[SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED...]
[CRITICAL FAILURE: HULL INTEGRITY 0%]
[LIFE SUPPORT: OFFLINE]
[TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT DETECTED]
The first thing Dr. Elian Vance felt was not pain. It was weight.
It wasn't the heavy, comforting blanket of high-G acceleration he was accustomed to during a warp jump. This was different. This was a concrete slab poured directly into his chest cavity. It was a physical, malevolent force that pinned him against the pilot's seat, pressing the air out of his lungs until his ribs groaned under the strain.
He tried to inhale, but his diaphragm refused to move. It felt as if a hydraulic press were paused on his sternum.
His heart hammered against his ribs—not a steady rhythm, but the frantic, fluttering beat of a trapped bird struggling against a cage that was shrinking. He could feel the blood pooling in the back of his skull, heavy and sluggish. His vision was a wash of static and red warning lights, blurring into a headache that felt like a drill bit boring into his temples.
Think, he commanded himself, though the thought felt slow, wading through molasses.
Status. Report.
He tried to lift his arm to reach the manual release. He couldn't. His arm felt like it was made of solid lead. The simple act of twitching a finger required a Herculean effort of will.
I'm dying, the detached, scientific part of his brain noted. Hypoxia induced by atmospheric pressure or localized gravity anomaly. Time to unconsciousness: roughly eight seconds.
Then, a voice cut through the roaring tinnitus in his ears. It was cool, synthetic, and achingly familiar.
[A.R.C. SYSTEM ONLINE]
Commander,
[visual and auditory cortexes are responding.]
[Vital signs are critical.]
[Pulse: 192 BPM. ]
[Oxygen saturation: 78% and falling.]
[Warning: External environmental pressure exceeds baseline Terra-Standard by factor 8.5Gs.]
Elian's mind reeled. 8.5Gs.
That wasn't a planet. That was a centrifuge set to "liquefy."
A normal human, even a conditioned Federation soldier, would be a puddle of gore right now. Their bones would have snapped like dry twigs, their organs crushed under their own weight.
The only reason Elian wasn't dead was the genetic sequencing he had undergone at the Academy, carbon – lattice bone grafting designed for high – impact crashes.
But even diamond – hard bones couldn't keep his heart pumping against this kind of pressure.
"Suit..." Elian wheezed, the word barely escaping his crushed throat. It sounded like a death rattle.
"Engage... override."
Acknowledged. Rerouting Emergency Power to Exo-Musculature.
A high-pitched whine, like a jet turbine spinning up, vibrated against his skin. The matte-black Vanguard Mark-IV Exo-Skin hugging his body suddenly contracted. Millions of synthetic nano-fibers tightened simultaneously, acting as a second, stronger set of muscles.
The suit squeezed his legs, forcing blood back up to his torso. It clamped down on his abdomen. It wrapped around his chest like a corset of iron and pulled.
Hiss.
The pressure eased just enough. His ribs expanded. Air rushed into his starving lungs with a wet, ragged gasp.
Elian's eyes snapped open. Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the hypoxia.
"Alara!"
It was the first word out of his mouth. He thrashed against the pilot's harness, ignoring the screaming protest of his muscles.
"A.R.C.! Status on Secure Cargo Hold! Is the pod breached?"
[INTERNAL SENSORS ONLINE]
[Scanning...
Secure Cargo Hold: Blast doors sealed.
Stasis Pod Telemetry: Active. Green across the board.]
[Commander, the subject Alara Vance is safe. The containment unit was designed to withstand a supernova.]
Elian slumped back against the seat, the relief washing over him so intensely it made him dizzy.
She was safe.
The blast doors had held. He hadn't failed her yet.
"Get me to her,"Elian rasped. "Unbuckle me."
[NEGATIVE.]
"That wasn't a request!"
[COMMANDER,
look at your biometric readings. You are currently sustaining 8.5 Gs of gravitational pressure.]
[The Cargo Hold is located at the ship's center of mass, 40 meters down the corridor.
Your Exo-Suit is in Emergency Mode. If you attempt to crawl that distance, your heart will fail before you reach the blast door.]
Elian stared at the ceiling, tears of frustration pricking his eyes. He was forty meters away from his dying daughter, separated by a wall of gravity he couldn't climb.
[PROTOCOL: You must stabilize your own biological condition first.]
[If you die, the pod's external power will eventually fail. She will die alone.
Survive first. Rescue second.]
Elian grit his teeth. The logic was cold, cruel, and undeniably correct. He had stolen this ship, stolen A.R.C., and fled the Federation to save her from the Galactic Phage. He hadn't come this far to die of a heart attack in the pilot's seat.
"Fine," Elian whispered, his voice trembling with suppressed rage.
"I survive. I fix this suit. Then I get to her."
He unbuckled the harness.
He fell only three feet to the cockpit ceiling, but in 8.5G, he accelerated like a bullet. He hit the metal plating with a sickening THUD.
"Ghh!"
The wind was knocked out of him again. If not for the suit's gel-layer hardening on impact, his spine would have shattered.
He lay there for a moment, staring at a piece of twisted titanium railing. He reached out to grab it, intending to pull himself up. The metal groaned under his grip.
