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Pom, Mei and Sigrid were still reeling from ARI's intervention. Though the AI had refrained from taking punitive action, its calculated reprimand left them uneasy. The cold logic of ARI's words hung over them like a specter, a reminder of the precarious balance they all lived under. ARI’s message had been clear: All must cooperate despite their differences, or all would perish.

In the infirmary, Mei checked on Pom's progress. Careful treatment had brought him back to health, and his immune system had finally recovered enough for him to leave the sterile confines of the surgery room. Mei adjusted her visor, the containment suit crinkling softly as she approached him.

"You are officially cleared," Mei said with a small smile. "Your immune system has stabilized, microbiome is regenerating, and you are free to resume your duties."

Pom exhaled deeply, a relieved smile spreading across his face. "Finally. If I had to eat one more of those sealed rations, I'd have started chewing on the walls.

Mei chuckled; the sound slightly muffled by her suit. "Don't celebrate too hard. You are still on light duty for another day or two."

"Light duty's fine," Pom said, his tone softening. "I'm just glad to be out."

Pom gathered his belongings, and both left the infirmary together, walking into the direction of the grove. The alien pre-dawn sky above them shimmered with unfamiliar stars, and the landscape around them illuminated with an array of otherworldly colors under the gloom of the twin moons. The air was cool and still, a brief reprieve from the heat of the coming day.

Pom glanced at Mei. "It's strange,” he said quietly. "Even with everything we've been through—everything we've lost—I feel lucky.”

Mei tilted her head, studying him. "Lucky?”

He nodded, a wistful smile on his face. "Yeah. Back on Luna, life was just… survival. Shifts, quotas, orders. People didn't care about each other, you know... Hell, half the time, they didn't even see each other. Here, despite all the danger, despite ARI breathing down our necks, it feels different. Like there's a chance to build something real."

Mei turned away, her eyes straying out toward distant cliffs that made up the crater ridge. "I used to think that too," she said quietly. "When I boarded the Dolya, I thought it would be about discovery. Building a new world, making a difference. But lately…" She let her voice trail off, weighted with doubt.

"Lately what?" Pom asked, his voice low, stepping closer.

She hesitated, then met his gaze through her visor. "Lately, I've just been grateful to have people who care. People who want me here."

Pom smiled, and his voice was warm. "That's worth more than anything else. We can deal with the rest-Maximilian, ARI, even the alien plants. As long as we've got each other.

Mei smiled, her face gentle and all but shy. "You make it sound so simple."

"Doesn't have to be complicated," Pom said, his tone light yet sincere. "We've got this moment, right here, right now. And that's enough."

For a time, they stood in comfortable silence. The planet, with all its mysteries and dangers, felt almost peaceful under the gleaming sky.

"Thank you," Mei said finally, her voice barely above a whisper.

Pom raised an eyebrow. "For what?"

"For being here," Mei returned, the smile clear in her voice. "For reminding me that even here, so far away from our homes, there is something worth holding onto."

Pom reached out, his gloved hand brushing against the exterior of her suit. "Always," he said simply.

It was, for the first time in weeks it seemed, a spark of hope for Mei. She was convinced that whatever came next, at least she wouldn't be walking into it alone.

As they entered the grove, the pale white stems of the mushroom-like plants seemed almost to glow in the light of the moon. Mei approached one of the larger ones, her containment suit softly crackling as she squatted to examine it.Her breath caught when she saw what had changed.

Along the length of the stalks, a series of new, blue-green buds had developed, their surfaces smooth and faintly translucent, like uncut gemstones.

"They're growing," Mei whispered, reaching out cautiously, her gloved hand hovering just above one of the buds. "This is going to produce the fruit we need."

Pom tilted his head, frowning. "They look like they're… getting ready to bloom or something."

Mei nodded wildly, her eyes round with amazement. "It's a sign. They're responding to us. The plants aren't hostile-they are trying to help."

