2025-05-24 12:32:05Three large space choppers kicked up Martian dust as they touched down in the Outlands. The harsh
wind carried the fine red particles in swirls. Jarek, now officially part of the exploration team, stood beside the cargo with a wide stance and folded arms. I hadn’t yet brought Gerry into the core plan. He was a newbie, and my gut told me something wasn’t right. “Inventory!” I barked over the comms, watching Gerry move around the newly delivered rovers and crates. Across the dusty plain, Vanessa and Tyron huddled near Jarek, murmuring. Gerry’s visual feed flicked onto my interface. “We’ve got the O2 converter,” he said, pointing at a six-wheeled rover with a large tank built to extract breathable air from the Martian atmosphere. He pivoted. “Extraction and sampling unit here. And behind you—five bikes, all fully fitted with RTG, wind, and solar systems. We’ve got six months' worth of autonomy.” The rest of the crew gathered. Vanessa and Tyron were fixated on Jarek’s open palm. “Amazing,” Tyron said, brushing a thumb against the object. “Where did you get this?” Vanessa asked. “Funny enough,” Jarek replied, “Back on Earth. From a dying pirate.” They glanced back at me, and I signaled them to join the rest of the crew. “Did he tell you about the Devilmen?” Jarek asked. “Haven’t seen one with my own eyes,” Tyron said with a wink. “Not scared of ghosts.” “Well,” Vanessa cut in, “We brought a couple of AK-Xs. Tyron over here can handle a Mars M82 like a pro. It’s got enough power to take out a Tardigrade at long range.” “BANG!” Tyron quipped, pointing his finger gun at Jarek. They all laughed. Gerry was the first to approach me as the rest followed. “What’s with all the heavy artillery?” he asked, squinting. “I thought this was an exploration, not an invasion.” I patted his helmet with a grin. “That’s what you need for exploration... down here, anyway.” --- That night, we gathered inside the main Terrapod. Planning was in full swing. “Tyron, your models are calibrated for Earth terrain. That won’t fly here,” Jarek said, drawing paths on a glass tablet. “Our best shot is northeast. It’ll give us an uninterrupted passage between TMP and the new colony.” “Okay, G.I. Joe,” Tyron scoffed. I knew Jarek was right. If the Red Rock existed in abundance, it would be there. “And the guns?” Gerry pressed again. Tyron placed a firm hand on his shoulder. “It’s shoot or be eaten. I don’t plan on being mauled by a Tardigrade like G.I. Joe over here. Tell him, Jarek.” Jarek cleared his throat. “Gerry, this isn’t a simulation. Or some cushy observation gig. It’s bare-knuckle.” He pointed out through the viewport. “A lot of mean things out there. And we’ll need guns to secure new territory. For the people still stranded back on Earth.” He looked at me. “Does he even know how to shoot?” I shook my head. Gerry blinked.
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Chapter 151: The Eldritch Awakes
It returned on silence. Across the frozen dark, a shape moved—thin, skeletal, trailing filaments that shimmered like broken glass. Its body was a cipher now, half organic, half signal. Once, it had been merely a Rake—one of thousands dispatched from the crystalline citadel when the Shepherd first called. Now, it came back alone. The stars bent around it. The void hummed with the low ache of transmission. Every pulse in its body carried stolen sound: human speech, the metallic throb of the Vigilant’s engines, the unholy whisper of the HAARP core awakening. At its heart burned one fragment of human language, looped in static: Return the fire. The Rake crossed the outer moons and descended toward the citadel, the forge-world glowing beneath it like a diseased jewel. Green plumes licked at the sky. The spires of Da’kar’s empire reached upward to receive what they had cast out. It struck the citadel’s outer membrane and did not stop. Flesh met matter, matter met code; the barrie
Chapter 150: The Leviathan Signal
The Vigilant drifted in the half-light between Mars and Earth, its hull trembling under solar wind like an old ship creaking against the tide. The stars outside were sharp enough to cut. Inside, everything hummed — systems recalibrating, metal contracting, oxygen cycling through lungs that never seemed full enough. We were alive, but only just. After everything, that word—*alive*—felt like defiance.Nancy stood at the central console, her face lit by the pulse of the HAARP core. The box — our box — sat between us, now unsealed but dormant. The air around it shimmered faintly, like heat rising off asphalt. A low resonance vibrated through the floor panels. It wasn’t loud, but it crawled through the bones. It felt like the ship itself was listening.No one spoke for a long time. The only sound was the whisper of coolant lines and the slow tick of my pulse in my ear. Then Rachel exhaled, quiet but deliberate.“It shouldn’t still be active,” she said. “We shut the circuits.”Nancy didn’t l
