The descent had been smooth—but not silent. As Amaterasu pierced the outer layer of Erebus-9’s atmosphere, the ship’s structure groaned with pressure redistributions, ion wake turbulence roaring past its reinforced hull. Inside, lights flickered. Stabilizers corrected minor drift. The low rumble beneath their feet felt like the deep breath of something ancient and waking. When touchdown came, it was with a sharp lurch and a resonant hum of metal sinking into foreign soil for the first time in human history. Dust billowed across the lower sensor arrays, scattering light like powdered silver.

  Dr. Elias Mercer stood at the viewport, hands clasped behind his back, as he watched the dawn spill over an alien horizon. At sixty, his body bore the weight of decades, though his posture remained unyielding, hardened by thirty years of vigilance. He had never intended to lead this mission. Mercer had been JASA’s Chief Systems Officer, responsible for cryo-integrity and onboard diagnostics but when Commander Saito Hayashi perished during the Bay 12 failure, a silent power surge that claimed fifty lives in year twenty-six, it had fallen to Mercer to carry the weight. Not by rank, not by ambition but because someone had to.

  He remembered a night cycle aboard Amaterasu during the first year of flight. The two of them, Mercer and Hayashi, had sat beside the kamidana shrine in silence, lit only by red alert beacons on the diagnostic panel. “You think I asked for this?” Hayashi had said without looking up.

  Mercer had scoffed. “You’re the one who said yes.”

  Hayashi smiled—thin, tired. “Not every leader is someone who wants the job. Some of us are just the last ones standing.”

  “That’s not a strategy.”

  “No,” Hayashi had said, eyes now locked with his. “It’s a promise. That when the time comes, we don’t run.”

  Mercer had hated how right that felt and now, thirty years later, he understood.

  Before opening the cryo-bay doors, Mercer paused at the ceremonial alcove near the bridge. A remnant from launch day. The scroll still hung in its glass case, untouched by time or motion. “守破離,” he read aloud. Shuhari—the rhythm of learning: obey, transcend, create anew.

  Commander Hayashi had chosen it for the mission’s spiritual center. “Obey the old ways,” he’d said, placing the scroll, “but make something new when the time comes.”

  Mercer bowed once, his knuckles brushing the cold alloy below. “In your name, Saito. For all of us still walking.” Then he pressed his palm to the control panel, and the bay doors parted with a hiss. “Let there be daylight.”

  Now, Amaterasu had arrived. The alien world outside the viewport was unlike any image from the ship’s archives. Rolling plains swept away from the landing site, interrupted by a winding silver river and forested foothills. Beyond them, jagged mountains stood like ancient gods, snow-capped and imperious. Overhead, the pale sun of Erebus-9 diffused its light through faintly green clouds. The air was clear. The gravity, stable. Life was possible. Behind Mercer, cryo-pods began to stir. Lights flickered to life along the corridor as system protocols engaged. The cold silence of cryo-sleep was breaking. Engineers emerged first, blinking, disoriented, reaching for something solid. Then the architects and scientists, limbs stiff and minds fogged from decades of slumber.

  Mercer moved toward the main console and initiated the final cycle.“Cryo-Bay: 99% Awakening Complete,” the ship’s AI intoned. “Welcome to Erebus-9.” He stepped into the bay and called out, voice still hoarse from disuse. “Rise and shine, everyone. We’ve got a new world to build.”

  Groans, muttered curses, and groggy laughter echoed in return. Among the first to rise was Marta Solis, already brushing sleep from her dark curls as she scanned environmental readouts on her wrist pad. “Feels like I’ve been hit by a building...and I used to design them.”

  Mercer cracked a tired smile. “Better than not waking up at all.”

  She nodded and turned away, already forming teams. Solis was a structural architect by trade, formerly of the Global Habitat Reconstruction Corps. She’d rebuilt half of Quito’s water-locked ruins before Earth finally gave out. She was brilliant, driven and never one to wait for permission.

  Dr. Jia Huang emerged next, calm and composed despite her pallor. She moved with the measured precision of someone who'd done this before. A veteran of Earth’s last water reclamation programs, she was the lead environmental scientist for Erebus-9. She paused beside Mercer only briefly. “Atmospheric composition is stable. Oxygen and nitrogen levels holding. Local gravity is confirmed at 0.96 Earth standard.”

  “Good,” Mercer said. “The river’s our priority.”

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  “And our vulnerability,” Jia said, already calculating water purification ratios in her head. “I’ll coordinate immediate sampling. We need to establish control before contamination spreads.”

