3 Minutes to Turnfall - Chapter 1: Teague

Welcome to Planet Darksur where you follow one simple rule.

Jun 24, 2025

A Note from the Author: This serial is currently my latest WIP, so it is, to say the least, imperfect. As I continue to write this story, I am posting chapters as I complete them. Personally, this helps me move forward and avoid getting bogged down in self-editing mode so much that the story halts. So please forgive any misspellings, mispunctuations, and any other misses. My goal is to work on craft, and so, you may find changes occur along the way. What you read today may be slightly different if you go back and re-read it four months from now. Alas, that’s it from me. Thank you so much for reading and joining me on this journey.

CHAPTER 1: Teague

The sentry’s words stuck with me.

That’s just how it is here. So don’t get dead left out there.

“Darksur to Teague—”

In my ear, her voice tried to cut through.

“Hello—Teague—HEY!”

“Owww!” My common arm suddenly throbbed at the elbow.

“Are you—are you daydreaming again? Pay attention!”

“Sorry, geez, you didn’t have to pinch me with your death grip,” I said, rubbing the soreness.

“Well, it’s certainly not that,” Sage scoffed.

“Yeah, I forgot. You only torture.” Even through my darksuit’s insulation, my sister’s form of discipline stung.

She rolled her eyes. “Sorry. C’mon T, don’t zone out on me. Pick it up already, huh? The gates!”

“Right,” I mumbled.

Sage caught me. Mind drifted again. Happened more and more now.

My sister folded the siphoning nozzle back into the side of the last metal barrel. She lifted the convex half-ton container with ease and cradled it on one shoulder. The ground was now completely dry. The barrel was then shoved in with the rest, a total of forty cells, stacked on a mammoth metal hauler parked nearby. The bulky, rectangular flatbed, a heavyweight beast waiting to flex its muscles. Old, creaky ones.

“Great,” Sage muttered.

I followed her gaze up to the murky gray and then straight ahead at the dimming horizon. The sky haze above us had already parted in slim waves. The Goddess. She eyed us steadily, her faint outline glittering behind sheer, wispy fingers.

She was Valir 1, the largest moon of Darksur. Beautiful for sure and almost directly above us now. Which meant the two smaller moons would soon follow suit. Which meant Turnfall. Which meant—we ought to be bunkered well within the rims of the Orestus gates, OR ELSE.

No Orestian would dare experience what ‘Else’ meant. Bet the thought wouldn’t even enter their minds.

The warnings on screens sprinkled throughout the colony city were for us, really. For the off-worlders.

TURNFALL: INSIDE OR ELSE

Swiftly, I hoisted the wrapped carcass on my shoulders, my cybernetics giving a slight wail as I hurried over to the giant metal pallet and tossed my haul.

The bundle of flesh squished and slugged down, deep into a metal freezer. A spray of frost puffed up as the lid shut. Next to it, three more freezers full of the same, plus the mountain of solar barrels we’d managed to fill. Lighted strips on the sides blinked blue, signaling the dark-cell fuel in each was primed for recharge.

“Wow,” she said. “I think this is our biggest haul to date. Almost ready here.”

Old circuitry in Sage’s hands bleeped as she began punching in commands. The hauler shuddered as it rose. She pocketed the control and walked over to her LightCruiser floating just ahead. Tow lines whipped out the back of the sleek, bullet-nosed, twin-solar engine, and Sage wasted no time securing the hauler.

“All set, now, let’s go!”

I cringed at her thin voice, piercing my ear.

She straddled her cruiser; the steady hum of the vehicle escalated with a burst of power as it inched forward, gathering creaks and groans from the hauler, as it too, began to move.

“Right behind you.”

The work was done anyway. I followed her lead and jumped on mine, a newer model. Scaling the air, we blazed over the ground, instantly trailing orange and blue brilliant stripes over black rock.

Darksur was unlike any other planet I’d ever seen. Where you traveled over ground made of shadow, scorched black, like its Red Sun chose to set the planet ablaze in one giant funeral pyre. I imagined the planet felt punished. And now was ecstatic, keeping us trapped, desperate to see something colorful, shades of green, gold, or even brown. Anything but crow.

“Don’t know why you even bother with that thing. It’s ancient!” I said.

“Now, now. He’ll hear you,” she said jokingly.

“Sage, it’s too heavy! It’ll topple or just plain quit on us.” I glided up next to her. “Let me help. We can pull it together.”

“Nah. It passed routine spec this morning.” She waved her hand. “Besides, you never want to strain the engine of a brand-new cruiser. Gotta break it in. Don’t worry. Ol’ Big Wheelie’s carried heavier. It’ll be fine.” She glanced back at the hauler.

