The Outpost

The jungle stretched for thousands of miles, thicker and wilder than anything Earth had ever grown — the tangled, ancient green of a world at the farthest edge of settled space, in the most desolate stretch of the galaxy. Where it ended, an ocean took over, its waves crashing hard against a shoreline that seemed to belong to no one.

A sound rolled in over the water first — distant, low, easy to mistake for thunder. It grew. A shape resolved out of the haze above the waves: a Starcopter, flying only a few feet above the surface, fast and low. As it reached the shore, the letters on its hull came into focus. NOVA GROUP.

It rose sharply at the treeline, clearing the canopy, and pushed inland. Ahead, an extinct volcano loomed over the jungle, its slopes scarred and gray. Built into the wall of it, half-swallowed by rock and shadow, sat a large outpost — barely visible even from the air.

The Starcopter slowed near a clearing and spun through a tight one-eighty, until its open ramp faced the distant outpost. A single figure stood on that ramp, one hand resting on the hydraulic strut that worked the door. Behind her, other shapes moved inside the aircraft — but she didn't look back at them. Not a glance. Not a wave.

The moment the ramp dipped within a foot of the ground, she jumped.

The Starcopter never touched down. It lurched forward and climbed away, engines howling, leaving her alone in the clearing. She unslung the assault rifle from her back and started for the trees. In the failing light, there was almost nothing left to see of her at all — just two eyes, glowing green, moving into the dark.

She walked slowly once she reached the jungle, pausing every few steps to listen, to watch, to taste the air for anything that didn't belong. Rain began to fall — light at first, then harder, hissing against the broad leaves overhead until it swallowed every sound but the ones she'd been trained to hear anyway.

She stopped. Raised her wrist. A tablet strapped there flickered to life just long enough to confirm her heading, then went dark again.

In the gaps of the canopy, where the gray light reached her, something became clear that the shadows had hidden until now: she was small. Not short — slender, feminine, built for speed rather than size. But beneath the low profile of her ballistic helmet, nothing of her face showed. Only those two eyes, glowing a soft, unnatural green.

She made no sound. The jungle did that for her — birds shrieking somewhere above, insects droning in waves, and once, distant and low, the roar of something she didn't have a name for. She didn't flinch at any of it. Her focus never left the ground ahead.

Then the tunnel opened before her, a jagged black mouth cut into the volcanic rock. Just before she reached it, she crossed one last gap in the canopy — a final patch of open sky before the dark would swallow her whole.

The light found her face.

She wasn't even a teenager. A human girl, Asian features streaked with sweat and camouflage paint, gripping a rifle built for hands twice the size of hers. It didn't seem to slow her down. For a moment, something almost childlike crossed her face — a small, considering look, followed by a shrug, the kind of shrug a kid gives when told to take out the trash. Then it was gone, replaced by something colder. Focused.

She raised the rifle, sighted down the red dot, and stepped into the tunnel.

She lowered the HADAR goggles built into her helmet. The passage lit up instantly, as if someone had thrown a switch — every rock, every root, every jagged wall thrown into stark, colorless clarity. It didn't touch the dread of the place. It only meant nothing would get close enough to surprise her, and that she wouldn't trip over the rubble underfoot.

The Commander's voice surfaced in her memory, steady and clipped, the way it always was before a solo run. *Scanners didn't pick up any movement other than wildlife. Expect contact inside. A few merc groups have tried for the data before you. None of them came out. Be on your toes. Head on a swivel, Kona.*

He always found a way to sound like he believed in her, even when the words themselves were just a warning. She understood that was simply his way. She respected it.

No one else had said a word to her.

She thought about the mercenaries who'd come before her and failed. A small, private thought slipped in before she could stop it — she glanced playfully left, then right, as if checking for something. *Where's my group?* She let out a soft giggle and kept walking.

Insects the size of her hand and small, quick lizards darted from their hiding spots as she passed, startled by her footsteps. It was only her discipline — trigger finger resting flat along the guard, never drifting to the well — that kept her from putting a round into every twitch of movement in the dark. She stepped carefully around the webs strung across the passage, thick as rope, each one holding something large and patient at its center.

Then she stopped.

Her head turned, slow, deliberate, her right eye straining toward something the goggles hadn't flagged. A wave of danger rolled through her mind — not a sound, not a word, just a feeling, absolute and immediate. *On your right.*

She moved before she'd finished processing it. Her right hand left the rifle and found the knife at her vest in the same motion, drawn and ready before conscious thought caught up. She bladed her body to the side.

That was when she saw it — a creature the size of a large dog, hanging from a crevice in the rock, brown hide banded in black, amber eyes narrowed with hunger, a mouth full of needle teeth. Something between an alligator and a scorpion, its tail curled and ready to strike.

The tail shot toward her throat.

She shifted her weight, feet planted, and let her core carry her just far enough that the strike found empty air where her neck had been a half-second before. Her left arm came up, rifle still in hand, driving the stock into the creature's tail and pinning it to the wall mid-strike. Her right hand buried the knife in its neck.

It screamed — a high, furious sound that filled the tunnel — and she twisted the blade again, and again, until the sound stopped and the body went still in her grip. She let it drop.

