Among Galactic Ruins (3 page)

Lexa was watching Dathan Phoenix with a
considering look. “Okay. You get us to our location and I’ll pay
you what I was going to pay your father.”

The teen grinned.

She shook a finger at him. “But not the
deposit I’ve already paid.”

As the boy pulled a face, Damon hid a smile.
The lady was no fool. He already knew there was a quick mind behind
her attractive face, and damned if he didn’t like it. Smart women
had always been a draw for him.

“So, where are we going?” Phoenix asked.

“I’m not exactly sure. But I have a map of
clues.”

The young treasure hunter winced. “The
deserts here are littered with the bones of the foolish following
treasure maps and cryptic clues they’d found, bought or bartered
for.”

Lexa patted her backpack. “Mine’s the real
deal.”

He winced again. “They all say that.”

“Well, lucky I’m the one paying you to do as
I ask, huh?”

A small smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

Damon cleared his throat. “To start, we need
transportation and supplies to cross the—” he looked at Lexa.

“The Sea of Dunes.”

Phoenix stilled. “The Sea of Dunes. That’s a
pretty name for a deadly place. Sandstorms, devil winds, wild
animals, sinkholes—whatever kind of desert horror you can think of,
the Sea of Dunes has it. Sure you don’t want to head out to the
Ruins of Carcalla?”

Damon watched Lexa’s eyes narrow.

“We both know those ruins have been picked
over by centuries’ worth of treasure hunters and
astro-archeologists.”

That unrepentant grin again. “But it’s an
easy, safe trip. It was worth a try.”

She crossed her arms. “Hmm, I thought easy
and safe would bore you, Mr. Phoenix. Guess you aren’t quite the
adventurer I thought you were.”

The teen straightened like he’d been hit
with an electric prod. “You want to cross the Sea of Dunes, we’ll
cross it.” He yanked a battered Sync from the pocket of his
trousers. “We’ll need decent transportation, camping gear, food,
treasure-hunting supplies…”

As the young treasure hunter tapped his Sync
screen, Damon leaned down, his mouth close to Lexa’s ear. “Nicely
done, Princess.”

She huffed out a breath. “That’s Dr. Carter
to you, Mr. Malik. And I have five brothers, remember. One teenaged
boy is a breeze.”

Suddenly, a horn sounded. A long, mournful
sound that echoed across the town.

A few seconds later, it was followed by the
blare of a modern siren.

Phoenix cursed.

Not good.
With a frown, Damon turned,
looking for danger.

“What’s going on?” Lexa demanded.

“That.” The treasure hunter pointed to the
north.

For a second, Damon didn’t know what he was
looking at. The northern horizon was darkening, a dark brown
smudge, growing in size.

Lexa frowned. “What is it?”

“A sandstorm.”

Lexa hurried along the dusty street,
following Dathan Phoenix. Damon was a solid, silent and
surprisingly reassuring presence at her back.

All through the town, people rushed and ran.
Some carrying goods, others tugging along reluctant animals. A
large, shaggy beast reared up, bellowing out a frightened call,
held in place by a struggling young girl.

Overhead, the growing brown cloud raced
closer. She could see the sand twisting and boiling in a writhing
mass inside it.

“I’m going to take you to the best inn in
town,” Dathan called back over his shoulder. The wind was picking
up and he had to yell.

“Inn?” she yelled back. “I want to get
started on this hunt!”

“Not today.” He stabbed a finger at the
darkening sky. “It’s too dangerous. In the heart of a Zerzuran
sandstorm, the winds are strong enough that the sand can strip your
skin off.”

Damn
. Disappointment left a bitter
taste in her mouth.

Damon leaned closer. “We’ll get a good
night’s rest and tomorrow you can have your adventure.”

“I’ll organize supplies and we’ll head off
at first light,” the treasure hunter yelled back at them.

“This will be over by then?” she asked.

“Yeah. They’re violent, but they rarely last
too long.” He waved a hand. “Come on, the Lost Oasis is right up
ahead.”

A reptilian man was trying to calm a
horse-like creature with a red-and-brown-striped hide. As the beast
stamped the ground, the man called out to Dathan in a language Lexa
didn’t recognize. She had a new-model lingual implant embedded
under the skin of her neck, and she knew they were adding languages
every day. But whatever the treasure hunter and the man were
speaking, it wasn’t in the lingual database yet.

