Chương 105: 41.Flare 41-2

The fact that the firestorm didn't instantly sandblast us into ash was, by itself, enough to inspire a warped kind of respect for the Federation's educational system. The first ten minutes were the worst. Not just because of the heat—though that was bad enough. It felt like someone was scraping the sun back and forth over the thermal sheeting. The dirt walls soaked heat in layers and fed it inward; the air was thick enough to feel pre-chewed. The real problem was the sound.

That continuous shriek and pounding, like something huge and invisible was pinning the rainforest down and slowly planing it open. Trunks cracking, vines whipping, and now and then the brief tortured twist of metal—probably somebody's gear frame, or some even unluckier drop pod. I kept my shoulder to the wall and watched the external temperature numbers climb, my throat feeling like it was full of dust. [EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE: 138. 4°C] [WIND PRESSURE CONTINUING TO RISE] [SHELTER STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY: 61%] Sixty-one percent. Great. Exactly the kind of score an instructor would give our life plans—not enough to justify execution, nowhere near good.

"Frost 04. Time," I said, voice rough from the heat. Maki, hunched in front-left, checked the timer on her wrist.

"Thirteen minutes since main heatfront contact. Vent slit still stable, but humidity's rising too fast. First adjustment in approximately fifteen."

"Water?" Harvey asked.

"At current loss rate and subjective strain, fifteen milliliters per person per cycle," she said, like she was reading off a spreadsheet.

"Any more and we risk an early dry-out." Jess gave a dry laugh.

"Fifteen milliliters. How generous. I thought you'd have us sniff the bottle and call it a day."

"If you can hydrate by smell, I'll reclassify you as special-purpose equipment," Maki said, tone as flat as ever, blade still going straight for the joint. I almost laughed. My throat hurt too much, so I swallowed it. Which was a good sign. Banter meant we weren't at the bottom yet. Another surge hit. The whole hide dipped. Fine dust rained down. Harvey pushed the support up another half-centimeter.

"Right-upper corner's loosening," he said.

"Do we reinforce?" I asked.

"No big moves," Harvey said, voice even shorter than usual.

"Frost 02, that bag of soil by your boot. Slide it over. Slow." Jess didn't talk back. She eased the bag toward him, no wasted movements. Most of the time she sounded like she was paid to provoke people; right now, she understood that not even her usual twitch was worth it. Harvey caught the bag and packed it into the hot leak, and Maki followed with a layer of wet mud and thermal sheet. Nobody said good job. Nobody said teamwork. Someone reached. Someone braced. Someone patched. Annoying, but effective.

I pulled my eyes off the HUD and laid it out.

"Rotation," I said.

"Frost 02, structure first. Frost 04, time and air. Frost 03, external. Forty minutes per round. If you can't hold, this is not the time to play stoic—speak up. This isn't a pissing contest. It's a contest to see who spoils last."

"That metaphor is terrible," Jess said.

"But accurate," I said.

"Fine. Frost 01's literary talents remain impressively awful."

"Less noise. Listen to your side." Jess tilted her head toward the sheeting and went quiet. Not the dead quiet the forest had fallen into earlier—the coiled quiet of a hound flattening its ears and putting away the jokes. Most days she hit people with the blunt side of a knife. When she was actually working, she could press herself down to nothing. After some unknowable stretch of time, the shrieking outside finally started to drop. Not away—down. From that ear-sanding edge to a lower, rougher howl.

The temperature was still hanging at the top, but it wasn't climbing like it wanted to set a record anymore. [EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE: 611. 2°C] [EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE: 584. 9°C] [HEATFRONT PEAK PASSED – RESIDUAL PHASE] I stared at the line and had to admit Federation hardware had a talent for euphemism. Residual phase. Made it sound like a nice sunset. What it meant: congratulations, you have not yet been boiled; please enjoy four more hours of slow roasting.

On the first rotation, I forced Harvey to rest twenty minutes. He wasn't the type to tap out—he'd probably keep going until he snapped, and we'd find out too late.

"Frost 03. Eyes closed," I said. He frowned.

"I can still—""I know you can. Corpses can lie there awhile too," I said.

"Order. Twenty minutes. I'm on supports, Frost 04 backs structural watch." He stared at me for two seconds, then finally said, "…Copy." Good. Obedience counted for more than loyalty here. Knowing when not to be tough was rare and expensive. Maki took his position, knuckles brushing my knee as she shifted. Just once. Light. Like she was checking I was still solid.

"You'll need a rotation too, team lead," she murmured.

"Later."

"Not a recommendation. Requirement." She shoved another saltwater packet into my hand, voice still flat but pitched one notch lower.

"Your voice is breaking." I really wanted to swear at her. Because she was right. And because whenever she was right, she did it in a way that made you feel like you'd been measured and shaved down with a perfect straight-edge. I took the packet and let the brine hit my tongue. It tasted like the ocean and scrap metal had slapped me at the same time.

"This is awful," I said.