She looked down at it for a moment, and muttered, almost offended, "*Jerk.*"

Then she sheathed the knife, raised her rifle, and kept walking.

Kona turned a corner, and a heavy metal door swung into view. She checked her wrist tablet — the front face of the volcano, right where the intel had said it would be. Her hand went to her digital lock-pick out of habit, then stopped.

The lock was already gone. Blown clean off.

*This must be how the mercs got in.* She whispered, "So much for stealth, guys," and shook her head, almost disappointed in them.

She eased the door open — heavy, but she muscled it — and slipped inside. It shut behind her on its own, slow and final. Darkness swallowed the space whole. No lights, no hum of power anywhere — the outpost was dead, every system down. Only the green wash of her HADAR goggles gave the place any shape at all. She dropped into a crouch and went still, rifle up, letting the darkness settle around her while she read it with everything she had: eyes, ears, the taste of the air on the back of her tongue. Anything that might tell her what had happened to the groups who never came back out.

*How many groups were there, even?* The Commander had never said. She let the thought go and returned to the silence.

Ten minutes. That was the standard — long enough that if the door's noise had drawn attention, whoever came to investigate would walk into her, not the other way around. Ten minutes of nothing. No footsteps. No voices.

She'd cleared plenty of abandoned outposts, young as she was. This one felt different. It felt *dead* — not empty-dead, but the other kind. The smell reached her before she could place it: that particular rot she'd never once managed to forget, no matter how many times she told herself she had.

Somewhere in here, there were bodies.

She rose into a low crouch and started forward, eyes moving, head moving, nose working through the layers — smoke, oil, chemical residue, the sour edge of unwashed bodies that always announced someone before she ever saw them. This looked like a science outpost, maybe tied to the volcano itself. She followed the wall signage the way newly stationed personnel would have, until one pointed her toward the Control Room.

It led to a stairwell. She climbed it slowly, step by step, watching for the mercs the whole way. Nothing. At the top, another sign: *CONTROL ROOM — LEVEL 7.* She checked the level marker beside her. Two.

She shook her head and kept climbing.

By the time she reached the seventh level, the tight, cramped architecture of the lower floors had opened into something wider, more industrial. She found the sign for the Control Room and started toward it — and stopped dead the moment she turned the second corner.

Her face twisted in disgust, like she'd taken a blow to the nose.

Ten bodies lay scattered across what had once been a conference space — tables, chairs, all of it shoved aside or overturned. The bodies weren't shot. They weren't stabbed. They were *torn apart*, blood dried dark and thick across the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. The smell of it hit her in waves.

She scanned the room — hundreds of spent casings glittering under the emergency lighting, bullet holes chewed into every surface, fired in every direction imaginable. But there was nothing to explain what they'd been shooting *at*. No target. No second set of bodies. Just blood, and whatever had bled it hadn't been left behind.

*At least it bleeds,* she thought. *That's something.*

She moved on. Every turn brought more of the same — different uniforms, different mercenary crews, all of them ended the same way. Low in her chest, something stirred and rose into a soft, throaty growl, not entirely her own. Her symbiote, readying itself, coiled and waiting to push her past every limit her body had if it came to that. It could get loud once the fighting started.

She kept moving until the hallway opened onto a room marked CONTROL ROOM, a second door mirroring it across the corridor, a wide observation window set between them. No more bodies here — whatever had torn through the others hadn't made it this far. She didn't know why. She didn't have time to wonder.

The first door: locked. The second: locked. She pulled her digital lock-pick and got to work. This one fought her — heavily encrypted, more resistant than anything she'd cracked before. She told herself her mind worked like a machine and kept at it, patient, until the light finally flared green and the lock gave way with a soft click.

She checked the frame for traps before she opened it — anyone fleeing a room this secure might leave something behind for whoever came looking. Nothing. She stepped inside.

The central computer system sat waiting, dark and silent along with everything else — the whole outpost had been running on nothing since she'd arrived, which was the only reason she still had the HADAR goggles down at all.

She dropped to her knees and checked beneath the control desk. It didn't take long to find what she was after: a small panel set into the housing. She pried it open. Wires and breakers crowded the space inside, a tangle she sorted through with quick, practiced fingers until she found the one marked for auxiliary power.

She flipped it.

The Control Room surged to life around her — screens flaring, panel lights blinking on in rows, the low hum of machinery waking up after however long it had sat dead. She reached up and flipped off her goggles. She didn't need them anymore, not in here.

She got to work.

That was when she heard the first sound — a dull, heavy thud, like a fist or a door slamming somewhere behind her. She froze, scanned the room. Nothing there. She went back to the terminal.

Her fingers moved fast, tearing through layer after layer of encryption while more sounds crept in around her — closer now, though still nothing she could see. She didn't let it slow her down.

*There.* She found it.

*Holy cow.* The clearance levels alone told her this was something significant — no wonder the outpost had been buried under this much security. Scientific files, all of it. They'd been experimenting on something pulled from near the volcano's core — crystals, or rocks, she wasn't sure which. She'd been right to expect exactly this.

