The ground shifted beneath their boots, alive with something that shouldn’t have been there. Vines slithered toward the breach they’d forced into the surface, sealing it shut. Linuka reached for help the way she always had—but this time, the voice inside her didn’t respond. This is your fault, it whispered.

There was no ‘next’. Finding the last diin was the mission. Only knowing the seedling’s fate would ensure there was a future for anyone. Linuka sat on the bunk, exhaustion heavy in her bones. Then Cha said it—the words that cracked the silence: ‘We returned… with a sphere drive array.’

Clouds of yellow dust puffed out of the surface. Blue static ran along towering vines. Then the ground shook. A blinding beam erupted skyward, leaving behind a smoking crater. At its bottom, half-hidden in charred plant-matter, gleamed the hull of something impossibly old.