Beneath the expansive, verdant canopy, shadows danced over their path. Haunting echoes of unspeakable mutations weighted down the air, their cries reverberating from unseen corners of the wilderness. Particularly unsettling to Gravel was the chittering click of something with far too many teeth gnashing together in rapid succession, as if it were tasting the air, or worse, testing how his name would sound rolling off its tongue. But then another creature let out what could only be described as a deflating squeak, like someone stepping on an old accordion. Nature was balancing itself out. All was good.

  Gravel was sure Hunter would’ve complained about how this planet had wasted its potential if she was in the mood for chatting. Being just far enough from its star, Namor-4 was one of those planets with better climates for life.

  But the lifeforms here, for some reason, were designed for hostilities.

  Gravel wasn’t thinking about animals. There weren't a lot of animals that didn’t fall into predator/prey categories, which would both be hostile. Unless planets were specifically filled with docile creatures, which they were not.

  He was thinking plants. Plants weren’t just plants. Some pulsed faintly in a rhythm not too dissimilar from breathing. Some folded inward at the first sign of movement. Others dripped nectar so sweet it could lure prey into a slow, dreamy death.

  Artificially bioluminescent fungi clung to the gnarled trees, illuminating the darkened path. Thick vines coiled around ancient trunks, their surfaces slick with an iridescent, almost organic sheen, as though they were more muscle fiber than plant. Somewhere in the distance, something large crashed through the underbrush, but it either hadn’t noticed them or wasn’t interested. Yet.

  Everything was malformed.

  Priest winced mid-step, the ache in his back flaring again like a hot coil winding tighter. Priest’s thanks to Priest’s ‘miracle hands’, which were less of a miracle and more ‘concentrated energy blast of bioactive compound Regen303’. had gotten him upright and walking, but ‘upright and walking’ still hurt like hell.

  “Alright,” Gravel said, stopping with a quiet grunt, hand pressed against the small of his back. “We’re taking five.”

  Hunter slowed. “You good?”

  “I’m good. Just feel like my spine's trying to escape through my kidneys.” He tilted his head at Priest. “Did your miracle hands forget to miracle my lumbar region?”

  “Miracles,” Priest said, “require faith. You gave me sarcasm.”

  “Consider it my tithe,” Gravel muttered, scanning the area.

  They stood in a brief clearing—clearing being generous. A flattened patch of undergrowth ringed with low-hanging ferns and oddly geometric moss formations. On the right, a decaying log slumped between two stone-like root structures, one of them oozing what looked like sap. On the left, fungal stalks the height of a human child lurched in the absence of wind.

  Hunter crouched, poking at the moss with the butt of her rifle. “It’s warm. Is that normal?”

  “Not unless moss started running fevers,” Gravel said. “What about that log?”

  “Leaking orange,” Hunter pointed out. “Your call, but I wouldn’t sit on anything with a secretion rate.”

  Priest crouched near a cluster of rocks, waving a scanner over them. “Mildly radioactive. But otherwise stable. Life signs minimal.”

  “‘Mildly radioactive’ is not reassuring,” said Hunter.

  “Statistically, your body has already accumulated worse in the average spaceport chow line.”

  “Well,” Hunter said, sitting on her pack and propping her boots on a root, “I guess that makes it fine.”

  Gravel found a semi-dry patch near Priest’s rock cluster and gingerly lowered himself to the ground with a breathless sigh. “Oh yeah. That’s the stuff. That’s exactly the angle of pain I needed.”

  Hunter scanned the underbrush again, more alert than her lounging posture let on. “This area looks too open. You think we’ll be fine?”

  “No. But we have to stop, and this is the best place,” Priest’s eyes flicked to Gravel. “Jacket up, please.”

  Gravel grunted. “You could at least pretend to be gentle.”

  Priest knelt beside him, already rolling up his sleeves. “You want gentle, go see a masseuse. Jacket.”

  With another sigh, Gravel pulled off the outer layer, the motion making him wince. Priest’s fingers were already glowing with bioactive energy. He pressed his hand against the junction of Gravel’s lower back. “Still inflamed. Regen compound did not take as fully as I hoped.” He adjusted his pressure, more carefully this time. “Hold still.”

  The sensation wasn’t exactly painful—more like being pressed with the corner of a heated stone, followed by a soothing wave of numbness. Gravel let out a slow breath through gritted teeth.

  “Better?” Priest asked after a moment.

  “Not worse,” Gravel admitted. “You ever think about installing a personality in those hands?”

  “I did. It tried to unionize.”

  Hunter, still lounging with one leg propped up against a vine-draped stump, barked a laugh. “He’s not kidding. He downloaded some third-party empathy mod and it spent six hours apologizing to me before self-deleting.”

