“We need a ship,” Valerius said. “Or a power source. We need to leave.”
Valerius popped the hatch and stepped out. The air was cold, thin, and smelled of rust and incense. He looked up. The dome's skeleton framed a sky where a pale, dying sun bled through perpetual smog. Around him, the crew emerged—Korr, his mechadendrites twitching; Scribe Liatris, clutching data-slates; and sixty-three other souls, all of them scared. stranded on santa astarta
Valerius raised his las-rifle. “Who did you expect?” “We need a ship,” Valerius said
They moved inward. The cathedral-city was a necropolis of forgotten industry. They passed rows of automated penitent engines, long dead, their iron skeletons still bolted to the floor in eternal kneeling. They found manufactoria that once built war titans, now filled with the frozen shadows of workers—calcium outlines pressed into the stone by some ancient, silent detonation. The air was cold, thin, and smelled of rust and incense
“Life support is critical,” came the vox-click of Mender Korr, the ship’s enginseer. “Atmosphere will be breathable for another four point three standard hours. After that, nitrogen narcosis, then hypoxia.”
“You are not the ones I expected.”