The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novices Nicholas Rambusch, harry simpson, AgentZero, Abrahim Kamara, ZJAY 1, Aidyn Schroeder, Lenny, and OMG X WAFF3LZ.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
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Mark left the rest of the Elites in the primary diagnostic bay, the sterile, humming room already filling with Dr. Corven's intense, rapid-fire questions as she began her preliminary scans of the decapitated apex predator.
Severus had already pushed through the heavy, reinforced double doors at the far end of the laboratory, stepping out of the harsh, blinding white lights of the diagnostic bay and into the muted, calming ambiance of the newly constructed clinic. Mark followed him in.
Marcos had designed this attached module specifically for patient care. The room was spacious, and the lighting was kept soft and ambient blue. Lined against the far wall were ten freshly extruded medical pods. They were sleek, oblong structures crafted from smooth, white-finished metal and reinforced polarized glass.
Severus was already climbing into the first pod, his aristocratic face deathly pale from the severe concussion.
"Don't get too comfortable, Severus," Mark grunted, walking heavily toward the adjacent pod, every step sending a fresh, agonizing spike of pain radiating through his right side. "Concussion protocol shouldn't take more than an hour or two. Then you're right back on the clock with the Doctor."
"Yes, my lord," Severus replied, his eyes already slipping shut as his pod's lid began to lower.
Mark stood before his own open pod and looked down at his chest. He couldn't exactly climb into a sterile medical environment wearing a hyper-dense suit of powered combat armor.
With a mental command directed at the pendant, the jet-black armor instantly rippled. The armor lost its rigid structure, shifting back into a fluid, liquid state. It cascaded rapidly up his arms and down his neck, the mass shrinking and compressing toward the center of his chest. But Mark visualized the clothing he naturally preferred to wear.
The liquid metal washed back over his body, restructuring itself at the molecular level to perfectly mimic the texture, flexibility, and appearance of his standard attire. Within two seconds, the heavy combat armor was gone, replaced by a simple, fitted black t-shirt, dark utilitarian cargo pants, and heavy-duty combat boots. Resting quietly against his chest, completely visible over the black fabric, the metallic pendant remained, the anchor point for the shifting tide of technology, ever-present even while generating the clothes he wore.
Mark let out a ragged sigh of relief as the suffocating weight of the armor vanished. He carefully climbed into the medical pod, wincing as he lowered his battered frame onto the soft, highly reactive synthetic gel-bed within.
The moment his back settled against the padding, the pod's internal sensors flared to life. The polarized glass lid smoothly hissed shut, sealing him inside a pressurized, sterile environment.
"You're looking a little rough there, bucko," Marcos murmured softly through the pod's internal speakers, his tone carrying a casual conversational ease. "Commencing deep-tissue regeneration protocols. Administering localized anesthetics to the right thoracic cavity. Estimated time to full skeletal fusion: three hours and fifty-two minutes. Get some sleep, Mark."
Mark didn't even have the energy to reply. Almost instantly, a cool, numbing sensation began to spread across his fractured ribs, chasing away the blinding agony and replacing it with a dull, distant pressure. The soft, rhythmic hum of the pod's internal reconstructive lasers and cellular stimulators filled his ears, acting like a hypnotic lullaby.
His eyes felt like they were filled with lead. He let his head loll to the side, the adrenaline finally crashing out of his system entirely. Before the pod had even finished its initial diagnostic sweep, Mark was entirely unconscious, plummeting into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Four hours later, Mark's consciousness slowly swam back to the surface.
There was no sudden jolt of adrenaline, no frantic grasping for a weapon. He woke up gradually, his senses returning one by one. The first thing he noticed was the profound, beautiful absence of pain. He took a deep, testing breath, expanding his lungs to their absolute maximum capacity. The pod had done its work flawlessly, and his skeletal structure was whole once more.
The second thing he noticed was the weight resting squarely on his chest.