“Sounds like we’re only going to catch the
edge of this,” Dathan said.

Lexa eyed the billowing sand clouds, the
wind whipping the ends of her hair into her face. If this was the
edge, she’d really hate to be caught in the middle of it.

“Here’s the inn.” The young man shouldered
open a door into an unassuming beige-colored, two-story
building.

They stepped inside and as soon as the door
shut behind them, the howl of the wind cut off. Lexa shook her head
and sand flew out of her hair. Damon ran a hand through his.

“This way.” Dathan led them down some
steps.

A woman sat at a battered old table. Her
weathered face was wreathed in wrinkles and her metal-gray hair was
piled on top of her head in a shaggy mess. Lexa tried hard not to
stare. In the central systems, one or two simple med treatments a
year kept people looking young. Wrinkles forming? No worries, zap
them away. Hair turning gray? Easy, just pick from the hundreds of
permanent shades added in just a few seconds. Lexa’s mother would
die before stepping foot outside with a blemish or a strand of
gray. Cassandra Carter didn’t look much older than Lexa’s thirty
years.

“Phoenix, what’re you doing here?” The
innkeeper scowled. “Told you and those riff-raff brothers of yours
to stay out of my place. Last time you were here, you smashed up my
bar with your fighting.”

“Aww, Stellar, I think you’ve missed me.”
Dathan shot a wide smile at the woman. “And you know my brothers
are off-planet. Niklas is at university and Zayn’s at the Strike
Wing Academy. That fight was a long time ago and I paid for the
damages.”

Stellar made a harrumphing sound and
muttered under her breath. Lexa thought the woman might have said
something about young, too-handsome riff raff.

“My friends here need a room for the night
and I told them your place was the best in all of Kharga.”

Lexa’s eyes widened. “Two rooms.”

The treasure hunter’s gaze swung between her
and Damon. “You sure?”

“I’m
very
sure.”

Dathan winked at her. “Two rooms,
Stellar.”

Not long later, Dathan left with a
two-fingered salute, saying he needed to get to work on the
supplies. Stellar complained all the way up the stairs as she
showed Damon and Lexa to their rooms.

“My hips ache. Damn dry weather on this
godforsaken planet.” She led them down the narrow hall and pushed
opened the first door.

The room was…sparse and simple. Compared to
what Lexa had grown up with, this was pretty far down the luxury
scale. She barely resisted rubbing her hands together. This was
exactly
what she’d imagined in a room in an inn on Zerzura.
A simple bed was pushed against the rough, whitewashed wall. A
rickety-looking table with one chair and a low shelf were the only
other bits of furniture in the room.

“Each room has its own bathroom,” Stellar
said, puffing out her chest. “Only inn in the town that offers
that.”

“Thank you.” Lexa dropped her bag on the
table. “It’s fine.”

Damon caught her gaze. “I suggest we grab
dinner in the bar.”

Stellar’s faded blue eyes sparked. “We have
a special tonight.” Lexa could practically see the woman
calculating the additional e-creds in her head. “Dinner and an ale,
all for a bargain price.”

Lexa nodded. “Prepare a table for us,
please.”

Damon hitched his bag over his shoulder.
“I’ll take a shower and meet you there.” He headed farther down the
hall with Stellar and Lexa closed her door.

She decided a shower sounded wonderful. She
opened the door to the bathroom and rolled her eyes. Stellar had
been exaggerating slightly. The room had been fitted with an
all-in-one lavatory unit that was often retrofitted onto deep-space
starfreighters. The round cylinder had been set into the corner of
the room, its shiny, silver walls a stark contrast to the rough
plaster.

Inside was a shower unit that, with a press
of a button, disappeared into the wall, letting a toilet slide
out.

Lexa took a quick shower…which was by
necessity. It seemed Stellar was stingy with the hot water. It ran
warm for two minutes before turning decidedly cool.

As she switched to the dryer, and warm air
blasted from the side of the unit, her thoughts turned to
Damon.

The completely irrational question of what
he looked like naked in the shower sprung into her head.

