2025-05-24 12:32:24“Our connection to the colony is dead,” Gerry said flatly.
We had entered an entirely different region, though the red sands stretched in all directions like the rest of Mars. Dunes broke unevenly around us, scattered like rust-colored waves. “Did you hear what I said?!” Gerry repeated, louder. I stood on the edge of a dune and activated the Astro Binoculars in my helmet. A heads-up display flickered across my visor, calibrating. I scanned the barren wasteland ahead. “Thoughts?” I asked over the comms. “This is Jarek’s expertise,” Vanessa replied. Despite the early hour, the Martian heat was already suffocating. “Yes, Boss,” Jarek said. “We have to cross. That’s how I found the Interstellar camp the first time.” “If we don’t find that camp, we die,” Gerry mumbled. Tyron typed rapidly on his console. “Analyzing topography. If we veer south, we’ll hit an even plain. Could be ideal for a camp.” Jarek nodded. “We move. It’ll take two days. We can refill supplies there.” --- Two days later, we were all huddled in the same Terrapod. Jarek sat in the dark, vaping silently. Then Gerry burst in, turning on the RTG lamp and blinding us. “What the hell?” Tyron groaned. “You guys have to see this!” Gerry panted. We climbed the tallest dune nearby, plowing through loose sand. “Look!” Gerry shouted, pointing. Sure enough, far in the distance—a flickering strobe of light. “What is that?” I asked. Jarek squinted. Tyron replied, “Impossible to identify. Distance—126 kilometers.” We followed the strobe all night. At daybreak, it vanished. Then: smoke. A thin trail over the horizon. When we arrived, the Interstellar camp had been destroyed. Ashes. Burned debris. A vandalized RTG—still pulsing—that must have been the light source. We stood in silence. Buzzing filled the air. A Martian gnat zipped past, then a dozen more. They descended on bodies strewn across the sand—unmoving, with only their inner suits remaining. Their space suits had been stripped. From over a slope, a Martian pangolin—its armored body dull and coppery—lurched forward, dragging a corroded corpse down with it. “Did these things kill all those people?” Gerry asked, his voice trembling. “They’re scavengers,” I said. Jarek crouched by a body, examining it. “Devilmen,” he said darkly. We all looked down. Some had gaping wounds. Some were missing limbs. We retrieved shovels and buried what we could. --- Later, as we sat beside the RTG eating silent rations, Gerry broke the silence. “Boss, this mission is a bust. We should go back.” Vanessa shrugged. “To go back is still easier.” I looked at Tyron. He was unreadable. Jarek stood and gestured for me to follow. We stepped aside, away from the others. “The desert is drier. We struggled just to make it here. And the Devilmen? If they wiped this camp, they’re stronger than we thought,” I whispered. “I got a crazy idea,” Jarek said. Whenever he said that, it meant madness was coming. “We go further south. Might find another way in. Or... you take the Red Rock and return. I’ll go on alone.” He held out the stone. I pushed it back. He was testing me. Tyron approached. “Sorry to break up the bromance,” he said. “A severe storm’s coming. My readings say we have 48 hours before it hits.”
