Sand Mother Memories by Swiftfoot

This was not exactly how she'd envisioned her next trip to the Sand Mother. In fact, it was not even remotely close. The only thing that was right was the fact that Ace was here with her - and Ace wasn't even here. She was back at the shelter, if you could call it that, resting on the leeward side of a slab of steel from the late Faux's hull. Swiftfoot had no idea how far she'd come, or how long she'd been walking in the pre-dawn twilight. The stench of burnt starship fuel was still heavy in the air, marring the crispness of an early desert morning. Drips and splashes of glass marked her path along the sands where the super-heated fuel had fallen from the sky as the wounded ship plummeted to the planet's surface. As long as she kept track of what direction she came from, finding her way back would never be difficult with a line like that to mark her path.

The ragged, badly injured pilot limped clumsily up the side of a sand dune on three limbs, her broken leg hanging limply. The Demarian was no doctor, of course, but she knew it was broken or at least badly damaged in some way. No matter how easy she went on the damn thing, it stubbornly refused to support her weight. She could always tell when she was starting to get tired, too, because then it started to drag like it was now. That's a hell of a shitty way to know when to head back to the shelter, she thought. When your foot starts to drag. It was almost funny, in a way. Almost. The pain in her belly didn't help either, and she had no idea what was wrong in there. Bone grated against bone - and probably other things to boot - when she moved the wrong way, which was pretty compelling reason not to move the wrong way if she could avoid it.

Searching was always easier early in the morning, after true darkness had faded, but before the twin orbs of the Great Watchers rose over the barren sands of the desert, two hammers to one white-hot anvil during the day. But that time of day is short, and searching in the morning hadn't turned up anything. Both Swiftfoot and her gravely injured tovarisch both needed something to help them survive another day of the Sand Mother's hostility, and so she kept going though every instinct screamed at her to turn back.

The top of the next dune was not far away when she slipped, getting a snout full of sand. She didn't even move for a few moments, and then moved only slowly. She coughed as she tried to inhale, getting a mouthful of grit. Fuck, that's just great. She looked up at the sky, and shook her head. It was getting too warm way too fast for her tastes. I'm no expert, but I know when it's getting dangerous. That much, at least, I remember. I only wish I remembered more. She stumbled again, and this time, merely stared up at the sky for a few moments, unable to even muster enough presence of mind to rise.

Suddenly, she was elsewhere.

***

A crack of light appeared around the door to the smugglers' hold, and the Demarian within froze stiff with fear. She'd been discovered, and after only a matter of hours. Brakir damn it all, Swiftfoot thought to herself, creeping quietly toward the side of the doorway, into the dark corner made by a pair of haphazard stacks of crates. Perhaps she wouldn't be noticed. It was then that the hatch was opened slowly, and she groaned inwardly as she saw what stood there in the doorway waiting for her. The captain of this ship was a Demarian. That did not bode well at all.

His nostrils flared as he scented the air, and his whiskers bristled forward. His ears were flattened back against his head, and he had a firearm of some sort in one paw. He sniffed again, then peered behind the crates, and his light-green eyes locked on hers. Oh, he noticed her, alright.

She turned to flee, trying to dodge around him, but not quickly enough.

There was a feral roar behind her, and suddenly, the weight of the much larger and heavier male pinned her down to the floor on her belly. His claws dug into her back painfully, almost cruelly. Swifty struggled in his grasp, trying to bring her footpaws to bear to push him away, but only succeeded in getting herself even more clawed up as he renewed his grip in the flesh of her back. His breath was hot and rank and ruffled up the fur on the back of her neck. She whimpered and recoiled away from him as best she could.

"What's this? Such a pretty little stowaway..." he murmured in Demarese, trying to nose the side of her face. The gesture was anything but affectionate.

The only answer from the orange-striped female was another whimper and more struggling. For some reason, something was happening on the other side of the hatch, too. Voices - human voices - argued briefly with the captain in Standard. She wasn't sure what they were arguing about. Her mind just wouldn't engage around the words. Suddenly, there was the telltale blue flash of a stun weapon being fired, and the male went limp atop her. She curled up into a ball as he was hauled off of her, closing her eyes tightly and shivering.

***

Skulking little reptiloid forms moved nearby, stalking none too silently among the dead and the dying. The former were efficiently stripped clean of anything that could possibly have value. The latter were killed first. The stink of Nall and the smell of fresh blood - fresh Demarian blood - filled her nostrils, and the anguished cries of those still living reached her ears in her hiding place.

The disturbingly empty eyes of her sister stared at her from no more than twenty yards away, red blood bright against her white fur. Orange and white, a coat all too similar to the one she saw in the mirror every morning, could be seen just past Snowfur. That would be where Father had fallen, the rest of them behind him. He fought to his last trying to give his family time to escape. Mother and Snowfur and Blackpaws and Greeneyes and Shortears, and her new friend Blackwhisker that she had only just met as they boarded the ship... all of them, gone. Just like that. And she'd watched every second of it.

