That's when I heard it—a low, rumbling growl that seemed to come from everywhere at once.
I turned slowly.
The leasion stood twenty meters away, and it was massive. Easily the size of a horse, with sleek dark fur that rippled over heavy muscle. But it was the eyes that froze me in place—eight of them, four on each side of its head, all fixed on me with an intelligence that was somehow worse than simple animal hunger.
It took a step forward, and I saw its tail—thick, powerful, and there, just barely visible near the tip, a band of gold.
Alpha.
My body moved before my brain caught up. I ran.
The world became a blur of purple vegetation and burning lungs. I couldn't breathe, couldn't get enough air, each gasp feeling thinner than the last. Behind me, I heard the leasion's claws tearing into the earth, heard its breathing—steady, patient, the breathing of a predator that knew its prey was already dying.
I vaulted over a fallen log and nearly collapsed on the other side. My vision was starting to tunnel. Why couldn't I breathe? What was wrong with me?
The leasion was getting closer. I could hear it, feel it, the ground shaking with each bound.
Ahead—rocks. A tumble of massive boulders creating a maze of narrow passages. I threw myself into a gap barely wide enough for my shoulders, scraping skin, not caring. The leasion's snarl echoed off stone as it tried to follow, but the gap was too narrow for its bulk.
I crawled deeper into the rocks, my hands shaking, my chest heaving uselessly. Each breath was agony. Each breath gave me nothing.
The leasion circled outside, growling, those eight eyes visible through the gaps in the stone. Watching. Waiting.
I fumbled for my pack with trembling hands, pulled out the emergency kit. And there, clipped to the inside of the lid, was a small atmospheric filter mask with a note in Vargas's handwriting: "Oxygen mix toxic to humans without filter. 6-hour exposure limit before permanent damage."
They knew. They'd known the whole time.
I pressed the mask to my face with shaking hands and took a breath. Then another. Sweet, clean air flooded my lungs.
Outside, the leasion alpha waited.
And I was alone.
The night lasted forever.
I sat wedged between two boulders, the mask pressed to my face, listening to the alpha pace outside. Sometimes it would go quiet for long stretches and I'd think it had left, but then I'd hear the scrape of claws on stone or see the gleam of those eight eyes through a gap in the rocks.
I didn't sleep. Couldn't. My body was a catalog of damage—cuts from the rocks, bruises from the fall, muscles screaming from the sprint. The mask's filter would last maybe eight hours according to the indicator. After that, I'd be breathing poison again.
I checked my comm unit. Dead. Either damaged in the fall or they'd remotely disabled it. Probably the latter.
Around what I guessed was dawn—the light changed, became less purple, more amber—the leasion finally left. I heard it move away, the sound of its passage fading into the distance. I waited another hour to be sure.
When I finally crawled out of the rocks, my legs barely held me. The mask's filter was at thirty percent. I had maybe two hours of clean air left, and the ship was at least three hours away on foot.
I started walking.
The terrain blurred together. Purple grass. Strange trees with bark that looked like scales. My shirt hung in tatters, blood dried black on my arms and chest. Every breath through the mask was a reminder that my own people had tried to kill me.
I filed it away. Another data point. Trust no one.
When the filter hit ten percent, I started running. Stumbling, really. My vision tunneled. My hands shook. But I kept moving because stopping meant dying, and I wasn't going to give Vargas the satisfaction.
The ship appeared through the haze like a mirage. I pulled the mask off when I was fifty meters out—no point wasting the last of the filter—and immediately my lungs started burning again. But I could see the airlock. Just had to make it to the airlock.
I hit the exterior panel with my palm and the door cycled open. Stepped into the decontamination chamber. The inner door opened and I walked into the cargo bay.
Reeves was there, checking equipment. He looked up, saw me, and his face went white.
"Jesus Christ," he breathed.
I walked past him without a word, heading for the medical bay. My shirt was more blood than fabric now. My breathing sounded like a broken engine.
Chen appeared in the corridor, Vargas behind him. They both stopped dead.
"Kaine," Chen said. "We thought—"
"Leasion alpha," I said, my voice flat. "Lost the team in the pursuit. Made it to cover. Survived the night. Walked back."
