fracking hell!”

  Ruma took a lurching step forwards, then tried another. Gritting her teeth, she broke into a trot, ignoring the pain that shot up her legs. “Yaman!” she shouted.

  Nothing but the whooshing of dry, prickly desert air.

  Using the sun and her shadow as a guide, she headed eastwards. “Yaman Nuway! Where the fracking hell are you?”

  Without warning, something heavy, dense settled behind her sockets, pounded against her skull. Ruma howled, clawed at her temples, the world vanishing for a moment under its onslaught.

  She stomped her feet, cried out until the pain subsided.

  Before it could return, she began running once more, opened her mouth to shout for her father.

  Despite the panic gripping her, she shook her head. She would not call for Yaman like a lost child might for her father. If anything, the man deserved her full wrath.

  Another idea bubbled through the pain. Was Yaman behind all of this?

  Her feet slowed at the thought. Yaman had been a gambler, a smuggler all his life. A man well used to living life on his own terms, without many qualms or moral quandaries. A furious daughter, baying for his blood, seeking to take him to task for all he’d done, wouldn’t exactly have filled him with great delight.

  Had he ejected her onto some planet, taking the frigate for himself?

  Biting her lips, Ruma forced a chuckle, finding both amusement and disappointment at how feasible the idea sounded to her mind.

  “If that is what you’ve done…” she croaked, slowing down, “you’re going to pay tenfold!”

  Slowed, but still moving, Ruma surveyed her surroundings once more. Something about the unchanging backdrop was familiar, a sense of déjà vu that set the hairs on the back of her neck rising.

  She hadn’t been in this desert before, yet it felt familiar.

  Too familiar.

  The gravity wasn’t oppressive on this planet, either, the colour of the sand and the sky the shades she had always seen. Just the one sun as well.

  Facts pointed at a conclusion she found hard to accept. Surely, it wasn’t possible. They had been heading away from Doonya. And to the best of her knowledge, there was no other known planet that could be considered a twin to the planet she kept seeing around her.

  Ruma shook her head once more, clicked through gritted teeth. Her mind was trying to invent patterns to divert her attention. Trying its damnedest to keep her from focusing on what she did need to focus on.

  Where in the seven hells was she?

  She had to find her ship, chase Yaman. And get away from Gulatu.

  The last thought nauseated her, a lump she struggled to swallow forming in her throat. “Oh, think of something else, Ruma!”

  Constant motion was good, kept her body from giving in to anxiety, but was it really wise to stumble blindly without knowing what lay ahead? As if on cue, her stomach growled. Groaning, Ruma rested a hand on her abdomen. Her mouth was
parched, making it hard to keep thoughts in order. Water. She needed to drink.

  Something shimmered in the distance. She blinked, hope flaring in her mind. She shook her head, and the mirage collapsed.

  All thoughts of scouting ahead fizzled away. She resumed her trudge eastwards, hoping she wasn’t making a mistake. Well, even if she was, so long as the bastards had some water, it’d be better than collapsing of dehydration in this empty desert.

  “You’re lost!” whispered a low, deep voice into her left ear.

  Ruma jumped, pivoted around, her hands jutting in front to ward against whoever…

  She blinked.

  Nothing but the vast emptiness of the sand dunes. Had she heard a mirage, an after-effect of her dehydrated self?

  Realising her hands were still splayed out in front, she retracted them, eyes still scanning the surroundings, her heart suddenly beating too loudly.

  When nothing pounced at her, Ruma turned around, resumed her arduous trek through the sand, eyes peeled for the strange voice.

  The landscape kept rearranging itself no matter how many sand dunes she crested. Worst was realising she was the only living being in a landscape that could very well have passed for space.

  Something nagged at her. Ruma glanced up, scanned the horizon east to west.

  The skies were empty, devoid of any planes or ships or other such contraptions.

  Where am I? The question rose once more, this time with an urgency she could no longer afford to ignore.

  Still dragging her feet forwards, Ruma concentrated on her breathing. This is not the first time you’ve gotten yourself into a bit of a jam, girl! Don’t let your senses slip away. Everything has an explanation. And whoever put you into this mess is going to pay for this.

  The pep talk failed to boost her spirit as much as she would’ve liked, but at least the dread that had been threatening to consume her lessened a smidge.

  She was Ruma Nuway, one the worlds had tried and failed to throw off-track many times before. What was one more challenge? She’d make her way through this as well. And—

  Water!

  Ruma clenched her fingers, narrowed her eyes. There was no need to panic. She just needed to keep walking. Ensure she got close to a settlement. With the war against the Pithrean concluded, a temporary peace between the species established, who would dare deny provisions to a nobody like her?

  “Just keep going,” she told herself.

  The weight behind her eyes shifted. A thick, viscous liquid sloshing within her skull, settling around the contours of her head. Gritting her teeth, Ruma ignored it, kept her attention firmly at the task at hand.

  Left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Right foot.

  Memories tried rising from the periphery of her vision. Regrets. Fears. The way she had left things behind with ones she cared for.

  “No!” she shouted, jabbing a finger at no one in particular. She wasn’t one for dwelling on the past. What was done was done. She had given the man—prophet or not—every possible chance to make up his mind, and the blasted fool that he was proved himself utterly incapable of making the right one.

