The shimmering dome of their shield had never looked so beautiful.

Luca stumbled through the energy barrier, his legs burning from the three-kilometer nightmare they'd just survived. Emily collapsed beside him, both of them gasping inside their helmets as the Centurion's protective field sealed them away from the horrors of Midnight Veil.

"Made it," he wheezed through his comm, his scout armor scratched and pitted from their desperate scramble through the toxic landscape.

Emily's voice crackled through the radio, exhausted. "Barely. Those things were right behind us the whole—"

THUMP.

Something massive struck the shield directly above them. Lightning-shaped cracks spider-webbed across the energy dome's surface, brilliant fractures of light that made them both flinch.

"What the fuck!" Luca rolled sideways, expecting the shield to collapse and dump whatever nightmare was overhead right on top of them.

But the cracks faded, the energy field rebuilding itself with a low hum. Still, through the translucent barrier, they could see something massive probing their defenses. Not clearly, just shapes in the fog, but big enough to make the entire dome shudder with each contact.

"It followed us," Emily breathed, staring up at the alien presence testing their shield.

Luca's hands began to shake as adrenaline finally caught up with him. They'd outrun ground predators, survived a feeding frenzy, and made it back to safety. But whatever was up there in the fog hadn't given up. It was testing their shield, looking for weaknesses.

"Inside," he said, grabbing Emily's arm. "Right now."

They stumbled toward the Centurion's ramp, looking nervously toward the sky. Something enormous moved overhead, its massive presence withdrawing into the fog.

Once inside the Centurion's airlock, they finally pulled off their helmets, both gasping the recycled but clean air of their mobile base.

The dinette was impossibly small, with everyone crammed around the table watching the toxic hellscape outside their armored windows. What had been a deadly planet that wanted to kill them before was now a planet actively hunting them.

And it sucked.

"Shield integrity holding at ninety-two percent," Chris reported from his engineering station, though his voice carried a note of concern. "But it's dropping. Slowly, but consistently."

Luca watched the power readout tick down another decimal point. They'd started the day with full shields. Now, after the aerial predator's probing and the constant drain of maintaining their protective barrier in this corrosive atmosphere, they were bleeding power they couldn't afford to lose.

"How long do we have?" Joey asked from his medical station.

"At current drain rate? Maybe eighteen hours before we're down to critical reserves," Chris replied grimly.

"If the Centurion's fission core was stocked, we wouldn't even be sweating power cells," Ryan muttered, running calculations on his tablet. "We'd be running indefinitely."

"Yeah, but when we upgraded the Centurion, it didn't come with fuel rods," Chris replied.

"Maybe we can scavenge one from one of those portals you found," Emily suggested.

Through the reinforced windows, they could see movement in the fog above them. Shadows that suggested something large circling their position, waiting for the shield to fail.

"Danny," Luca said, turning to their scientist. "Any way to recharge our reserves out there? That toxic lake we passed... Anything we can use?"

Danny's eyes lit up, his mind already racing. "The lake is concentrated acid, but we could rig a chemical battery. The Centurion's core can convert the energy if we use our spare probe casings as electrodes."

Ryan and Chris leaned in, the technical challenge overriding their fear for a moment. "It's risky as hell," Danny admitted, "but it might work."

"But," Luca said, holding up a hand as the engineers got excited, "before we start dropping our shields and moving equipment around, I want to know something."

The excitement around the table died as his tone cut through their technical discussion.

"Why are we being targeted? Why is that thing attracted to us specifically?"

The question hung in the air. Through their windows, they could see the alien landscape stretching in all directions, full of potential prey. Yet something was keeping the predator focused on their position.

"Maybe it's territorial," Joey suggested.

Danny shook his head, his scientific mind working through the possibilities. "I think it's our shield. We're the only thing on this planet generating a large-scale energy field. To a predator that evolved here, we might be lighting up like a Christmas tree."

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"Electromagnetic attraction," Chris said, understanding immediately. "If the local fauna evolved electrical senses..."

"We're probably the biggest, brightest target they've ever encountered," Danny finished.

"So dropping the shield to move closer to the lake," Emily said grimly, "could either make us invisible to it, or turn us into sitting ducks."

"The only way to find out is to scan the creature," Danny said. "See if it shows bioelectric organs or electromagnetic sensitivity."

The implications were sobering. They needed answers before they risked everything on a desperate gamble.

"So our options are..." Emily said slowly, her voice reluctant as she counted on her fingers. "Run out of power, shoot the alien and hope there's no more, risk everything trying to recharge..." She paused, clearly uncomfortable with what she was about to suggest. "Or go into one of those portals. I hate saying it, but that research outpost has to be powered by something."

"Or," Zoe said, scratching Pixel behind the ears while looking thoughtful, "I'm not one for violence, but... we have our turret."

Everyone turned to look at her.

"We disable our shield, unload on that motherfucker, and shield up again. Problem solved."

The silence that followed was broken only by the hum of their life support systems and Pixel's contented purring.

