The seventeen corpses were excellent teachers.
Kael crouched at the edge of the Dead Zone, his notebook balanced on one knee as he sketched the positioning of the desiccated remains scattered before him. Each body told a story of failed ambition and poor calculation. The scavenger forty meters out had made it the farthest, close enough to see the corrupted essence crystal's pulsing violet glow before the radiation cooked him from the inside. His skeleton still pointed toward the prize, arm outstretched in eternal futility.
"Lesson seventeen," Kael murmured, adding notes to his detailed analysis. "Essence corruption follows inverse-square law, but the threshold drops at thirty-seven meters. Bone char pattern suggests twelve minutes of exposure before total cellular breakdown."
The morning light of Nethys Prime's three dying suns cast harsh shadows through the crystalline formations that jutted from the mining complex's broken walls. Once, this had been the most productive essence extraction facility on the planet. Now it was a tomb that happened to contain the last significant essence crystal on a world bleeding itself dry.
Kael closed the notebook and slipped it into his worn pack. Seventeen corpses representing seventeen failures over the past five years. But their deaths had provided him with invaluable data, and data was the only currency that mattered in the careful equation of survival.
A distant whistle, two short, one long, drifted across the wasteland. Jax was early today.
Kael shouldered his pack and moved away from the Dead Zone's perimeter, following a path he'd memorized through the maze of collapsed tunnels and twisted metal. The hidden observation post was built into what had been a ventilation shaft, now expanded into a crude but effective surveillance position overlooking the three main scavenger routes through the complex.
Jax waited inside, his thin frame hunched over a battered water container. At nineteen, he was already showing the signs of long-term radiation exposure that marked Nethys Prime's remaining population, pale skin with dark veins visible beneath, hair that grew in patches, and the slight tremor in his hands that never quite went away.
"What've you got for me?" Kael asked, settling onto a chunk of broken concrete.
"Gareth hit the northern section yesterday," Jax said, producing a small wrapped bundle from his pack. "Found something good in the old supervisor's office. Wouldn't say what, but he's been asking around about off-world transport."
Kael accepted the bundle, processed ration bars, probably two days' worth, and handed Jax a small metal vial in return. "Rad-flush medication. That tremor's getting worse."
"Thanks." Jax pocketed the vial quickly. "There's more. Maya's crew found intact equipment in the eastern tunnels. Power cells, maybe some medical scanners. They're planning to hit the same area again tomorrow morning."
"Eastern tunnels." Kael opened his notebook to a detailed map of the complex. "Section Seven or Eight?"
"Seven, near the old med-station."
Kael made a note. Section Seven's structural integrity had been compromised for months, a few strategically placed charges in the support beams would bring the whole area down. Maya's crew would be trapped, and their equipment would be accessible from Section Six once the dust settled.
"Good information," Kael said. "Here's what I need you to spread around: the western access route to the Dead Zone is clear. Radiation levels dropped significantly after last week's storm."
Jax's eyes widened. "Is that true?"
"Does it matter?" Kael met his gaze steadily. "Gareth's been sniffing around the Dead Zone for weeks. If he thinks there's a safe approach, he'll try it."
Understanding dawned in Jax's expression. "And the western route leads directly through the highest radiation field."
"Gareth makes his own choices," Kael said. "I simply provide information."
It was technically true. The radiation levels had dropped, from instantly lethal to merely fatal within thirty minutes. Gareth was smart enough to bring a scanner, but smart enough wasn't always smart enough when desperation drove the calculations.
After Jax left, Kael made his way to the eastern tunnels. The Section Seven collapse would need to look natural, but natural disasters required careful engineering. He'd been preparing for this opportunity for weeks, ever since he'd identified the critical support beam whose failure would trigger a cascade collapse.
The charge was small, just enough to weaken the beam beyond its load-bearing capacity. By the time Maya's crew arrived tomorrow, even their footsteps would be enough to bring tons of debris down on their heads. Their equipment would be damaged but salvageable, and three more competitors would be eliminated from the equation.
