By Ken McConnell
I didn’t want to come to Ocherva, but there I was. Funny how fate can sometimes take you to places you never thought you’d go. Now I can’t imagine not living on this red dirt moon on the frontier and being the only law for light years. Ocherva is in my bones, its very essence is a part of me like nowhere I have ever lived in this galaxy. I am so much a part of this place; I feel nothing will ever force me to leave. It was not always so.
When I first came here, I was an outsider. The Stellar Ranger Company I took over command of was a bunch of misfits and loners who didn’t care about rules and regulations. It was my job to bring discipline and compliance to the unit, and for that I was not liked by any of them. I could see it in their eyes when they looked at me. They didn’t like me telling them to change their ways. Some of them had been stationed on this rock for years, and it seemed to have affected their ability to comply with standard operating procedures. Especially the man I was replacing, who seemed to have little regard for unit compliance.
“Cap’n, we just find it more to our advantage to look like everyone else here. We can still do our jobs without all the spit and polish,” Seth said, in his slow, easygoing manner. His face was unshaven, and his skin was dark from either sun exposure or red dirt. I couldn’t tell which.
“Sergeant, we will wear the Ranger uniform when on duty and we will wear it correctly. Understand? That includes bathing and grooming before putting the uniform on.”
It amazed me the lack of personal hygiene on this moon. Seth nodded and lowered his head like a schoolboy in trouble. I thought that was going to be the end of it, but he spoke up again. “Cap’n, we’re a long way from the civilized parts of the galaxy. People don’t take too kindly to fashion and pretense. Besides, this is a desert, and it’s damn near impossible to keep a shine on boots.”
If that was an attempt at dry humor, it failed.
“I don’t want excuses. Just get your people in uniform and up to standards,” I said.
That was when the call came in from dispatch about a smuggler ship heading out across the southern desert. Aven, the dispatcher, was watching the long range scanners, his gaunt face lit with the green light of the display.
“It’s a known smuggler, he’s flying low to evade our markers.”
“I’ll get this one, feed the coordinates to my Scrambler,” I said, heading for the launch platform.
Seth caught my arm before I could leave. “Cap’n, maybe I should come with you, you’ve never been out that way before.”
I flashed him an icy glare. He looked at me strangely and let go of my arm like he knew I was going to leave without him. “Nevermind.”
He watched me grab my flight gear and head out the back of the building, probably thinking I was the craziest woman he had ever seen.
I had only been on the moon for five days. Long enough to piss off just about every Stellar Ranger in my company by making them comply with rules and regulations. I thought that if I could bring everyone back into regulation, I could then rebuild the unit into a shining example that others would follow. Company D would be the best damn Ranger Company in the galaxy when I was through with them. But that vision was not to be. It was not the members of the Company that needed to change; it was me.
* * *
The Ocherva dessert was vast and unforgiving. Red sand dunes extended from horizon to horizon. I watched the shadow of my gull winged plane play across the dunes like some kind of alien bird. After several hours I was nearing the end of a vast dune sea. There were no settlements this far out. The gas giant planet hung in the pale pink sky like a sentinel watching over a dead and forgotten landscape. The renegade ship was about three times bigger than my single-seat Scrambler. It was skimming along the tops of the dunes when I finally caught up to it. I had the advantage of surprise coming up on it from behind. I broadcast the standard warning message from all ship to ship channels as I locked onto the ship’s dual engines with my canons.
The ship, a Capellian light cargo model, appeared to shut down its engines. Reverse thruster shields suddenly cut the white flames off. I was stuck flying directly behind it as it slowed dramatically and came at me with a vengeance. I frantically tried to slide out of its way as it blasted past me. I was not quick enough and the cargo ship took off most of my port wing. I had no altitude for cushion and my plane fell like a rock. Jamming the throttle wide open and pulling back on the yoke let me hit the sand dunes with the bottom of the Scrambler instead of auguring in and exploding.
My Scrambler came to rest at the base of a large dune. All electrical systems were dead as the engine turbine whined to a stop. I popped the canopy and looked around. The air was hot and dry. In another couple of hours both suns would burn in the brilliant sky and the temperature would soar. The sand slid down the dune and covered the shiny metal plane. Before too long, it would be buried. I unstrapped myself and pulled the survival rucksack from the back storage compartment. It had enough rations and water for about two days. As I looked around at the barren landscape, something told me it could be a lot longer before anyone found me. My transmitter was broken and I had no idea where I was. I’ve been in some remote places in my life, but nothing as remote as that desert. The feeling of suddenly being alone in the universe came over me like the oppressive winds. I wished I had never come to this moon and for the first time I truly missed my friends and family on Prahran.