Ridiculous
. She fluffed her hair out
and squelched the thought. She didn’t even like the man, so she had
no business imagining him naked.
Don’t need to like him to know
the man is really, really good to look at.

She paused. Okay, she could admit that much.
He had the whole tall, dark and handsome thing going on. She
sniffed. She’d always found blonds more attractive, personally. But
the image of his long, lean body leapt into her head. Water
cascading over taut bronze skin and tight muscles.

Lexa sucked in a deep breath and realized
her nipples had hardened to stiff points.

Stars!
She shut off the air dryer,
her skin suddenly feeling far too hot. Damon Malik was a thorn in
her side. He constantly second-guessed her, and poked and prodded
at her at every opportunity.

She stepped out into the coolness of her
room and yanked on clean clothes. She focused on the egg and the
treasure hunt. That’s what she was here for…not to fantasize about
a man who’d driven her crazy ever since he’d started at the museum.
He was forever trying to alter her exhibits and add more technology
to the displays—all in the name of security.

Besides, he’d called her a trouble magnet.
She definitely did not like him.

With a nod, she headed out into the hall and
slammed the door behind her.

***

Damon wasn’t quite sure how he found himself
sharing a candlelit dinner with Lexa Carter in a dark corner of an
inn on Zerzura. A tiny bunch of desert wildflowers sat in the
center of the table, and the flickering of the simulated candle
cast a pretty glow on Lexa’s face.

He was certain the grumpy old innkeeper
wasn’t trying to play matchmaker, so he guessed the almost romantic
atmosphere was a coincidence.

The bar was mostly empty. He’d moved his
chair so his back was to the wall and he could keep an eye on the
bar’s patrons over Lexa’s shoulder. A battered syndroid served
drinks at the bar. Part of his face covering was missing, revealing
a mass of blinking lights. The other half of his face was
surprisingly realistic. Good tech was slowly finding its way out of
the central systems toward the galaxy’s edge, and even here in the
Exodus quadrant, you could apparently get decent syndroids.
Inexpensive models tended to look reasonably human, but their
facial expressions never changed. The good ones…well, the good ones
made it tough to tell what was human and what was machine.

A gray-haired man who appeared lost in his
sorrows sat hunched over a lone glass of ale at the bar. Across the
room, two young men were laughing uproariously at their table.
Adventurers, by the look of them. No doubt on the planet to make a
name for themselves.

Damon took a sip of his ale. It was cheap
and watered down. He’d never been an adventurer. He’d been too busy
surviving. He would have done anything to escape his homeworld, and
when given the chance, he’d taken it.

He never counted on the cost of that choice,
though.

“This stew is surprisingly good.”

Lexa’s smooth voice sucked him out of his
dark memories.

He watched her take another spoonful of the
rich, dark stew. “You probably don’t want to know what’s in
it.”

Her spoon hesitated, hovering above the
bowl. Then with a determined move, she brought it to her mouth and
swallowed.

Damon smiled. Damn, she had guts. She might
eat the cheap stew with manners that no one could mistake for
anything other than central systems finishing school, but she
wasn’t afraid to jump in.

“Don’t tell me,” she grumbled, wiping her
mouth with the threadbare napkin. “I don’t want you to ruin it. I’m
hungry.”

He lifted his drink to her.

“I hate that we’re just stuck here.” She
sighed, shifting in her seat. “I was really hoping we could have
gotten underway today.”

“Don’t be so impatient, Princess. You’ll
have your chance to get hot and dusty tomorrow.”

She rolled her eyes. “Do we need to have
another talk about that stupid nickname?”

“How about you tell me more about this
egg?”

Her eyes lit up and made an already
attractive face damn near irresistible. “I know you’re just
distracting me, but since it’s a topic I love, I’ll let you.” She
leaned forward. “The egg was made by a Terran jeweler, Fabergé. His
eggs were famous and highly valuable, most resting in Earth’s
museums. The myth says that this egg, known here as the Goddess
Egg, was for an emperor to give to his empress. It was made of gold
and encrusted with rubies.”

“Terran rubies? Valuable.”

“Priceless,” she said. “The colonists
brought it here and over the centuries, a religion grew up around
it. A religion that worshipped the goddess of life, birth and
fertility, and was led by a group of priestesses. They cherished
the jeweled egg and built a fantastic temple to keep it in.”