Mura put a hand on Kaya’s shoulder and peered into the break room. She stood head and shoulders above Kaya without the power armor—with it she was like a walking tank. A massive figure easily identified among the anonymous face plates of their suits.

“Fuck,” she said simply.

With two of them here to confirm the body, Kaya’s list of personnel updated. Isadora’s name blinked from blue to gray and beside it, the word DECEASED appeared.

Mura pushed into the room and tucked her Armash against her chest as she crouched for a better look. Kaya was happy to leave her to it. She didn’t usually have a problem with corpses, but she felt her throat tighten up and she looked away, her breath coming in shallow pants.

Her power suit beeped at her. In the corner of her HUD an alert told Kaya all about how her heart rate had started to climb and the suit detected she was under stress. Did she want a chemical correction?

Kaya toggled into the menus to look at her options. The power suit, like all GSA suits, came with a standard coctail of drugs. Anti-nausea, anti-fatigue, things that could restart a heart or coagulate the blood at the site of an injury. Kaya’s list of drugs was a bit longer than the standard. She was fully loaded with all kinds of illegal options, ironically easier to obtain now that she was working for the GSA rather than running from them.

Options like Rust, a highly addictive drug that muted brain activity and mod-communications. It came with a euphoric high, but it could destroy the nanothreads of wiring that standard brain and eye mods relied on. Particularly the mods in Kaya’s brain that spoke to her power armor.

She had Shine, a street drug that caused hallucinations. EMP, used as an emergency solution to shut down mods for several hours—and as a side effect, irradiate whoever took it. She had Go—aptly named for its perception and energy enhancing qualities—two types of Sugar—a common party drug for the way it blacked out memory—and even a few doses of Thrip—reported to give the user an overwhelming feeling of oneness with the universe.

Kaya calculated a dose of Rust and injected it. Her suit plunged a needle into the back of her neck and retracted in an instant. The drug swept up into her brain and gave everything a glimmer on the edges. Like an oil slick.

Kaya’s visual HUD glitched sideways. A quick flicker. Then it blinked twice and reset.

Kaya licked her lips. She could feel herself distancing from the scene in front of her. The body on the floor didn’t bother her anymore. It wasn’t a person she’d known—just a slab of poorly cut meat. The carved lines of flesh weren’t angled for dismemberment or harvest, but for overwhelming blood loss. A long slice started at the right shoulder and cut straight down to the groin, cleaving against the ribs and the hip but not strong enough to slice bone. The face Kaya hadn’t been able to look at before was no longer a face, just a jumbled series of features that had been cut free of the skull on one side. Blood loss, yes, but by way of incredible pain and terror.

The pool that lay beneath the corpse was undisturbed at the edges, so whatever had happened here didn’t move the body or step in the mess. There were arcs of splatter across the break table and chairs. Another up on the ceiling panels. Another across the face of the pale blue cabinets where the dry coffee pot sat.

And there were dots. Kaya stepped away from the doorway and asked her HUD to highlight the track of dots she’d found on the floor. Maybe drips? They were close together, three of them in the length of her power armor foot. And perfectly spaced right out the door and down the hall.

The hall where the rest of her team was marching up to meet her. Kaya snapped the barrel of her Armash down to the floor and gave Paracitica Jin a crisp salute. Her right fist hit her armor over her heart. The Paracitica clapped her on the shoulder as he passed to get his own look at the body.

Then the lights went out.

“Shit,” said a light, feminine voice over the coms. Kaya always found Izumi’s cursing to be out of place. Her voice was too gentle for it. Kaya toggled her headlamps and so did the other eight HORNETS around her.

“Izumi, you need some help keeping that circuit closed?” teased Omori.

“Come up here and I’ll close you into the circuit,” Izumi threatened. The lights blinked back on. “There. Stay, you piece of shit.”

“What did you do? Shoot it?” Omori asked.

“I’m practicing my welding,” Izumi said.

“She shot it,” Takata nudged Omori beside him and the two of them snickered.

The banter cut off as the slow vibration of something extremely large traveled up through their feet. Kaya looked up at the Paracitica for instruction, but he held his hand out in standby. “Izumi?”

“I see it. A whole substation just came online. A lot of this machinery is autonomous—“ her voice trailed off as she half-mumbled through a list of some kind. “Drone, drone, transport, drone, scanner—oh that could be useful later—transport, ah, digger. You’re the problem child. Off. Yes, I’m sure. Yes, I’m really sure. No, there isn’t anyone in the vicinity about to get crushed by stopping machinery… I hope… just fuck’n—yes! Off!”

Kaya imagined Izumi stabbing her finger at some touchscreen in exasperation.

The vibration slowed and came to a stop.

A central control station had been one of the first rooms the HORNETS had found and subsequently left Izumi behind to work her magic on all things electronic. She’d been patching the lights and unlocking doors for them ever since, trying to get a feel for the facility by wire while the rest of them mapped the half-buried structure on foot.

Scanning the facility from their shuttle hadn’t worked well. The asteroid was almost eighty percent iron. Great for mining. Not amazing for a deep scan into the core.

Izumi hissed over coms, “The inner door I’ve been trying to unlock just opened on its own.”

“Visual?” The Paracitica asked as he gestured for the team to form up around him.

“Negative. Just an indicator light.”

Kaya moved sharply into her place in the formation. Nine HORNETS, limited to two-by-two thanks to the narrow hallways. Mura knocked her big shoulder into Kaya’s left as a greeting and on the Paracitica’s mark, the entire column marched forward cautiously, Armash up and ready.

Whatever Izumi had done to the lights, they held strong. Their warm yellow glow gave the metal walls a softer look. The ridgid, standardized paneling repeated in chunks down the main spine of the buried building, terminating in an airlock that led to the mine proper. There wasn’t much space reserved in the building itself—only enough for a shift of employees to sleep, eat, and get back to work.

The airlock at the end of the hall was large enough to drive a truck through. It hunched there, its wide red warning light steady and bright despite the other power fluctuation.

It hadn’t responded to Izumi’s first attempt to open it, but now that big red light had flipped to green and the door cranked open slowly, like a heavy vault meant to keep the valuable things in and everyone else out.

The lights smeared at the edges of Kaya’s vision thanks to the Rust working its way through her brain. Her HUD glitched again, that sideways hiccup, and restored itself a moment later.

Just in time to see a terrified woman stagger out of the airlock, alone. She yanked her helmet off and dropped it by her feet. Her dark hair had been tied back into a bun at some point, but it was a snarled mess, now that draped down her neck. Her working suit, mostly a light grey with a splash of the blue StarDust logo across the breast, looked to be a size too big, and she dragged one foot at an angle that could not be healthy.

The HORNETS stopped in the hallway, blocking all access further into the facility. For a moment, the woman kept shuffling forward with vacant look in her eyes. Kaya didn’t think she’d noticed the team at all, which was impressive given they were nine highly trained people in massive combat nanoarmor with guns.

The woman stopped. She blinked.

Then she collapsed.

Like a smooth machine, the HORNETS moved forward. Takata and Omori were the forward guns. They stepped past the collapsed woman, looking down the sights of their Armash as they worked to clear the airlock and get visual through the polyglass on what lay beyond.

The second row, the twins Arai and Seo, followed after them as backup.

Paracitica Jin was next, and he took up a guard position at the fallen woman so that Kaya and Mura could crouch and inspect her.

Behind them, Tomatsu and Tao faced back the way they had come… just in case.

Mura brusquely rolled the woman onto her back and initiated a series of scans. Kaya confirmed she was still breathing, then began stripping her out of the pressure suit. She checked for injuries—cuts and broken bones—while Mura pulled her eyelids open one at a time and tested pupil response.

“Broken ankle,” Kaya confirmed as she carefully removed the suit’s boot.

“She’s breathing and pupils are even,” Mura said. “Temperature is a little low. I think she’s in shock.”

