Gentlemen, I appreciate the fact that UN law requires all Level Five Biohazard labs to be constructed on non-populated planets for safety and privacy. But I also believe that more hospitable locations could have been found, and the staff at the newly dedicated Gerald Siemann Research Laboratory would appreciate it if this fact was taken into account for future installations.

Furthermore, we have compiled a list of organisms that we believe to be unsuitable for study at this or any other laboratory. What few scraps of knowledge we can glean from their study is far outweighed by the threat their continued existence poses. As a level five biohazard, they are capable of actively breaking quarantine, and many gestate too fast to be countered with traditional treatments. We, as scientists, propose the eradication of all the nominated specimens, and the sterilization of the habitats where they were collected.

They are, by definition, too dangerous to be allowed to survive.

Professor Addam Y. Khyrznhy, Administrative Epidemologist, ONI subsection [Classified]

0843 hours, 3rd May, 2533 (Military Calendar)

Solar System ID# MWG-OA/M-9483, Planet ArakKER-003

Southern Hemisphere, Spinal Ridge, Bauxite Base

"Good afternoon, Professor Brewster. How is the coffee?"

The reply was bitter, coming from a man who had not shaved, and whose turn in the shower room would not come until tomorrow. "Same as always, Durin; too damn weak."

"My apologies, Professor." This meant that the 'dumb' AI was sorry that the coffee had to be weak. The team, due to budget cuts, had only been supplied with enough coffee to keep ten people going for four years. But there were eighteen people on this planet, and they would be here for up to five years. It was a decision between weak coffee and no coffee for the last two years. The first option was deplorable, but the second one was unthinkable.

It wouldn't be so bad, Brewster mused, if Doctor Hitachi didn't make a habit of getting up at four in the morning and drinking the first cup before the whole batch was done brewing, cutting the heart out of the coffee. Brewster had once ordered Durin to prevent Hitachi from doing this, only to be met with "I have neither the authority nor the capacity to do so."

He poured the cup through a membrane filter (It tasted better once half of the water was out of it) and got down to business, catching up with the news in the morning.

"What's the weather forecast?"

"Unchanged." Durin answered.

"Temperature?"

"Thirty five degrees in the shade."

"Worm activity?"

"Minimal."

"Seismic activity?"

"Minimal."

"Correspondences?"

"Junk mail. Are you interested in a cheap supply of Viagra?"

Brewster grimaced. "You know the answer to that. Trash it and call up a map of the crater."

Durin, an AI and not a mind reader, called up aerial maps of several craters in the area, including the caldera in which Bauxite Base was located. Detailed seismic and topographical maps filled Brewster's computer screen, with options for other types of imagery.

Brewster selected a crater five klicks from the caldera. Little pins, dots, and markers showed it to be studded with every type of sensor the United Nations Geological Survey team had available, including Geiger counters, scintillation meters and mole-drones. He stared at the image, the sole reason they were here. Either it was the planet's mother lode of fissile materials, or it was the biggest radon leak in the books.

This was the one reason Brewster, or any of the other UNGS scientists had a job. With a war of extermination against a theoretically undefeatable and definitely fanatical race of aliens being fought and lost, nobody was remotely interested in long-term terraforming projects, or geological surveying for potential future settlements. On the other hand, the UNSC had put out an urgent call for raw materials. Sources that had been discovered decades ago and left for later (So as not to depress the market) were now top priority. Uranium and cesium were now worth their weight in palladium, which was also in high demand. The faster these materials could be sucked out of a planet's crust (Environment and environmentalists be damned) the faster new shipyards and factories could be built, which meant that more ships and guns could get sent to the front lines.

Fourteen years ago, Brewster had graduated with his PhD in Astrogeology, eager to take part in the terraforming of the next Harvest or Arcade. His dreams had been shredded and incinerated before him by UNSC General Order #129682, Section Nine. Now he and the rest of the UNGS scientists everywhere were little better than prospectors with college degrees.

His chatter buzzed, hard. Brewster picked an earpiece off the desk and clipped it on his ear. Darn, he hated it when people interrupted.

"Hello?" he snapped.

"Professor, I have been saying your name for the past two minutes," Durin said at the other end of the connection. "You have not responded."

Brewster shut the chatter off and glared at the vidcam clipped to his computer screen. "Sorry, Durin, I was busy thinking."

"Anything you can publish?"

"Not under my own name."

Durin barely missed a beat. He highlighted an area of the crater, where a cluster of drones were. "Then think about this: the Go-PHR drones have been digging for the past twenty-seven hours, and have not encountered target concentrations of technetium."

The professor blinked in surprise. Technetium was a product of uranium decay, but was short-lived and almost non-existent in a planet's crust. As a general rule of thumb, radon and technetium levels should rise exponentially as you near uranium ore.

The radiation levels checked out. The right isotopes were present to prove uranium decay. The crater in which they were digging was big enough to indicate a deep-lithosphere volcanic vent, usually a good source of uranium on a planet with a core like ArakKER. But where the Hell was the lode? Was this the geological equivalent to Oak Island?

