Anhara
The console hummed. The readings held steady. And Kallum said nothing.
I’d been alone in the farmhouse basement for two hours. Hour Three approaching. The vault sequence continued its slow work, and my earpiece gave me nothing but static.
He’s fine, I told myself. He’s dealing with the scouts. He’ll be back.
I made the adjustments he would have called for. Torek had drilled this into me until I could do it in my sleep, and now I was grateful for every repetition.
Turnip grunted from his position by the stairs. He didn’t like the basement. Too enclosed. But he liked leaving me alone even less. He kept looking up the stairs, ears swiveling, then back at me. Checking. Confirming.
“I know,” I told him. “I don’t like it either.”
Where are you, ghost boy? Talk to me.
He’d asked for silence. He’d said he needed to go dark. But two hours was a long time to be dark.
“Kallum.” I kept my voice low. “If you can hear me, I need a status update.”
The earpiece crackled. Empty air.
“Kallum. Please.”
Nothing.
I’d gotten used to his voice in my ear. The clipped sentences. The way he said my name. Without it, the basement felt twice as deep.
Turnip made a low sound. Not a warning. Something closer to concern.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”
The gunfire started thirty seconds later.
Not the basement.
The ridge.
I heard it through the walls, through the meters of dirt and stone above me. Distant and sharp. A rifle I didn’t recognize. Then nothing.
Then another shot.
Kallum.
I couldn’t leave. The console needed constant monitoring. If I stepped away, the sequence would drift. The readings would spike. Six hours of work, destroyed in minutes.
But Kallum was on that ridge. Fighting. Maybe dying.
And I was stuck in a basement, watching numbers.
“Status,” I said into the comm. “Kallum, give me a status.”
Nothing.
“Kallum!”
The gunfire had stopped. Either he’d won, or he’d lost.
I stood there, hands flat on the console, and made myself breathe.
He’s alive. He has to be alive.
That’s when the perimeter alarm went off.
Twenty signatures. Southern approach.
The third wave. They weren’t supposed to arrive until dawn.
I looked at the clock. Almost four hours in. Still dark outside, but I could feel the night tilting toward dawn.
They’d pushed through the night. No rest. No staging.
Full cleanse authorized. No survivors.
They meant to end this before morning.
I adjusted the console one more time. Locked it into its current settings. The readings would drift without active management, but slowly. I had minutes, not seconds.
“Turnip.”
The boar rose. His tusks still carried the dark stains from the last assault. He looked at me with those small, intelligent eyes, and I saw understanding there.
“Time to earn your dinner.”
The farmhouse was dark. I’d killed the lights hours ago, and the only illumination came from the moons through the windows. Two moons tonight, both full. Bad for shadows. Good for shooting.
I counted heads through the scope.
Twenty. Maybe twenty-two. Moving in three loose formations. Professional spacing this time. They’d learned from the first two assaults.
Too many.
Way too many.
“Kallum, if you’re listening, I need you.” I didn’t expect an answer. Didn’t get one. “Third wave is here. Twenty plus. I’m engaging.”
I settled the rifle against my shoulder. Found my first target.
Torek, somewhere in the back of my mind: Breathe. Squeeze. Don’t pull.
I squeezed.
The first one dropped.
The rest scattered for cover, and the night exploded into chaos.
The next forty minutes were the longest of my life.
They came at the farmhouse in waves. Two or three at a time, probing different approaches. I moved between windows, firing, repositioning, firing again. The rifle grew hot in my hands.
Turnip guarded the north door. Twice, someone tried to breach it.
Twice, they met two hundred kilos of Frangian boar with three-inch tusks.
“Good pig,” I called after the second one stopped screaming. “Very good pig.”
The console beeped in the basement. A warning tone. The readings were drifting.
I couldn’t check them. Not now.
Hold, I told myself. Just hold.
A window shattered. Someone was breaching the kitchen.
I spun, fired twice.
The figure fell. Another appeared behind it.
I fired again. The shot went wide.
He raised his weapon.
Turnip hit him from the side. His weight moving faster than anything that size should move. The man went down, and Turnip finished it.
I didn’t watch. I was already moving to the next window.
“How many left?” I asked the darkness.
Nobody answered.
