It’s not that I’m disappointed. Not really. It’s just... this place is hell.
The air recyclers wheeze and sputter like arthritic lungs, every breath filtered through layers of static-laced purification that still leaves a taste like warm battery acid on the back of my tongue. The suits are stiff and unforgiving, sealed tight to protect us from the radiation bursts, but so thick around the joints that it feels like walking through molasses. Every movement is a negotiation. Every step a calculated risk.
“Just another glorious day on Purgonis,” I mutter, bent double under the weight of a sample kit, sweat crawling down my spine in sticky rivers. The inner lining of the suit clings to me like a second skin—one that absolutely hates me.
Ciampa’s voice crackles in over the comms. “Section Three is still uncharted, students. Make sure your scans are thorough.”
“Got it, Professor,” I answer, and I don’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. It doesn’t matter. He never listens when we’re not in the room with him.
The ridge I’m surveying looks like it was belched out of the planet’s throat. Blackened slag, charred crust, steam venting through cracks that singe the soles of our boots if we step wrong. Glorious. I kneel beside a patch of warped rock, flicking on my compad’s scanner.
“Gamma spikes again,” I murmur, tapping through the readouts. “Higher than yesterday’s baseline.” The data pings back with angry orange flags. I make a note, wipe the touchscreen on my suit’s knee, and glance up at the horizon.
The sun on this side of the planet never truly sets. It just… glowers. A dull, amber smudge behind the magnetic haze, bleeding color into the thick, dust-choked sky. Everything glints weird here. Distorted. Like the light’s fighting the planet and losing.
Still, there’s something undeniably beautiful about it. Like a planet that refuses to die pretty. It snarls and burns and says, “Come on, then.”
I like that kind of energy.
I shift my balance and begin scraping a fresh sample into a containment vial when something sparkles in my peripheral vision. I pause, blink, tilt my head.
At the base of a half-melted basalt column, beneath a drift of scorched earth, there’s a flicker. Pale blue, almost iridescent. I shuffle closer, heart thudding, and push aside the slag with a gloved hand.
Crystals.
A vein of them, nested into the rock like frost flowers. They catch the ambient light just so, sending kaleidoscopic patterns scattering across the inside of my visor. Tiny, geometric structures pulsing faintly—almost alive.
“Oh, you gorgeous bastard,” I breathe, already forgetting how uncomfortable I am. I adjust my scanner, careful not to disturb them further. “You’re not in the database.”
The compad confirms it with a smug blank screen.
I grin, wide and wicked. This. This is why I signed up. Not to scrub data in a lab, not to triple-check simulations. For the chance to see something no human’s ever seen before. Something new. Untouched.
“Hey, Carson,” I call over the short-range comms. “You picking up these frequencies? Section Three. About fifteen meters from the east vent.”
Static, then his voice, tight and nasal. “Yeah, I got you. You found something?”
“I foundthesomething.” I kneel lower, inspecting the fine webwork of mineral strands. “Crystalline structure embedded in high-heat terrain. Reflective diffraction patterns I’ve never seen before. These could be photonic. Maybe even self-replicating. You want to come see?”
He’s quiet for a second. Too quiet.
Then, “In a minute.”
I frown, leaning back on my heels. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” he says too fast, then adds, “No. I mean—kind of. Can I talk to you?”
“Um. We are talking.”
“No. Like… alone.”
I glance around. The marines aren’t close, and the other students are still stumbling around their assigned sectors, most of them just pretending to do their jobs. The atmosphere’s too thick with dust for anyone to be listening clearly anyway.
“Meet me by the rover,” he says. “The one parked by the supply dome.”
“Ten minutes,” I reply, tucking the sample carefully into my case. “Don’t get eaten by anything.”
He doesn’t laugh.
