Destiny Among the Stars - Scifi - LitRPG - Adventure

"A man's gifts are his gifts, and his natur' is his natur'. I'm a hunter, and a warrior, and a scout, and can be a guide, but I'm not a ruler of settlements or a palaverer in councils."

— James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans

They spilled out of the portal's green light into the damp undergrowth, and there it was, the Specter, drifting free in the rain. Luca should've spotted it through the viewport, but his head was pounding too hard and his vision kept swimming. The tether had snapped the moment they'd driven into the portal; now their little hover craft bobbed a yard off the ground, its lights muted in the gathering storm.

"Shit," Ryan muttered, opening the back ramp. Shoulders squared, he shot Emily a look. She was already unclipping her pack. "I've got the line. Em, you ready?"

She clicked on her tool‑belt and thumbed open the hatch again. "On it," she said, voice steady. "I'll climb up and hook it while you winch it down."

Luca's ribs flared with pain, but he didn't argue. He was useless right now, half-conscious, clutching at his chest, migraine slicing through his temples. So he sat back against his seat, biting back the urge to collapse, and prayed they wouldn't need him for more than a minute.

Rain spat against them as they climbed out, tether in hand. The Specter bobbed in the air, but Ryan hauled it in fast. Within seconds, the line tightened, the hover craft swayed, and the Peregrine's winch re-locked it in place.

"Nice work," Luca rasped at Ryan. "Gonna ride the hovercraft back, or still saving that for special occasions?"

He shot him a look. "Dude, it's pouring outside. No hovercraft joyrides today."

Guess we were all tired.

The portal shut behind them with a low, seismic thrum. Forty-eight-hour cooldown. No mobs, not from this portal anyway. Just wet forest, red-leaf trees, and too many hours of bruises and blaster fire still echoing in Luca's bones.

Chris was driving like a fucking maniac.

"Did you try to hit that root?" Luca asked, getting whiplash for the tenth time in as many minutes. He was ninety-percent bandage, ten-percent pain at this point, and he was pretty sure Chris was trying to reopen his wound.

"Obstacle avoidance training," Chris said dryly. "You could thank me."

Joey winced up front as they went over another bump. "My spleen's gonna file a formal complaint."

Rain hammered the windshield, like the planet was pissed and taking it out on them. Everything outside was a blurry mess, gray sky, red trees all dark and soggy, branches flailing around in the wind. New Dawn: New Problems. Should've called it that.

Luca was in the back, half-mummified, half-conscious, still recovering from the whole "almost died from alien venom" thing. Emily leaned against his good shoulder, and yeah, her hair smelled like some floral shampoo miracle. He didn't even care what it was. He'd snort it like a drug if she offered. She was warm. Steady. Real. And just heavy enough to ground him. Almost made the nightmares shut the hell up.

The Vireling wound was healing. The toxic lines had faded. No more glowing green spiderwebs across his chest, thank God. Still throbbed though, and hurt like a bitch.

Chris clipped another rock on purpose. Luca felt it. Ryan turned from his seat with that smug grin of his. "For the record, your driving was worse."

Luca flipped him off. "Yeah? At least I didn't try to reopen my chest cavity with every fucking pothole."

In the rear compartment, Danny was shaking one of their sample containers with the flower petals. Zoe was right next to him, a little too comfortable, her legs crossed like she owned the place, flipping through the loot manifest like she was ordering lingerie. Luca caught her smirking at something, probably a new infiltration toy.

Lightning lit up the world like the planet was having a tantrum. For a second, the red-leaf forest went white, everything sharp and frozen in place. Beautiful in that oh-fuck-we-might-die kind of way.

Luca should've been relaxing. They survived. Everyone was alive. And the loot? TL9 gear. Real top-shelf stuff. That should've been a win.

But his stomach was still in knots. That ticking-clock feeling was chewing at the back of his brain.

Every day was a ticking time bomb. The whole damn place was shifting. The System was reacting. And Luca knew what came next: shitstorm.

You fuck around long enough, you find out.

Danny leaned forward from where he was strapped in behind Luca and jabbed his shoulder. "You could at least pretend to look excited. You look like someone pissed in your nutrient bar."

Luca didn't look up. "We're behind schedule."

Ryan groaned. "Oh god. Here we go."

Luca ignored him. "We've spent three weeks on New Dawn. Day sixty-six since we left the Genesis Platform. Out of a hundred and eighty. And we haven't even touched the other planets. We're still surveying. Still fighting. Now stuck with mobs spawning everywhere."

From the back, Zoe chimed in like she'd just been waiting. "You mean mobs you helped spawn?"

Luca could feel Emily smiling against his shoulder without even turning. "And who was it that wanted to open that portal first? Who said, what was it, 'We're not here to set off a chain reaction we can't control?'"

Fucking traitors, all of them.

Ryan swiveled in his seat like he was moderating a debate show. "To be fair, it was worth it. Skill upgrades? XP out the ass?"

