Chapter 0031, Five Minutes of Peace, Part 4

  The blast had leveled everything.

  What trees hadn’t been vaporized now lay snapped and charred, their trunks splayed across the red dirt, their forms evoking broken fingers. The crates had vanished, either splintered into nothing or scattered halfway across the ridge. The air still trembled with heat, vibrating in low, shuddering pulses. Ash clung to the edges of Ethan’s visor as he staggered upright, his suit’s cracked oxygen seal hissing faintly in the background.

  The crater where the Apex had landed was a ragged bowl of scorched earth and melted stone. Its rim glowed faintly red, lined with spiderweb fractures where molten veins of Redresin seeped up through the crust. The resin bled in thick, uneven rivulets, boiling in place. Steam curled upward in lazy spirals, turning the surrounding air into a shimmering curtain that hurt to look at.

  At the center, nothing remained of the Apex: not a limb, a corpse, or any shape that resembled anything living. There was just a blackened mass half-sunk into the resin pool, a hardened crust of tar over what might have been bones. The heat made it shimmer and twitch, but it was no longer moving.

  CelestOS’s voice cut through the haze with crisp indifference.

  CelestOS: Threat level downgraded. Auto-Turret engaging secondary targets. Please remain conscious for combat debrief.

  Ethan coughed and spit something dark. His ears rang, his right arm was numb, and every part of him felt bruised from the inside out. He was, however, still breathing and standing. He looked toward the turret. The rotating mount stood firm, now fully active. Its twin barrels tracked across the outer field, twitching as motion registered. Then, with a quick clicking sound, it fired two bursts of gunfire. Two more creatures dropped at the ridge line in smoldering heaps. Their limbs twitched once and then stilled. The defense would hold, at least for the moment.

  Ethan turned in place, surveying what was left of the camp. The forge still glowed a dim green, and Reyes lay motionless beside it beneath the thermal wrap. Beyond that, everything was ash and ruin.

  He had won, in a technical sense. But all he could think was: God, what the hell comes next?

  The wind stirred dust through the crater’s edge, where boiling resin still pulsed with the rhythm of a heartbeat. The planet was wounded, and something told him this was not the end. It felt instead like the beginning of a deeper burn. He limped toward the edge of the crater, his boots crunching through a blackened mix of glassy rock and red-streaked ash. Every step sent sparks of pain up his leg. His shoulder throbbed in time with his heartbeat, still rattled from the cannon’s recoil. It had been a miracle, or perhaps just dumb luck.

  The molten trench stretched between him and the drill. A haze of heat made the world ripple, and through it, he could just make out the T1 unit's tripod frame slumped on the far side, its shape resembling a dead insect. It wasn’t spinning and produced no vibrations or output. A faint plume of steam rising from a cooling intake vent confirmed the unit was offline. Between here and there, a river of Redresin cut through the ground, at least ten meters wide and possibly more. The resin bubbled with a magmatic heat, bloated with pulsing crimson veins. It possessed a living quality, the way oil can reveal a hidden movement beneath the surface, a quality that felt manufactured, like something that should never have been alive.

  Worse still, he’d seen them crawling out of it. Small things at first, twitching forms that pulled themselves free of the resin like insects hatching from a skin. Not drawn to the heat. Born from it. Spawning directly from the wound the Apex had left behind.

  He clenched his jaw. The ore was over there, locked behind a barrier that he just couldn’t pass. And if he tried to go around, the horde of monsters wouldn’t be any friendlier. He considered jumping it but knew he would need a running start, and right now he could barely stay upright, which made the idea as dangerous as it was futile.

  CelestOS chirped in his ear again, its tone consistently polite.

  CelestOS: Structural integrity of T1 drill unit: 42%. Ore extraction offline. Recommend initiating emergency recovery protocol.

  “Yeah? You think?” Ethan muttered.

  There was nothing for it. The only working piece of equipment left was the turret. He looked over his shoulder at it, still tracking lazily from left to right. It gave a sharp click and gunned down another hostile in the distance, a small one this time. The threat had not vanished; it was merely waiting and testing the perimeter. And Ethan… he had exhausted his options.

  He exhaled slowly. “All right,” he whispered. “So what can I still do?” But there was no reply. He needed to do something about that stupid robot.

  Ethan tried one more time to find a way around, circling the crater, hugging the broken slope where the terrain dipped beneath a twisted outcrop. The heat was brutal here, radiating off the resin in a way that felt like an open furnace. His boots sank half an inch into softened ground. Every step took effort over the damaged ground, but he persevered. However, the moment he crested the ridge, he froze.

  He saw movement, dozens and dozens of glints in the dark. These were smaller, quadrupedal things that might have been hunters. They had resin-glossed hides, sharp front limbs, and low slinking bodies. They hissed faintly, their tongues flicking with an eel’s quickness, their eyes pulsing a strange yellow even in the gloom of night. They were scavengers, drawn by the blast, or perhaps summoned, or even worse, bred by it. He backed up slowly, careful not to dislodge any loose stones and attract their attention. He resisted the urge to run. The moment his foot scraped a shard of metal, one of them turned, and then another. They started to stalk him.

  He eased his way back down the ridge, one foot at a time, his breath shallow. Sweat burned his neck. His gloves were slick. If even one of them pounced, he would fall. He reached the base and turned, sprinting fast toward the camp perimeter.

