Content Warning: Some coarse language

“All right, fellas, listen up,” said the grizzled guide addressing the motley crowd.  “The sandworms are really pernicious critters.  As the locals expand their settlements further into the desert, the sandworms have been uprooting their farms and water system.  Some of them have even developed a taste for livestock.  We’re not going to be able to eliminate all of them.  The goal is just to keep them at manageable levels.”

Leiyu glanced at the other freelancers around him.  Most of them were wearing body armor and, like him, carried a blaster on their hip and a sheathed heat blade.  Leiyu’s heat blade was old and purchased second-hand.  The blade was made of translucent material and the sharp edge glowed when he pressed a button on the hilt.  At the highest temperature setting, it could cut through metal, which was quite useful when he was out scrap collecting.

There was one freelancer who stood in the back of the crowd, further away from everyone else.  They wore a form-fitting spacesuit and a helmet with a large darkened visor that covered the entire face area.  Slung across their slender waist was a belt with an unusual-looking blaster and blade.

“All right, best of luck to ya!” the grizzled guide declared.  “Be careful out there.  They have very sharp teeth and can come out of nowhere.  Curfew’s at sundown so best be back by then!”

Leiyu went back to his hovercraft and got on.  He placed his goggles over his eyes, lifted his face mask up, and pressed the button to turn the vehicle on.  It emitted a faint blue glow from the front lights before levitating.  The other freelancers sped off into the distance and he raced after them.  He turned his head and saw the helmeted freelancer out of the corner of his eye.

They approached the vast golden fields of sand.  The wind whipped through Leiyu’s hair.  Besides the soft hum of the hovercrafts, it was relatively quiet.  How long would they have to wait before the sandworms showed up?  Would they show up at all?

Leiyu’s ears perked up as he heard a faint rumbling coming from below.  He saw the sand lift up as if a wave was rolling through it.  The hovercrafts braked in the air and levitated in place.  The freelancers took out their blasters and got ready.

The sand erupted and a giant sandworm shot into the air.  It had a segmented body with no eyes and a gaping circular mouth was full of clawlike teeth.

“Holy shit!  That thing’s huge!” one of the freelancers shouted.

“Shoot it now!” another one yelled.

The freelancers unleashed a barrage of laser beams from their blasters.  The sandworm shook from the impact of the beams and crashed back down into the sand.

“Did we get it?” asked one of the freelancers.  A few of them brought their hovercrafts closer to the downed sandworm.  When they were right above it, the sandworm suddenly whipped its head upward and knocked some of the freelancers off their hovercrafts.  As they fell onto the sand, the sandworm opened its jaws wider and lurched towards them.  The freelancers screamed as they saw the sandworm’s sharp teeth and braced themselves to be devoured.

There was a sudden flash of light as the jaw came crashing down over them.  However, the teeth did not close in on them.  Instead of a dark cavernous mouth, the freelancers could now see the bright sky above them.  It took a few more seconds for them to realize that they were now surrounded by a ring of sandworm flesh that had been detached from the rest of the body.  One of the freelancers climbed up the sandworm section, wincing at the viscous goo that was oozing from the inner surface.  He poked his head up and caught a glimpse of their savior.

Leiyu was nearly standing on his hovercraft, levitating nearby.  One of his hands gripped the handle while the other one held a glowing heat blade.  The rest of the sandworm’s body was slumped over in the sand.

“Hey man, thanks!” the freelancer called out to him.

“No problem!” Leiyu called back.

The sand behind suddenly burst and another worm came surging towards him.

“Look out!” the freelancer yelled.

Leiyu turned his hovercraft around but the sandworm was too fast.  It knocked him off the vehicle and he rolled onto the sand.  The heat blade was thrown off to the side.  He got up and ran toward it but the sandworm was approaching fast.  He yanked the blaster from his belt and shot a beam at it.  The sandworm was unfazed and opened its mouth wide.

A red ball of energy suddenly tore through the sandworm’s jaw.  The impact of the blast threw Leiyu backward.  After he got up, he saw the immobilized sandworm before him with smoke curling from its damaged jaw.  He turned his head to the left to see where the blast came from.

The helmeted figure in the slim spacesuit sat on a sleek hovercraft, holding a customized blaster in their right hand.  As they turned toward Leiyu, the sun’s light bounced off their helmet.  They nodded and sped away in their hovercraft.

Leiyu retrieved his heat blade and trudged through the sand back to his hovercraft.  He jumped on and started it up so he could rejoin the crowd.

***

The sun was now sinking into the horizon.  The freelancers made their way back to the way station where they met up with the guide.

“Damn, those things are disgusting!” a freelancer growled as he wiped the sandworm goo from his suit.

“We got a few, but it seems like we barely scratched the surface,” another remarked.  “There’s probably whole colonies of them underground.”

“Don’t matter, a job’s a job,” said a third.  “Long as I get some coin, that’s all I care about.”

Leiyu collected his payment on his kom and was cleaning his heat blade when he spotted the helmeted figure leaning against their hovercraft a short distance away.  He jogged over to them.

“Hey!” he said as he approached.  The freelancer turned their helmet toward him.  “I didn’t get a chance to thank you earlier for saving my life.  Thank you so much, bro, I owe you one!”  He held out his hand.