Zoe kicked the back of his seat lightly. "Mutated spiders, psycho ferret-things, glowing acid virelings, and oh, your ass getting flung off a walkway. Let's not forget that."

"Battle scars," Ryan said, brushing a hand over his not-quite-healed shoulder. "Chicks dig them."

Emily snorted. "You mean having me drag you out of the dirt while Danny screamed about losing fusion-pollinators?"

Danny threw his hands up. "That greenhouse was irreplaceable! Do you know how much data we could've studied?"

Luca finally turned, snapping just a little. "Do we have enough data to leave the damn planet?"

That shut them up.

He pulled up the company interface, needing to see the cold, hard numbers that would settle this once and for all.

That confirmed it, they were done... even though Emily's objectives were still short. She'd gone overboard with the numbers when she set their objectives.

Luca stared at the floating display for a long moment, then dismissed it.

The numbers didn't lie. They were done. Technically, officially, completely done with New Dawn's survey requirements. The weight of that realization hit him physically - all the stress, the constant pressure, the ticking clock in his head... it had been for nothing. They'd already succeeded.

His shoulders sagged. The tension he'd been carrying for weeks just... evaporated. Left him feeling hollow and drained, like someone had pulled a plug and let all his anxiety drain out at once.

"We're done," he said quietly, almost to himself. "We're actually done."

Danny adjusted his glasses like Luca hadn't just verbally slapped the whole cabin. "Yeah. Technically? We do. Air's breathable, water's stable, gravity within optimal variance. Zero long-term pathogens. The soil supports Earth crops. We've logged over two hundred species of fauna and flora, and the environmental modeling has been consistent."

He shot Joey a look, who gave a silent thumbs-up from the co-pilot seat.

Danny continued, "New Dawn hits every marker for the Habitable World part of the mission charter. We just need to confirm the signal origin."

Out there, past more portals, past more monster spawns, past the point where the wildlife had decided evolution wasn't moving fast enough, and hit the gas, was the persistent signal that had started this whole planetary side-quest. And they couldn't ignore it.

It was part of the charter. Part of the payout. Part of the reason they were still fucking around down here.

Luca leaned his head back, sighing through clenched teeth. "We still don't have full armor coverage. I just need the Tactical Vest and the Gauntlets." Then louder: "We should've brought backups."

Not that it would've helped.

What the fuck were backups gonna do? They were underclassed. Out-leveled. Burned, bitten, and twenty pieces of Guardian armor short of not dying horribly. They'd come to New Dawn thinking they were hot shit in TL8 gear, and now the System was laughing in their faces.

Danny shrugged like the universe had taught him Zen. "Hindsight's 20/20."

Ryan checked his pad, swiping through what was probably their painfully incomplete loot manifest. "We need more than that. Still five Guardian pieces missing. Joey's Juggernaut set? Three short. We're not fully equipped for anything higher than Level 64."

Another pothole rocked the vehicle. Emily's head bounced against Luca's shoulder.

Ryan kept going. "We all need full sets. If higher-level portals exist on the other planets, and you know they do, we need to be ready before the next spike. Better we gear now while we still can."

Luca didn't respond. Just stared through the rain-streaked viewport as lightning danced in the distance like the sky was flipping them off.

What the hell had they done?

Chris grunted from the front. "Five minutes. Big rock formation ahead. Dry spot, I think. Looks like a good place to stop."

Luca squinted. Out there, rising up from the soggy hellscape was a jagged, looming hulk of stone. Black, sharp, definitely unfriendly, but dry. Towering like a fortress, tucked into the valley like it knew they'd come crawling.

Even he had to admit... yeah. Looked like a good spot to park their collective trauma.

Emily's voice was soft in his ear. "See? Not every day has to be a disaster."

The next jolt shook the whole cabin. Luca barely kept from biting his tongue.

The Peregrine came to a crawl beneath the overhang, its shielding flickering once before stabilizing against the jagged stone. The rain, which had been hitting the roof relentlessly for the past few hours, finally stopped.

Chris killed the engine. The silence that followed was almost startling.

The back hatch hissed open.

Everyone moved like they were two hundred years old. Zoe groaned as she stepped into the shelter, her spine popping loud enough to make Luca wince.

"I swear this planet's terrain has it out for my spine," she muttered.

"Same," Danny grunted as he dropped down beside her, decked out in his shiny new Juggernaut armor. Thing hissed like it had asthma every time he moved. "And that was with power assistance."

Joey followed with Chris, then Emily. Then Ryan, all smug and limber, cracked his neck, rolled his shoulders, did the whole Look at me, I survived another hellstorm routine.

Luca stepped out last.

Gray sky. Red trees fading to muted slate. The overhang rose above them like a half-buried crescent moon, and around them, the forest was a mess, whistling rain and distant thunder.

Chris tapped the perimeter shield, and it shimmered out around them. Just enough to pretend they were safe. Wouldn't stop a pissed-off caterpillar on New Dawn, let alone whatever was leveling up out there now.