Brewster leaned forward in his chair, his stubbled face lit only by the glow from the computer screen. His cubicle was dark, the way he liked it in the morning or the night. He could function in the semi-light, but he could also forget that he was in a cubicle.

Brewster contemplated using the shotgun approach. Like a doctor ordering a battery of tests in the hope that one would come back positive and save him from working his way through the patient's symptoms, Brewster could initiate a myriad of new surveys and probes. But that didn't change the fact that this patient might be a hypochondriac; that they might be digging in the wrong place.

He glanced at the crater again. Every few days, raging sandstorms would blast through the volcanic mountain ranges on this planet. Great peaks were reshaped unrecognizably in the span of five years. Every valley, every fissure, and every crater was filled with sand as fast as the dynamic tectonic action formed them. This meant that the uranium lode had probably been sandblasted and covered in a dozen meters of course, irritating sand. Traces of uranium would have been scattered throughout the crater, buggering up the readings and predictions. The solution was, of course, to get an exact image of the crater and work from there.

"Durin, fire up the Sonar and GPR equipment. We're going to survey that crater again."

"I'm sorry, sir, but that won't be possible. Doctor Kelly is using that equipment at the moment, and will not return for several hours."

A hundred years ago, when the UNGS was formed, some deskbound astronomer had drawn up the categorization system for naming newly discovered planets, prior to terraforming and final naming. Whoever it had been, he or she had been a fan of Frank Herbert. Volcanic-desert planets with large arid deserts and an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere had the callsign "Arak". Further conditions, including a detectable hydrosphere, would add a KIS suffix.

Dr. Laura Kelly was a devotee of the Dune series; it was her Bible. In spite of her initial high hopes, this planet only earned a KER suffix, but it was as close as any planet could get. Perhaps they could eventually terraform it closer…

She pulled a seismic sensor, about the size of a microwave-oven, out of the bed of the Sandhog and lugged it to a spot fifteen meters away.

Laura was a xenoecologist, not a geologist. On a prospecting trip like this, there was no biology to study, no terraforming to plan. To stay employed, she was now fixing equipment and taking rock samples. Every time she heard the geologists whine about 'prospecting', she wanted to break their necks and leave them for the sandworms. At least they still had their precious rocks to study. If she wanted to pursue her life's work, she had to do it on her own time.

With the sensors in place, she climbed into the Sandhog, buckled herself in, and drove off to a safe location. She clamped her hands over her ears and then pressed a button on the dash with her elbow.

A ring of seismic sensors analyzed their relative position with radio bursts, and then an explosive charge detonated. Shock waves traveled through the ground and reflected up, and the sensor ring recorded how the shock waves reverberated throughout the ravine.

A 3-D image of the ravine was generated on Laura's PDA. On each side of the ravine were steep basalt cliffs, which came together to form a V deep beneath the sand. As wide and deep as the ravine seemed to be, it was two-thirds full of sand, and there was clearly room for the Sandworms to venture into the citadel.

The Sandworms. While such organisms were not unique in the tallies of the alien organisms encountered by the UNSC, they were the closest to the beasts imagined by Frank Herbert. They grew from several meters to several hundred meters long, and could consume anything with their powerful trivalve jaws. Indeed, after one specimen had swallowed an entire Sandhog, the UNGS team had moved their bases to the volcanic mountain ridges which bordered great oceans of sand.

Except for Bauxite base. (Not Bravo or Biome base, arrogant geologists) It was on the sand, in the middle of the Caldera.

The Caldera looked like a bulls-eye from above, a huge volcanic crater (dormant) ringed by huge cliffs of volcanic rock. At the very center was the Citadel, a three-kilometer wide cap of basalt on a smaller volcanic vent. The ground beneath the Citadel had bulged, dividing the basalt with a spiderweb of ravines. Later, the lava had leaked out from the Citadel, forming wide fans of lava tubes deep beneath the sand.

Where the deserts were vast oceans on the surface of ArakKER, the volcanic mountain ranges were continents, and the sand-filled caldera was a large inland lake, separated from the nearby ocean by a handful of mountains, comparable to a sand bar. It was large, large enough to harbor and sustain a healthy Sandworm population, but not large enough to let them reach the gigantic proportions seen deep in the interior of the deserts. This made it safe for the UNGS firebase to be parked out on the sand, and it also made it safe for her to do her own studies on the Sandworms… on her own time, of course.

The radio in the dashboard buzzed, and Laura pressed the speaker button. She sighed inwardly, knowing the raging argument that was about to kick off.

"You took the Sandhog." Brewster's voice hissed. A calm accusation, not a question. But didn't a lot of storms start out over calm seas?

"I dunno. You dialed the Sandhog's phone, and I happen to be the one who answers. Why do you think that is?"

"Return to base, ASAP. We need to use it."

Laura had to return to base anyways, but this had ceased to be about the Sandhog. This was now a power struggle, the ages-old war between the geologists and the biologists employed by the UNGS, and the more recent power plays and petty bickering over the scarce resources allotted to them.

If she returned immediately, Brewster would win, and his administrative demands would only get harsher. If she had the guts to run tests for another fifteen minutes, she would come out on top. If she managed to delay another ten minutes on top of that while swapping out a spare tire on the Sandhog, it would be a victory for UNGS ecologists everywhere.

