DARK SANDS: Book One of the Darkworlds Saga, page 1
DARK SANDS: THE DARKWORLDS SAGA #1
Copyright © 2025 by J.S.HARMAN
All rights reserved.
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The story, names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Book Cover Design by DAMONZA
Edited by Kat Betts of Element Editing Services.
First Edition 2025
ISBN: 978-1-7641209-0-6 (paperback); 978-1-7641209-1-3 (ebook)
Table of Contents
Key Information
0: PROLOGUE
PART ONE: BEFORE
1: DIRT-GROWN POTATOES
2: MUDDY-ORANGE MARBLE
3: BLINDING DAWN
4: UNNATURAL
5: TO BE FIRST
6: SUNFALL
7: SHIMMERS
PART TWO: BESET
8: LITTLE ORANGE LIGHTS
9: NINE HOURS
10: THE SPACE BETWEEN
11: A TAUNTING GRIN
12: RIDE
13: THESE EYES CAN’T LIE
PART THREE: BETWEEN
14: LIFE
15: THIRTY SECONDS
16: THROUGH THE DEPTHLESS VOID
17: KENOPSIA
18: HONEY AND HOPE
19: EVERYTHING IS STRANGE HERE
20: KALEIDOS
21: JUDICIAM PER IGNUM
22: THE GATHERING STORM
PART FOUR: BENEATH
23: SUCH FLEETING WONDER
24: THE ONLY WAY
25: BLIND
26: RETURN
27: ALONE
28: FAREWELL
29: FATE
PART 5: BEYOND
30: ∞
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HOW TO SUPPORT THE AUTHOR
Key Information
Key Personnel:
Science:
Dr. Ashelyn, S (M) Dr. Jontie, L (M)
Dr. Mai, W (B) Sp. Tarlo, V (B)
Dr. Sel, S (G) Sp. Yerald, T (D)
Detachment:
Sgt Terrus, T Cpl Velentini, I Sq. Abado, M
Sgt Rushna, P Cpl Enthis, L Sq. Vashni, S
Sq Han, Z Sq Bostov, R
Construction:
Jame, T Elhanto, S Mondes, M
Mury, N Lavelle, S Sestry, M
Kermanh, N Amir, A
Elec-tech Specialists:
Morgen, T Girani, K
Vehicles and Assets:
D6: Carrier class, mobile base sustaining several people for up to a standard week. 1 per base.
B6/BBF: AKA Biologists Best Friend. Exploration buggy. 3 per base.
MULE: 3 per base. Construction robots.
E12: All-environment, high-tolerance spacesuits.
CAHROS INFORMATION:
Day/Cycle Length: 220 hours.
Sunrise/Sunset Duration: 4 hours.
Average Diurnal Surface Temp: 25 degrees Celsius
Average Nocturnal Surface Temp: -15 degrees Celsius
Expedition departure date: 03-01-2220
Travel time from Earth: 4 weeks active, 8 weeks stasis
Capital Ship return date: 20-06-2220
0
PROLOGUE
New London, Earth
Common Date (CD): 20-06-2220
The coffee on the third floor was always too bitter. She had never really liked coffee anyway, but things got so boring here, she’d often make extra journeys to the brew machine just to break the monotony. Except for the days when she was anxious; then she’d just have one and resign herself to the increased boredom. In a job like this, it was always better to be bored than busy.
Crisis correspondent, that’s what they called her. The job nobody wanted. If something went wrong out there, she was the one tasked with notifying the families of the victims. She wouldn’t even be told how it happened – that was need-to-know only – but you could bet she’d be the one making the calls and sending out the flowers. She’d be the one fielding the questions, the tears, the rage, and the accusations.
The office space was dark, almost dingy, and always smelled of damp, but at least the ceiling didn’t leak. Large west-facing windows allowed a great view of the city, though that could be considered a negative. New London was a brown-grey eyesore that captured all the dourness of its predecessor with none of the character.
She skipped the coffee today.
The meeting would be over soon. Everyone around the place was nervous, as this morning marked the first time they’d be receiving word from the off-world expeditions. The execs would listen to the reports first, of course, and then most likely call in the media. They had press releases drafted for every eventuality and every demographic: hearty, patriotic declarations for the right-wing outlets, messages of scientific breakthrough and social progress for the left, promises of profit and sustainability for the investors and politicians.
The colonisation project represented so much to so many, and this first update was an event of international importance. There was one scenario though, where they wouldn’t immediately call in the media. A scenario where things had gone so catastrophically wrong, nobody could know until the situation was contained, understood. Handled. In that scenario, they would call in the crisis correspondent.
An elevator dinged and shuddered to a halt, shaking the entire floor. Someone stepped out, not the chief exec, but one of her deputies. They weren’t supposed to be here; the media were on the ground floor.