Then the emergency logs caught her eye. She skimmed a handful — something had gotten *into* the outpost. Something that had come up from inside the volcano itself. She didn't have time to read further.

She pulled the data pad from her vest and pressed it into the port.

"Put the data pad thingy, into the output port thingy," she murmured to herself, "and then Kona gets to go home. I sure hope they saved some rations. I'm starving."

The noises kept coming — closer now, unmistakable. Banging. Something heavy toppling over. Metal shrieking against metal.

She glanced at the transfer meter. *2%.*

"Damn it," she muttered. "Will you go *faster*, please?"

Her mind went, unwillingly, back to the bodies — the way every one of them had lost their heads, torn away like nothing at all. She didn't want any part of that. She just wanted the data, a clean exit back the way she came, and the ship waiting to pull her out the second she called.

That thought ended the moment she saw it.

Kona looked through the wide glass window of the Control Room. It opened onto a larger space beyond — two hallways feeding in from either side, each ending at a door into the room she stood in. She'd come in through the one that was now on her left. Between the two hallways, facing her window dead-on, sat a set of heavy double doors. She had no idea what was behind them.

She glanced up, and her heart missed a beat.

A figure stood in the hallway on her right. A lab coat hung off it, filthy, threadbare, the fabric gone gray-brown with age — something that had once belonged to a scientist, twenty years ago, and had never been changed since. But the head wasn't a head — not anymore. Something was wrapped around it, flat and wide, like the manta rays she'd seen in old picture books of Earth, a place she'd never been. A single black eye sat where a nose should have been. What skin she could see, at the neck and the backs of the hands, was a bloodless gray-white, the color of something that had died a long time ago and never been allowed to finish rotting. A smell reached her through the open door — chemical, sweetish, wrong, nothing like decay should smell. And from the palms of its hands, two ivory-colored blades extended, over a foot long each, double-edged, serrated enough to shred flesh on contact.

The shock lasted a second. Maybe less.

Her training took over before her mind fully caught up. The rifle came to her shoulder in one fluid motion, red dot settling on the thing's head, and she put two rounds through it. The head burst apart. It dropped.

Another one stood behind it, already moving. She dropped that one too.

She checked the Data Pad. *12%.* Her eyes flickered with disappointment.

Back to the scope. Another creature closing fast — this one running. She dropped it, then saw more behind it, and didn't wait to count how many. She vaulted the console and sprinted for the door, firing twice more on the way, the last shot close enough that the thing could have reached out and touched her. She slammed the door shut a half-second ahead of the next one and threw her whole weight against it while she worked the lock. The creature outside hit the door like a truck. She held.

The lock flashed green, then red. Secured.

She stepped back, chest heaving, and that was when she saw the hallway beyond the window — more of them, pouring out now, streaming toward the door she'd just sealed. She turned to check the other hallway, the one she'd come in from.

More were coming through that one too. Running. Already at the door, already hammering against it.

She checked the transfer meter. *21%.*

She swore under her breath. A full data dump — that was what was killing her. She should have pulled only the classified files, the ones her employer actually wanted, and left the rest. She'd thought she had time to dig through everything, to understand what had happened here. That decision was costing her now, and there was no undoing it. *27%.* Agonizingly slow.

She dropped behind the console, scanning for another way out. Nothing. The vents were too small — even for her.

She started box breathing, forcing her pulse down, her mind working the problem the only way she knew how.

That was when the double doors blew open.

Creatures flooded through, splitting toward both side doors, throwing themselves against the frames in waves. The door on her left began to buckle, its frame bending inward under the weight. These doors were built strong — but even strong things had limits, and the limits were being tested now with everything the swarm had.

She was over the console again without thinking, scanning the room. Data cabinets. Circuit housings. She slung her rifle and started dragging them into place, shoving the first in front of the door, then the second, then the third — every muscle in her small frame screaming, held together only by whatever her symbiote was pouring into her to make a twelve-year-old body do what it was doing. She growled through gritted teeth with every shove, head tipped back, the sound tearing out of her before she could stop it.

The third cabinet landed just as the door frame gave way behind it and the door began creeping inward.

She grabbed two metal supply carts, swept their contents to the floor with one arm, and wedged them both between the last cabinet and the console — muscling the second one into place with everything she had left. *That should hold,* she thought. *I hope.*

The meter read *47%.* Not even halfway.

The other door's frame was already shaking, already starting to bend. She didn't hesitate. "Here we go again," she murmured, and ran for it — dragging cabinets, growling through the effort, her symbiote burning through her limits a second time. Three cabinets went up against the door. She looked around for a cart to close the last gap and found only one — she'd used the rest already. It wasn't enough on its own. She looked for anything else to fill the space, found nothing, and then the frame gave out entirely.

She climbed onto the console, sat, and planted both feet against the cart, bracing herself with her legs where the second cart should have gone, pushing with everything she had left to hold the line.

Behind her, the other door started making a new sound — hacking, rhythmic, metal on metal. She checked the meter. *61%.* Better. Maybe the largest files were already through, and what was left would move faster.

