Author Notes: Field research log from Haven sector zero-six. Cataloging native biology under survival parameters.
Haven air tasted like cold iron and wet slate, heavier than Earth's, pressing against the lungs with a persistent, low-pressure ache. Luna adjusted the filter mask, watching the soil sensor readouts on her wrist unit.
"Carbon-silicate ratio holding at four-to-one," she recorded, her voice raspy. "Fertilizer absorption is sub-optimal. The local microbes are eating the nitrates faster than the corn roots can draw them. We need a different culture sequence."
A soft click sounded behind her, rustling through the low, blue-fronded brush.
Luna went rigid. Her right hand slipped slowly to the holster at her hip. The holster was canvas, military surplus, containing an acoustic disruptor. Six-legged stalkers didn't react to kinetic fire, but high-frequency sound split their sensory nodes.
The rustle came again, closer.
She spun, disruptor raised, finger tightening on the trigger.
Sitting on a fallen, calcified log was a creature about the size of a domestic cat, but completely wrong. It had four front legs, jointed like a crab's, and two stocky back legs that kept it anchored. Instead of fur, its skin was a smooth, matte-black hide that absorbed the dim light of Haven's violet star. And instead of eyes, it had a cluster of small, vibrating sensory tentacles that twitched in her direction.
It let out a sound like a wet condenser leak—a dry, raspy whistle.
"What are you?" Luna whispered, not lowering the disruptor.
The creature hopped forward, its six legs moving in a synchronized, surprisingly graceful tripod pattern. It stopped three feet from her boot, tilted its tentacled head, and let out another condenser rattle.
She slowly lowered the barrel. The sensor array on her wrist flared cyan. The creature's skin was radiating a weak electromagnetic charge.
"No thermal signature," Luna muttered, tapping the log. "You're drawing power from the atmospheric static. Like an organic capacitor."
The creature walked up to her pack, sniffing the copper terminals of her auxiliary power cell.
"Oh no you don't, Professor," Luna said, nudging it gently with her boot. "That battery is keeping the hydroponics online. You want power? Go find a storm."
She renamed the log file: HAVEN_BIO_ANOMALY_01_WHISKERS.
