Chapter 1: Awakening the Dunes
The sky wasn’t a sky at all. It was a ceiling of broken ribs, the skeletal remains of things so vast Radish’s mind couldn’t frame them. They arced over the world, bleached white against the perpetual twilight, casting jagged, shifting shadows across the rust-colored waste below. It wasn’t sand. He knew that now. It was chitin. Finely ground, a billion shattered exoskeletons forming dunes that whispered underfoot.
He walked because walking was easier than talking. The low, rhythmic thrum from deep in the earth vibrated through the soles of his boots, a heartbeat older than gods. Bioluminescent fungi pulsed in the fissures of cracked obsidian, casting a sickly, greenish light that made his stark white hair seem to glow. He preferred it out here. The silence of the wastes asked no questions, demanded no small talk.
“You’re moping,” a crackling voice said in his earpiece.
“I am navigating, Ziggy,” Radish corrected softly, his eyes scanning the treacherous, beautiful hellscape. His voice was quieter than he intended. It always was.
“Same thing. You’ve been ‘navigating’ for three days. You saw a pretty girl at the outpost and now you’re wandering the most depressing place in the galaxy. Classic.”
Radish’s pale cheeks flushed. She hadn’t just been pretty. She’d been a drifter with sun-bronzed skin and laugh lines around her eyes. She’d asked him for a light. His hands had shaken so badly he’d dropped the igniter. She’d picked it up, her fingers brushing his, and smiled. “Nervous?” she’d asked. He’d just stared, his unnervingly black eyes wide, his brain a flatline of static. She’d shrugged and walked away. He’d replayed the moment seventeen thousand times since.
“It wasn’t like that,” he murmured.
“Sure. So, what’s the plan? Another hour of admiring the dead bug scenery?”
“Scouting. The readings suggest unstable substrata ahead.” He adjusted the heavy pack on his shoulders, the weight of the Eldritch Lance and Volkanite Disintegrator a comfortable, familiar pressure. Tools he understood. Rules of engagement were clear. Feelings were not.
He crested a dune. The ground here was darker, the fragments larger, like the plate armor of some colossal beetle. The thrumming felt stronger here, resonating in his teeth. He took a careful step forward.
The ground shifted.
Not a slide, not a settling. A deliberate, lateral roll. He froze, one foot planted, the other sinking slightly. The rust-colored ‘dune’ he stood on shuddered. A long, deep crack fissured open ten feet to his left, releasing a puff of stale, hot air.
“Ziggy,” he whispered.
“I’m seeing it. Seismic spike. Localized. That’s not ground, Radish.”
A segment of the dune the size of a landspeeder lifted. It wasn’t earth. It was a plate, thick and glossy, the color of dried blood. From beneath it, a jointed leg unfolded, slender as a support beam, ending in a curved pincer that snapped the air with a sound like breaking stone. Another plate rose. And another. The dune dissolved into a waking topography of legs and antennae.
Scutterbeasts. Dormant, buried, and he’d walked right into their nest.
The thrumming wasn’t from the earth. It was from them. A chorus of it now, vibrating up through his bones. The nearest one, its main body still half-submerged in the waste, rotated a cluster of faceted eyes toward him. Its antennae, feathery and dense, twitched, sensing the heat radiating from his body, the frantic drumbeat of his heart.
His training took over before his fear could. He dropped into a low crouch, his hand flying to the activation rune on his thigh. The Eldritch Lance hummed to life in its harness, a purplish-black energy coalescing along its length. He didn’t draw it. Not yet.
The Scutterbeast moved with terrifying, fluid speed. Its pincer leg stabbed down, shearing through the space where he’d been standing. He rolled, the chitin fragments scraping against his gear. He came up firing the Volkanite from his other hand. A beam of pure orange heat lanced out, striking the joint where the leg met the body. It hissed, splintering, and the beast recoiled with a shriek like grinding metal.
“Two more on your right!” Ziggy’s voice was pure data-stream in his ear.