  They were too different to have made something work. Yeah, that was right. For one, she knew what she wanted and had the courage to walk away when that didn’t transpire.

  She was rambling. She realised that, then decided she didn’t really care for it.

  Left foot. Right foot.

  After an eternity, wiping the sweat off her brow, Ruma look up again. The merciless sun still shone harsh, still unaccompanied in the wide expanse of the blue sky.

  Before more troubling questions could take root, she quickened her pace. Motion was good.

  Thoughts washed over her once more. Had it been Gulatu in her state, the damned fool would have kept on waiting for a sign instead of just getting on with it.

  Why was she still thinking of him?

  “Snap out of it, girl!” she said, fingers balling into fists. She was not one to wallow, to think over what a man said, or didn’t, or what she should have or could have done. She was better than that. Deserved better than that.

  Even if the man was a so-called prophet of God.

  Pain throbbed up her back, spreading into her limbs. A wave of darkness washed over her, left her shivering despite the heat. When was the last time she’d eaten or drunk anything? How many miles had she covered already?

  How long could a human body keep going before it could no longer function?

  Left foot. Right foot.

  Ruma crested another sand dune, no different than the innumerable ones she had crossed before, her thoughts growing heavier, darker by the minute. She looked up, moving the right foot forwards when her eyes fell on what lay ahead.

  A city.

  She blinked, then rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. The shimmering city didn’t disappear. Not quite a city, she decided. More like something one might see in holo reconstructions of ancient cities of the past. One with a colossal white tower that seemed like a giant middle finger pointed at the sky.

  Not a dead city, though. She could spy a train of distant figures, humans and beasts, crawling on a road that snaked its way across the desert to massive gates. A semicircular wall no taller than three metres ran along the city, more gates to the east and west flung open to even more figures as they went about their business.

  Ruma shook her head. When was the last time she’d seen humans in those holo reconstructions? Now that she concentrated, she could make out the horses, camels, cattle being herded.

  “What in the seven hells…” she exclaimed, not believing what lay ahead. “Is this some sort of a joke?”

  For long minutes, Ruma stayed still, her heart disbelieving what her mind and eyes relayed. The city was alive, bustling with activity. Everything seemed to belong here, fitting in with its surroundings and the rolling desert like a fusion engine in a ship’s bowels.

  Everything… but her.

  Her stomach cramped. She licked her lips, torn by indecision. She had no Alf-damned idea of where she was, but one thing was certain. She was not going to learn anything melting away under the harsh sun.

  Shaking her head, she headed for the ancient city with the mud-baked walls and minarets with the one great tower reaching towards the sky.

  Two

  On the Brink

  Ruma dunked her head into the brown water trough set just after the city gates. The water stank, the texture icky, but despite it all, it felt heavenly. She drank greedily, not caring for the eyes she was attracting. A mule brayed behind her, more animal voices that she ignored joining in.

  When she finally raised her head to gulp in air, her eyes fell on a layer of algae and microfilm accumulating to the iron trough’s left side.

  “Argh!” she pushed herself away, cursing herself for being so damned careless.

  Reckless or not, the water did seem to help clear her thoughts. Taking a step back, she now stared in wonder and disbelief at the mud-baked buildings around her, all other concerns abating for the moment.

  People milled about in the square she had entered. Men dressed in long, flowing tunics and conical hats made their way through a press of bodies and animals. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, their dialect of Anduras so pure she had trouble keeping up with it. She spotted women, too—few, but standing out from the rest on account of the thick folds of dress draped across their bodies. Two broken catapults stood rammed against the gates that continued to let in a steady stream of bodies.

  Ruma craned her head up. She was taller than most men here, but the conical hats they wore were high enough to obscure her view of the tall tower. Ruma narrowed her eyes. She’d seen the tower before—or an approximation of it before. But where?

  “What the frack is happening?” she murmured to herself, dodging an old street vendor dressed in a frayed leather vest and flowing white beard who pushed a cart laden with colourful herbs.

  She caught a whiff of the pungent spices. The act jolte
d open her senses. A heady mix of old leather, raw sewage running in open gutters, dried sweat, the stink of animals, strong, fruity perfume the men wore all around her.

  Gagging, Ruma stepped back. She coughed, slapped her thigh.

  Where in the seven hells was she?

  Thoughts flittered in her mind. Back when she was a girl, Yaman had taken her to the ancient ruins around Yiuman, marvelled over the lives people of the past would have lived. She’d almost longed for such a life, impressionable as she was. A world without electricity, the fusion drive, the Shards.

  What she had never quite grasped was all the negatives that would come with such a life. And the stink.

  Whoever had constructed this… theatrical set obviously had an eye for historical accuracy.

  “Hey,” Ruma said, gesturing to the vendor who had somehow managed to squeeze in the middle of two younger merchants who shot him evil eyes. The old man bent over, giving no sign of having heard her as he set down over his stall a streamer overflowing with cursive writing. Ruma snapped her fingers, waited until the man was looking up at her. “What is this place?”

  The man lifted a heavy eyebrow, then wheezed a cough. “Alf be praised, what would you like to buy?”

  Ruma narrowed her eyes. “Where am I?”

  The vendor tried to straighten his crooked back, his attention fading. “If you’re not buying, leave me be, woman.” He shook his head, shooed her with his left hand, then muttered, “Trouble, the lot of them, these females!”