Chapter 1
She fucking hated being injured. It made her slow, and people kept talking about her resting… which was boring.
Michelle grumbled to herself as she pushed through the construction office's doors, her leg throbbing like a son of a bitch.
The splint wrapped around her calf felt tight against the swelling, and each step sent a sharp reminder up her shin that she probably should've taken Zeke up on those painkillers he'd offered yesterday.
Fuck that. The first time she'd taken them, they'd knocked her on her ass, taking her brain offline until all she could do was stare stupidly at the ceiling above her bed.
No, thank you. She'd handled worse than a broken leg before, and she wasn't about to start popping pills like that now.
Besides, bothering the handsome Izaean medic at—she glanced at her watch—four-thirty in the morning seemed like a dick move, even if he'd told her to wake him if the pain got bad.
The admin office hummed with the low thrum of overnight systems, soft lighting casting everything in a pale blue wash.
Liam Graham looked up from his console, coffee mug halfway to his lips.
His pale eyes widened in surprise at the sight of her.
Caleb Park spun around in his chair, nearly dropping the tablet he'd been scrolling through and looking as guilty as a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
"Fuck, Michelle." Liam set his mug down hard, ceramic clicking against metal. "What are you doing up? It's not even five."
"Couldn't sleep." She limped toward the central console bank.
Caleb pushed back from his workstation, concern creasing his brow. "You should be resting. Doctor's orders and all that."
"My leg is broken, not my head." She dropped into the chair in front of a console, biting back a wince. "And we've got work to do."
She pulled up the reports on the secondary site, the screen filling with columns of data and survey readings.
The data stared back at her—density anomalies, matrix fluctuations, and harmonic feedback patterns that didn't quite match the baseline numbers the Izaean survey team had taken months ago.
Even accounting for data drift between the alien systems and theirs, there shouldn't be this much deviation.
"What kind of work?" Liam rolled his chair over to look over her shoulder, bringing his coffee. The rich smell mixed with the admin center's recycled air and the faint ozone scent that always lingered around the monitoring equipment. "What're you looking at?"
She scrolled through the reports, a frown settling between her brows.
The system had translated most of the notes from the original survey…
from Izaean, but their sentence construction was odd.
It was as bad as when she’d had to translate a six hundred-year-old text from Late English for a construction project. Total pain in the ass.
"The readings from the second site. Look at these density fluctuations… they're off by twelve percent from the original baseline. And these patterns..." She tapped the screen where red warning indicators clustered in the data. "Something's changed down there.”
With the primary site completely fucked thanks to the Purist attack, shifting operations to the second site was the only thing they could do. But she wasn't about to stake their entire project on survey data that looked this wonky.
"You think the readings are that off?" Caleb leaned over her shoulder, studying the display. His cologne was too strong this early in the morning, like he'd had a shower in the stuff, but she didn't have the energy to tell him to dial it back.
"I think we need to get out there and check these ourselves.
" She frowned as she pulled up the survey maps, overlaying them with the recent readings. The discrepancies were subtle but consistent enough. It could mean equipment malfunction or environmental changes, but she didn’t know for sure.
And she wasn't about to leave it to chance.
"The scanners could be miscalibrated, or the underground structure could've shifted after all the seismic activity from the attack.” She shrugged. “We need to be sure which it is before we break ground. Will save us a lot of time and effort if we find out now if this site is screwed."
Liam crossed his arms. "Does Ashley know you're planning a field trip?"
Michelle's fingers paused over the keyboard. Ashley was all wrapped up in post-wedding bliss with her new husband, Sy, but Michelle was done feeling sorry for herself.
"Ashley's got enough on her plate right now," she said, closing the reports. "Besides, this is standard verification. We're not doing anything, just rechecking the readings before we commit to anything."
"So what's the plan, boss?" Caleb asked, already reaching for his jacket.
She stood, testing her weight on the splinted leg.
The pain flared, but it was manageable. "We take the survey kit out to site two, run a full check and compare the readings to what we have.
