“You’re the Captain, ain’t you supposed to lead?”
Dexter frowned but had to acknowledge the large man’s logic, such as it was. “Fine, but don’t think I’m not telling the others about this!”
Rosh grinned. “Fine by me, Cap.”
Dexter slipped in front of Rosh and the large man edged back towards the dais to give him room to run. Dexter sprang forward, taking two strides and leaping into the air. He pulled his feet as high as he could as soon as they left the ground, and only barely managed to avoid stumbling and falling when he landed on the far table.
Two of the sand sharks had leapt into the air, their jaws clamping shut on air behind the man’s passage. Rosh was moving before they sank back into the sand, sinking into it as though it was water. He leapt between the two, also pulling his feet up, and landed only slightly more gracefully than Dexter had. He also bumped into the man, which caused him to teeter precariously for a moment before he reclaimed his balance.
“You could have waited,” Dexter admonished him.
“Didn’t want them to be ready for me,” Rosh said, watching the roiling sand suspiciously.
“You nearly pushed me off!”
“I’d grab ya,” Rosh offered, smiling.
Dexter opened his mouth to scold him but stopped when something in the room changed. They had not noticed any background noise, but the sudden absence of it struck them both as very odd. They looked at one another and then around them, staring at the sand first. The dust that had risen from the frenzied thrashing of the sand settled and revealed a landscape unmarred by vibration or movement.
“They stopped,” Rosh muttered.
Dexter stared at him for a long minute, his expression one of disbelief.
“What?” Rosh asked, seeing Dexter looking at him.
Dexter just shook his head. He was amazed at the man’s ability to state the obvious and just let it go at that. Instead Dexter knelt down and leaned closer to the sand. “Could be a trap,” he suggested.
Rosh raised an eyebrow, he had not thought of that.
“Why would they just leave us be?” Dexter wondered aloud, letting his hand slowly drift over the open sand beyond the table.
Rosh watched, grimacing silently as he expected one of the creatures to burst upwards and swallow Dexter’s hand. The creature never came, and instead Dexter waved his hand over the sand in a slow gentle arc unmolested.
“Let’s get that other table moved over here,” Dexter said excitedly, rising up from where he had knelt.
Rosh turned to look at it and frowned. “Ain’t gonna be easy, they chewed all the legs off. Nothing to grab on to now.”
Dexter looked at it and frowned as well. “Could pick it up by the edge of the table,” he offered.
“You first,” Rosh said, knowing full well how fast the creatures had been and what he was sure they could do to fingers.
“I could order you,” Dexter said. “I’m still your Captain.”
Rosh chuckled. “Aye, and I could toss you into the sand. I’m still bigger than you.”
Dexter scowled but had to admit that the man was right. “Didn’t say I was going to,” he offered by way of a peace offering.
Rosh grinned and clapped Dexter on the shoulder. “Me neither, Cap.”
“So how we going to get over there? I judge it a fair five feet to the stairs still,” Rosh asked him.
“We run, I guess,” Dexter offered.
“You guess?” Rosh echoed. “I thought you was the Captain? I thought you had these things figured out?”
It was Dexter’s turn to grin. “I figured it out… we run. Now back up you big lug, I want a head start.”
Rosh backed up so that Dexter could have a couple of steps on the table before he leapt into the sand. Rosh glanced behind him, suspicious still of the quiet landscape. When he looked back Dexter started his run.
The Voidhawk’s Captain cleared three feet in the air, and managed to spring the last couple of feet off of the single foot he planted in the sand. Other than the impression his foot left in the sand, there was no sign of his passage nor of the sand sharks.
“Come on!” Dexter said, moving up the stairs enough for Rosh to join him.
Rosh took a deep breath and, with a last nervous glance around, ran and jumped. He, too, made it to the stairs with no sign of pursuit or aggression. He looked back in amazement, wondering why they had stopped all of a sudden and let them be.
“Hurry, we need to be getting back to the ‘Hawk,” Dexter said, starting up the stairs again.
Rosh nodded and followed him, letting the strangeness of the room slip from his mind. Instead he thought forward to wondering if Bailynn had learned anything new and if she was ready for him to teach her some private lessons yet. He grinned as he thought of just what some of those lessons would involve.
They emerged from the ruined tower and stared around, seeing no sign of the Voidhawk. “Um, where’s the ship?” Rosh asked, snapping out of his lustful reveries immediately.
Dexter looked around, eyes scanning the void, and found that he could not answer. He wanted to, but the absence of his ship left him with an equal loss of words.
“Cap, there’s a trail over here,” Rosh said, pointing out several worn rocks and scuffed marks on the ground.
Dexter stared dully at where Rosh was pointing, not understanding the point the man was trying to make. “Might be worth checking out,” Rosh suggested.
Dexter stared at it a moment longer then nodded. He felt empty at the abandonment of his ship. He knew that Kragor, Jenna, and the others would never mutiny on him. Well, Rosh might, he reasoned, for the right price or opportunity, but the others would never do it. Keshira was bound to him, it was impossible for her to betray him. So where in the reaches of the void were they?
Rosh led the way down the trail, which made its way directly across the asteroid and went over the edge of it, by means of some stairs. The stairs changed their orientation, which made both men momentarily nauseas, but they found that it took place at the same time that they passed through the gravity plane on the asteroid, so it kept them upright even though they found themselves upside down from where they should have been.
“This rock’s like a ship,” Rosh said, surprised.
Dexter grunted, in no mood to talk. It was odd though, he had to admit.
Ascending the stairs on the bottom of the asteroid they soon beheld a sight that left both of them standing in surprise. A small dock had been constructed on the far side, with ports for two small to mid-size ships. A wooden shed was constructed nearby, though the door could be seen to have been smashed in. More importantly, a small boat was moored to the dock. It had been mistreated much like the shed, but the vessel, some homemade contraption resembling a cross between a rowboat and a stagecoach, looked to still be sound. The wheels were broken, some missing rungs while others had been shattered entirely, but the actual boat itself seemed intact.
The castaways rushed towards it, thoughts of their situation no longer bleak and hopeless. Rosh veered into the shed, looking for anything of worth that had been left behind, while Dexter circled the boat before making his way up to the broken decking. Rosh emerged from the shed holding a broken piece of wood. He tossed it to the side and made his way over the treacherous footing of the broken gangplanks up to the boat.
“Got yourself a new boat?” Rosh asked with a grin.
Dexter emerged from doorway in the front to the pilots seat on the front and shot Rosh a dark look. “She’ll fly, but the sail’s been cut up and there’s supposed to be a sail off the bow too.”
Rosh turned to look at the front of the boat. He saw no obvious placement for a sail, just a beam that looked to have been hacked through and broken off. “Where’d it go?” Rosh asked.
Dexter leaned forward to point to the ground beneath the ship. The rest of the beam lay down there, some fifteen foot of it, along with a collapsed sail and several ropes that had been cut or snapped.
“Oh,” Rosh said, scratching his chin. “Well how’s it gonna fly without sails?”
“That’s where we come in, my friend,” Dexter said with a grin. “We need to fix it up so we can find the ‘Hawk.”
Rosh stared at the broken beam and sighed. “Ain’t no talking you into waiting it out for them to come back?”