Sage seemed so sure. My hands clammed in my gloves so much that I upped the cooling unit in my darksuit. Solar radiation registered higher than ever, and I felt the heat weighing on me even though our darksuits protected against it. I could tell we’d been out longer than ever today. But we’d done our job well.

Sector 518 was all clear for the Titanur Drills to torture the ground again. For the Orestians’ precious ores. We got to clean up after them, plugging up ground holes, siphoning fuel leaks. Fun. Reclamation duty. But no getting around it.

The odor of dark-cell fuel attracted things.

The planet was empty of plant and animal life on its surface, but underground, it was home to something I couldn’t even say. Some form of creature. Underneath us, they remained, during the Red Sun’s movement across the sky. And they steered clear of the autonomous, colossal drills at work. It wasn’t until after the Titanurs had gone and left their trail of dark-cell matter that the creatures came out.

Everyone knew. Only in the absence of sunlight. Only at Turnfall.

I wondered what they really looked like in full form. No one in the colony could say or would say. Orestians and their secrets. Whatever.

All we off-worlders saw was the aftermath: disfigured, lacerated, rotting flesh, mangled bones. Every day.

Which we got to clean up, too. The mess of piles here, there, three, four, sometimes five in a sector, left over after darkness. After the shrieking faded. Yeah, shrieking. I’d heard a recording of them once. Major creeps. I could swear I held slimy suckers, slabs of tentacles this go-’round. Major gross.

“Sorry, not a pretty sight, I know,” said our crew director on our first tour. “Think of it as your basic animal debris. Bit of an annoyance, really. You’ll soon get used to it.”

Gasps and lots of “Ew!” echoed in my ear from the females in our cleanup crew, including my sister. I almost smiled. Except for this one girl, Miriam, who calmly looked on.

“What does this to them?” I asked.

“You may have heard of The Valir Three,” he said. Several nods went around. “They are the moon gods who protect the colony and take care of these ground breaches each night. It is the Orestian people’s greatest belief that each Valir Moon is home to a god who has promised to protect Orestus. Their gods say we have a great purpose here. And it is because of their protection—”

I pictured three glistening warrior beings beaming down each night, slaying squid-like creatures writhing up from the ground.

“—The Valir Three have made their intentions known only to this colony’s Diviners, who the people call ‘The Revered Ones.’ You’ll learn all about them next from Officer Marti, who will take you to see them.”

Guess it’s a good thing their moon gods protected because no matter how solid Sage and I ran the patchers, filling in each hole left by a Titanur, these gross things still got through.

Why did Sage even agree to the job here? We weren’t making a difference. So far, the work’s been crappy, miserable. At least, for me.

“Aren’t you a bit curious?” she asked after getting the call back on Misonar. “Orestus! Orestus, Teague. They don’t choose just anybody you know. This is epic.” Her eyes just about popped out. “The creators of dark-cell fuel wants us to work for them,” she sighed. “We’d be part of history. Space energy ten point-o. Working inside the mystical colony.”

I rolled my eyes at her air-twiddling fingers to the word mystical.

“People said it couldn’t be done,” she went on. “Darksur was ‘unlivable.’ What a load of bull we were fed. You see? It only takes—hey, are you listening?”

I wasn’t as thrilled as she was. All the myths we’d heard growing up warned us of this place, stuff about alien viruses, vampire insectoids, even giant squid monsters. A place batty-eyed teachers threatened to send you if you misbehaved in class. Labeled a ‘doomed planet,’ followed by ‘death and destruction.’ Whether or not the debris was squid gunk, I couldn’t say. But the rest of the tales were pretty much shot when news about the extraordinary colony came out years ago.

“How’d they do it? The Orestians. Don’t you want to know what all their mystery is about?”

Not really, I thought. Except if it meant getting out of our tiny, boxed deck and I’d be able to work on new tech, I was there for that.

But it’s been three months now, and my sister and I were nothing more than janitors out here. Said it was the best way to orient us on the terrain.

Yeah. Right. Grunt work the Orestians would rather hand to off-world persons like us. Like Sage and I, because we were—the way we were.

Yet we kept at it day after day.

Rotting flesh. Fuel. Rocks.

My mind had wandered again.

“Teague—LOOK OUT!”

A spiked pillar came for me. I quickly jerked the handles in a sharp slant, veering my cruiser sideways, just missing it.

“Holy shee—!” I gasped.

Another jagged set. I rose up to miss it. Between my hands, the handles rotated like a crazy video game. Right-left-right-forward—I angled between spear-pointed things—swiveling back and forth jerkily. Robbed of air, my breath stuck to my throat before I finally exhaled, switching the motor control back to its normal rhythm at a clearing. Holy crud. Flight simulators really need to up their game.

