The Sparrowhawk

[Akarui Sora]

Chapter One: Discovery

The sandstorm had only just begun to clear. The viscous winds still whipping the freshly carved sand-dunes into place, molding them like puddy into their final resting place, at least until the next storm rolled through in a few days time. As far as the eye could see, there was sand. Beyond the Horizon in the North? Sand. South? Sand? East? Mountains that rose up to the sky… and sand. West? Sandy Plateaus. Yet, in the heart of these long forgotten sands, something stirred.

Atop one of the recently perched dunes, a hole was rapidly forming upon its surface. Loosely packed sand falling downwards and scattering away. The hole continued to grow in size, lengthwise, the sand being peeled away from the surface from underneath until finally the whole of the peak was leveled to a nearly flat surface. A lone man, clad in a mix match of clothing finished pulling a heavy tarp off of some retrofitted vehicle: tracks of a snow-mobile, engine of a bike, mounted upon a frame with sleds and a frontal set of steel armor plates settled upon a custom build roll cage that towed behind it a small sled.

Shrouded by a cloth mask, the driver of the make-shift desert vehicle turned, watching as the electromagnetic sandstorm swept further to the South and East, before pulling off the veil that protected most of his face from sand that was kicked up by the now fading winds. Revealed was a desert worn, oil smudged face that still held onto its youthful nature, even if it no longer made its way to his eyes. Akarui, still wearing patched coverall bottoms tucked into pilots boots, matched with a desert battered cloth tunic, turned back to his dune rider, mounting into the seat and kick starting the engine back to life to continue his journey West.

A trader, days ago, had come into the Bazaar raving about an uncovered behemoth in the furthest reaches of the Great Desert. When asked if it was a creature, he spoke of metal. When asked for riches? He spoke of scrap. Most dismissed him… except Akarui. Wanted across Cadentia for his Banditry, he kept his face covered as he got the information from the man, and paid him in gold coin and the last of his credits. Scrappers wouldn’t dare go that far into the dunes, not for what could be a mere rumor, but rumor was all Akarui had left, to find a new home.

Nearly a week had passed, and the behemoth of metal had yet to show its face.

“Lost to the sands.” Another five nautical miles to the West, Akarui parked his strider upon the crest of one of the lower dunes. “No way it's this far out… seventy…eighty nautical miles now.” The young man bantered to himself, pulling down his mask to finish off the last drop from his fourth water canteen, brushing the water that dribbled from his chin and cutting a path through the muddled sand and dirt that coated his face. “At this rate I might as well cut to the Mountains..” Leaning back into the seat, his phone was quickly pulled up. Nothing, no messages, no alerts. Just a background image of himself and Shelby in uniform. The last time they saw one another as they had been.

Gliding down the dune, the stride cut through the loose sand with ease, its engine rumbling to life at the apex and roaring up and over the near vertical dune and then down into the next. Over and over this process was done as the young man continued his trek, his aimless search continuing into the heat of the day until finally, as he tugged the controls to the left to rest upon a plateaued dune, Akarui would take pause. The engine was nearly out of fuel, and hunger pains meant that he too was running on empty. Jumping off from the converted snowmobile chassis, he moved to his stash of goods on the sled behind him. A jerry can in one hand, and a condensed ration bar in the other, the lone Akarui had time to kill as he worked on fueling his strider.

With a scan of the horizon, Akarui shook his head. Off in the distance, he could make out the speck of a Gründer Industries corvette hovering over the Eastern Mountains. A floating hive of stinging fighters, bombers and a division of ‘Planetary defense’ troopers ready to face whatever horrors lurk in the caves. Further to the West the sand battered Plateau’s separate the dunes from the badlands beyond. The sky above, crisscrossed with cloud-trails caused by the myriad of ships and planes overhead, and to the South? A gray rectangular object, slanted above the height of the dunes…

A gray rectangular object. Akarui couldn’t rush the fuel into his strider fast enough nor stuff the rest of the bland, tasteless, meal into his mouth. Ripping across the dunes he would rapidly close the distance to the out-of-place object in the sea of sands right up until…

There it was. Nestled on a port side list… a behemoth of metal. The battered hull of some space-faring… vessel. Giant atmosphere engines lay destroyed on their sides, parts of the hull missing, revealing an even more confusing mixture of metals, materials, and building techniques. It was a manticore; a machine manticore. Parts and pieces from identifiable and unidentifiable make created a patchwork hull that sported, on its surface, a raised hangar missing its doors, and a runway.

A runway.

