A tidal reservoir basin lies beneath the shadow of a gas giant, built to control floodwater and protect the colony’s low coastal settlements. Now the basin floor has dried into cracked clay, old concrete, and dead floodgate pylons — and the Stinger Grove, an aggressively growing alien pest, has rooted through all of it.

The Grove is not a forest, but a living minefield of wooden spires, black mucus mats, invisible neurotoxic darts, falling fronds, and buoyant seed structures. It paralyzes soldiers, swallows bodies into the ground, regenerates from torn fragments, and spreads with every tide that reaches the coast.

A small sapper team enters the basin to plant plasma-core charges at Pylons Four through Seven and collapse the upstream floodgates before the Grove can expand again.

This is “The Stinger Grove” by Sascha Schmidt.

Terminus 9 is an underground transit and freight hub buried beneath the old colony district, built to move cargo, people, and emergency supplies below the water table. Now the valleys above it have turned into sulfidic bog, and the abandoned station below has become a subterranean forest of Sourstacks. The Sourstacks are alien fungal towers rooted through the wet infrastructure, coating the concrete with hooked biofilm, corrosive sludge, spores, and lethal gas.

A small sapper team is sent down into Terminus 9 to recover two hundred anti-toxin ampules from a sealed medical vault before the poisoned battalion on the ridge collapses. Every movement through the hub becomes a contact hazard: flooded corridors, failing seals, black sludge, and touch-sensitive biofilm leave no room for mistakes.

When the extraction cable snaps and fouls inside the growth, the team is forced off the planned route and into a drainage conduit barely wide enough to crawl through.

This is "Poisoned Terminus" by Sascha Schmidt

On a volcanic colony world, atmospheric processor towers were built to scrub ash and glass-sleet from the evacuation lanes so shuttles could land and lift off through the poisoned sky.

Now the ridge-hatchets have taken the high ground. These giant predatory birds nest inside towers, sensor masts, and ventilation shafts, blinding the colony’s systems while using cloud cover and vertical terrain to kill anything moving below.

Firebase Anvil is trapped under the ash ceiling, its evacuation window closing. A combat engineer team crosses an ash-choked ravine to restart Spire Seven and clear the lane. But inside the processor, the ridge-hatchets have packed the vents with nests made from stick, cable, animal remains, military kit, and human limbs — and the adult bird is still above them, listening through the tower.

This is "The Bone Yard" by Sascha Schmidt

I would lock this version. It has the right movie intro shape: world purpose → predator occupation → trapped humans → mission → horror object → unresolved threat.