Mortal’s Gambit Chapter One

Under the eye of a winter storm Ashna Caspari led her brothers through a vast stretch of frigid New Mexico desert.

They rode on tired horses, unaccustomed to both the cold and the gravity. Hooves struggled to find purchase on half-frozen soil and their riders shivered in several layers of synthetic wool and leather. The snow rolled in thick, covering the desert with a dusting of gray and white.

Somewhere out there, over a hill or behind a smattering of bushes was their destination - they just had to find it.

“Dad didn’t say it’d be so cold,” the youngest, Kal, said from the back of the pack.

“That’s why you check the weather ahead of time,” Caleb, the middle sibling, grumbled, “don’t act like it would’ve stopped you from coming.”

“I might’ve packed a better coat.”

Ashna huffed and her breath drifted out in wispy swirls, “If the cold is too much for you, you can go back and wait for us to finish up.”

“And let you assholes take all the credit…no thank you.”

“Then stop complaining,” Caleb barked.

The three crested a hill that overlooked another expanse of windswept icy desert. Mountains loomed in the far distance, partly obscured by sleet. Apart from shrub, dirt, and the occasional jackrabbit, there wasn’t much out there - not worth freezing for anyway.

Ashna reached into her layers of winter clothing for a pair of binoculars. She made sure they were still powered off, which would mean she wouldn’t get any detailed readings of distance, temperature and elevation, but it also meant they could keep their low profile.

“You see it?” Caleb asked, shivering.

Ashna scanned the horizon twice, three times, then spotted it. At a passing glance it looked to be no more than a mound of earth just like all the others. But then she spotted the reflection of glass catching the gloomy midday light–windows.

“I think I found it.”

“At last!” Kal shouted.

Caleb took the binoculars from Ashna and had a look for himself.

“You see the windows?”

He nodded, “Let’s get moving,” then slapped the reins of his horse to charge ahead.

Kal wasn’t far behind, propped crooked in the saddle.

The three raced across the desert, all of them fighting to be in the lead. Their horses, giant variants of the ancient Clydesdale, worked hard to keep up with their demands, huffing out wisps of condensation, snot, and blood. It didn’t matter who got their first, not really, and each of them knew that. But each of them also knew that they weren’t going to be last.

It turned out that they arrived at nearly the exact same time.

“You both ride so damn slow,” Kal said with a chuckle.

“Shut up,” Ashna snapped back, “You’re being ridiculous.”

Caleb was first off of his horse, “Stop playing around, we’ve got a job to do.”

Their destination was more than just another pile of dirt, it had a round door built right into the base of the mound of Earthen soil.

Ashna strode past her brothers to bang her frozen knuckles against the sealed door.

“We know the deal right?” She whispered to each of them.

“Snag the package using as little of Dad’s money as possible?” Kal said.

Caleb chuckled, “Essentially, that.”

A beat later a lock was unlatched on the other side of the door. Out stepped a woman with white hair, dressed from head to toe in purple silk - not the kind of attire that Ashna would expect from a hermit living in one of the last nature preserves on Earth.

A blast of hot air swept from inside and for a brief moment, Ashna could feel her nose again.

“You from STX?”

Ashna and Kal both opened their mouths, but Caleb spoke first.

“Yes mam,” Caleb said, “On behalf of. Solomon Caspari, CEO of Stellar Transit Limited.”

The woman just nodded and waved the three of them in. They entered a damp cave-like home made of mud brick. To Ashna it reminded her of what a grandmother’s house would look like;old photographs, dusty antique furniture, chachkies littering every square inch of free space - it was nothing like how she expected the den of an illicit goods dealer to look like.

A pot of something dark and smelling of mushrooms and butter boiled on a stove, a gray cat slinked by watching from the shadows and somewhere a speaker played a news broadcast in a language that Ashna couldn’t recognize.

“This way,” the woman barked, “Did you bring the money?”

Ashna and Caleb both turned to Kal who nodded and patted the inside pocket of his coat.

“Yes we did mam,” Ashna said.

The woman led them to a damp stairwell beside the kitchen.

“You don’t need to do that,” the woman snarled.

“Do what?” Ashna asked.

“The stuffy talk. I’ve been dealing with your father since he was your age - I know the kind of business that man runs.”

“I assure you, a trustworthy one,” Caleb cut in from behind.

“Bullshit.”

