The first thing Justin noticed was the heat, the way the air itself seemed to crackle and sizzle on his skin. He was half afraid that come nightfall, he’d already be cooked through and through, like he’d been speared on a metal rail and rotisseried over an open fire. As it was, dusk was a good three hours off yet -or so Justin thought, he couldn’t be sure- and the low hanging sun cast rays that felt equal to high noon as he’d known it back on Earth during training runs spent in Death Valley. Everywhere Justin looked he saw heat waves distorting his perception, and if he didn’t have so goddamned much to worry about already, he might be inclined to think he was going to die out here, amid the scraggly sagebrush and dusty red rock.

There had obviously been water here once, as the lines and grooves in the rock face of the canyon below testified, but not so much as a drop remained. Justin’s brow furrowed as he stood surveying the terrain. Trees as he knew them were nonexistent on this planet. The landscape boasted only an occasional clump of wood, trunks little more than sticks whose diameter was shockingly thin, and even then, they did not sport the crown of foliage Justin was used to.

The heat combined with the dryness of the climate made the dirt beneath his feet take on a life of its own. It crept everywhere, it seemed, because they hadn’t been on the planet for more than half an hour and already his pants were dusted with the ruddy terra, his boots caked in it. The grit mixed with the sheen of sweat coating his features and every time he ran his hand across his forehead or the back of his neck, his palm came away with granules stuck to it and the skin where he’d rubbed felt raw.

The climate was intolerable but the worst part had to be the mangled remains of tankers and crashed fighter jets -both foreign and of the League- which protruded at odd angles from the ground, jutting up from the sand like hands reaching up out of a grave. And indeed, Justin couldn’t shake the feeling that he stood on hollowed but desecrated ground, a sort of extemporary cemetery for the fallen soldiers and their twisted scraps of plutonium.

He could almost smell the blood, the stench of a battlefield.

Justin turned away from the canyon and the desert beyond, expecting to see a mirage at any moment, a testament to his waning sanity and the toll the heat was already taking on his body. Instead, he saw JC just where he’d left him, reclining against an outcropping of rock in the sliver of shadow it provided.

Justin plodded over then sank to the ground beside JC, sending up a little cloud of dust where the seat of his pants hit, and dared to say what they’d both so carefully avoided.

“We’re fucking stuck here, aren’t we?”

JC used his teeth to tie a knot in the dressing he’d wrapped snugly around the jagged wound on his upper left arm, then squinted up at the bright, azure sky.

“Don’t know,” he said.

“C’mon,” Justin growled lowly. “We didn’t spend nine years together at the Academy just so you could be all evasive with me.”

JC’s eyes snapped to Justin and a frown creased his forehead. “Well what do you want me to say? We’re fucked, okay? Fucked. You saw my flight craft, Justin. It looks like Swiss cheese and there ain’t no way we can fix that, man. You know it as well as I do.”

Justin did know. So he said nothing more and began to pick at a hangnail, wishing he was back on the base, still in training, and not out here in the middle of no where, getting into skirmishes and evacuating from his jet because it was going down and he didn’t want it to take him, too.

“Here.” JC pressed a canteen of water to Justin’s chest.

Justin drank, then handed the vessel back to JC, who took a gulp. Justin’s gaze locked on JC’s adam’s apple as it bobbed with a swallow. A trickle of water escaped from the corner of JC’s mouth, and Justin tried not to notice as JC’s tongue chased as much of it as he could before wiping the residue off with the back on his hand.

“If we find an outpost, we can use their com. Contact the base. Let them know we’re still alive.”

“*If* we’re still alive,” Justin muttered.

“Yeah. Hey, you’re bleeding.”

“Really? Where?” Justin asked. The fact that he was shedding blood was hardly news because the front of his shirt was splattered with it. His lip had been split, he knew, since the tang of iron was bitter on his tongue. Other than a stinging gash on his forehead, though, Justin wasn’t aware of any additional wounds. He was too busy not being scared.

“Here,” JC touched Justin’s temple lightly, making him hiss. “You got bashed a good one, looks like.” The words were delivered gruffly, but with an undertone of concern that made Justin feel a little better, reminding him of home and the way JC had always watched out for him, kept an eye on his six.

The pad of JC’s thumb rubbed at the blood smeared from Justin’s temple down along the line of his jaw.

“You look like you’ve got war paint on,” he said. Justin figured he must and would have said something in reply, but JC’s thumb was on the move, stroking over the skin of his throat and dipping onto his collarbone. Then, JC was ripping off another shred of his undershirt, and wetting it with a little of the water from the canteen. Justin folded his hands in his lap and concentrated on them as he tried not to look at JC’s bare abdomen while JC gently washed away as much of the sticky redness as he could.

“Hey, um.”

“What?” JC patted at the cut a little, dabbing the encrusted dirt away.

“Thanks.”

JC paused. “For what?”

“For. Uh. Well, for you know. Like, coming after me. Getting me out of that pod before I baked to death. Not just going on by yourself, finding a city or whatever and.”

“Hey.” JC placed his palm flush against Justin’s cheek and turned the boy’s head to face him. “We’re gonna be okay. And we’re in this together, so stop talkin’ shit.”

“Yeah,” Justin agreed, feeling his cheeks heat for reasons he couldn’t explain. He was all too aware of what JC had done by taking the time to find him, to drag him out of the oven-like enclosure of his detached cockpit and then rouse him back into consciousness. And now, Justin couldn’t seem to ignore the brush of JC’s thumb against the corner of his mouth, probably not a purposeful touch, but there just the same. ‘It’s this fucking heat, that’s all,’ Justin assured himself angrily. ‘And those motherfucking enemy fighters.’

“Let’s rest a while, at least until nightfall. It’ll be better traveling, then.”

Justin nodded, leaning back against the rock beside JC. “How’re we gonna figure out which way to go?”

JC scratched the crown of his head and sighed. “There’s only one way *to* go. We’re bordered on two sides by that canyon, and to the north is nothing but old battlefield. So, that leaves east. Work our way up over that hill, I guess.”

Silence reigned, a quality of sound which Justin found disturbing. He wasn’t used to the quiet at all, not on the base where there was always the roar of jet engines and the almost constant stutter of the firing range. But here, it was not ordinary quiet, it was absolute silence. Nothing moved, nothing rattled, nothing droned. There was no audible evidence of life. And that, Justin thought, was even worse than the heat.