I headed for a nearby mountain range. Perhaps I could find water and food there while I watched for rescue planes. I slogged over the tops of the dunes for about an hour until I reached the rocky base of the foothills. It was an easy hike up the smooth sandstone rock. As I came down into the shadows of the rock walls, I found a hidden cavern. The temperature lowered considerably as I moved deeper into its confines. There was a pool of water tucked away from the reach of the twin suns. I set down my rucksack and went to the water’s edge. It was cool and inviting. I took off my boots and waded into the water. I didn’t realize it, but I was descending into more than just cool water. I was surrendering to the land and moving into its warm and dusty embrace.
I sat for a while, looking at my reflection in the cool, still water. My perfectly pressed uniform and polished leather jacket were the textbook image of a Stellar Ranger. I was Devon Ardel, the daughter of a Stellar Ranger and a well respected Senator from Prahran, a border world not yet a member of the Federation. My father, Joe Ardel, was descended from a long line of lawmen. He was tough and strong with everyone he knew, and they all loved him for it. Quick to tell you when you screwed up but equally quick to tell you how to correct your mistakes. He was also a drunk. He kept his drinking private, but it slowly brought him down and eventually led to a messy divorce with my mother. It was my father who sent me to Ocherva. He suggested I make a name for myself on the frontier, where I would not be under constant comparison to him. I respected his opinion and two weeks later I was stepping off the transport onto this dirt ball moon in the middle of nowhere.
Coming to Ocherva was an adjustment for all who made the journey. It was like stepping back in time to when people were strong because they had to be in order to survive. You couldn’t go to the local store and buy everyday conveniences like you could on Prahan or Selene. If you needed a tool, you had to learn how to make it yourself, or do without it. Most people learned to get along with nothing they didn’t absolutely need to survive. The people lived simple lives, uncomplicated by stellar politics or fancy societies. Most folks were ranchers or miners, though some were just loners who wanted to live off the grid. The only professionals in demand were frontier doctors, and they tended to be more veterinarians than human healers.
Being a frontier world, Ocherva had its fair share of criminals. The Stellar Ranger Company I was in charge of had twelve Ranger Sergeants, and I kept them busy most of the time. Between cattle rustlers and gun fighters making a name for themselves, they were always being called out to restore order and maintain the peace. Sometimes the locals would take the law into their own hands and by the time the Rangers arrived, someone had hanged or was shot and whatever wrong had been committed was made right again.
I spent several hours at that water hole, trying to figure out what to do about my company as I waited to be found by them. I had to make the unit my own and in order to do that I had to get Seth my second in command to accept me as his leader. That much was obvious to me. What was not so obvious was how to earn his respect. I didn’t need him to like me as a person; I needed him to respect my authority and carry out my commands without question.
Taking charge of the Company like I had done, making all kinds of changes to dress and policy in order to make it my unit and not his had seemed to backfire on me. I was pretty sure that all the Rangers hated me. They seemed to adore and follow Seth like he was their protector. What was it about him that garnered their respect? Was it his rugged good looks and natural leadership traits, or was it simply loyalty? He was practically a native on the moon. He seemed to know the land and the people better than anyone. I thought about that for a long time. How does a newly arrived person come to know the land as well as a long-time resident? It seemed impossible. I was not willing to wait months or even years until I knew the land as a native.
After the first day, I grew tired of sitting around the cavern. I gathered up my things and headed out into the foothills to see if I could get to higher ground. The desert landscape was simple and elegant in its desolation. The salmon colored morning sky was calm and peaceful. A low fog clung to the foothills before the suns had risen. I sat down and watched the dawn breaking over the mountains in the distance. It really was quite beautiful. The night air was chilly, and I rubbed my arms. Before long, the searing heat of day would force me to find shade.
As I wandered the hills, I taught myself about the shrubs and the sand blasted trees that dotted the landscape. I didn’t know their names, but I classified them in my mind. There were sweet edible plants and bitter tasting ones I avoided. I identified various varieties of reptiles and small mammals that made their home among the rocks. I ate fewer of my rations and more and more off the land itself. I trapped snakes and various small critters that were at first ugly and strange to me but as I consumed them over open fires; I began to develop a taste for them.
