Long Way Home

In a desperate attempt to outrun his past, Andrew accepts a posting to the distant mining colony of Markourya, where the air is acid and the skin of the planet ruptures daily, swallowing men and their APCs whole.

Markourya is uninhabited but for the hundreds of engineers - like Andrew - who spend their days laying down concrete and dodging the local fauna, trying to live out the length of their contracts. But there's something even more dangerous out in the Markourya gas-storms... something terrible and beautiful, drawing men like Andrew to their deaths...

Long Way Home is a 2500 word dark science fiction short told through the letters Andrew sends home to his family. Can he survive Markourya long enough to get back to Earth? Or will Andrew's next letter home be his last?