"Alright," Ryan said, clapping his gloved hands. "Let's find something burnable."

Danny looked around the soaked clearing with a frown. "You mean... in this mess?"

Ryan pointed at the far tree line. "You're in the armor. You're pulling." The Specter hovercraft was still tethered to the Peregrine's undercarriage. Ryan untethered it and got inside.

"Don't kill us," Chris called, already halfway into a ration bar.

Ryan just winked and spun the throttle. Asshole.

Danny stomped after him like a very angry mech suit, each step thudding with a servo-assisted grunt. "You drive, I'll pick."

"Deal," Ryan grinned. "And no, we're not towing the whole forest."

Hovercraft screamed to life, hissed up above the mud, and shot off into the tree line.

The rest of them stayed under the overhang, waiting.

They'd opened a portal. They'd triggered the System. They'd activated the mobs. And sure, they'd gotten XP, armor, loot, TL9 gear out of it. But what had they lost?

Luca knew the answer. He was the answer. Control. Schedule. Order. Time. The one fucking thing he could never get back, the one thing they didn't have enough of to begin with.

They were twenty days into New Dawn. Sixty-six into the voyage. They were meant to scout and survey, not bunker down, fight tooth and nail, and pray the next dungeon wouldn't wipe someone out.

Wind howled through the valley. The shield shimmered. Luca adjusted his bandages under his bodysuit and said nothing.

A distant whine echoed through the canopy.

Then a massive crack as something snapped.

Something massive crashed into view, bark shredding off in chunks as it skidded down the slope. A half-rotted tree, fucking enormous, dragged behind the Specter like a trophy. Danny was holding it upright with both hands like he was at the Olympics. Ryan zipped circles around him in the hovercraft, running the winch line like it was a damn sport.

"Told you I'd find one!" Ryan shouted, grinning like a maniac.

Danny dropped it with a ground-shaking thud just under the shelter's lip.

Chris blinked. "We're gonna burn that?"

"Damn right we are," Danny said, brushing tree bark off his armor. "Or die trying."

Ryan hopped off the Specter, yanked the plasma torch off his belt, and tossed it like a mic drop. "Let's get this fire going."

Ryan was still trying to intimidate the tree into catching fire, wrestling the plasma torch like it had personally offended him. Blue flame sputtered against soaked bark while he muttered curses under his breath like that'd change the laws of thermodynamics.

"It's not catching," he growled.

Chris didn't even look up. "Because it's soaked."

"I know it's soaked. I'm trying to un-soak it."

"You're burning the bark. Not the wood."

Ryan turned to him, torch still flaring uselessly. "Is there a difference?"

"Yes," Chris said, tone so flat it could've been printed on a sign that read Idiot Detected.

Emily was in her throne, a folding camp chair, arms crossed, legs tucked under a blanket, watching the whole disaster like it was the evening's entertainment. She smirked, lips twitching, trying real hard not to laugh.

Luca was done watching.

The scout suit was... tighter than he remembered. Level 48 gear, the spare. The one he hadn't worn since he was seventeen and a couple inches narrower through the chest. His legs had filled out since then, more running, more fighting, more everything, and now the suit fit more like a compression sock. Every time he moved, he felt just a little ridiculous. And a lot exposed.

Still better than walking out there naked. Waterproof, right?

Luca pulled his plasma sniper from the weapons rack and slung it over his shoulder. The weight felt good. Familiar. He popped open the vest slot, slid in an Energy Cell. They were low on the regular ones, but the TL9 Power Cells ran cleaner, hotter, longer. He watched the HUD blink to life inside the helmet. It was the older interface, dimmer than the new stuff, but it worked.

Emily shot him a look, eyes sharp under that lazy smirk. "Where are you going?"

She was still lounging, hair pulled back, looking about as relaxed as anyone could after two weeks of near-death scenarios.

Luca didn't quite meet her eye. "Hunting," he muttered. "Need some air."

She tilted her head but didn't press. Just nodded.

Luca stepped past Ryan and Danny, who were still playing Survivor: Wet Wood Edition, and headed toward the Specter. It sat a few meters away, hovering a foot off the mud, repulsors low and steady like it was holding its breath.

Zoe's voice dropped in from above.

"Can I come?"

Luca stopped.

She was perched on the Peregrine's roof like some kind of sniper gargoyle, legs swinging, rifle across her lap like it was a pet cat. Visor up, face unreadable in the gray dusk.

Luca paused and thought about it.

"No," he said. "I just... need some air. I'll be back soon."

She didn't argue. Just gave him a small, almost understanding nod.

Ryan stood up, mud stuck to his gloves. "Careful with the accelerator," he called out. "The Specter kicks harder than it looks."

Luca shot him a look over his shoulder. "Thanks, Dad."

"I'm serious," Ryan said, grinning. "The repulsors bite if you're not lined up clean."

Yeah. So do I.