He saw them. Their massive forms breached the surface, sending waves through the brittle landscape. They were coordinated. One lunged, pincers snapping. He dove sideways, the air whiffing as they closed. The second tried to flank him. He was small, fast, a difficult target. But there were three of them, and the ground was their ally, shifting, alive.
He unleashed the Lance. The air screamed as the eldritch energy tore free, a bolt of impossible physics that didn’t so much cut as unmake. It passed through the central beast’s head-plate silently. Where it struck, the chitin didn’t shatter; it simply ceased to be, leaving a smooth, smoking void. The creature collapsed, its systems blinking out.
The victory was a second long.
The remaining two Scutterbeasts, enraged or communicating in some unseen way, attacked in unison. One charged, a living battering ram. The other dug, sending a spray of sharp fragments at his face. He shielded his eyes, firing the Volkanite blindly. He felt a connection, a sizzle of carapace, but the charging beast was on him.
Its pincer slammed into his side. The armor held, but the impact lifted him off his feet. He landed hard on his back, the breath blasted from his lungs. The world swam—the ribbed sky, the pulsing green fungi, the monstrous silhouette looming over him, its pincer raised high for a final, puncturing blow.
He tried to bring the Lance around. Too slow.
A shadow fell across him. Not from the beast.
Something long, metallic, and brutally simple shot down from above, impaling the Scutterbeast through its central eye cluster. The force of it drove the thing sideways, its death-throes a violent shuddering. The pincer meant for Radish’s chest thudded into the ground beside his head.
Radish blinked up, gasping.
A figure stood balanced on the dead beast’s carapace, casually retrieving a heavy tungsten spear. She was tall, clad in patched, sturdy gear, a scar cutting a pale line through the dusk-gold skin of her cheek. The drifter from the outpost.
She looked down at him, her expression unreadable. “You drop this?” she asked, her voice dry as the wastes. She tossed the igniter he’d fumbled days ago. It landed in the dust by his hip.
Then she turned, leaping down to face the final Scutterbeast, which was scrabbling toward her, antennae whipping in fury. She didn’t run. She planted her feet, hefting the spear.
Radish pushed himself up, his side screaming. He saw her calm stance, the deadly focus. He saw the beast coil to strike.
His hand found the Volkanite. He didn’t aim. He just pointed and let the disintegrator beam carve a searing line across the waste, slicing the Scutterbeast’s leading legs clean off. It stumbled, off-balance.
The woman didn’t hesitate. She drove her spear forward, not with brute force, but with a precise, economical thrust into a soft joint at the neck. The beast convulsed once and fell still.
The sudden silence was deafening, broken only by the fading hum of his weapons and the slow, grinding settlement of chitin. The thrumming had stopped.
She yanked her spear free, wiping the ichor on the ground. She glanced back at him, her eyes taking in his trembling form, the advanced weapons, the shock-white hair. “You’re a long way from a lab, kid.”
He stood, wincing. “It’s Radish,” he said, the word barely audible.
“Huh.” She retrieved his igniter again, walked over, and held it out. This time, her gaze held his. It wasn’t pity. It was assessment. “You fight pretty good for a guy who can’t hold onto his lighter.”
He took it. Their fingers brushed again. This time, he didn’t drop it. A strange, warm current shot up his arm, utterly alien in the cold waste.
Before he could stammer a thank you, a new sound sliced the air. Not biological. Mechanical. The distant, familiar whine of grav-cycles. Four of them, cresting a far dune, kicking up a plume of chitin dust. The sun glinted off scavenger rigs and mounted projectile casters.
The woman’s face hardened. She looked from the bikes to Radish, then to the massive, valuable carcasses of the Scutterbeasts.
“Friends of yours?” she asked, her voice tight.
Radish shook his head, his black eyes fixed on the approaching threat. The easy warmth of the moment was gone, replaced by a colder, more familiar tension.
“No,” he said, his voice finally finding a solid core. He hefted the Eldritch Lance, its energy field flickering back to life. “They’re not.”