“Maybe she can tell us what happened when she wakes up.”

Mura asked the Paracitica, “Should I wake her up?”

“Not yet, lets take over the barracks as our fallback.” Paracitica Jin looked toward the airlock, pinging Takata. “Report?”

“Too dark to see much, sir. There’s a long descending ramp but the lights cut out a few meters in. Nothing here by the doors, though.”

The Paracitica grunted. “Ok. Takata, Omori, Arai, Seo, you all stay here and hold the airlock. Mura, pick up our mystery woman—“

“Paola Batista, engineer,” Kaya reported, reading the bio her HUD displayed. “New hire for StartDust six months ago with specialization in decommission projects.”

“Took the wrong job,” Omori muttered.

The Paracitica cut in, “Mura, take Batista and backtrack to the barracks. Kaya with her. Tao, go with them to secure the barracks, I’ll be right there. Tomatsu I need a personnel list, maybe Izumi has an employee list in the control room?”

“On it,” Tomatsu said, his voice clipped and sharp.

Mura needed no help with the woman. She rolled her up over one shoulder and strode back down the hall, branching left at the only intersection where the break room was. Kaya had to jog to keep up. The barracks room was opposite, a room large enough for several rows of bunks with a trunk for each bed. No doubt people’s personal belongings were meant to fit in the trunk, but makeshift side tables, shelves, and stools had all crept in here from the mine, carved out of stone and metal. Some of the beds were made, most were not. Each one spoke loudly about their owner. Aside from the bare break room, an employee’s bed was clearly their personal space, lounging location, and all-around living quarters.

Mura set Paola down on the nearest bottom bunk, a bed made with crisp military corners and a perfectly smooth pillow. There was little clutter around this bed, no doubt actually contained in the trunk as intended, but a gooseneck light running on battery clung on the bottom of the bunk overhead and was perched for reading. Whoever slept here must be ex-GSA.

Tao and Kaya swept the rest of the room together, checking under beds and poking into corners just to make sure the place really was as empty as it seemed. Kaya used the barrel of her Armash to sweep aside a pile of dirty laundry under a bed, glad she couldn’t smell it in the power suit.

Paola screamed.

Kaya smacked her head on the bedframe as she stood up, Armash aimed and ready. Two beds away, Tao turned with their gun up, sweeping for the threat.

Paola had woken up—no doubt thanks to a punch of epinephrin—and had shoved herself backward against the head of the bead. She held one arm out and tried to kick at Mura who stepped away with her hands up. “Calm down. You’re fine.”

“Stay away from me! STAY AWAY YOU MACHINE!”

“I’m not a machine,” Mura snapped.

Mura was efficient and strong, but her bedside manner could use work. Kaya clipped her Armash to her chest where the nanosuit absorbed the gun entirely. She ordered the helmet to fall back, and it did so like a fold of fabric, the nanotech reconfiguring into her shoulders and back. She approached the bed and Paola with her hands open. “Hey, hey, look at me.”

Paola’s wide eyes flicked to Kaya, but didn’t really see her. She was too focused on Mura, her breath coming in pants.

“Mura, I got this,” Kaya said, taking another step toward the bed. Mura faded backward, no doubt to hold the door. “Paola, you need to take a deep breath. You’re hyperventilating.”

“What?” Paola flicked her eyes to Kaya again, and held there. Her brow furrowed. “What?”

“Deep breath,” Kaya instructed. Then demonstrated by inhaling loudly and pushing the air out her mouth.

Paola glared at her. “Who are you?”

Kaya made it close enough to sit on the corner of the bed. “My name is Kaya. I’m with the GSA.”

“Oh, god. Oh, god,” Paola cried, her face suddenly falling, tears squeezed from her eyes. “Nils is dead. Armand is dead.” Her hands reached for Kaya and gripped weakly to her armored glove and arm. “They sent a team to kill us all.”

“Who did, Paola?” Kaya moved forward on the bed and rubbed her free hand up Paola’s arm. The woman shuddered. “Who sent a team?”

“StarDust,” she gasped. “There’s a StarDust team here. They look like a rescue team. They have radios and medical supplies and they told us they were here to extract us but it’s lies. It’s lies.” Paola’s eyes were wide and not quite focused on Kaya. She leaned forward and Kaya watched her try to focus, fail twice, then shake her head and try again. When her eyes met Kaya’s, they were hollow with fear.

A shiver ran up Kaya’s spine. A headache spiked suddenly just behind her eyes and she had to close them and pull away. Her Rust had worn off, leaving a final goodbye bullet in her forehead.

Paola curled in on herself at the head of the bed, shivering and twitchy.

“I’m going to give you a sedative,” Kaya said. “Something to help you calm down for now. My whole team is here to keep you safe.

“They’ll kill you, too,” Paola said, but she wasn’t looking at Kaya anymore. Her vision had unfocused again into the distance.

“I’d like to see them try,” Kaya muttered. She brought her helmet back up and toggled through the drug options. She issued a mild tranq to Paola through the muscle of her shoulder, then gave herself another dose of Rust to cut through her headache.

It only took a moment to kick in. The lights took on that oily shine at the edges and she felt herself distancing emotionally. It was good to keep some distance. It kept the nightmares at bay later on.

The headache smoothed out.

ticktick

Kaya’s HUD glitched sideways and powered down. She narrowed her eyes as it failed to come back up for two breaths, three, four…

She reached one hand up to tap on the helmet and—

ticktick

—it blinked back online like she’d just put her suit on.

Kaya frowned. The Rust was starting to impact the connections in her implants. She knew it would happen sooner or later. The decay it caused was how the drug got its name. Her dosage was carefully measured. She didn’t go on binges of the stuff trying to chase an artificial high, but its ability to keep her emotions at a remove was invaluable. She had no doubt the other HORNETS managed the problem in similar ways. Hell, her dealer was a GSA Apocrita. An enlisted woman.

But if the drug was going to impact her suit maybe it was time to get the mods in her head replaced. She could easily claim the damage happened on a mission. That was the truth.

“Report?” Paracitica Jin’s voice brought her back to the present.

“Paola is awake and talking, but I’m not sure how reliable her account is. She’s claiming StarDust sent a kill team here to eliminate the mining group.”

There was silence on the coms for a moment. Then Tomatsu said, “That is… unlikely.”

“I agree,” said the Paracitica. “GSA specifically ordered a full extraction of all persons.”

“I’ve completed the list,” Tomatsu added. “Distributing now.”

Kaya’s HUD brought up a new window to the side and the text scrolled upward rapidly.

#

Mining Team:

Paola Batista – alive, barracks

Danilo Clamente

Tadeu Lopes

Nelson Medina

Andre Cruz

Vitor Cruz

Marie-Charlotte Serra

Dietrich Chauvin

Marli Paz

Charly Denis

Armand Roy

Nils Trahan

Davy Pinet

Lufroid Tassin

Isadora Bosco – Deceased, break room

#

Rescue Team:

Tereza Barreto

Fabiane Sato

Leticia Sa

Neusa Melo

Agathe Salgato

#

Based on Paola’s testimony, Kaya added a note to both Nils Trahan and Armand Roy. Deceased, unconfirmed.

Tomatsu explained, “The mining team was working on decommissioning the site with an expected timeline of three months. They’d already launched one of four payloads back to a StarDust relay when corporate lost contact. The rescue team was dispatched and when they went dark, StarDust contacted the GSA for assistance.”

“Our next task will be diving the mine and retrieving everyone we find back to the barracks as their condition allows,” said Paracitica Jin.

Kaya eyed the list with some concern. “What if there is a murderer running around?”

“We detain and extract,” the Paracitica said with a sigh that Kaya took to mean of course that would happen on my watch.

She smiled privately. Jobs were the same in every corner of the universe. Sometimes interesting. Sometimes boring. Sometimes annoying as hell. She was glad she wasn’t the manager of this little crew.