The woman led them down the stairs, deeper and deeper into what Ashna could only imagine was some kind of cellar or bomb shelter. When they reached the bottom, she was sweating through her many layers of winter gear. At the bottom was a low ceiling basement filled with greenery.

Row after row of exotic produce was planted in box beds, all of which Ashna could not even begin to place a name for. Misters in the ceiling released a payload of sweet smelling water and light panels in the walls were tuned to a frequency of light that mimicked Earth’s sun at mid-morning.

The loamy scent of it all was overwhelming.

The woman went to a shelf at the edge of her greenroom cellar, retrieved a canvas sack and placed it into Caleb’s arms.

“I don’t know why your father sent you halfway across the settled systems for this, but he assures me it is worth a pretty penny where you come from.” The woman said.

Caleb started to peek inside but the woman stopped him, “Where’s my cut!?”

Kal shuffled forward.

“Our father agreed to Sixty-thousand—”

“Sixty!? Your father clearly said eighty over the Super feed the other day.”

“Er…well.”

Ashna shoved her little brother, “Just pay the woman Kal.”

Kal swore under his breath, rolled his eyes, then handed the woman a heavy coin purse, “Pleasure doing business with you.”

…

They were quickly shoved back out into the cold, and Ashna barely got a chance to thaw her fingers.

The horses were restless as both the wind and snow had picked up. The eye would be passing them soon and the true storm would begin in earnest.

“What’s in the sack?” Kal asked.

Caleb started to open the sack again but was stopped as a strong gust nearly knocked him over.

“Maybe we should inspect the goods when we’re back on the Miranda!?” Ashna shouted against the wind.

Caleb nodded, secured the sack to his saddle and hopped back onto the seat of his horse. Ashna and Kal mounted up too and the three rode back the way they came - even if they weren’t exactly clear of where that was. Since the storm picked up, the sleet and wind obscured everything, giving them no more than five feet of visibility in any direction.

They battled the storm for maybe an hour, fighting for every meter. The horses protested, legs trembling - this was not at all the environment they were familiar with.

At one point, they stopped at the bottom of a hill, shielded from the wind.

“Do you have a compass?” Caleb asked her.

Ashna shook her head, feeling dumb for a moment.

“Kal?”

The youngest Caspari son just shook his head.

“Shit,” Caleb hissed under his breath.

He then began rummaging through the many pockets of his winter coat.

“Do you have one?” Ashna asked.

“I mean, I should, it’s a little busted but it might work here.”

He retrieved a battered plastic thing, with cracked glass and a trembling needle. Ashna recognized it right away, it was their father’s, likely inherited during one of his warmer moments.

“Okay, it is picking up the pull here. We should be able to head west and find it.”

At that moment, Kal’s horse gave a pained whine. The hulking beast suddenly collapsed all at once, pinning Kal to frozen soil. Kal let out a tremendous howl as the weight of the horse likely snapped his leg in multiple places.

Ashna and Caleb scrambled from their horses to heave the giant, now dead, mass off of their brother.

“Get me out! Get me out!” He screamed.

“Don’t move too much Kal, we got you,” Caleb said as he reached under his brother’s arms.

“Okay, you pull on my count,” Ashna said, looking her middle brother in the eyes, “Three..Two…One—now!”

Ashna pushed, Caleb pulled and Kal screamed—a tense beat later both horse and rider were separated.

Kal cursed and shouted, all while Ashna and Caleb lifted him onto Ashna’s horse.

“I think it’s broken!” He groaned as he slumped on the back end of Ashna’s saddle.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Caleb said.

“We’ll get it patched up, just need to get you to the med bay.”

Kal just nodded and gritted through the pain. With their brother secured, the two eldest Caspari siblings took to the saddle again.

They pressed further on, following Caleb’s broken compass, even as the storm worsened. Eventually the gray horizon of shrub and iced over dirt became a thick black veil that made visibility practically nil.

After another hour of wandering, Ashna directed them behind another hill sheltered by the wind.

“We have to use the binoculars,” Ashna said, her teeth rattling in her skull, “it’s either that, or we f-f-f-freeze to death.”

Caleb groaned, “Fine, but be quick about it.”