Pom folded his arms, his face still a mask of scepticism. "You're assuming a lot, Mei. Just because they're growing doesn't mean they're on our side. For all we know, these things could be preparing to unleash clouds of toxins into our base."

She turned to him, her voice firm, yet matter-of-fact. "Think about it. The fruit they produced before wasn't harmful. And now, after all that has taken place, they are producing more. That can't be coincidental."

Pom sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Maybe you are right. But I am not letting my guard down. Not here.

Mei smiled faintly, rising and turning to the grove. The buds were everywhere now, scattered across the taller stems, their contrasting colors giving the grove an almost ethereal beauty. She felt a shiver run over her spine, as if the plants were somehow trying to tell her something, their growth some kind of response to her earlier effort at communication.

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"If this is what I think it is," Mei said quietly, "we're one step closer to what the base needs. Nutrients, medicine, resources-it could all come from here."

Pom turned to her, his face softening despite himself. "Just promise me you won't push too hard. We don't need another close call."

Mei nodded as the soft hum of an engine broke the stillness of the night. Turning with Pom to look back, the rugged outline of a dozer rolled over the hill nearby. The long shadows cast by the vehicle's lights showed them Sigrid was behind the controls as it rumbled closer. She waved them over, her usual reserved expression giving way to one of purpose.

"Hop in," Sigrid called through over the comms as the dozer came to a stop. "We are already running late.

Mei climbed into the cabin, taking the passenger seat while Pom swung himself up onto the rear platform. The dozer roared to life again, making its way toward the staging area, where the other vehicles were parked.

Once they had arrived, the group disembarked onto the destination site. In her sealed suit, Mei moved quickly to the intact toploader. Pom walked around the second dozer for a quick inspection. He got low, running his gloved hand over a section of the treads where metal plating had been warped and scratched.

"This one's taken a beating," Pom muttered, frowning as he checked the hydraulic lines. "Nothing critical, but if we don't get the refinery up soon, this kind of damage is going to pile up. Replacement parts aren't going to print themselves."

"Indeed," Sigrid said as she joined him, "We have to get that fabricator running, or the equipment is going to fall apart on us."

Pom straightened, giving the dozer a final pat before climbing up into the cabin. "Let's not waste more time, then."

Mei led the convoy in her toploader, with Pom and Sigrid following close behind in their dozers. They arrived at the original excavation site, where a low-density ore pile had already been collected but left untouched after the beetle attack had knocked out their refining capabilities.

"It's not the best kinda stuff," Pom said over the comms, "But it'll keep the machines going until we get better material.

"Start loading," Sigrid said, already maneuvering her dozer into position. The bucket swooped into the pile with a mechanical roar, lifting a load of the loose ore. Pom mirrored her movements, his machine grinding slightly as he looked for the dense layer of sand that had settled over the pile.

Mei's toploader stood waiting, its cargo bed open in a yawning gape, as the two dozers dumped their loads in turn. ARI's voice came over the comms, calm but firm.

"Reminder: current armed drone capacity limited to three units. One drone has been assigned to your location, while the remaining two remain on base defense.

"Understood, ARI," Mei said, adjusting her controls to compact the load. "Let's just hope nothing decides to crash this party."

Pom laughed dryly. "Yeah, because everything's gone so smoothly for us so far."

Within minutes, Mei's toploader was filled to capacity with the low-density ore. She ran a final systems check, making sure her load was balanced, before turning back toward the base. "I will drop this off at the refinery," she said. "You two head to the next site and start digging."

"Be careful," Sigrid called after her as the toploader rumbled off into the night.

With Mei on the way to base, Pom and Sigrid took up the second mining site. As they moved away from the original dig, the surface grew more and more coarse, their machines rumbling under the stress of maintaining traction on the jagged ground. Headlights showed a jagged, rocky surface ahead, a reminder that parts of the world were not nice places.

"You are approaching the second marker," ARI said, pinging the coordinates on the dozers' dashboards.

"This is the spot where we found better quality ore last time," Sigrid said over the comms. "Let's loosen it up. The refinery needs this kind of density if we want to have something resembling an efficient production run."

