Sand

Sola glittered against the night behind them as Dustin wove the shuttle through the orbital debris field. This world - the first they’d come to after a week of travel from the Lievira homeworld - was an odd one. Thick forests rose from orange sands - the trees having grown deep roots to dig into water table, with wide leaves to extract every drop of sunlight. It had been home once to a sentient species - the debris that Dustin was now weaving through was evidence of that.

Beside him, Rye stared out of the shuttle’s view-port at the junk that occasionally rattled off the shuttle’s hull. “Looks all late industrial or atomic era.” She mused, tapping on her tablet as she did so. “Poor sods never had a chance when the Fractals showed up. Reckon we’re gonna find any survivors down there Dusty?”

Dustin shook his head. “Doubt it. Scans show no signs of sapient or even proto-sapient life across the planet. We’re going to be scouring a world that was attacked to see what’s grown back after a few hundred years; it’ll give us some really useful information to pass on to the Yuran and our other friends. Might get to see some ruins if we’re lucky; you said you thought you’d found some on the scans?”

The bunny girl gave a shrug. “Might have. It’s hard to tell, sand makes it a pain in the ass to get clear readings from orbit. I’ve got that thing…” and here she hooked her thumb towards a crate in the rear of the shuttle “…to help us get some better data. Lifeform wise, gonna leave it to you bubbles. Did ya pick up any signs of anything bigger than a fly?”

Bleu sighed, waving her own tablet in Rye’s direction. “You know as well as I do Rye that there are flies on this world the size of a house-cat. And yes, I have picked up indications of at least a half dozen species larger than that, as well as some signs of burrowing predators. Which is why we are going to be landing on a rock outcrop rather than bare sand, and avoid touching the dunes until you and I can both get better information through that ground-penetrator of yours.”

Dustin sighed to himself as the pair started bickering over inconsequential matters. He was very aware that both of them had asked him to make time for them - and both of them had yet to have that time, between celebrating Meli and Trea’k’s pregnancies and the work of getting the ship moving on it’s mission again. It was part of the reason they were both accompanying him on this trip - so that he could at least hopefully find time to do the talking parts of whatever intimate things it was that the women wanted. The other reason they were both here was a matter of practicality - Rye was needed to manage the ground scanner, and to do proper surveys of any ancient tech they found lying around, while the options for biologist had been either Bleu or Meli, and the doctor had flat out refused to allow the pregnant Velca permission to travel to a non-surveyed world unless it was a matter of life or ****.

Landing the shuttle on the narrow strip of stone rising from a clearing in the trees was a challenge; indeed, too much of a challenge for Dustin’s liking. As they reached a point a few miles off from their target, he put the shuttle into hover and rose from his seat. “She’s all yours, set us down neatly.” He said to Sammie, gesturing towards the console. The final member of their small landing party grinned, setting the book she’d been reading - an actual paper one she’d nabbed from Sola’s stockrooms - down in one of the storage bins before scrambling past him to the pilot’s seat.

Where Dustin would have struggled to navigate around the wide and twisting branches of the trees while avoiding disturbing the patches of deeper sand on the edges of the clearing, Sammie had no such problems. The shuttle’s engines hummed gently as she spun the craft on it’s axis like a ballerina, pivoting just enough to clear the canopy before bringing it to a gentle stop right in the middle of the target area.

As soon as they hit the ground, Rye thumbed the shuttle’s sensors, running a pre-configured sweep. “Yup, ground’s as solid as it looked from orbit. We’re safe from any big sandy monsters for the time being.” The Rabyth said with a chuckle, before swinging out of her seat and towards the rear of the craft. “C’mon you three, lets go get the big tin can set up so we can see what’s lurking under the surface.”

Even with a grav-sled, it took all four of them to manoeuvre the heavy scanning equipment out from it’s place in the back of the shuttle, and to mount the massive footplate bolts to Rye’s satisfaction on the rocky outcrop. Once the metal was in place, the Rabyth woman tapped her tablet and the bolting mechanisms activated, metal rapidly super-heating and bonding with the rocky ground. “Right, that should do it for the mount, now the awkward bit of getting the big pole to fit in the hole.” The Rabyth mused, before grinning at the others. “I’ll let Dusty do the steering, he’s got the most practice with that sorta thing” she added, to groans from everyone else present.

Despite the bad pun, Dustin was in fact the best choice to handle the raising mechanism for the scanner. With care and more than a little swearing he managed (along with Rye) to get it into place and secure it, deadbolts slamming home before the probe unfolded it’s antennae. The device was designed to connect to a base unit in orbit to allow for some longer range calibration, and soon latched on to the signal Sola was broadcasting for that very purpose.