Vargas's expression was unreadable. "Your comm was offline."
"Damaged." I met his eyes. "Or disabled. Hard to tell."
A moment of silence. Then Chen nodded slowly. "Get to medical. Full workup. We'll debrief after."
I continued past them. In the medical bay, the automated systems scanned me while I sat on the examination table. Lacerations. Contusions. Atmospheric poisoning, moderate. Dehydration. The AI recommended rest and observation.
I overrode it. Authorized myself for light duty.
Because that's what you did. You got hurt, you got up, you kept working. The company didn't pay for weakness. Vargas had taught me that, even if he hadn't meant to.
When I walked back out into the corridor twenty minutes later—cuts sealed, stimulants in my system, clean shirt—Vargas was waiting.
"Tough bastard," he said. It might have been respect. Might have been resentment.
"Yeah," I said.
I walked past him to my quarters, pulled up the geological surveys on my terminal, and got back to work.
The planet had resources. We had quotas. Everything else was irrelevant.
I was learning.
Three days later, they sent me out again.
Different team this time. Morrison, Keller, and Okafor. Security detail plus two surveyors. The target was a mineral deposit in the Thressa range—a series of jagged mountains about forty kilometers northwest of base camp. The scans showed promising concentrations of rare earth elements. Someone needed to verify the readings on the ground.
I checked my pack twice before we left. Atmospheric filter, fully charged. Emergency beacon. Water. Rations. Rock hammer. Sample containers. I didn't trust anyone to tell me what I needed anymore.
The terrain got rougher as we moved into the foothills. Red-orange stone jutted up through patches of that strange purple moss. The mountains themselves rose ahead of us, dark and imposing against the pale sky. They had a different quality than the lowlands—sharper, more angular, like someone had carved them with deliberate violence.
Morrison set a brutal pace. I kept up for the first two hours.
Then the ground started climbing in earnest, and my lungs—still recovering from the atmospheric poisoning—began to burn. I fell back. Ten meters. Twenty. Fifty.
Nobody slowed down.
Nobody looked back.
I watched them disappear around a switchback in the trail, their figures swallowed by the shadow of an overhanging cliff. I waited for someone to notice. To call out. To stop.
The wind picked up, carrying dust and the faint smell of something mineral and sharp.
I kept walking.
By the time I reached the switchback, they were gone. I could see their tracks in the loose scree, heading higher into the mountains. I followed for another hour, but the gap only widened. My comm crackled with static when I tried to raise them. Either the mountains were interfering with the signal, or they'd switched channels.
I stopped trying.
The sun was starting its descent when I accepted the obvious: I wasn't catching up. And night in the mountains would be worse than night in the lowlands. Colder. More exposed.
I needed shelter.
It took another thirty minutes of searching before I found it—a shallow cave carved into the mountainside, barely deep enough to be called a cave at all. More like a deep overhang. But it would block the wind, and the opening faced away from the direction I'd seen storm clouds gathering on the horizon.
I dropped my pack inside and did a quick sweep with my handheld scanner. No heat signatures. No nests. No droppings. Empty.
Good enough.
I set up efficiently. Emergency blanket unfolded and weighted down with rocks. Rations and water within reach. Atmospheric filter checked and rechecked. I positioned myself with my back to the stone, facing the entrance, rock hammer across my lap.
The mountains were quiet. Not silent—wind moved through the crags with a low, whistling sound, and somewhere distant I could hear something that might have been water running over stone. But there were no animal calls. No rustling in the undergrowth.
Just wind and stone and the fading light.
I ate a ration bar without tasting it. Drank water. Watched the sky turn from pale blue to deep purple to black.
The stars came out. Thousands of them. More than I'd ever seen from Earth, even in the darkest places. They scattered across the sky like someone had thrown diamonds against velvet.
I looked at them for a moment. Then I looked away.
Beauty didn't matter. Survival mattered.
I pulled the emergency blanket tighter and settled in to wait for morning.
Somewhere in the darkness, something howled. Not a leasion—the pitch was wrong. Something else.