[POV: Nardia]

  Beyond the ship’s forward glass, a sphere hung in the dark—gray smeared with deep navy like bruised stone.

  Veshild’s moon.

  A yellowish rock-moon with almost no sign of life, its surface pocked with swollen bumps that didn’t look like impact craters so much as… irritation. Like the planet had a rash.

  Ahmad slid into the pilot’s seat and made his announcement in the same tone you’d use for tea is ready.

  “We’re entering landing posture. Seatbelts on. Enjoy.”

  Genichiro settled into the copilot chair. I practically dove into the rear jump seat and started wrestling my belt like it had offended me personally.

  “Enjoy…? We’re going to an unknown ruin and you want us to enjoy it?”

  “Unknown is exactly why your blood should run hot,” Ahmad said without taking his eyes off the approach.

  “You’re the most unshakable person on this ship! It’s unfair!”

  I yanked the belt tight. In front of me Ahmad leaned back slightly—arms folded—too relaxed for a man dropping into alien terrain.

  I leaned forward to check.

  “…Are you sleeping?”

  “I’m not sleeping,” he said. “Meditating.”

  “That is exactly how someone who’s sleeping talks!”

  Behind the cockpit bulkhead Genichiro let out a low grunt, then threw his favorite kind of “help.”

  “Hey, rookie. During landing, don’t press any weird buttons. The last trainee accidentally hit emergency thrust.”

  “Please don’t talk like you’re listing trainee death statistics!”

  “Didn’t die,” Genichiro said. “Ship just did a full barrel roll.”

  “THAT’S STILL A DISASTER!”

  My heckle count had already doubled since departure. Adventurer internship was a horror genre wearing a sci?fi coat.

  The Shiratori slipped into descent and the ground rushed up with stupid speed.

  “W-wait, we’re coming in fast!”

  “This is slower than usual,” Ahmad replied, almost bored.

  There was a G?canceller, so my body didn’t feel the acceleration at all—but the visuals were pure military intercept craft. The terrain ballooned toward us, cliffs and ridges turning from “map texture” to “oh wow, that’s real rock.”

  “I’ve confirmed the ruins’ location,” Ahmad said. “We’ll take the shortest line.”

  That was when Genichiro—watching the radar feed—clicked his tongue.

  “Oh. We’ve got company on the ground. Projecting.”

  “Huh?”

  The forward display popped up a small shuttle I didn’t recognize. The AI zoomed in automatically.

  Sleek white hull. Corporate markings. Earth-made.

  “…That’s an Earth company shuttle,” I breathed. “Why are they here?”

  Ahmad’s brows drew together. “GDC contracts are ‘adventurer priority’ in principle.”

  “I heard that too,” I said. “So why is a corporation—”

  “‘Priority’ has exceptions,” Ahmad said, voice low.

  (There are exceptions? That’s important information you could’ve mentioned earlier!)

  And then it got worse.

  “Enlarge the other group,” Ahmad ordered.

  The AI stretched the image, and a tall man in a black cloak-like outer coat came into sharp focus—too sharp, because airless worlds didn’t blur distance the way planets with atmospheres did.

  He had a predator’s eyes. The kind of face that made you instinctively check whether your wallet was still there and whether you’d somehow committed a felony in the last five minutes.

  “…That’s Grim Barlock,” Ahmad murmured. “An executive in the Witches Family.”

  My stomach dropped through the seat.

  “Barlock? As in… the criminal organization? The one tied to my incident?”

  I’d seen his face before—on a file Ahmad had shown me back when everything in my life had gone sideways.

  “Yeah,” Ahmad said flatly. “His picture is basically cover-art for the ‘Do Not Approach’ database.”

  “WHY IS HE HERE?!”

  “No idea,” Ahmad said. “But he’s not the kind of person you want to be liked by.”

  That did not help.

  “Also,” Ahmad added, as if sharing a casual travel tip, “if he greets you—run.”

  “YOUR ADVICE IS SO LAZY!”