  There was a quiet beat. The glow of Priest’s bioactive hand dimmed as he pulled away. Gravel’s pain had largely subsided, for now, but he knew it would come back some time later. He just didn’t know when.

  A branch rustled. Hunter tensed, rifle half-raised before the creature emerged.

  It was small, soft, with oversized back legs and twitchy ears. It bounded clumsily across a thick vine and vanished into the underbrush, leaving a faint tremble in the leaves.

  “False alarm,” she muttered, lowering the rifle. “Little thing looked like a gnarled-up rabbit.”

  She let out a breath. Her posture eased, and a small smile tugged at her lips. “Y’know, this reminds me of the first op we did together.”

  “Haret? Doesn’t exactly scream fond memories.”

  “No, not this jungle,” she said, waving vaguely at the dripping vines and steaming moss. “The one with the conifers, during our first trip as a trio. Remember? Dry air, cold nights. Trees that didn’t try to choke you out.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  Priest nodded once. “The camping mission.”

  Gravel snorted. “That wasn’t a mission. That was Hunter’s idea of ‘mandatory team bonding.’ “She called it an ‘op’ on the paperwork. Filed it under ‘low-threat wilderness assessment exercise.’” Back then, they still bothered with paperwork.

  “You brought a full mess kit,” Priest said without looking up. “And a hammock.”

  “And you brought your entire tea setup, don’t even play,” she shot back. “You made us sit through an actual steeping ceremony like we were on some backwater cultural diplomacy tour.”

  Gravel shook his head with a chuckle. “I slept on a rock. A literal rock. Because you two built the tent directly over a nest of angry burrowing insects and then left me out of the backup plan.”

  “I gave you a protein bar,” Hunter said.

  “You threw me a protein bar.”

  “You caught it.”

  Hunter’s idea of fun had always been strangely wholesome. For someone who could disassemble a rifle blindfolded and once suplexed a space pirate into a fuel tank, her vacation fantasies never went beyond dry logs, warm soup, and maybe a local animal that wouldn’t bite her hand off. She didn’t dream of neon-lit resorts or gravity-free spas, only of a place where nothing exploded for a full 24 hours. Maybe a rabbit. Maybe a nap. And, ideally, a surface that wasn’t a rock.

  Gravel, on the other hand, never wanted rabbits. He was in it for the adventure. For the adrenaline that hit just before a drop. For the feeling of weightlessness when a plan went to hell and he had five seconds to improvise something stupid and glorious. The kind of chaos that made him feel alive, even if it also came with shrapnel.

  Back then, he thought Hunter was the same. She moved like she was born in a warzone, fought like she couldn’t imagine anything else. He figured she was chasing the same high he was

  But it turned out their definitions of “thrill” didn’t quite line up.

  He still leapt face-first into danger. She still followed him. But somewhere along the way, her fingers stopped drifting toward the trigger first.

  Priest looked between them, and was the first one to stood. “We need to move. This area is too exposed, and the local fauna appears . . . inquisitive.”

  And Priest’s idea of fun? Fun was a dead language he spoke fluently before he learned survival.

  Gravel grunted as he pushed himself up, favoring his side. “Back to the thrilling life of getting shot at and eating protein bricks.”

  And the trio was on the move again.

  They passed a tangle of vines, curling as they moved by. Hunter looked down at the fungi below and asked, “Do you think this mushroom is edible?”

  Gravel replied, “Don’t. Last time you asked if we could breathe in the spores on Carthos-7 . . .”

  “Listen, the spores smelled like citrus, and I—”

  “You hallucinated for six hours, Hunter.”

  “I didn’t. And I’m not unreasonable for assuming citrus-smelling things are non-hallucinogenic,” she muttered, stepping over a gnarled root pulsing faintly with bioluminescence, “Not my fault every godforsaken planet we step foot on is always out to kill us.”

  “Not every planet,” Gravel retorted. “Just most of them.”

  It would’ve been obvious to an outside observer, if there were any, that this crew either had a mortal aversion to silence or a compulsive need to fill every available second with noise. Keeping up a constant stream of chatter was generally frowned upon by professional ground teams, especially during tense moments where one would need utmost concentration. But the Black Fang had never claimed to be professionals, nor did they spend much time with their boots on solid ground. Arguing amongst themselves was much easier when they had a ship’s ceiling above their heads.

  Priest, walking ahead with his cybernetic fingers trailing over the interface on his wrist device, spoke without looking up. “Statistically speaking, 83% of unregulated frontier planets contain hazardous ecosystems hostile to human life. So it is not just your luck. It is probability.”