Akarui rushed right to the edge of the towering machine, looking up at the staggering height he would need to clear just to board upon the surface and yet, that was not what came to mind. It was simply: “Beautiful…” His voice croaked out as he dismounted from his own creation and gawked at the carrier.

It didn’t take too long, before combining ropes, grappling hooks, and removing the tracks off of his strider had netted a working ‘crane’ that was hoisting him, and his equipment up onto the flight deck of the derelict ship. Listing at an angle, standing on the deck alone was a slight challenge, yet Akarui had found it, and in the nick of time, as the winds began to grow as night started to fall. For now? He would have to settle on sleeping inside of the exposed hangar, but this was it.

Home.

[Akarui Sora]

Chapter Two: A Name

The winds of a night long sandstorm had battered the derelict carrier. Such was the nature of the electromagnetic storms, fueled by the strange energies of the Nexus, that large parts of the dunes from the day prior were all but changed. A shifting tapestry of loose sands. Yet, as the early sunlight cut through the darkness and woke Akarui with a flash of orange light upon his face, the ship remained.

Audibly groaning, the delinquent pilot rolled up to his face and brushed the sleep from his eyes as he stepped out into the rapidly warming day to examine his surroundings. While the dunes had shifted as far as the eye could see, the nameless ship remained where it had sat, its list to the portside still the same.

Breakfast was an easy affair. Water, dehydrated ration bar, stir, enjoy. Enough calories and all of the needed vitamins and other nutrients to keep a body moving for at least eight hours, ten if you were conservative with energy.

Morning affairs taken care of, and no running water to wash the layer of sand from his clothing and skin, Akarui moved out onto the flight deck of the derelict ship, each step taken carefully, not because of the angle that the ship listed, but rather out of fear the surface was merely held up by rust, decay and rot and would give way under even the lightest of weights. It was under the fresh light of day and the clear head afforded from sleep that he realized the ship was, nearly, pristine.

Of course, there were flaws. Any sign of a mark, insignia or paint scheme had been sand-stripped from the surface, leaving nearly bare metal composites to be facing the elements of the insatiable desert. Yet, while the paint was removed, the integrity of the hull was holding as Akarui used his makeshift winch system to lower himself down onto the sands below. Taking nearly an hour of the early morning to walk the lengthy circumference of the ship, it was evident that while the extremities, the thrusters and atmospheric engines had all been swallowed by the desert; the rest remained.

Yet, there wasn't a sign of life anywhere. No planes, no life-rafts or escape pods, no trash, refuse, skeletons… nothing. It wouldn’t be hard pressed to argue that it had slid off the factory racks in low orbit and come to land right in the spot it was in. The signs of use however, were everywhere. Scrapes along the flight deck, near to where the catapult shuttle would be. Burn scars upon the surface from all manner of space and aircraft opening up with their propulsion systems. Even the occasional oil-stain that even the strongest of intergalactic cleaning brands, Dawn, couldn’t remove.

Whatever this ship was, it had flown. Traveled both the stars and the lands and had seen immeasurable moments. If one listened close enough you could almost hear the ghosts of said memories upon the hallowed halls below… Or was that just Akarui’s stomach rumbling as the day had swiftly passed into the heat of the day, and while he was nourished from the ration bar, there was a distinct lack of solid food in his stomach.

Still, there was work to be done, which had the desert dweller returning back to where his trailer had been tucked away in the shade cast by the flight-deck hangar. Removing the tarp, soon enough Akarui was bent over collecting tools for his planned work. Duct-tape, a rebreather, goggles, paint gun, epoxy white paint. The remnants of what he had left to work on in BRNO before it was taken from him.

Moving the winching system from the starboard to the rear of the ship wasn’t the hardest part. Nor was jerry-rigging up a system for him to latch into with a harness that had been cut away from an old pilot's seat. It was willing himself to dangle several stories over the surface of the desert, held onto by one rope and clinging to another to guide the winch to the edge of the flat-rear of the ship.

That act alone took several dozen minutes of self-pep talks, pacing, and eventually a water break before finally the Delinquent went rappelling over the edge. It would be his luck a gust of wind would catch as he lowered himself well beyond the threshold. Clinging on for dear life, the dangling delinquent braced as his body would ricochet off the composite hull twice over, before finally the winds would once again calm.

Sporting a nasty, unseen bruise and sore muscles, there wasn’t time to complain about pain. With the guiding rope pulling him against the surface, he rapidly began to stripe out what it was he wanted to paint on the side of the ship. From point to point he went, bouncing off the surface with his feet and then proceeding to stop, using his teeth to rip the tape into place and then swing outwards in a dangerous acrobatic show to ensure that the vision in his mind was starting to come together.