“I’m good! I’m good!” But my chest heaved, I breathed hard, and Sage could hear it.

“You’re gonna give me a heart attack in my youth, Little Man.”

She only called me that when I was in deep. To her, I was still seven, her baby brother, instead of seventeen.

She was standing now, feet almost to tiptoes on footrests straddling her cruiser. Balanced, perfectly at ease, gracefully towing the monster steel that labored lower with the weight.

Sage was the best at driving air cruisers. She could beat anyone in Orestus in a Galaxian race. The harsher the terrain, the bigger the pot. It was how she’d scored me my very own cruiser. And how our living quarters, which started as a single deck, had now been upscaled to a full-blown garage with adjoining double decks. And how the added square footage had become a stockpile of parts: dark-cell batteries, anti-grav pallets, and aircart-runners. Sleeker, sturdier, better equipment for our job here. Yet, today, she had insisted on using this rust-to-dust relic of a hauler.

“Sorry. Didn’t see that patch.”

“I should have strapped your ass to Big Wheelie behind me.” She glared at me through the clear visor of her helmet. Her cruiser growled at me, too.

The hauler groaned.

“Why do you still call it ‘Big Wheelie’?” I asked.

“So what? It’s nostalgic!”

“The wheels aren’t even real!”

What once were six massive wheels on the giant boxy vessel were now simple compartments stuffed with tools and reclamation bots, with outer rings lit up in electric orange. Functioning wheels were extremely rare except as retractable safety measures, like on the Titanur drills.

I glided next to the hauler. The tired vessel coughed, and the back right corner teetered, unnerving me.

“Uh—looks like Grandpa Wheelie’s having some trouble.”

“We’re almost there,” Sage said confidently. She poked at her wrist, and out popped the hazy digits in red.

3 MIN TURNFALL

“But, uh—let’s step on it, huh?” Behind her, the enormous tow grunted as her cruiser boomed supersonic.

Step on what? Papa’s voice suddenly came to me. I matched her speed and caught up.

I could make out the curvature of Orestus, a series of solid reflective dark metal domes, the center being the largest, the only sloping breaks in the horizon away from the planet’s sharp, ruinous peaks.

But the solar towers were getting smaller, which I found odd. Then I realized they were disappearing from view altogether, lowering into the mouths of the half spheres. Hints of shine filled in empty gaps in the domes. The Sky Breaks. They were closed already. It wouldn’t be long before…

But there was another problem.

I slowed and fell behind the hauler. Piece of crap junk! The big clunker was failing on its back side.

We were going way too fast. Cables strained, even the supporting ones.

“Major problem, Sis,” I gasped. Don’t tip over. Don’t tip over.

“We can make it!”

“Sage, no, we won’t!” I yelled, the urgency deepening my voice to a growl. “You can’t see it from back here. The anti-grav, it-it’s about to go!”

No use arguing with her; the back and forth could go on forever. She was always so—so damn stubborn.

Not today, Sage.

I glided next to Big Wheelie, hitched my cruiser on its side, reached over, and began tugging barrels away from the labored back edge. It was harder than I thought, with polarity turned on. I had forgotten how strong magnetic strips were on the bed of this hauler. The metal barrels barely budged.

“Boy, why do you always gotta question me? Just leave it alone!” Her voice rang with irritation.

My arm whirred in protest, but I was able to slide two barrel stacks. Next, I dragged one of the monster goop freezers, butting it close to the front edge to allow for more barrels to spread.

“Almost got it!”

I had nearly leveled Big Wheelie again when—CLICK, CLICK, CLICK—PLINK! And not a second after, another PLINK!

OH NO. Just as sure as I was that it would happen, or maybe I secretly wanted to be right for a change. Or I manifested it; I wasn’t sure.

But I heard each one.

My heart stopped when the last cable snapped.

Flashes of lightning, the metal-on-metal cargo flew.

A ferocious, deep whistling came out of Big Wheelie, turning into a mammoth scream as it hit rock.

Sage’s cruiser missiled forward at triple speed and did a loop-the-loop before it puffed in a gray cloud. My sister, graceful as ever, crested in the air and nosedived somewhere. Somewhere in a graveyard of clawing, dark rock.

Sky. Rock. Sky. Rock.

The horizon played with me, landing me in time to watch more gray mist fade, revealing the sheer size and beauty of the silvery Valir Moon. Flanking The Goddess, were her smaller, younger brothers, glittering just like their sister. So close. I can almost touch them.

I pictured the Orestians in prayer, arms raised, swaying to strange humming noises.

Warm liquid dripped slowly down my face.

Turnfall. This was it.

Damn.

The glittery moon gods went dark.