Mark opened his eyes. The polarized glass lid of the medical pod was already open, having automatically disengaged upon the completion of the healing cycle. The soft, ambient blue lighting of the clinic illuminated the room.
Resting directly on top of him, her small face buried into the crook of his neck, was Lyra.
She was fast asleep, her breathing slow and steady, puffing warm air against his collarbone. Her vibrant, auburn hair was splayed wildly across his black t-shirt, a messy halo of copper framing her pale, freckled face. Her small arms were wrapped fiercely around his torso, and her stuffed bear was trapped between their bodies, squeezed so tightly it was nearly flattened.
Mark lay perfectly still for a moment, an overwhelming warmth flooding his chest while he found himself wondering once again how children found the most uncomfortable positions to absolutely knock out.
She must have been terrified. The supersonic cracks of the railgun, the explosive concussions of the recoilless rifle, the screaming of the massive raptors, she had probably heard it all from the safety of the plaza. And then, she had watched him drag a bleeding, massive nightmare through the center of the camp. For a little girl who had spent the majority of her life trapped in the silent, terrifying darkness of a pirate frigate, the sheer sensory overload and implied violence of the night must have been deeply triggering.
She had sought him out. Sister Elara had likely brought her to the medical module when she refused to sleep, and Marcos had undoubtedly bypassed the clinic's door locks to let her in.
Mark smiled, a genuine, soft expression that entirely erased the hard, calculating lines of the commander. He carefully wrapped his large, calloused arms around her small frame.
Taking a deep, stabilizing breath, Mark slowly sat up, moving with care, using his enhanced core strength to rise from the gel bed without shifting his arms or disrupting her position. Lyra murmured softly, her nose crinkling in her sleep, but she didn't wake, simply adjusting her grip, clinging to him like a small, auburn monkey.
Mark swung his legs over the side of the pod, his boots silently hitting the clinic floor. He stood up, easily supporting Lyra's negligible weight against his broad chest.
He looked around the room, noticing that the pod Severus had occupied was wide open and completely empty. The rapid concussion protocol had likely finished hours ago, and the man had simply walked right back through the double doors to join Dr. Corven in the diagnostic bay.
Mark adjusted Lyra in his arms, ensuring her stuffed bear wouldn't fall, and quietly made his way toward the exit.
The heavy sliding doors of the clinic hissed open automatically as he approached, granting him access to the module's exterior. Mark stepped out onto the wide avenue of the colony.
The moment he crossed the threshold, a cool, sweeping gust of wind hit them. The baking humidity of the day had been entirely stripped away by the deep night, leaving the air crisp and wildly refreshing. The wind carried the scent of crushed purple grass, ozone, and the faint, metallic tang of the massive nanoprinters working in the distance.
Lyra stirred a bit as the cool air washed over her face. She shivered slightly, burying her face deeper into Mark's shoulder, but the deep slumber she was in held firm. She continued sleeping peacefully, anchored by the steady, rhythmic thud of Mark's heartbeat.
Mark took a long, deep breath of the cool air, letting the quiet reality of their survival wash over him. They had survived the ambush. They had a plan for the power grid, defensive weapons, and a wall. They were adapting to this whole new world thing.
Suddenly, the small, sleek intercom panel mounted by the clinic's exterior doors flickered to life.
"Hey," Marcos's synthesized voice spoke, the volume perfectly modulated so as not to startle the sleeping child in Mark's arms. "Looks like you're fully patched up. And it seems like you picked up a stowaway."
"Keep your voice down, Marcos," Mark whispered, stepping slightly away from the intercom speaker. "She's out cold. What's up?"
"Just running the night shift on the turbines," Marcos replied casually. "Printers One and Two have been running hot for hours, so I'm letting them rest for a bit. I'm using the heavy-lifter drones to ferry the finalized tower segments, the generator housings, the swept blades, and the Hellfire battery bank casings straight out to the western ridge."