That was when the blades appeared — cutting through the first cabinet, widening the gap with each strike. Hands followed. She unslung her rifle without moving her feet from the cabinets and started firing at every hand that pushed through.

*73%.* Two more shots. *81%.* It was speeding up. *Good.*

The first cabinet collapsed. Arms shoved through the wreckage of the second. *89%.* Then the door she was bracing with her own legs started to give too — blades, hands, forearms tearing through the gap while the creatures hacked and clawed from the other side. *95%.*

A thought surfaced, unwelcome: *what happens at 100%?*

She didn't get to finish it. The Data Pad screamed a single loud beep. The meter flashed green. *100%.*

She looked out the window, and an idea dropped into her head fully formed — her symbiote's, maybe, she didn't know and didn't care. There was no time to think it through. She was already moving.

She jumped off the console, crossed to the Data Pad, yanked it free, and shoved it into a vest pocket in one motion. She was back on the console when the cabinets in front of one door finally gave out completely, creatures surging through the wreckage. She stood and fired into them — but there were too many, and the math wasn't in her favor. Fifty rounds in the magazine. A reload would take longer than she had.

The other side collapsed a heartbeat later. Creatures poured through both breaches now.

She emptied the magazine and looked out the window one more time. Every creature in the room was converging on the two side doors. The double doors at the center — the ones they'd already burst through — stood empty. Clear.

She slung the rifle, dropped into a crouch at the edge of the console, and understood, all at once, what she was looking at: this was a Control Room. Not a science lab. Labs were built so nothing could break their windows. This wasn't a lab. This glass was tempered — designed to shatter into harmless pieces, not knives.

She sprang.

She curled into the jump, arms and forearms shielding her face and head, angling her right shoulder to take the impact first. The window exploded around her in a shower of glinting fragments, the sound of it sharp enough that even the creatures still fighting to get through the doors flinched. She sailed nearly halfway across the outer room, hit the floor in a roll that carried her straight back up onto her feet, and was already running before her body had finished catching up with what it had just done.

She had no idea what waited beyond the double doors. It didn't matter. She sprinted for them anyway, thin trickles of blood tracking down her exposed hands — nothing compared to what that glass would have done if it hadn't been built to fail safely.

Kona unslung the rifle from her back as she ran, dropping the empty magazine in the same motion. A fresh one came out of her chest rig, seated home, bolt released — fifty more rounds, ready to fire, all without missing a step. She burst through the double doors mid-stride.

They opened into a massive auditorium — built, it looked like, for large scientific conferences. She couldn't imagine anyone holding one out here, this far into the rim, but it didn't matter now. She had the data. All that mattered was finding a way out.

She started around the perimeter of the room, and that's when she heard it behind her — a wave of sound, chaotic and close. She glanced back. A horde was pouring through the double doors she'd just come through.

She turned for a door marked EXIT — and it burst open before she reached it, more creatures streaming through from the other side.

They were in front of her now. And behind her.

She didn't hesitate. She vaulted the rail into the auditorium seating below — an eight-foot drop, taken without a stumble — and looked up to see creatures pouring down both entrances into the room. Her finger twitched toward the trigger. *Save the ammo,* she told herself instead, and started leaping over the folding chairs, row after row rising higher toward the back so everyone would've had a clear view of the stage. She dropped down a few rows until she hit an aisle and sprinted for it.

She hit the stage at a full run and leapt up onto it — straight into the podium set up front and center. She'd been too busy checking behind her for creatures to see it coming. The podium shattered under the impact, sending her sprawling across the stage floor. A jagged piece of broken wood caught her across the face on the way down, snapping something in her nose. Blood started immediately.

She was back on her feet before the pain fully registered, spinning to check behind her. The creatures had reached the stage and were already climbing.

She raised the rifle and flicked the selector from semi to full auto, laying down short bursts into center mass, dropping as many as she could as fast as she could. Blood ran freely from her nose now, soaking into her vest, tracking down into her shirt. *How does a nosebleed bleed like this?* She didn't have time to answer her own question. For every creature she put down, another climbed up to take its place, and she kept backing away as she fired, glancing over her shoulder to make sure nothing had gotten behind her. Clear, for now.

She ran for the back wall of the stage, where a door waited — and it burst open the second she reached it, more creatures pouring through.

"You've got to be *kidding* me!" she shouted, wheeling around, slamming a fresh magazine home, and opening fire on the nearest of them. She kept trying to wipe the blood away with her sleeve between bursts. It wasn't working.

She looked around, and an idea dropped into her head — probably her symbiote's, she didn't stop to check. Ropes hung near the back wall, the kind used to fly props and curtains. A table sat nearby. She emptied her magazine, slung the rifle across her back, and ran for it — jumping onto the table, then leaping for the nearest rope, and climbing.

Below her, creatures swarmed the space she'd just vacated, knocking the table over, blood dripping down onto them like rain from where she hung above. They stood there, clustered together, waving their bladed arms up at her.

She climbed until she reached a metal beam running across the ceiling and spotted what she needed — a large vent set into the wall, just below where the beam ended. She started across the beam, hand over hand, and her grip immediately began slipping — blood from her nose slicking her palms. She tried holding on with one hand while wiping the other on her vest. It made things worse.