  Then came Ethan Kaspar, a tall, weather-worn surveyor with eyes that had seen too many failed colonies. He’d once worked for a mega corporation scouring Earth’s deserts for lithium before he defected. He cracked his back and exhaled. “Still breathing. Always a good sign.”

  “Mountains are yours,” Mercer said.

  Kaspar gave a low whistle as he looked toward the ridgeline. “Let’s see if Erebus is hiding bones beneath that pretty snow.”

  With assignments underway, Mercer surveyed the dispersing crew. Teams formed and dispersed—Marta’s west toward the forest; Jia’s east toward the river; and Kaspar’s up the rocky trail. The remaining crew began unloading equipment from storage compartments. Tents, water units and power scaffolds. Their temporary camp would rise swiftly and still, Mercer felt something… off. It wasn’t the terrain. The readings were sound but there was a tension in the air, like the hush before a verdict. He turned and quietly retrieved a wooden ofuda from his coat pocket, the one Hayashi had given him on launch day. The script was faded, but the kanji still read: 守護 — Protection. He knelt, pressed it into the new soil, and bowed. “We made it,” he whispered. “I kept the light.”

  “Dr. Mercer,” came the call. It was Dr. Huang, jogging back from the riverbank. “We have something unusual.”

  He met her near the base of the slope. “What is it?”

  She handed him a datasheet. “Trace sediment near the river contains high levels of metallic particulates—non-native to the surrounding geology. It looks artificial. Possibly structured.”

  Mercer frowned. “Could it be debris?”

  She shook her head. “It’s layered in symmetrical clusters, not scattered. Like… a foundation.”

  At that moment, Kaspar’s voice crackled through the comm. “Mercer, this is Team Mountain. We’ve got a thermal spike.”

  Mercer straightened. “Say again?”

  “Up here in the rock face. There’s something under the ridge. Triangular formation. Geometry’s too perfect. Thermal readout... active. Whatever it is, it’s not just rock.” Kaspar adjusted the straps on his exosuit as he climbed. The rock underfoot felt too warm for a snow-capped ridge. Not just sun-warmed—engine-warm. At one point, he paused and crouched low. His glove skimmed across a jagged surface—and there it was again. A hum. Sub-audible. More felt in his teeth than heard. “Mountains don’t hum,” he muttered. He tapped his visor, syncing the thermal overlay. The screen shimmered. A perfect triangle bled white heat against the infrared backdrop. He whistled through his teeth. “Okay… what the hell are you?”

  The day’s data had been compiled and arguments had begun.

  Marta sat across from Mercer in the command tent, her jaw tight. “We need to expand west immediately. There’s shelter, resources, and room to build.”

  Jia leaned forward. “We control nothing yet. The river may be compromised. We should restrict movement and initiate quarantine protocols.”

  “You want to lock everyone down while we debate soil samples?” Marta snapped.

  “I want to know what’s in that river before anyone drinks from it.”Jia said coldly.

  Mercer raised a hand. “Enough. We proceed cautiously. Marta’s team can scout, but no permanent construction. Jia’s crew will set up filtration stations. Kaspar... keep eyes on that heat signature.”

  Kaspar nodded, frowning. “Something’s alive in those stones. I’m telling you.”

  A silence fell and then the tent flap burst open. “Commander!” an engineer gasped. “You need to come to Cargo Hold 3. Now.”

  The crate had been sealed for 72 years. Inside, nestled between two life-support coils, was a cryo-escape pod—one not listed in Amaterasu’s manifests. The glass was frosted but through it, they saw her. A girl, no more than seventeen, maybe with black hair and breathing slowly, steadily. The name etched into the pod was unmistakable: AIKO HAYASHI

  Mercer’s breath caught. “Saito’s daughter...”

  Marta stared. “How the hell did she get on board?”

  “She wasn’t on the final manifest,” Jia said. “Someone smuggled her in. Possibly with override access.”

  Mercer said nothing. Because he already knew. He stepped forward, ignoring the gasps behind him. He placed a hand against the frost-sealed pod. Her face hadn’t changed, not since the day Saito had brought her to the private deck near the core and asked him for one impossible favor. “Override the manifest. Hide her. Just in case.”

  Mercer had refused at first but Saito’s eyes, unwavering, sunken with grief, had told the story before the man even opened his mouth. A terminal illness with no time left. “I won’t survive cryo,” Saito had said. “But she might. She has to.” Mercer had written the access codes himself, and buried the pod’s identity in mislabeled maintenance data. He’d never opened the file again. Now here she was. Alive, seventeen and frozen in the moment her father had said goodbye.