"You're assembling them now?" Mark asked, his brow furrowing. "That's risky. The wind off the ridge is highly turbulent. A drone gets clipped by a gust while holding a forty-meter-long blade, and that's a component you have to re-print."
"Nah, I'm just playing delivery boy right now," Marcos corrected easily. "I'm not doing any vertical assembly. I have the drones on a loop of moving the finished products into place and laying them out sequentially along the foundation sites. I'm just getting them perfectly staged so you guys can bolt them together the second the suns come up, and we have maximum visibility."
Mark nodded slowly, looking out toward the distant, darkened silhouette of the western ridge. "That's a solid plan. Maximizes our downtime and minimizes the assembly window tomorrow. Good call."
"Glad you approve," Marcos replied, a hint of digital dry wit bleeding into his voice. "But I'm gonna need you to play Santa Claus again if you want me to keep going. Printers One and Two just chewed through the last of your stockpiles in the plaza. I'm tapped out on raw mass. I need more material."
Mark chuckled softly, the vibration rumbling through his chest. "Always needing something from me, aren't you? Alright. I'll play make-a-wish."
Mark adjusted Lyra's weight, supporting her securely with his left arm, and began to walk. He moved with quiet strides toward the northern edge of the Timgad grid, navigating the wide, empty avenues until he reached the colossal, imposing silhouette of the Shepherd.
The heavy frigate sat exactly where it had crashed, its heavily armored, scarred hull reaching eighty meters into the night sky, casting a shadow that swallowed the surrounding landscape. Mark walked around the massive starboard engine thrusters, moving to a secluded, empty expanse of dirt and crushed grass tucked safely out of sight behind the warship, entirely concealed from the view of the camp.
Mark stopped, ensuring he had plenty of clearance. He opened his inventory and selected the massive, cubic reserves of raw industrial materials he had siphoned from the corporate shipping lanes. He summoned 50 of them.
The air in front of him violently shattered.
A rapid, deafening succession of concussive CRACKS ripped through the quiet night as the atmosphere was instantly and violently displaced. Fifty colossal, perfectly cubic blocks of hyper-dense raw materials materialized out of thin air, dropping the final three feet to the ground.
The sheer, combined weight of five hundred tons of solid iron ore, dense carbon bricks, and heavy synthetic polymers slamming into the alien dirt simultaneously created a miniature, localized earthquake. The ground shuddered violently beneath Mark's boots, a deep, bass-heavy shockwave radiating outward and rattling the Shepherd's massive landing struts.
The sudden, concussive noise and the violent trembling of the earth were impossible to sleep through.
Lyra jolted awake with a sharp, terrified gasp. Her bright blue eyes snapped open, wide and frantic, as she violently pushed herself up against Mark's chest, her small hands grabbing fistfuls of his black t-shirt. She looked wildly around the dark, secluded space behind the massive frigate, her breathing shallow and panicked.
"Papa?" she asked, her voice trembling, raspy with sleep. "What happened? Did the ship crash again? Why are we outside?"
"Hey, hey, it's okay, Bug," Mark murmured instantly, his large hand coming up to gently cup the back of her head, pressing her back against his shoulder. His voice was a low, soothing rumble, completely devoid of the sharp edge he used with the Elites. "We didn't crash. Everything is fine. You're okay."
Lyra blinked rapidly, her heart hammering against his ribs. She looked at the massive, perfectly stacked grid of colossal metal and carbon cubes resting in the dirt just a few yards away, the dust still settling around them. She pointed a small, trembling finger at the impossible mountain of resources.
"Where did those come from?" she asked, her confusion warring with her lingering fear.
Mark chuckled softly, a genuine, warm sound. "I was just doing some magic for Marcos. He needed some more building blocks to make our new wind catchers, and he ran out. I had to give him some of mine."
Lyra's eyes widened, the fear immediately evaporating, replaced by the boundless, unquestioning awe of a child. She had lived in a world of absolute sensory deprivation for so long that she accepted the miraculous and the impossible with profound ease. If her father said it was magic, it was magic.