“The paperwork would be… killer,” Omori chuckled.

The Paracitica growled. “Thanks for volunteering to the lead the way down, Omori.”

“Aw.”

“HA!” barked Takata.

“You can join him, Takata.”

“Damn.”

“What was that?”

Takata’s voice was warm with his smile. “I said, yesser! Ready and willing, sir!”

Omori picked up Takata’s bright tone, “Locked and loaded, sir!”

“Point us and fire us, sir!”

And in the same cheerful voice, “Don’t fire me, sir! I need the insurance!”

Kaya smirked and Mura’s chuckle echoed over the line.

***

The Paracitica deployed most of the squad through the airlock and into the depths of the asteroid. Kaya moved carefully at Mura’s shoulder, both of them sweeping dark corners and jagged rock with their headlamps. Some ten meters past the airlock and down into the rock, the ramp bottomed out and the lights became intermittent. The stone yawned overhead, like a massive cave system, but judging by the even claw-like marks on the walls and roof, each one wider than the span of Kaya’s hand, all of these tunnels and junctures had been carved out by machinery.

The main tunnel was a massive space. Wide, tall, and deeper than the squad’s headlamps could penetrate. Huge tunnels branched off at regular intervals, each one of them a straight shot through the rock that terminated only a few meters from the asteroid’s surface. The mine carved out every centimeter of usable stone, only leaving periodic pillars and thin wall between each tunnel to support the outer shell.

In the center of the spine, the team found a track set into the stone about a meter wide. It stretched down into the darkness. At the first tunnel they identified its purpose. The disassembled shell of a transport was still locked onto the track, the majority of its innards detached, removed, or otherwise carved away, leaving the carcass of the machine behind. No battery, no wiring, no lights. There was a metal slab on a spring serving as a seat, but no guts in the dashboard to make the thing run. No doubt the first of many machines half-decommissioned.

Kaya hopped onto the open bed of the transport, just a slab of steel, and kicked off a hunk of rock left behind. The stone dropped heavily to the floor. She scanned her helmet lights across the machine, but it was well and truly gutted.

The Paracitica split the group then, sending Mura and Kaya down one rib and the twins down another while he, Takata, and Omori stayed in the center and kept watch.

Initially, the tunnel looked much the same as the spine it branched from. Massive metal claws had scraped at the walls, the tracked wheels of the thing leaving imprints in the dust under Kaya’s boots. It was entirely straight and perfectly flat the way only a machine could create.

Deeper into the branch, Mura’s headlights panned over a rockfall. Static tickled their coms. The further they moved from the spine, the less connection they had thanks to the iron-filled stone all around them. Kaya pinged Takata to test the connection, but didn’t receive a reply.

They scrambled over the rock fall. It had given way from the ceiling above, punching a hole directly in outer space overhead. The magnetics in Kaya’s boots kept her firmly on the asteroid, but the winking stars were a reminder that some magnets and rock were all that kept her grounded. She moved ahead, scrambling down the talus of stone to leave open space behind.

Mura came up behind her. Together they stumbled across the hulking remains of a digger. The tracked wheels stood taller than Mura and the vast majority of the machine was a massive chainsaw that jut forward with diamond-tipped teeth, perfect for cracking into stone. A counterweight was stacked on the butt-end, where Kaya and Mura approached, and a personnel ladder stretched down beside it, making the machine look all the bigger for the contrast.

As Kaya grabbed the ladder to climb, the static in their coms resolved into voices.

Arguing voices.

“—was Neusa, I’m telling you. I saw him. I SAW HIM!”

“Alright, calm down—“

“Don’t tell me to calm down, I saw him murder her and look at her! LOOK! She doesn’t even have a leg anymore! What the fuck? What the fuuuuuck!”

“Back up, Tereza. Just back up, look at something else and take a deep breath.”

“You think I’m crazy. You think I’m losing my mind just because I got a little motion sick looking out the window on the way here—“

“I don’t think you’re crazy, Tereza.”

“I saw him—“ Tereza burst suddenly into tears. Great, wracking sobs that sucked on the chest. “He’s going to kill us all.”

“Okay, lets take a minute—“

Kaya tried to match the names with her list of personnel and found both Neusa and Tereza on the rescue team list. She toggled both in a message to Mura who nodded, then said on a tight band for Kaya alone, “Behind me, Rookie.” Her Armash came up to her shoulder.

Kaya fell in step, to the right and slightly behind so that Mura’s broad shoulders covered Kaya’s left. She brought her gun up to her shoulder and looked down the sights as they rounded the corner in a half-crouch designed for maximum stability. Heel-toe, empty step, heel-toe.

They found three people in pressure suits, two together on a fallen pile of rock as they argued and a third half-buried in stone, resting in a pool of frozen blood. All pressure suits had some minimal tech on board, enough to track the wearer’s body temperature, oxygen, and the stability of the suit. Kaya’s HUD highlighted the fallen body and displayed those stats for her:

O2: depleted

Temperature: -78 C

Suit integrity: compromised, pressure 0 psi

It wasn’t looking good.

Mura took a position within visual distance and easy firing range, but didn’t approach. She announced on the wide band, “Don’t be alarmed, we’re with the GSA. Can you both please turn to face me.”

Tereza eeped on the coms. The other woman spun in surprise. “Did you say GSA?”

Kaya’s HUD caught a clear image of her face and identifed her as Agathe Salgato, from the rescue team.

“We’re with the GSA,” Mura repeated. “Please step to the side,” she gestured with her Armash, “And show me your hands.”

Agathe complied, her hands up at her shoulders—and empty. Kaya approached Agathe from the side, her Armash up and ready. She gave the woman a quick check front to back—it wasn’t like she could hide something useable in her suit—then approached Tereza.

Tereza blubbered into the com, her distress stealing clarity from her words, “It’s too late, it’s too late.” She sobbed. Kaya cleared her as well, then passed further to the left where the body, and a box of equipment, lay under the rock.

“Both of you come with me,” Mura said, lowering her Armash. “We are evacuating everyone off this rock.”

Kaya knelt by the body and peered into the cracked faceplate. Her HUD made a match on the personnel list: Leticia Sa. She marked the woman as deceased and with Mura there to confirm, her name blanked to gray on the list and fell to the bottom.

The equipment box appeared to be a StarDust branded radio, probably dispatched with the rescue team to help extend communication deep inside the asteriod. Kaya grabbed it, found a handle, and asked her armor to provide a latch on her waist. The armor obliged, scanning the book-sized machine and providing a tailor-made latch so Kaya could hook it on to her hip and keep both hands available for her gun.

She stepped away from the body and let her armor record the scene as a whole. The digger had bit into this rock at the end of the tunnel, causing a rockfall that caught Leticia below. That probably explained the cracked faceplate. It didn’t really explain the perfectly clean cut just below Leticia’s hip, where her leg was missing. If there were further injuries, the rock obscured them.

But Tereza claimed someone from the rescue team murdered her—just like Paola back at the barracks.

Kaya frowned.

So something had gone wrong with the mining team, requiring the rescue team on site. And then someone on the rescue team was also murdering people?

That didn’t seem likely. Still, Tereza had given them a name. Neusa Melo, according to the personnel list. Kaya marked him as the murder suspect and shook her head. This was getting way above her pay grade.

She joined Mura at the rockfall and together, the four of them made their slow way back up the mining tunnel toward the spine.

Just as they reached the top of the rock, everything around them vibrated. The stone rattled and tumbled downward, destabilizing their footing. Kaya fell to one knee and twisted around to her butt to hang on. Everything shook.

She stared at the digger. Red and yellow lights on its corners and controls had lit up and were blinking. The massive chainsaw of a front end started to rotate, its teeth biting in the stone like a knife through butter. Rock cascaded downward, quickly burring Leticia and any evidence of her death.