She hoped that his confused look could simply be attributed to getting out at the wrong floor, but he didn’t turn and leave. Instead, he squinted around, scanning the room with beady black eyes. She shrank back into her cubicle, as if that might change something. He couldn’t be looking for her, right? Maybe one of the media liaisons? Maybe he was just a fan of burned coffee, maybe—
His eyes locked onto hers and he approached, swift in stride.
“Hey. CC officer, right?” His voice was low and curt, and his left eye twitched as though whatever thoughts existed behind it were trying to break free. “Would you mind joining us up in the office for a minute?” She nodded and jumped to her feet, banging her knee on her desk in the process.
In this job, it was always better to be bored than busy.
“…some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
HP Lovecraft
PART ONE
BEFORE
1
DIRT-GROWN POTATOES
New London, Earth
Tarlo
CD: 03-01-2220
Tarlo could still remember every detail about the moment he’d found out he would be leaving Earth. He’d been sitting at the old dining table in their family home, accompanied by his mother and sister, eating broccoli and potatoes. He remembered the meal because they were the first dirt-grown vegetables he’d had in months – they only got the lab stuff out in the desert – and they just tasted better. It was that strange time of afternoon where the uncovered windows still allowed sufficient natural light, but not enough to prevent the creep of evening gloom. An eerie time of day, one that as a child, always left him feeling unsettled.
His mother Karee’s house was small, cramped, just one of a million similar dwellings that had been constructed postwar. Characterless apartments, created solely to provide shelter for the maximum number of people, with the smallest expenditure of space. Karee found small ways to give it life, be it her artful arrangement of inherited furniture, or walls decorated with souvenirs from Tarlo and his sister Demi’s childhoods and successful careers in research and academia.
Despite the gloominess of the afternoon, there had been a feeling of great warmth in the room. Demi had just graduated from her gold levels, and Tarlo, freshly returned from eight months in the Mongolian desert, had brought with him several pieces of good news. Firstly, sustained observation had revealed that plant and insect biodiversity was increasing at rates significantly higher than predicted. Secondly, their expedition had been a resounding success, testing a variety of tech that would not only be useful in the continuing worldwide restoration, but would serve as prototypes for the upcoming Extraterrestrial Colonisation Project. A project that, earlier that day, he had learned he would be a part of.
There were other reasons Tarlo held this day so fondly in his mind. It had been the last day of true stillness, where he had been able to simply sit in the excitement of the moment. Demi, with her golds, could now secure work with the restoration project, for which the meagre salary would be offset by the guarantee of on
The time following this pristine moment had disappeared in a blur. Twenty-five weeks, where every day was significant, and every second had a purpose. The rigorous training, testing, and conditioning of the first few months gave way to countless interviews, conferences, and farewells as the departure date grew nearer. They were not just scientists, astronauts, and colonists, but a symbol of political unity and societal progression, presented to the public to optimise the message that humanity, despite desecrating its home to a point almost beyond return, was not finished.
Regardless of whatever cynical political backdrop lay behind the Initiative, Tarlo had still found himself overwhelmed with excitement. These were the final days he would spend on Earth. He would miss Demi and Karee so dearly, but looking ahead, all he saw were a thousand captivating possibilities unfurling in front of him.
This giddiness had made it difficult to feel truly present in the events of these final days, and at times he felt as though he was merely watching them play out on a screen. Even as he had hugged Karee a final time that morning, tears in her eyes and a smile on her face, all Tarlo could think about was the imminent embrace of the stars. Years of working, months of training, and a lifetime of dreaming – it all led to this.
It appeared he was not alone in this feeling; a strained hush had taken over the shuttle where his fellow colonists-to-be sat in various states of readiness. Tarlo recognised only a few of the faces from the training. The UCI – United Colonisation Initiative – had originally taken on close to two thousand would-be colonists, although less than half of that number actually finished the training. The two people he had formed close bonds with, Markys and Steryn, had received vastly differing outcomes. Markys had fallen at the final hurdle, as his post-training psychiatric test revealed neurotic tendencies that hadn’t been present before he undertook the gruelling six months of training. It seemed nobody liked to talk about those who had come out of the “close quarters, isolation, and conflict” sessions with lasting personality changes.
Tarlo acknowledged the cynical logic to the testing – in an isolated colony, light-years from reinforcement, a governing body couldn’t take any chances. Even then, he’d heard there was a margin of error to these examinations of human “behavioural predictability” which averaged out to roughly one-in-fifty psychoanalytic predictions recording false positives.
Steryn had been handpicked for another role altogether; having shown a remarkably high level of physical reflex and technological understanding, he’d been drafted to join the “elite of the elite” – Interstellar Fleet. While this honour came with a certain gravitas, Tarlo did not envy Steryn, as the vast majority of those in the Interstellar Fleet would never set foot on an extraterrestrial planet. Jokes abounded that for all the fanfare, these venerable, highly skilled pilots were little more than interstellar ferrymen.
