Desert Treasure

[t0l]

"You should've just left me in the rain!" she screamed, tears welling up in her eyes, "Here's the rest of your payment, choke on it, y-you monster!"

There she went, someone, a client, who for once wanted a loving relationship, out the door, stomping furiously into a rainy Manhattan night. Tal leaned up against the doorway of his Scimitar, holding a credit chip in his hands, running his hands over it's light-blue grooves and bumps.

He had no idea how he wrecked their previously meaningful relationship, forged through hardships over four months of trans-Sirius travel, in just ten minutes. Previously, he had thought her departure would help heal his guilt over her injury; it only added a layer of newfounded loneliness, a feeling with which he never had issues coping with up until now, atop the plethora of events that gave him his characteristic, cold gaze that extended for miles upon miles. Truth be told, he wanted as much as ever to stay with her, wanted to run out into the rain and apologize, wanted to grow old with her at his side, but it was far too late now.

She was gone.


Coarse grains of sand rattled against cold-forged steel as Tal scooped hundreds of them up with a single thrust of his entrenching tool, their combined weight causing him to struggle slightly as he brought the small collapsable shovel above a small pit where a steaming pile of fresh human excrement laid in state. He tilted the tool slightly, pouring his cargo of sand into the crude, hastily-dug hole to cover it up, making sure to stamp it twice with a swift boot for solid measure, and stood up straight, shovel resting against his shoulder. One sigh followed, as his eyes scanned his former toilet and gradually moved their way up into the distance.

Delta's triple threat, as he'd come to call them, were ferociously baking any mercenary in sight at this afternoon hour, marking his third day on standby all the way out on Planet Nauru. He wiped his brow of any stray sweat, then proceeded back into base.

The look on the gate guard's face when he asked him if he could go outside the wire to "take a dump" could only be described as a mixture of utter bewilderment and confusion, although after an explanation he was let through with a stern "be quick".

His issue was largely with the small, yellow stalls, each made out of low-quality polymers that melted a bit under prolonged direct exposure to harsh sunlight. On top of that, the scarcity of these "porta-johns", as they were so often referred to as by the indigenous mercenaries, led to an inevitable overcrowding which in turn led to less than desirable environments to use the bathroom in due to considerable buildup of old excrement and urine, not to mention the native species of insects that swarmed only around these portable chemical toilets.

In the meantime, Tal had re-entered the forward operating base, still a bit surprised at how quickly his lunch and dinner of synth gel had passed through him, and plotted a smooth course back into his box to escape the sun.

---