If she told him to take those orders and shove up his terminally puckered-

"The sensors are still running." She said. "I'll pack up when they're done." The radio was shut off before Brewster could object.

Professor Brewster leaned back in his chair and dropped the chatter onto his lap. For a full minute, he stared off into the distance, mentally removed from his cubical.

He didn't want this. He wanted his old job back. He wanted to work alone. He wanted to kill his colleagues, one by one, and he often daydreamed about how he would do it. Hitachi would be strapped to a table and waterboarded with scalding hot coffee. Laura Kelly would be locked outside overnight, left to the sandworms and the sandstorms. The guy who was sending him the Viagra spam… Brewster would use a curly phone cord as a catheter on that jerkoff.

Brewster was not a violent man; he was driven to these daydreams by the constant proximity of his fellow morons. The kind of people who were willing to be stranded on a hostile planet for five years had to genuinely love his job and love to be left alone. These people hated being stuck in cubicles for four hours a day, informing the UNSC where the goods were. And they absolutely hated each other.

"Durin, next time she tries to take the Sandhog out, deny her the keys."

"I'm sorry, Professor Brewster, I'm afraid I cannot do that."

"Why!?"

"I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."

"She is using vital equipment for private use!"

"As is Doctor Hawthorne, but he has yet to be reprimanded. You know he is only digging into the lava tubes so he can go spelunking on his own time." Durin accessed a map of the caldera, centered on the Citadel. From the Citadel, deep beneath the sand and the sandstone layer beneath that, a network of lava tubes spread out from the basalt monoliths like cracks in a glass windowpane. An icon over the location of the firebase showed where Hawthorne was tunneling into the tube network.

"That's different," Brewster hissed. "He'll be calibrating the mole-miner when he does that, which will have to be done either way."

"But Doctor Kelly is also calibrating the sensor equipment she is using. Quite honestly, any administrative action you take against her will have to be taken against Doctor Hawthorn also, as he is breaking the same rules she is."

Brewster gritted his teeth. Quite honestly, he could use some spelunking himself. To be alone, to be surrounded by cool, metallic air and be able to feel the silence… Hell, maybe he could even find a place to hide the bodies.

Laura stepped from one bleached rib segment to the next, each as tall as she was, just two in a thirty-meter long chain of them. The chain tapered to a flat paddle on one end, and abruptly fused to a skull tipped with a powerful trivalve beak on the other end. For a moment, she imagined the silicon-dioxide skeleton was still covered with silicon-based muscle and exoskeleton. She willed hooks into her hands and dug under the leading edge of one of the ring segments that covered the ribs. And the Sandworm took off, gliding over the sand, with her as Master and Commander, Fremen.

Everywhere on the planet, the Sandworms were at the top of the food chain. There may be animals that they didn't eat, but only other Sandworms killed Sandworms, and only Sandworms ate Sandworms. Wherever there was sand or flat rock for them to travel, they were supreme.

Except here.

Now that she was perched on the skull, just behind the jaws, she had a better view of the damage. It had been a huge worm when it was still alive, perhaps the alpha specimen in the pond that was the Caldera, and its death throes had shattered many of the other skeletons in the Boneyard. The jaws, powerful slabs of silica capable of chewing concrete, were mostly eaten away by… something, when even the ferocious sandstorms only polished and thinned the bones down. It was… puzzling.

She stared at the sheer basalt cliffs around here, rising twenty-five meters above the sand. The Citadel had been split asunder by the ground beneath it bulging from internal pressure, and a spider web of ravines had formed. Here, at the center of the Citadel where the ravines came together into a nexus, the Sandworms had also come together to die. This was the Boneyard, where Sandworm skeletons of all sizes were heaped together, helter-skelter.

Beneath her, between her worn boots, she saw a hole in the skull; just one of a dozen like it. It was natural, similar to an eye socket in a human skull. Here, a nerve cluster sensitive to vibrations grew close to the skin, and helped the Sandworm navigate beneath the desert oceans. The socket was natural, but not the scratches surrounding it.

Doctor Kelly kneeled down and stuck her knife into one of the scars. The scars, seemingly grouped together in threes, were deeper than the knife blade could reach, wider than her finger. Whatever it was, it had cut into silicon dioxide, a chore even for some of the power tools the UNGS scientists had with them.

The Sandworms are supreme, she thought. Except here.

A/N: Yes, it's back! I posted this on Halloween, but numerous technical errors and my own dissatisfaction with it prompted me to take it down and rework it. It's different from Isolation in that not all of the story is being told at the same time. But as the chapters go by, things should just... click together...

In other news, I will be traveling to Washington D.C. until next Saturday, and I will be taking a crapload of pictures while I'm there. The Inauguration, the Holocaust Museum, the Bill Clinton Memorial (Washington Monument) will all be posted over at Broken Line Studios (dot net) when I get back, as well as a journal I will be keeping.

And I got something... special... slated for release sometime after March 3... depending on whether my friend lets me borrow his Xbox...