Among those on the shuttle with him presently, there was one face that resonated in Tarlo’s psyche: Ashelyn. He didn’t remember where or how he’d learned her name. He’d only been grouped with her a few times, but there was something about her that differed from many of the others who’d emerged from the rigorous psych-testing. Her hair was wrapped up tightly above her head, accentuating already angular features, and its raven-blackness contrasted sharply with a pair of the most vivid green eyes he’d ever seen. She was striking, but not in a conventionally beautiful way. Those eyes. There’s something about—
He was snapped from his reverie by the announcement everybody had been waiting for: “All crew and staff, final check before departure, ensure you are seated and stationary.”
Steryn had once told him these announcements were little more than a tradition – they could all be doing backflips and cartwheels and still wouldn’t be affected by the g-force-shattering events of the ship taking off and entering relativity-bending speeds. Tarlo’s thirst for knowledge had always been focused on the machinations of the living – beyond the tools necessary for his profession, he found the specifics of interstellar engineering to be rather mind-numbing. Even when he did make the effort to understand, he tended to lose his focus once the words quantum, post-light, relativistic, or plane-skip were repeated too many times.
The structural integrity of the ship allowed for nothing resembling windows, but several large screens in the viewing area served the same purpose. They focused one last shot on the masses of farewellers gathered a safe distance from the launch area. Though it was too far to make out individuals, Tarlo knew Demi and Karee would be among them, cheering as loud as anyone. It was comforting to know he wouldn’t be leaving them alone; they’d look after each other. Life had never been easy for the three of them, but he drew comfort knowing that their futures, along with that of the Earth itself, seemed safer than ever.
Tarlo’s group were not the only ones leaving Earth on this prestigious day – in fact, they were one of four concurrent expeditions funded by the multinational UCI project. The build up to the launches had been a worldwide spectacle not seen since The Final Armistice, with thousands mustering at each launch zone, spread across the world’s four major continents, to celebrate humankind’s best and bravest venturing out into the stars. Several thousand kilometres above, four gigantic Titanic-class colonist frigates awaited them, ready to take them out to distant corners of the Milky Way.
Local-system space travel and habitation had been successfully implemented for decades, with hundreds given opportunity to work in industrial and exploration outposts, but there had never been financial incentive, or any perceived benefit, to mankind breaking out of its home system. That was until the UCI was born, a glistening testament to the cooperation of humanity, powered by the resources of all the remaining global superpowers. It had seemed a miracle when it was founded, and as always, questions were asked of the true incentives behind the sudden cooperation, but the face of the Initiative was one of glorious, expeditious opportunity. The truth was, it had been an easy sell to the downtrodden populations of the inhabited continents, so wearied from the ravages of natural disaster and the planet-spanning Last Great War. With Earth now officially “back on track”, the UCI’s vision was simple, yet compelling; find proof of life in outer space, and expand humanity’s growing cosmic footprint while they were at it.
“A posse ad esse. Ad aeterno,” rang the final words of the announcer: the calling cry of the UCI. From possibility to actuality. To eternity. Tarlo braced for a great rumble, but the shuttle’s launch was quick and quiet, and within just a few seconds they had broken through the atmosphere.
There was a slight delay in orbit as they met up with the larger frigate, a powerful beast known as the Nitimini. Tarlo took a moment to enjoy the new vision on the cam screens. They were dominated now by the beautiful blue-green sphere, covered sporadically with wisps of white and grey. Fare you well, dear Earth. It was incredible that, from this distance, it still seemed so luscious and beautiful, despite weathering so much abuse throughout the past century.
A few more robotic confirmations intoned as the docking completed and the Nitimini’s primary engines kicked in. The departure was smooth, due to both the ship’s internal gravity and the lack of atmospheric interruption, and the only way Tarlo could tell they were moving was by watching the cam-feeds. He, like everyone, remained transfixed on the images of their home as it shrank rapidly: a pale, fading blue dot shining in defiance of the blanketing dark of empty space.
Moments later, it was gone. Tarlo’s stomach dropped and disorientation set in as he realised there was no ground beneath his feet nor sky above his head, no up or down, and no single point of reference for his place in reality. He was the most insignificant of specks, hurtling through the abyss with just a few metres of titanium preventing him from being crushed into absolute nothing.
Everything he’d ever known was gone, as though it were never there. As though he were never there. Unconsciously, his eyes found the closest thing to a familiar face. He was startled to realise Ashelyn was already staring back at him. His stomach backflipped again, this time accompanied by a markedly different feeling. Now was not the time to try to understand that sensation.