Then something massive struck their shield again, harder this time. The entire Centurion shook, and everyone looked up at the dome crackling with stress fractures. Through the translucent barrier, they saw it, bioluminescent organs pulsing beneath alien flesh, a shadow so large it blocked out the toxic sky.

"Fuck it," Luca decided. "Ryan, wind down the shield. Zoe, get on the turret."

"Are you serious?" Emily asked.

"Dead serious. If that thing drains our shields, we're all dead anyway."

Ryan's hands flew over his controls. "Shield dropping in three... two... one..."

The protective dome flickered and died. Immediately, the toxic winds of Midnight Veil slammed into the Centurion, rocking the vehicle as acidic gusts howled around them. Through the viewports, they could see the storm intensifying, green and yellow clouds swirling overhead.

Zoe was already at the turret controls, her targeting system coming online. "There," she said, locking onto something massive in the fog above them. "Got you, you bastard."

The plasma turret swiveled upward, tracking its target through the toxic storm. Zoe's finger hovered over the firing control.

"Light it up," Luca said.

The turret erupted in brilliant blue-white fire. Volley after volley of plasma bolts streaked upward through the toxic atmosphere, illuminating the swirling winds in electric bursts of light. The storm scattered the energy blasts, but Zoe kept firing, tracking the massive shape above them.

Everyone watched through the viewports as the plasma bolts climbed higher and higher into the fog, disappearing into the toxic clouds above.

A sound unlike anything Luca had ever heard crashed down on them, a cry. Haunting, mournful, something that resonated through his bones and made his chest ache. The sound wave rocked the Centurion so violently that loose equipment scattered across the floor. It almost sounded like a voice, calling out across the toxic wasteland.

Oh shit, Luca thought, his stomach dropping. Is it calling for help?

The crew sat frozen, the weight of that alien voice settling over them like a shroud. Emily's face had gone pale, and even Zoe looked shaken. They'd expected a monster, but that cry suggested something more... intelligence, maybe even pain.

The sky darkened as something enormous began to fall.

"Shield up!" Luca yelled, breaking the spell. "Right fucking now!"

Ryan slammed his controls, and their protective dome flickered back to life just as the gargantuan creature crashed down into one of the golden acidic lakes nearby. The impact sent a tsunami of toxic liquid surging outward for miles, a golden wave of corrosive death that would have dissolved them instantly.

The crew pressed against the viewports, watching in stunned silence as the toxic tsunami approached. The wave hit their shield and flowed around and over it like water around a rock, covering their protective dome in a golden shower of deadly fluid that hissed and steamed against the energy barrier.

For long moments, no one spoke. They just watched as the corrosive liquid slowly drained away, leaving their shield intact but their surroundings transformed into a toxic wasteland.

"Well," Zoe said finally, powering down the turret with forced satisfaction, "problem solved."

But her voice carried less conviction than before.

"We should try to scan it—" Danny started.

"Chris," Luca said, clearing his throat, "how long can we keep the shield up if we power everything else down? Life support, heating, everything non-essential?"

Chris ran quick calculations on his tablet, grateful for something concrete to focus on. "You're talking about automated shield mode? We'd have to shut down life support completely, but the shield would maintain basic protection against the corrosive atmosphere."

"That's the idea. We all go into the portal together, so we don't need the Centurion to be livable. Just protected."

"The system's smart enough to auto-strengthen if there's another attack," Chris continued, "but that'll drain the battery faster. Under normal corrosive conditions, seventy-two hours, maybe eighty if we're conservative."

Ryan leaned over Chris's shoulder, checking the numbers. "But if something else shows up and starts testing the shield like our friend up there did, we could be looking at half that time."

"That's a hell of a gamble," Emily said. "What if the portal takes longer than expected?"

"Then we're proper fucked instead of just regular fucked," Luca replied, his frustration bleeding through. "But sitting here waiting for the shield to fail isn't exactly a winning strategy either."

"How did we get this so wrong?" Chris asked, his voice carrying a note of disbelief. "I mean, we had atmospheric readings, but this..."

"We had no idea the environment was this hostile," Joey added. "The readings showed corrosive, not apocalyptic."

"What about the damn giant creatures?!" Ryan gestured at the windows. "Nothing from our satellites indicated apex predators the size of buildings!"

Danny looked up from his tablet, frustrated. "The toxic smog kept us from getting decent bioscans. Our probes just melted before they could gather proper data."

"Fuck," Zoe muttered, scratching Pixel's ears more aggressively. "We should have brought another battery pack or something. More backup power."

"No use blaming anyone," Emily said. "We made the best decisions we could with the information we had."

"I'm not blaming anyone but myself, Em," Luca said quietly. "I made the call to land. I approved the mission parameters."

The silence that followed was heavy. Luca looked from face to face, seeing the same question in their eyes that was screaming in his own head: How had a routine survey mission turned into a fight for survival?

He looked around the cramped cabin at his crew. They'd just killed something that might have been intelligent, they were trapped on a planet that wanted to dissolve them, and their only way out involved diving into an alien dimension while their base slowly lost power.

"I want off this death trap of a planet," he said simply. "We hit that research facility portal, find what we need, charge the reactor, and finish this survey. Then we go home."

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