He turned and looked back at the splinter of sunlight fighting with the blowing sand for possession of the horizon and having to keep the hood on his right side held firm by his hand to block the wind from his face. It peppered his fingers but didn’t cut them as he starred at the sunlight as it began to dip behind a distant dune.
For some reason the storm and the oncoming darkness were a comfort. As if they were blocking out the rest of the galaxy and reducing him down to just himself and this spot, even with Cal-com nearby. He knew he could see through it if he turned on his Pefbar, but right now that thought wasn’t very tempting. He liked being blind to the universe, and it being blind to him, even if that wasn’t entirely true. Certain orbital sensors could find them through the storm, but not all. Thought for the moment he let himself forget all that and just go back to being a simple Human that didn’t have that much tactical knowledge.
Paul sighed, though he couldn’t hear it. The wind was too loud and the sand hitting his robe sounded like sleet, but he stood there and watched until the last of the sunlight disappeared, with the transition happening more rapidly than he anticipated. One moment it was there, then boom…it was gone and totally black. Not even a little glow in the sky left to mark its proximity over the horizon.
Paul felt very small looking out into that pitch black and seeing nothing, but feeling the wind hammering him on his robe. He turned around and saw the small orange light marking their tent and walked towards it on memory, stumbling once on a new dune that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. He caught his balance quick enough, but the surprise was shocking and refreshing, and like any good Archon he adapted to it, taking smaller steps and giving himself plenty of leverage as he did so, finding some steps sinking in more than others as he made his way around to the side that held the entrance, though he couldn’t see it until he was only 3 feet away.
Paul opened the zipper on the leeward side of the tent and stooped down to walk in, then spun around and zipped it back up behind him as a second brighter lantern hung in the same spot on the tent roof, inverse to the exterior one.
“Night is upon us,” the Human said, pulling off his robe and seeing trails of sand pouring off it onto the floor. “Nuts.”
“Here,” Cal-com said, handing him a brush and collection pan. “I had the same problem.”
“At least the vendor’s package anticipated this,” Paul said thankfully as he knelt down and cleaned up most of the sand, then unzipped the door enough to toss it outside before resealing up the interior and dampening the sound of the ever increasing wind.
“You sound better.”
“I feel better. Logically I don’t know why, and for some reason I don’t care to find out. Being ‘small’ is easier in the storm I think.”
“Isolation without responsibility. We have no one to protect. No one to monitor. No one that we can monitor if we wanted. Our responsibility is only in this tent and to each other. The storm and the night create a void into which we shelter from rather than fight. When was the last time you sheltered from anything?”
“I’ve been in ships and internal cities so long I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t spent much time outdoors in general, except in my armor. And never a sandstorm.”
“Never?”
“Have you?”
“Such things were required of all Voku, as hardening for battle. We were sent to many harsh environments where we could make mistakes without it getting us killed. That way when we faced similar conditions in battle there would be less of a learning curve.”
“Most of Star Force’s training occurs in indoor parks where we determine the weather. I can’t recall ever being in a sandstorm training session though. Sand dunes, yes. But a storm on them…I don’t think so.”
“Then this is new for you?”
“It is, but I’ve always had this feeling in storms…though until this moment I had forgotten. I feel more alive in them.”
“As you also feel more connected to life in danger in general?”
“That may be true, but this is different. There’s no one trying to kill us. This is player versus environment. I guess I’d come to think of the Hadarak as the environment, and forgotten what the real environment was.”
“Your Excalibur is a poor location to spend so much time for a person of your responsibilities.”
Paul glared at him. “I feel obliged to defend my ship, but I’m failing to find a means.”
“Naval is a part-time Archon activity. Not a full-time one.”
“And yet the Hadarak don’t give us time off on the Grand Border.”
“That’s why you recruited the V’kit’no’sat. So they can guard the Border constantly, freeing up the High Guard and others to do other vital tasks.”
“That wasn’t the only reason. And in truth not the primary one.”
“You wanted to save them from themselves?”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that, but in doing so we destroyed the purpose that had driven us into becoming Archons.”
“You ended your quest by completing it.”
“Yeah, we did. And part of me is missing it…” Paul said, about to put a caveat there, but instead he let it hang.
“If you could travel
