Strictly Business

[Omi]

"There's no way this is legal, even in the Omicrons." In an instant, the apparent professionalism of the scene was ruined. Komachi knew her partner in crime liked to think of himself as some sort of grizzled veteran, but that hadn't stopped her from raising one eyebrow after another as she'd watched the man struggle with a second-hand explosive charge and loops of entangled wire for the past half an hour. Of course, she felt perfectly justified in allowing him to figure out a way inside on his own - her part of the deal mostly involved her piloting skills, and she'd upheld her end of things by managing to coax an Anki with sand choking every last one of its turbines across the desert. If it weren't for her, there wouldn't be a pyramid within a hundred miles to break into.

That said, she was beginning to doubt Ravis' expertise more and more. The pyramid looked decidedly fragile to her - it could've been centuries, if not millennia, old - and the original builders probably hadn't designed it to withstand plastic explosive. "You might just collapse the whole thing, too. We're not here to bury it again. Couldn't we just chip away at the hole until it's big enough?" By 'we', she meant 'you', but wisely decided to leave that as being implicit.

Truth be told, Komachi would have accepted a pickup off this stupid, sandy, sulphurous world a week ago. There was no happy sweet spot of things to wear on Nauru - either you slowly cooked under the three Delta suns, or you tried to get away with wearing less to beat the heat and found yourself smothered in caustic sand. It was almost insulting - the planet didn't even have the decency to be a properly toxic or dangerous world; instead, it was permanently stuck in the category of 'very annoying'. The only nice things about Nauru were things like the smooth, porcelain-white pyramid in front of her, and the idea of their blowing a hole in the side of it and setting about pillaging it from within was beginning to leave her feeling just a little guilty.

As usual, Tal didn't appear to be listening to her. This was something of a common theme, and one that worked both ways. If she kept pressing him, he'd be grumpy for days - more so than normal, anyway - particularly if she interrupted him playing at soldier. Therefore, with a final roll of her eyes, she slumped back against the rock that was to shield them, crossing her arms in front of her chest and looking thoroughly put out. A strident beeping caught her attention, and after unfastening a patch of Velcro on the sleeve of her jacket she soon located the offending instrument.

"Hurry up," she complained again, hoping she was interrupting some important mental calculation. Needling her partner in crime was one of the few perks of the job. "There's a sandstorm in... about fifteen minutes, by the looks of it. I wanna be inside by then, for once.

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