Mk's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Mk had been digging with a busted shovel for six hours when the wind erased his hole. He stood on the ridge above Star West and watched the sand pour back in like water. Somewhere under that desert lay a fleet of ships older than the town itself, or so his grandfather had sworn on his deathbed. Everyone else in Star West called it a drunk's story. Mk called it the only thing worth doing, which was why he had spent his last coin on a shovel that snapped before noon. He walked back into town with the broken handle over his shoulder. The trading post on the main row sold ground-scanners, the kind prospectors used to find water and metal. He knew the price. He did not have it. He sat down on a weathered chair outside the post and counted what he had left: three copper bits, a folding knife, and a leather pouch of pigments his grandfather had used to mark maps. Red ochre, yellow, white, black. Ceremonial paints, the old man had called them, though he had used them for surveying. Mk turned the pouch over in his hand and thought about what a scanner cost and what he was willing to trade to get one. Not the paints. Anything but the paints. Then Finn Jarro came out of the post, and Mk stood up. Finn ran the only rig in Star West with a working sand-scanner mounted to the axle. Mk had watched him charge miners double for a single sweep. Mk stepped in front of him and offered the deal fast, before he could talk himself out of it. One week of free labor on Finn's claim, in exchange for one afternoon with the scanner on a patch of dune Mk would choose. Finn laughed. Then Finn looked at Mk's face and stopped laughing. He said two weeks, not one, and Mk said done before Finn finished the sentence. They shook on it in front of the post. Mk had traded his next fourteen days for a single afternoon of answers, and he would spend them swinging a pick on another man's dirt while the wind kept burying the only thing he cared about.