  “Regardless,” Ahmad said, hands steady on the controls, “we’ll land from the blind side. Don’t complain.”

  “I’m not— I mean— KYAA—?!”

  The Shiratori snapped into a sudden evasive maneuver. The G?canceller didn’t fully catch it this time; my guts tried to climb into my throat.

  Then the vibration changed—light tremors through the hull—and we kissed down onto the surface of Veshild’s moon.

  Outside was a flat wasteland of gray. Thin ice crusted everything, swallowing light until the world looked like it had been paused.

  Genichiro read off his instruments in a dry, mechanical tone. “External temperature matches predictions. Radiation levels within safe range.”

  “Could you tell me that in a way that feels reassuring?!” I said.

  “Find your own reassurance,” he replied.

  “Even your mechanic voice is strict!”

  I forced a deep breath and headed for the exit hatch.

  We avoided both the corporate shuttle and Barlock’s group, circling around from the opposite side toward the valley marked on Ahmad’s scan.

  The ground was hard, layered with dried ice. Every step made a small piki… piki… cracking sound, like the planet was quietly judging our weight.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  This silence is creepy.

  Deep in the valley, something waited—an oddly black, glossy mass of rock.

  As we closed in, it stopped looking like rock at all. The surface was too smooth, almost metallic, with a faint static itch crawling along my skin.

  “This is… a Ancients ruin?” I whispered.

  “It is,” Ahmad said. He didn’t touch it—just stared like he was measuring distance with his eyes. “No human tech can process material like this.”

  “Don’t get too close,” Genichiro said, brusque.

  This time he wasn’t joking. There was real warning in his voice.

  “Genichiro,” I said, “you’re being weirdly serious.”

  “I’m always serious,” he snapped. “Especially around hazardous objects.”

  “You just called it hazardous!”

  “Because it is.”

  “Honesty is appreciated but I hate it!”

  That’s when the ground under our boots began to tremble—ka… ka… ka…—steady, rhythmic, like something massive was walking beneath the ice.

  “…What is that sound?”

  “Below us,” Ahmad said immediately, stepping in front of me.

  Genichiro’s voice turned sharp. “No. Don’t tell me—”

  (Please don’t say ‘don’t tell me’! That phrase is cursed!)

  “Scan!” Ahmad barked.

  “Already scanning— there’s interference—!”

  And then the ground split.

  Not cracked—tore.

  The dry ice layer bulged upward from beneath and burst, white shards spraying into the air.

  “Wait— hold on— the ground is— the ground is peeling!”

  “Stay calm, Nardia!” Ahmad grabbed my arm and yanked me back.

  “HOW IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO STAY CALM?!”

  A huge shadow rose slowly from the wound in the earth.

  It looked like a whale skeleton rebuilt as a machine and scaled up until it stopped making sense. Its surface was a reflective, semi-solid metal that rippled as if it were breathing.

  “…An Ancients machine?” Ahmad hissed.

  “This is bad!” Genichiro shouted.

  “Nardia—back!” Ahmad ordered.

  “I AM backing! I am backing at FULL POWER!”

  The thing moved.

  It slammed something like a limb into the ground and the valley shook—thunder traveling up through my legs.

  Then, in the next moment, that “gaze”—whatever passed for it—turned toward the distant white corporate shuttle.

  “…Huh? It’s not targeting us—? Wait, corporate guys, RUN!”

  My shout was slower than the machine.

  Its chest flared with light and a beam lanced out.

  The airless distance didn’t give us sound—but the visuals were loud enough.

  A white bloom swallowed the corporate shuttle’s flank. For a heartbeat it looked like the ship had turned into a star.

  Then the hull buckled.

  A spray of glittering fragments burst outward—ice dust and metal shards tumbling in slow, obscene grace.

  My stomach flipped so hard I tasted copper.

  “Genichiro—Shiratori, defense mode,” Ahmad snapped, already moving, already thinking.

  Genichiro’s fingers flew over his wrist console. “Defense mode up. Shields on standby—”

  A second beam skimmed the ground, carving a bright line through the ice.