He pulled.
It was exhausting. Lifting his own body weight felt like bench-pressing a truck. Sweat instantly broke out on his forehead, stinging his eyes.
One step at a time, he told himself. Move or die.
He crawled through the jagged hole in the hull, dragging his body inch by inch. The soil outside was wet, dense, and magnetic; it clung to his gauntlets like iron filings.
He tumbled out of the wreckage and onto the ravine floor.
He tried to stand. The servos in his suit whined in protest, the sound rising to a scream. The battery indicator on his wrist flickered.
Whirrrrr-CLUNK.
He locked his knees. He was standing.
Elian looked down at his HUD, projected onto the retina of his helmet.
The data stream was a waterfall of red error messages.
[Hull Integrity: 0%]
[Warp Core: Ejected]
[Distress Beacon: Failed]
But the number that caught his eye—the number that made his blood run cold—was the power gauge.
[BATTERY LIFE: 14% (EMERGENCY MODE)]
[ESTIMATED RUNTIME: 14 HOURS 12 MINUTES]
Elian stared at the countdown. It was ticking down steadily. 14:11... 14:10...
"A.R.C.,"
Elian said, his voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through him.
"Define 'Emergency Mode'."
[Commander, the Exo-Skin is currently bearing 88% of the gravitational load. It is mechanically expanding your diaphragm to allow respiration and compressing your vascular system to maintain blood pressure.
Without the suit, your biology cannot sustain life in this environment.]
["So if the battery dies..."
You die. Estimated time to organ failure post-shutdown: 45 seconds.]
"Fourteen hours," Elian muttered. "I have fourteen hours to figure out how to survive on a planet that wants to crush me into a diamond. Or Alara wakes up to a corpse."
He looked around the crash site. The Horizon Seeker had carved a deep trench through the jungle, snapping trees that looked as hard as steel. Smoke billowed up from the engine, but it didn't rise—the gravity was so strong that the smoke hugged the ground, creeping like a grey fog.
"Atmospheric analysis," Elian commanded.
[Oxygen: 35%.
Nitrogen: 64%.
Unknown Isotope: 1%.]
[Note: The "Unknown Isotope" is a high-energy particle behaving like a background radiation field. It is permeating every cell of the local flora.]
"Radiation?" Elian asked, checking his dosimeter.
[Negative]
[It is not ionizing radiation. It appears to be a form of bio-reactive energy. The local flora is absorbing it via photosynthesis.]
Elian activated his helmet's scanner. A grid of blue light swept over the jungle.
The data stream was chaotic. The trees weren't just wood; they contained high concentrations of iron and copper. The moss on the rocks was vibrating. The "Unknown Isotope" was everywhere—in the air, in the soil, in the static charge bristling on the fern leaves.
Snap.
A sound from the brush. Sharp. Deliberate.
Elian froze. His hand drifted to his hip, muscle memory reaching for his standard-issue Plasma Sidearm.
His fingers brushed empty air. The holster had been torn away in the crash.
"A.R.C., scan sector 2-1-0."
He looked around frantically. He spotted a jagged shard of the ship's hull plating lying in the mud—a strip of torn titanium alloy, about two feet long and sharp as a razor.
He bent down to pick it up. It weighed nearly forty pounds in this gravity. He grunted, hefting it like a crude short-sword.
"Movement detected," A.R.C. stated, its tone flat and emotionless. "30 meters. Closing."
From the dense, purple ferns, a creature emerged.
Elian blinked. He almost laughed.
It was a rabbit.
It had white fur, long ears, and a twitching nose. It was large—perhaps the size of a Terran wolf—but it was undeniably a rabbit. It sat on its haunches, chewing on a piece of metallic bark.
Elian relaxed slightly, lowering the metal shard. "A herbivore? Well, that's a relief.
At least we aren't starting with a T-Rex."
[TARGET ANALYSIS]
[Morphology: Leporidae family.
Weapons: None detected.
Threat Level: Negligible.
Recommendation: Ignore to conserve calories.]
"Agreed," Elian said. He took a step back, intending to circle around the creature.
The Rabbit stopped chewing.
Its ears swiveled toward Elian. Slowly, it turned its head.
Its eyes were not the soft pink or brown of a prey animal. They were a burning, radiant crimson, glowing with an internal light that seemed to sear the air.
The creature looked at the metal shard in Elian's hand. Then it looked at Elian. It bared its teeth. They weren't flat herbivore teeth.
They were serrated needles made of crystal.
The air around the creature suddenly warped.
Elian's instincts, honed by years of piloting in high-stress combat zones, screamed at him. Anomaly.
He threw himself to the left. The suit's servos screamed as they forced his heavy body to dodge.
BOOM.
The space where Elian had been standing simply depressed.
It was silent, instant, and terrifying. The ground collapsed inward, cratering as if an invisible hydraulic press had slammed down from the heavens. Dust and rock exploded outward. A solid granite boulder was pulverized into powder in a millisecond.
Elian tumbled into the dirt, coughing as the shockwave rattled his teeth.
"Negligible threat?!"
