“Hey Arnie.” Saul said, lifting their tent flap aside. Wode looked up from his cot, which was comically too small for him, his legs coming over the bottom and resting on the floor.

“Saul?” Wode asked, instantly alert and awake. “What’s up with you? Why do you look like a felid that got into the dunestrider coop?”

“Two day pass big man.” Saul said, brandishing two slips of paper. “Already got it approved.”

“Yea? What d’you wanna do with ‘em?” Wode asked, “That burlesque show you won’t shut up about is in t-”

“No no. Remember what we talked about weeks ago?” Saul said, cutting the larger man off.

Wode sat up, looking at Saul with a serious expression. He looked past the smaller man, seeing if anyone was listening in behind them, and then looked back at Saul. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. 

“I thought you said you didn’t wanna do that on our -first- pass?” Wode said, warily.

“Yea, yea, changed my mind. It’s been eatin’ me up man.” Saul said, also whispering. “I gotta know if you actually came outta the sky.”

Wode screwed his face up. “I told you, ain’t that good enough? Besides, it could be dangerous. I haven’t been out to those mountains in years. There’s no telling if it is even still there.”

Saul hefted his autogun. “Hey, we’ll be alright. We’ll cover eachother. I saw your marksmanship scores, we’ll be okay. We’ll take a day’s rations, two days water, combat load of ammo…”

“Vest and helmet too.” Wode said, “No risks.”

“Sure sure, no risks.” Saul said, “We’ll hike out, see it, and then hike back.”

“It’s thirty klicks, Saul!” Wode said, pulling his last, desperate card.

“Yea yea, you’ll just carry me when I get tired.” Saul said, “Bro, I’ve seen you hump gear. You carried yours, Arnelio’s, Triska’s, and Montaigne’s packs for 20 klicks, and that was after an all day beatdown. You hardly broke a sweat.”

Wode threw his hands up, then rose to his feet, stooping so he didn’t knock their tent off its pegs. “God damn it, alright, Saul Imogen, I am getting my god damn pack.”

“See you at the camp edge, big guy.” Saul said, throwing an ironic salute. He turned around, and walked away.

________________________________________________________________________________

With only a few bemused glances at they left camp in the opposite direction of everyone else, Saul and Wode began to trace their path through the Eluhim desert. They’d brought extra water for their anticipated early morning start and were glad to have it; by midday both had emptied a full canteen, their shirts soaked with sweat underneath their body armor. 

“I liked that story you told ‘em, Saul.” Wode said, screwing the cap on his canteen as they walked.

“Hmm?” Saul said, looking up at the larger man.

“We’re just two soldiers all messed up from training.” Wode said, reciting Saul’s story, “We’ve got some backpacks full of beer and we’re gonna go to the desert, get trashed, and shoot guns.”

Saul’s hazel complexion spiderwebbed into a large smile. He laughed, and Wode laughed too. 

“Bro, I didn’t say that. I just said we were gonna go on a hike and take in the view.” Saul said, “We’re gonna hike to the Table of the Gods and just soak it in.”

“Soak in all the sand around us?” Wode asked. “Admire the tumbleweeds?”

“Bro, you don’t know what you’re makin’ fun of.” Saul said, kicking a stone in front of him. Wode kicked it when he reached it. 

The stone whizzed through the air, impacting an in-bloom cactonid and exploding the poor plant. Wode and Saul briefly stopped, their eyes as wide as dinner plates.

“Did you-?” Saul asked.

“Yea.” Wode said. They looked at each other, and raucously laughed. After several minutes of this, they continued walking again, trading jibes with each other. 

________________________________________________________________________________

They reached the Table of the Gods by late afternoon, Saul riding on Wode’s shoulders like a small child. Wode let the smaller man down. Both unslung their weapons checking the chambers were loaded. Saul buckled his helmet on.

“Your call big man. Safeties off?” Saul asked.

Wode mulled it over for a second or two, then flicked his own safety catch off. Saul did the same. 

“There should be a switchback we can walk up to get inside.” Wode said, his finger pointed, moving through the air as he searched. “There. After that, there’s a tunnel, then it opens into kind of a basin.”

“That’s good, we can refill our canteens.” Saul said. 

“Why would we need to? You didn’t hardly walk at all.” Wode said, bemused.

“-I- ain’t a nine foot tall supersoldier what fell from the god damned heavens, Arnie.” Saul retorted. “We goin’?”

“We’re goin’.” Wode said.

“Alright, then lemme go in front of you. You’re too big, I won’t be able to cover you from the back..”

________________________________________________________________________________

The next hour or so, they navigated the narrow switchback. The footing was perilously narrow, especially for Wode, who had to safety his autogun and sling it to safely navigate the narrow footing. Saul, much smaller, and much more slender, was able to keep both hands on his gun and stay secure. They moved like this, deliberately, helping each other across the gaps that erosion had made in the path. It was not something that could be taken with speed; their pace was slow, deliberate, and focused on getting the perilous journey right the first time.

There certainly wouldn’t be a second chance if either of them slipped. They reached the mouth of the tunnel at the start of the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set and the desert began to cool. Saul and Wode switched on the lamp packs at the end of their autoguns, and moved into the cool cave. 