The entire contraption rumbled and rattled Kaya’s teeth. And on top of the machine, standing at the helm, her HUD identified Neusa Melo in a standard StarDust pressure suit, his face clearly visible through the plate.

ticktick

Her HUD glitched sideways. Rebooted.

The entire contraption rumbled and rattled Kaya’s teeth. And on top of the machine, the levers and dials at the helm rotated on their own. The chainsaw head bit into the rock as it maneuvered slowly downward, following its automated instructions to dig.

Mura’s hand landed on Kaya’s shoulder and helped her back to her feet. She grabbed Tereza’s hand and together the four of them slid and slipped their way down the opposite side of the rock.

By the time they reached the stable bottom, the rumbling whined to a stop. Izumi’s voice came over the coms, half broken with interference.

“…mation turned on aga…vn’t figured out whats trigg…e careful down there.”

Mura took the lead. Kaya followed from the rear. They worked their way back to the main tunnel with two rescued people, but far more question than answers.

Along the way, Agathe hung back to walk next to Kaya and pinged her on a private band. Kaya accepted. “Something wrong?”

“I don’t want you to think Tereza is crazy. She’s been through a lot. Her daughter—it doesn’t matter. You saw Leticia’s body. She was crushed by the rock when that machine turned on. We’ve only been here for a couple of days but I’ve seen lights and hardware turn on by themselves, these things have a mind of their own.” Agathe shook her head.

“You don’t believe Neusa killed Leticia?”

“I don’t,” Agathe said firmly. “And I know Tereza is under a lot of stress. She and Neusa are…they don’t get along. At all. Tereza shouldn’t have been on this trip, but… I shouldn’t… fuck, what does it matter? She’s sleeping with the boss, like, the CEO, and he put her on the trip because she asked. She’s looking to prove herself, I think. She wants—it doesn’t matter. My point is she and Neusa have a lot of beef and it only got worse on the cramped week-long shuttle ride over here. It’s probably easier for her to accuse him of murder than believe some random electrical accident killed Luticia.”

Agathe’s reasoning made sense. She’d let the Paracitica know there were internal politics at work here.

They met up with the rest of the HORNETS at the shell of the transport vehicle and Mura provided a succinct report for the Paracitica. He sent Omori and Takata to escort Tereza and Agathe back to the barracks with the promise that the team would attempt to recover Leticia’s body once everyone still alive had been accounted for.

Then Paracitica Jin sent Kaya and Mura down rib number three to continue the search.

***

They found nothing for over four hours.

Kaya’s HUD glitched twice in that time, powering down and rebooting with minimal prompting, but Kaya was concerned the events were becoming more frequent. Despite that, she injected herself with another dose of Rust when it felt like the pressure of the asteroid was bearing down overhead and threatening to crush her like Luticia. She kept pace with Mura down one tunnel after another, but her head was stuffed with visions of falling rock and being flung into space.

The Rust kept her from panicking. Her thoughts slipped through her head like oil on water, unable to gain purchase and dig deeper. Her mood remained stable and she performed her duty with attention and care. Frankly, she was proud of herself for staying on top of the drugs. If she was lucky, she’d come out of this without too many nightmares haunting her steps. The edges of her headlamps light swirled with oil slick color, but that was an easy price to pay.

She was prepared for whatever this asteroid might throw at them next.

Their current tunnel, already wide enough across to fit the entire squad with room to spare, expanded into what appeared to be a natural cavern. The floor had been mined flat with more of those massive diamond-tipped claw marks, and several pieces of large machinery had been parked here.

“A maintenance yard…” Mura mused.

Kaya counted four of the large diggers with tracked wheels and chainsaw noses. A couple of tracked ATV-style vehicles were parked in a rough line on the left. They had enough room for four with a small bed in the back.

She and Mura split up to canvas the space. Mura headed for a massive tracked vehicle with no obvious mining ability. Kaya carefully circled each one of the mining machines.

Around the back of the third one, tucked into the triangle of the rear track, Kaya spotted the familiar light gray of a StarDust pressure suit. Someone was curled up. Asleep? Kaya touched the person’s shoulder as she knelt down. They twitched away and a soft squeak of fear issued over the public band.

“It’s alright,” Kaya said. “I’m with the GSA.”

The employee hesitantly turned to look up at Kaya and her HUD scanned and identified the face in the polyglass. Marli Paz. Her voice over the coms shook and was barely above a whisper. “Is it… gone?” Sweat pasted her short black hair to her forehead. The natural brown of her skin pale with fear.

Kaya frowned. She looked around the empty cavern again with one hand on her Armash, then shook her head. “There’s nothing else here. What did you see?”

“It was made of metal,” Marli whispered, her eyes wide as they darted over Kaya’s shoulder and back. “Tall, and…. And it ticked when it moved. Like tapping. I heard it crawl over the machine.” Her eyes flicked upward again and she cringed.

Kaya stroked her arm. “It’s gone now,” she reassured the woman. Privately she wondered if all these people had been exposed to some kind of gas or bad air. First murderers, now metal aliens? “Come with me. We will keep you safe.” Kaya offered one hand to Marli and patted the other on her Armash.

Marli stared at Kaya’s hand for a moment. “Do you promise?”

“I promise,” Kaya said. “You’re safe with us.”

ticktick

Kaya’s HUD flickered sideways, but she could still see Marli reach for her.

Kaya grasped the soft, flesh hand and pulled her gently to her her feet. And just as the human straightened, Kaya thrust her utility knife into the unresisting suit and deep into her throat. The animals couldn’t scream, this way, allowing her time to carve them. Blood gushed over Kaya’s armored hand.

The human gripped Kaya’s wrist and arm in shock and confusion.

Kaya yanked the blade downward, through the human’s throat, skittering over collarbone and sternum, down easily with the power of her armor into it’s gut and out the side when the blade jarred against the hip bone. These creatures were weak prey. Full of fluids and chemical processes. It was so easy to disrupt their lifecycle. They had no defense.

Blood curtained downward. It splashed over the human’s suit and Kaya’s boots. The human fell to her knees, then slumped backward onto the stone, her body flopping open like a gut fish. Her guts, so much like worms, spilled onto the stone, shining in Kaya’s headlamps. The body twitched.

Kaya retracted her utility blade back into the nanoarmor as it began sloughing the blood in an automatic cleaning process.

Kaya’s HUD shutdown.

She stood there for several seconds, staring at nothing but the inner black polyglass of her helmet.

tick tick tick tick tick tick….

Kaya’s HUD rebooted with a click and a flicker of light.

A headache tried to bloom behind her eyes. She stopped it automatically with a dose of Rust and a follow up microdose of Shine to take some of the pain away. She sighed with relief as the drugs worked into her system.

Then she opened her eyes and saw the body. It lay in a disturbing sprawl only a meter away, the limbs intact but the torso ravaged by a series of long vertical slices right through the pressure suit. Cut up in the same way that first body in break room had been. Sliced to cause bleeding and pain. A lot of it.

The Rust gave the frozen blood a glitter on the edges while the Shine almost made Kaya laugh. She had to clamp her lips shut for a moment—but wasn’t it funny that two people had been cut to ribbons?

She had enough wherewithal to realize Mura wouldn’t find it funny. Once Kaya was sure her voice wouldn’t waver, she toggled over to the HORNET com and paged Mura. She got no response.

Kaya had to walk around the digging machine and get a clear line of sight on her partner before the coms reconnected. All this metal was really starting to impact communications.

“Mura, I’ve found another body,” she said. Her voice sounded a little flat to her own ears. That had to be the Rust keeping most of this experience at a distance. At least she didn’t burst into giggles.

Mura turned to her and jogged to investigate. Together they identified the woman as Marli Paz, StarDust technician for over ten years. Kaya updated her entry in the list of personnel. Deceased, tunnel 9.