I knew one of the indigenous weeds that grew in abundance on the moon was Ocha. I learned about it from Hap, the only Ranger who had befriended me when I first arrived. She was a tall, thin brunette with a perpetual look of concern on her face. She told me to chew on the white roots of the Ocha to keep hydrated in the desert. Nearly everyone sucked on the roots like candy. The root was slightly sweet, but also very moist. Hap reminded me of my mother, the honorable Gail Constantine. My mother was always looking after my safety. She even gave me a caretaker android to look after me when I lived with her on Selene. I was always trying to see what crazy thing I could get Thirty-seven to do in order to keep me safe. That poor machine was never so glad to see me leave and return to Prahran to live with my father. I never needed looking after by anyone, I was always a pretty independent minded person.
The red dirt permeated my skin and alter its pigment. My long blond hair became a reddish color and started to mat on me. I had no brush, and I didn’t care what I looked like for the first time since I arrived on the moon. My uniform was becoming stained reddish brown and the leather boots quickly lost their shine. After a few more days, I took off my boots and walk in the dirt barefoot. The fine sand no longer bothered me between my soft toes. The soles of my feet became calloused and dry. Stepping on rocks and twigs no longer bothered me after a day or two of walking barefoot.
The temperatures soared during the afternoons, and I learned to take refuge in rock overhangs. In the mornings, I explored and studied the ancient landscape. There were valleys and bluffs that had ancient rock beds exposed in stripes of jade green and reddish orange layers. I became quite adapt at climbing the loose rocks to get to more interesting features of the geology.
It was during one such hike amongst the scattered shale that I first encountered the ruins of a walled city. I knew there were no indigenous intelligent life forms on the moon, but it was entirely possible that ancient space faring beings had once lived on the arid landscape before moving on or even dying out. It was difficult to tell much about the inhabitants who made the stone city. There were no biological remains or anything other than shards of pottery and broken mud bricks. I took shelter in the ruins during the afternoons and thought for a time about what it must have been like for the ancients to have traveled for light years only to find this barren and hostile moon to eke out a living on. It was no wonder that they either moved on or died off.
That evening I gathered firewood to cook my dinner of snake and whistle rat. There were precious few trees in this area so I substituted with Ocha weeds. I started the fire at dusk and prepared my meal with my utility knife. The meat cooked quickly and before dark, I was feasting on the finest cuisine that Ocherva could offer. The smoke from the burning Ocha drifted up into the clear night sky as I lay back on the sand and searched the black for my home star. I was less than ten light years from it, but it seemed much further away on that dark and lonely night.
The smoking Ocha weeds were in fact psychoactive. Although I did not know it. I felt light-headed and relaxed. For the first time since coming to Ocherva, I felt as if I truly loved the place. I felt I was at home. I no longer missed Prahran or Selene or any of my friends and family from off moon. I felt relaxed and comfortable with the red dirt and the pink skies. I could not imagine ever leaving this moon again. I can remember experiencing those feelings of belonging and love for the place for the first time that night. I know it was probably just the Ocha weed’s influence, but at the time, I felt I was making a genuine connection with the land. I felt at one with the moon in a way that I had never known about the planet I was born on or any other planet I had visited. I also knew that my future on the moon was somehow meant to be. That if I stayed here long enough, it would eventually take me on a great adventure that I could not even comprehend at the time.
I know all this may sound weird to anyone who has not been to Ocherva, but that night, under the twinkling stars, I found my destiny in a red dirt moon on the wild frontier. In my dreams I saw a devil faced image that I must have traced out in the dirt. It would become the symbol that would unit my company and signify law and order in a lawless land. I also saw images that confused me, like the blue-skinned people with dark hair and bloodlust in their eyes. I saw very large warships attacking each other in the depths of space. I saw my caregiver droid, Thirty-seven, covered in dust and scratches. I even saw the thin, elegant bodies of the aliens that had lived in the surrounding ruins. They were gentle, patient beings that faded in and out of my dream like ghosts. Before I awoke from the trance-like dream, I saw the faces of the Rangers under my command, all of whom I knew I could trust with my life.
I awoke to the howling wind and blowing sand of a dust storm. The fire had blown out and covered in loose dirt. A drift of sand had blown against my body and nearly buried me. I stood up and tried to make it back to the shelter of the ruins. The blowing wind blinded me and slowed my progress. By the time I made it out of the wind, I was covered with red sand and tasted its grit in my mouth. I sat there for the longest time, not thinking at all about the storm. Instead, I thought about my strange dreams. I shook out my long hair and bound it into a tail before I cut it off with my pack knife. It was a very crude bob, but I didn’t care. I dropped the blond hair onto the floor of the ancient hovel and covered it with dirt. It was liberating to not have to wear long hair anymore. Everyone in the border worlds wore long hair. It was the fashion of the day for both men and women. It was not popular on Ocherva. Hard-working people little needed fashion. We cut hair short and people concerned themselves with more weighty matters in life.
