---

Desert tripAfter a meeting with Xine, I was on my way back to the community center and thought about the conversation with Xine. He had gotten me a P6 sniper rifle and a railgun. And of course he was threatened by Ray Keaton. That guy had to keep showing up and causing trouble, too. Xine wanted to know if I wanted to pulverize Ray with the railgun. It was an interesting thought. Would the railgun then be a raygun? But no, I had found my center and my peace and had no need to deal with Ray. And thanks to negotiators like Xine, no need to appear on dubious assignments either.

Pyro’s star had just climbed over the horizon when I reached the communal house. I gently placed my borrowed Drake Cutter behind the house. With a deep breath, I inhaled the morning desert air. It was the last freshness before Pyro showed its full power. I wanted to be done with my preparations before the rising heat turned every movement into a sweat bath.

After loading a crate of drinks into the cutters, I checked the hoverbike. At that moment, Brubacker came out of the common house.

“Hey,” greeted Brubacker sleepily.

“Morning, slept in?”

“Yo, what are you doing?”

“Getting ready for our trip to the desert. I’ll show you where to find your balance. Where’s Husky?”

“He’s out on his bike.”

“He probably doesn’t have enough water with him. Get in, Bru. We’re looking for him.”

As we glided over the red desert sand in the Cutter, I asked Brubacker.

“Tell me, the data stick with the virus. It wasn’t in your Zeus when we found it on Terminus. Do the Xenothreats have it now?”

“Probably. The Xenothreats kidnapped us and took the Zeus.”

“I find that alarming. The Xenothreat had already attacked facilities and the UEE military in Stanton. If they now have a virus that bypasses security systems, I don’t want to imagine what comes next.”

“I find that worrying too.”

I couldn’t care less about the megacorporate facilities in Stanton and the UEE military. But if the Xenothreat were to take action against the free peoples, even here in Pyro, I did care. Besides, the virus was interesting for me as a hacker. Two good reasons to find it and take it away from the Xenothreat.

Suddenly I had a signal on my radar.

“Oh, there are Quasi Grazers down there. Fancy petting one?” I asked Bru and set off to land.

After landing, Bru carefully approached the large animals. They were standing peacefully in a hollow in the red sand, eating the few shrubs and grasses. Watching the quasi grazers and listening to their steady chewing could have a calming effect. Perhaps this was a first step for Bru to regain his balance after all his experiences in Pyro.

Suddenly, the silence was shattered by the distant sound of an engine. Just a second later, a hoverbike raced over the next ridge. It was Husky. After he had dismounted, he exchanged a few words with Brubacker. Something was out of balance between the two of them. I ran onto the dune crest and called them to me.

“What do you see?” I asked them.

“Red sand and a white tree,” Husky replied.

“And what else?”

Silence. They both stood next to me and stared into the distance, where the air shimmered.

“Nothing,” Brubacker finally said.

“Exactly,” I replied, “nothing. That’s the secret of the desert. Nothing to distract you. No shrill neon lighting and acoustic irradiation like in Stanton. You are alone with yourself and can find your inner path to the center undisturbed. Feel the breath of the desert.”

Several minutes of silence pass. Then I ended the moment of meditation.

“I know a lake nearby where we can have a drink in peace.”

We set off, Husky on the hoverbike, Bru and I in the cutter. After a short flight, we landed on the shore of the lake that I had found on my first desert trip on Monox. Against the backdrop of some steep red cliffs, we sat down on the gently sloping shore and opened the first can of Rust. Husky, meanwhile, thundered across the water on his hoverbike, trailing a fountain of water behind him. Each time he rode past, larger waves splashed onto the shore. It was a wonderful moment of peace.

At some point, Brubacker took off his clothes and went into the water, Husky joined him. I treated myself to one Rust after another. It was said that Rust could remove rust from the hull. But it also cleaned the inside. It ran down your throat like fire and burned the tension out of you.

After a while, Brubacker came out of the water and lay down on the shore with a Rust. He began to talk in a sentimental voice. He slurred his words a little.