"Wow," she breathed, staring at the massive cubes. "You're really good at magic, Papa."
"Thanks, kiddo," Mark smiled. He tapped his comms. "Marcos, materials are staged behind the Shepherd's starboard thrusters. Send the heavy lifters."
"Got 'em," Marcos replied in his ear. "Swarm's on the way. Thanks, man."
Mark looked down at Lyra. She was fully awake now, her chin resting on his shoulder as she looked out at the dark expanse of the alien jungle beyond the ship. He knew there was no point in taking her back to her bed right now; the adrenaline of the sudden wake-up had banished her sleep entirely.
"Since we're already out here," Mark said softly, adjusting his grip and walking toward one of the Shepherd's splayed landing struts, "do you want to look at the stars?"
Lyra's face lit up. "Yeah! Can we sit on the big foot?"
"We can sit on the big foot," Mark agreed.
He walked over to the location where one of the colossal, hydraulic landing struts anchored the frigate to the earth, though the foot itself was currently buried. The heavy frigate had slammed into the ground with enough force to embed its massive lower structure deep into the soil. However, the upper arch of the strut, a thick, sloping piece of metal, remained exposed. It was flat enough and elevated a few feet above the crushed grass, serving as a perfect makeshift bench. Mark easily vaulted onto the smooth metal surface, sat down, crossed his legs, and settled Lyra comfortably into his lap.
She immediately cuddled back into his chest, her stuffed bear wedged safely between them, and tilted her head up.
Mark looked up with her. The sky above Rubrion Prime was a breathtaking, terrifying masterpiece. Because the colony had almost no light pollution, the galaxy's absolute vastness was laid bare. For Mark, the stars weren't the familiar, comforting constellations of Stara O86 he had grown up seeing, or the ones from Earth that he had traveled through in his past life.
It was an alien tapestry. The twin moons, one a pale, haunting silver and the other a bruised, dusty purple, hung low in the sky, casting long, eerie shadows across the jungle canopy. Between them, sprawling ribbons of vibrant, bioluminescent cosmic dust and dense, shifting nebulas painted the pitch-black void in strokes of deep violet, icy blue, and fiery crimson. Millions of stars, sharp and unblinking, pierced the darkness like scattered diamonds.
"It's so big," Lyra whispered, her voice barely carrying over the wind. "It's bigger than the ceiling in the house. It's bigger than the ship."
"It's the biggest thing there is, Bug," Mark said softly, his chin resting lightly on the top of her head.
"Did you see all of this when you were flying?" she asked, turning her head slightly to look up at him. "When you were a space pilot?"
Mark's chest tightened, a profound, complicated ache settling into his heart as two lifetimes of memories collided. He thought about his past life on Earth, before the reincarnation, before the system, before the endless grinding survival. He had been a guy from New York City, utterly obsessed with the thought of space, consuming every piece of media and science fiction he could get his hands on. But no matter how hard he had looked up back then, the suffocating light pollution of the city skyline had always choked out the stars, leaving him with nothing but a dull, orange-tinted haze.
Then, he had been reborn into this universe. He had finally made it to the stars, but the reality had been a brutal nightmare. He thought about the cold, sterile corridors of the pirate frigates, the blinding flash of gunfire in the void, and the three dead bodies he had found on the bridge the day he met her. He had lived in the cosmos he once dreamed of, but he had only ever looked at it through the crosshairs of a targeting optic or the tactical overlay of a warship. He had never actually seen it. Not until now. Not until he was sitting on a dirt-covered alien planet, holding the very reason he was still human.
"I saw a lot of it," Mark answered truthfully, his voice a low, quiet rumble. "But I never really took the time to look at it. Where I used to live, a long, long time ago, the lights of the city were so bright you couldn't see the stars at all. And when I finally got up there... I was too busy doing other things to appreciate them. Not like this. You're right. It's much prettier from down here."
