Anubis rolled over the dunes stopping on the section marked on their map. Asher sat in the captain’s chair looking over the screens as seismic scans and pulse detectors went through the sand to check out the area below ground.

“Do you see it?” he asked Krell.

“It’s faint,” Krell said. “If we didn’t have that map it would be easy to miss but I do detect the outline of several structures. Looks like they were built into the ground.”

“Bunkers,” Twitch said fingering his plasma revolvers. “Good sign, should be some good military tech in their to loot.”

“All right get people out I want the sand pushed back and a path cleared down in less than two hours,” Asher said standing up as he gave the order.

They moved out setting up mag-beacons, the beacons pushed out a magnetic field pushing back the sand compacting it creating a massive crater in the dune. Fans turned on sucking up the sand as their mining equipment used for sifting the sand were used to tunnel down to the bedrock of the desert. The red stone veined with lines of aresite. Then a golden door appeared.

“They made a door out of diasium?” Doctor Renald mused. “I’ve only heard of them doing that to their most vital military outposts. Could prove difficult to get through though.”

“Maybe,” Asher said looking through a pair of binoculars. “If something hadn’t already melted a hole through it.”

“You think its looted then?” Twitch asked.

“Only one way to find out,” Asher said. “Get the ground team together.”

Asher assembled on the ground before the bunker doors. They all wore an assortment of power armor some modern and some dating all the way back to the Old War.

“We all know the riches that could await us in there,” Asher said. “But don’t let greed get the best of you, once we clear this place we’ll strip it for everything it has but not before. You’ve all heard the stories of these places and the traps the Radiant left behind, bio-weapons, monsters and that’s not even counting your everyday tripwires and anti-personal mines so keep your head on a shoulder and follow behind our thief.”

“Thank you,” Doctor Renald said stepping forward and nodding to Asher. “I am in an expert in the history and technology of the Radiant, at least the pieces of their technology we are able to study. I also have training in handling explosives and can disable any regular traps we come across.”

“Good,” Asher said hefting his maul and smacking its shaft in his hand and he loosened up his shoulders. “Lead the way.”

They pulled open the doors the laser burns around its latch preventing it from closing. They stepped into a sand filled entryway. Something crunched under foot and everyone flinched. Doctor Renald knelt down and brushed aside the sand to reveal a broken skull. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and let the thief get a bit more of a lead on them.

Asher looked at the walls as they stepped into a hall out of the foyer. There was only a bit of red sand now. The walls were covered in a smooth glaze protecting the murals painted onto them. Scenes of glowing men and women in golden armor fighting wars against beasts and sailing into the stars were prevalent.

“This doesn’t look like a military bunker,” Asher said.

“Indeed, I believe you are correct,” Renald said. “At least its primary purpose was not to be military installation when it was first built; it was likely converted into one during the Illarium Wars. I think this place was originally one of the Luminari’s temples.”

“Luminari?” one of Asher’s crew asked.

“It’s what the Radiants called themselves,” Asher said, “Didn’t you ever go to temple growing up?”

“My folks wasn’t religious like that,” the heavy gunner said with a shrug.

“Yes,” Doctor Renald said seeming irritated at having been interrupted. “The old religion of the natives were ruled by the Lightweavers, they could draw and store energy from the sun similar to plants over millennia they learned to manipulate that energy as a tool of creation and destruction. They were all killed by the cyber humans at the very end of the war to keep us from learning to use the Lightweavers power.”

“There is no us here, doctor,” Asher said. “We may live in the Empire but none of us are part of it, we are prisoners on this planet. Even you, or else you wouldn’t be here.”

“What are you implying?” Doctor Renald asked haughtily, turning to face Asher.

“I’ve met plenty of your type,” Asher said meeting the doctor’s eyes. “You’re a doctor which means your educated, that means money and privilege but somehow you end up working for a man like Barker. That means you’ve fallen high from wherever you started, could have been anything, drugs, slept with the wrong man’s wife, stole something the Empire didn’t want you to see. Whatever it was you came to the one place they wouldn’t bother to come looking for you.”

“You don’t know a thing about me,” Doctor Renald said a hard edge to his voice. “I’m nothing like any of you.”

“You’re just like us,” Asher said. “Out here in the dust we’re all the same. Now turn around, you’ve got work to do.”

Renald didn’t’ say anything else but turned around and kept moving down the hall. He stopped and looked at a blackened section of wall. The walls were less and less pristine remnants of plasma burn, laser scoring and bullet holes becoming more and more common. Metal bullet casings littered the ground. Fallen bodies now filled with skeletons, the flesh rotted but the bones preserved by the dry air.