*How does a nosebleed hurt worse than a gunshot wound?* She kept moving anyway, slow and careful, while beneath her the creatures filled the floor, arms raised, blades waving, letting out high-pitched squeals and sharp popping sounds. She tuned it all out. Every ounce of focus went into the next handhold.

She reached the wall, wrapped both arms tight around the beam, and let her legs drop, driving her boots into the vent cover. A few kicks. It didn't budge. Then she felt it — her symbiote, unwilling to accept that. Power surged into her legs, and she started pounding the cover in earnest, watching it buckle and dent with every strike. One final kick sent it flying off the wall entirely, clattering down onto the heads of the creatures below.

She let out a short laugh, then thought, almost annoyed: *I could really use some help with this nosebleed.*

She squeezed herself into the vent, sat, and finally caught her breath. Then she pulled a tissue from one of her pockets and shoved it up her right nostril.

She looked out through the vent opening and felt her stomach drop. It wasn't just that there were more creatures beneath her than she could count — it was that the ones she'd already shot in the chest were getting back up, one by one, rejoining the horde like nothing had happened.

She stared, disbelieving, and then it clicked. The ones in the Control Room — all headshots. These ones, down here, she'd tried to drop with volume fire to the chest. That was the difference. Headshots only. That was the only thing that actually killed them.

Not an easy thing to manage when everything was moving — her included.

*Just great,* she thought, and switched back to semi-auto.

She turned to face the inside of the vent — a tight crawl, barely wide enough for her frame — and started forward, rifle out in front of her. Whatever she'd done at that breaker panel must have restored power to the whole level; she could see stray light bleeding in from somewhere ahead. The vents themselves stayed pitch black, though, so she dropped her HADAR goggles and moved slow, watching, listening. *Find a spot to rest,* she told herself. *Come up with a plan.* A few vent covers passed beneath her, too small to use. Finally, after what felt like a hundred feet of crawling, she saw real light ahead and flipped the goggles up.

She eased toward the cover and looked down through the slats. An office. She scanned what she could see of it — nothing unusual, and better yet, no creatures. She worked the cover open quietly against its spring hinges and lowered herself through, feet finding a desk below before she let the rest of her weight drop. The cover snapped shut behind her the moment she cleared it.

She climbed off the desk and took stock. A nice office — big, one door out, a desk and chair, a loveseat, cabinets stacked with books and files, a large wall monitor, even a small bar she had no use for. She crossed to the door, listened, heard nothing, and eased it open. Empty hallway both directions, just more doors lining the walls. She shut it again and threw the lock, then dropped onto the loveseat and let out a long breath.

That was when she spotted the small medical cabinet on the wall. She got up, opened it, and found basic supplies — a bag of cotton balls, which she pocketed most of, and a bottle of saline mist. She pulled the blood-soaked tissue from her nose, which immediately started bleeding again, soaked a fresh cotton ball in the saline, and pushed it up her nostril, deep enough that it didn't show.

*Damn. When is this going to stop.*

She checked herself in the small mirror inside the cabinet door and managed a smile. "Looks better now," she said out loud, the words coming out thick and nasal, and almost laughed at how ridiculous she sounded.

She remembered this trick from Helena — cotton and saline, for nose wounds specifically. Helena was the group's medic, about ten years older than Kona, and closer to her than any of the other hybrids. Helena knew about Kona's photographic memory and used to walk her through treatment for every kind of wound, just in case. Her symbiote was an empath — she could feel what people were feeling, find injuries just by reading the color of someone's aura. She always made Kona feel better, just by holding her.

Not on this mission, though. Helena had been ordered to stay on the ship. No medics assigned to the Starcopter this time. *Didn't matter anyway,* Kona thought. *It was only ever going to be me down here.*

Her head throbbed. Her nose wouldn't quit. Her left eye had started to swell, probably from the same piece of wood that broke her nose. And she still didn't have a plan to get out. She wished, badly, that Helena were here.

She found a small bottle of pain relievers in the cabinet, then wandered to a mini fridge beside the desk. Opened it. *Bingo.* Two bottles of water. She downed two pills with one, drained the bottle, and pocketed the second for later. The water was warm — power had only just come back — but she didn't care enough to wait.

She sat back on the loveseat, rifle across her lap, just in case, and let herself rest for a minute. Looking down at the weapon, she thought, not for the first time, how comically large it was for her frame. *Why don't they let me carry one of the lighter carbines.* She shrugged and patted the rifle affectionately. *As long as you keep going pew-pew, big guy, you're okay with me.*

After a few minutes, she noticed a green LED glowing on the desk computer. She got up, sat in the chair, and touched the keyboard. The screen woke up. Within a minute or two she was into the facility's intranet, scanning for anything useful.

Files stretched back to the outpost's founding — volcanologists, the first scientists on-site. Most of it was dry and technical; she skimmed past it fast, until messages about crystals discovered near the core caught her eye. She sped through the interesting parts. This wasn't an extinct volcano, apparently — it was a supervolcano, one of the most powerful ever recorded in the settled systems. That explained why they'd come all this way.