"I like it," Lyra decided, looking back up at the swirling violet nebula. "It's better than looking at the ship's displays. Out there, the dark was scary, and the stars were just cold dots. But here... it feels like we're inside a painting."
Mark closed his eyes for a moment, resting his cheek against her soft hair. "Yeah. We are."
They spent the next hour sitting on the exposed curve of the landing strut, bathed in the ethereal glow of the twin moons. It was a rare, profoundly peaceful father-daughter bonding moment, entirely isolated from the brutal realities of the colony, the threat of the apex predators, and the relentless logistical grind. Lyra asked a hundred innocent, endless questions about the way the atmosphere changed the stars, pointing at clusters and inventing her own constellations, a giant metal bear, a flying fish, a huge plate of pancakes. Mark answered them all with gentle patience, his soul anchoring itself to the sound of her voice.
Eventually, the deep, impenetrable black of the sky began to shift, and the vibrant ribbons of the nebulas started to fade, washed out by a creeping, bruised shade of indigo that bled up from the eastern horizon. The stars slowly began to wink out, surrendering to the approaching dawn.
Mark looked down. Lyra was still awake, but her blinks were growing longer, her small body relaxing heavily against him. She had stayed awake for God knows how long playing hide-and-seek, survived the terror of the night's commotion, and had now spent an hour mapping an alien sky. She was running entirely on fumes.
"Alright, Bug," Mark said softly, beginning to stand up. "The sky is waking up. It's time to get you back to bed."
"But I'm not sleepy," Lyra protested immediately, followed instantly by a massive, jaw-cracking yawn that entirely betrayed her words.
Mark chuckled, stepping off the buried strut and beginning the walk back toward the residential grid. As they moved past the hull of the Shepherd, the eastern horizon flared with the very first, brilliant edge of light.
Mark paused. He looked at the approaching dawn and then down at the exhausted girl in his arms. Instead of simply carrying her to the manor and putting her to sleep, he had a thought.
"Hey, Lyra," Mark asked softly. "Do you want to see the sunrise?"
Lyra looked up at him, her brow furrowing in genuine confusion. Her bright blue eyes blinked sluggishly. "What's a sunrise?"
Mark stopped. It was a simple question, but it carried the devastating weight of her entire, tragic life. She had seen the stars from the ship's displays, and she had seen the blazing light of distant suns in the void, but she had never stood on a world and watched its star crest a physical horizon. The transition of night to day was a completely alien concept to her.
She had literally never seen a star rise.
"A sunrise," Mark explained gently, resuming his walk toward the massive, three-story manor at the center of the grid, "is when the night ends. The suns wake up, and they climb over the mountains to bring the light back. It's how the day starts on a planet."
Lyra's eyes widened slightly, the exhaustion momentarily pushed aside by curiosity. "They climb over the mountains? Like giants?"
"Exactly like giants," Mark smiled. "Do you want to see it?"
"Yes, please," she whispered, clutching her stuffed bear tighter.
Mark quickened his pace, bypassing the main avenues, moving swiftly through the quiet, awakening camp. They reached the reinforced steps of his home, the heavy front door disengaging with a smooth pneumatic hiss at his biometric approach. He carried her directly up the carpeted stairs, bypassing the second-floor library, and walked straight up to the master suite on the third floor.
He didn't take her into the bedroom. He knew that viewing the dawn through the polarized, heavily tinted glass of the expansive windows wouldn't do it justice. He wanted her to feel it. He wanted her to witness the raw, unfiltered beauty of her new world.
He pushed through the heavy glass doors to the right of the bedroom, stepping out onto the expansive open-air porch overlooking the eastern expanse of the colony and the sprawling jungle beyond.
The air was still cool, but the sky was rapidly transforming.
Mark stood at the edge of the railing, holding Lyra securely against his chest so she had a perfect, unobstructed view over the edge.