“Gimme a minute or five and I’ll have that data for ya Dusty.” Rye said, already fiddling with the controls, the scanner starting to emit a low-pitched whine as it drilled deeper into the rock. Dustin and the others pulled back to the shuttle to monitor the reports coming in from Sola - while Dustin was pretty sure they were safe on the outcropping it never hurt to be too careful, and anything large enough to be a threat should show up on the orbiting ship’s scans, even buried under the sand.

To everyone’s relief, nothing seemed to be showing any interest in their landing party, and it was only a few minutes before Rye ducked into the shuttle to join them, one arm wiping sweat from her forehead as she did so. “It’s getting pretty fuckin’ hot out there, even under the trees.” She observed, grabbing a bottle of water from the automat before reviewing what her scanner had found.

“So we got ruins. Not that far from here, under dense tree cover so we’d need to hike.” The bunny girl opined before continuing, “doesn’t look to be anything too special, but you never know. As far as lifeforms go - there’s something big out there under the sand, but from the looks of things it’s too large to get in between the deep roots under the forest canopy. Guessing it hunts anything that drifts out from the trees, plus the sand-dwelling life ya found on your scans Bleu? Leave that one for ya to confirm before we start traipsing around without a way of getting airborne if that’s okay.”

Bleu nodded, transferring Rye’s readings to her own tablet. After a cursory glance, she looked up. “We should be fine in the immediate vicinity of this rock either way. Given what our scans showed about overnight temperatures, might I suggest we use the time until nightfall to gather some firewood? If we’re staying on the planet overnight which I believe was the plan, it might be nice to sit around a fire outside when it gets dark rather than just retreating to the shuttle.”

At the Queri’s words, Sammie stretched. “Alright, you heard the slime. C’mon, let’s go get some twigs and stuff. The idea of sitting around with all of you sounds pretty good right about now.” Dustin glanced at Rye and shrugged, then the pair followed Sammie’s retreating form - with both of them more interested in the roll of her hips and the bounce of her braids than the prospect of gathering up dried stuff to burn, it must be said.

Outside, the air was as Rye had indicated, blisteringly hot. Dustin winced as the heat hit him; a wall of thankfully bone-dry air even amongst the trees. Sweat beaded his brow almost immediately; he didn’t know how Rye was managing with her fur. Turning to glance at her, he almost lost his footing. The bunny girl’s apparent method of dealing with fur and heat on this planet was the exact same as it was when she was working in engineering alone - to undo her overalls and knot them loosely at her waist, leaving her top half bare save for a thin bra. Catching him staring, she winked and flexed one of her arms causing a ripple to pass over the surface of her breasts before bending far lower than she needed to in order to pick up a handful of sticks from around the edge of the shuttle.

Sammie meanwhile had already been dressed for the planet - a fact that did not help Dustin keep his attention on gathering rather than getting wood when the pilot also bent over, her hot-pants hitching up and giving him a view of a truly spectacular pair of deep brown legs, the woman’s thighs glistening with a sheen of sweat in the oppressive heat.

Swallowing hard, Dustin turned away from his lovers, doing his best to will his erection down as he started to gather burnable detritus from the floor of the clearing. As he bent, he wasn’t entirely sure which was the more uncomfortable - the sheer heat of the day, or trying to bend down to pick up fallen branches while he still maintained a hard-on.

The trio dragged, carried and generally moved a bunch of timber back to the rear of the shuttle, propping most of it up in a rough pile to one side of one of the craft’s thrusters. With that done, Dustin and Sammie carefully selected larger stones from the loose scree on one side of the outcrop on which they were perched, and began to arrange them into a crude firepit between the shuttle and the ground-penetrating scanner.

Rye took that as an opportunity to duck back into the craft and retrieve folding seats, and as a result despite the short day in the elevation they were at, the crew had a small bonfire ready to light as early evening draped the land in a blanket of orange and yellow hues. “Dust in the upper atmosphere messing with the sunlight, I reckon.” Rye had suggested, before pointing in the vague direction of Sola and adding “Ya can ask the nerd when we get back up there, if ya wanna make sure Dusty.”

Dustin grinned and nodded as he replied. “Not saying I don’t trust you, Rye, but I think I will. She’s mad she didn’t get to come along on this mission as it is, at least asking her that will make her feel like she’s contributed. I mean, it’s obvious she’s contributed - she’s running Sola while I’m down here, but you know what I mean.”

The bunny girl and the two humans sat in silence, watching the fading light and the rising moon for some time as the last dregs of the day faded away - before jumping as Bleu emerged from the shuttle and gestured towards the pile of sticks in front of them, asking “You do know fire is supposed to be… on fire, right?”