The mining colony lies in ruins, a smoking graveyard of shattered rigs and collapsed corridors. Shelley and Stozi pick their way through the devastation, calling out for survivors with thinning hope. Bodies are everywhere; the silence feels heavier than the gunfire that came before. Then—against all odds—they find movement. Frim, the cranky, sharp-tongued engineer who had mocked Shelley’s warnings the loudest, is somehow still breathing beneath a mound of twisted metal. Barely conscious, covered in ash and blood, he looks up at her and croaks, “You’re…still alive?” Shelley and Stozi haul him free and drag him to a half-functional med bay where flickering lights cast sickly shadows. With trembling hands, Shelley stabilizes Frim and begins tending to the few remaining survivors who trickle in, each one a reminder of how many were lost.