"Watch the horizon, Bug," Mark whispered, pointing toward the jagged, distant peaks of the eastern mountain range. "Right there."
They didn't have to wait long.
Rubrion Prime was a trinary system of ancient red dwarfs, and its dawn was a display of deep, smoldering color. The bruised indigo of the sky began to slowly burn, bleeding out as a beam of pure, molten ruby pierced the horizon. The primary star, massive and sullen, crested the jagged peaks, bathing the sky in deep, vibrant shades of crimson, rust, and violent violet. The colors bled across the heavy clouds, washing the city's metal towers in a bloody, ethereal glow.
A moment later, the second and third suns followed, breaching the horizon slightly to the left and right of the primary star. The second star burned with a fierce, bloody crimson, while the smallest of the three glowed like a dark, dying ember of burnt orange.
The three heavy, red light sources merged in the atmosphere, casting long, stark, overlapping shadows across the sprawling canopy of the alien jungle. The dew resting on the purple grass caught the light, instantly transforming the chaotic landscape into a glittering, endless ocean of dark amethysts and liquid garnets. The heavy, crimson dawn chased the last clinging shadows from the deep woods, and the diurnal wildlife of the planet began to sing, sending a sudden, rising chorus of clicks, chirps, and distant, echoing calls that heralded the new day under a blood-red sky.
Lyra gasped. Her small hands flew up, resting against Mark's chest as she stared, completely mesmerized by the heavy, smoldering colors. The deep red light reflected perfectly in her wide, bright blue eyes, turning them a striking shade of violet in the dawn.
"It's... it's so pretty," she breathed, her voice filled with absolute, unfiltered wonder. "Everything is red."
She watched the giant red suns clear the mountains, completely captivated by the simple, universal magic of the dawn. But as the dull, ember-like warmth of the light finally touched their skin, the last reserves of her energy completely evaporated.
Lyra let out a massive, shuddering yawn, her jaw stretching wide. Her entire body suddenly trembled, a deep, involuntary shiver of pure physical exhaustion rattling her small frame. It was still incredibly early in the morning, and she had barely slept, just a few fragmented hours throughout the night. Her battery was at zero percent.
"Alright, sleepyhead," Mark chuckled softly, turning away from the railing and carrying her back through the glass doors into the bedroom. "You saw the giants wake up. Now it's your turn to sleep."
He walked over to the sprawling island of soft white linens in the center of the dark room. He gently set her down on the mattress, pulling the heavy duvet up to her chin. She immediately curled into a tiny ball, clutching her alien plushy and her stuffed bear fiercely to her chest.
"Papa?" she murmured, her eyes already fluttering shut, fighting a losing battle against the heavy pull of sleep.
"Yeah, Bug?" Mark answered, kneeling beside the tall bed so he was at her eye level.
"Can you tell me a story?" she asked.
Mark froze, experiencing a sudden moment of absolute panic. He knew how to strip a fusion reactor, coordinate a drone swarm, and snap an apex predator's jaw. But this was a new one that he had never heard her ask for before, and he had absolutely no idea how to tell a bedtime story. He had never read one, never heard one, and certainly never told one.
"A story?" Mark stalled, desperately racking his brain for anything resembling a fairy tale.
"Mmhmm," Lyra hummed, her eyes now fully closed. "A good one."
Mark swallowed hard, looking at her peaceful face, and then just started talking, making it up entirely on the spot.
"Uh... well. Once upon a time, there was a... a little girl with bright red hair," Mark began, his voice hesitant. "And she lived in a giant, metal castle in the middle of a very big, very wild forest. The castle had huge walls and tall towers that reached all the way to the stars."
Lyra smiled softly, leaning into the pillow.
"And the little girl," Mark continued, gaining a fraction of confidence as he basically narrated a highly simplified version of their own lives, "was guarded by a massive, metal knight. He wore black armor, and he was very strong. But the forest was full of big, scary monsters with sharp teeth and thick fur."