Ashna reached into the pocket of her coat, found her binocular set, brought them to her eyes then powered the set on. Immediately she saw everything…the composition of the soil, the nearest star port (which was all the way in the Albuquerque province), the trajectory and intensity of the current storm, the heart rate of herself and her brothers, and of course, the Miranda parked just over a kilometer northwest of them. She made a mental note of the direction, then immediately powered the binoculars down.

“Did you see her?”

She nodded, “We have to move — now!”

They headed in the direction of the Miranda, pushing their horses as fast as they’d let them - as it turned out it wasn’t fast enough. And after five minutes of trudging through the now dense carpet of snow, a distinct whistle rang out across the desert.

Ashna knew what that sound was. Local authorities.

A beat later, copter drones, no larger than fruit flies dug themselves out of the dirt and ice and shot up into the sky - indifferent of the hurricane force winds. If they didn’t leave soon, it’d be all over.

Equipped with microscopic drills and saws, the drones would burrow into their target’s nervous systems and find ways to incapacitate them whether that be convulsive vomiting, temporary paralysis, or death if the law so suited them... and it usually did.

The howling of the wind, and Kal, quickly became drowned out by the angered buzz of the swarm. Ashna powered up her binoculars again, and spotted the Miranda.

Through the thermal view, she spotted the Miranda’s main propulsion engines located on the underside and designated rear of the ship, still red hot after a rough entry. An AI generated view of the landscape, defined the shape of the Miranda’s tempered ceramic hull. She looked strange parked in the desert on a set of squat legs, with her utilitarian hodgepodge of parts and necessary components. Sensors, piping and all manner of antenna ribbed her sides. Now dormant torpedo cannons and rail gun ports jutted from under her front end like intimidating but worthless tusks. Along her spine, she wore an array of bulbous habitat modules like a steel and plastic crown. The ship was dark for now to avoid detection, but when she was in-flight she was a glorious beacon of light.

In one lifetime, she was a pleasure craft, in another she was a self defensible freighter - the Miranda had many histories and many more names. And while she may have not been the prettiest, the fastest, or even remotely reliable at times, she belonged to Ashna, no matter what her father tried to say otherwise.

A portion of the swarm suddenly latched onto her arm and began chewing through the material of her coat. She swatted them away, but then she felt them begin eating at her back and shoulders.

Ashna looked up, and saw Caleb swatting at his legs with one hand and holding the reins with the other.

Luckily, the coats they all wore would offer some protection from the drones, but it wouldn’t be enough to last forever.

“How are you doing, Kal?”

Kal let out a pained groan from under his coat, “Fine, for now.”

The wind howled, the swarm chewed through their coats and their horses bucked and protested against the storm. It was a slog and each step forward a tremendous battle.

But eventually, they reached the underside of the Miranda. Up close, she was massive, looming over all of them like some ten-story high mythological beast made of synthetic metals, incredibly strong ceramics and ancient plastics. There was something comforting about being under her massive shadow.

They’d been smart to leave the ramp door on the underside of the Miranda open, and it gave just enough room for Caleb and Ashna to move both of their horses side-by-side.

They entered a cramped airlock, almost pitch black, spare for the gray light that leaked in through the open ramp door. Inside, the steel walls of the hull hummed with the sound of buzzing drones, the pained wheezing of their horses, and the shouts and swears of each of the Caspari sibling.

“Florence, get the power on!” Ashna shouted, “Standard cleansing protocol.”

The walls chimed in response, as dim yellow emergency lights in the floor flickered to life. Behind them, the ramp door hissed shut and once it was sealed a sharp pulsating whistle blared through the airlock’s speakers.

All at once, the swarm of drones clattered to the floor like a thousand tiny pieces of hail.

Ashna caught Caleb’s eyes in the partial darkness of the airlock.

He smiled, “Mission accomplished?”

“We still have to get off-planet,” Kal barked.

The walls chimed again and a cocktail of sanitizers and nano machines fell from vents in the ceiling like a soft mist, cleaning and inspecting them from head to toe. None of the drones had likely gotten into their system, but they could never be too certain.

“Well, we’ll be here for at least a moment,” Ashna said, nodding to the sack still secured to her brother’s saddle, “Let’s have a look inside.”

Caleb unhooked the satchel from his saddle, grinning through the frozen snot caught in his mustache and beard. He untied the knot holding the sack together, peered inside and his grin melted.

He reached into the satchel and to all of their surprise, he pulled out a pomegranate—in fact, the sack was filled with them.