The tunnel was dark, and smelled dry, clean, the antiseptic smell of cool stone. Every step of theirs, no matter how quiet, echoed, a peculiar acoustic phenomenon that only seemed to occur in the dark caves at the corners of the galaxy. 

Neither men were experienced tunnelers. The constant echoes of their own steps unnerved them as they slowly crept forward, and between steps, both of them swore they could hear something scuttling far off. They told themselves, the two travelers in unfamiliar territory, that these were normal sounds, not deserving of special attention, but the silence eventually became too much for the both of them.

“Say, how did baby you even get out of here?” Saul whispered, his lamp pack twitching over the smooth stone walls. 

“I walked.” Wode said quietly.. “I drank as much water from the basin as my belly would hold and I walked. I made it to Carverstown three days later.”

“God-damn. Six years ago?” Saul asked. “Weren’t you like, a baby baby?”

Wode shook his head. “I was asleep a year, so it was more like five. I think I grew inside the pod, just enough to survive on my own. There was a canister in it that I think contained nutri-paste. It must’ve woke me up when it was empty.”

Although the relief of giving into their nervous urge to chatter was relieving, the walls of the tunnel seemed to press in on them as they went further in. The echoes of their own voices in their heads turned to imagined whispers, caresses from fingers that didn’t exist, and faces leering in the darkness that disappeared the moment their lamp packs touched them.

“I don’t like this, Saul.” Wode growled. “It wasn’t like this five years ago.”

“It- It’s just a cave, man, right?” Saul said, wiping sweat from his brow. His hand was shaking.

Wode gripped the man’s shoulder. It was warm, reassuring.

“Whatever happens, I got you.” Wode said. “Alright? You’re safe. Let’s go see this thing and scoot.”

Saul nodded, his grit restored. “Yea. Yea. We ain’t campin’ out here, alright?”

“Alright.” Wode agreed.

They moved with renewed purpose, the cave seemingly disappointed in its failure to cow them. When it finally ended, they stood above a vast basin of water, an underground lake. In the middle of it, a small, sandy island. The water level had decreased enough that there was a murky sandbar that looked solid enough to walk on leading to it. 

On that island, there was a pod, and a tree growing from it. Wode blinked. He’d never seen a tree. At least, not like the one growing from his pod - this one had a thick trunk, with bark, and green, leafy branches. Salient had no such trees - and the ones that grew were short, stubby, with large root networks.

“What the hell is that…” Saul said, in a small voice.

“That’s where I was born.” Wode said. “..The tree’s new though.”

They approached the little island, their guns held at their hips. Saul reached the pod first, whistling at the way the tree’s roots intertwined and trapped the pod within its systems. Both of them searched around the thing, which was about the size of a luxury groundcar, before Saul called to Wode.

“Found a datascreen. Think it still works?” Saul said.

“Hey, don’t get too comfortable with this thing.” Wode said, and looked up. The tree’s branches were heavy with fruit. He picked one, and looked at it, then recoiled.

There was a face. The face of a woman, tattooed, with long, wavy hair. One half of her face smiled, pleasantly, while the other was a manic rictus of feral glee. Wode dropped the fruit in disgust, then picked another. This one was a man, with piercing golden eyes, and a black beard and mustache. His very countenance suggested mischief. He picked another, and found it was two fruits conjoined into one. 

He reached out to take another, but Saul’s hand grabbed his arm.

“Buddy, would you quit it with the fruit?” Saul said, bemused. “Come look at your cradle.”

“But…” Wode said, looking down at the fruits. The three he picked no longer had faces. Their pink-orange bodies were bruised where he dropped them, however. “Shit. You’re right.”

“I tried tapping it, but the screen just says ‘Bio-signs rejected.’.” Saul told Wode as they walked around the pod.

“It still has power?” Wode asked.
“Shit I guess. Give it a whack.” Saul said, showing him the screen. 

Wode hesitated in front of the arcane device for a second, then touched it. The screen warmed under his massive hand, and a chime sounded from deep in the circuitry. The pod whirred to life, an antenna extending from the back. Lights within the pod shone, unreachable and unreadable behind the root boles that impaled the pod, fixing it to the ground. It began to hum. 

“Arnie?” Saul asked, “Arnie, what the hell is it doing?”

Wode took his hand off the datascreen, shaking his head. “I don’t know! I dunno!”

With a loud howl, the antenna shot a blindingly green beam of laser energy into the sky. Both men had to shield their eyes from the bright, radiant green. It went on for what seemed like forever, long enough for both men to think it would never stop, and then suddenly it ended.

Silence. Both men’s ears rang. The beam had been such high intensity, it had burned straight through the tree branches covering it, shooting through a jagged hole in the ceiling of the basin that had been caused when the pod crashed down. 

The tree, that beautiful tree, had begun to burn. Half of the thing was completely ablaze, the fruits hissing and popping in the insane heat.It was clear that the blaze would eat the thing up entirely - its fruits never to have been enjoyed by anyone the way it was, despite growing, improbably, from nothing. Wode felt a small pang of sadness at this, but quickly passed it from his mind. There were other things to do.

He swallowed. He looked to Saul, and nodded his head. It was time to go. Whatever happened here, it was done.