The Sparrow and The Princess

Chapter 2: The Sparrow

Oriole wiped his brow as he looked out over the sandy expanse through his binoculars. The planet he was on felt like it was ten times worse than the Sahara Desert back on Earth. His black uniform was sticky with sweat. He was on security detail with four of his best soldiers.The Galactic Oil Confederation owned three mining rigs on this planet and Oriole was contracted to patrol the borders of their main facility. They had made it out that there was going to be a potential hit on the main rig that would bring operations to a halt for a few weeks, but so far nothing had happened. All the supplies had to be flown in and he thought someone would have to be crazy to want to attack a place like this.

"I hate this planet," Ben said as he passed a canteen of water over to Oriole. His right-hand man, Ben, would be by his side no matter what. With everything that they had survived, every job they were on, Ben was like a brother to Oriole. That didn't stop him from complaining for the billionth time this week though. He squinted through his binoculars as he saw a flash of something in the distance. Was this the attack the Confederation was thinking would happen?

"Quit your yapping, Ben. Do you see that in the distance?" he passed Ben his binoculars out of habit, forgetting that Ben had come equipped with his own pair of binoculars. Ben, ever dutiful, still grabbed Oriole's binoculars and peered into them. He could faintly make out a gray blob coming into the atmosphere pretty fast.

"Yeah I do," Ben commented, handing Oriole back his binoculars. Ben kept his answers short and curt. Most people would have thought he was probably thick-brained, but Ben was really just simple with his words. Anything more didn't need to be said in Ben's eyes. He had answered Oriole's question, with no need for elaboration. Oriole was used to how Ben was.

"You think it could be the supposed attack coming?" Ben pondered. Oriole looked into the binoculars again. The object was getting close to the point where he could actually make out what it was. A small fighter plane with severe damage to it's left wing was making a crash landing on the sandy plains.

"No, it's a fighter plane with wing damage. Probably a thief or pirate shot out of the sky." he shrugged. He watched the trajectory of the fighter plane and it's crash landing. Even without binoculars, the sand cloud that rocketed into the sky was easy to see. He had been in enough crashes to know that whoever was flying that plane would be pretty scraped up coming out of it. He also knew that an emergency police drone had already detected the crash and would be coming to the site to see if there were survivors. Still, that didn't stop him from continuing to watch the scene from a distance. Call it curiosity, or just a sick sense of humor, but he had to keep watching.

It was a good while before the glass dome of the fighter plane finally popped up and a woman crawled out of the wreckage. He could see her sputtering, trying to breathe, scrapes on her right arm and a large gash on her left. Dust and debris had settled in her hair, making it's chocolate brown color look dull and faded. Just as he predicted, a police drone was flying to the site right now. All level one police drones look like baby teddy bear security blankets. Oriole figured this was to help put the potential victim at ease. After all, it was hard to be scared when a security blanket was robotically talking to you.

He watched the girl numbly grab ahold of the security blanket and what she did next was unthinkable. He knew he had to get down there and save her before she did anything worse. He pushed off his elbows and onto his feet from where he had been and started running down the sandy dune and towards the crash site.All the while, he could see the girl acting very confused. Was this her first time seeing a police drone? He figured all the planets came equipped with them. The Royal Intergalactic Coalition had fought for six years to get at least one installed on any inhabited planet. Zeron 84 may just be a mining planet, but it had at least 150 dedicated minors and zero security detail. It was good enough to have a police drone or two.

Ben had stayed back to get their transport pod ready to get going. He knew what Oriole was going to do before Oriole even knew. Being in close quarters with someone for so long made it easy to tell what kind of character they were. Oriole would save the damsel in distress and Ben was the trusty escape driver. After all, Ben had witnessed what Oriole had witnessed.