I never should have accepted this job, the technician thought to himself. The planetoid was the closest thing to Hell he had ever experienced in his life. In fact, it almost fit the literal description. It was a dense metal world at the assend of space. Active volcanoes covered almost 60 of the surface, rendering the ambient temperature a toasty 49 degrees Centigrade yearround. The atmosphere, what little there was of it, was full of volcanic ash and poisonous phosphide vapors. There weren’t any freestanding water bodies worth mentioning, though the indigenous insects and quasimammalian rodents somehow managed to survive just fine anyway. The Company had placed an atmosphere processor here under the pretenses of eventually being able to mine the mineralrich crust, but he knew it was just a cover. The other building complex, the research facility, was the Company’s main interest on this backwater rock. Playing God, jerking around with genetic manipulation of some alien bugs to create bioengineered weapons. Whatever,they didn’t tell him and he didn’t want to know; ...just as long as the paychecks kept coming. But now, it seemed the biotech geeks had shot themselves in the proverbial foot. Their bugs had somehow gotten loose, and the entire research facility had been quarantined, awaiting the arrival of containment crews from offworld. Oh well,as long as nobody tries to blame ME for it He took a swallow of lukewarm coffee and checked his panel readouts again, oblivious to the twin rows of razorsharp teeth emerging silently from the shadows of the doorway behind him...

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