“Cut up like the first one,” Mura said, shaking her head. “I don’t like this. Whatever is down here… it’s hunting.”

Kaya detached her Armash from its hook on her chest and gave the cavern a serious look from one end to the other. “Do you think it’s still here?”

“I doubt it,” Mura said, standing. “Not if it wants to ambush people alone.”

“You don’t think it’s Neusa, either, do you?”

Mura kept a hand on her Armash and led the way back to the ATVs. “I don’t know.” She gestured Kaya to drive one of the vehicles and follow her. They drove two back down the tunnel. Eventually Mura said, “None of the bodies have been eaten.”

Kaya watched a bubble of revulsion rise up out of her stomach and smack solidly into the wall that was the Rust running through her veins. She felt her body contract at the very idea… but her cocktail kept her level-headed and she didn’t panic.

“Eaten?” she asked carefully.

“If it’s a wild animal of some kind I would expect it to hunt for food. But the bodies aren’t being eaten.”

Kaya had to work at putting that picture aside. “Could it be territory?” she asked.

“If it’s not a person running around, I doubt we’ll ever know.”

“Right,” Kaya said. “Neusa.”

“Or someone in the original mining team trying to frame Neusa.”

“Great,” Kaya said flatly.

They finished the ride back to the spine tunnel in silence and arrived one person fewer but two ATVs richer. The twins, Seo and Arai had delved tunnel six and come back with three people alive and well, none of them suspicious of the rescue team or Neusa in particular. They’d been busy at work disassembling one of the diggers for removal, clueless as to the spiraling fate of the rest of the mine’s inhabitants.

Kaya tried not to be jealous of their nievite. She could tell the Rust was holding at bay a growing emotional storm she’d have to contend with eventually. The horror of the bodies, the fear of being next, the looming anticipation of the unknown. She didn’t consider herself claustrophobic, but the tunnels seemed to be narrowing in on all sides, tightening closer and closer the deeper they dove into the mystery.

Paracitica Jin sent all three of the employees back up to the barracks in an ATV with the twins as supervision. Then he took Mura’s report with a long frown on his face. Three dead, now, and still eleven people unaccounted for.

Kaya reviewed her list.

#

Mining Team:

Paola Batista – alive, barracks

Dietrich Chauvin – alive, barracks

Charly Denis – alive, barracks

Danilo Clamente – alive, barracks

Tadeu Lopes

Nelson Medina

Andre Cruz

Vitor Cruz

Marie-Charlotte Serra

Armand Roy – Deceased, unconfirmed

Nils Trahan – Deceased, unconfirmed

Davy Pinet

Lufroid Tassin

Isadora Bosco – Deceased, break room

Marli Paz – Deceased, tunnel 9

#

Rescue Team:

Tereza Barreto – alive, barracks

Agathe Salgato – alive, barracks

Neusa Melo – murder suspect?

Fabiane Sato

Leticia Sa – Deceased, tunnel 1

#

Only six people alive and well. Kaya had to toggle the list closed or she’d never stop staring at it.

The Paracitica shook his head at his own thoughts. “Lets keep moving,” he said. “These ATVs will help speed things along.”

Kaya peered down the spine. “Tunnel eleven, next?”

“Actually, no. Takata and Omori are late with their check-in from number ten. Even with this repeater you found,” Paracitica Jin patted the box at his hip that Kaya had given him. “Coms are intermittent the deeper we go, it’s the nature of things, but better safe than sorry. I’d like you both to head down ten with the ATV and meet up with Takata and Omori. Help them clear the tunnel and come back.”

Kaya and Mura both gave the Paracitica a short salute—fist to chest—then Kaya swung into the passenger side of Mura’s vehicle.

***

It didn’t take very long at all for the problem to come to them. Mura sped down the mostly-flat tunnel as fast as the ATV could go, pushing the little battery to the limit. There weren’t any rock falls or stray equipment to stop them, just a tunnel stretching for meters into the gloom of the distance. And no accident could injure them in any meaningful way—not at these speeds against their nanotech suits. The headlights of the ATV flooded the tunnel, so they spotted the StarDust employee running toward them easily.

Mura skidded the vehicle to a stop and Kaya jumped out, toggling her coms to the public network. Her HUD caught a dark-skinned determined face through the polyglass and identified them as Davy Pinet, StarDust lead technician for five years. This was his third cycle out here on this asteroid and probably the person most familiar with these tunnels and machines.

“Oh, thank God, get back in the car.” He shoved at Kaya, which did little to move her with the weight of her armor, but Davy didn’t wait around. “Hurry up, get this thing moving, you have to help them.”

Davy dove into the back seat as Mura accelerated again. Kaya snagged the front pillar as the ATV drove by and swung herself back into the front passenger seat.

She twisted back to look at Davy. His dark hair curled tight with sweat against his forehead and his blue eyes glowered into the distant darkness. His breath heaved from running. “Help who?” Kaya aked.

“Two of your people. Two of mine; Andre and Vitor Cruz. Brothers. I don’t understand what happened but everyone is fighting.”

“Fighting? Why?”

“I don’t know, but one of your men shouted at me to get backup, so that’s what I did.”

Kaya frowned and looked at Mura. “Why would Takata and Omori need backup?”

Mura shook her head. “Nothing good.”

They fell silent, staring forward as the ATV rumbled along at its fastest pace. Mura had the accelerator stomped flat to the floor.

It gave Kaya time to think, and none of her thoughts were optimistic.

ticktick

Takata and Omori were highly capable men wrapped in extremely powerful armor. Two people in standard pressure suits, even if they had some kind of weapon, weren’t a threat to a pair of HORNETs.

No one had mentioned the brothers as being suspicious—in fact, the only accused murderer was still Neusa, whom they hadn’t found yet.

It was more likely Davy was drawing them into an ambush of some kind. Was he working with Neusa? Something had caused StarDust to deploy a rescue team…

Kaya kept a firm grip on her Armash as she eyed Davy in the back seat. He pressed his lips together and stared firmly ahead, apparently concerned for his fellow employees. The brothers.

Kaya narrowed her eyes. She could eliminate Davy now. He was just a human in a pressure suit, no weapon, no armor, no defense at all. Probably no combat training. He was a technician. If he was leading them into an ambush, she could take care of the problem early…

She lifted her Armash over the back of the seat—

“There’s Takata!” Mura barked.

tick tick tick tick tick

Kaya swung out of her seat before Mura could skid the ATV to a stop. She snapped the Armash up to her shoulder, sighting down the barrel and glancing across the scene. A rockfall had obscured half this tunnel, burying a digging machine with it. Takata stood over the body of a StarDust employee before the pile of rock that towered overhead. He was stabbing it.

Kaya scanned the rest of the tunnel as she quick stepped up to Takata at an angle. She didn’t spot Omori or the other employee Davy had mentioned.

She reached Takata and trained her Armash downward. Then she blinked, not exactly sure what she was seeing, at first.

Takata had mutilated the body. He gripped a knife in his hand and was sawing down the length of one arm, right through the suit, his other hand pealing the flesh away from bone—not bone. What was that dark strip inside?

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Davy tried to shove Takata away from the body, but the effort was wasted on a power suit. Takata’s hand snapped toward Davy and he snagged the man by the throat, holding him effortlessly up at arm’s length.

“Are you one of them too?”

Davy choked on the coms, his hands meekly scratching at Takata’s armored glove.

“Are you infected?”

Kaya crouched, thanking the Rust once again for separating her disgust and shock from the analytical side of her that could process Takata’s poor butchering job and make sense of what he was doing. Her suite of sensors scanned the body—Vitor Cruz—and highlighted the dark stripe of something inside that Takata had been cutting free. Like metal buried deep, replacing the bone. Kaya followed the length of it down the filleted arm and used the short barrel of her Armash to turn the hand over. A blade of metal, like a shiv, extended out the back of the hand and clear past the fingers. Some kind of… internal weaponry? It had cut right through the pressure suit, though.

