The first thing that hit me was the smell.

  Salt. Heavy. Thick enough to taste even through the environmental suit’s filters. Not ocean-smell the way Earth had ocean-smell—clean, fresh, alive.

  This was different.

  Older. Metallic. Like the sea had been here so long it had stopped pretending to be anything other than what it was: a massive, indifferent body of water that didn’t care if you drowned in it.

  The second thing that hit me was the wind.

  Forty miles an hour. Maybe fifty. Constant. Not gusting—just a steady, relentless pressure that shoved at me like the planet was trying to push me back through the portal before I got comfortable.

  The third thing that hit me was the realization that I couldn’t see the portal anymore.

  I spun.

  Nothing.

  Just grey sky, grey water, and a rocky slope that climbed up behind me toward what looked like a mountain.

  The portal had closed.

  “RIKU,” I said, voice tight.

  “Present.” Her voice came through clear, steady, no distortion. The suit’s comms were working. Small miracle.

  “Where’s the portal?”

  “Collapsed upon transit completion. This is normal for randomized SSS deployments. The glyph chain is incomplete. The Empire will need time to reconstruct your location and establish a stable corridor.”

  “How much time?”

  A pause. Not hesitation. Calculation.

  “Unknown. Weeks. Possibly months.”

  Months.

  I stood there on a rock in the middle of an ocean planet, wind screaming, suit already collecting moisture from the air, and felt the weight of that word settle into my chest like a stone.

  Months before they could even find me, let alone send help.

  “Okay,” I said quietly. “Okay. We work with what we have.”

  “Agreed. First priority: locate your equipment. Supply containers were deployed in advance of your transit. They should be within a five-mile radius of your arrival point.”

  “Should be?”

  “Portal scatter is not precise. Containers were equipped with beacon transmitters. I am scanning now.”

  I looked around while she worked.

  The slope behind me rose steep and jagged—volcanic rock, dark and rough, the kind that would tear through gloves if you weren’t careful. No vegetation. No trees. Just stone and wind and the faint white crust of salt where spray had dried.

  Ahead, the ocean.

  Endless.

  Grey-blue, rolling in long, lazy swells that looked deceptively calm until you noticed the size of them. Ten feet. Twelve. Breaking white where they hit submerged rocks.

  No land. No islands. No ships.

  Just water.

  “RIKU,” I said. “How much of this planet is ocean?”

  Another pause.

  “Scanning available data… topographical analysis indicates approximately ninety-eight percent ocean coverage.”

  Ninety-eight percent.

  I laughed once. Sharp. Bitter.

  “They sent me to a water world.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a construction worker from Denver.”

  “I am aware.”

  “Denver’s a mile above sea level. I’ve seen the ocean maybe twice in my life.”

  “I am aware of that as well.”

  I rubbed my face through the suit’s faceplate and forced myself to breathe.

  In. Out. Slow. Controlled.

  Panic later. Work now.

  “Containers,” I said. “How many did we get?”

  “Manifest indicates forty-seven supply containers deployed. I am detecting beacon signals from… thirty-nine.”

  “We’re missing eight?”

  “Correct. Either damaged in transit, submerged beyond signal range, or scattered outside detection radius.”

  Fantastic.

  “What about the big stuff? Vehicles? Fabricator?”

  “I am detecting the M936A2 wrecker chassis. The Anchorhold habitat. The small hybrid utility vehicle. The large-scale fabricator.” A pause. “The aircraft remains undetected.”

  “The Windwalker?”

  “Correct.”

  I swore under my breath. The plane wasn’t just a luxury—it was recon. Mapping. The only way to cover distance on a planet that was ninety-eight percent water.

  “We’ll find it,” I said. More to convince myself than her. “What’s closest?”

  “The wrecker. Two hundred meters northeast. Beacon signal strong.”

  “Good. Let’s move.”

  I started walking.

  The rock was worse than it looked. Uneven. Sharp. Every step had to be tested, weight shifted carefully, balance maintained against wind that wanted to shove me sideways into gaps that dropped straight into surf.

  My boots held. The suit held. My knees complained but kept working.

  Two hundred meters took fifteen minutes.

  When I crested the ridge and saw the wrecker, I actually smiled.

  It sat wedged between two boulders, nose down, rear axle caught on a ledge. Intact. Battered, but intact. The crane arm was folded, the bed empty, the tires still holding pressure.

  “Beautiful,” I whispered.

  “It is a vehicle,” RIKU said flatly.

  “It’s our vehicle. And it’s not at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Fair point.”

  I climbed down carefully and ran my hands over the frame. Checked the engine mounts. The hydraulics. The drivetrain.

  Everything looked solid.

  I popped the hood.

  The engine was dry. Clean. Protected. The fuel cells were full, the power relay intact.

