Two drone pods sat on the ice like fat beetles, one orange, one green, both drilling toward the same lucky vein. Inside the orange shack, Priya watched her bore-counter tick eleven meters ahead of Theo's. Then both screens flickered turquoise. Far below the crust, something deep in the ocean was glowing back at the drills.

Priya grabbed her radio and called the green shack. "Theo. Are you seeing the blue light too?" A pause, then his voice came back, shaky. "Yeah. My whole screen's lit up. Stop drilling, Priya. I think we hit something alive."

They both shut their drills down and met outside on the ice. Through the clear crust, the glow spread wide beneath their boots, soft and blue. "We can't tell the company," Theo said. "They'll send a mining fleet and crush whatever this is."

Theo wanted to drill a clean window in the ice so they could finally see what was glowing. Priya held the controls. "One careful hole," she agreed. "We look, we don't touch." They lined up the drill over the brightest patch of blue.

The instant the drill touched the ice, every light below snapped off. The ocean went black and silent. "We scared it," Theo whispered. They pulled the drill back and waited in the dark. After a long hour the lights flickered on again, brighter than before, and pulsed three slow times. Forgiven.