The rocky outpost loomed ahead, rising from the sands like a giant skywhale that had fallen face-first into the desert and decided to stay there out of spite. Unlike the modern towering docks they had launched from, this place was built for function over comfort—a squat structure of reinforced metal and, as archaic as it sounded, stone, welded into the natural rock formations to withstand the harsh desert winds.

  A landing platform protruded over the edge, built on rusting struts and anchored with thick cables. The anti-grav pads lined the edges where the gliders launched. Weathered banners flapped lazily from poles, their colors faded but still displaying the insignia of the dockworker’s guild. There was no-one in sight.

  Hunter already reached for her firearm. “I’m sure those things don’t climb up here.”

  “They might,” Priest replied. “This might get out of hand. We should warn the authorities once we are up.”

  Gravel caught a brief twitch of Hunter’s fingers against her firearm’s grip. That was her tell—Hunter hated dealing with bureaucrats.

  “Relax, Hunter. The authorities down here are the fun kind.” He waggled his brows. “You know, corrupt, bribable, and only mildly incompetent.”

  “That is exactly the opposite of what we need in this situation,” Priest replied. Hunter still said nothing.

  “You want them to be extremely incompetent instead? Weird,” Gravel answered as he walked over a few modular buildings clustered around the main outpost—living quarters, storage units, and a small generator hub. He knocked on one of the quarters and a guard opened the door to meet him. She didn’t look that unlike him: tall and on the chubbier side, platinum hair falling to her shoulders.

  “You lost, or you actually got business here?” she asked, her voice carrying the clipped accent of someone who had once called Earth home.

  Gravel flashed his usual lopsided smirk. “More the latter than the former. We need a ride back up. Dockworkers told us this was the place.”

  The guard exhaled, rolling her shoulders before stepping out of the doorway and nodding toward the platform. “Yeah, you’re in the right place. We’ve got backup gliders available—though if you wrecked yours,” she eyed Hunter’s half-buried glider with a knowing smirk, “that’s gonna cost you.”

  Hunter sighed, already bracing for bad news. “How much?”

  “Fifteen thousand ducats.”

  Hunter let out a slow breath. “Of course.”

  Gravel chuckled. “That’s robbery.”

  “That’s inflation,” the guard corrected. “Hazard pay’s been raised, and we get a lot more idiots crashing than we used to. The cost of keeping this place running doesn’t pay for itself.”

  Gravel leaned slightly on the doorframe, studying her. “Hazard pay, huh? You getting paid extra for this lovely desert vacation?”

  She snorted. “Yeah. Double what the city-edge docks pay. Not bad for a gig in the middle of nowhere.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  His interest piqued. “Double? That’s pretty generous for standing around and babysitting gliders.”

  The guard chuckled, shaking her head. “You know what’s funny? Another guy who came down here for M’mara last week said the same thing. About the pay.” She leaned against the doorway, crossing her arms. “Said it was too generous for what we actually do. Then he laughed and said he might have to make our jobs harder—just for the hell of it.”

  Gravel raised a brow. “Sounds like an asshole. Luckily for you, I’d never say such a thing.”

  She gave him an amused smile. “Yeah. Maybe. But he paid the fee, didn’t wreck his glider, and tipped the guards. He also wore a pair of cool-looking goggles. Didn’t see them on him when he came up yesterday.” She shrugged. “Probably got stolen.”

  Gravel exhaled, shaking his head. “Yeah, yeah. We’ll settle up in a second.” He glanced at her name patch, barely readable under the desert grime. “You got a name, or do I just call you ‘toll collector’?”

  She smirked again, pulling a holo-card from her pocket and flipping it toward him. “Elsa. And if you’re ever dumb enough to come back down here, buy me a drink.”

  Gravel caught the card, spinning it between his fingers. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Hunter crossed her arms as she walked over. “Are you seriously flirting right now?”

  Elsa grinned, the kind of grin that was equal part childish and jovial. “Let him. Makes my shift a little less boring.”

  Gravel flapped his hands around. “C’mon, let me live! I didn’t question you when you go off for an hour searching for discarded cans underneath city sewages.”

  Elsa tapped the small terminal embedded in her wristband, her gaze flicking to a glowing countdown. “Your friend’s right, though. Next ascent’s in five minutes,” she said. “If you wanna get off this rock, I’d stop flirting and start paying.”

  Gravel held up his hands. “Alright, alright. You can tell me ‘I don’t wanna see your face’ without being roundabout about it.”

  He brought up his own interface, scanning the payment code stitched onto Elsa’s uniform just below her shoulder. A quick beep confirmed the transfer—the usual fee, plus an extra five hundred slipped in for the hell of it.

  Elsa glanced at her wristband as the tip registered, then looked back at him, raising a brow. “Trying to bribe your way into good karma?”

  “Nah,” Gravel said, stepping back toward the platform. “Just paying for good service.”

  Hunter and Priest were already making their way to the launch zone. The anti-grav pads let out a flat fizzle beneath their feet as Gravel fell in beside them, stretching his arms as they approached their gliders.

  As he mounted his, he threw a smirk at Hunter. “So, tell me, how did you spend your time then? Did you spend our time down here figuring out how these gliders actually manage to ascend?”

  Hunter gestured toward the anti-grav emitters lining the platform. “The air’s too thick for normal lift, so the launch system uses stratified repulsion fields—basically, they push against different layers of the atmosphere using electromagnetic waves. The moment we’re airborne, the onboard system taps into residual heat pockets to maintain lift without needing full propulsion. That’s why we don’t just drop like rocks when we reach cruising altitude.”

  Gravel stared at her for a long moment, then burst into laughter. “Of course you did! That’s our Hunter right here.”

  Elsa gave them a lazy salute from below.

  “Try not to miss me too much,” Gravel flashed a grin at the guard as his glider lifted off the ground.

  “Gravel.” Priest cut in with a humorless voice. “Seat restraints. Emergency oxygen check. Altitude stabilization calibration. You have done none of them.”

  Gravel sighed. “I was getting to it. I swear.”

  He managed to get them all done before the launch sequence kicked in.

  A jolt of inertia pressed them down as the repulsion field fired, propelling them skyward. The outpost shrank beneath them, blended with the sand into an endless sea of ochre and gold. M’mara never looked smaller, until it was gone.