The hive did not release prey easily.
It tightened around it.
Kaerin felt it the moment the formation broke. Pressure shifted through the corridor walls. The resonance in his bones changed pitch. The insects were no longer reacting. They were directing.
"Course blocked," Kinsley said through clenched teeth. His hand pressed hard against his abdomen, fingers slick despite the compression wrap Verrik had bound tight minutes earlier. "Forward path collapsed."
"Confirmed," Mantis added. His injured arm lay strapped across his chest, fingers twitching with nerve shock. "Squadron's attack vector sealed. We should double back; fly straight into them."
Kaerin's eyes stayed on the tactical display. Red spread across it in branching patterns. Living corridors rearranged themselves, closing like muscle. Weariness seeped in as he spoke,
"Nearest escape route?" he asked.
Silence followed. Then Verrik spoke, voice thin with strain. "Opposite direction. Deeper."
Kaerin inhaled once. Slow. Measured. They were alone with an injured teammate; they had to escape first, and their combined strength could guarantee that. It would not be the only time they'd been pushed to extremes, and it wouldn't be the last.
"On it."
The ship banked hard. Organic walls scraped the hull, leaving streaks of acidic residue that steamed on contact. Warning glyphs bloomed across the console.
The hive reacted instantly.
The first sonic pulse hit them like a physical blow. The deck warped. Kaerin's teeth clicked together. The air vibrated until his vision fractured at the edges. The queen had attacked.
Mantis gasped. Blood spilt from his nose, dark against pale skin.
Kinsley cried out once, sharp and involuntary, then slumped sideways. His vitals spiked and then plummeted.
Verrik and Kinsley winced.
"Kinsley's out," Verrik said. He braced himself against the wall as the ship lurched again. "Abdominal trauma worsening. Healing pod now, or he won't regenerate clean."
"And Mantis?" Kaerin asked.
"Arm damage will worsen if we delay, but he can pull through."
Kaerin did not answer. His hands moved across the controls with practised economy. The hive corridor narrowed, then split.
"There," Verrik said, referencing Kinsley's earlier instructions, before pain stole his focus. He moved to help with the ship steering and attack. "Maintenance breach. Old route. It's for waste expulsion."
Kaerin remembered. The star map overlaid itself in his mind, precise and unforgiving.
"Taking the opening," he answered.
The ship surged forward. The walls peeled away into darkness and suddenly there was no pressure at all.
Space swallowed them.
For half a second, Kaerin thought they had made it.
Then the swarm followed.
They poured out of the hive like a living tide. Small interceptors first, needle-shaped and fast. Then the larger carriers, tentacle rigs unfurling as they locked on.
"They're still coming," Verrik said. His voice cracked. He was shaking now, reaction setting in after the sonic strike. "We're not in the clear."
Kaerin swung the ship hard to port. A missile grazed the aft plating, tearing away shielding. Alarms screamed.
"Communications?" he snapped.
"Jammed," Verrik replied. "Everything. Long range, short range, emergency bands. The queen's interference is saturating the spectrum."
Kaerin tried anyway. He sent the signal blindly, fingers moving from memory rather than hope.
No response.
Another sonic wave slammed into them. The deck buckled. Kaerin felt it in his spine. A migraine hit him full force, he could only brush it off.
Kinsley convulsed once, then went still.
"Kinsley!" Verrik shouted.
Mantis groaned, head lolling. Blood ran freely now.
Kaerin gritted his teeth and pulled the ship into a dive. The insects followed, relentless.
"Opening ahead," Verrik said, breath hitching. "Probably used for launch. If we can clear it—"
The queen struck again.
The world went white.
The ship spun. Kaerin slammed against his restraints. Something cracked. The nav display shattered, sparks spraying across the console.
Then suddenly there was nothing in front of them but stars.
They had burst free.
But the damage was done.
"Course deviation critical," the ship intoned. "Navigation compromised."
Kaerin fought the controls, muscles burning. The insects did not relent. They swarmed the hull even in open space, clinging, cutting, drilling.
