"Drop the anchors!" Kaelen yelled, slamming a grounding rod into the sand to divert the charge. "We aren't leaving without the Glass."
The sand erupted twenty yards ahead. Not a creature of flesh, but a localized vortex of magnetic force, dragging shards of metal and stone into a towering, serpentine shape. It was the planet’s immune system, a sentient storm born of the very dust they walked on. HDPlanet Dune
Kaelen adjusted his rebreather, the copper-tinted sky of the planet pressing down like a physical weight. On the maps of the United Colonies, this world was technically "HD-8842b," but to the scavengers and outcasts who lived here, it was simply Dune. It wasn’t like the deserts of Old Earth. Here, the sand was composed of pulverized silicon and rare-earth magnets, creating shifting dunes that sang with a low, metallic hum whenever the wind reached forty knots. "Drop the anchors
"Static-Wyrm," Mira hissed, her hand flying to her flare gun. It was the planet’s immune system, a sentient
Kaelen nodded, his boots crunching on the glittering ground. They weren't looking for gold or water—the most precious commodity on Dune was 'Pulse-Glass.' When the planet’s lightning hit the magnetized sand, it forged jagged, translucent shards that could power a starship’s warp core for a century.