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 the figure, other shapes moved inside the aircraft — but the figure didn't look back. Not a glance. Not a wave.

The moment the ramp dipped within two feet of the ground, the figure jumped. The Starcopter never touched down. It lurched forward and climbed away, engines howling, leaving the lone figure standing in the clearing. The figure unslung the assault rifle in one smooth motion and went into the treeline and crouched low, waiting for the normal jungle sounds to return. Then the figure started into the jungle. In the failing light, there was almost nothing left to see — just two green eyes, glowing in the darkness as the figure disappeared into the jungle.

The figure moved slowly once beneath the canopy, 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 except the ones the figure had been trained to hear anyway.

The figure stopped and raised a wrist. A tablet strapped there flickered to life just long enough to confirm the heading, then went dark again. A few hundred yards ahead should be the entrance.

In the gaps of the canopy, where the gray light finally reached through, something became clear that the shadows had hidden until now.

The figure was female.

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 occasionally, distant and low, the roar of a beast she didn't have a name for. She didn't flinch at any of it. Her focus never left the ground ahead. She navigated through the thick, unforgiving jungle.

She finally reached the tunnel entrance. It 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 yet. She looked like a human girl, Asian features streaked with sweat and camouflage paint. Green and black stripes forming a tiger stripe pattern across her face. Those glowing green eyes were what betrayed the truth. She wasn't human, at least not totally. She was a hybrid. Her DNA had been combined with that of an alien. The alien's essence had melded with hers. This gave her an alien symbiote that formed a partnership with her. The brighter her eyes glowed, the more control her symbiote had. Giving her extra abilities that a normal human wouldn't have. All the operators in Nova Group were hybrids. Gripping a rifle built for hands larger than 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 a soft green hue, bright enough to see clearly. 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 mission. 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 trigger 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. The tunnel seemed to go on forever.

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 her knife and pulled it out of its sheath all 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. 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!"

She sheathed the knife, raised her rifle, and kept walking. Following the tunnel for another three hundred yards.

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 and started forward, eyes moving, head moving, nose working. Trying to identify any smells like tobacco smoke, oil, chemical residue, even body odor. Something that would give her enemy away before she even saw them. She looked around. This looked like a science outpost, then she thought everything tied to the place was because of 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 or any other combatants the whole way. Nothing. At the top, another sign: CONTROL ROOM — LEVEL 7. She checked the level marker beside her. LEVEL 2.

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 headless 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 drag marks. Thick black fluid streaked across the floor where something had been dragged away. Whatever it was, it didn't bleed red... but it bled.

At least it bleeds, she thought. I can work with that.

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. As she kept moving forward she saw less and less bodies. Then none at all. Whatever they were fighting didn't let the mercs get any farther.

She kept moving until the hallway came into a large open space. On the right, two doors with a huge window in between them. The hall continued on past the doors. Across from the window, on the left side of the hall, was a set of double doors. A sign over the window said CONTROL ROOM. She slowly went to the window. She looked through it. She could see a large computer console and assorted electronic equipment. Both doors opened into the Control Room. She tried the first door to the right of the window: locked. Then to the second door: 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, I can do this. I'm not going to let a stupid lock beat me. She 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.

Groups of mercenaries went in. None came back out.
Kona just went in alone.

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