The reinforced viewing port hummed, a sheet of blackened glass separating Aris from the maelstrom. Outside, the world was a riot of sound and pulverized matter. Black rain, thick with the abrasive grit of pulverized mountain, slammed against the transparent barrier, scoring faint, ephemeral trails that vanished an instant later. Glass shards, driven by winds that tore through steel, glittered like malevolent stars in the dim, pre-dawn gloom, ricocheting off the armored suits of Citra and Mandor Karta. Their tethers, anchored to the Kubah’s outer plating, strained taut against the gale. Aris tracked the pair across the main telemetry array, a grid of high-resolution feeds projecting their progress. The pressurized rigs, cumbersome and clunky, made every step a battle against the elements. Their visors, thick with condensation and slurry, offered only fractured glimpses of the chaos. Citra, despite the bulk, moved with an augmented grace, her movements economical, focused. She ducked under a flying scaffold section, the impact resonating through the rig's internal dampeners, visible as a sharp tremor on the screen's overlay. Karta, however, lumbered, his gait a series of clumsy stumbles. He swore, his voice a distorted crackle through the comms Aris could choose to monitor, though he currently kept the channel muted. The former guard captain was not built for salvage runs. He was built for command, for striking down lesser men. Now, he was just a lesser man, battling a gale that didn’t care for his past authority. `[OUTER FILTERS: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY 9% – PRIMARY SUPPORT FAILURE]` `[SOLUTION: IMMEDIATE REPLACEMENT REQUIRED. SOURCE: STORM-FORGED RESIN (HIGH-GRADE)]` The Omen-Dial on Aris’s wrist flashed, its holographic display flickering. The internal temperature of the Kubah continued its slow, agonizing descent. Aris’s fingers, cold against the console, twitched. He needed that resin. Now. Citra’s feed showed her scanning the wreckage-strewn rock. The storm-forged resin, a crystalline byproduct of the gale's destructive power, glowed with an eerie, internal light, often clinging to the skeletal remains of collapsed structures or embedded deep within mounds of shattered stone. She pointed, a sharp, decisive gesture, towards a cluster of ruined wind-turbines, their blades twisted into grotesque sculptures. A rich vein of resin pulsed faintly beneath the wreckage. She began to move, her magnetic boots finding purchase on the slick, angled metal. Karta followed, slower, more hesitant. As they approached, another worker, a thin elder named Rendra who had once handled middle-terrace manifests, was already there, chipping frantically at the mineral seam with a standard-issue pick. His thermal suit was older, less robust, and a visible tremor ran through him with every gust. A sudden, guttural roar from the squall. A torrent of heavier refuse—twisted rebar, shattered ceramite panels, and a waterlogged cargo crate—slammed into the stone shelf nearby, kicking up a spray of vitreous gravel. The rock shelf bucked. The bureaucrat, caught off balance, cried out, his voice thin and high through the comms. He slipped, one boot losing its magnetic lock, and began to slide towards a yawning gap where the terrace had completely sheared away, the turbulent waters of the Glass Monsoon churning hundreds of meters below. Karta was closer. He could have reached out, offered a hand, braced himself. Instead, Aris watched as Karta’s magnetic heel snapped forward. A deliberate, precise kick. It struck Rendra's spine plate, propelling the sliding laborer directly into the path of tumbling masonry. The old clerk's shriek cut off as the slurry swept him down the cliff face, his tether snapping with a violent crackle against the basalt ridge. Karta didn’t even glance back. He simply stepped into the newly cleared ledge, his heavy pick already hacking into the crystal seam. Aris felt a familiar, cold satisfaction bloom in his chest, quickly followed by a prickle of something else – a dull, unsettling ache. He had seen countless acts of cruelty on the terraces, but this… this was different. He was supposed to be better than them. The Omen-Dial on