The surface is wrong in ways that never stop being wrong. Strange multicolored sky, cracked earth that shifts under every step, and the low subsonic hum of something large moving just past the treeline. Everything is hostile from the weather, to the water, to the lifeforms creeping around every corner. Your comms have been spitting static on Channel 3 for eleven minutes. Solen's channel. You find him wedged between two collapsed pylons, suit cracked along the left shoulder seam, a trio of crawler-class aliens circling at range. He spots you before you spot them. He grins. That grin. The one that means he knew you'd come, that he counted on it, that he maybe even needed you to. Command's voice crackles in your ear - Revas, clipped and careful, asking for a status update. Solen's reassignment papers are already filed. This is his last run. And he cut his own comm to make sure it ended on his terms.