The Desert is Cold in the Dark [Dark Data]

[Jim Raynor]

Jim flipped up his visor and examined the smoking bodies on the ground. He kicked the charred, melted remains of the bandit minion, just in case the crazy bastard survived his roasting. He'd smelt cooked flesh before, but something else about the maniac's situation made him stink all the more. Jim scowled, making conscious efforts to breathe through his mouth, but somehow the stench still twirled through his nostrils.
 
"Oh man. What did these guys eat?"
 
Ogong pointed at the headless bandit leader, a puddle of black ooze widening around his neck stump. "That's not the normal colour of blood, is it?"
 
"No, it definitely isn't," Somerfeld said, squatting by the thick sludge. "If it didn't come out of their bodies, I'd say it barely qualified as blood at all."
 
Jim knelt down, cushioning his metal knee into the yielding sand, and dragged his finger through the ebony fluid. Lifting the sample closer to his face, he watched it hug the fingertip, dripping with hesitance, falling in slow and thick globules. The smell was something he'd never had the displeasure of encountering before, and he knew what horrible bouquet a rotting zerg carcass produced. If he had to guess, it smelled like a combination of spoiled eggs, engine oil and vomit.
 
"Makes a man wonder how someone comes to be with this stuff pumpin' in their veins," Jim said, wiping as much of the sludge from his finger as he could. "It ain't natural."
 
"Maybe it has something to do with the dark chips that the doctor has us hunting," Somerfeld said, standing. 
 
"Or whatever creature's protectin' 'em."
 
"Commander," Jim's adjutant spoke up after a series of high pitched beeps, "the device is receiving new data."
 
"It is too!" Sun Ogong said, staring at the Liberator aide on his arm. "Looks like we might have found a stronghold!"
 
"Adjutant, bring up the intel on screen," Jim said as his visor flipped down.
 
The words 'STRONGHOLD DETECTED' flashed before him with an arrow pointing almost directly north. Nothing else appeared.
 
"What else you got?" Jim asked his AI. "Distance, size, fortifications?"
 
"No additional data has been provided by the device," the adjutant said.
 
"That doesn't matter," Sun Ogong said, scrambling up the dune. "An arrow's all we need!"
 
Somerfeld trudged up the sandy hill and Jim followed. At the peak, Raynor stared out into an almost flat plain of desert interspersed with slight, low peaks. The blazing sun lay down a swathe of stinging white light that reflected from the dunes, forcing Jim to squint, but even with the visual distraction, he was sure he could make the outlines of something out there. The waves of heat sizzling from the sands distorted the picture further, but Raynor thought he could see a ... castle? Pile of oddly shaped rocks? A forest of dead trees? It was no good. There wasn't enough definition from this distance. Yet a smoky shroud hovered above, as if some sort of industrial complex was disgorging some pollutant. Or it could have been a sandstorm, swirling it all around. Ugh, what was the use?
 
"Can you guys see that?" Jim asked, pointing at the blurry smudge on the horizon. "What's it look like to you?"
 
Somerfeld stared out, but Sun Ogong was the first to respond. "I don't know, but there are a lot of things buzzing around over there. Maybe flies?"
 
Jim peered closer. Now that the monkey boy had pointed it out, he noticed them too. Specks from this distance, but there were a hoard of black, indistinguishable objects flocking around the unclear object. 
 
"Whatever it is, it's likely the stronghold," Somerfeld said.
 
"Stands to reason," Jim said. "Guess we better head off. I don't think I can stand the stink of them bandits much longer."
 
Once he found his Impaler rifle and sequestered it safely inside his armour leg, the trio took off towards the assumed stronghold. Visor closed and air conditioning cranked, Jim marched next to Somerfeld, with the young Sun Ogong resting on Raynor's rounded shoulder pauldrons. Thankfully the battle hadn't seriously injured him, though he still had been battered around by the bandits. Somerfeld looked worse off, but he didn't seem too concerned about it. Jim thought about offering assistance, but he figured if the thin man hadn't mentioned it yet himself, there probably wasn't any great need to deal with it yet. It was the Omniverse after all, who knew what sort of creature Somerfeld really was?
 
"Are we there ye-"
 
"Start that nonsense again kid, and you can walk."
 