Elian shouted, scrambling backward.
"It just crushed the ground with its mind!"
[ALERT: LOGIC ERROR]
[Kinetic output exceeds biological mass!
Energy Spike Detected: The "Unknown Isotope" is being weaponized!
Correction: Threat Level - LETHAL.]
The Rabbit hopped forward. It didn't bounce; it blurred. It moved with a speed that shouldn't be possible in 8.5Gs.
It leaped into the air, aiming to land directly on Elian's chest. A red aura surrounded it, increasing its density. It was a living cannonball.
"Calculated trajectory!" Elian shouted.
Trajectory plotted. Intercept point: 1.2 meters above you.
Time seemed to slow.
A.R.C. projected a red wireframe path across Elian's vision. He could see exactly where the beast would be in 0.5 seconds.
He didn't have the strength to fight it. His plasma gun was gone. His suit was draining power by the second. If he tried to block, that gravity attack would crush his arms and then his skull.
He had to use the environment. He had to use the math.
Elian rolled onto his back. He didn't try to strike the beast. Instead, he jammed the jagged titanium shard into the ground at a 45-degree angle, bracing the bottom against a deep root.
The Rabbit descended. Its red eyes locked onto Elian's face. It was expecting soft meat.
It met Federation Alloy.
SHING.
The titanium shard—part of a starship hull designed to withstand asteroid impacts—pierced the Rabbit's chest.
The beast squealed, a sound like grinding metal. It thrashed wildly.
For a second, the gravity around them went haywire. Pebbles floated into the air. Elian felt his stomach lurch as he became weightless, then slammed back down as the gravity doubled.
Then, the red light in its eyes faded. The gravity normalized.
The carcass slumped down the spike, sliding until it stopped inches from Elian's face. Neon-blue blood oozed from the wound, sizzling where it touched the soil.
Elian lay there, panting. The effort of the roll had burned a significant chunk of his reserves.
[BATTERY: 13%]
"It's dead," Elian rasped. "A rabbit almost killed me."
[Correction: A biologically augmented organism almost killed you.
Commander, scan indicates an anomaly within the carcass]
Elian pulled himself up, his muscles burning with lactic acid. He approached the dead beast, wary of it springing back to life.
"Where?"
[Thoracic cavity. High-density energy signature detected]
Elian gritted his teeth. He used the sharp edge of the hull plating to slice open the creature's chest. The skin was tough, like cutting through old leather tires reinforced with Kevlar. He pulled back the ribs with a wet crack.
There, nestled next to the still-warm heart, was a crystal.
It was the size of a walnut, glowing with a soft, pulsating azure light. It hummed, vibrating against his glove like a live wire.
"What is this?"
Elian asked, picking it up. It felt heavy for its size.
[ANALYSIS COMPLETE]
Object: Biological Solid-State Capacitor.
Function: Stores the "Unknown Isotope."
Mechanism: The creature utilized this Core to manipulate local gravity fields, negating the planet's atmospheric pressure.
Elian froze.
He looked at the glowing core. Then he looked at his dying battery indicator.
A thought—crazy, desperate, and purely scientific—formed in his mind.
"A.R.C.," Elian said, staring at the blue light. "You said the locals use this energy to negate gravity. That's how a rabbit can move at Mach 1 in 8.5Gs."
[Affirmative. It is an evolutionary adaptation.
"If this thing stores energy... and if the local biology uses it to reinforce their cellular structure..."]
Elian looked at the towering iron trees.
The rabbit. The crushing sky.
["What happens if I put it inside me?"
Commander, that is ill-advised. You do not have a biological reactor. Your digestive system cannot process high-energy crystalline matter.]
[The volatility is 98%. It will likely cause total systemic failure. You will explode.]
"And if I don't?"
The battery dies in 13 hours and 58 minutes. You will be crushed to death.
Elian laughed, a short, sharp bark devoid of humor. "So, option A is certain death. Option B is probable death."
He looked at the jungle. He looked at the wreckage of his ship – the symbol of the technology that had failed him. And he thought of the white pod, forty meters away, locked behind a door he was too weak to open.
"A.R.C.,"
Elian said, clutching the bloody crystal. "Can you run a simulation?
If I ingest this... can you hijack my nervous system to guide the energy?
Can you force my cells to accept it?"
Calculating...
...
Theoretical Probability of Success: 14.2%.
I would need to override your Autonomic Nervous System. I would need to break your bones to rebuild them with the energy lattice.
The pain will exceed human tolerance levels.
"Turn off the pain receptors," Elian said.
I cannot. The suit is in Emergency Mode. Auxiliary systems, including neural dampeners, are offline.
You will feel every molecule.
Elian looked at the timer. [13 HOURS 55 MINUTES]
He didn't hesitate. He wasn't a hero. He was a father. And the math was clear.
"Fourteen percent is better than zero."
He wiped the blue blood on his suit. He stood up, facing the alien storm brewing above the ravine.
"Do it, A.R.C. Prepare the interface."
Elian threw his head back and swallowed the core.
It slid down his throat, cold and hard.
For three seconds
Nothing happened
Then,
the fire started.