Chapter 0029, Five Minutes of Peace, Part 2

  The turret’s internal servos groaned to life, louder than before. Its targeting array spun with unsettling precision, humming in rhythm with the wind as it locked onto something just beyond the ridge.

  Ethan barely had time to react before the first creature broke cover. It moved with impossible speed for something its size, a blur of matted fur and exposed bone with limbs that loped unevenly, as if it had once been something else. Tumorous red-veined growths pulsed along its flank like molten veins under stretched skin.

  The turret swiveled smoothly, its barrel following the blur. A green reticle blinked across Ethan’s HUD.

  Target acquired.

  It fired with a single, hollow click. The sound was empty, like a door slamming shut behind him.

  A small red LED blinked to life on the turret’s casing:

  [AMMO: 0]

  Ethan’s stomach dropped.

  CelestOS 4.2: Warning: Ammunition reserves for CelestiTurret Model A1 are missing. Each unit of unrefined iron or copper ore is equivalent to 200 rounds of kinetic ammunition. Turret must be reloaded manually, or supplied via CelestiConveyor? hardware. Upgrade options available via the CelestiStore.

  Ethan stared at the blinking light. “You’re kidding.”

  Out in the beyond the edge of the wreckage, the shadows moved again, this time not alone. A low chittering hiss rose from the treeline, like insects whispering through cracked teeth. It was followed by the heavier sound of brush being crushed beneath a deliberate and unnatural weight.

  The turret didn’t stop moving. It rotated obediently, tracking the nearest shape with eerie calm, but its barrel remained mute. It was a machine that performed every function perfectly except for the one that mattered: firing.

  Ethan took a step forward, rage and disbelief curdling in his throat.

  “You had me build a gun,” he said, his voice rising, “but didn’t have me collect enough supplies for the bullets?”

  There was no answer, just the quiet whir of servos, the hiss of wind through broken metal, and the sound of things crawling closer.

  Ethan spun toward the forge and froze, his eyes locking on the alien weapon half-buried in the dust. It hadn’t moved and still looked both dead and dangerous. Coiled like a wasp’s stinger fused to bone, the thing jutted from the dirt like the fossil of some violent god. Organic lines curved through hard ridges, while veins of dull light flickered once and then faded.

  “You had me build that,” Ethan jabbed toward the turret, “when that thing has been sitting here the whole time?! How do I use it?”

  CelestOS 4.2: That asset is of unknown origin and fails to meet Celestitech’s safety certification requirements. Activation is not advised.

  “You don’t say.”

  A hot, sharp, and wrong pulse of air slammed into him. He turned just in time to see it rise from the grassland. Four insectile legs, too long and too delicate to support such mass, moved with dancer-like precision. Translucent green chitin shimmered across its massive torso, bending sunlight into a fractured, ghostly lattice that shimmered across the terrain. Its wings flared wide

  Ethan froze. Every muscle refused to move as his lungs stopped. His thoughts, however, did not.

  Run. Fight. Scream. Duck. Crawl. Anything but Die.

  Finally his body reacted. He lunged toward the alien weapon.

  “CelestOS, override! Bypass compliance. I don’t care if it violates protocol. If it’s a bomb, great. If it’s a gun, better. Just help me do something!”

  CelestOS 4.2: Compliance override requires Command Clearance Level 3. You are currently Level 2.

  Of course he was.

  Ethan reached out anyway, his hand closing around the strange bone-metal handle.

  CelestOS 4.2: Unauthorized contact with unidentified technology detected. Please cease interaction immediately to prevent potential consequences..

  He ignored the AI as he lifted the alien cannon in both hands. The weight hit him like a dead body: dense, uneven, and uncomfortably warm. The surface pulsed faintly beneath his gloves, humming with energy that felt alive rather than electric. Resin plates flexed beneath his grip, exhaling a hiss of internal pressure. The weapon reacted by waking up.

  Another monster screamed from the edge of the clearing and bounded toward him. Ethan turned, planting his feet, raising the cannon like a shield between them.

  “I don’t care if it’s unsanctioned,” he muttered through bared teeth. “You stick to crafting. I’ll handle this shit.”

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  CelestOS didn’t answer with words, but the weapon did. The low hum beneath his fingers surged, becoming more than background noise. It was a rising internal pressure building toward something. Ethan felt the change before he saw it, a tension in the frame and a subtle shift in balance. His fingers curled deeper into the grip, and the cannon curled back, adjusting itself around him as it synced to his body.

  Thin seams along the barrel cracked open. Red light bled through panels on the side of the gun.

  The cannon pulsed again, but Ethan’s eyes weren’t on it anymore. The massive insectile creature, the one that had nearly paralyzed him, wasn’t charging toward the forge. It had turned, and was gliding low across the grass toward the drill site.

  Ethan’s gut clenched. The turret was offline. The drill was exposed. And whatever that thing was, it wasn’t hunting randomly. It was targeting infrastructure. His infrastructure.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, shifting his grip. “It’s not coming for me. It’s going for the ore.”

  He pivoted without hesitation, boots digging into the loose grit. “CelestOS,” he growled, “We’re going after it.”

  The hordes of monsters were on him. A first creature screamed and charged. Ethan stood his ground. He found the trigger, which wasn't a button but a fibrous cord twisted around his fingers, and yanked it. He didn’t know if he was aiming or if the weapon was aiming for him. It didn’t matter.