  It wasn’t aiming at us, but the shockwave still hit like a fist. The ice beneath my boots shuddered; my teeth clacked.

  I dropped without being told, because at this point my body had finally learned.

  “I’M DOWN! I’VE BEEN DOWN THIS WHOLE TIME!”

  “You’re doing great,” Genichiro said, which in his language was basically a love letter.

  Ahmad’s eyes never left the machine. “It’s targeting the shuttle. Not us.”

  “That is not comforting!” I hissed.

  “It means we have seconds,” Ahmad replied.

  Seconds.

  As in, you can die in seconds.

  Ahmad tapped his comm. “AI. Any signal from the corporate shuttle?”

  A hiss of static answered—then a thin, broken ping.

  “…distress… code…” the AI translated, voice smooth despite the chaos. “Transmission weak. Multiple life signs.”

  “Multiple,” I echoed, throat tight. “So there are survivors.”

  Genichiro swore under his breath. “Of course there are. Of course we landed right next to a disaster.”

  Ahmad’s gaze flicked from the machine to the distant wreck site. Calculation, cold and fast.

  “We’re here on GDC contract,” Genichiro said, like he was reminding Ahmad—and maybe himself. “Rescue isn’t in scope.”

  “It is if it changes the mission environment,” Ahmad said.

  Which was a very Ahmad way of saying, we’re not leaving people to die if it messes up our job.

  Possibly also if it annoyed his sense of order. Hard to tell.

  The machine’s chest dimmed, like it was… recharging?

  Or thinking?

  It turned its head fractionally, as if listening to something under the ice.

  And that was when I noticed it.

  The ruin behind us—black, glossy, too smooth—was vibrating in a pattern that didn’t match the footsteps.

  It’s reacting.

  My skin prickled.

  “Ahmad,” I said, voice smaller than I wanted. “The ruin—”

  “I see it,” he cut in. “Genichiro. Mark the safest approach vector to the corporate site. Avoid line of sight.”

  Genichiro blinked. “We’re going?”

  Ahmad looked at him.

  It wasn’t a glare. It was worse.

  It was the look of a man who had already decided, and was now waiting for reality to keep up.

  “Yes,” Ahmad said.

  Genichiro exhaled. “Yeah. Okay. Sure. Why would we have a normal day.”

  Ahmad turned to me. “Trainee. This is not a drill.”

  “I KNOW,” I squeaked.

  “Good. Then do what you’ve been trained to do.”

  “Observe and—” I swallowed. “—stay alive.”

  Ahmad nodded once, satisfied.

  Then he did something that was somehow scarier than yelling.

  He relaxed his shoulders.

  Like he was ready.

  “Move,” he said. “Now.”

  We sprinted—half crouched, half sliding on the dry ice—using ridges as cover. Every few steps the ground gave a brittle piki under my boots, and every time it did my heart screamed, That was loud! That was loud! That was loud!

  But Veshild’s moon was quiet enough to make even a whisper feel criminal.

  The machine’s beams came in pulses. When it fired, the ice flared white and the world became a single sharp line of light.

  When it didn’t fire, the silence returned.

  And in that silence, I could hear my own breathing inside my helmet like a trapped animal.

  Genichiro’s voice came through comms. “No sudden movements. If it looks this way, we freeze.”

  “Freeze like…” I panted, “like a statue?”

  “Like you want to keep your bones,” he replied.

  Ahmad’s voice was steady in my ear. “Nardia. Distance.”

  I glanced up.

  The corporate shuttle was closer than I’d expected—because we were running toward it like maniacs.

  The hull had been torn open along one side, the white plating bent outward like peeled skin. A thin fog of vented air drifted into vacuum and vanished.

  A suit-clad figure crawled from the torn bay—slow, clumsy, one hand pressed to their chest like they were holding themselves together by force of will.

  They looked up at us.

  Even through the visor I could see their eyes were wide.

  They weren’t thinking, Oh, rescue.