  “Woo-hoo,” Gravel said. “I love being a statistic.” He then nudged Priest with his elbow. “Has the kid caught up to us?” The kid he was referring to was Hua Fang, their pilot. At only seventy-five years old, her inexperience was obvious—if not from her flying, then from the fact that she’d chosen her own name as her codename instead of coming up with something cool and swag, like Hunter.

  Priest simply put his index finger close to his mouth, the universal ‘silence’ sign among Earthlings. Having had a human father, Priest was well-acquainted with humankind etiquette.

  As they trudged through the underbrush, Gravel took stock of their situation. His spine was back in working order but the dull ache in his limbs reminded him that he’d probably need a proper visit to the med bay after this job. If they survived.

  Gravel tapped his earpiece. “Fang, you there?”

  A burst of static crackled in his ear before a bright, chipper voice responded. “You rang?”

  “Status?”

  “Circling above, waiting for you slowpokes. Got a bit of turbulence—” A loud thud interrupted her, followed by a string of Mandarin curses. “Okay, more than a bit. Something just latched onto my hull. Not a fan of that.”

  “Do I even want to know what it was?” Gravel asked.

  “I dunno, it had tentacles and a real bad attitude.”

  “Fucking wonderful.” Gravel sighed. “Just stay airborne and be ready for evac.”

  “You caught us at a good time, Flower. Did you know Gravel moaned for an hour straight because he got his back scratched by a kitty cat?” Hunter chimed in.

  “My codename is Fang, Hunter. Fang!” Fang near-shouted over comms.

  “Nobody chooses their real name as their alias, Fang. I’m protecting your identity.”

  “Your full alias is Bounty Hunter. I think I can chill with the naming.”

  “Who here’s gonna care what the kid calls herself, Hunter?” Gravel pointed to the glowing mushroom. “Because that thing ain’t.”

  “Right, sure. You two gonna team up on me, huh? You won this round.” Hunter stretched, clearly unbothered. “Let’s get to the damn facility before that thing with tentacles decides we look tasty.”

  “I thought you’d like that,” Gravel smirked, only to be met with the most hateful, disdainful glare he’d ever seen in his life. “Sushi, I mean! I thought you liked sushi.”

  “Shut up,” Hunter snarled at him.

  “You two stop bickering this instant,” Priest commanded. As boisterous as the two could be when they were together, they knew when to shut up and not get on Priest’s bad side.

  The silhouette of the research facility loomed ahead, barely visible through the thick vegetation. Built decades ago by the Namorian Science Division, it had now been abandoned after their experiments, whatever they were, went catastrophically wrong. The letters had either fallen off, or were ripped off of the sign atop the front entrance by some massive creature looking for a chew toy, leaving only S, C and a reversed D hanging.

  The client, McPherson, the off-world corporate bigwig of all off-world corporate bigwigs, had been particularly vague on the details of the drive Gravel’s team was supposed to retrieve, which meant one thing. Whatever was on that drive was valuable enough to kill for. They would also be paid seventy million ducats upon completing the mission, and that was enough for them to take it upon themselves without further question.

  Such was the life of bounty hunters.

  The trio crouched near the tree line, surveying the facility from a safe distance. The place was a mess—rusted security fences overgrown with vines, collapsed watchtowers, and a main entrance half-buried under decades of creeping vegetation. Yet, something still lingered beneath the surface.

  Faint, flickering red lights lined the perimeter. An old security system? Maybe. But Gravel had been in this business long enough to know that just because a place looked dead didn’t mean it was dead.

  Priest knelt beside him, cybernetic fingers tapping against his wrist device. “Heat signatures. Three, maybe four moving inside. Non-human.”

  “Mutated?” Hunter asked, gripping her gun.

  “Possibly.” Priest’s eyes flickered. “Or automated. Some old versions of mech have unique heat signatures when powered.”

  Gravel clicked his tongue. “Great. Could be feral lab experiments, could be security drones still running on emergency power.”

  “You managed to make it sound boring,” said Hunter.

  “Oh, I know how to make it sound better. They might have tentacles.” He studied her as her dissatisfaction turned into audible growls inside her throat. “You know the teasing gets funnier the more you refuse to deny it, right?”

  “I am not into sushi,” she said.

  A floodlight snapped on from a rusted tower with a clang.

  “Fucking fuck fuck!” Gravel hissed, diving behind the nearest tree.

  The ground trembled. A deep, metallic groan echoed through the facility’s ruins that sent all the birds flying away, followed by the sound of hydraulics whining to life. Then came the thudding—heavy, deliberate footfalls.

  Priest was already moving. “We’ve been made.”