The Impossible Winds
Harvesting the Spice of Life
This is fourth installment of the Collision series. You can read Part 5 here. If you’re new to the series, you can read Part 1 here.
Munha adjusted the collection device for the third time in a minute. She was more than used to Khmo’s seasonal gales, but the planet’s winds rarely shifted this often in the course of an hour. In fact, one-third of the planet’s citizens made a living on them not shifting during this time of year.
Gritting her teeth, she swung under the oversized metal sieve, dragging it down and to the northwest, trying to avoid her take from getting any smaller than it already was. The worn edge of the container ripped a hole in Munha’s drab jacket, exposing a strip of tawny skin and a hint of blood that annoyed her more than anything. She rolled her eyes as more particles started to hit the container and expand, turning from a blue that nearly matched the sky to a brilliant scarlet, forming patches of red against the shimmering silver metal it reacted with.
Once a solid enough layer had formed, Munha pulled the switch, bringing the spice into a second container below. A few stray particles from the scraper got in her face, causing her eyes to water. The winds might have been fickle today, but the galaxy-renowned—at least at one point — Khmoan adole remained as incendiary as ever.
Munha had some time to think as the gusts slowed, easily able to tune out the occasional pops of silt particles as they reacted with the container to make the spice. What had been going on for the last few weeks to halve her normal take? She worked through the possibilities:
First, a standard shift. Every now and again, Khmo’s winds would shift over the course of a day or two, lessening the take as a smaller amount of silt would arrive from the Great Desert.
This explanation didn’t feel quite right, as the typical shifting winds just meant they’d come in a different direction for a few days, not shift several times in one day. On top of that, standard shifts lasted a week at most, not the 26 days Munha had counted since they first became unstable.
Second, maybe the planet’s orbit was changing or the angle of its axis was shifting?
If the change in orbit or axial tilt were actually happening, Munha figured she would’ve heard about it by now. If the scientists had somehow missed it, artificial farming islands would be up sooner than later to catch the silt in its new optimal locations. Maybe the ones from centuries ago would be revisited and renovated, that is if they could get all the vornrath, and worse, their pups, out of the equipment.
There was a third possibility: Roughly a year ago, there was an interruption when a band of pirates went to the Great Desert itself to get the spice straight from the source. After three months without even a response from the garrison of two platoons of soldiers — if that — stationed on the planet, a few dozen merchants from Munha’s hometown ramshackled a few combat skiffs and went there themselves.
Apparently the pirates weren’t ready for an assault so close to ground level, as many of them hadn’t even made it to their patrol craft when their base was lit up by a cacophony of pulse cannon fire and bodkin missiles, with the merchants recovering a substantial amount of spice, albeit only half of what they expected.
Had the pirates gotten most of the Great Desert’s supply off-world in those few weeks? Was it depleting through some natural process? Whatever the case, Munha told herself she’d have an answer soon.
The following four days were more of the same — or rather, much, much less of it — and the unease was starting to make itself known in Lsanta City’s markets. Even with the Khmoan tradition of thriftiness, people’s savings would only last for so long, and dipping into them for the first time was a borderline traumatic experience for most people.
Munha wasn’t quite as reluctant to spend as most of her fellow citizens, but she wasn’t thrilled either; she definitely didn’t have as many silver agias, let alone golden auxes to spend as the older families on the planet, and Confederation credits meant next to nothing out here. Fitting, because Khmo certainly meant nothing to the Confederation.
This disregard — no, contempt — from the Confederation towards Khmo had its benefits. For one, nearly all the citizens of Khmo had some after-market parts on their speeders and skiffs, be they tellurium engine boosters, armor-piercing bodkin missiles, or even mass drivers which fired molten projectiles nearly as fast as a pulse cannon could, but with considerably more, well, mass behind it.
Munha had taken advantage of this herself, with her mini-skiff’s speed doubled thanks to those tellurium engine boosters. Its paltry standard load-out of one medium pulse cannon was also upgraded with a pair of light mass drivers, perfect for the recon mission she had planned.
Fixing a recorder onto the skiff, Munha headed out in the middle of the night, the squat, teal lights of Lsanta City fading away after just a few minutes, and the cliffs that nearly swallowed the city disappearing not long after that. Roughly an hour later, the skiff found a rocky outcrop in the middle of a frothing sea, green foam lapping at jet black cliffs.
Those cliffs were holding firm under a millenia-long onslaught, supporting the island’s lone dwelling, a squat stone hovel. The building itself was three stories, only one of which as above ground. In decades past, it had served as an outpost for the Ringut Spice Company, with the spice winds blowing directly over the island and leading to some supposedly monumental takes, at least according to Munha’s grand-uncle. The building had probably paid for itself dozens of times over.
The door still had a faded insignia of the company, which had long since gone bankrupt due to family infighting, tariffs, or one of the universe’s other inevitabilities. The opening mechanism was long since busted, in part due a certain adventurous teenager who went there with her uncle several years back. Smirking a bit, Munha pulled out her knife, sliding the bronze-tinged blade in the door until it caught, then flicking it down and to the right, triggering the door’s manual mechanism. The old metal was surprisingly quiet as it let Munha in. Had she oiled the door the last time she visited?
She must have, as the vacation house/doomsday bunker was otherwise identical to when she was last there. The freezer was still well-stocked with rations so nondescript they looked like the decoy food from ancient Earth propaganda. Still, the things supposedly lasted for decades, so if anything ever went down during The Collision, Munha would have plenty of time to figure things out. Khmo wasn’t supposed to be affected in the slightest, but that didn’t stop its risk-averse — no, neurotic— citizens from preparing for it. A second house with a freezer full of food was a relatively tame measure compared to the arsenals and acres-long hydroponic complexes some Khmoans had hidden around the planet.
Munha was reheating one of said non-descript rations when she heard something from the lower levels. Just a hint of wind; apparently all those years of farming had done her senses some good after all. Drawing her pulse blaster, Munha crept down to the bottom level, only using the illuminator attached to the blaster’s twin chromium barrels. Holding her dagger in her other hand, Munha walked down the gray stone steps towards the whistling of the wind, rubbing the turquoise stone embedded in the dagger’s handle for luck as she entered the cellar.
The basement was full of farming equipment, with countless sieves and containers from the house’s old days as a spice farm, their metal a slightly shinier gray than the fill-crete floors. These familiar masses of metal scarcely drew a bit of Munha’s attention.
She was solely focused on the black hole smack in the center of the room. Thankfully not the kind that occurs in space, or else she would have been torn to ribbons the second she entered the house, but a literal black hole surrounded by a purple ring, just there in the middle of the room, deathly still. Taking a breath, Munha looked for a possible emitter, or anything that would have created whatever she was staring at. There was nothing. Whoever made it was not just a petty pirate, and was likely capable of causing much more damage. Perhaps they already had. They couldn’t be allowed to do that for any longer.
Munha thought of running, not to the Confederation — that would be a cruel joke — but to her fellow citizens. Even if she could get some of them on her side, who knew how long this thing in front of her was going to last? No, there was only one option. Steeling herself, Munha stepped through the portal…
Freddie Bastiat is a futurist who’s a fan of Yoko Taro games, college football, and the restoration of the Byzantine and Achaemenid Empires. You can find him on Bluesky @bastiat-child.bsky.social