  They were thinking, Are you more trouble?

  Fair.

  Genichiro muttered, “Corporate security. Of course.”

  Ahmad raised one hand—palm out, weapon lowered—universal don’t shoot us language.

  “We’re GDC contractors,” he said over open comms, voice calm. “We’re not with Barlock.”

  The suit’s helmet tilted—like they didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  Then, from inside the broken shuttle, a muffled thud.

  Another survivor.

  And another.

  Someone screamed—voice garbled by comms and vacuum protocols, but the panic made it translate anyway.

  “They’re coming back! It’s coming back!”

  Ahmad’s gaze snapped up.

  The Ancients machine had turned.

  Not fully—just enough.

  And this time, it wasn’t looking at the corporate shuttle.

  It was looking at us.

  My blood went cold.

  Ahmad didn’t hesitate. “Genichiro. Smoke. Now.”

  Genichiro slapped a canister onto the ice. It burst into a thick cloud of particulate—dark, shimmering, like pulverized graphite.

  A visual blind. In vacuum.

  Because of course Genichiro had smoke grenades that worked in space. This team was insane.

  “Move the survivors,” Ahmad ordered. “Into cover. Into the valley shadow.”

  Corporate security shouted something back—angry, incredulous, desperate.

  Genichiro answered with the universal language of mechanics everywhere.

  “Shut up and walk if you want to keep your organs.”

  I grabbed the nearest survivor’s arm and pulled.

  They were heavy—suit mass, fear mass, the mass of I might be dead in thirty seconds.

  “Come on!” I yelled. “We’re going!”

  They stumbled, then matched my pace.

  Behind us, the machine fired.

  The beam tore through the smoke cloud, turning it into a glittering storm.

  Light flared across the ice.

  And I realized something horrible:

  It wasn’t shooting wildly.

  It was probing.

  Testing.

  Learning.

  Ahmad’s voice came through, low and sharp.

  “Trainee. Update.”

  My brain tried to be useful. Tried to be an adventurer.

  “It’s not just attacking,” I said, breath ragged. “It’s adjusting. Like it’s… mapping targets.”

  “Good,” Ahmad said.

  Good?!

  He meant the information. He always meant the information.

  We reached the cover of a jagged ridge—shadow cutting across the ice like a knife.

  The corporate survivors collapsed behind it, gasping in their helmets, voices overlapping.

  “How many?” Ahmad demanded.

  “Four out,” one of them said. “Two still inside. The bay’s jammed.”

  “Genichiro,” Ahmad said.

  “On it,” Genichiro replied immediately, already moving.

  Ahmad looked at me.

  His eyes were calm.

  Which was somehow the worst part.

  “Nardia. You stay with them,” he said. “If that machine comes over this ridge, you run toward the Shiratori. Do not stop.”

  My mouth went numb. “What about you?”

  Ahmad’s gaze shifted back toward the smoke cloud, where the machine’s silhouette moved like a nightmare behind a curtain.

  “I’ll buy time,” he said.

  “Buy time with what? We’re on a rock in space!”

  Ahmad’s lips quirked—just a flicker. “With experience.”

  Genichiro’s voice cut in, irritated. “Don’t let him do it alone. I’ll pop the bay, grab the trapped ones, and we all leave. Fast.”

  “That was a plan,” I said, voice shaking. “That was an actual plan.”

  Then the smoke parted for half a second.

  A glimpse of reflective metal. A ripple like breathing.

  And a soundless impact that threw ice shards into the air.

  It was getting closer.

  Ahmad’s voice dropped, no humor now.

  “Everyone,” he said, “move.”

  The corporate survivors scrambled. I grabbed the nearest one and hauled them.

  And somewhere deep under the ice, the ruin pulsed again—answering the machine like a heartbeat answering a heartbeat.

  This isn’t just a random guardian.

  Something is waking up.

  As we ran, my inner heckler whispered the only conclusion it could manage:

  So this is the part where the contract stops being paperwork…

  and becomes a death clause with a very specific address.