Chapter 34
MAUG
The first shot skims my wing before I even breach the outer perimeter.
The defense grid recognizes me for what I am: unwelcome. Automated lasers snap online, carving white-hot slashes across the void. Turrets rotate. Targeting locks blink red across the canopy screen.
I don't hesitate.
I can’t.
My hands move before thought catches up—flipping toggles, jerking the yoke left as plasma arcs miss me by meters. The old starfighter shudders, metal groaning under stress it hasn’t known in decades. I grit my teeth and dive.
The station looms ahead—massive, ringed in rotating layers like a metal beast waking up hungry. Deep Space 12. She’s inside.
The controls scream at me: WARNING—HULL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED.
I don’t care.
Another shot grazes the nose of the fighter. The plating peels like old bark, sparks vomiting into the vacuum. One wing is shredded halfway through, flailing like a broken limb.
I slam the stabilizers forward and throw the weight of the ship into a spin.
The cockpit blurs—stars and station and fire, all smeared into one. I yank the throttle, ignoring the way the frame rattles under my claws.
I see the docking arm.
Emergency landing platform. Side port. Minimal shielding.
That’s my window.
One second.
Two.
Now.
I cut all forward thrust and let the ship drop like a stone.
Impact.
The whole world slams sideways. My harness jerks so hard my ribs creak. The canopy fractures. Smoke pours in. Something inside me screams—my lungs, maybe. My back. Everything.
But the arm holds.
I’m alive.
And she’s here.
I claw the canopy open, muscles howling in protest. Smoke hits my face, scorched metal and ozone and the bitter stench of burnt coolant. I breathe it in like it’s air.
The fighter’s half-embedded in the side of the platform. I scramble out, boots skidding on the slick plating. Alarms wail above me. Red lights strobe in waves, painting the docking corridor in pulses of blood.
I stagger.
My shoulder’s dislocated.
I slam it against the wall and force it back in with a roar.
No time to heal.
No time to think.
I reach under the seat harness, pull the override spike I hid there long ago. Old war trick. Military backdoors IHC never cleared.
I jam the spike into the maintenance port on the docking panel.
ACCESSING… OVERRIDE ACCEPTED.
The hatch hisses open.
I disappear into the station.
The maintenance shafts are darker than I remember.
Tighter.
I move through them in near silence, boots careful, breath held. The hum of the station surrounds me—electrical, mechanical, wrong. The air feels charged, like a thunderstorm waiting to crack open my skull.
I follow the bond.
I feel her.
Not like a scent or sound. Like gravity. She pulls me inward.
But the closer I get, the more I see.
And it makes my skin crawl.
The crew shuffle through the main corridors like wraiths. Eyes wide, mouths slack, shoulders relaxed in a way no trained personnel should ever look.
They hum.
In unison.
Soft. Low. Melodic in the worst way—like lullabies hummed over corpses.
Some have crystals blooming from their necks. Their arms. Their faces. Iridescent veins streak down their skin like lightning made solid.
One passes within inches of my hiding spot in the shaft wall.
He doesn’t even blink.
Doesn’t see me.
I slip past.
In the next junction, I find the first body.
Not dead—dying.
A technician. Young. Her eyes flicker like a candle in the wind. She’s curled up against the wall, whispering something over and over.
“Too loud… too loud… too loud…”
Crystals rupture from her spine as I watch.
I close her eyes when she stops moving.
There’s no time to bury her.
I move faster.
When I must, I kill.
Quick, clean, brutal.
I break a neck in silence behind a power relay. Jam a knife under the ribs of a communications officer before he can alert security. Drag a humming engineer into a vent and choke the song out of his lungs.
But every time I kill, the humming gets louder.
Like it knows.
Like the station knows.
The lights flicker.
I hear her name in my head like a war chant.
Jillian. Jillian. Jillian.
She’s close.
I drop into a secondary corridor. Doors line the walls—labs, mostly. Containment wings.
One of them is sealed.
Thicker glass. Reinforced.
I press a claw to the seam.
Inside—her.
Slumped against a chair, restraints biting into her wrists. Eyes open. Lips moving. Not singing. Fighting.
She’s still fighting.
My heart hammers like war drums.
I step forward—and a siren blasts overhead.
They know.
I see movement down the corridor. Figures turning. Faces snapping toward me.
Time slows.
I draw my weapon.
And I roar.