"Effective," Maki said.

"That should be printed on Federation rations." In the dark, Jess gave a short laugh.

"I'd buy that." If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. The laugh didn't last. A few seconds later, she lowered her voice.

"Left side. Something's out there." The hole tightened up again. I leaned forward.

"Direction?"

"Not big. Many," Jess said.

"Crawling, not walking." She listened again, voice dropping another shade.

"Like a whole lot of half-cooked bugs dragging themselves along." Maki killed another sliver of light. Harvey opened his eyes, hand already on a tool handle. I watched the faint, crooked seam of the vent and felt my pulse thudding in my throat. The worst thing out here wasn't knowing something would eat you. It was knowing that most of them were patient. A thin scratching slid past outside. Not impact. Not a lunge.

More like clusters of creatures being driven out by the heat, scraping over the top and sides of our hide, flowing past. Closer, then farther, for almost a full minute. Then gone. Jess let out a long breath, and still had enough left to make a joke.

"Good news—they weren't headed for us," she said.

"Bad news—this planet's refugee caravans aren't human either."

"Log it," I said.

"During Purgation Gale, we have biological migration. No food smell, no sweetness, no blood at the edge of a hide. Frost 04, add to rules."

"Recorded," Maki said. I nodded and leaned back against the wall. I couldn't tell you when it stopped needing to be explained sentence by sentence—when they just started catching the second half on their own. It felt strange. Like you'd thought you were holding three mismatched broken knives, and when you finally swung, they somehow locked together into a set. On the second rotation, I finally closed my eyes for ten minutes. Not sleep. Just shutting them so the HUD's red text would stop drilling into my brain.

The howling outside had dropped to a low groan. The hide was down to breathing sounds, the occasional creak of the support strut, and the small, measured sounds of everyone swallowing water in the most economical way possible. Those sounds were quiet enough that you suddenly understood—all four of us were calculating how long we could last. In those ten minutes I thought about midterm scores. About finals. About the Upper House watching this run and deciding who was worth pulling up and who was worth throwing away.

About how this planet wasn't just for training—it was for sorting. The ones who made it through weren't necessarily better. Just harder, or better at biting. Thinking about it, I actually felt calmer. Because compared to the ones who'd gone soft in the transport and hit the ground already looking for someone to carry them, I at least knew one thing: pressure doesn't shrink because you complain about it. So the only option was to be standing when it came down. Three-plus hours later, the system tone finally changed.

[ULTRA-LARGE PURGATION GALE MAIN BODY PASSED] [EXTERNAL TEMPERATURE DECLINING] [RECOMMEND DELAYING EGRESS — CONFIRM SECONDARY THERMALS AND BIOLOGICAL ACTIVITY] When I opened my eyes, the hide wasn't quite the steam cooker it had been, but every one of us looked like we'd been fished out of water and then left to dry badly. Jess had her back to the dirt wall, eyes half-shut, hand still pressed on the metal panel. Harvey was checking the support points.

Maki was distributing the last round of water in measured sips, going by her log. Nobody said we made it. Because this was only round one. Saying that was like writing your own epitaph early. I wiped my face and spoke, voice rough as scraped stone.

"Final watch rotation. Twenty minutes. Then we exit." Jess opened her eyes and looked at me.

"Frost 01, you sound like you've been smoking garbage for thirty years."

"You've got enough energy to insult me—you're fine."

"I'm always fine."

"That's called being loud." Harvey cut in, flat and final: "Everyone's alive. That's enough." Maki looked at the three of us, and her mouth didn't quite smile—it just relaxed, briefly and slightly.

"Agreed. For now, it's enough." That moment was short. Short enough to be a trick of the light. But I saw it. Annoying. Twenty minutes later, we stripped the seal back layer by layer. When the first air pushed in, I almost thought my nose was broken. Still hot outside. Still carried the iron-rust smell of things that had been scorched. But compared to the air from a few hours ago—the kind that could boil a lung directly—this qualified as mercy. The sky was a dull, overcooked lead color.

The forest had no normal green left in it—only charred black, dark red, and the grey of things that hadn't finished dying yet. I stuck my head out first. No vines, no large movement. Then I signaled.

"Frost 03 first. Left security. Frost 02 second, check ground and structure. Frost 04 third, collect supplies. I exit last." Jess went out and immediately dropped low, sweeping left. Harvey tapped the ground around the entrance with a tool handle, checking for hollow spots. Maki gathered every piece of waste, empty packaging, and excess mud seal and erased them, clean enough that you'd never know four people had buried themselves here and waited out a firestorm. I crawled out last.

When I stood up, the rainforest looked like something enormous had licked it with fire and then ground it under its heel. More than half the canopy was gone. Most of the high branches were black skeletons. The ground was covered in a layer of white-grey-red ash that compressed underfoot—not ordinary mud, but soil that had been cooked until it turned brittle. Several Strangler Pyre-Vines had carbonized completely and snapped in mid-air, hanging like sun-dried snakes.