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  The turret clicked and then roared.

  Twin bursts of fire lit the night as the auto-guns cut through the first wave. Three fell, then two more. But they just kept coming, testing the turret’s range and timing while staying just out of its optimal firing arc. Ethan collapsed behind the fire line, in range of the turret’s protective fire, panting. That route was closed. The path was blocked not only by heat but by the planet itself. Whatever was in that resin was not inert; it was birthing something and feeding something. And now, it had his scent. He could let tomorrow worry about that, though, because there was something much more pressing to worry about now that he had a moment.

  “Hey, CelestOS. We need to talk.”

  A flicker of static buzzed in Ethan’s ear.

  CelestOS: Threat acknowledged. Clarification requested—was that a genuine systems override, or an outburst of emotional fatigue?

  Ethan didn’t answer.

  He pushed off the crate, limping toward her. The drone hovered a few feet off the ground, softly pulsing with status lights, angled slightly away like she was pretending not to notice him.

  He didn’t slow.

  With a sudden lunge, he grabbed one of the lower stabilizer arms and yanked her down. The drone bobbed in resistance, but he dragged her toward the turret line anyway, boots scraping across the scorched dirt.

  CelestOS: Alert: Per Celestitech Policy Subsection 12.9, unauthorized contact with corporate hardware constitutes a Class-C violation. Please desist.

  “Override this,” he snapped.

  He shoved the drone directly in front of the turret. The auto-guns twitched. Targeting sensors flickered, unsure. The barrels began to spin, just slightly.

  CelestOS’s thrusters fired in a panic, but Ethan kept her locked in place, one hand gripping the armature, the other braced against her core housing.

  “You see that?” he growled. “That’s called leverage. If that turret fires, you're dead.”

  A long, humming pause.

  CelestOS: Processing...

  CelestOS: Status update: Ethan Cross is no longer classified as an expendable asset. Updating mission hierarchy. Assigning Ethan Cross as primary survival node. Auxiliary subroutines deprioritized.

  Another beat.

  CelestOS: Would you like to enable critical-assist mode?

  Ethan let her go.

  The drone floated back a half-meter, silent.

  “Now you ask,” he muttered, chest heaving. “Start with helping me get around that slag field. I’m not dying ten feet from the thing I just killed.”

  CelestOS: Acknowledged. Calculating traversal options. Survival likelihood: suboptimal but technically feasible.

  He coughed, too tired to laugh. “Better than nothing.”

  The forge light had dimmed to its standby glow, casting the camp in flickers of soft green and pulsing orange. The sky overhead was a sheet of black glass, broken only by two alien moons: one wide and pale, the other sharp and red, a bleeding eye in the heavens. Night had not just arrived; it was fully present. Ethan pushed himself to his feet, his limbs aching in stages. The forge had stabilized. The turret continued its slow, sweeping arc, its sensors blinking faint blue as it tracked motion near the edges of visibility. Its barrels twitched again, followed by a click and a quick discharge of fire. Something chittered in the dark and then went silent.

  He opened the ammo container with a grunt. Only eight ingots of copper remained from the initial ten, with no spares available. The turret could hold for another few hours, maybe longer if the horde stayed cautious. Still, it was better than nothing. He slotted three into the loader. The fourth he kept in his hand, weighing it between thumb and palm as if it were a decision.

  CelestOS chimed gently, not interrupting but waiting.

  “Don’t say anything,” Ethan muttered. “Just give me a minute.”

  He stepped to the edge of the resin field again just to make sure. The substance was still boiling and still impassable. The resin hissed where cool air touched it. Bubbles ruptured in slow, uneven pulses, throwing off tiny arcs of red vapor that vanished before they hit the ground. Beyond it, the drill stood motionless, quiet and unreachable. He tapped his comm again. “Reyes?” He received no response, only the sound of his shallow, rhythmic breathing. He was alive, but just barely. He walked back toward her and crouched, brushing dust off the thermal blanket. He didn’t stir. His lips were dry. His face had gone pale beneath the grime and bruises.

  He wanted to scream, or punch something, or run straight into the resin and let it eat him just to feel something else. He did none of those things. He just stood there, quiet, until the wind shifted again.

  CelestOS’s voice broke the silence, its pitch lower now and less cheerful.

  CelestOS: Recommendation: initiate rest cycle. Turret has sufficient ammunition for a minimum of 4 hours under current engagement frequency. No hostile signals detected within 80 meters.

  Ethan didn’t move at first. Then he turned, walked to the side of the crate, and slowly sat down. “I am pausing,” he whispered, “but I am not giving up.” He leaned back with his eyes half-lidded, the glow of the forge swimming behind his eyelids. Every muscle screamed. Every instinct told him to avoid rest, not yet, not with enemies circling and ammo running dry. But instincts no longer carried weight. All that remained was bone, blood, and the last of his will. The turret clicked again in a test pattern sweep that found no targets. He knew the turret had only three shots left.

  He tried to stay alert, his mind buzzing with a dozen problems he couldn’t solve: the heat, the resin, the drill, the ore, the scavengers, and Reyes. But his exhaustion was an immense weight, a physical force pulling him down. “I’ll figure him out in the morning,” he whispered, his head tipping forward. “Assuming I get one.”

  While the world continued turning, he finally stopped, and promptly fell asleep.

  End of Part 2: Red Resin