In seventy-two hours, when the next ion storm hit this valley, it would know.
Without the stabilizer to manage the electromagnetic overload, the planet’s storm field would overwhelm the ship’s core.The feedback loop would build and build until the system reached a threshold it wasn't designed to survive.
Then it would stop trying.The explosion would take out everything for miles.If that happened, the village I’d just risked my life to save would be destroyed anyway.
I sat with that for exactly three seconds.Then I picked up my field kit, exhaled through my nose."Right.Seventy-two hours."The empty cockpit echoed the words back to me like a threat.
The survey data I'd collected from orbit had flagged crystalline formations in the cliff faces surrounding this valley.Extraordinary conductivity.Electromagnetic properties unlike anything in the xenomineralogy database.I'd noted them as scientifically remarkable three days ago from the comfortable distance of a stable orbit.
Now I was looking at them the way a drowning person looks at a rope.
A storm crystal with conductivity readings that high might —might— substitute for the stabilizer coil, if I could interface it correctly with the core's regulation system.It was a theory built on incomplete data and desperate need.
It was the only theory I had.The only chance I, or the other members of the crew somewhere out there in escape pods, had to get off this rock.I either stabilized the ship’s power system, or we all died right alongside the alien villagers.
I wondered what the aliens looked like.Tall?Short?Did they look like humans or were they some kind of strange creature?Reptilian?Ape-like?Insectoid?
A shudder ran through me.God, I hoped not.I could deal with a lot, but a ten-foot tall cockroach was something I could live my entire life without seeing and I’d die perfectly happy.
Didn’t matter as long as I wasn’t food.
With a thump that made my teeth rattle, I fell from the cockpit chair and shrugged out of the harness.Time to take a look at the planet that had just tried to kill me.
Breathable air.Bit warmer than I liked, but at least I wasn’t going to freeze to death outside the ship.I’d seen hundreds of distorted digital images, but reality stopped me at the edge of the ramp.
I stood there and I looked, which was not something I normally allowed myself.Science was observation, yes, but disciplined, purposeful observation — not standing with one hand braced against the hatchway because the world in front of you had just short-circuited every professional instinct you possessed.
“Whoa.”If my dad were alive to see this?Wow.Just wow.I’d set foot on multiple alien worlds since I signed my contract with NFI, and the group of corporations it belonged to, known as The Imperium.But this world?It was…spectacular.
The trees were wrong in the most beautiful way I'd ever seen.Their trunks were glass-smooth where lightning had repeatedly melted and rehardened the bark.They caught the last of the dying light and threw it back in fractured violet like a hundred disco balls.The undergrowth pulsed with faint, bluish glow that rolled along the forest floor like waves in a babbling brook of light.Small fungi clustered at the base of every root system, breathing soft blue bioluminescence in a slow, rhythmic pattern that was almost — disturbingly, uncomfortably — like a heartbeat.
And the air hummed.
Not mechanically.Not the ambient white noise of atmospheric pressure or wind through branches.This was a frequency.A resonance.Low and constant and alive.I felt it less in my ears than in the cage of my chest, vibrating against my sternum like a tuning fork pressed to bone.My body hummed along in tune, like someone had struck a giant gong the size of a bus and that long, shimmering note vibrated through my entire body.My blood hummed.My bones resonated.Like a tree with deep roots but with every leaf and branch shaking.My eyes buzzed.Even the air moving up and down my throat felt like it was moving.Alive.
Extraordinary.
I forced my feet to move and headed for the obsidian cliffs on the far side of the valley.According to my calculations, I had four hours of usable light, maybe less.The rest of my crew had ejected in escape pods.I would find them later.First, I had to stop the ship from exploding, destroying everything.Even if my friends survived the crash, they couldn’t cover enough ground to escape the radius of the blast.Not even if they were uninjured and knew which way to run.
I should have just enough time to assess the climb—and hopefully the crystal deposits—before darkness made the terrain impassable.I needed to move fast, think clearly, and not waste cognitive resources on?—
The air changed.
That was the only way I could describe it.One moment the electric hum was background noise, ambient and ignorable.The next, it shifted.Not louder — sharper.The way a radio signal sharpens when you find the exact right frequency, the static cutting away to leave something clean and direct and undeniable.
Every hair on my body stood up.
I was being watched.I felt him.A presence.Male.Strong.A warrior.
How did I know that?
The back of my neck went hot.My lungs pulled in a slow, involuntary breath.My pulse, which had just started to slow after the crash, lurched into something faster and out of control.
I stopped walking.
He stepped out of the jungle, directly in my line of sight, and watched me.He was ethereal.Beautiful in a way I couldn’t explain.Like something from myth.Something magical.
Before our arrival, there had been no registered civilization on this planet.Just wild weather and obsidian trees.Glass.Storms so violent nothing could survive their fury.Scanners never penetrated far enough into the dense atmosphere to send reliable data back to NFI, Nova Frontier Initiative.The corporation that funded our research.That was why they’d sent us.To determine if there was anything on this planet worth taking, mining, stealing or selling.