The Stellar Corridor

Flat, plated threshold predators first documented in the wreck of the Reliable. They crossed during an earlier breach and endured in the cold until heat, vibration and living bodies woke them.

Habitat

Cold wrecks, dead service works and narrow shafts touched by a historical breach.

Hazard

A disturbed cluster follows heat, vibration and exposed tissue. It worries suit seals, strips protection and can drag a wounded person into a service shaft.

Field response

Strong work lights and sustained heat can disorient or redirect them, not make them safe. Both consume scarce power and may drive the cluster toward another warm body.

Thread-thin, mineral-bodied scavengers that lie dormant in comet ice, rock seams and frozen coolant lines.

Habitat

Asteroid tunnels, ice haulers and frozen refinery infrastructure.

Hazard

When thawed, they spread through hairline fractures, clog valves and turn a minor leak into a structural failure.

Field response

Isolation and a controlled temperature drop work. Panic heating gives them more routes through the structure.

Membrane-winged animals that glide through pressurized cargo spaces and nest around warm exhaust runs.

Habitat

Pressurized docks, cargo caverns and poorly maintained refinery habitats.

Hazard

They attack exposed hoses and regulators in flocks, confusing a maintenance emergency with a feeding rush.

Field response

Seal the airflow, kill the work lights and give them a colder route out. Chasing them deeper spreads the nest.

A headless, mineral-crusted living mantle fused to hot, wet rock. It hides as salt lichen and stone until a breathing body passes within reach.

Habitat

Warm, humid geothermal caves and seep vents on Kharos-9.

Hazard

It detects warm exhalation and folds over prey, pinning it to a scalding seep before the victim can identify the wall as alive.

Field response

A sealed or rerouted exhaust can hide someone briefly. Moving air breaks its scent trail; outside the warm, wet zone it dries out and dies.

The most dangerous land predator on Kharos-9: a compact, panther-sized alien hunter built for silence, sudden acceleration and confined metal spaces. Its rust-dark chitin and layered plates mimic abandoned locks, braces and duct ribs until the structure moves.

Habitat

Abandoned polar stations, ventilation shafts, maintenance ducts and pressure-lock corridors, especially around the derelict P-14 facility.

Hazard

It attacks from blind angles with an inner jaw and hooked foreclaws. A flexible tail ends in a venomous stinger that can puncture suit joints; the venom brings rapid loss of coordination before the kill.

Field response

Never enter a duct alone. Keep a clear retreat, scan for breathing-space movement and do not trust any motionless lock, rib or service plate. Flooded light and open distance reduce its advantage, but do not make contact survivable.

A broad, legless predator that swims through snow and firn beneath a mantle of hollow mineral-organic fibres. Its track is a collapsed, undulating tunnel, never footprints.

Habitat

Snowfields, firn slopes and the edges of ice fissures on Kharos-9.

Hazard

It watches through thin snow, erupts with its full mass and pins prey. Only then does the ring of jaw-plates beneath its body open.

Field response

Stay on smooth, solid ice or bare metal where it is slow. Heat, flame and abrupt pressure changes can disrupt it, but never safely for long.

Low, dark-ice armoured pack hunters with six lateral limbs. Their milky eyes see little; sensory plates along their flanks read every vibration carried through ice.

Habitat

Thin ice, storm-scoured plains, shafts and tunnel mouths on Kharos-9.

Hazard

A pack herds prey toward fissures, drills thin ice beneath its weight and attacks exposed suit lines from the flank.

Field response

Hold still on thick, silent ice when possible. Irregular broadband noise disrupts the pack, while metal and warm dry surfaces deny it purchase.

A pale, pulsing mass of unknown scale glimpsed beyond thin ice or a breach membrane. Its dark circular pits are sensory organs, not eyes.

Habitat

Kharos-9's sub-ice ocean, particularly thin ice and flooded industrial chambers.

Hazard

It presses against ice and forces peristaltic siphon-limbs through cracks, gripping rails, ice and suits before dragging prey into the water.

Field response

It cannot break thick solid ice or hunt on dry land. A hard freeze and sharp pressure drop force it back; the objective is escape, never a kill.