  The weapon spasmed. A deafening thump exploded from its core, followed by a sharp blast of heat and pressure. A sphere of corrosive red resin launched forward, arcing like a mortar round before it hit the creature midair. It detonated on impact. The monster was torn apart; its front half was obliterated while its back half was flung across the clearing like wet, smoking trash. The air filled with a choking, sweet-burnt chemical scent.

  Ethan staggered back, screaming. His arm was on fire, feeling as if someone had jammed a pressure hose into his bones. Another monster charged. He fired again. The second blast was smaller and less dramatic, but it still hit, detonating near the creature’s chest. A splash of red acid tore through its ribcage. It howled and crashed to the ground, smoking and twitching.

  Ethan dropped to one knee, gasping. Every shot felt like it had pulled something out of him, as if the cannon wasn't just discharging energy but feeding on him. His breath came in ragged bursts. The lines between the weapon and his own body were beginning to blur. The cannon throbbed again in his grip, eager and starved. Whether it was his hunger or the weapon’s, he couldn’t tell anymore.

  He caught a flash of fast movement. A third creature broke left, trying to circle behind him. Ethan pivoted too hard, and the world tilted. His vision tunneled. He fired blind. The shot punched a crater into the earth, splashing molten resin like acid, but missed its target. The beast shrieked and closed in.

  Ethan flung himself sideways, rolling through shattered gear and loose soil. He slammed into the last intact crate, shoulder-first, and stayed low. The cannon was cradled against his ribs now. It was no longer held or gripped, but anchored as if it belonged there.

  CelestOS 4.2: Biological stability compromised. Recommend immediate disengagement from unsanctioned interface.

  “Disengage?” he growled, his voice cracked raw. “I’m still breathing because of this thing.”

  He shoved off the crate and lunged back into the open. The last creature was already mid-pounce. Ethan aimed center mass and fired from five feet away. The shot vaporized its head. The body collapsed midair, twitched once, and then hit the dirt in a lifeless sprawl.

  Silence dropped like a hammer. There was only the crackle of scorched resin, the stink of ozone and blood, and smoke rising in delicate threads from ruptured stone.

  Ethan stood there, the weapon humming in his hands, his chest heaving. His HUD blinked once.

  [Skill Unlocked: Exotic Weapon Proficiency – 0 → 1]

  Ethan dropped to his knees. The cannon gave one last pulse in his hands, like a dying heartbeat, then went still, cold and dormant again. He let it fall. It hit the ground with a dull, reluctant thud, as if it didn’t want to be parted from him.

  The air stank of scorched resin and ruptured chitin. The monsters lay in heaps across the cracked terrain, some twitching faintly, others dissolving into ash. Smoke curled in thin tendrils from the earth, rising into a sky that had already begun to dim.

  CelestOS 4.2: Combat engagement concluded. Threat proximity: minimal. Status:… survivable.

  Ethan laughed, a dry, hoarse, empty sound. It wasn't a laugh of joy or even relief, but simply sound escaping a throat too ragged to hold it in. Then he moved. He had no time to rest and no strength to waste. He shoved himself upright, legs trembling, his lungs hitching against a chest that didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore. The forge and its scattered parts faded behind him with every step. The turret was a broken silhouette, the battlefield was quiet, and the beasts, or what remained of them, lay in smoking ruin.

  But the fight wasn’t over yet. The drill was still running. It was still working. If he didn’t get to it soon, everything it had harvested could bleed away.

  He ran. The alien cannon thudded against his hip with each uneven stride, heavier than it should have been, as if it remembered the kill count and now had a taste for it. His suit creaked under the strain, friction-welded to dried sweat and smeared blood. Every breath scraped like sandpaper down his throat, and every joint howled with effort. Still, he ran.

  The land dropped into a shallow ravine cut with brittle grass and scattered rock. He skidded on the descent, his boots slipping on powdered grit, then slogged through the dry wash at the bottom. The incline on the far side loomed ahead. It was sharp and jagged, the kind of climb that punished hesitation. Halfway up, his legs gave out. He collapsed forward, catching himself on his palms. Gravel bit deep into the skin, a fresh pain joining the choir already screaming through his body. For a second, he hovered there with his head bowed, blood dripping from one sleeve. Then he pushed himself onward, one foot and then the other, clawing his way up and dragging himself forward with teeth clenched and vision swimming.

  Ethan crested the ridge and stopped cold.

  The drill was still there, its beacon blinking faintly and steady in the dusk, but something vast loomed over it. It crouched low, balanced on bent limbs, its silhouette stretching wide across the clearing. Its shape was wrong, shifting subtly as the light hit it. It was part insect, part crustacean, and part gnarled tree twisted by rot and hunger. Its hide shimmered with the sheen of volcanic glass, black and obsidian-smooth. Beneath that surface ran thick veins of blood-red resin that pulsed like arteries, lighting the creature from within and casting a slow, hellish glow over the broken terrain.

  One of its limbs, a massive, barbed appendage jointed like a siege claw, was clamped around the body of the drill. The machine groaned under the strain. Its stabilizers twitched and its servos strained to hold their ground. Metal creaked. The beacon flickered. The thing was inspecting it, sniffing it, studying it.

  It hadn’t seen him yet.

  Ethan stood motionless, holding his breath. The weapon on his hip felt dead. He was drained. A single shot might just kill him this time.

  Then the drill let out a mechanical squeal of strain, and something inside it snapped.

  The monster turned all of itself toward him. A dozen obsidian lenses layered across a bulbous, plated skull locked onto him, slowly, one by one. The red glow beneath its skin pulsed brighter, and the monster took flight.