The device on Captain Elara Vane’s wrist blinked red.
She closed her eyes. Seventy-two hours became seventy-two minutes of oxygen. The asteroid was tumbling toward the sun. If she left without the relic, Earth burned. If she stayed, she burned with the asteroid, and Earth still burned. remove failed
Elara smiled, blood on her teeth, and watched the stars spin. She had failed to remove. But she had not failed to save. The device on Captain Elara Vane’s wrist blinked red
Remove failed.
She stared at the words, her gloved hand still pressed against the cold, black monolith in the asteroid’s core. Her mission was simple: extract the relic, jump home, and save the solar system from the solar flare that would sterilize Earth in seventy-two hours. The relic was the only thing that could absorb the flare’s energy. The asteroid was tumbling toward the sun
But the monolith wouldn’t let go. It had fused itself to the rock, to reality itself. Her extraction device had whirred, sparked, and then died.