*I wonder if it's actually safe to be here. Killed by creatures, or blown up in a volcanic eruption.* She kept reading. *Oh, good — it's not due for another ten thousand years.* That estimate was twenty years old. *Okay. Still good, then.*

The crystals harnessed the volcano's own energy — enough, according to the files, to power entire planets. No wonder everyone wanted them. Everything she'd already pulled onto the Data Pad had come off a government-restricted system; this was the civilian scientist intranet, lower clearance, less classified — but still enough to paint a picture.

The government had used the military to take over the outpost, forcing the miners and scientists to keep working under their control. The miners, digging for more crystals, had found something else down there — alien creatures that wrapped around a person's head. *Hmm. Wonder where I've seen that before.* They'd brought the infected miners up for treatment, and everything had fallen apart from there. An evacuation order went out. Only the highest-ranking officials tried to get off-world, on the single ship stationed there, holding everyone else back at gunpoint. Didn't matter — the creatures had already gotten aboard. The ship was self-destructed. A major had refused every request to send help. His statement, verbatim: *we are all dead, leave it at that.*

Hundreds of these things, at minimum. Whatever else was on the Data Pad was above her clearance to understand. She guessed people had been coming back for the crystals ever since — unlimited power tended to have that effect on people. None of them had ever made it out.

*And here I am.*

She gave a small, tired smile, and then, as she pulled up a facility map, something better — a real one.

She found her position and studied the layout around it. The tunnel she'd entered through was an escape route, built for high-ranking officials in case a rival government ever tried to seize the outpost. It came out near the middle of the facility's left side. The clearing where she'd been dropped was a small landing pad for exactly that kind of emergency extraction. Her route since then — through the Control Room, the auditorium, the vent crawl — had taken her deeper into the facility, into the part built directly into the volcano itself.

She needed to reverse course. Head for the front.

The hallway outside this office ran nearly the whole way there. This was the top level — the Control Room, the auditorium, even a formal dining hall and officers' mess, clearly built for people with rank. Invite-only, by the look of it. Even this office belonged to one of the head scientists.

She memorized the map, shut the computer down, grabbed her rifle, and returned to the door. Checked both directions again. Right led toward the front. She started walking.

*Playtime's over. Back to work.*

She brought the rifle up, red dot settled, and moved down the hall — and that's when she started hearing sounds coming from vents set high on the walls, too small for a creature to fit through. She stopped, listening, trying to place it.

A vent she'd just passed popped open. Something flopped out and hit the floor — a creature with no host, and without one, it looked exactly like the manta rays from those old picture books. Furious. It came at her, moving low and fast, snake-like.

She shot it.

*Why did I do that,* she thought, a half-second too late. Squeals and popping sounds erupted from every hallway around her, near and far. She looked down at the knife on her vest and shook her head. *Now everyone knows exactly where I am. Great work.*

She picked up her pace. She could smell them before she saw them — that same chemical, sweetish wrongness — and within moments they were pouring out of the side hallways ahead. She started firing as they appeared. Headshots only. More vents popped open around her, dropping hostless creatures into her path. She kept pushing forward, shooting everything in front of her.

At the intersections, it turned physical. She'd drop the ones she could see coming, then have to shove, kick, and club the ones that came in too close for the rifle — smashing skulls with the stock when there wasn't time to aim. The hostless ones started dropping on her from above, waiting for her to pass underneath before letting go; she had to tear them off before they could wrap around her head, shooting them the second they hit the floor.

For the first time on any mission, she felt like she might not survive this one.

That was when she felt it change inside her. Her symbiote took full control — something it almost never did, but this was as close to life-or-death as it got. Her eyes flared bright, glowing green. She dropped an empty magazine, slammed in a fresh one, gripped the rifle in her right hand, and drew her knife with her left. Both weapons up, she let out a roar that tore through the hallway and charged straight at the nearest cluster of creatures.

Heads burst apart as she closed the distance. Spent brass rang off the walls. Creatures dropped from the vents around her — she stabbed some, dodged others, moving like something choreographed rather than fought. She launched off the walls, using them as springboards, over and through the creatures still standing, knife finding throats and skulls, rifle stock crushing what the knife missed, boots kicking bodies down as she passed. It wasn't clean — she took slashes and stab wounds with every few steps, the blades finding gaps she couldn't cover — but she didn't stop, didn't slow, moving with a speed and precision that looked, for a few seconds, like something beautiful. Deadly, but beautiful. Time seemed to bend around her.

She reached the end of the hall — left was the only way now — and it delivered her exactly where she needed to be: the front of the outpost. Full of creatures, of course, so the dance continued. She burned through magazines, dropping each one and reloading one-handed — knife pinned between her ring and pinky finger against her palm, three fingers free to pull and seat a new mag — all without breaking stride.

Last magazine. She charged the remaining distance, jumping, bouncing, cutting a path forward, taking more wounds with every step and feeling none of it — her symbiote made sure of that. She could see the door ahead. She prayed it wasn't locked; there was no time left for the digital pick.