The dust storm had moved on, altering the landscape as it drifted over the surface of the moon. I decided it was time to go. I knew what I had to do, and I wanted to get back to town to get on with my life. I heard the sounds of Scrambler engines in the distance. They had come for me, probably wondering if I had survived the storm. I walked out of the desert looking like a vision of death rising out of the dirt.
Seth noticed me first. He watched with his squinting eyes as I moved over the Ocha weeds, carrying my rucksack over my shoulder. I was covered in red dirt, like a sandy ghost. Hap noticed Seth’s stare and followed it to me. They didn’t look as startled as I would have thought. I guess everyone who lives through a sand storm winds up looking more like the earth than a human.
I rode back with Seth in his Gull Scrambler as mine was buried in sand. I don’t know how he tolerated my unwashed self, but he never flinched from the dirt and weed odor that clung to me like the sand. We didn’t talk in the tiny cockpit until after we landed. I asked him how things were while I was away, and he shrugged. “Same old stuff, bar fights and range disputes. The storm brought down the ship you were chasing. We apprehended him down range yesterday.”
He looked at me differently, and I thought for a moment that he might actually like me. A gentle smile of approval spread across his whiskered face. I was no longer threatened by him. I somehow had managed to survive in the desert, and in the process, gained some respect from my second in command.
We gathered in the dirt street in front of the command post. Aven came out into the sunshine to greet us. He saw me, covered in dirt, and laughed out loud.
“Looks like the desert ghost hath returned, ma’m.”
“You didn’t say not to burn the Ocha, mister,” I said to him, my dirty face blank.
Aven looked at the others and then floundered. “I, I didn’t?”
He stopped when he saw my wide grin. “You had the vision then?”
I nodded.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“I saw my future here with you all,” I said, looking at each of them in turn.
Hap took off her helmet and shook out her short brown hair. “We’ve all had the Ocha dream. I dreamed of you, Captain. I knew you would come to lead us one day.”
I nodded after meeting her gaze. Seth kicked the dirt a bit with his boot. “I knew you would come too. I dreamed you would come back from the desert and take us forward.”
He glanced at me, and I swear I saw more than respect in his eyes. Something tugged at my heart, and I knew inside that he was special.
Aven spoke up, “I didn’t see you in my dream, I saw that.” He pointed over his shoulder as a thin, metallic form ambled out into the street.
It was Thirty-seven, my caregiver droid.
“Thirty-seven?” I was not entirely surprised to see it, but I did not know why it was here.
“Your mother sent me. She was worried about you living on the frontier alone,” the android said with little heart.
I gave out an embarrassed laugh. The others looked at me like I were crazy, but they soon laughed along with me. Who sends a domestic droid out into the frontier? My over protecting mother, of course. I walked over to the android and put a dusty arm around it and gave it a hug. I knew it hated that human gesture, because it could feel nothing in return.
“I’m sorry Slim, she must be getting senile.”
Thirty-seven reserved comment. Its politeness routines were much too refined to say anything bad about its owner. I dug into my pocket and pulled out an Ocha root and stuck it in Thirty-seven’s mouth piece.
“Maybe you need to burn the Ocha, my friend. Come to grips with this place, I recommend it.”
After a long, cold shower and a clean uniform, I gathered the Rangers in the main room for an informal meeting. I had Aven round up some leather dye paint and brushes. My brown leather Ranger jacket lay spread out on the table. I picked up a brush, dipped it in the paint and drew out the “V” shaped devil head design on the jacket. It was not perfect, but it was identifiable. Underneath it I wrote, “Devon’s Devils”.
“Today this unit is known as my desert devils, not Stellar Ranger Company H. We will uphold the law of the land and protect and serve the system and its citizens. We will not concern ourselves with spit and polish, only doing our duty. We live on this moon and make it our home. Rangers far and wide will sing songs about our courage and our fairness on this hostile world.”
I saw the looks of approval on everyone’s faces, so I continued. “I no longer care where you come from, or how you like to wear your uniform or how you do your job. I just want you to uphold the law and maintain the peace. Any questions?”
There were none.
“Let’s get out there then and do some good.”
We went on to do plenty of “good” in the years that followed. I’ve never heard any ballads about our deeds, at least not yet. Some of our Rangers were killed on duty and some of them moved on to other assignments. None of them ever forgot their time on the red moon of Ocherva. After the Great War started, I left the Rangers and joined the Fleet. I took my hard flying, straight shooting ways with me and helped to defend the Federation against a new and terrible enemy who wore blue skin and nursed a devilish hatred in their hearts. But then, I saw all that in my dream.