[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 was not the heavy and 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 and malevolent force that pinned him against the pilot's seat. It pressed the air out of his lungs until his ribs groaned under the strain.
He tried to inhale. His diaphragm refused to move. It felt as if a hydraulic press were paused on his sternum.
His heart hammered against his ribs. It was not a steady rhythm. It was the frantic and 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. It was heavy and sluggish. His vision was a wash of static and red warning lights which blurred into a headache that felt like a drill bit boring into his temples.
Think, he commanded himself. The thought felt slow like wading through molasses.Status. Report.
He tried to lift his arm to reach the manual release. He could not. His arm felt like it was made of solid lead. The simple act of twitching a finger required a Herculean effort of will.
I am dying, the detached scientific part of his brain noted. Hypoxia induced by atmospheric pressure or localized gravity anomaly. Time to unconsciousness is roughly eight seconds.
Then a voice cut through the roaring tinnitus in his ears. It was cool and 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 8.5.]
Elian's mind reeled. Eight point five Gs.
That was not a planet. That was a centrifuge set to liquefy.
A normal human or even a conditioned Federation soldier would be a puddle of gore right now. Their bones would have snapped like dry twigs. Their organs would be crushed under their own weight. The only reason Elian was not dead was the genetic sequencing he had undergone at the Academy. He had carbon-lattice bone grafting designed for high-impact crashes.
But even diamond-hard bones could not keep his heart pumping against this kind of pressure.
"Suit..." Elian wheezed. The word barely escaped his crushed throat. It sounded like a death rattle. "Engage... override."
[Acknowledged .Rerouting Emergency Power to Exo-Musculature.]
A high-pitched whine vibrated against his skin like a jet turbine spinning up. The matte-black Vanguard Mark-IV Exo-Skin hugging his body suddenly contracted. Millions of synthetic nano-fibers tightened simultaneously. They acted as a second and stronger set of muscles.
The suit squeezed his legs and forced 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 and ragged gasp.
Elian's eyes snapped open. Panic cut through the hypoxia. It was cold and sharp.
"Alara!"
It was the first word out of his mouth. He thrashed against the pilot's harness and ignored 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 washed over him so intensely it made him dizzy. She was safe. The blast doors had held. He had not failed her yet.
"Get me to her," Elian rasped. "Unbuckle me."
[Negative]
"That was not 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. It is 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 pricked his eyes. He was forty meters away from his dying daughter. He was separated by a wall of gravity he could not 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 and cruel and undeniably correct. He had stolen this ship. He had stolen A.R.C. He had fled the Federation to save her from the Galactic Phage. He had not come this far to die of a heart attack in the pilot's seat.
"Fine," Elian whispered. His voice trembled 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. 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 and stared at a piece of twisted titanium railing. He reached out to grab it. 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 and stung his eyes.
One step at a time, he told himself. Move or die.
He crawled through the jagged hole in the hull and dragged his body inch by inch. The soil outside was wet and 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 rose 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 was the power gauge. It made his blood run cold.
[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 was 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 is 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. It snapped trees that looked as hard as steel. Smoke billowed up from the engine but it did not rise. The gravity was so strong that the smoke hugged the ground and crept 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 as he checked 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 were not just wood because they contained high concentrations of iron and copper. The moss on the rocks was vibrating. The Unknown Isotope was everywhere. It was in the air and in the soil and in the static charge bristling on the fern leaves.
Snap.
A sound came from the brush. It was sharp and deliberate.
Elian froze. His hand drifted to his hip as muscle memory reached 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. It was 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 as he hefted it like a crude short-sword.
"Movement detected," A.R.C. stated. Its tone was 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 and long ears and a twitching nose. It was large. It was perhaps the size of a Terran wolf. But it was undeniably a rabbit. It sat on its haunches and chewed on a piece of metallic bark.
Elian relaxed slightly and lowered the metal shard. "A herbivore? Well that is a relief. At least we are not 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 and intended 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 and radiant crimson. They glowed 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 were not flat herbivore teeth. They were serrated needles made of crystal.
The air around the creature suddenly warped.
Elian's instincts 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 and instant and terrifying. The ground collapsed inward. It cratered 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. He coughed as the shockwave rattled his teeth.
"Negligible threat?! " Elian shouted as he scrambled 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 is LETHAL]
The Rabbit hopped forward. It did not bounce. It blurred. It moved with a speed that should not be possible in 8.5Gs.
It leaped into the air. It aimed to land directly on Elian's chest. A red aura surrounded it and increased its density. It was a living cannonball.
"Calculated trajectory!" Elian shouted
[Trajectory plotted. Intercept point is 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 did not have the strength to fight it. His plasma gun was gone. His suit was draining power by the second. If he tried to block then 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 did not try to strike the beast. Instead he jammed the jagged titanium shard into the ground at a 45-degree angle. He braced 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 pierced the Rabbit's chest.
The beast squealed. It was 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. It slid until it stopped inches from Elian's face. Neon-blue blood oozed from the wound and sizzled where it touched the soil.
Elian lay there. He panted. 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 burned with lactic acid. He approached the dead beast and was 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. It glowed with a soft and pulsating azure light. It hummed and vibrated against his glove like a live wire.
"What is this?" Elian asked. He picked 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 and negate the planet's atmospheric pressure.
Elian froze.
He looked at the glowing core. Then he looked at his dying battery indicator.
A thought formed in his mind. It was crazy and desperate and purely scientific.
"A.R.C.," Elian said as he stared at the blue light. "You said the locals use this energy to negate gravity. That is how a rabbit can move at Mach 1 in 8.5Gs."
[Affirmative. It is an evolutionary adaptation]
["If this thing stores energy then maybe the local biology uses it to reinforce their cellular structure."]
Elian looked at the towering iron trees. He looked at the rabbit. He looked at 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. It was a short and 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. He thought of the white pod forty meters away locked behind a door he was too weak to open.
"A.R.C.," Elian said as he clutched 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 did not hesitate. He was not 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 and faced 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.
[END OF CHAPTER 1]