Chapter 2: Blood on the Dunes

The partnership with Lyra paid off faster than Dax anticipated. Two days after hiring her, a group of raiders tried to sabotage his water pumps. Lyra took out three of them with her plasma rifle before Dax could even aim. The remaining two fled, their rover kicking up dust as it disappeared over the horizon.

Later that evening, they sat around a small fire inside the dome's common area. Lyra cleaned her weapon methodically while Dax patched a leak in one of his irrigation tubes.

"So, what's your story?" Dax asked, breaking the silence.

"I've been a little bit of everything," Lyra replied. "Engineer, smuggler, bounty hunter. Came out here to get away from the corporations in the cities. Thought I'd find freedom, but all I found was chaos."

"Freedom always comes at a cost," Dax said.

Lyra smirked. "And chaos is a hell of a price to pay."

Their conversation was interrupted by an alert on Dax's console. Someone was approaching the ranch—fast. They rushed to the observation deck, where the sensors displayed a lone figure stumbling through the red haze. Dax grabbed his rifle and opened the airlock. The figure collapsed just outside the threshold.

It was a young man, barely out of his teens, with a bloodied face and tattered clothes.

"Raiders," he gasped. "They're coming. Dozens of them."

Dax's heart sank. He turned to Lyra.

"Looks like we're going to war."