his wrist flashed with a new message, its urgency stark against the plummeting temperature. `[THREAT IDENTIFIED: MALICIOUS HOMICIDE – COLONY STABILITY COMPROMISED]` `[RECOMMENDATION: IMMEDIATE ELIMINATION OF SUBJECT KARTA. PROBABILITY OF FUTURE TREACHERY: 98%]` Aris’s thumb hovered over the ‘ACKNOWLEDGE’ button. Elimination. A clean, efficient solution. Yet, the thought curdled in his mind. He wanted Karta to suffer, to live with the consequences of his choices under Aris’s heel, not to be granted the swift release of death. The satisfaction of his humiliation would be far sweeter than mere execution. Citra, her mouth set in a rigid line within her visor, ignored Karta. She harvested the resin with practiced efficiency, filling her storage pouch with the glowing shards. She completed her quota first, signaling her readiness for return. Karta, grumbling through the comms, finished his own, smaller haul a minute later. Aris activated the return sequence. The exterior blast doors ground open just enough for them to be pulled back inside by the auto-winches, the antechamber roaring back to life with the hiss of re-pressurization. The inner hatch hissed open. Citra and Karta stumbled in, their suits shedding rivulets of black water and glittering dust onto the grated floor. Their visors cycled clear, revealing faces etched with exhaustion and the cold bite of the monsoon. Pak Tua, his frail frame wrapped in a thick, threadbare shawl, stood near the airlock, his posture tense with concern. Other bunk-dwellers, huddled for warmth, watched silently. “Report, Citra,” Aris’s voice was flat, devoid of emotion. He held out a small, filtered water pouch. “Quota met?” Citra, her breathing ragged, pulled her full resin pouch from her suit. “Met. And high-grade. Enough for two filter cycles.” She met his gaze, defiance battling exhaustion in her eyes. Aris nodded, a barely perceptible dip of his chin. He tossed her the water pouch. “Good work. You’ll receive an auxiliary ration of purified water and an extra meal credit.” Citra snatched the pouch, her eyes narrowing as she looked at Karta. The small victory was clear on her face, but so was a deeper unease. “Karta,” Aris stated, his voice now carrying a sharper edge. “Your quota?” Karta presented his pouch, fewer shards, less vibrant. “Met. It was a brutal squall out there.” He shot a nervous glance toward the overhead lenses, knowing Aris had seen everything. “We lost Rendra. Blown away by loose iron.” Aris stepped closer, his shadow falling over Karta. “Indeed. Blown away. Though from my vantage, it seemed his trajectory was… assisted.” Aris’s voice was a low growl, audible to everyone nearby. “A weak link, perhaps, but a life nonetheless. A life you chose to sacrifice for a few extra minutes of your own miserable time.” Karta’s face hardened, a flush creeping up his neck. “Warden, I was caught in the blast, I—” “Silence.” Aris cut him off, his voice like grinding stone. “For your efficiency, you will receive your base rations. For your… *assistance* in Rendra’s demise, your rations will be halved for the next week. And your next five scavenging rotations will be solo deployments. Consider it a lesson in colony stability, Mandor Karta.” A collective gasp rippled through the gathered workers. Halved rations in the Kubah was a slow starvation sentence. Karta’s teeth ground together as he stared up at Aris, powerless against the dome's master, not yet. The seeds of an inevitable mutiny had just been deeply sown. The Omen-Dial on Aris’s wrist violently sparked, a shower of blue-white light illuminating the frigid air. The holographic display warped, then snapped into focus, projecting a complex, spiderweb fault. It wasn’t on the outer filters, but deep within the Kubah’s core. The diagram zoomed in, revealing a hairline fissure across the primary conduit of the geothermic heat exchanger. The text flared, red and urgent. `[GEOTHERMIC CORE: MICRO-FRACTURE DETECTED – STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY 85%]` `[CAUSE: EXTERNAL SEISMIC ECHOES FROM OBSIDIAN MONSOON]` `[WARNING: SELF-REPAIR PROTOCOLS INITIATED. UNLESS STABILIZED, CASCADING FAILURE IMMINENT. CURRENT ESTIMATE: 7 DAYS]`

The First Harvest