“Do you know that you’re my best friends? I want to tell you something else.”

Brubacker recounted a conversation with Friedrich Winters in which he had learned a lot about his past. Brubacker was kidnapped as a child and was to be sold on a slave market. He and other children were rescued at the last moment. Nobody knew who the children were or where they came from. Friedrich Winters was present at the rescue and took Brubacker into his family. The Winters family gave Bru the name John Brubacker. Bru grew up together with Husky, the two were stepbrothers. At some point, Brubacker and the Winters family parted ways until they ran into each other years later in Stanton. However, neither Husky nor Brubacker had any memory of their childhood together until the images of the past washed to the surface during their trip together in Pyro.

I took the story for what it was, even though it seemed strange. Brubacker had always said he was 700 years old and had spent a long time in a cryo-capsule.

The star of Pyro had traveled far in the meantime and was sinking towards the horizon. But it had lost none of its burning power.

“Bru, you’re guaranteed to get a sunburn,” I said as I treated myself to another Rust.

The high-proof alcohol was now having a clear effect on me. I halfway noticed Brubacker setting off on a hike in his underpants. Husky had given himself some drugs with the medgun and was lying on the ground. After two more rusts, I staggered along the bank and stumbled over Brubacker’s clothes. My instincts told me “the desert takes and the desert gives”. Then my conscious thoughts and actions stopped and gave way to automatism.

*

“Zero, hey…do you know where my clothes are?”

“The desert doesn’t give anything away…the desert…” I stammered.

“Yes, yes, I know. But I’m about to freeze my butt off.”

“The desert…” I stammered on.

Then I opened my eyes and found myself in the Cutter’s bed. Brubacker was standing next to me and said angrily.

“One more word. My clothes, my shoes…”

“Gave me the desert,” I said as I rose ponderously.

I was completely out of it and had no idea what had happened to Brubacker’s clothes. The only thing I remembered was Rust and a gift from the desert.

Staggering, I left the spaceship and went out into the night. I shone my flashlight on the dark shore so that Bru could search for his things. There was a sea of stars above us, streaked with reddish-brown gas nebulae. I let myself fall onto my back and surrendered to the view of infinity.

Eventually my thoughts became clearer and after a treatment with the medgun I felt fit to fly again. Husky was also back on his feet and Brubacker had found his clothes in the cutter’s cupboard. We decided to return to the communal house.

When we got there, I showed Brubaker and Husky the cave where the Citizens for Prosperity stored their emergency supplies. As we walked through the long stone corridor of the cave past the phosphorescent mushrooms, I told them about the legend of the Prophet of Pyro.

“…it is believed that the Prophet’s voice, heard by many in the caves, is an acoustic anomaly caused by the interaction between intense solar flares and a metallic mine. But who knows. Maybe they’ve just been sniffing the mushrooms too much. So don’t get too close,” I said with a wave in the direction of the glowing mushrooms in the cave.

As if I hadn’t said anything, or I wasn’t clear enough, but shortly afterwards we found Brubacker lying on his stomach with his head in the middle of the mushrooms. The phosphorescent spores danced around him like fireflies. Brubacker was completely out of it. He stammered something about an attack by the Vanduul, that they were coming, that we had to get away. Then he kept mentioning the same name. He had to see Bishop, he had to talk to him urgently.

It was impossible to have a sensible conversation with Brubacker. Brubacker’s mind was in a parallel world, only his body was with us.

“Bru, I’ll take you to Bishop. Come with me,” I said to him in a gentle voice.

With great effort, we got him into the cutter. We flew to the Patch City space station and laid Brubacker on a treatment bed in the clinic. A doctor asked me if Brubacker had had an imprint before. He had.

“Uh-huh,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “Could be a traumatic response echo. Not my only patient with impaired consciousness. There’s nothing you can do at the moment. I’ll take care of him.”

Then I remembered that Xine had told me that there were problems with the imprint technology and that it was no longer working reliably. I could only hope that Bru’s last imprint was flawless and that he would soon be back on his feet.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)