  I closed the hood and leaned against the fender, breathing hard, hands shaking slightly from adrenaline I hadn’t realized I was holding.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “We just got very, very lucky.”

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  “Luck is not a sustainable resource.”

  “No. But I’ll take it when I can get it.”

  I climbed into the cab. The seat adjusted automatically to my height. The controls lit up—simple, manual, the kind of interface designed for people who needed things to work under pressure.

  I fired the engine.

  It caught on the first try.

  The sound was beautiful. Low. Steady. Reliable.

  I let it idle for a moment, just listening, feeling the vibration through the seat.

  Then I put it in gear and started driving.

  The next four hours were brutal.

  I found containers one by one, following beacon signals, winching them up from crevices, hauling them onto the wrecker’s bed, strapping them down with chains and ratchet straps.

  Some were easy. Sitting on flat rock, intact, ready to move.

  Others were nightmares. Wedged between boulders. Half-submerged in tidal pools. One had landed on its side and rolled fifty feet down a slope before catching on an outcrop.

  I pulled it up with the crane, swearing the entire time, watching the cable strain, praying it wouldn’t snap.

  It held.

  By the fourth hour, I had twelve containers loaded and the sun—if you could call it that, the light was wrong, too diffuse, like it was filtering through something the atmosphere shouldn’t have—was starting to drop toward the horizon.

  RIKU’s voice cut through the work.

  “Taylor. I am detecting a structural formation one kilometer west. Large. Stable. Elevated above sea level with significant wind protection.”

  I stopped, hands still on the chain I’d been securing.

  “A cave?”

  “Possibly. Or a natural shelter. I recommend investigation.”

  I looked at the containers. At the wrecker. At the sky.

  At the ocean that was getting rougher as the light faded.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t a cave.

  It was better.

  A bowl carved into the mountainside—maybe two hundred feet across, three hundred deep, with steep rock walls on three sides and a natural ramp leading up from the shoreline. The floor was relatively flat. Drainage channels cut through the rock where rainwater would run off instead of pooling.

  And most importantly: the wind dropped by half the moment I drove in.

  I stopped the wrecker in the center of the bowl and climbed out.

  Silence.

  Not total—the ocean was still there, distant, steady. But the howling, screaming wind that had battered me all day was gone.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “This is perfect.”

  “It is defensible. Sheltered. Accessible. I concur.”

  I walked the perimeter, checking the rock. Solid. No cracks. No unstable overhangs. The walls were high enough to block wind but not so high they’d trap heat or create downdrafts.

  And at the far end, near the back wall, I found something that made me stop.

  A flat section of stone. Smooth. Wide enough to park the Anchorhold habitat on.

  “We could build here,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “We could make this home.”

  A pause.

  “Yes,” RIKU said again. Softer this time. “We could.”

  I stood there for a long moment, staring at the empty bowl, imagining what it could become.

  Then I turned back to the wrecker.

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”

  By nightfall, I had twenty containers stacked against the north wall.

  The Anchorhold habitat sat in the center, anchored, pressurized, life support online.

  The small hybrid vehicle was parked beside the wrecker.

  The animals—chickens, goats, the small livestock they’d sent for long-term sustainability—were sealed in climate-controlled crates, fed, watered, quiet.

  I sat on the ramp of the Anchorhold, suit peeled down to my waist, eating a ration bar that tasted like compressed cardboard and chemicals.

  It was the best meal I’d ever had.

  “RIKU,” I said between bites. “Status report.”

  “We have secured sixty percent of deployed containers. Thirty-nine confirmed. Eight remain unaccounted for. The Windwalker aircraft is still missing. Power reserves are at seventy-eight percent. Life support is stable. No hostile fauna detected. No atmospheric toxins detected. Water is saline but filterable.”

  “So we’re not dead yet.”

  “Correct.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I finished the ration bar and stared out at the ocean.

  The light was almost gone now. The sky had turned from grey to deep blue-black, and stars were starting to appear.

  Unfamiliar stars.

  Constellations I didn’t recognize.

  A sky that had never seen Earth.

  “RIKU,” I said quietly. “What are the odds we survive this?”

  She didn’t answer immediately.

  I appreciated that. It meant she was actually thinking instead of feeding me optimism I didn’t need.

  “Unknown,” she said finally. “We lack sufficient data. But I will tell you this: we have shelter. We have power. We have supplies. We have time. And we have each other.”

  I smiled despite myself.

  “Yeah. We do.”

  I stood, stretched, and climbed back into the Anchorhold.

  The door sealed behind me. The pressure equalized. The lights came up soft and warm.

  And for the first time since stepping through the portal, I felt something close to safe.

  Not safe.

  But close enough.

  I lay down on the bunk and closed my eyes.

  Tomorrow, we’d find the rest of the containers.

  Tomorrow, we’d start building.

  But tonight?

  Tonight I was alive.

  And that was enough.