Was this an extensive body mod?

“He can’t answer you if you strangle him, T.” Mura put a hand on Davy’s shoulder and yanked him free of Takata’s grip. “Answers.” She demanded. “Now.”

But Davy fell to his knees with a keening, wretched sound that grated on Kaya’s ears. She stood and asked Takata, “What happened?”

Takata shook his arm and absorbed his utility knife back into his suit. “We found these three working on the buried digger.” He gestured at the machine in the rock. “Approached, made contact. They came down and we told them we were evacuating everyone and that’s when it went to shit—”

“You butchered him!” Davy screamed.

Takata whirled on him,”Course I fucking did! He sprouted knives and attacked me! He’s infected with something and I bet you are too!” Takata pointed an accusing finger.

“Infected with what?” Mura asked, pushing her hand against Takata’s shoulder. She got him to back up.

Kaya slipped between them and grabbed Davy’s arm. She pulled him back, away from the other HORNETs. He fought her, but it was like resisting a river. She simply ignored the struggle and picked him up. He was taller than her, but the power armor didn’t care.

Mura slapped Takata’s chest for his attention. “Infected with what, T?”

It was Omori who answered. His com connected as he walked around the edge of the rockfall, holding a… well, a something long, dark, and with many angles in his hand. “Infected with this, Mura,” he said, his voice oddly serious.

He threw the tangled metal thing on the ground and began arranging it. The dark metal shined with fresh blood—not Omori’s—and there were strings of flesh still attached to various barbs and hooks.

Davy whispered, “What the fuck?”

Kaya agreed. Omori finally stepped back from his modern art arrangement. The thing he left behind was only nominally human-shaped. It had four limbs and a cluster at the top that might have been head-like. It also had an acid-melted center mass—no doubt from Omori’s Armash. It was entirely comprised of metal, pieces, angles, sheets, and spikes that seemed welded together. There was no obvious senses. No eyes or nose or ears. It looked like a pile of scrap.

“That thing,” said Omori, “walked itself out of Andre’s body. Like taking off a coat.” He kicked one of the leg-structures. “It took acid to kill it. I’m not sure it’s actually dead since it doesn’t seem to have a nervous system. Andre is very dead.”

Takata pointed to Vitor’s body. “That’s what’s inside him. Only it didn’t get a chance to get out before I killed it.”

Davy’s legs collapsed from under him. Kaya put him gently on the ground and crouched next to him. He was hyperventilating, his eyes wide and unfocused, his skin alarmingly pale.

Everyone, including Davy stared at the scrap-creature.

“Davy,” Kaya said softly. “I’m going to give you a sedative.”

He turned to look at her, eyes searching. “They’re both dead?” he asked, plaintively.

“It’s going to knock you out for a few hours,” Kaya continued. “Just… take a breath and count to ten.”

It was all she could do to help him right now.

ticktick

She prepped a lethal dose of EMP and slotted the drug into Davy’s input port on his pressure suit. He took a deep breath. She killed him with a single injection.

His suit’s minimal tech beeped once before the radiation from the drug fried everything. The suit kept it contained.

Tick tick tick tick

Another headache rose up behind Kaya’s eyes. They were getting stronger. She wrinkled her nose and considered if another does of Rust was wise.

Mura turned back to look at Kaya as she hefted Davy in her arms. “What was that?”

She took the Rust. And another small dose of Shine, to be sure the pain would recede. She didn’t want to think too hard about her recovery once this mission was over.

“I just knocked him out. If he’s got one of those things in him we need to figure out how to scan for it.”

Mura looked at Omori. “X-ray?”

He looked down at the scrap metal pile, his suit’s scanners activating, then over at Vitor’s body. “X-ray should do it,” he agreed.

Kaya tucked Davy into the back seat of the ATV and did her own xray scan. “I don’t see anything strange,” she reported. “A normal skeleton.” She looked up at the others, sending the files over their suit’s connection. “I’m not a doctor, though.”

Both Takata and Omori shook their heads. “Looks clear to me,” Mura agreed.

Takata sighed.

Omori bent over and picked up the scrap monster with one hand, holding it at a distance. He hiked it over and threw it on the bed of the ATV. Takata did the same with Vitor’s body. They both climbed into the ATV, Davy limp in their laps. Mura took the driver’s seat. Kaya took the front passenger.

Wordlessly, Mura turned them around and headed back for the spine.

They met Paracitica Jin there with Seo and Arai who had found three more people alive and well. Fabaine, from the rescue team, who’d kept Nelson and Lufroid alive when a rockfall had cut them all off from the main tunnel of the mine. The twins had activated one of the diggers and managed to carve room enough for them all to clamber free.

Mura slid the ATV to a halt and every hornet clambered out of the vehicle with their Armash up. Kaya pointed her weapon at the closest person—Fabaine—as Mura announced to everyone: “Step away from each other now and keep your hands up where we can see them.”

Conversation on the general band ceased. The civilians exchanged looks, but did as instructed.

Paracitica Jin, Arai, and Seo all took several steps away from the StarDust employees, their hands going for their Armash automatically. The Paracitica asked, “What do you know?”

“There’s an alien entity infecting people. Two of them are in the bed of the ATV,” Mura said.

The Paracitica backed up to inspect the vehicle.

Mura pointed her gun at Lufriod. “You. Stand still.”

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Mura didn’t answer, just shared her x-ray with the other HORNETs and moved on to Nelson.

The first scan came back clean.

The second one did not.

Thin, razer-sharp blades burst from Nelson’s shoulders, elbows and wrists. Oxygen vented from his suit. He lunged forward—and got nowhere.

Mura, Takata, and Arai all open fired. Mura and Takata with acid, Arai with iron bullets that pinged off of Nelson’s now-metal bones and shredded through his remaining flesh.

Nelson dropped to the ground, unmoving. Blood spread and flash froze on contact with the vacuum of space. Takata added several more acid bullets to be sure.

Mura turned her Armash on Fabaine, who squeaked softly over the coms. Her scan came back clean.

Mura lowered her Armash and turned to the Paracitia. “Everyone back at the base needs to be x-rayed. Acid seems to melt them enough to kill them.”

“Understood.” The Paracitica put a hand to the repeater on his belt, activating the machine with a button. “Izumi, do you copy?”

Her cheerful voice had a forced edge to it. “Paracitica. Excellent timing as always. We have a problem.”

***

Gunfire snapped over the coms, overwhelming Izumi’s voice for a moment. When she came back in focus it was mid-sentence. “—entity. It appears to be made of metal. Tomatsu has retreated to me in the control center—“ More gunfire crackled.

“Acid,” the Paracitica barked into his radio. “Use acid to melt it down. Acid, Izumi, do you copy?”

“—py, applying acid. Standby.”

The bullets barked in a rapid tattoo, burst shots repeated and overlapping from two Armash. Then a long moment of silence.

“I think it’s dead,” Tomatsu said.

“Be sure,” Izumi replied.

A single burst of bullets crackled over the line.

Then Izumi reported, “It’s down and half dissolved. We think it’s dead.” Her voice shifted softer, “Good god, look at all this blood…”

Kaya looked at the bodies on the trunk of the ATV, one still mostly human, the other entirely alien. She traded a look with Mura, who spoke over the radio.

“You need to x-ray everyone in the barracks. That thing came out of a person and you need to make sure there aren’t any more.”

“Understood,” said Tomatsu.

While the team waited for an update, Fabiane circled the ATV to inspect the metal creatures in the truck bed. She didn’t touch them, probably wise given their sharp edges and her fabric pressure suit. She did turn one of Vitor’s arms over to peer at the metal inside. She shook her head. “It’s like it grew over the bones and replaced them,” she muttered to herself. “I wonder if they were anemic?”

