The crimson sands flashed red-hot over the desert expanse of the titan-asteroid Rutilus. Already, the silver surface of the downed saucer-craft was dulling under the sandstorm’s relentless grind—the ship, though no longer smoking, was slipping away beneath the asteroid’s surface, as though it was caught in a torturously, mockingly slow patch of quick-bog. Bit by bit the coarse grains sucked it down, carrying it deeper and deeper into the rock’s insatiable gullet, until only a fraction of its curved edge was visible above the surface.
The ship’s owner was leaned up against a tall stone, trying to brace themselves against the scorching storm. It was no use—their upper limbs were bound with energy-cuffs, so they could not shield their face, nor indeed any other part of their body. They struggled and strained against their bonds, trying to get their manipulator-phalanges loose, but it was futile.
“I tell you again,” Grorton-Luenga said to the platinum-blond humanoid, who had been the one to shoot them down and cuff them, “I am not your enemy!”
“Then why,” asked the silver-clad figure, who wielded a deadly-looking laser-blade, “were you piloting a ship belonging to my race’s greatest Nemesis?”