Some giant ferns in the distance hadn't fully died—their leaves were curled in, edges bleached white, occasionally twitching for no apparent reason, the kind of involuntary movement that made you want to finish the job yourself.

"Beautiful," Jess murmured.

"Like a Federation tourism poster drawn in charcoal."

"I've already got the title." I looked at the scorched earth ahead and pulled one corner of my mouth.

"Welcome to the Evaporation Forest—Not Quite Done Yet?" Harvey crouched and turned over a patch of ash with his blade tip.

"Top layer cools fast. Underneath's still hot. No digging water pits yet." Maki had her clipboard out, already re-marking routes.

"Post-Gale visibility improves, but cover decreases. Advantage and risk both go up."

"Smell goes wrong too," Jess added, sniffing the air, brow pulling together.

"Char's too thick. Can't pick out half of what I'd normally catch. Same problem for the bugs." I nodded and gave the updated orders quickly.

"Revised assignments. Frost 03, twenty meters ahead—living things and overhead only. Frost 02, ground temperature variance, strippable materials, dig potential. Frost 04, route, time, water processing. Frost 01 watches HUD, shelter bearings, and other teams' signs. Spacing at two body widths. Anyone spots a root zone still venting heat, report first, don't step on it."

"Copy." All three came back nearly at the same time. Good. Still individual voices, still each with their own rough edges—but the timing finally sounded like a unit. We angled southwest along the open corridor the Gale had burned through. The official shelter marker was still lit on my HUD, close enough to be annoying, far enough that I kept us away from it. The whole forest had just been cooked; everything alive was about to start moving again, and so was every other team.

Right now the most dangerous thing wasn't the lack of paths—it was everyone trying to grab the first breath at the same time. We hadn't gone far when Harvey raised his hand.

"Stop." We pulled up immediately. He tapped a patch of ground that looked flat with his tool handle. The ash layer collapsed, exposing a section of root that was still glowing—red as rotted metal. Heat vented straight up.

"Ground fire pocket," Harvey said.

"Surface cold, interior still live."

"Mark it," I said. Maki put a red cross on her board.

"Post-Gale thermal trap. Useful as an obstacle, not suitable for a campsite."

"In plain language, we can use it to screw other people over," Jess added.

"Yes," I said.

"And it can screw us over too, so everyone remembers where it is." Ten minutes further on, Jess raised her hand and pointed up. Between the burnt-out tree frames, several black shell clusters hung—roughly helmet-sized, half-cracked, hollow inside.

"What the hell are those?" I kept my voice down. Maki looked at them for two seconds.

"Possibly a heat-resistant casing. Sealed in before the Gale, hatched out after."

"Which means—" Jess started. A thin, high wing-buzz came from the ash-branch pile to our right-rear. My scalp tightened. Harvey was faster than me. He kicked a charred branch toward the other side, creating a displaced sound source. A black shape burst out of the ash pile and chased the sound straight into another cluster of dead branches. Not a Razorwasp—smaller, faster, with a long thin proboscis and trailing translucent hindwings.

"Don't move," I said quietly. The thing spent two seconds on the wrong target, then shot off and vanished into the burnt lattice above. When the sound was gone, I let out my breath slowly.

"New rule," I said.

"First things to emerge after a Purgation Gale—don't guess, don't touch, don't play hero. Misdirect first, engage last."

"Agreed," Harvey said. Maki followed immediately: "High-temperature aftermath scrambles scent. Repellent efficacy may be reduced. Needs re-testing." Jess clicked her tongue.

"Fantastic. Yesterday's monsters aren't memorized yet, and today we've got a patch update."

"Welcome to the midterm," I said.

"This is still the appetizer. Finals will probably have us designing our own causes of death." The words came out and that familiar burn rose in my chest. Midterm scores, finals setup, the Upper House watching this run to decide who got pulled in and who got dropped—all of it hung on every step like invisible hooks. You didn't just have to survive. You had to survive in a way that looked worth something, survive in a way that made you useful for the next round.

The system sorted its livestock with impressive efficiency. I shoved the heat back down and checked the HUD.

"Low-ground water reflection two hundred meters ahead—thermal reading's low, doesn't look like a trap source. Frost 04, assess viability. Frost 03, outer perimeter, smell first. Frost 02, check whether we can set a short stop. We water up and we don't linger."

"Copy." All three moved. That was how it was now. Nobody racing to prove they were the smartest. Nobody sharpening their blade on someone else's mistake. Mouths still sharp, faces still punchable—but once an order went out, someone would catch it, someone would back it up, someone would finish the half-sentence before it was spoken. This wasn't romantic. It wasn't gentle.

It was more like four pieces of badly-shaped iron that had been hit hard enough by a firestorm to finally figure out how to fit together without falling apart at the next blow. I tightened my grip on the line-cutter, already hot from the air, and led Team 144 across the scorched rainforest toward the next point where staying alive was still an option. The Purgation Gale had passed. The real trouble was only just starting.