Ogong's spiky head appeared upside down over Jim's visor. "Well, what can we do to pass the time?"
 
Jim sighed. "You still got energy even after that big mess back there? All I wanna do is lie down in a comfy chair and have a whiskey."
 
"Whiskey? What's that?"
 
"Uh ... never mind. Somethin' you'll find out about when you're older." 
 
Ogong slipped from Jim's shoulder, shouting in surprise as he buried his face into the sand. He sat up, spitting grains from his mouth. "Hey, what'd you do that for?"
 
Jim's sudden stop had hardly been intentional. His right leg had sunk into the sand and stuck fast.
 
"Ugh, my leg's caught in the sand somehow," Jim said. He grasped his shin with both arms and pulled, but even the might of his mechanical armour wasn't enough to loose him. "Step back in case you get caught too."
 
The ground shuddered. Jim slipped down into the sand up to his knee.
 
"Jim!" Ogong shouted, stretching out, holding his staff out for Raynor to grasp.
 
"Let us help you," Somerfeld said.
 
"No, don't come any closer or you'll just get stuck here too. 'sides, it's not like either of you two scrawny fellas can lift me out in my suit." Jim planted his left foot and drove all of his strength through it. His heart leapt as his snagged leg budged an inch, and then fell as the solid sand beneath his left foot crumbled, sucking it in beside its twin. The sand crept up to his waist and showed no signs of slowing down.
 
He didn't want to abandon his armour. It was far too valuable to leave for an opportunistic bandit to acquire, but he was out of options. Either leave it or go down with it. "Adjutant, emergency eject, and in a hurry!"
 
The three quick beeps that signalled a failed action tightened Jim's gut. "CMC-400 emergency eject command failed. There is too much pressure to open the torso."
 
"Shit!" This wasn't how Jim Raynor was going to die! The unrelenting stranglehold of the shifting sands pressed against his metal shell, heightening the air density inside so much that it built inside his head. Yet if popped the visor and equalised the pressure, moments later sand would pour in and drown him.
 
His arms were buried, and no amount of forceful suggestion would move them.
 
Come on, what did this damn thing have that could save his skin? Grappling hook had nothing to use as an anchor and his two allies couldn't pull him to safety. Everything else was a weapon or a shield.
 
"Adjutant!" Jim yelled as a dull buzz thrummed in his ears. "Is there anythin' you can turn on that'll launch me? Somethin' to make me fly or jump or somethin'? ANYTHIN'?!"
 
"Affirmative, commander. A newly installed miniature version of the Reaper's jump jets are -"
 
Jim's eyeballs rolled in his head, so he shut his eyelids tightly, hoping he wasn't about to utter his last words. "I don't care, just turn the damn things on!"
 
The marine armour jolted. A loud rumbling originated from Jim's back, but his hearing was slowly dulling. Grains of sand like tumbling blocks fell over his visor, walling out the last untouched part of his suit.
 
Another intense rumble woke the terran commander with a start. Snapping his eyes wide open, Jim took in the sandy wasteland before him ... from ten metres up. 
 
"Holy shit! What just happened?"
 
Jim somersaulted as he plummeted back to the ground. Sun Ogong stared at him, apparently stunned by the unexpected lunge into the sky.
 
"Get outta the way, kid!"
 
The monkey boy snapped out of his reverie and scurried away on hands and feet just as Jim ploughed into the sand where he once stood. Jim immediately wrenched himself free and turned around. A hole had opened in the desert. Curtains of gold gushed into it. A faint trail of smoke that travelled into the air above it dissipated gradually in the slow wind.  
 
All three inched closer, peering into the black gap in the sands, though affording it the respect that it deserved.
 
Raynor popped his visor. "Wow. That was almost too close."
 
"What do you think is down there?" Sun Ogong said, unconsciously skulking forward.
 
Jim snatched the monkey boy's tail with a light pinch of his index finger and thumb and dropped the kid next to him. "Not worth fallin' in to find out."
 
"I hope there's no more of these traps around here," Somerfeld said. "There wasn't any warning."
 
"You're tellin' me," Jim said. "From now on, I think you two should walk out in front. If you get bogged, at least I can pull you out."
 
"Aw, so no more riding?" Sun Ogong said.
 
"Sorry, kid. Better than takin' a permanent nap under the sand."