The season premiere of their mission was off to a chaotic start.

They threw their combined weight against the seize-locked valve. For a agonizing second, nothing happened. Then, with a scream of complaining metal, the wheel turned. A hiss of pressurized coolant surged through the pipes, vibrating under their palms.

He tapped his comms unit. Maya, get down to the sub-level. We need to manually reroute the coolant before the core brackets melt.

He stepped beside her, gripping the wheel. On three. One, two, three!

The fluorescent lights of the research bay hummed with a low, irritating frequency that matched the dull ache in Dr. Aris Thorne’s temples. He stared at the holographic schematics of the atmospheric processor, his fingers hovering over the interface. For three years, the Colony 7 terraforming project had followed a strict, predictable timeline. Now, a sudden shift in the planet's seismic activity had rendered their primary calculations useless.

We aren't going to fight it anymore, Maya, Aris said, turning to look at the viewscreen showing the shifting, violent landscape outside. We are going to adapt.

Aris wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. The station’s environmental controls were already struggling to compensate for the external temperature spikes. He pulled up the personnel roster. If they were going to survive this shift, he needed a team that could think outside the rigid protocols of the training manuals.