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Chapter 53: Final Broadcast
The wind howled across the Mahikeng plain like a dying animal, thick with the acrid stench of ozone and something worse—the metallic tang of old blood baked into the dust. The moon hung limp in the sky, a jaundiced sickle in the bruised twilight, its feeble light catching on the jagged edges of their makeshift comms tower. A Frankenstein's monster of car batteries and scavenged radio parts, its exposed wires hissed and spat like a cornered serpent with every gust.Click.Whir.Silence.The young woman's fingers danced across the cracked console, her nails blackened with soot and desperation. "Horizon's Edge," she whispered into the dead air, her voice raw from days of screaming into the void. "This is Survivor Group Sigma. Do you copy?"Static.Always static.Behind her, a man with hollow cheeks and hollower eyes tightened a final wire, his knuckles splitting against the metal. Blood welled, black in the dim light. He didn't seem to notice.Then—A sound.Not from the radio.From the
Chapter 52: The Rim Runs Red
The hangar’s alarms still echoed in Rachel’s bones when the ATV roared to life beneath her. Its repulsor-assist coughed, then steadied into a thunderous growl. She slammed the throttle forward, and the machine leapt ahead like a predator loosed from its chain. The Rim opened before them—twisting ridges of red stone and fossilized cliffs that jutted like the ribs of some ancient beast.Behind them, the shadows stirred.!Gareseb twisted in the gunner’s nest, the railgun cradled to his shoulder. “Contact left!”Rachel swerved, tires spitting gravel. A Rake launched itself from a ledge, its talons flashing in the weak Martian light. It slashed air where they had been a heartbeat earlier, screeching as it struck stone. Sparks showered the canyon wall.“Hold steady!” !Gareseb roared. The railgun spat molten light. The creature’s body tore apart mid-arc, scattering fragments of carapace that clattered against the ATV’s roof.Rachel’s pulse pounded in her throat. Already more of the things we
Chapter 51: Convergence
The hangar was alive with noise — not the celebratory kind, but the raw, metallic chaos of a city tearing itself open to bleed one last chance into the void.Repulsor carts screeched along the basalt floor, technicians shouting over the wail of alarms as they loaded missile crates, cryo-charges, and breather masks onto waiting shuttles. Plasma welders hissed against torn hull plating. The stench of scorched metal, moss-wine, and human sweat pressed thick in the air.Above it all, the Red Rock veins pulsed in irregular rhythms, as if the planet itself was holding its breath.Rachel stood near the observation rail, one hand clamped around her glowing arm, the other on the railing to steady herself. She could feel the ghost signal thrumming stronger with every cycle. Somewhere out there, Nancy’s echo — or Nancy herself — was calling. The line between the two had blurred until she could no longer tell if it was her friend’s soul or just the hive baiting them deeper.!Guruseb was at her si
Interlude: The Calculus of War
War isn’t just fought with weapons. It’s fought with math. Not the kind you learn in school—the kind you can balance on a knife edge. Lives in one column. Outcomes in the other. Somewhere in between, the sum tells you how many people you can afford to lose before the plan collapses.The council chamber had smelled of stone dust and old fear that day. They spoke in numbers: projected survival rates, energy reserves, shuttle fuel ratios. Everything neat and clean until you remember each digit is a pulse, a face, a name.The Rakes don’t think like we do. They don’t negotiate. They don’t bluff. To them, war is the same equation every time: Assimilate → Expand → Consume.!Naba’s research laid the variables bare. The Red Rock’s power is both their obsession and their allergy. Khomani bodies, adapted over generations, bridge the gap—but only partially. Humans with the Eve Gene? They could complete the circuit. That’s the prize. Not just survival—dominion.The council’s vote was simple on pa
Chapter 50: The Weight of Stars
The abandoned algae vats hummed with a residual energy, their curved glass surfaces still faintly glowing from the Red Rock’s circadian pulse. Rachel ran a fingertip along the cool, slick surface, watching the amber light ripple through the nutrient-depleted fluid like thinned blood. The air in the hydroponics lab was thick with the earthy scent of damp soil and the sweet, decaying smell of failed harvests.Three days had passed since the Rake ambush. Three cycles of the city’s artificial twilight—each dimming of the cavern’s vast, mineral veins sending !Guruseb’s shadow stretching longer against her quarters’ door. She could always sense him there, a sentinel of silent protection. The heat of his body warped the recycled air currents, and the rhythmic scrape of his whetstone along his spear synced with the city’s deep, subterranean heartbeat. It was a constant reminder of the pact they had made and the unspoken weight of his vigil.The hydroponics lab breathed around her, a living, sy
Chapter 49: The Edge of the World
The climb to Ka!ri’s sanctuary was a silent confession etched in stone dust and labored breath. No klaxons shattered the stillness, no war drums pulsed through the caverns—just the rhythmic scrape of my boots on raw basalt and the weight of every unspoken word between us, heavy as the planet's core. The path coiled upward like a serpent's spine, each narrow ledge slick with condensation from the colony's struggling atmospheric processors. My fingers left damp prints on the cold rock as I ascended, the thinning air sharpening every inhale to a knife's edge in my lungs. She reached the summit first, her silhouette haloed by the throbbing veins of iron-rich minerals threaded through the cavern ceiling. The bioluminescent strands pulsed in slow, hypnotic rhythms—amber one moment, blood-red the next—casting her in liquid fire and bruise-purple shadows. I halted three paces behind her, close enough to feel the radiant heat of her skin, far enough to pretend the scent of her didn't unravel me
