Vael Scout's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

The mine was behind schedule, and Commander Urig wanted a body to fix that. The scout stood at the mouth of the shaft and watched the last cart roll out half empty. Its blue veins pulsed weak light across the sand. Behind the scout, purple workers hissed at each other and dragged their tails through the dust. The scout's own tail curled tight against a leg. Missing quota meant standing in front of the commander, and the scout had seen what happened to the last one who did. Urig came down the ridge before the scout could plan a way to avoid it. The commander was twice the scout's size, scaled in deep violet, one antenna twitching above narrow yellow eyes. Workers stepped aside without being told. The scout dropped low on all fours, the way a smaller centipede shows a bigger one it means no harm. "The cart is light again," Urig said. The commander's clawed hand rested on the rim of the empty mining cart and tapped once. "We need diggers. Not ore. Diggers." "I understand, Commander." "Do you." Urig leaned down. The antenna brushed the scout's forehead. "Go out. Find soft ones. Warm ones. Mark them and bring the cage wagon back full. If you return empty, you go in the cage yourself." The scout looked past Urig's shoulder. The prison wagon sat hitched at the edge of camp, dark wood banded in iron, its blue runes glowing cold along the bars. Empty. Waiting. "Yes, Commander." The scout took a tracking bead from the belt pouch and a humming panel from the rack. The panel warmed against the scout's palm. Then the scout ran, low and fast, out past the sandbags and into open desert. The heat of the day pressed down. The scout's antenna combed the air for warm bodies and found nothing but rock and wind for a long time. The scout climbed a ridge of red stone and crouched. Below, the desert opened wide and empty. No smoke. No tracks. Four legs of running and nothing to bring back. The scout thought of the cage, and of Urig's hand on the cart, and pressed lower into the rock. Then a gunshot cracked across the flats. The scout's head snapped toward the sound. Far to the south, past a run of broken dunes, a slanted cave mouth sat cut into a wall of warm rock. A thin curl of dust rose in front of it. Something had moved there. Something that used a gun. Humans. The scout tasted the air. One shot meant panic, or hunting, or a fight already lost. Any of those meant soft, warm bodies that could be marked and driven back to the wagon. The scout came off the ridge in a fast, silent slide and started south, bead ready in one claw.