They were run to a corner. With an asteroid belt ahead and compromised navigation, they couldn't change the ship's gear or return to the main ship without tearing their vessel apart.
Kaerin scanned the belt. Rock and metal. Old debris. Dead orbits.
Beyond it, barely visible, a dull sphere hung against the void.
Recognition hit him with brutal clarity.
"Trash planet," he said.
Verrik looked at him sharply. "You're sure?"
"Yes."
"You remember it?"
"I memorised the star map," Kaerin replied. His tone left no room for doubt. "Atmosphere is thin but breathable. No dominant lifeforms. No settlements."
"Or no survivors," Verrik said.
Kaerin did not answer. They needed a place to land soon, Kaerin thought; the ship couldn't continue to maintain the needed oxygen for four people instead of two while damaged.
The ship shuddered again. One engine cut out entirely.
"Kinsley's vitals are crashing," Verrik said. "We need more oxygen and the healing pod."
Kaerin made the decision.
"Taking us down."
At least then they'd have a chance at survival.
The insects screamed as the ship angled toward the planet. They pursued without hesitation.
Kaerin fired into the swarm. One interceptor ruptured, then another. It barely slowed them.
They hit the atmosphere hard.
The ship screamed as friction tore at its hull. Fire licked across the canopy. Gravity slammed Kaerin into his seat.
The insects followed them through the firestorm.
Kaerin locked the ship into autopilot and tore free of his restraints. He grabbed the gun from the rack and opened the side hatch enough to fire. The recoil rattled his bones.
It was not enough.
The ship veered sharply. Something exploded near the aft. Verrik was thrown against the wall. Mantis went limp, blood pooling beneath him.
They hit the ground with a violence that snapped breath from Kaerin's lungs.
Metal screamed. Stone shattered. Then silence fell like a held breath.
The ship lay broken in the dust.
Kaerin pushed himself up. Pain flared, then dulled. He checked his crew fast.
Kinsley was unconscious but breathing. Mantis barely stirred. Verrik knelt beside them, hands shaking faintly as his system struggled to compensate after the queen's assault.
"I'll draw them off," Kaerin said.
Verrik looked up sharply. "Alone?"
" It's better this way, fix the emergency signal," Kaerin said, then added, " And look after them."
He sealed his suit and opened the hatch.
Cold air hit him. The sky hung low and pale. Debris stretched to the horizon.
The atmosphere was dusty and dry. They had landed on a plateau, it seemed. With his enhanced vision, he could see further than any normal zerg. And all he saw was a vast, endless wasteland of grey sand and trash. Such a planet yielded no fruit; it could only be used to throw the non-degradable waste of the galaxy.
Yet through it all, something else pressed against his awareness.
A presence.
Not hostile. Not curious.
Watching.
He felt it the moment his back was turned. A steady awareness that did not shift or retreat.
Odd.
The sensation unsettled him more than the insects ever had. It reminded him of something old. Something buried. His father. The way his presence had filled a room without sound. The way Kaerin had known where he stood without looking. His eyes locked on a rock formation in the distance.
Wrong shape. Too smooth. Too deliberate.
The feeling came from there.
He narrowed his eyes, scanning. Nothing moved.
"Focus," he muttered.
The insects descended after finally noticing him. Kaerin met them head-on. He moved through them with lethal efficiency. Blades flashed. Shots landed true. Chitin split. Acid hissed against the sand. Kaerin cut down another insect and turned sharply. The insects surged again. Kaerin drove into them, faster now, angrier. Still, the awareness did not fade.
It stayed.
Watching.
Measuring.
And for the first time since the hive, Kaerin felt something close to unease.
Recognition.
The fight raged on beneath the cold sky of a dead world. And somewhere among the scrap and stone, unseen eyes followed his every move.
******
Kaerin had lost count of how many minutes he had been fighting.
Time fractured under pressure. It no longer moved forward in neat segments. It stretched, snapped, and folded back on itself. Breath became a resource. Pain became background noise. Thought reduced itself to shape and motion and kill angles.