A few feet out, she heard the sound she'd been dreading — the bolt locking back on an empty rifle. No more ammo. She dropped the magazine, gripped the rifle like a club, and used its length to hold the last of the creatures back with one hand while she tried the door handle with the other.

It opened.

She stumbled through into a room dominated by a floor-to-ceiling window, the biggest she'd ever seen. The rain had stopped sometime while she was inside, and the sun was blazing through the glass, bright and clean. She turned to face whatever was coming through the door behind her — and stopped.

The two creatures pushing into the room recoiled, covering their single eyes, shrieking in pain. They scrambled back into the ones behind them, and within seconds the entire mass was retreating down the hallway, squealing and popping as it went.

Kona walked to the door, shut it, and locked it. Then she turned to actually look at the room she'd landed in — some kind of executive lounge, plush furniture, artwork on every wall. Those windows were extraordinary. And, she realized, the reason she was still alive. That, and the sunlight pouring through them.

*Cave dwellers,* she thought. The outpost's artificial lighting had never bothered them. But real sunlight — they hated it.

*Nice.*

She crossed to the window and looked out at the wreckage of the jungle beyond.

*Now. How am I getting out of here.*

Before Kona could start thinking about how to get off this rock, something caught her eye — a tall mirror mounted on the wall to her right. She walked over to it, leaned in close, and gently pulled the cotton ball from her nostril with two fingers.

It was soaked through with blood. But nothing new dripped after it.

She checked again, closer this time. Nothing.

She thrust the cotton ball into the air like a trophy. "*Yes!* No more bleeding!"

Then she stopped. Lowered her arm. Let the cotton ball fall to the floor. She took a few steps back from the mirror and just stood there, looking at herself.

Her face was a mess — blood, sweat, and camo paint, the once-crisp green and black stripes smeared into a single dark blur from all the times she'd wiped at her nose. Her left eye was darkening toward black, though thankfully it hadn't swollen shut. Her helmet had a crack running across the top, and both the HADAR goggles and the comms unit built into it were broken. She looked down at herself. Her chest rig hung on by threads — cut, torn, whole pouches ripped away entirely. She turned slowly, checking the sides and back, finding more damage the longer she looked. Slice marks everywhere. Broken tips of the creatures' blades still jutted from the fabric in a dozen places, snapped off mid-strike.

*They stabbed me. Over and over.* Only the plates had kept any of it from reaching her skin.

Her arms and legs told a different story — too many cuts to count, and a deep gash along the outside of her left thigh she hadn't even felt happen. She hadn't felt any of it. Not while her symbiote had been in control. But it had let go now, and she knew the pain was coming.

She pulled off what was left of the helmet and dropped it. Stripped away the pouches she didn't need, keeping only the essentials — the one holding the Data Pad, most importantly. She checked the tablet strapped to her wrist. Shattered. She peeled it off and let it fall too. Even one of her boots had a slash across it.

She looked at herself for a long moment.

She was just a child. By any standard the rest of civilization would use. Twelve years old. Tall for her age — five foot nine, though that was the symbiote's doing, not nature's — and her body had the shape of someone older. But her face gave it away completely. She looked like a kid playing army in her father's gear.

Except she'd never been a kid. And she wasn't playing.

Her fatigues hung dirty and torn. Blood soaked the front of her plate carrier from the nosebleed. Her arms and legs, striped with slash marks, still bled steadily enough to soak her sleeves and pant legs through.

She looked at her reflection and said, out loud, "Boy, I look like a mess."

The pain was arriving now in earnest. She scanned her wounds, picked the one that needed attention first, and dropped onto the nearest couch. She dug the med kit out of a remaining pouch — cotton balls, painkillers, and the saline bottle tumbling out with it — and got to work. Disinfectant spray on the thigh gash first. It burned. She ignored it. Healing paste next, then gauze, a bandage, and a wrap of adhesive tape to hold it all in place.

*I hope this holds,* she thought, studying it.

She swallowed two more painkillers and finished off the water bottle, setting the empty on the arm of the couch — no trash can in sight, apparently. She packed the med kit back into its pouch and lay back, resting for a few minutes.

Then it hit her.

"Darn," she muttered, jumping up, wincing as the movement lit up every wound at once. She ignored it and crossed to the front of the room. She'd chosen this room not for the view — though it was extraordinary — but because the map had shown a patio attached to the front. She found the door at the far end, down a short flight of steps, and pushed through it.

Sunlight hit her the moment she stepped outside. A breeze crossed the patio, carrying the smell of the jungle up to her, and she smiled without meaning to. Free of the outpost, if only for now. She needed open sky for a signal — her wrist tablet controlled the helmet's comms, and both were wrecked. That combination was the only way to reach the *Skycopter* directly, or the "Mothership," as the crew liked to call Nova Group's command ship, the *Super Nova*.

But she had a backup.

She pulled it from a pouch — an emergency locator beacon, shaped like an old Earth hockey puck. She set it on the concrete rail overlooking the jungle and activated it. A red light began pulsing. If she'd had direct comms, they'd have been here in minutes. This way, she just had to wait until they came close enough to pick up the signal. They were expecting her to call them in. She couldn't. This was the fallback, the last resort.