If there's a real variance, then we come back and look for a new site.
But if it's equipment error, we redo the survey so the first shift team has proper readings when they break ground. "
The two men nodded.
"We'll need the survey scanner, spare power cells, standard comms, headlamps, and the basic toolkit,” she said as she limped toward the equipment storage area, Liam and Caleb falling into step behind her. “Include the drill and spare bits in case we need to take core samples."
The equipment cage sat in the corner of the storage bay, a mesh-enclosed area filled with cases, tools, and monitoring devices. She punched in her access code, the lock clicking open with a soft electronic beep.
Pulling out the survey scanner, she checked the status display. "Status green, power at ninety-six percent. Good to go."
Caleb nodded, already filling out the job report. "Noted."
She handed the case to Liam, then pulled out the spare power cells, comms units, and headlamps.
"Caleb, you've got the power cells and comms. Liam, scanner, and tools.
" She grabbed a headlamp and tested the beam against the cage wall.
Bright white light cut through the bay's dim lighting.
"Grab your shit and let's move. If we can get this done before the start of the first shift, then we'll be ready to rock and roll if we need to use the site. "
They left the bay together, their footsteps echoing in the corridor.
Her leg made her slower than usual, but she kept pace, refusing to let the injury hold them back.
The garrison was quiet at this hour, most of the humans still asleep, and the Izaeans were on their own schedules that she still couldn’t work out.
The transport bay opened up before them, a huge space filled with vehicles, equipment, and the smell of motor oil and metal.
Low-level lighting cast long shadows between the parked trucks and construction vehicles.
In the far corner, the all-terrain truck they'd finally gotten running yesterday sat ready for use.
She headed for it, running her hand along its reinforced bumper.
Built for rough terrain, it had heavy suspension, all-wheel drive, and enough ground clearance to handle the rocky landscape around the construction sites.
They'd been fighting with its electrical system since landing, but Liam had finally traced the problem yesterday.
A wiring loom had corroded. A simple fix… once you knew where it was.
Climbing into the driver's seat, she pressed her lips together when her leg protested. The brace was doing its job while her leg healed. Which couldn’t be soon enough.
But then, Zeke had mentioned they were expecting some new fancy medical equipment courtesy of Prince Isan and that it would fix her up, quick-smart.
Apparently, the planet hadn’t qualified for that kind of medical equipment because there were only Izaeans here before, but now that humans were here, the Empire had agreed to release some new kit to them.
Her jaw tightened as she turned the key, and the engine turned over, settling into a steady rumble that echoed through the transport bay.
What she’d heard about the Latharian Empire left a sour taste in her mouth.
There were kids here. What kind of assholes withheld medical equipment based on people’s DNA… or mutated DNA, or whatever.
The panel lights on the truck were all out. She sighed. The wiring loom was still playing up. Great. Leaning forward, she whacked the side of the dashboard. Hard. The lights flickered to life, showing fuel, oil pressure, and system status all in the green.
"Okay, we’re good. Load it up," she called to Liam and Caleb, who were already moving toward the truck bed with their equipment cases.
As they secured them, movement in the shadows on the other side of the transport bay snagged her attention.
An Izaean stood there, watching them. It wasn't Zeke, she knew that instantly.
This one was taller, with long hair and scarring down his arms. His eyes reflected the low lighting with an unsettling red gleam.
Not just Izaean, feral.
She suppressed her shudder and adjusted her mirrors, checking the truck's systems before they left.
The Izaeans kept odd hours, and it wasn't her job to go around questioning them, even if they were lurking in the vehicle bay.
Perhaps he was the alien version of a truck spotter or something.
As long as he wasn't interfering with them or stopping them, it was nothing to do with her why he was there.
"Comms check," she said into her radio, testing the connection.
"Liam here, clear signal."
"Caleb, good to go."
Putting the thing into gear, she drove them out into the pre-dawn darkness. The truck's headlights cut through the gloom, illuminating the rough track ahead. The suspension absorbed the worst bumps and ruts, but she still felt every jolt through her injured leg.