On a poisoned moon, thorium mining makes this hostile world too valuable to abandon. Surface mining profits, greed, and wartime demand lead to the decision to revisit a dead deep-mining complex and “stabilize” future yield.

Penal sappers descend into dead refinery sub-levels to collapse a vast industrial cavern — a supposedly dormant Plate-Bull hive.

The creatures ram industrial structures into hardpan and turn corpses, severed limbs, and battlefield wreckage into armored nursery mass.

The mission is supposed to be a clean demolition run: place seismic charges, bury the hive, and earn extraction.

But… well, listen for yourself.

This is “Inside the Thorium Moon” by Sascha Schmidt.