The Nall were swift, and they were merciless. So she hid. She hid with the dead, and she prayed silently to Brakir for deliverance. Two bodies lay atop her in her hiding place, a Bonded pair that had fallen much like her own family had. Their kits lay not far away, all in a heap. The sight of the broken and torn young bodies left Swiftfoot wanting to retch, but all she could do was lie there, frozen in fear. To move is to die. To move is to die, she repeated to herself over and over again in her head. She stayed there, not moving, not thinking, not shedding the guilty tears that wanted so badly to fall. There would be time enough for all of that later. For now, she played dead. Eventually, exhaustion overtook her, and as the Nall moved away, she drifted off into a light, uneasy doze.

***

"Be safe, Swiftfoot."

Those were his parting words to her, that first time they'd met. She hadn't been, though. She'd been bloody giddy all the way back to the landing pad, hardly paying attention to her surroundings. If someone had tried to rob her in the ruins, she probably would have handed them everything she had and several things she had to steal just for the occasion, all because she was in such a good mood. It was stupid, too, because she hardly knew him. He was a disreputable character at best, an enforcer if the word on the street was to be believed. But then, what are you? she thought. An ex-privateer. Now there's a reputation to be proud of by comparison. A pause, and she snorted, shaking her head. He's older than you by a good bit. He's obviously been around the block a few times. What's his angle? A better question is, do you care what his angle is? He's got an awful nice tail, and he seems to like you an awful lot. Either that, or he's got an angle... Yeah. He's got to have an angle.

He'd even tried to sucker her into a bet. A bad bet. A really bad bet.

But that's just part of his charm.

Charm, my ass.

She fairly skipped up the landing ramp when she got to the ship, ruminations and any possible witnesses notwithstanding. The airlock cycled open obediently as she punched in her passcode, and stayed open while she paused there at the top of the ramp, staring back toward the Warren. I'll probably never see him again, she thought sadly as she turned to enter the ship, the hatch shutting behind her with a hiss of displaced air.

***

An interdimensional gateway swirled like water before the Faux's viewscreens, a shimmering disc of light marring the starfield of the Ra system. It was ringed by a veritable fleet of ships, all in the service of the mysterious man named Savant, but none of them moved to intercept the freighter as she nudged it toward the rift. Her paws trembled with anticipation on the controls, the felinoid watching for the slightest sign of a reaction. It didn't even seem like any of them saw Faux. So maybe I'm not completely and utterly insane, she mused silently, her thoughts wandering just a bit despite the overwhelming need to concentrate - or perhaps because of it. If the voices at the end of the universe tell you the truth when they say that they'll lend a helping hand, then are you still fucking nuts for listening to them? The gate and its retinue of ships drew slowly closer, the pilot nearly holding her breath, and afraid to go too fast lest she break this strange spell that kept the enemy ships from detecting their presence.

And then, the gate was in front of them, its rippling surface taking up the entire front view. The Faux passed through it effortlessly, the ship not even giving any sign that it was passing through a tear in space, and possibly time itself.

***

The felinoid sat up so suddenly that she moved without thinking it through first, and an involuntary yowl of pain escaped her. Damn it all she thought to herself as she shifted again with a wince, be more careful or you'll draw attention to yourself, dumbass. What the Brakir-damned fuck are you doing sleeping out here in the sun, anyway? Idiot. Fucking idiot. Go back now, before you can't go back at all. She sat still for long moments, letting the pain ebb, but knowing she couldn't tarry too long - the Great Watchers rose ever higher in the heavens. As she went to get back up, dreading the trip back, a forepaw dragging with fatigue brushed against something - something cool and most definitely man-made just under the surface of the sand. She started digging with her forepaws, ignoring the lingering old pains and the sharp new ones in her leg and belly. She dug out whatever it was - a high-impact plastic tank of some sort. It didn't look at all like a fuel tank, and was way too small, in any case.

No, she knew this container. She'd seen it before. After some thought, it came to her - this one was from the galley. The label was gone, but this wasn't a container for cleaning supplies, either. No, this was a container for some sort of drink. Whatever liquid that it actually contained, it would be helpful. Demar would provide after all.

She loosened her tattered sash from about her waist and tied one end to the tank. It wasn't heavy under normal circumstances, but these were definitely not normal circumstances. The very thought of trying to either walk on two limbs and carry it with one, or walk upright for that matter, made her wince in pain. Fuck that, she thought. I'll just drag it. I should go slow anyway. The other end of the sash she tied around her waist before beginning the long, tedious crawl back to the camp.