Consciousness flooded back to Iago.

He gasped, spat, trying to keep from choking on his own saliva.

He was floating, and flailed for something, anything solid to anchor himself on. His hands found nothing, and he struggled through the instinctive panic to speak through bleeding lips.

“Three-dimensional map projection,” he told his system. “Orient me upright.”

He could see lights in his suit, he could hear the air pumps working. But no visual appeared on his hud, and he reached up, to feel if the face plate was even still there.

It was. At least that was something.

“Ackerman? Hernandez? Anyone there?” he said into his radio. There was no response.

His higher systems must be out. It was a strange problem to have, with the heavily-distributed nature of the suit’s computer meaning something should be working as long as the suit was even partially intact.

But it was a situation he’d drilled for. His breaths loud in his ears, he reached for his manual thruster controls on his side and gave a burst from his shoulders.

He did not know what his orientation was, only that he was floating in a room. It was dark, so he couldn’t tell one bulkhead from another, but if he got into a gentle spin he might just figure out up and down.

As he rotated, he realized that he’d been perpendicular to the floor, and was now seeing the windows of the Equator ring. The area they’d taken on to defend.

And they had failed. Because he saw that the explosion from earlier had not just torn open the protective shutters over the doors and windows, but blasted out the solid blocks of transparent titanium.

Large shards were floating, still carrying momentum.

Out of reflex he felt his body for air holes, for sharp pains, for the sight of spherical droplets of his own blood floating by.

But he felt, he saw, nothing.

“Emergency recording log,” he said, hoping that system was working. He didn’t get an indicator, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t working. Their black boxes were quite hardy.

“An explosion has opened the windows of the equator ring. I’m sorry, but we failed. Most of my unit are KIA, and I cannot find the rest. I seem to have no serious injuries and no suit punctures. Primary systems are all offline.”

The Hev pod was gone, he realized – and it had been the epicenter of the explosion. It was expected that a pod would explode if its team died – because why not? It would make it easier on the next wave.

Had they killed the entire boarding party? That didn’t seem likely, there had been a hell of a lot of Hev, at least forty. He knew for sure he’d only taken down about three. His battery likely hadn’t killed any. So it probably wasn’t that the Hev were gone.

Maybe the pod had malfunctioned and exploded, taking their own party with it.

He couldn’t count on them all being dead, though. If he’d survived, they might have as well.

He didn’t know where his mag rifle had gone, but he knew his duty wasn’t done. Groping to his side, he found his sidearm and drew it.

“I do not know if any of the boarding party is still alive. I will keep this running in case I fall. I hope it serves someone . . .”

With the artificial gravity out, he’d have to get around with thrusters. Keeping a close eye on his reserve fuel and reaction mass in case he needed to make an emergency burn towards cover, he headed towards the messiest area. Tables, chairs, silverware, even plates and dishes, had been thrown by the explosion, towards the walls.

Fuck. This was Watchito’s, wasn’t it? Elliot’s favorite restaurant. They had the best pizza on the Craton.

The place was eerie in the darkness. Lit only by starlight . . . it should really be almost pitch-black, and he wasn’t sure why he was seeing as much as he was. There had to be some dim light sources still on, but wherever he looked he could not see them.

A sound came from behind him. That was impossible, of course, because he wasn’t even touching anything that could carry sound, and it clearly had come from outside of his suit.

With a quick hiss he spun to face behind himself, lifting his sidearm. A second burst shook him as it arrested his spin.

He saw nothing behind him. Certainly nothing so close it was touching him.

But he scanned the dark room more carefully.

There! Was that irregular shape a limb?

It wasn’t moving, so he jetted over. The size and shape didn’t look Hev, and it was hopefully one of his own team, just unconscious.

As he got closer, he saw that his first thought was correct, but his second was not.

It was Ackerman. Bloody droplets in perfect spheres were leaking from a dozen punctures through his armor. It had been pieces of the windows. Flying at high speeds, even his armor hadn’t stood a chance.

The man’s O2 meter was at zero; his tanks must have gotten voided.

He’d survived for at least a little bit, Iago realized. He’d grappled onto a metal railing.

A small decompression wouldn’t have sucked people out, but one this big . . . Ackerman must have barely had time to connect himself here.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Ackerman is KIA,” he said for his black box. He rotated the man around, finding that his rifle had been slung and hooked. Taking it off, he tapped in the code to convert it to his system, and slung it. He’d need it. If the Hev had succeeded here, it was only a matter of time before another landing party came. Now he just had to find a way to alert command-

His eyes flickered over Ackerman’s face. The plate was gone, his face exposed to the bare vacuum.

His eyes were bloodshot, his face swollen, looking like putty. His mouth was open, tongue dry – all the water on it had boiled away.

But his lips were moving.

It wasn’t just some kind of twitch. Despite the fact that he could not be alive, despite the fact that dead men did not talk, Len Ackerman was mouthing words.

He seemed to be repeating himself, and Iago tried to make sense of this bizarre death message.

But he couldn’t. And his eyes were drawn upwards, to the man’s own eyes. Despite being dry and bloodshot, he saw they were moving. Widening, as if in terror.

“Ackerman!” he called, pressing his helmet to the man’s. It wouldn’t help without air to transfer the vibrations, but he did it out of habit.

His eyes were inches from the other man, and they moved – for an instant locking onto his own.

“. . . as terrible . . . time . . .”

Shaking, Iago pushed Ackerman’s body away. Its safety link kept it from drifting far, but he had to get it away from him.

He jetted back, feeling a surge of nausea, he tried to fight it back. He failed. A hose and mouthpiece dropped in front of him, and he bit onto it. The hose had a gentle suction, taking his vomit away so he didn’t choke.

He focused hard on not breathing in while it worked, and when it was done the mouthpiece retracted.