Mark paused, realizing he was probably making the story too terrifying for a child. So he quickly pivoted. "But the monsters couldn't get in, because the metal knight built a giant wall. And then one day, the knight went into the forest and met a giant, fluffy wolf. And the wolf..."
Mark stopped, then looked down.
Lyra was softly, rhythmically snoring. She hadn't even made it a minute into the story. The sheer exhaustion of the night had claimed her completely.
Mark let out a silent sigh of relief, smiling warmly at her sleeping form. He reached out, his thumb gently brushing a stray lock of auburn hair away from her freckled forehead.
"Sleep tight, Bug," he whispered.
He stood up quietly, ensuring his heavy boots didn't make a sound against the floor, and stepped back out through the glass doors onto the third-floor porch.
The tender, storytelling father vanished the moment he crossed the threshold, and the stoic, calculating commander returned, his eyes scanning the sprawling, sunlit expanse of his colony.
He looked toward the western ridge, the natural funnel of the basin. Even from a distance of two kilometers, the sheer scale of Marcos's nocturnal logistics was awe-inspiring.
The colossal 25x25-meter and 8x8-meter nanoprinters were no longer in the central plaza. Marcos had engaged their massive, independent tread systems, driving the colossal machines through the dark to position them directly at the construction sites.
Along the elevated ridge, Mark could see the fruits of Printers One and Two. Four massive, fully printed wind turbines lay horizontally across the cleared earth. The gleaming towers, the intricate generator hubs, and the impossibly long, ultra-thin swept blades were perfect. Beside each staged turbine, a deep, excavated pit held the freshly printed, reinforced bunkers designed to house the modified Hellfire battery banks. They were ready. They only missed the final erection and assembly.
Mark stepped up to the railing, his mind shifting entirely to the logistical puzzle. With a focused thought, he commanded the pendant's nanites to rest against his t-shirt.
A stream of liquid metal flowed up from the pendant, traveling up his chest and over his face, but it didn't form a full helmet. Instead, it replicated the gear he had utilized back on Mechanicus Station. A pair of heavy, polarized, tactical engineering goggles formed over his eyes, instantly filtering out the blinding glare of the three suns and overlaying the distant turbines with structural schematics and stress-load data. Then he thought of a new addition, and a sleek, high-fidelity comms headset formed over his right ear, dropping a slim microphone down to his jawline.
"Hey Marcos," Mark said, his voice crisp. "The staging looks flawless, and the blades are perfect. But we have a mechanical problem. Those towers are eighty meters long and weigh forty tons. The blades are another twenty tons. Sure, the drones can help, but you'll need them elsewhere while we work. We don't have a crane in our colony, and Kenji's mech won't be able to reach that height, let alone stabilize the hub while we bolt the blades on in a turbulent wind tunnel. How exactly were you planning to get these built?"
There was a long, heavy silence over the comms. Mark could almost hear the digital friction of a hyper-advanced AI realizing it had perfectly calculated the aerodynamics, the electrical routing, and the material extrusion, but had completely forgotten to factor in the physical reality of human assembly.
"Ah, shit," Marcos sighed, the synthesized voice dripping with casual realization of his own oversight. "Yeah, that's on me. I'm momentarily halting the extrusion of Turbine Five."
Mark watched through his polarized goggles as the massive 8x8-meter printer stationed near the ridge suddenly flared with a blinding white light. It spat out the final section of a Hellfire battery casing and instantly began cycling a completely new blueprint.
"Loading up schematics for a couple of ultra-heavy crawler-cranes and some stabilizing excavators now," Marcos muttered, pivoting his logistics with terrifying speed. "Give me forty-five minutes. I'll have your assembly toys ready."
Mark smirked, crossing his arms over his chest as the brutal, relentless grind of the new day officially began. "Don't beat yourself up, Marcos. I forget about the shit I'm able to do all the time."