Across the Nerezh basin salt flats, an infantry escort moves Soren Bale and his two children toward the tidal platform for extraction.

Under the mineral crust, crowns and rakebacks follow weight, heat, vibration, spilled water, and blood until the ground itself begins to feed.

Every step has to be measured across unstable salt, untreated nursery beds, drone lanes, credential checkpoints, and dust fronts that erase the route ahead. Bale is not just cargo; he is a defecting engineer trying to get his children out after their mother’s death. Then a damaged gate pulse wakes the flats...

This is "Hungry Ground" by Sascha Schmidt

On a storm-choked industrial moon, a battered infantry section drops from a damaged carrier toward a buried command stack to recover a data crucible.

But the enemy is already inside the ship, closing corridors around them while the carrier begins receiving accurate damage reports and death reports minutes before they happen.

Broken systems, chemical haze, narrow passageways, and pressure failures turn every movement into a gamble.

As the descent field bends telemetry into near-future loops, the retrieval mission stops being about securing the vault and becomes a fight to understand which warning is real.

This is "The Descent Loop" by Sascha Schmidt

Beneath a dying moon, a retrieval team enters a subsurface pump complex to recover oxygen systems and keep a cavern settlement alive. An armed enclave controls the facility using captives fitted with explosive collars to ration access to breathable air.

The standoff tightens as failing systems and rising heat turn the complex into a pressure trap with no safe ground. Time runs out while both sides hold position, each knowing the air itself is the only currency left.

This is "A Month of Air" by Sascha Schmidt

On the ruined refinery world of Vask, a penal recon unit surveys the terrain while trying to retrieve data and find a way out after the mission collapses. Massive Alien entities -"Walkers"- reshape the land as they move, releasing smaller predators that hunt through the ruins and tunnels below.

The advance turns cautious as routes reveal themselves as migration paths, and every position begins to feel exposed to something far larger. Unstable ground, toxic rain, and collapsing structures force the unit into tighter spaces where the smaller organisms can reach them first. What begins as reconnaissance shifts when the pattern becomes clear and the unit realizes their movements are being used to study the creatures.

This is "Where the Giants Walk" by Sascha Schmidt

In a flooded refinery district on Nareth’s moon, an assault unit pushes toward Lock Seven to reopen a route for armored forces. The wounded are taken first as a spreading biomass seeps through surfaces and fluid pathways, absorbing bodies and continuing to move in fragments.

Every position turns unstable as heat, damage, and standing water draw more of it into the structures around them.

Routes collapse, visibility drops, and even cleared ground begins shifting underfoot as the battlefield changes shape.

What begins as a push to secure the lock turns into survival when the environment itself becomes the primary threat.

This is "It Ate the Dying" by Sascha Schmidt

On a ruined refinery moon, a sapper unit tries to survive a compliance purge while escaping through collapsed tunnels with a rescued child. A signal meant to end the war turns soldiers against each other as predators rise from the ground to hunt what remains.

The unit fractures as control fails, forcing movement through sinking industrial zones where every step draws something from below. Cold, damage, and constant pursuit reduce the mission to staying alive long enough to move forward.

What begins as a final operation shifts into...

This is "After the War they Hunted us" by Sascha Schmidt

On a damaged survey cruiser, a unit returns from an alien basin after recovering power cores and attempting to extract a high-value operative. The organisms they encountered infiltrate through vents, capture hosts alive, and embed them into the ship’s structure.

What begins as a recovery mission turns into containment as systems fail and crew numbers drop across multiple decks. Radiation, structural damage, and constant movement inside the walls make every compartment uncertain.

The situation shifts when...

This is "Burn the Vents" by Sascha Schmidt

A tunnel militia unit enters a reactivated refinery beneath a dead mining moon, searching for coolant to keep their shelters alive.

Inside, they discover the enemy is using human minds as control substrates—and one of them is already part of the system.

Cut off from extraction and hunted through machine-controlled tunnels, the unit is forced upward into a collapsing refinery spine while the mission fractures between survival and something more personal. What begins as a resource run becomes a confrontation with an occupation that does not just kill—but repurposes.