“Now we see what caused all this,” Doctor Renald said as they entered into a large room shaped like some sort of auditorium.

Pews were stacked into a barricade or smashed to pieces. Skeletons lay slumped all around the room. Among them were also robotic remains, broken ceramic plating and circuitry of the battle droids.

“They were attacked and killed by cybermen,” Doctor Renard said his voice taking on the tone a lecturer. “As you can see they all died fighting eachother,” he said stepping in among them and prodding the broken machinery.

A pew rolled to the side as a massive machine pushed itself its five remaining working legs.

“Not all of them,” Asher said glaring at the thief. “Take cover!” he shouted diving behind a stone pillar.

The scorpion battle droid turned the laser turret on its back as the ten men following Asher scattered. Twitch rolled across the floor, his pistols firing scoring hits along the war machines side but doing little damage. The ceramic armor was easily able to disperse the heat of the plasma as it fired up the two other guns on its underside.

Doctor Renald had dived behind cover and lay prone, his hands covering his ears as he took cover. The battle-droid stumbled unsteadily, its right side gun wasn’t working properly its laser fire sizziling out before hitting anything. One of their gunner’s a man named Jergo hadn’t made it to cover fast enough and his chest was smoking where the laser fire had cut through his armor.

Vieno had taken a shot to his left leg, and it was seared down to the bone as he crawled behind cover. The battle-droid turned and fired on him and he crumpled to the ground, his entire body on fire. It turned to face the barricade of pews the rest of Asher’s crew were hidden behind.

Leaping to his feet Asher rushed the battle droid. It turned but is movements were slowed by its missing limb and he leapt into the air. The iron rocket on his maul ignited and he brought it down on its ceramic carapace. The armor split and shattered. One of its front limbs lashed out knocking Asher half a dozen meters away. It advanced on him, but Twitch stepped up and pointed both pistols into the gaping hole its side. The plasma fire melted its internal components and it collapsed to the ground.

There was silence as Asher pushed himself to his feet and looked around, but no other battle droids came to life.

“Now they are all dead,” Asher said coldly. “You were hired to keep us from dying not lead awaken old war-machines.”

“I disable traps,” Doctor Renald said. “I’m not a mercenary I can’t take out centuries’ old robotics. I don’t even know how that thing was still running.”

“They’re programmed to go into hibernation to conserve all power unless they detect noise in their proximity,” Asher said. “We just need to hope there isn’t a Litch down here.”

“You believe those old ghost stories,” Renald scoffed.

“They aren’t stories,” Asher said flatly. “Litches are as real as you and me, cyberhumans centuries old all the flesh and humanity rotted away only the murderous war-machine and intelligence remaining. They’ve wiped out the crews of entire MACCs before.”

“You ever seen one?” Doctor Renald asked raising an eyebrow.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“No that why I’m still here,” Asher said. “Now disable traps, preferably without activating any more battle droids.”

The doctor scowled but did as he was told. He found several land mines and disabled them. The rest of the rooms were similar, but no more battle droids activated. They cleared the rest of this level, finding stairs leading down. They reached a set of sealed doors and Doctor Renard hooked up a tech-pad to the panel on the door as he hacked the controls. The doors slid open and wet humid air hit them, it smelled like a swamp, and they entered a long stretch of hall with a foot of dark green murky water covering the floor. The doctor held up his tech-pad as he scanned the ground ahead of them.

He paused then tapped on a section of the wall. After several minutes of tinkering, he removed four cylinders from it. They were about thirty-five centimeters long and eight centimeters wide made of dark steel instead of red illarium or gold diasium.

“Here,” Doctor Renald said tossing a canister to Asher and Twitch. “A souvenir.”

“What is it?” Twitch asked examining the cylinder.

“Stryker worms in stasis,” the doctor said.

Twitch nearly dropped the canister, but Asher didn’t flinch.

“Are they going to pop out?” Asher asked.

“No,” the doctor said. “There are more canisters of them but these four are the only ones that still have bio-signs. The rest must have been damaged by the moisture in this section. “I’ll keep moving ahead but this section looks clear of more traps so far.”

They kept moving Asher stowing the canisters of the deadly bio-weapons in the coats of his leather overcoat. They got to another door and after a few moments of tinkering it opened. The humid air was gone only the section behind flooded. They entered what looked like a hospital ward. Operation tables lay overturned more skeletons of warriors and broken battle-droids scattered around. There were shattered cryo-pods along the walls, they would have been used for treating patients in intensive care but the skeletons inside showed that none of these patients had made it.

They kept moving until the temple complex finally ended. A warrior in golden half-plate lay slumped in front of a door to the next room. A broken heavy assault cannon lay in his hands the explosion from the weapons destruction evident on the walls and floor around him. Another humanoid lay on the ground, this one as much wire and metal as it was bones.

