Desert Treasure

[t0l]

He almost couldn't believe it; he'd just survived six hours of the most menial-yet-mentally exhausting stint of his entire career as a mercenary.

Now he sat triumphantly in a slightly less uncomfortable cloth chair, cruising down the same two-lane road that they had blankly stared at out of sheer boredom for so long in a light military utility vehicle painted a flat light tan color to fit in better with the dune sea that was Planet Nauru. An incredibly hot aura wafted around his face and clung to his skin, likely originating from several hours of the vehicle's sealed black interior sitting within sunlight's reach, but he shrugged it off, more than willing to just deal with it if it meant that he stopped getting bracketed by waves of sand every twenty seconds. Only some faint humming, originating from the vehicle's large engine, could be heard in the cabin, prompting Tal to try and break the rather awkward silence.

"Oi, kid," droned Tal towards his partner in the seat adjacent to him, making sure not to take his eyes off the road as to avoid cruising straight into danger, "what're you gonna do when you get off this damned rock?"

There was silence at first.

"Well, I'm getting paid a lot for this job, plus a few other jobs I picked up along the way. I'll probably have enough then to comfortably settle down on say...Cambridge or some place like that. Maybe after I get settled, I'll go look for a girl. A big strong one, too, and now that I think about it, I'd really fancy one of dark-skinned miner types from the Tau systems, y'know? We'd enjoy a quaint life together on a plantation during each day, and then make sweet love during each night. I'd light some candles, and then she'd casually stroll in with a feral swagger, dressed only in the finest lingerie money can buy..."

Tal cocked an eyebrow, taking his eyes off the road to glare blankly at his partner despite his conscience telling him otherwise, trying to process the torrent of information that surged out of the man's mouth.

"..What's your name again, kid?"

"Daniel Wheeler, from the Kingdom of Bretonia."

"Right, uh, Daniel Wheeler from the Kingdom of Bretonia, remind me to never ask you questions."

With a quick motion, he returned to the road, only to discover that in his distracted state he'd inadvertently shifted the vehicle ever so slightly right, ending up so close to the elevated edge of the desert road that they'd nearly gone off onto the sand. He jerked the vehicle back over into their lane, marked by a faded white line and an endless, ruined divider dotted by rusting, damaged, or missing streetlights, and breathed a sigh of relief, although the pain wasn't over yet, for there was still the incredibly awkward hour-long journey through miles of empty terrain to get back to base.

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