She moved to Davy, stretched out on the back seat, still unconscious. She peered into his faceplate, then looked up at Takata. “Your group brought Davy back? Did you see what killed him?”

Kaya shook her head. “He’s not dead, he’s just knocked out. I gave him a tranquilizer. He was panicking.”

Fabiane looked from Kaya to the Paracitica, then down again at Davy. “I’m sorry, but this man is dead,” she said. “His temperature is near freezing.”

“What?” said Mura.

“That can’t be right, he’s the one who led us to Omori and Takata.”

The Paracitica leaned into the ATV to scan and connect to Davy’s suit AI. Abruptly, a piercing alarm issued across all the coms and Kaya flinched at a warning that flashed across her HUD.

RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL DETECTED!!

Fabiane and the Paracitica both retreated from the body promptly.

Arai asked, “Radioactive? Is he infected?”

“His xray was clear,” Mura said.

“Keep your distance for now,” said the Paracitica. “I wan—“

“Izumi to Paracitica, do you read?” Her voice cut in to the conversation and wavered.

Kaya felt her chest clench.

“We read you, Izumi. Report,” said Paracitica Jin.

“All of the rescued employees have been … metal creature slaughtered everyo … racks. Repeat: all rescued are dead. Tomatsu and I are the only survivors.”

Kaya’s breath left her in a rush of surprise. She clenched her fist on her Armash and stared at the Paracitica. She watched him close his eyes slowly for a single beat, then open them again, hard on the edges with banked fury.

She couldn’t handle this.

Everyone they’d worked to rescue…?

Kaya slammed a double dose of Rust into her system and let the blessed distance lift her up and away from the terror. From the looming walls of the tunnels. Away from the sense of inevitability that was growing inside of her. She clenched her teeth on a sob until the Rust soothed the pain away.

Only then did she check the list of personnel.

#

Mining Team:

Lufroid Tassin – alive, escort

Tadeu Lopes

Marie-Charlotte Serra

Armand Roy – Deceased, unconfirmed

Nils Trahan – Deceased, unconfirmed

Nelson Medina – Deceased, spine

Davy Pinet – Deceased, EMP overdose

Andre Cruz – Deceased, tunnel 10

Vitor Cruz – Deceased, tunnel 10

Isadora Bosco – Deceased, break room

Marli Paz – Deceased, tunnel 9

Paola Batista – Deceased, barracks

Dietrich Chauvin – Deceased, barracks

Charly Denis – Deceased, barracks

Danilo Clamente – Deceased, barracks

#

Rescue Team:

Fabiane Sato – alive, escort

Neusa Melo – murder suspect?

Leticia Sa – Deceased, tunnel 1

Tereza Barreto – Deceased, barracks

Agathe Salgato – Deceased, barracks

#

She felt nothing. Most of the names were grayed out. But the list meant nothing at all. Just an accounting of tasks Kaya no longer had on her plate.

“No…” someone said, the voice so strangled Kaya couldn’t identify it.

“We are not done,” the Paracitica said firmly.

The letters on Kaya’s HUD shimmered a bit on the edges. She closed the list.

“Sir, we have two people left alive,” Seo said. “We should leave while we can.”

“There are five people whos status is unconfirmed. We are going to find them and, if we can, bring them home. This is the mission.”

Kaya muttered, “I bet Neusa’s infected. Paola accused him of murder, before.”

“We treat everyone as infected,” The Paracitica nodded at Kaya. “X-ray anyone—or any body—we come across.” He pressed the button on the repeater at his hip. “Izumi, come in.”

“Copy, sir.”

“Come down the spine and meet up with us. There’s no point in holding the front door anymore.”

“Copy, Tomatsu and I will find you down below.”

The Paracitica pointed at the ATV with Davy’s body still laid out in the back seat. “No one touch that machine. HORNETs you should be protected in your suits, but we’re not taking the chances.” He pointed at Fabiane and Lufroid. “You two, in the back seat of the other vehicle. We’re going to find your coworkers and get out of here.”

“We’re going deeper?” Fabiane asked, her voice pitching higher.

“I’m not going down,” said Lufroid.

“You’re welcome to hike your way back up to the barracks alone,” said the Paracitica. “If there are any more of these…” he gestured at the bed of the first ATV “Metal assassins running around, you’re on your own.”

Fabiane scurried into the back seat and sat primly. Like the Paracitica was going to rap her knuckles if she slouched. Lufroid scowled, but opted for the ATV.

“Mura, you drive.” He put up a hand to greet Izumi and Tomatsu as they jogged down the main tunnel and joined the group. Ten HORNETs. Two civilians. At least one more metal alien on the loose.

Kaya swung into her seat beside Mura and just shook her head as the group started downward. Deeper into the asteroid. And toward the final tunnel of the mine. Toward home.

She turned over her shoulder to eye the people behind her. “You both should take anti-rad pills when you get back to the surface.”

Lufroid and Fabiane shared a look. Then Lufroid nodded mutely.

***

The asteroid, it turned out, had a hollow core. At the deepest point of the main shaft, the HORNETs found a decompression digger in the process of disassembly parked up against a caved-in hole. The digger’s diamond-tipped chainsaw was still wedged into the metal crust of the core—like an eggshell the size of a Barracuda destroyer.

Mura parked the ATV. Twelve sets of headlamps swept over the area, picking through the remains of the digger like vultures.

Kaya was drawn to the hollow center. Something about the metal captured her attention. It shined in some way she found attractive. Like a dark glitter.

There was enough room beside the digger’s blade to slip inside. Her headlamps reflected off the metal crust in every direction. Like a dark geode. The metal had formed in hard, sometimes sharp angles on every surface, straight across the ceiling and down the opposite side of the cave in a complete, unbroken layer.

Kaya knelt at the entrance and picked up a broken shard of metal. It reminded her of the assassins the others had killed. Her HUD scanned the piece and identified it as trinordia. It hadn’t occurred to her to scan the aliens they’d found. She wondered if they were made of the same stuff.

“Kaya.” She announced herself on the coms. “Did anyone think to scan the assassins to see what they were made of?”

“Did you find something, Rookie?” Asked Mura.

“The core is trinordia.”

A few surprised sounds over the coms overlapped. Trinordia wasn’t a common metal, but it was valuable. It captured and held potential energy in high densities. As a liquid it was even more powerful. And explosive. The HORNETs had come across it occasionally, but Kaya had never seen a natural deposit like this.

“I found a body,” Reported Seo abruptly. His voice was flat. Hard.

“Shit,” his sister Arai hissed shortly after. “I have another one.”

Kaya let the chunk of metal she held drop and turned away to join them when a flat gray caught her eye. The cavern was uneven, with juts of metal protruding in all directions. A growth of it had hidden something.

Kaya scrambled over the metal—like bouldering over an uneven climb—and her eyes widened at what she found. She held her breath, as if staying silent would keep it from noticing her.

A StarDust employee lay akimbo among the metal growths, their gray suit a stark contrast to the glimmering black trinordia. Blood had spilled across their chest and froze there, bright crimson under Kaya’s headlamps. She couldn’t see their head, it lay tipped backward at an angle that couldn’t be natural.

And climbing carefully out of the body in the same way someone might disengage from a sleeping bag, was a metal assassin.

It was vaguely human-shaped. Its arms and legs stretched out from a bulky center mass, all of it comprised of shards and blades of trinordia. As if someone had used a magnet to collect a bunch of metal scrap and loosely welded it into a shape.

Somehow, it didn’t notice her. Or it couldn’t hear or see, maybe? It didn’t seem to respond to her presence as it carefully carved its way out of the body that had helped it grow.

Kaya took an unsteady step back. Her foot caught an odd angle in the geode and she stumbled. The power armor compensated for her, keeping her on her feet, but it didn’t matter.

