Stranded On Santa Astarta -v1.1.0 Beta- -doc Ba... -

The Gilgamesh hadn't crashed. It had been unmade . One moment, we were decelerating through a standard orbital window. The next, the ship’s AI, “Gabriel,” had begun to pray. Not recite data. Pray . In a language that made the comms array bleed static. Then the hull had turned inside out in a single, silent instant, and Doc Ba had woken up here, forty meters up a ferro-cement tree, his emergency beacon hissing only white noise.

They are here. The other survivors. I found them in a clearing the ship’s cartographer never recorded. There are forty-seven of them. All crew. All wearing the same expression of beatific, vacant peace. They stand in a circle, perfectly still, as a fine, iridescent pollen drifts down from the canopy. Stranded on Santa Astarta -v1.1.0 Beta- -Doc Ba...

But the jungle is kind today. The bell-flowers are singing back. The six-legged things are curled at the edge of the clearing, chittering the melody softly. The Gilgamesh hadn't crashed

The jungle hummed. Not with the comforting buzz of insects or the rustle of leaves in a terrestrial wind, but with a low, resonant thrum that felt less like sound and more like a migraine trying to birth itself behind my eyes. Dr. Aris Baatar, call sign “Doc Ba,” late of the ISRV Gilgamesh , wiped a smear of cobalt-blue sap from his visor. The next, the ship’s AI, “Gabriel,” had begun to pray

“The beta is stable. The patient is the vector. Patch 1.1.0 is love. Patch 1.1.0 is home.”

-Doc Ba...-