The mission was simple. There was no scientific data collection, no civilian evacuation, nothing fancy that real Stormrunners would do.

All that the trio needed to do was to defuse the storm in fifteen minutes. Period.

The moment the gates closed behind them, the sandstorm began. Walls of dust stretched all the way to the ceiling, blocking any sight into the terrain that lay beyond. Multiple vortexes started forming throughout the terrain, launching tiny pieces of granite that posed no fatal risk but hurt nonetheless. The artificial forces of nature clashed against each other, pushing Shon to the brink of falling.

Without a word, Shon, Zora, and Damien Strauss fell into the tactical position discussed earlier. They stood on top of a tall, sturdy rock, which gave them a bird’s eye view of the terrain.

Shon and Zora closed their eyes, using their Fraxian perception to identify the shape of the air currents. Damien, with his vision blocked by the wall of dust, fired a flare inside the wall and tracked the trajectory of the bright light.

“There are three nuclei linearly positioned one behind another,” said Zora.

“I got the same thing,” confirmed Shon. “Seems like the innermost nucleus is the strongest, but the turbulence is too big to get a good read.”

Unlike the mono-nucleus storms of the ages past, the colossal sandstorms that ravaged human civilization were composed of multiple nuclei. Each nucleus was like a storm within the storm, possessing its own behavioral pattern and meteorological properties. Much like the different heads of a hydra, the nuclei each carried a mind of their own, yet their combined behaviors somehow managed to magnify destruction. And just like a hydra, a colossal sandstorm could only be killed by defusing all its nuclei.

Fortunately, storms made of linearly positioned nuclei were fairly easy to defuse. Following the most logical order, Stormrunners simply needed to destroy one nucleus after another, fighting their way to the innermost nucleus.

“I’ll get a detailed read on the first nucleus,” said Zora.

Zora grabbed two recon spears and launched herself toward the canyon in front of the opaque dust wall. She fired her grappling hooks toward the opposite walls of the canyon, using the cable like a slingshot to shoot herself forward, rapidly closing in the distance.

As she closed in towards the dust wall, she adopted a more careful stance. With her jump pack powered on, she ran up the walls of the canyon until she was entirely running sideways.

When Zora was about to reach the dust wall, Shon and Damien fired a few more flares inside. Although Zora could probably find her way relying purely on her thermal perception, it would be safer to give her vision as well.

Following the trajectory of the flare, Zora accelerated sideways along the highest wall of the canyon. With the recon spear in her hand, she took a leap of faith, ready to plunge the recon spear into the depth of the first nucleus.

However, the moment her spear touched the dust wall, it bounced off as if it hit a yoga ball. Zora was shocked. She tried to change position midair, but it was too late to stop her momentum.

Zora crashed against the dust wall, now an impenetrable solid. She was launched back where she came from.

Right before she was about to hit the ground, she used the jump charge in her jump pack. It took away most of the fall, but she still stumbled and rolled on the ground.

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Wiping blood away from her mouth, she yelled into the comms.

“Guys, what the hell was that?”

Shon was shocked too. He saw the flares penetrating the dust wall right before Zora. This didn’t make sense.

However, now was no time to panic. They already used up three minutes, and they did not even defuse the first nucleus.

“It’s non-Newtonian!” Damien yelled from sudden realization. “The wall follows properties of non-Newtonian fluids!”

“What the hell?” said Shon.

Non-Newtonian fluids carried a unique property: The more force they received, the higher the viscosity, and hence the more solid it would seem. That was why the small, lightweight flare round could pass through easily, but Zora could not.

“You ever mixed starch with water and tried to punch it? Or you tried to escape a quicksand? The harder you hit it, the more resistant it becomes.”

Shon understood. Theoretically, with all the sand, moisture, and air inside this dust wall, it could theoretically become non-Newtonian. Shon didn’t know this was possible in real life, but the storms always defied the current understanding of physics, even artificial ones.

“Seems like we have to blast our way through,” said Zora over the comms.

Zora planted a recon spear near the dust wall. Shon glanced at the display on his arm. The velocity of the dust reached up to 150 kilometers per hour. At this rate, any breach they blasted in the wall would be filled with more dust in less than half a second. This meant that someone had to continuously keep the breach open while others passed through.

Damien understood this as well.

“You guys go in and kill the nucleus. I’ll keep the breach open,” said Damien.

Shon sprung into action without arguing. He began wallrunning on the same path as Zora did. With a double jump from the jump pack, Zora also quickly positioned herself next to Shon.

Shon put one hand on his grappling system, preparing himself for any obstacle beneath the dust wall. On the other hand, he used his blaster pistol to open a few small holes on the dust wall, but they were nowhere big enough for him to pass through.

Thankfully, Damien’s covering fire came immediately. Damien Strauss truly lived up to his reputation. With the largest caliber blaster, he fired blue energy beams around Shon and Zora, perfectly tracing their silhouettes but never letting the energy beam touch them. Like flames burning a sheet of paper, a few gaping holes opened up in front of them.

Zora jumped in headfirst. Immediately launching the recon spear into the first rock she could see. Shon followed suit immediately.

As he was still flying in the air, Shon saw new readings pop up on his display. These numbers from the recon spear provided more details on air current composition, temperature, and speed.

The moment he passed through the dust wall, he found himself in a dome of dusk where nearly all sunlight was blocked.. All he could see were streams of sand racing past his eyes. The moment he tried to focus on his moving surroundings, he felt dizzy. After all, he was trying to stand still inside a rapidly spinning sphere of air.

Shon closed his eyes to tune in to his thermal perception. With all the sand inside a storm, thermal perception often helped more than the naked eye. Dodging obstacles along the way, he performed the meteorological computation in his head.

“Ten o’clock, forty down, One hundred fifty meters,” Zora yelled. She found the critical point before Shon.

The critical point was the fatal weakness of the storm nucleus. A storm was made of clashing currents of hot and cold air, and the critical point was where the source of the energy resided.

Shon closed eyes. He could feel a huge pocket of warm air bubbling like a cauldron at the base of the storm nucleus.

He rotated himself in midair and scouted the path towards the critical point. There were no opposite walls for him to do the canyon slingshot move. The only solid structure that stood between them was a few boulders.

Shon launched a grappling hook towards the first boulder in the target direction. As he accelerated towards the rock, he detached the first hook and launched a second one at another boulder further away. The new hook sharply turned his acceleration to a different angle, but his body was well-trained to handle this kind of stress. One more shot and he was close enough.

He drew the cyro spear from his waistbelt and took careful aim, accounting for the different gusts of air at play. Then he launched the spear forward, hearing the satisfying crack as the tip of the spear dug itself deep inside a rock near the critical point.

The white cryogenic mist was not visible behind the dust, but Shon could feel the explosion of chill air rushing toward him.

Immediately, the winds slowed down. The dust wall, without the heavy winds to support itself, slowly settled into a heap of sand. The sun was able to shine in. Damien and Zora quickly gathered around Shon.

One nucleus down. Two more to go.