Asher let out a breath of relief. “There was the controlling cyberhumans,” he said looking down at the mix of what had been man and machine.

“And he’s not some undead monstrosity,” Doctor Renald said dryly. “How surprising.”

Asher knelt before the golden warrior touching his armor. The armor reacted to his touch unlaching from the mans skeleton.

“You match is bio-lock? Doctor Renald asked. “That rare.”

“We’re all descended from the survivors of the Old War,” Asher said. “Its not as rare as you think.”

Asher pulled off his coat and removed his armor the diasium power armor clamping on and locking. Diasium had such a impact and heat resistance that the Empire had never been able to open them up to study them without destroying the components within. The bio-lock the Radiant had installed on all their weapons and armor meant only their descendants could wield them. While there were some in the Empire descended from them in the vastness of the Empire it was only a drop in the bucket.

Asher flexed his hands and arms as the armor adjusted to his size. Despite the time since the Old War the advancements in technology made by the Empire still hadn’t caught up to the achievements of the Radiant smiths. Doctor Renald was hacking the door behind fallen guardian and it opened into an operating room, a single cryo-pod was the only thing of notice in the room.

Doctor Renald walked up the to the cryo-pod and looked inside.

“Emperor be praised,” he breathed out in wonder.

Asher stepped up and looked inside. A woman with bright silver hair lay her eyes closed. Golden markings were tattooed along the edge of her eyebrows and under her eyelids a golden circlet rested on her head and silk silver and brown robes covered her.

“Do you realize what we found?” Doctor Renald said his voice filled with excitement. “A Lightweaver, a living Lightweaver!”

“So?” Twitch asked.

“So?” Doctor Renald asked, whirling on him. “Do you know what the Empire would pay us for her? We’ll all be living on our own private pleasure moon; she holds the key to unlocking the ability to lightweave. Once we bring her back too….”

A shot rang out.

The doctor crumpled against the side of the cryo-pod as Asher holstered his smocking revolver. Bringing up his comm to his mouth he spoke into it.

“Krell put the crew on lockdown, everyone is to remain in their quarters until further notice,” he said.

“Can I ask why?” Krell said.

“Tell them we may have come in contact with a bio-weapon,” Asher said. “We need to be checked out by Dr. Nicoli before we can mix with the rest of the crew.”

“And the truth?” Krell asked.

“Meet me in the med bay and find out,” Asher said.

“Are you planning on selling her?” Twitch asked Asher.

Asher turned a glare on his best friend. “Never in the past six years, no matter how hard the times have we ever turned to slavery; and we aren’t about to start now.” He turned to the rest of the ground team. “None of you will ever speak of this to anyone, understand.”

“Aye captain!” they said saluting.

“What about him?” Twitch asked nudging Renard’s body with his foot. “Barker won’t like us losing his thief.”

“He woke up a battle droid and it killed him,” Asher said. “Nothing we could do about it, we’ll give Barker an extra share of the loot and he won’t ask anymore.”

Asher grabbed the pod and began wheeling it out of the room. “This place is clear all of you pick up what you want for first pick. When we’ve finished with her back on board, we’ll send the rest of the crew to scavenge the rest.”

Asher and Twitch the pod had a hover function that let it glide seamlessly above the sand and into the med bay. Dr. Nicoli stepped forward polishing his glasses nervously as he always did.

“What is this?” he asked.

“A woman I need you to wake up,” Asher said. “She’s been asleep a longtime and its time for her to get up.”

“I’m not sure if I have the proper tools to…” Dr. Nicoli began.

“Make do,” Asher said cutting him off.

The doctor nodded and began fiddling with the controls on the side of the pod. Minutes passed then steam escaped the sides of the pod. More minutes passed then the lid of the pod opened. The woman’s eyes opened slowly she looked around in confusion for a minute. Then her eyes fixed on Dr. Nicoli and went wide. A blinding flash of light filled the room and everyone stumbled back. The sound of feet running signaled the woman’s flight as she ran out of the room.

Asher blinked away the spots in his eyes and moved to the door. He looked left and right before pulling up his wrist and tapping the screen on it. The screen fed into the cameras aboard Anubis and he looked through them seeing the woman running down a hall. She was running into a dead end and he ran to catch up. He found her just as she hit the front end of Anubis. All the doors were sealed and there was nowhere for her to run.

“Easy there,” Asher said holding out his hand. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

The woman held a golden staff in her hand something he hadn’t seen she had while she was inside the pod. The staff began to glow as she said something in a language he didn’t quite understand. It reminded him a bit of the language of the Incandi tribes.

