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A skiff swept over the red-brown desert. Grains of sand flew in its wake, a gust stronger than any wind the weak red dwarf of a sun could muster on the planet. The craft flew close to a large metal pole in the ground.
"There's the third waypoint," the pilot commented to himself, keeping an eye on the compass on his dashboard. "Don't know why he couldn't just set up a GPS..."
His companion, a young-looking woman in a large green coat, looked out. "Can you see the next one?"
"No. Just need to follow a bearing of 215 degrees."
"It's like orienteering!"
"It's exactly orienteering. And this is the fourth time you've said that, Nepeta."
The girl stuck her tongue out. "Well it's not like there's anything else to talk about! Just boring red sand everywhere!"
"Are you not, at least in some small way, anticipating the job ahead?"
"Nuh-uh. It's just mining. Nothing fun."
Equius sighed. "Of course it's not fun. But it pays, and what we need now is money."
Drifters were not an uncommon sight in the 3250s. As urban sprawl consumed entire planets, living expenses rose sharply. The value of a home skyrocketed. The galaxy's lower classes, now homeless, moved from place to place where work could be found.
Equius and Nepeta were no exception. They had taken up a job at a mining facility on this red planet in the middle of nowhere. Equius figured the owner must be some kind of luddite; he was hiring people to work his mine rather than using droids (which were dirt-cheap these days) and he'd given them directions with a compass and waypoints from a spaceport some way above the planet's atmosphere.
After two solid hours' piloting over the featureless desert, the skiff touched down in an enclosure at the bottom of a large cliff.
"We're here," Equius said. "Got your bag?"
"Yeah."
"Then let's get going."
A man was waiting for them in the enclosure. He had strange glasses - one lens red, the other blue.
"Sollux Captor," he said, holding his hand out. "I'm the owner." He spoke with a soft lisp.
"Equius Zahhak," came the reply, shaking the proffered hand. "This is Nepeta Leijon. We're here about the job."
"I know. Been waiting, since the last couple of miners I had left. This isn't a big operation."
"So it's just us?"
"Yeah. Come in, let me show you the ropes."
Sollux led the two inside a cave in the cliff. Rows of floodlights kept the cave illuminated.
"So why no technology?" Equius asked. "Living workers, compass directions? What gives?"
The bespectacled man picked up a handful of sand from a cave floor and let it sift through his fingers.
"This is iron. The whole planet is full of it - all the way to the top, all the way to the bottom. The magnetic field wreaks havoc on any complicated circuitry. Can't use any iron mechanisms round here either."
Equius nodded.
Sollux went on. "The iron would be pretty valuable if it could be mined out on a large scale. But to do that you need droids. Kind of a catch-22. So we're not here for the iron."
He walked over to a table and picked up a crystal of some sort. It was electric blue, and glowed faintly in the dim light. "These are what we're looking for. Hell if I know how they work, but they're like super-charged batteries. Just one of these is running all the lights on this level. They fetch a high price.
"Oh, one last thing. I'm a psyche. Hope that's alright with you."
"The mind-reading kind?"
"No, the other kind."
The hours were long, and the work hard, but the pay was good. After a year of this, maybe two, they'd have saved up enough money to break into a middle-class life, and it'd be smooth sailing from there.
Three weeks in, Nepeta was taking the lift back to surface level for her break. As she approached the entrance to the cave, she saw a black ship landing in the enclosure. Sollux was already outside to greet it.
The door open and some steps descended. Down them came a sharply-dressed man, with a black carapace. Nepeta hid from sight and listened in.
Sollux was the first to speak. "Good to see you, mister...?"
"Diamond. Just call me Diamond. I trust you remember our arrangement?"
"Yes, yes. I have your shipment here." He brought out a box, about the size of a suitcase.
Diamond took a look inside. "This isn't enough."
"I'm sorry. My miners quit after your visit last month, and I've been having trouble finding new people for the job. I've got a couple of guys but they aren't keeping pace so well."
"I don't care for your excuses, mister Captor. This will not please the boss. If the boss is not pleased, he will find many ways to make my life just a little bit of a living hell. And every bit of that I will lever onto you tenfold. I swear it." The man kept a calm demeanour, channelling anger into frighteningly sincere threats.
Sollux was looking nervous. "Don't worry! I'll work them harder, or hire more staff, or something! We'll be back to normal production by next month, I swear!"
"I will return in one month. If you do not have ready for me the usual quantity of goods, plus what you lacked today, I will personally ensure you will regret it."
He took the box and started toward his ship. "Don't try to get out of this, mister Captor. The Midnight Crew has a long reach and a long memory. You will find the extra production, or you will be disciplined. Good day."
Nepeta rushed back to tell Equius, who then confronted Sollux about it.
Sollux sighed. "Best take a seat."
"Why are you dealing with the Midnight Crew?" Equius accused.
"I don't have a choice. They pretty much own this whole sector. The very day I began operations they came here.
"I pay them a certain quantity of the crystals each month, and in return they don't kill everyone here. That's pretty much the deal. And you know you can't run from these guys."
Equius held a crystal in front of him. Nepeta stared at it, enrapt. "Just how valuable are these things?" He asked.
"Extremely. If the Crew weren't taking so much from me we'd all be rich right now."
"And yet I get the feeling they don't just want these for the money."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Who cares? They do what they do, and all we can do is obey them."
"Why did the last people you had working here leave?"
"Fear. I don't blame them. I'd get out if I could."
