The door swung open.

Nothing but sunlight.

The general craned his neck and glanced in all available directions. He motioned forward with two raised fingers, and Sterling—who hadn’t seemed too keen on following the man’s order up until then—moved forward. The exterminator halted at the open door and glared at August.

The rookie snapped to it and joined his superior at the craft’s threshold. As runner, his job was to scout ahead of the others and make sure no trap or ambush awaited them. This was his first real tour of duty outside the dome, and it hadn’t started out exactly as he’d hoped. The crash was still fresh in his mind, and he forgave himself for forgetting a bit of protocol, even if he knew the others wouldn’t afford him the same understanding.

The squad was comprised of six of the bravest and most decorated soldiers to ever tread within or without the dome. It also had August Ace—rookie. The young man’s life was shorter than some of his squad-mates’ careers. He’d just been in a plane crash with some of his childhood heroes. He’d seen General Wolf on breakfast boxes. Luna Belmont’s endorsements of Slupman food products had been plastered on building-side ads for nearly a decade.

None were as famous as Colonel Dalton West. The dome-renown sniper had a higher dolorium kill count than anyone else, thanks in part to his legendary ability to think like the bugs. He knew his enemy well and, because of that, possessed an almost psychic ability to predict their behavior and anticipate their movements. Many so-called scientists attempted to duplicate the sniper’s results, but their efforts were always futile. West’s unbelievable run in the military nose-dived after sustaining a nasty break in the knee. The doctors told him he was too old to return to duty after such an injury and that he should lay low and finally take the office job like so many heroes before him. West chose to partner up with the Gilzak family instead and had himself a movie career that nearly rivaled his time in the army as far as garnered fame went.

August had forgotten about the sniper during the crash. He’d seen all of his movies and was damn near star-struck when they’d been introduced that morning. West had been the only one to remain silent during the crash and still chose not to speak. He clipped a laser pistol to his belt and smirked when he noticed August had been looking.

August struggled to keep his balance after being struck hard between the shoulders. He turned to find Sterling glaring at him with a rivulet of blood snaking down his sharp nose. The colonel touched his chin and thrust a finger to the left, then pointed at August and thrust to the right. The rookie nodded—his face red beneath the yellow tinted face shield, and joined the exterminator in the threshold.

“Remember your training, son,” General Wolf whispered, “and keep calm.”

The two scouts left the safety of the craft and stepped out into the wildlands beyond the dome. It was the first time in August’s life where nothing but sky lay between him and the sun. It took a while to get used to the brightness. Even with the tinted shield, his eyes didn’t get accustomed for a full minute—a relatively small amount of time that didn’t feel too short with the threat of possible dolorium in the vicinity.

What he saw was the opposite of how his thoughts and dreams had painted the outside world. Rolling fields of wild green spanned for miles. Unkempt shags of grass swayed in the soft breeze catching the sun’s rays whenever they leaned far enough toward the west. A distant cloud projected a soft, wandering blotch of shade that made the grass matte wherever it went, but instead of dousing the view in melancholy, as shadows often do, the shade revealed a hidden beauty the grass had to offer and hinted at the calmness of dusk all while the sun shone at its peak.

Blue mountains, almost transparent from such a distance, marked an end to August’s sight. There was nothing to scout. It was all fields. All flat. All beautiful. He skirted the craft for a more encompassing assessment. The ship itself lay there like a dying pet. It hissed and moaned periodically, likely having seen its last day. He could never admit to the squad of battle-hardened colonels how much emotion the death of something lifeless like the craft could make him feel.

August pushed the terminal craft from his mind and peered out over the greenery in the direction they’d come from—the direction of home. It was more of the same. None of the festering, blighted hellscapes he’d pictured as a child were present. His mind had rendered a nightmarish image of cracked trees perpetually smoking with lightning fire. Corpses of man and beast had lined the yellow-brown fields barren of any growth save for poisonous fungi that reached for any warm flesh that came within its range.

There was nothing like that. The only comparable to his dark thoughts was the straight run of ripped-up dirt the craft had left in its crashing wake—a scar on an otherwise heavenly land. He tightened his grip on the MoShun Skybeam. Beautiful as it was, August knew the land outside the dome was infested with flesh-starved creatures that would stop at nothing to feed upon him. Just because he couldn’t fathom any place for them to hide in the surrounding landscape didn’t mean there wasn’t any.

His mind went to work at constructing all sorts of dreadful possibilities. Could the dolorium smell them from miles away? Was a winged cavalry of hunger and anger already en route to inspect the loud noise their crash had sent over the land? He imagined a massive square of earth lifting just before him as if hinged like a trapdoor and envisioned a grotesque spider-like monster emerging from the dank shadows below, snatching and dragging him in. A chill crept through him as a not-so-pleasant cloud passed overhead, hushing the sun for just a moment.

He returned to find the squad stationed outside the door. Colonel Sterling gave his report to the general while Luna Belmont tended to the wound on his brow. Vern Slupman was already at work inspecting the hissing engine. The engineer yanked at a warped panel on the exposed belly of the craft harder and harder until he fell on his backside, panel in hand. The engine coughed out a plume of black smoke that looked like liquid coal before it diluted on its way to the sky.

“There are worse places to crash, I guess,” General Wolf said once Sterling had finished his report. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been here. Beautiful place, really.” He ran narrow eyes over the horizon before tapping at the communication tablet on his forearm made him grimace. “That’s not good.”

“What now?” Sterling sighed. Belmont had left him with a thin adhesive strip over his minuscule wound.

The general removed his helmet freeing neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and hair. He tucked it beneath his arm. “My map isn’t working, which means I’m not getting a signal, which means the communications might be offline.”

Sterling’s brown eyes shot open, and he glared at the similar device on his arm. August did the same.

“My map is shot,” Sterling said.

“Same,” August added.

The rest of the crew confirmed the same.

Wolf held a finger in the air to quiet complaints. He tapped the screen and spoke into the device—another MoShun creation. When it came to the military, the MoShun family had their fingers in everything. August wondered how long until even the soldiers were replaced by some form of artificial intelligence. He’d hate for it to happen, but Sterling’s reaction alone might make it worth it.

“General Wolf to Dome. Come in, Dome. General Wolf to Dome. Do you copy?”

Nothing.

The rest of the squad tried, but each device suffered the same failure. The general faced August. “Anything noteworthy to report?”

“Nothing but green fields for miles.”

“At ease, everyone,” Wolf holstered his skybeam on his back. “We’ll wait for Colonel Slupman to complete his diagnostics and take it from there.” The general tried to keep a neutral face, but August and the others knew that a broken engine and no means of communicating back to base meant that they were stranded. Stranded amongst the hungry dolorium.