It’s said Scarabs don’t feel the heat. Goes to show how much folks bother to learn about us before they come to the heat-death of the Great Expanse.

The sun simmers overhead like a turbulent lover - and we’re hiding under the sheets to escape their ire - when one of our worm friends decides it’s time for an expedition.

He’s toting a pack full of science-looking gadgetry and a wormkin’s exuberant self-belief as he slithers from the shade.

I’m the first bug to react, to scuttle out after him.

His confidence is already waning as the ruddy stone hisses with the passing of his segments, but he hasn’t yet realised the terminal error of his ways.

My instincts scream in resonant warning as the full wash of the sun paints my carapace, but it’s considered bad form to lose a client to the Expanse.

The instruments on his back are already beginning to smoulder.

But no-one outpaces a Scarab under the sun.

I grab his pack and cast it to the stones just as the first battery ruptures, consuming his delicate scientific instruments in fire.

He turns to berate me, but his concerns are drowned by the scree-rattle of shrapnel across my back as the pack explodes. I have, of course, shielded him with my shell; worms are such fragile creatures.

Once we’re back in the shade, we’ll be having words about this.