Twenty-three light years away, orbiting a much brighter star at a much greater distance, was a city planet. While not yet completely consumed by urban sprawl, a solid third of the planet's landmass was devoted to it. The rest mostly consisted of large estates for the especially wealthy. Porvonis and its colonies had a large and complex aristocracy.
Somewhere in a temperate borough, in a tall block of flats, two girls stood in front of a numbered door.
"This is it," said Rose, the human. "A flat all to ourselves."
"Are you ready?" Asked Kanaya, the troll. They gripped each other's hand as she turned the key.
It wasn't much. One large room served as living room, kitchen, dining room and bedroom, with an en-suite bathroom. It was clean, and very white, with large windows to let the light in.
The two girls stepped in, and closed the door behind them.
"It's wonderful," Kanaya said. "It's everything I ever dreamed of." She looked at her companion with admiration. "And it's all thanks to you."
Rose laughed, and returned the gaze. "I couldn't have done it without you." She embraced her. "You're the only reason I do anything."
They kissed. A place to call your own with the person you love. What more could anyone want? Why, Rose thought, would you want anything else?
Kanaya broke off the kiss and rested her forehead against Rose's.
"Hey. Wanna try out the new bed?"
A month later, on a dusty red planet not important enough to have a name (Sollux had proposed calling it Captura, but a stony look from Equius shot the idea down) the black ship returned once again.
"Hello again, Diamond," Sollux said.
"Hello, mister Captor. I'll cut to the chase. Do you have the shipment?"
"Right here." A larger box than before was brought out. "I've been working the guys hard. I hope it's enough."
Diamond opened the box and looked inside. "This is... sufficient. In fact, yes, this is perfect. You have performed adequately." He beckoned to a henchman from his ship, who took the box aboard.
"So, same time next month?" Sollux asked.
"No," Diamond said. "This is to be the last shipment."
The troll couldn't believe his ears. "You're cutting me loose?"
"In a manner of speaking. We have all the crystals we require. Indeed, with this last shipment, we have a surplus. Your services are no longer required. However, it serves our purpose better that nobody knows we have these." He beckoned again. A henchman got out and began picking the lock to Sollux's own craft.
"What are you doing?" He protested.
"We are ensuring you do not leave this planet. There is no need to kill you when the desert will do it for us. Your former employees have already been taken care of."
"This is murder!"
"No, this is mercy. I'm sure you have enough supplies to last yourselves quite some time." He climbed the steps into his ship. "Besides. We're the criminal underworld. Murder is what we do."
The black ship left, and Sollux's went with it. Equius and Nepeta emerged from the cave.
"So what now?" Equius asked.
Sollux clicked his fingers. "They didn't take the skiff! We can take that!" He rushed over to its place nestled behind a fold in the cliff, and the other two followed.
Nepeta sniffed. "Stop!" she screamed.
Equius picked up immediately. "Get down!"
All three dropped to the ground as the skiff exploded.
Sollux got up, spitting sand from his mouth. "They bombed it."
Equius would have commented on the obvious statement, but this was not the time. He examined a crystal, which caught Nepeta's attention as usual. "What do they want with these things?" he asked himself. "Just what purpose could they serve?"
Nepeta snatched it from him and held it up to the red sunlight. She then rushed into the cave to get more. Wordlessly, she began placing them in a large circle outside of the enclosure.
"What the hell is she doing?" Sollux asked.
"Don't look at me," Equius said. "She does weird things sometimes. Best to just let her."
Kanaya was piloting her personal cruiser, with Rose in the passenger seat. Together they were on their way to spend a day on a favourite planet of theirs, with lush fields and forests, exotic flowers and beautiful wildlife. It was also almost completely unknown.
"I'm going to make the fold", Kanaya said. "Are you ready?"
Rose looked uncomfortable. "I hate this part."
Kanaya once again gripped her hand and turned a key.
Space folded around the small craft. It was the only known way of travelling faster than light safely, and could cross a whole galaxy in minutes, though this was highly inadvisable. Physically, nothing could interrupt the passage of a Folding craft - from normal space, one would never notice it passing.
But that doesn't make it completely unstoppable.
The cruiser came to a stop in a pit on a red desert planet.
Rose looked around in panic. "Where are we? What happened?"
"I don't know!" Kanaya said. "The computer's acting strangely."
A troll - a girl with a long green coat - peered over the edge of the pit, then slid down the sand toward the cruiser. She knocked on the window. Kanaya opened it.
"I'm really sorry about this," the girl said, "but we're stranded here and need a way out. Can we take a ride on your ship? Please?"
"Stranded?" Kanaya asked. "Why? Where's here?"
"Pretty much in the middle of nowhere," replied the girl. "We got into some trouble with the Midnight Crew. I can explain later, okay? Will you help us?"
Kanaya turned to Rose. "What do you think?"
"I don't see why not," Rose replied. "If they're really stranded out here it'd be wrong to leave them."
"I still don't get why we're here in the first place, though."
Nepeta answered. "Oh, that was me. This planet is full of these crystals that channel electromagnetic energy and... well, I can explain that later too. It interrupted the folding. I'm glad you came when you did, it could take weeks for someone else to come by this way."
"Alright then," Kanaya said. "You can ride with us. How many of you are there?"
"Three! The other two will be here soon. I'm Nepeta. The other two are Equius and Sollux. Sollux is the one with the funny glasses."
"Well, I'm Kanaya. This is my girlfriend, Rose."
"Hi! Well, let's get going, shall we?"
After some strategic placement of glowing crystals, and with three more passengers than they'd expected, Kanaya's cruiser folded back into space, back to civilisation.