Xv-827 Online

The designation was clinical, a string of characters stamped onto a titanium data plate and riveted to the portside thruster housing. To the Interstellar Mineral Survey, XV-827 was a Class-4 dwarf planet in the neglected outer halo of the Nyx system: unremarkable, low-yield, and slated for automated dismantling.

To Elara Venn, it was the last place she would ever hide. xv-827

She chose the dwarf planet.

They never knew how close they came to losing everything. The designation was clinical, a string of characters

The descent was a controlled crash. The Sisyphus screamed through a thin, methane-laced atmosphere, carving a black scar across a landscape of frozen ammonia and silicate dust. When the ship finally came to rest, embedded in the flank of a jagged cliff, the reactor’s whine had shifted to a death rattle. She had perhaps thirty hours. She chose the dwarf planet

Then she walked to the horizon, as far from the shaft as her failing suit could take her, and sat down on a ridge of frozen ammonia to watch the stars. Behind her, the Sisyphus detonated. The nuclear flash turned XV-827 into a brief, furious sun. The shockwave vaporized the shaft, the cathedral, the sphere.