Breathing hard for a moment, his helmet still smelling horrible, he struggled to regain composure.

He forced himself to go back to Ackerman, he had to confirm what he’d just seen.

And as he put his face nearer the man’s, he saw no movement. His eyes were not moving, nor his lips. He was blue.

His heart thudded in his chest. Panic and adrenaline did things to men, he knew that – him, in this case. He tried to shake the image of Len’s lips moving from his mind.

He knew he had to find someone from his unit, or another unit. He had to do his duty . . . even if . . .

Even if he was terrified.

Because he was certain that Len Ackerman had said those words to him.

----------------------------------------

Iago jetted down the corridor that felt longer than it should have. Any door around him could contain an active hostile, or a civilian.

His system was still not functioning, so his HUD couldn’t give him an active mini-map.

It was the best way to reach his squad’s rally point, and theoretically shouldn’t have enemy present. But everything was down around him; the lights, the gravity.

That was extremely bad. It seemed unlikely that the P’G’Maig boarders could have taken down so many systems that the power was fully out.

Where was everyone? There should be Response Teams all over this area, dealing with the breach. At least drones.

Things had gone terribly wrong. He increased his speed.

Keeping his hand to the wall, he felt the ship. Normally, the Craton hummed. It was never loud, all steps taken to keep things calm and quiet in most areas.

Despite that, there was always a feel to a ship. Every spacer grew to know the feel of their ship when things were normal.

But right now there was nothing. She was as still as a tomb.

He felt a small shudder. Someone was not far away, perhaps in the room whose door lay just ahead.

If he was feeling it, then they had just fired their thrusters. The blast had impacted a wall, and . . .

They were alive, and could be a threat.

He placed himself next to the door, guessing as to when it might open. Perhaps on five or six.

He started counting, and had just reached five when the door opened.

And he rushed the target, shoving his pistol into the crook of his neck, where the armor was thinnest.

“Commander Caraval!” he heard. It was a male Dessei voice, filtering just barely through the contact of their suits.

He blinked, his finger on the trigger, ready to pull it. With a great effort, he let go, and leaned in to press his helmet to the other being’s.

“Kessissiin,” he said, panting. “It’s you.”

The Dessei’s eyes were wide with concern, his crest higher still – at least as high as the confines of his helmet would let it go.

“Sorry,” Iago told him. “I thought you were a Hev.”

“I had to patch my suit,” Kessissiin told him. “Took some hits that ripped it, but I’m unhurt, sir. The detonation of their landing pod caused some disruption to local systems, so I also acquired some replacement radio pieces.” He offered one to Iago.

He gratefully took it and connected it to his helmet. His speaker crackled to life.

“Good job,” Iago said to him, now over the radio. “We should . . . get moving.”

“Yes, hook up with whatever unit we can,” Kessissiin replied.

Iago didn’t echo the sentiment. At the moment, he was just glad that the first person he’d run into was someone he could trust.

Someone not from the Craton.

“If I were the Hev,” Iago said, “And I had landed there, I think the obvious place to head would be Reactor Two.”

“True,” Kessissiin agreed. “It’s a prime target.”

Iago unslung the rifle he’d taken, trying not to picture Ackerman’s face. “Let’s move out. If we catch them from behind, we can take a few.”

They had no drone defenses left. It was much more likely they’d be shot down before they could do much.

But they had to try.

Kessissiin clearly knew that. But he nodded along. “Yes, sir. You will know the best path – I will be with you.”

----------------------------------------

Kell had felt it.

Apollonia Nor had awoken something, and that something, however briefly and ephemerally it had been here, had come.

Every part of the ship felt strange to him, but the area Apollonia had been in had turned to a shade of reality he was all-too familiar with – and loathed.

He could travel where he wished; locked doors were nothing to him, the security of the ship was nothing, and he made his way there, straying to the edges of the fabric, until he arrived.

The bodies of the Hev were torn, twisted in ways that could not be achieved with tooth, claw, or human weaponry. Not even he could have tortured them into the shapes they had become.

Unnatural shapes that stirred within him ancient hate and even, to an extent, horror.

Oh, when he was fully awake, how he hated the force that had done this.

Even if they had done his immediate job for him.

Scurrying animals, using their tricks and technology to confuse and kill each other. It was all beneath him, their games, and these were not the first of the secret Hev teams he had found and dealt with.

His body flowed like a liquid, over their corpses. He left behind all the parts that were artificial. But their bodies, their flesh, was consumed. Bone, fur, tissue.

They were alien, yes. But . . . he savored the uniqueness of their matter. Truly, he’d never had anything like it.

He had known he’d get to eat an alien eventually. What a pleasant novelty.

When the last of their twisted corpses was consumed, he moved on, into the room they had sought entry into. The door was still standing, but he moved past it, flowing through the gaps, and into what was beyond.

A creature that he still did not know was dead here, punctured and oozing orange ichor across the floor. Doctor Arn Logus was in a puddle of his own blood, his wounds covered now with drones that were focused entirely on keeping him stabilized. Lights flashed on them, some sort of call for help. Perhaps it would come; he knew that should he even bother to intervene the man would be certain to die.

Logus should be thankful he didn’t try.

More importantly beyond him, was the woman.

Apollonia Nor was unconscious, blood running from her nose, ears, and eyes. The natural result of what she had unleashed.

But she still lived. And she was not going to die, not from that.

Something wanted her to live, and he saw suddenly, how the thing, so often asleep, much like most of his mass, subtly twisted the world around itself.

All to protect Apollonia Nor. And by extension . . . itself.

But like Nor, it was now dormant. Exhausted into a stupor.

Looking down at her, he wondered. Would he be doing them all a favor by killing her?

Would it be the greatest gift he could ever give Apollonia Nor, to free her?