5.5 LIGHT

With a crude fourth “peg” leg fitted, Juna and Ste struggle to integrate it into the pod’s gait, their tempers frayed by exhaustion and overwhelming pharma. Juna’s sense of self blurs under chemical strain and confinement. In darkness, they spot a dim red glow and lurch toward it, hoping for human activity.

The light proves volcanic: a molten vent sustaining simple biota. Realizing they’re near solid ground toward the pole, they leave the mirage and continue into a bleak, crevassed ice desert. Sleep becomes impossible; systems fail. When a knee joint seizes, Ste admits defeat and welds it rigid, turning the pod into a slow crawler.

Amid worsening morale and alarms, a long-awaited alert triggers: a faint human beacon using Concern encryption—the anchor. They creep toward it but make little apparent progress, as if chasing something receding in the dark. Their lamps reveal a large, multi-legged work robot laying insulated fibre-optic cable and moving away faster than the crippled pod.

After a grinding pursuit, they grapple the robot and realize they only needed its cable trace back to the anchor. They tap the fibre, sending clean light pulses through Shroud’s noise to the anchor and up to orbit. Fears that Garveneer had left or been destroyed are dispelled when a clerk spots the anomalous traffic; Opportunities queries their message.

Two days later, repurposed construction bots mount a rescue. Juna and Ste, having survived unprecedented overland ordeal and system failures, are retrieved and finally home to human hands at the anchor.