As he worked, Kael found himself thinking about efficiency. Seventeen corpses in the Dead Zone represented seventeen failures, but also seventeen sources of useful data. Maya's crew would become three more data points about the dangers of inadequate preparation. Gareth would shortly provide valuable information about the western radiation field's actual lethality.
Every death served a purpose in Kael's careful calculations.
The explosive charge set, he made his way to his primary cache, one of seven hidden throughout the complex. This one was built into the remains of an old storage room, concealed behind false walls and accessible only through a narrow crawl space. Inside, neat rows of supplies lined metal shelving: medical supplies, processed food, water purification tablets, and a small arsenal of salvaged weapons.
But the real treasure was information. Hand-drawn maps of the complex showing safe routes, structural weaknesses, and resource locations. Detailed notes on every scavenger in the area, their capabilities, weaknesses, and behavioral patterns. Weather records and radiation measurements going back three years. A complete catalog of everything he'd learned about essence corruption and its effects on human physiology.
Knowledge was power, and power was survival.
He retrieved a specific set of maps, ones that showed the safest approach route to the corrupted crystal. He'd been studying the problem for months, using the positioning of the seventeen corpses to triangulate the radiation pattern. There was a path, narrow and dangerous, that would allow someone with his exact knowledge to reach the crystal with only survivable levels of exposure.
Survivable, if that someone had a natural resistance to essence corruption.
Kael had tested this theory carefully over the past year, deliberately exposing himself to mild radiation from smaller crystal fragments. Where other scavengers sickened within minutes, he could tolerate exposure for hours. It wasn't immunity, he still suffered the nausea, headaches, and cellular damage, but his recovery time was dramatically shorter.
Either he had some genetic anomaly that provided resistance, or he was slowly building up tolerance through repeated exposure. Either way, it gave him an advantage no other scavenger possessed.
The corrupted crystal in the Dead Zone wasn't just valuable, it was potentially transformative. The rumors spoke of essence crystals that could awaken cultivation potential in those who survived exposure to their power. On a world where cultivation meant the difference between transcendence and slow death, that crystal represented the only possible escape from Nethys Prime's inevitable collapse.
But survival required more than resistance to radiation. It required perfect timing, flawless execution, and the elimination of all variables that could interfere with success.
Gareth's elimination would remove the most capable competitor. Maya's crew would be buried by tomorrow afternoon. The other scavengers in the area were either too weak to pose a threat or too valuable as information sources to eliminate yet.
The sun was setting by the time Kael reached the Dead Zone's perimeter. In the fading light, the corrupted crystal's violet glow was clearly visible, pulsing with a rhythm that seemed almost alive. Seventeen corpses lay between him and power, their bones bleached white by radiation and time.
He opened his notebook one final time, reviewing his calculations. The approach route was clear in his mind, forty-three meters following the shadow of a collapsed ore processor, then twenty-one meters through a gap in the radiation field created by a massive chunk of fallen concrete. The final approach would be the most dangerous: eighteen meters of direct exposure to reach the crystal itself.
Total estimated exposure time: eleven minutes, thirty seconds. Well within his survival threshold, assuming his resistance calculations were accurate.
Assuming was the word that killed scavengers. But Kael's assumptions were based on months of careful observation and experimentation. He'd studied every variable, accounted for every risk, and eliminated every competitor who might interfere.
The only variable he couldn't control was whether the crystal would do what the rumors claimed, awaken cultivation potential in someone strong enough to survive its touch.
But that was tomorrow's calculation. Tonight, he had preparations to complete.
As he turned away from the Dead Zone, a faint sensation nagged at the edge of his awareness, the feeling of being watched. He paused, scanning the shadows around the mining complex, but saw nothing unusual. Probably just paranoia, a natural response to spending too much time alone in hostile territory.
Still, as he made his way back to his shelter, Kael made a mental note to check his security protocols. On Nethys Prime, paranoia was just another word for proper preparation.
And proper preparation was the only thing that separated the living from the seventeen corpses who would teach him how to claim their prize.