Excerpt: Terminal Cusp

A flash of sunlight glinted off of something in the ravine below as Jaeger’s dogged march brought him to the top of the rise. Dropping to a low crouch, Jaeger squinted against the brilliance bouncing off the bleached rock, assessing the situation he’d chanced upon. Waves of heat radiated from the baked surface, burned through the soles of his boots and scorched the air above it. Beads of sweat sprang up over his entire body, drenching his skin and turning the layer of dust to rivulets of mud. A drop, snaking down his arm and dripping from his elbow, evaporated almost as soon as it hit the stone. Jaeger took hold of the hem of his tunic, tied around his head for protection from the unrelenting blaze of Charva’s mammoth sun, and wiped the stinging moisture from his eyes.
A cruiser, a tarnished wreck of a civilian transport that was probably within a judder of total disintegration if he was any judge, squatted pathetically in the narrow gorge. Clearly who ever had set it down there was hoping to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Especially round these parts. No relay towers, no patrols, no witnesses. No point inviting any opportunistic marauders, even if the cruiser already looked like a scavenged carcass.
Jaeger worked some saliva down his throat. Exhaled into his cupped hands and breathed the slightly moistened air through parched nostrils. Maybe his luck was turning. As near as he could figure he was still three days out of the nearest settlement on foot. He might have made it. But then again he’d be in no shape for anything by then. And it may have been pushing his luck way too far to expect that the patrol wouldn’t be keeping an eye open for a fugitive. Or someone fitting his description.
Besides he was sick of sucking bitter viscous sap out of frikkin prickly succulents and pulling the barbs out of his palms.