Tedious, was the task of seeing this through, and soon enough the sun was daring to cast longer shadows as it began its descent in the sky, yet the process repeated over and over until finally, there wasn’t any tape left on the roll and the design was all but done. With his mangled strength, he clambered up to the edge of the rear-walkway of the ship and gathered what was needed next. The rebreather to protect from the fumes, goggles for the same purpose, the paint which was dangerously hooked to his side by means of twine and a belt loops, and the paint gun.

Down he went again, entering into a laborious task of making sure more paint ended up on the rear façade of the ship and not onto him or his clothing. Splatters of paint coating parts of his goggles and hands, the shadows of the fading day were now placing him and his apparatus into near darkness as the dying light turned to dusk. The last remaining bits of life in his paint gun sputtering out the final stroke of paint as he finished.

No longer a derelict ship. It was now:

The Sparrowhawk.

[Akarui Sora]

Chapter Three: A Friend

Yet another day upon his Oasis. Akarui rolled out from the hammock in the back of hangar bay, having fully secured a corner of it and began the process of unpacking his fleeting possessions. A home in progress. The Derelict Carrier, the Sparrowhawk had been battered by yet another storm throughout the night, and remained firmly where it had come to rest, though a new Dune had come to settle along the Port side. A ramp for easy access up and onto the carrier's flight deck.

Akarui stumbled into his pilot's boots and then forward towards the exit out onto the flight deck. Sand lingering from the storm in the early morning rolled off of the flight deck in small swirling motions before falling off to join the piled sands on the ships Port.

“That's… useful.” Akarui grunted, his gravelly voice breaking the silence as he realized the natural ramp that had been made up to the flight deck, making it far easier to get up and down from the deck and back into the desert. Moving towards the dune, Akarui would step up and onto the Dune, coming over top of the small ridge and pausing.

Tracks. A set of four that seemed to climb up the dune and then onto the flight deck, disappearing amongst the tarmac gray surface. From just waking up to fully alert, Akarui turned and scanned the deck of the ship nervously, as if looking for whatever creature had left the tracks in the sand.

When nothing was spotted moving around, nor lurking in the shadows, Akarui lowered his guard as he would turn back towards the Dune ramp for a moment. Some stone, some metal treads could easily turn the temporary ramp into a permanent fixture. Plans for another day, first: Breakfast.

Jogging back towards where his sled was tucked away in, he would pull back the tarp rapidly off of the box-structure, revealing what was normally there. A mobile garage for doing repairs while out on the dunes, a small stove for cooking, tools, a water barrel, a Jagurabbit. A Jaguarabbit.

Akarui jumped back and away, tripping over his own feet as he fell hard to the surface of the hangar bay, his eyes wide as the rabbit-eared feline predator lifted his head from the opened top of the water barrel and turned it towards Akarui. Sharpened fangs barred towards the man that had interrupted his quenching of its thirst, a low growl carrying a warning of impending lunge.

Akarui froze, panic sweeping over him as he would attempt to shakily stand up to his feet, bracing himself to have to defend against the creatures attack. Yet as he found ground stable enough to stand on, the creature didn’t come towards him. Both Akarui, and the creature stuck in a standoff, gauging who would attack who first.

This went on for nearly an hour before finally, the rumbling stomach of Akarui pushed past the flight or fight mechanism. Approaching towards the creature, which only growled louder, Akarui would move past confidently. “Hungry?” He asked aloud, as if the creature would understand. Moving to open up his cold storage, a hunk of meat was tossed over towards the creature, which took to it rapidly as he would fish out some oats to make a quick porridge. Hot water boiled rapidly as he watched the creature continue to hack and pull the flesh off from the bones in the hunk of meat that was gifted.

Porridge in one hand, canteen in the other, Akarui silently made his way towards the creature that was still eating. Dropping down, he would come to sit across from the creature and enjoy the tasteless oats, eating quickly. As the creature came to finish off its meal, its gaze lazily lifted over towards Akarui, who met the creature's gaze flatly. After a few moments of shared silent communication, before the creature stood up and moved to go and drink some water.

Expecting it to leave, Akarui settled in to quickly scroll through his phone, checking to know when the shipment that had been set up by Salihah would be arriving in Cadentia. Without being noticed, the predator came over next to Akarui and planted its head right in his lap, chittering and purring at the same time.