"Copy that," Pom returned, his voice even, but the undercurrent leery. "Keep your eyes peeled. ARI may have a drone here, but I'm not trusting this place to stay quiet. Those beetles are still out there."

The dozers stopped near a vein of exposed ore, the mineral's sheen visible even under the dim moonlight. Pom's dozer groaned as its bucket bit into rocky ground, scooping up chunks of ore and loose debris. He adjusted the controls, his eyes flicking between the terrain ahead and the ore filling his bucket. The headlights illuminated the scene in stark detail, casting sharp shadows over the uneven surface.

Pom hesitated for a moment, then nudged his machine sideways to get a better angle on the just uncovered stretch of vein. His bucket was filled with dark metallic ore, but there was something else in there, too-something that glittered faintly pale, reflecting light in ways it shouldn't.

"What the freck is that?", Pom exclaimed, leaning forward in his seat. He climbed down from the dozer, grabbing a flashlight from the cabin as he moved toward the pile. The beam illuminated small, crystalline structures embedded in the ore. Unlike the sharp, structured crystals they had seen in the beetles' goo, these were smaller, almost stunted, their colors matte and dull, and their formations irregular and incomplete.

Sigrid approached from her own machine, carrying a handheld sensor. "These don't look like the other crystals we've found,” she said, crouching beside the pile.

"Keep your distance," ARI said firmly, lowering itself near the pile to get a closer look.

ARI tentatively reached out, brushing some of the dirt away to show more of the crystalline formations. Between them, thin, colorful tendrils—like veins of mineralized light—seemed to reach out and then abruptly stop, as if something had stunted their growth.

Kneeling beside Mei, Pom shone his steady beam of light at the weird formations. "They're… trying to spread out," he muttered. "But it's like they're incomplete. Broken, maybe?

ARI ran its sensor over the crystals. "Their composition is similar to the crystals we've encountered, but there are differences. These tendrils don't show up in ones we've analyzed previously, with one exception."

"What exception is that," Pom asked.

"Ervin's severed hand…", ARI replied, drawing attention to the red crystalline structures that had consumed all of the material in the whole limb before fizzling out.

"Could it be related to the ore somehow?" Pom asked. "Perhaps this deposit is interfering with whatever process grows these things."

"Perhaps," Sigrid said in a musing voice. "Or maybe it is the other way around. These crystals might be feeding on the ore, but there is something here that's limiting them. We'd need a lab to figure out which."

Pom looked around at the dark landscape around them. "You think they're dangerous?"

"Everything here is dangerous," Sigrid said dryly. "But these don't seem volatile or alive. Not like the goo we dealt with before."

"Still," ARI said, its tone pressing, "with anomalous crystals present in the raw ore, it could affect the refinery."

Sigrid nodded as she stood up. "Alright, let's get a sample and relocate to another site. We'll mark the area and come back when the others have returned."

Pom fetched a small containment box from his dozer, and ARI gently inserted one of the crystal-laden chunks into it. Sigrid shut it with a hiss of compressed air, making sure it was sealed safely for transport.

ARI's voice, crackling over the comms. "I have analyzed the signatures of the crystals encountered in this ore. Their presence poses a potential contamination risk. All material from this site, except for the secured sample, must be discarded and buried."

"What?" Pom exclaimed, hunching forward in his seat. "You're telling us to get rid of the whole load?"

"Right," ARI responded. "The properties of the crystals are not yet fully known, and contamination could affect the integrity of other ore loads. The buckets must then be cleansed of residue by dragging them through sand before proceeding to the next site."

Sigrid sighed, turning her dozer toward the disposal area. "Well, you heard the bot. Let's get it done."

Pom grumbled but complied, tipping the load from his bucket onto the ground. The freshly dug ore tumbled out, its mixture of dark metallic rock and faintly glinting crystals settling into a heap. With some reluctance, he lowered the bucket to the sandy ground and began dragging it across.