Chapter 149: The False Dawn
The Vigilant drifted in a slant of weak light. Dawn was rising somewhere far below the clouds, though out here it looked more like rust spreading through black water. The hull creaked as the heat of the upper atmosphere flexed the plates. For a long moment, no one spoke. We were waiting for the ship to decide whether it still wanted us.The sealed container sat in the center bay, its edges still warm from the last power surge. Nancy crouched beside it, her fingers flying over the projection screen that hovered from the console. Lines of code ran like veins of fire. Each pulse threw shadows across her face.Helene lingered near the viewport, chin high, pretending to watch the horizon. Rachel and !Gareseb sat shoulder-to-shoulder at the weapons bench, cleaning rifles that didn’t need cleaning. Hayes was on comms, pretending the static had meaning. Van Wyk lay strapped to the med-couch, a bandage blooming faintly where his shoulder wound kept re-sealing and reopening. Amani paced between
Chapter 148: Icarus Protocol
The Vigilant drifts in half-silence. The hull groans like a held breath, heat vents whispering, the red light of Mars smearing through the viewport. Every screen hums low, every shadow trembles with the residue of our escape.The cargo bay smells of ion burn and blood. We haven’t spoken much since we left the village behind—the screams, the smoke, the taste of iron in the air. There’s still dust in our suits; the kind that never settles.I stand at the observation deck, watching the wounded planet shrink below us. The box—our prize, our curse—sits bolted to the central dais, small as a coffin, quiet as confession.Nancy kneels beside it, hands poised over the embedded control pad. Her voice is steady, almost clinical. “It’s self-contained. Power cell intact. Quantum core is active.”She looks up at me through the shimmer of holographic light. “You realize what this is?”“I have suspicions.”“It’s a HAARP node. Miniaturized. Thirty-five years of classified iteration. This isn’t a relic,
Chapter 147 : The Fall of the Firewall
Olympius was no longer quiet.Adebayo’s voice ripped through the command tier, echoing off the glass panels and steel consoles. “Are the Voyagers in range?”No one dared answer. The operators exchanged glances. A thin line of sweat traced one technician’s temple as his fingers danced over the interface.“Ma’am, Voyager Three reports a partial relay. Two and Four are offline.”“Reactivate them,” Adebayo snapped. “I want a visual link over Sector Earth-Blue within ninety seconds.”She leaned over the console, her reflection fractured in the glass like a goddess divided by light. Her hair, normally immaculate, clung damp against her neck. The Olympius Command Center pulsed with warning lights, red ripples washing across the observation deck.“Deactivate the anti-Rake plasma field,” she ordered.Every head turned.“Ma’am?”“You heard me. Bring it down.”“General protocol—”“Bring. It. Down.”The operator swallowed hard. His hand trembled slightly as he entered the override. On the main dis
Chapter 146: The Broken Command Chain
The village square looked unchanged from the night before. Lanterns swayed above the mud-brick walls, their glow smudging into the early dawn. Smoke from cooking fires twisted into the mist. The sound of children—real laughter, the kind no battlefield could imitate—still drifted through the streets. But inside the safehouse, the air was taut. The team had gathered around the scarred wooden table. The maps were spread out. Weapons leaned against the walls. Everyone’s eyes turned when I entered with Helene. They knew something had happened. I didn’t waste time. “I took her to the border,” I said. The words hit harder than I’d expected. A ripple of silence spread around the table. Sefu’s jaw clenched. Rana leaned back, eyes narrowing. Even !Gareseb, usually unreadable, sat forward, as though the admission shifted the weight of the entire room. Only Helene kept her gaze steady, though her fingers drummed once against her thigh before she stilled them. “You what?” Ka!ri br
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