Akarui froze for a moment, before freeing a hand to run through the tight fur the animal had, letting out a sigh and a chuckle. “Alright… so you need to be fed and watered.” His hand lifted up towards the creature's large ears, scratching behind them causing the rear legs of the feline to beat against the ground happily.

As the day grew to its heat, Akarui set out to work on building up the sand ramp and making it more permanent, a shovel over his shoulder to work. Behind him, his new companion trotted behind him with a feline's grace, settling at the edge of the flight deck to watch lazily as its new friend began working on the sands for the day.

[Akarui Sora]

Chapter Four: Oasis

Oasis. A place of fertile land within an arid landscape. The Sparrowhawk, for all of its benefit, was nowhere near to being the Oasis that Akarui proclaimed it to be. It was a darkened steel behemoth surrounded by empty and shifting sands, holding within it three souls. Two that were wild beasts that had taken a liking to the lone person that had decided to make the derelict ship his home.

His Oasis.

The sun had already began to set as Akarui watched the convoy of trucks, guarded by a few smaller trucks armed with heavy machine guns, descend down the sand ramp that he had taken the time to reinforce and make, hopefully, permanent. As the trucks disappeared behind the dunes, Akarui turned to the pile of crates, boxes and spools of material. Everything he would need to begin work on to bring his vision to life.

Of course, that vision would require a lot of elbow grease and work, an expedition, and stopping his newest friend from chewing through the boxes. The Fruit Drake having jumped up and onto the largest box, sharp teeth pointed out to try and chew through the wood to get into it. “Aya… Pineapple, come down from there.” Akarui rushed over, pulling the Drake down like a large dog. “No eating the boxes silly.” The Drake, confused, chirped back up towards its new friend and waddled off, tackling the feline form of the Rabiguar within the shade.

A small snort as Akarui would just shake his head at the scene of the two wrestling. Family comes in all shapes. Turning back to the largest of the boxes, he would spin a worn crowbar from his side and slot it into the crates crack, digging in and pulling downwards to have the box fall apart.

It was an engine, one that he had previously used. The small form-factor fission reactor that was capable of producing thrust in nearly any condition, including the vacuum of space. The same engines that he and Shelby had ripped out of a inter-planetary freighter and placed inside of their hand crafted planes that had become their workhorses in the CAD. Quietly, his fingers followed the still polished steel exterior, the near silent hum of the engine in stasis. Where before they had to use this very engine second hand, this was factory new. A new heart for a new airframe.

Gründer had done everything in their power to keep him out of the air after the first few weeks of their arrival and belligerent actions in the area. Expecting the people of the desert to bend and break under their boots, they hadn’t foreseen what would happen when a lone, rogue pilot sunk his teeth into their operations. The burning wreckage of the space-destroyer was a beautiful sight to behold.

Of course, that left Akarui at the mercy of Gründer when they came to apprehend him. That bullet was still lodged in muscle tissue as far as he understood, he could barely remember running from Brno Beach. Just that he had managed to barely escape thanks to the help of the few local geezers that hung around on their porches. He still owed them that pack of beer.

Grounded for several harsh months, left to wander on his own. His only support came from the Lady that he had turned to serve. What had come out of the other side was still Akarui. Still the mischievous delinquent with a heart of gold, but also something more. Someone that was far more harsh when he needed to be. Someone that gave everything for something he believed in. It wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t perfect. Making mistakes and falling into trouble all the time, biting off far more than he could chew and plenty…plenty of bruises.

There was a bounding from behind him, as both Drake and Feline creature came rushing forth and tackled him to the ground, tongues dragging along his face to greet their friend and companion with glee. He had been standing still for long enough that they were worried for him. Akarui laughed loudly, arms wrapping around both Drake and Rabiguar and hugging them close. For all of the misfortune he had experienced, this had to mean something right? This had to mean a new beginning.

“Alright up… up, get inside, storms are going to be rolling through soon.” Akarui ushered his companions to the safety of the shelter that was the hangers. Taking the time to ensure the crates were strapped to the surface of the deck and would weather the oncoming storms, there was one final glance up towards the now golden pink sky, following the lines of the rays of the star all the way to the now shadowed mountains.

I lift up my eyes to the mountains, where my help comes from. The words of a song that Salihah had been singing in her domain with his sisters sprung to mind. Those mountains, where once there had been a hidden factory to produce what had once been his foe. A place that had never been touched, with the systems shut down, it was left to be abandoned to decay. A hidden Oasis, with bounty ripe for harvest…