The newly erected admin dome at Southern Diggings smelled of fresh duraplast. Construction was fast and simple. The circular base or foundation of the dome was poured on a flat surface. Pre-fabbed walls were laid flat on the foundation. The dome itself was a graphite-fiber fabric that was affixed to the outside of the circle and inflated. Once inflated, crews erected the pre-fabbed walls, raising them into position and locking them in place to create walls, halls, and rooms. Then every surface was sprayed with liquid duraplast, the polymer hardening and cementing the dome into a strong and resilient structure. It had gone up in a day.

Now, with fans blowing the fumes into a tubing, the structure caught the midday light.

Kalico, seated on a stack of bits for the pneumatic drills, waved at a pesky invertebrate that had been drawn to her perspiration. She reveled in Capella’s hot light after being in the air conditioned and ad hoc medical bay inside one of the shipping containers they’d used for initial shelter at Southern Diggings. Inside, Raya Turnienko worked on Private Aberash.

Kalico figured she had a strong stomach. Watching the Siberian doctor sucking blood out of the marine’s skull, however, had given birth to a queasy unease down in Kalico’s gut. So she’d stepped out here, taken a seat, and now was pondering if that brand new dome, smelling of fresh polymers, wasn’t already doomed by whatever had killed her marines and inflicted so much trauma on Aberash.

Worse, Talina Perez, Dek, Muldare, and the soft meat Valdez were just out yonder. Somewhere in that thick forest off to the south. Facing . . . what?

The lurking reminder of Maritime Unit remained fresh in her memory. The haunting reality that Donovan had destroyed the entire research base. And it hadn’t just been the big terrifying monsters, but the slime that had killed all those people and sank the supposedly impervious sialon complex into the ocean.

So, what’s lurking out there, and is it going to kill my friends?

And all the while, she was down here, terrified by what this latest venture was going to cost her. Three dead marines and one wounded? The remarkable promise of Southern Diggings and its unimaginable wealth? Or Tal, Dek, and Briah? Friends. People she cared a good deal about.

“So,” she mused, eyes on the striking white dome, “is this how the universe works?” Be just like the perversity of fate to cost her everything. Disaster on all fronts, grief, and defeat, all there to be witnessed by Soukup. Even while Kalico wanted to drown herself in grief, the slug sucker would order her arrested, appoint her replacement.

A weary smile bent her lips. Could I handle that? If Tal and the others don’t come back? Southern Diggings abandoned? Me, locked in a cell aboard Turalon?