Somehow—by some sense or another—the alien had noticed. It turned and Kaya realized she’d been at its back. When it faced her she could see a formation of metal spikes and hooks on the center mass that writhed.

It saw her.

It recognized her.

It returned to the business of unfolding from its human cocoon.

And Kaya screamed into the coms.

No sound came out of her mouth. No scream, no words, no voice at all.

She lunged backward, away from the assassin.

Her arms and legs refused to move. Her body remained perfectly still.

Something was wrong. Something was wrong. Something was wrong and Kaya couldn’t move! She couldn’t speak! Her limbs: frozen. Her muscles: still. She tried to thrash her way free, but there wasn’t anything to fight against. There was no one holding her down.

She couldn’t gasp or pant. Her body didn’t break out in a sweat. Her panic was confined entirely to her mind where she screamed and screamed and screamed and sre—

Kaya measured a double dose of Rust and injected it to stop the noise. The internal disruption quieted. The drug caused visual distortion, but she didn’t need the host’s visual senses. She waited another moment for her sibling to fully extract itself from the flesh of its host. Her sibling rippled all of its joints and spines in a cascade of stretching. Freedom. Kaya couldn’t wait to experience it herself. She was nearly mature.

Kaya lead the way out of the cave where her siblings had waited for eons, dormant, unmoving. Their existence had been slow and unstimulating. A long and quiet sleep.

Until the humans had cracked open the protective shell.

Kaya knew, because her host knew, that the humans in gray StarDust suits were the most vulnerable. The others, like Kaya, were protected by thick armor. Much more difficult to seed with the next generation of siblings.

But it was Kaya’s role—her imperative—to seed the next generation. To spread. To learn. To grow into many.

She would do so first with the one her host called Mura.

No! NO! Kaya stumbled from the entrance of the cave as her rising terror unexpectedly gave her control once more. She crashed to her knees and sobbed into the com. “Help me! So—“

Inconvenient. Kaya applied another dose of Rust—the last she had—to suppress the host and regained her feet. The host’s vision blurred into a rainbow of slurry.

“Kaya?”

She didn’t answer. Two HORNETs jogged toward her, their weapons drawn. Mura and Omori. Mura’s weapon snapped up over Kaya’s shoulder. “Kaya, down!”

She dropped low. Mura and Omori both fired on the sibling behind her, but she spared no thoughts for it. A single sibling was no loss if it lead to further seeds.

Kaya scrambled past Mura and leaned behind her. Their power suits were networked and with a little guesswork and prodding, Kaya put her armored palm on Mura’s back and convinced the suits to open a channel between them.

Humans were regrettably intolerant to natural space, she required a sealed connection.

And while Mura used acid to melt her sibling, Kaya thrust a needle loaded with Shine and a seed into her back. Mura jerked, but the Shine acted as a painkiller. Kaya disengaged from Mura’s suit.

The HORNETs had completely melted her sibling. They kept their weapons on it, but Kaya knew it was dead. The center mass, where thought and impulse lived, had been destroyed.

“Are you alright?” Mura asked, her hand heavy on Kaya’s shoulder.

Kaya nodded. “It was in the cave. I saw it climb out of one of the StarDust people.”

“Shit,” Omori cursed. “I bet they’re all infected by now.” He kicked Kaya’s sibling, punting the body against the rock wall. “Seo was right, we should have just left.”

Kaya backed away. Her host’s vision smeared with the slightest shake of her head. She found Paracitica Jin standing with Seo and Arai over the dead bodies of two other StarDust humans and moved in that direction.

Her footsteps staggered. She paused to regain her balance and tried to walk again, but found herself tipping drunkenly to one side.

“Kaya, what’s wrong?” Mura asked, suddenly there at her shoulder.

Kaya tried to say: Nothing. She was fine. Just a stumble. But her words slurred. A ripple of color washed over her host’s visual sense. She felt weightless all of a sudden. Like she was floating. Her limbs twitched as a rush of euphoria burst from her chest and made everything warm.

What was happening?

This host body was having an unusual chemical response.

She couldn’t gather her thoughts.

“That’s right, motherfucker, you think you can use my own drugs to knock me down? Try an EMP for size.”

Kaya injected a fatal dose straight into her bloodstream, and like a bomb had gone off, she suddenly had control of herself again.

She wrenched out of Mura’s grip and staggered away from her, hands up to ward them off. She tossed her Armash to the ground and screamed into the mic, “I’M INFECTED I’M INFECTED I—“

Surely no one else had to deal with a host so impossible as this one. Kaya muted the mic. She tried to flush the host systems of the drugs, but there were too many conflicting cascades already in motion. The body was dying. Surely the host had known she couldn’t survive this? That the Kaya-that-was-sibling would simply shed her skin when the time came?

Something struck her chest and sent her flying. Mura. She dropped her foot and was bringing her Armash up, Omori just a hesitation behind her.

The Paracitica swung toward her, his Armash already in line. The twins echoed him.

She heard Tomatsu curse over the line but wasn’t sure where he or Takata stood.

Her flight backward abruptly crashed into the imobile hand of a HORNET snatching the back of her neck. Kaya hung from Izumi’s mechanically enhanced grip and found her control of the power armor suddenly closed off. She was shunted away by a digital expert like a fly being swatted to one side. Izumi’s digital fingerprints proliferated through the suit at the speed of nano.

Kaya felt the first hint of concern. She still controlled the host, but the suit no longer answered to her.

“Kaya, your records tell quite a story. You have been busy…”

Very well. It was early to evacuate, but she was more than capable of surviving outside the host.

The host laughed. “Oh, shit, you’re in trouble now. You think the drugs were too much? Izumi is about to fry your ass.”

You will die! You will die I will make sure of it as I cut my way free!

“Oh, honey. Do you really think I expect to make it out of this alive? The EMP is about to fry my brain. What happens to you when the brain dies before you can get out I wonder?” Kaya laughed again, a coarse and ugly thing.

The sibling trashed inside the cage of its power armor. It began the process of untangling from the host. It cut through flesh, caused massive hemorrhaging that the suit attempted to staunch automatically.

The pain remained at a remove thanks to the more-drugs-than-blood coursing through Kaya’s veins. For a moment she was caught between the thing slicing through her muscle and bone and the power suit’s incredible measures to hold her together. But she felt the very moment the creature retracted its little mind-control wires from her head and attempted to exit via her spine. She spat a final message through her teeth as blood welled in her throat. “Scan Mura, Izumi. Scan for a seed.”

Izumi’s voice sounded distant and tinny. “Understood. Brace for impact.”

Her body convulsed. Kaya’s vision blurred like a technicolor acid trip. Her hearing did the same, sliding together like an orchestral crescendo.

It ending in a flash of electricity and acid. An overwhelming flood that Kaya couldn’t properly feel, she was too far gone.

“Die in a fire, asshole,” she whispered.

The HUD of her powersuit flickered.

And powered down for a final time.

#

Final Personnel Headcount:

#

Mining Team:

Lufroid Tassin – alive, escort

Tadeu Lopes – Unknown

Marie-Charlotte Serra – Unknown

Armand Roy – Deceased, core

Nils Trahan – Deceased, core

Nelson Medina – Deceased, spine

Davy Pinet – Deceased, EMP overdose

Andre Cruz – Deceased, tunnel 10

Vitor Cruz – Deceased, tunnel 10

Isadora Bosco – Deceased, break room

Marli Paz – Deceased, tunnel 9

Paola Batista – Deceased, barracks

Dietrich Chauvin – Deceased, barracks

Charly Denis – Deceased, barracks

Danilo Clamente – Deceased, barracks

#

Rescue Team:

Fabiane Sato – alive, escort

Neusa Melo – Deceased, core

Leticia Sa – Deceased, tunnel 1

Tereza Barreto – Deceased, barracks

Agathe Salgato – Deceased, barracks