Blood Debt at the Uplink Station

The jungle breathes hot and wet around K'hark, black trunks ringed with pale fungus and drifting spores.

Ahead, a corporate auditor crouches inside a thin energy barrier, clutching a data-pad with shaking hands.

Beyond the flicker, the shuttle lies gutted. Small bioluminescent figures move over its hull, peeling panels and prying cables with exact, patient motions.

He spots K'hark's silhouette between the trees and jerks upright, slamming one palm against the barrier as if it might open for him.

One of the bioluminescent scavengers pauses, its glowing head turning toward the trees. The rhythmic pulse around the shuttle quickens.

K'hark slips into the undergrowth, where the spores swallow his outline and the clearing loses him.

Two scavengers lean over a peeled panel, their glow pooling on the wreck, not on the shadow at their backs.

He rises behind them in one fluid strike, and the first pair goes down without a sound.

A second pair turns too late. K'hark is already inside their reach, and the clearing flashes with brief, cold motion.

When the bodies settle, only the shuttle’s leaking light and the barrier’s crackle keep moving.

The auditor stares at K'hark through the wavering field, fear giving way to desperate relief.

K'hark drops to the nearest corpse and rolls it over with one clawed hand. A stolen sidearm, a cracked field knife, and a compact data relay spill free from the scavenger's harness.

He strips the relay first, then snaps the sidearm clear of its mag clamp. The scavenger's stolen gear bears a crude village-mark, scratched into the housing with heat.

Inside the barrier, the auditor's shoulders lower a fraction as he watches the recovered gear. The crackle around him still bars the way out, but his grip on the data-pad loosens.

Wind shifts through the clearing, stirring the dead scavengers' glow and the shuttle's leaking light. The surviving scavenger remains off to the side, frozen, while the barrier continues to hum between K'hark and the trapped auditor.

K'hark plants one hand against the barrier's edge and feeds his tools into the field seam. His malfunctioning augment stutters, then catches, and the crackling shell gutters to a thin hiss.

The shimmer collapses in a ripple of pale sparks. The opening stands clear, and the auditor is no longer trapped inside it.

He steps out fast, almost stumbling over the edge of the dead field, then stops short when he sees the bodies around the clearing.

The recovered data relay flashes once in K'hark's grasp. Beyond them, the shuttle wreck keeps leaking light, and something inside its torn hull emits a hard mechanical chirp.