The plateau rang with shrieks.
The insects had spread out now. They no longer attacked in a single wave. Small groups darted in and out of range, drawing him forward while others circled wide. Warrior caste, no question. Their bodies gleamed under the pale sky, chitin layered thick and ridged. Acid dripped from mandibles that opened and closed with an almost eager rhythm.
Kaerin pivoted, fired twice, and rolled as a bladed limb tore through the space where his head had been. The shot took one insect clean through the thorax. It dropped, convulsed, then lay still.
Another slammed into him before he could reset.
He met it head-on.
The impact rattled his bones. He felt the strain tear through the muscle that had not fully recovered from the hive. He drove his elbow up into the softer joint beneath its carapace and fired point-blank. The recoil nearly wrenched the gun from his hand. The insect shrieked and collapsed in on itself.
Kaerin staggered back two steps and forced air into his lungs.
Too many.
He could feel it now. The pressure was building. His movements had slowed by fractions that mattered. The queen's sonic attacks still echoed faintly in his skull, a low vibration that refused to fade. His vision swam at the edges. Blood ran warm down his side where shrapnel had reopened a half-healed wound.
He scanned the terrain fast.
Debris fields. Broken metal ribs of old structures. Jagged rock formations rising like the bones of something long dead. No real cover. Nothing defensible for long.
Verrik's voice flickered at the edge of his thoughts.
Should I come?
It had been the right call. He still believed that. But belief did not stop exhaustion.
An insect darted in from the left. Kaerin twisted and fired, but his aim slipped. The shot clipped its wing instead of the centre mass. The creature spun wildly out of control, shrieking as it slammed hard into a nearby rock formation.
Kaerin barely registered it.
Another insect lunged. He ducked under the strike and drove his blade upward, severing a limb. Acid sprayed across the ground, hissing as it ate into sand and scrap. He rolled clear, came up firing, and dropped a second attacker.
His breath came shallow now.
He felt the thought form before he could stop it.
I may need Verrik.
The idea tasted like failure. Verrik was barely standing. Kinsley was unconscious. Mantis was bleeding out. Calling for help meant pulling what little defence the ship still had.
Another shriek cut through the air.
Something changed.
Kaerin noticed it not as a thought, but as a disruption. One insect moved wrong. Its convulsions after hitting the rock were excessive. Too sharp. Too violent. It spasmed as though struck again after impact.
That was odd.
But Kaerin did not look. He did not have time.
Two more insects rushed him together. He fired once, dropped one, then threw himself sideways as the other slammed down where he had been. Its mandibles snapped inches from his leg. He kicked hard into its head joint, felt something crack, then finished it with a shot through the eye cluster.
Silence fell for half a second.
Then the rock moved.
Kaerin froze.
The rock formation that the damaged insect had struck shifted. Not from impact. From intent. Stone slid against stone in a way that did not follow gravity or collapse patterns. Dust fell in controlled sheets. The outline changed.
Camouflage. Kaerin felt the hair along his spine lift. So I was right.
The sense he had felt since landing, the pressure at the edge of awareness, the feeling of being observed without hostility or threat. He had dismissed it while focusing on the fight.
He had been wrong.
The rock pulled apart.
Not shattered. Peeled.
Something unfolded from it.
Tall. Thin. Draped in tattered fabric that hung loose and torn. The figure rose to full height with fluid control, movements economical and precise. A long bushy tail unfurled behind them, flicking once before settling low.
A hood shadowed their face.
Zerg.
No extreme animal features.
A high class, if Kaerin had to guess. The posture gave it away. Controlled balance. No wasted motion. Predator stance, but restrained.
The figure did not hesitate.
They moved.
Fast.
The stranger launched forward with a soundless burst of speed that made Kaerin's eyes widen despite himself. No roar. No signal. Just motion.
An insect lunged.
The stranger met it midair.