“I mean you no harm,” he said in Incandi one of the few phrases he knew in their language. He slowly pulled off his coat dropping it the side. Slowly easing out his revolver he dropped it on top of his coat. Pulling his maul from the loop on his belt he set it to the side as well.

The woman cocked her side to the head in confusion. “Why is your accent so odd Templar?” she asked in standard her voice, having a musical cadence to it with her strange accent.

“I’m not a Templar, ma’am,” Asher said.

“Why do you wear our armor then?” she asked. “Why do you look like us but not speak our language and why am I inside a Kyshen war-base? Are you with the Order of Luminance, the Noble Houses or do you serve the Kyshen dogs?”

Asher sighed. “That’s a lot of questions, to explain things the fastest, the war is over. It has been for a long time, you’ve been cryo-sleep for quite a while.”

“How long?” she asked.

“Can we discuss this in my office?” Asher asked. “I can offer you a drink and we can both sit down.”

She lowered her staff from its threatening position. “Fine, my name is Priestess Cyllene Airthen.”

“I’m Captain Asher Thorn,” Asher said. “Can I pick up my weapons?”

“The hammer but not the gun,” Cyllene said.

“Fair enough,” Asher said picking up his golden hammer and looping it back on his belt. “Follow me, there’s a lot to catch you up on.

--

Cyllene sat in cushioned chair on the other side of the metal desk from Asher. He poured out two shots of expensive off world brandy.

“Why are you captaining a Kyshen war-machine?” Cyllene asked. “It is obvious by your hair you are not an imperial.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” Asher said. “My father was a Kyshen Centurion.”

“So your allegiance is to the Kyshen’s?” Cyllene asked her eyes narrowing.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Asher said. “I never knew the man he left my mother before I was ever born. Before we continue you need to put aside your thoughs of sides, the war is over there are no more sides.”

“Who wone?” she asked.

“The Kyshen Empire were the only ones with a hand still left to play at the end of the war,” Asher said. “Its there planet now, whats left of it.”

“What about the resistance?” Cyllene asked.

“What Resistance?” Asher asked. “The war is over, done.”

“That not possible,” Cyllene insisted. “The Noble Houses would never submit to imperial rule.”

“They did,” Asher said shrugging tossing back his drink. “It was either that or starve.”

“Starve?” Cyllene asked.

“The world you knew is gone,” Asher said his eyes softening somewhat. “There is no more forest, no rivers or fields. The entire planet is covered in desert.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said.

Asher let out a long sigh. “Follow me.”

He exited the room and walked up a flight of stairs. The doors to bridge were closed and a circular metal staircase led farther up. Cyllene followed him as he pressed the button to open the hatch to the top deck of Anubis. They stepped into the blistering heat of the noon-day sun. Cyllene squinted then looked around her expression horrified by the sight she saw.

“What happened?” she asked, her voice holding back tears.

“The Empire burned down the forests,” Asher said. “After that years of bombings tore up the soil, then there was a drought for a few years. The soil got dry and loose wind picked up and created massive sandstorms, bits of aresite in the ground going at hundreds of kilometers per hour shredded anything it touched not strong enough to stand it. Since then, we can’t plant anything since it will just get shredded by the wind. The desert grew and grew, and the ground couldn’t’ hold water anymore.” Asher explained.

“What about the Order?” Cyllene asked. “We could have created plants to resist the storm or designed…”

“Cyllene,” Asher said gently laying a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry to have to tell you all this at once but… there hasn’t been a Lightweaver seen in five hundred years. You are the last of your kind.”

“Five-hundred years?” Cyllene asked her voice catching.

“I’m sorry,” Asher said. “I’ll take you to the nearest temple and let you figure out your next move, but you need to know you are in danger. The empire will pay a fortune to capture you and learn lightweaving from you.”

“I can’t just go into hiding,” Cyllene said. “I’m a Lightweaver, I can fix this.”

“No one can fix this,” Asher said his voice hard. “Embrace what chance you have for a life now, don’t throw it away on a fool’s hope. There is no future for this planet.”

“How can you say that?” Cyllene snapped at him.

“Because I’ve lived it, seen the horrors it has to offer. The best future any of us can hope for is to get enough credits to buy passage offworld and settle in the outer colonies,” Asher said.

“I can’t believe that,” she insisted. “This is our world, its worth fighting for.”

“My wife thought that too,” Asher said taking a step back.

“What happened to her?” Cyllene asked cautiously sensing a change in Asher’s words.

“Reality killed her,” Asher said. “I’ll make sure you get to a temple, there are still those who follow the old ways; maybe some of them will die for your cause, but I won’t be one of them.”

Asher turned his back on her and descend the steps back into Anubis.