She waited nearly an hour, enjoying the sun, wanting badly to go home. Eventually she went back inside, telling herself she'd hear them the moment they arrived. She lay back on the couch and stared at the ceiling, the pain dulling under the meds.

*Let me just close my eyes for a minute.*

A loud crash jolted her upright. Pain tore through her whole body — the meds had worn off. She blinked into darkness, disoriented, only a few lights still on in the room. Outside the window: black. Nothing but the red pulse of the beacon, still flashing.

Then the noise came again, and she snapped fully awake. The hallway door was shaking, the frame starting to splinter.

She'd fallen asleep.

*Damn it, Kona. Real stupid.*

The door burst open before she finished the thought. Creatures poured through.

She grabbed the rifle off the table — beat up, broken in places, but it would have to do. She left the knife sheathed and gripped the rifle two-handed by the guard, swinging it like a club. The first creature that reached her took the stock across the head. Her symbiote surged back to life, dulling the pain as she fought, smashing and kicking her way toward the door, trying to bottleneck them into a single lane.

It wasn't working. Too many were pouring in at once.

She glanced outside — nothing. *When is the cavalry coming?* The outside door was an option, but reaching it would put every creature in the room right on top of her. Instead, she started backing toward the far side of the room, drawing them with her, throwing glances over her shoulder to keep from tripping. Her rifle was disintegrating with every swing — pieces flew off with each strike, the hand guard gone, then the stock, then the red dot scope. She was down to swinging the bare grip like an axe head, her forearms buzzing from the impact of every blow.

She noticed two things as her back neared the wall. First — they were coming at her almost single file, two or three deep from the door, even though the room was massive and they could have flooded her from every direction. Second — they clustered instead of spreading, packing in tight behind whoever was in front.

*They're not independent thinkers,* she realized. *They like to stay close.*

That was her opening.

She ran — as fast as her wounded, exhausted legs would carry her, with her symbiote pushing everything it had left into the effort. She vaulted chairs, tables, couches, anything in her path, and made it to the stairs, down them, and to the door, grabbing the knob and yanking it open. A glance back showed the creatures scrambling after her, tangled up in the furniture she'd just cleared.

She slammed the door and stepped back. A knob, not a lever — they'd need fingers to turn it, and those foot-long blades weren't built for that. She hoped.

Back out on the patio, she could hear them hitting the door and the massive window, piling up faster than she liked. At least the door was solid metal, and those beautiful windows had been built so nothing could break through — at least not quickly. That bought her time, but not forever.

She checked the rail. Looked down. A couple hundred feet, straight to the rocks below. Not an option. No other way off the patio at all.

"Better than being turned into one of them," she muttered, and sat on the rail beside the beacon, watching the door.

Two hours passed. She paced, gripping what was left of the rifle, and then saw exactly what she'd been dreading — the door frame beginning to shift, dust sifting down from around the hinges. She backed against the rail and stared, waiting.

Then she heard it.

She went still, listening hard, making sure it was real. A smile broke across her face. She turned toward the jungle just as the Skycopter cleared the treetops, flying low and fast.

She glanced once more at the failing door, then stepped up onto the rail. She grabbed the beacon, switched it off, and stowed it in its pouch. The Skycopter leveled off directly across from her, close enough that she could see the pilot. She smiled and waved. Slowly, the aircraft began its turn — a full one-eighty — the ramp lowering as it came around, until it was facing her dead-on.

She looked down at the ruined rifle in her hands. "Thank you, big guy. Rest in peace." She let it fall, watching it drop the five hundred feet to the rocks below, shattering somewhere she couldn't see.

She lined up her jump.

A figure stood at the edge of the ramp — one of the hybrids. Igor. She didn't know what his symbiote was, but whatever it had been, it must have been enormous — Igor stood six foot eight and pushed four hundred pounds, dressed in fatigue pants and a tank top, holding a minigun like it weighed nothing. A feed chute ran from the weapon to a massive backpack loaded with a few thousand rounds. His HADAR goggles were down against the dark, and the look on his face said he'd been hoping for exactly this kind of night.

Kona leapt for the ramp and landed on it, sitting down hard.

"She's on, let's go!" Igor barked into his comm, then went right back to scanning the patio with the minigun.

The Skycopter pulled away and started to climb. At around a hundred feet, Igor swore, pointing down at the patio. Kona followed his gaze — the door was finally giving way, creatures pouring out onto the space she'd just left.

"Of *course*," Igor said, disgusted. "Now they break through. I could've had so much fun." He shrugged, disappointed, and stepped back into the ship.

Kona looked over the edge of the ramp one more time, watching the creatures spill out into the open air with nothing left to reach. Then she sat back, reached under her plate carrier, and pulled out a small stuffed dog.

She held it up, looked it in the eyes, and rubbed her nose gently against its.

"Buddy," she said, "we're going home."

She pulled it against her cheek and held it there, a wide, easy smile spreading across her face — the first real one all night. The ramp began to close. Kona stood, still holding the dog tight against her, and walked into the Skycopter.