"Brace the door!" Gideon called, motioning to two Watchers, who were already hurrying for the long, wooden post next to the open doorway of the Comm Building. They lifted the heavy piece of wood while several other men slammed the door, dulling the wind's scream. The Watchers wedged the board into several wooden grooves, stepping back and wiping the sand from their faces.
A heavy gust of wind drew Gideon's attention to the roof, where something struck the edge of the dome and scraped over the top. A pang of fear he wasn't used to coursed through him.
Looking at the sloping roof's surface, it was easy to spot the years of repair. Some parts of the roof were comprised of the same slate gray stone that made up the rest of the building, but too many sections showed different colors, where they had patched the roof with the same mud brick as the rest of the hovels outside. The enormous, round building was the construct of the first generation—brave men who had forged a path on a new planet. He and his men had kept it stable, but the storm was severe enough that even Gideon worried it might collapse.
The other Heads of Colony—Wyatt, Brody, Saurab, and Horatio—hovered instinctively near the round table in the room's center, watching him. Nearby, The Watchers silently judged the building's stability, with tan, weather-beaten faces. Most had made it down from the cliffs before the storm started. A few had been forced to duck for cover. They were brave men, but the storm had them rattled.
All of Gideon's men knew the protocol for a storm such as this. The best place to be was in the main room, where they could survive underneath the enormous, round table if the roof collapsed. Everyone knew to stay away from the walls, or the private quarters accessed by the doors along the round edges of the main room. Those smaller rooms might easily become their graves.
He appraised the table, around which most of his Heads of Colony instinctively gathered. Around it were two dozen chairs. In its middle was a huge, metal centerpiece—a remnant from the days of the earliest colonists. Gideon traced the contours of the round, strange relic. The piece of metal was covered in small flaps and useless buttons he would never understand. Whenever he looked at it, he envisioned the enormous, rusted satellite dish of which it had been a part.
His father had told him about it. At one time, the dish had been a means of communication between Ravar and Earth, sending signals through some pieces of metal in the sky to the ships, reporting back on the colonists' mission. Over generations, the satellite dish had lost its use, like most of the other things that used to be in the room, scavenged by his ancestors and turned into things of necessity. Long ago, the metal's last scraps had sunk into the sand beneath the other side of the cliffs on the western formation. That area was forbidden, like too many other areas of danger.
Lost in a moment of reflection, Gideon ran his hands over his gray hair. Whenever he looked at the remainder of that relic, he recalled watching his father and his men hovering around the table during sandstorms like these, the way he and his men did now. His father had always kept him close, allowing him to attend every meeting, priming Gideon for the role that would encompass the rest of his life. Gideon had taken his position seriously, and would continue to do so until his death, just like his father, and his grandfather.
He'd never forget his father's last words as he lay on the bed in his room, dying of old age.
"Preservation at all costs."
A rattling noise distracted him.
Gideon's head jerked to a section of wall by the entrance, where one of the dozen hanging fossils shook. His head Watcher, Thorne, hurried over, adjusting the long, curved, yellowed skull. Thorne's severe expression didn't waver as he rotated the fossil with muscular, tanned arms.
The ancient skull was several times the size of Gideon's head.
He knew those bones almost as well as he knew his own body.
"Should we take it down?" Thorne asked.
Gideon studied the shaking object, and the others next to which it hung. All of the skulls had been there far longer than he had been alive, secured into the walls by pieces of metal that were probably older than the building, and would probably outlast both he and his men.
Each one was different, but no less entrancing. More times than Gideon could count in his childhood, he had stared at those skulls with equal fright and imagination, trying to put flesh over their bones. He had envisioned the animals that had walked around with them, with the heavens only knew how many legs. Each of the skulls contained a multitude of gaping sockets, housing features of which only his ancestors knew.
His eyes riveted on one in particular—an oversized skull with three orifices that might be eyes. A few of the animals appeared similar to the Rydeer that roamed the desert, or even the speckled wolves, but more than a few were decidedly hideous. The shaking skull's jawbone wiggled up and down with some wind that must be getting in through a crevice. Thankfully, that species was dead, or hadn't been spotted in so long that it might as well be, like most of the others.
The harsh environment—and the earliest hunters—had killed them off.
"Sir?" Thorne called over to him, awaiting his command.
Gideon swallowed, feeling a tinge of childhood fright he hated. With the sandstorm raging, it was easy to imagine himself and his men all buried, and some strange, future race digging them up.
"Leave the skulls. They'll be fine," Gideon ordered. "Get back to the table. We should be ready, in case the winds get worse."