I reloaded. My hands were shaking now, just slightly. Not fear. Exhaustion. The adrenaline was burning through me faster than I could replace it.
Check the console. You have to check the console.
I sprinted for the basement.
The readings had drifted, but not catastrophically. Torek’s drills kicked in. My hands found the adjustments before my brain caught up, pulling the numbers back toward normal.
“Hour Four complete,” I said to no one. To myself. To the ghost who wasn’t answering. “We’re holding.”
The gunfire above had gone quiet. Turnip appeared at the top of the stairs, blood on his snout and flanks but still moving, still alert. He descended and planted himself between me and the door.
“Good pig. Keep watching.”
Hour Five approaching. The vault’s systems reaching their peak. And Kallum still wasn’t answering.
They came again.
Not through the door this time. They’d brought something heavy. Something that punched through the farmhouse wall like it was made of paper.
I heard the explosion. Felt the floor shake.
Then I heard Turnip.
Not his war-squeal. Not his hunting sound.
Something worse. A high, pained sound that cut through the basement walls and straight into my chest.
“Turnip!”
I grabbed my rifle and ran.
The north wall was gone. Just gone. Rubble and dust and cold night air pouring through.
Three men stood in the gap. One of them was reloading something bulky, a launcher of some kind. The other two had their weapons trained on Turnip.
He was down. Not flat, not yet, but his back legs weren’t working right and there was blood on his side, dark and spreading. He was still trying to stand. Still trying to get between them and the basement stairs.
Still trying to protect me.
One of them raised his weapon, aiming for the kill shot.
I shot him in the face.
The second one turned toward me. I fired again. Missed. Fired again. He dropped.
The third one, the one with the launcher, was already swinging it toward me.
Turnip surged up on his front legs. Tusks low. He couldn’t stand, but he could lunge. He caught the man’s thigh and tore.
The launcher discharged into the ceiling.
I killed the man while he was screaming.
Then I was on my knees beside Turnip, rifle abandoned, hands running over his side.
“Hey. Hey, you stupid pig. Don’t you die on me.”
The wound was bad. Shrapnel, probably, from whatever they’d used on the wall. His side was torn up, blood matting the coarse hair, and when I pressed down, he made that sound again. That hurt sound.
“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
His eyes found mine. Dark and small and so damn trusting. He’d followed me since he was small enough to carry. He’d slept at the foot of my bed. He’d killed for me, bled for me, and now he was lying on my kitchen floor with his back legs not working.
“You’re going to be fine,” I told him. My voice cracked. I didn’t try to fix it. “You hear me? You’re going to be fine. You’re too mean to die.”
He grunted. A weak sound, but there.
I put my forehead against his. Felt his breath, shallow and fast.
“I have to go back down,” I said. “The sequence needs me. I can’t stay.”
A rough exhale. Acknowledgment, maybe. Or just pain.
“I’ll come back. I promise.” I pulled away, made myself stand. My hands were covered in his blood. “Just don’t die, okay? I can’t do this if you die.”
He blinked at me. Tried to lift his head.
I left him there, bleeding on the floor of my kitchen, surrounded by the bodies of the men we’d killed together, and descended into the basement to finish what Torek had started.
The console was screaming.
Warning lights everywhere. Pressure building in the primary manifold, in the secondary, in systems I didn’t even have names for. The readings had spiked while I was upstairs, and now they were approaching critical.
Hour Five. The crisis hour.
I ran to the controls. Started making adjustments. The pressure in the secondary manifold responded, dropping back toward normal.
The primary didn’t.
I tried again. Different approach. Manual override on the flow regulators.
Nothing.
The pressure kept climbing. Red zones now. Thirty seconds to critical, maybe less.
I ran through every override Torek had taught me. Every failsafe, every emergency protocol, every trick he’d ever mentioned.
Nothing worked.
The primary manifold was on Kallum’s end. The station controls. I couldn’t reach it from here.
I couldn’t fix this.
“Kallum.” My voice cracked again. I let it. “I’m getting pressure warnings. Something’s building in the primary manifold. I need you back online. Now.”
The console beeped. Twenty seconds.
“Kallum, please. I can’t do this part alone.”
Fifteen seconds.
The numbers kept climbing.
And somewhere in the darkness, I hoped the ghost was listening.