They twisted their body in a way Kaerin had never seen, using momentum instead of brute force. One leg snapped up, hooked around the insect's neck joint. Their body rotated, dragging the creature off balance. The second leg slammed down into the thorax with crushing force.
There was a crack.
The stranger fired.
Not a gun.
Something compact. Rudimentary. An arrow driven by force rather than powder. It punched clean through chitin and out the other side.
The stranger jumped back as soon as the insect dropped.
Kaerin stared for half a second too long.
Barbarian technique.
That was the only word that fit. It was not Dominion style. No army training. Not anything he recognised. It was raw, brutal, and precise in a way that spoke of experience earned alone.
Lower-class galaxies, maybe. Fringe systems. Or something else entirely.
Kaerin snapped back to the fight.
More insects were turning now. Their attention is shifting. Their shrieks rising in pitch.
They had noticed the stranger.
Kaerin fired into the swarm, covering the newcomer without thinking. Two insects fell. A third reeled back, acid spraying wide.
The stranger moved like a storm given shape.
They did not overextend. They struck, withdrew, repositioned. Their tail lashed for balance, counterweighting sudden shifts. They used terrain instinctively, leaping off scrap and stone to change angles.
An insect managed to snag the stranger's cloak. The hood ripped free. The stranger twisted, letting the cloth go. For a heartbeat, Kaerin saw the mask beneath. Smooth. Featureless. Functional. Not even skin colour was given away.
Then the insect lunged again.
What followed made Kaerin's breath hitch.
The stranger stepped into the attack instead of away from it.
They let the insect's momentum carry it forward. Their body flowed with it, spine bending, legs coiling. One leg wrapped tight around the insect's midsection. The other locked around its neck. The cloak now fully covered the insect's head. The stranger inverted, using their own weight as leverage.
They strangled the insect with their legs.
Then they fired again.
Point blank.
The creature convulsed and went still.
The cloak fell away completely as the insect fell.
Long white hair spilt free, braided and bound in sections that swung with each movement.
White.
Kaerin felt genuine shock this time. White hair was rare. Not just uncommon. Almost unheard of. Genetic anomalies, extreme mutations, or something far older.
The insects screamed. The sound changed; higher, more frenzied, almost enraged. They surged toward the stranger.
Not Kaerin.
The shift was immediate and absolute.
Why them? Did the insects realise the need to eliminate a strong foe first?
Kaerin did not have time to analyse. He moved. Fired. Cut down the insects flanking the stranger's blind side. The stranger did not acknowledge him. Did not thank him. Did not even look.
They fought as though Kaerin was not there.
And yet, their movements aligned.
They did not cross lines. They did not interfere. They adapted to each other's presence with unsettling speed.
This one is dangerous.
Not reckless. Not desperate. Dangerous.
The stranger cut down insect after insect with their dagger and rudimentary gun with ruthless efficiency. Their technique remained consistent even under pressure. No degradation. No panic. No wasted effort.
Kaerin felt a grim admiration surface before he crushed it.
Focus.
He emptied his magazine into a cluster of attackers, dropped to one knee, reloaded by feel, and rose firing again. The last of the swarm fell in pieces, acid hissing against metal and sand.
Silence returned.
Not peace.
Tension.
Kaerin turned slowly.
The stranger stood several meters away, weapon lowered but ready. Mask still on. White hair stark against the grey world. Tail held low, controlled, but not relaxed.
They faced each other.
Both in a fighting stance.
Both calculating.
Kaerin felt the exhaustion now that the adrenaline ebbed. His grip tightened on his gun despite the tremor in his arm. He measured distance, angles, and escape routes.
Friend or threat.
Unknowns were worse than enemies.
The stranger did not move.
Neither did Kaerin.
The wind stirred dust between them.
Somewhere behind him, the ship lay broken. His crew waited.
Kaerin made his decision.
To wait.
Because whatever this was, it was not a coincidence.
And whatever stood before him was not harmless.
The stranger shifted their weight slightly.
Kaerin raised his weapon a fraction.
The standoff held.
And the dead world watched.