The storm had swallowed Cinerax three hours ago.

From Dustwatch, there had been nothing to see. The Hive lay somewhere beyond the eastern horizon,
hidden behind a wall of ash that stretched from the ground to the heavens.
On a clear day, the uppermost spires of Cinerax could sometimes be seen as black needles against the poisoned sky.
Tonight, there was only darkness. The wind screamed across the Veyr Expanse.

It struck the rock upon which Dustwatch had stood for centuries, tore at the station’s armour plating and howled through gaps
no maintenance crew had ever managed to seal. High above, the great auspex array turned slowly against the storm.

Once every thirteen seconds, its ancient drive mechanism produced a metallic groan.
Operator Second Class Edran Solk had counted it four hundred and sixteen times. He hated night shifts.
Solk sat with his boots resting on the edge of the console and watched static crawl across the display.
Dustwatch had an official name: Long-Range Auspex and Vox Relay OX-17.

It was stamped on bulkheads, printed on maintenance reports and repeated at the beginning of every official transmission.
Nobody called it that. To the convoy crews crossing the Veyr, to the prospectors working the distant mines
and to the miserable handful of personnel stationed there, it was simply Dustwatch.

Solk thought the name gave the place too much dignity. Dustwatch was twelve rooms, three kilometers of cables,
a generator that should have been replaced eighty years ago and an auspex array large enough to make the entire installation
hum whenever it turned into the wind.

There were twenty-three people stationed there. At the moment, twenty-two of them were asleep. Solk looked at the chronometer.
Four hours, seventeen minutes remaining. He sighed, the auspex groaned, four hundred and seventeen.
A light appeared on his console. Solk lowered his boots. The light vanished…
He stared at the display. “Don’t.”
Static… “Don’t you bloody dare.”

The light appeared again, Solk leaned forward. A contact, weak, extremely weak… He adjusted the gain.
The storm filled the display with noise. Dust, metallic particles and electrical discharge turned long-range auspex into little more than educated guesswork during nights like this.
The contact disappeared. Solk relaxed. “Thought so.”

He reached for his cup, the light returned. Same position… Solk stopped. He placed the cup down. “All right.”
His fingers moved across the controls. Range, bearing, signal strength. The machine took several seconds to answer. Solk frowned.
That could not be right. He ran it again, same result. One hundred and eighty-seven kilometers northwest.
Solk opened the regional chart. A web of lines appeared across the display.

Convoy Route Six lay forty kilometres east of the contact.
The abandoned extraction settlements of Veyr Tertius lay much farther south. There were no registered mining operations nearby,
no settlements, no scheduled convoys, nothing. Solk activated the identification channel.
“OX-Seventeen Dustwatch to unidentified contact. Respond with identification code.”

Static answered, he waited.
“OX-Seventeen Dustwatch to unidentified contact. You are operating inside monitored territory. Transmit identification.”
Nothing… Solk watched the marker. It disappeared, he sat back. The storm, it had to be. He logged the anomaly.

03:06 — AUSPEX GHOST / WEATHER INTERFERENCE

He reached for his cup again. The warning tone sounded, Solk slowly turned his head.
The contact had returned. He looked at the coordinates, then at the previous log entry. “No.”
He ran the calculation manually. Once, twice.

The first contact had been one hundred and eighty-seven kilometers away, the new contact was one hundred and forty-nine.
Solk looked at the chronometer. Six minutes had passed. He stared at the numbers, thirty-eight kilometers in six minutes, across the Veyr. He opened a vox channel. “Control.”
Static, he increased transmission power. “Control, this is Auspex. Wake up.”
A tired voice answered. “What?”
“I’ve got something.”
A pause… “A convoy?”
“No.”
“Then it’s the storm.”
“It moved.”
Another pause… “Everything moves.”
“Thirty-eight kilometers.”
Silence… Solk watched the display.
“Say again.”
“Contact changed position by thirty-eight kilometres in six minutes.”
The voice on the other end was awake now. “Airborne?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Transponder?”
“Nothing.”
“Signal strength?”
“Weak.”
“Then it’s noise.”
Solk wanted to agree, he really did. The marker vanished. “There. Gone.”
“Weather.”
“Probably.”
“Log it. I’ll come up.”
The vox channel closed, Solk remained staring at the empty display.
The great array turned overhead, four hundred and eighteen. He waited… Nothing. Four hundred and nineteen, still nothing.
Solk exhaled, he reached for his cup. The warning tone sounded. The contact returned. Solk looked at the range.
His hand remained suspended above the cup. Ninety-three kilometers. “Control.” No answer.

“Control!” He slammed the vox key. “Get up here.” The door behind him opened.
Chief Operator Rhell Vask entered wearing trousers, boots and an undershirt. He carried his sidearm in one hand. “What have you got?” Solk pointed, Vask moved beside him.
The two men watched the marker. “Run diagnostics.”
“Already did.”
“Do them again.”
Solk did, the auspex reported no faults. Vask leaned closer to the display. “Could be atmospheric reflection.”
“Moving toward us?”
“Could appear that way.”
“At that speed?” Vask didn’t answer, the contact disappeared again.

Solk looked at him, Vask looked toward the ceiling as the array groaned overhead. “How long between returns?”
“First was six minutes, then five.”
“And now?”
Solk checked. “Four minutes, twelve.”
Vask reached for the vox. “Wake everyone.”
Solk stared at him. “You think it’s real?”
“No.” Vask keyed the station-wide channel. “All personnel, stations. Repeat, all personnel to stations.” A loud siren began sounding throughout Dustwatch. Solk looked back at the auspex, the marker returned.

Forty-one kilometers. Vask saw it, neither man spoke. Outside, the storm hammered against the walls.

---

Dustwatch woke quickly, weapons were removed from lockers, external floodlights illuminated walls of swirling ash.
The station’s defensive stubbers were manned for the first time in eleven years. Nothing emerged from the storm.
The auspex contact vanished again at twenty-seven kilometers. It did not return…

Five minutes passed, then ten, then twenty. The storm began to weaken shortly before dawn. Visibility increased to almost a kilometer. Nothing, no engines, no lights, no movement. At 06:12, Chief Operator Vask ordered the alert cancelled.
At 06:20, he classified the incident as atmospheric interference. At 06:31, he transmitted the night’s logs to Cinerax.
At 06:34, Cinerax acknowledged receipt. At 06:35, the transmission was classified.
By midday, nobody at Dustwatch was permitted to discuss what had happened.

---

Three days later, a maintenance crawler arrived from Cinerax. It carried replacement components Dustwatch had not requested.
Six technicians disembarked.
None wore identification badges. They entered the auspex control room and remained there for five hours.
When they left, they took the data core containing the original sensor logs with them.

Chief Operator Vask protested, he was told the equipment had malfunctioned.
Operator Solk asked why technicians needed sidearms to repair a malfunctioning auspex.
Nobody answered him. The crawler departed before sunset.

---

That night, Solk returned to his station, the storm had passed. For the first time in days, the sky above the Veyr Expanse was clear.
Far beyond the windows, Orthex IX stretched beneath a dirty orange horizon, empty, silent.

Solk placed his boots on the console, the auspex array turned. Its drive mechanism groaned, once every thirteen seconds.
He started counting. At 02:07, a light appeared on the display…
Solk froze, the contact lasted less than a second. Too short for the system to establish range, too short to determine direction,
but long enough for Solk to see one thing.

There had not been one contact, there had been seven. He slowly lowered his boots from the console.
Outside, somewhere beyond the reach of Dustwatch’s floodlights, something moved across the Veyr Expanse.

The history of Orthex IX continues…