The helmeted one hesitated but stood up straight and shook Leiyu’s hand.  Leiyu noticed that the top of their helmet only reached slightly above his own shoulders.

“Look, if you ever need anything, just let me know,” Leiyu offered.

The helmeted one stared at him for a long time, as if contemplating something.  Leiyu found the silence awkward.

“Well, it was nice meeting you,” Leiyu said.  “Take care-”

“Do you know of a place to stay?” the helmeted one suddenly asked.  Their voice was muffled and sounded mechanical.

“Oh!” Leiyu said.  “Well, I’m a traveling freelancer, so I usually stay on my spacecraft.”

The helmeted one’s head perked up.  “My own spacecraft was damaged when I landed here.”

“Oh?  Do you want me to take a look at it?  Maybe I could help you fix it.”

“It’s beyond repair.  I’m better off getting a new one.  That’s why I’m trying to earn some money.”

“Oh!” Leiyu’s eyes widened.  “But it’ll take a long time to earn enough for even a basic spacecraft if you’re just doing odd jobs here and there.  And if you can’t even leave this planet, you’re just going to be hunting sandworms everyday.”

The helmeted one looked downward.

“Um…I could offer you a place to stay on my spacecraft, at least temporarily,” Leiyu said.  “I owe you my life anyway.  I travel from planet to planet doing odd jobs, so you can just tag along and earn some money yourself.”

The helmet tilted upward.  “Would you really do that?”

“Sure.  There’s no one else on the spacecraft so there’s enough space.”

The helmeted one stared at him.  “All right, it’s a deal.”

Leiyu smiled.  “Okay, just follow my hovercraft.  Sun’s about to go down anyway so we better hurry.”

***

The hatch door on the underside of Leiyu’s spacecraft opened downward, forming a ramp.  Leiyu’s hovercraft floated upward, followed by the smaller hovercraft of his guest.

“You can just park yours here,” said Leiyu as he turned off his vehicle.  The helmeted one positioned their vehicle next to his.  Leiyu pressed a button on a remote control hidden in his pocket and the hatch door closed.

“Make yourself at home,” Leiyu said.  “I’ll show you around.”

They walked down the narrow corridor.

“There are two rooms, so you can take the empty one,” said Leiyu.  “Tiny kitchen here and a table for eating.”  He stared at the helmet.  “Oh, by the way, do you keep that helmet on at all times?”  He smiled and added, “it might be hard to eat that way.”

He thought he heard a faint mechanical laugh.

“I do keep it on most of the time, but I don’t have to,” the helmeted one replied.  “It gets rather stuffy in here anyway.”  They pressed a button on the side of the helmet.  The metal plates surrounding the dark visor suddenly retracted into the circular earpieces on both sides of the head.  A cascade of long auburn hair tumbled from the back of their head as they pulled off the visor.  Two teardrop-shaped ruby earrings dangled from their ears.  Leiyu’s jaw dropped as his brown eyes met their amber ones.

“Oh…” Leiyu breathed.  “You’re…a girl…”  She’s so pretty, he thought.

His auburn-tressed guest stared at him with one lifted eyebrow and a slight frown.

Did I say something wrong? Leiyu thought.  “I’m sorry that I thought you were a guy earlier.  It’s just that everyone else at the sandworm hunt was a guy and I just assumed-”

His guest smiled.  “It’s okay.  I’m not actually a girl.”

“What?!” Leiyu exclaimed.  “Sorry, that came out wrong.”  He looked at his guest from head to toe.  Other than their face, the rest of their body looked more male, albeit very slender.  “You…are a guy, then?”

His guest shook their head.  “Not that either.”

“Um…then…”

“I come from a planet where the inhabitants are neither male nor female.  At least, most of the time.”

Leiyu’s eyes widened.  “Oh…then how do…”

“How do we reproduce?  Is that what you wanted to ask?”

“Um…sure…” Leiyu felt his face turning red.  “Do you just…make copies of yourselves?”

The guest laughed.  “Yes, we can do that if we have to…but it’s not ideal and it rarely happens.  The more common way is when two people who have a bond reach a point when they are ready to reproduce, one of them becomes male and the other one becomes female.”

“Oh…I’ve never heard of that before…do they know beforehand which one will become what?”

“Mm, no, it’s completely random.”

“Random?  Then can they both turn into the same thing?”

“Hmm, that could happen too.  In that case, reproduction doesn’t end up happening, so we wouldn’t have a record of it.”

“Your planet is interesting…what’s it called?”

The guest frowned.

“Is something wrong?”

“It doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Doesn’t exist?”

“The Imperiat came.”

“Oh…I’m sorry…”

The guest looked downward.

“I lost my family to the Imperiat too.  They invaded the moon we lived on.”

The guest looked up at him.

“Look…um…” Leiyu hesitated, contemplating his next words.  “You can stay here as long as you want…I won’t mind…”

The guest smiled.  “Thank you.”

“Actually…” Leiyu said.  “I still don’t know your name.  Should have done introductions earlier.  My name is Leiyu.”

“My name is Thallios.”

Leiyu smiled.  “Do you want anything to eat?”

Thallios smiled back.  “Sure, I’d like that.”