Nucleus 1: The Dust of Moon [Mature Sci-fi Romance]

Mars Standard Time: 09:13, May 11, 2295 (Earth Day Equivalent)

Sector 9, Ironsides VII, Terra Alliance Aegis battlecruiser approaching Mars

"On the bright side, this one's practically pocket-sized." Diego's voice crackled through comms, that familiar edge of gallows humor creeping back now that the suits were gone. "Only about two klicks long. Practically a minnow, no?"

"'Pocket-sized', alright!" Lorna's breath came steady despite her pace, muscle memory taking over.

"Hey, we've seen the ones that swallow frigates whole. This little pescadito could barely manage a corvette."

"Diego. Maintain descent vector to Xing Hong." Otis cut through the banter.

"Is that wise, sir? We've got a space whale trying to French kiss our hull."

"It will suffice if we can repel boarders. Fortune favors the bold."

"What about hull breach, sir?" Thomas's voice held that particular calm Vanguards got before violence.

"Already in atmosphere. Mars air's thin but breathable." Otis paused. "Mostly."

"Fantastic." Lorna muttered. Just another day on the job. She'd run this drill before—boarding actions, corridor fighting, the works. They all had.

All except—

She glanced left. Xin kept pace, jaw clenched, that little furrow between his brows she'd noticed when he concentrated on code. Scared, probably. But not freezing up. Good.

"Yo, Xin. You get my Kuma cleaned and loaded?" Emmanuel called from further back.

"Yep! Barrel's spotless. Fresh magazine." Xin passed the folded Kuma without breaking stride, the weapon's white-and-blue finish catching the emergency lights. "Even fixed that feed jam issue."

Three months since Taiwan. Three months of Xin learning what took her years to accept—that humanity's real war wasn't with each other anymore. Though they still pretended otherwise. Otis still hadn't officially passed his probation. Then again, back when she'd started, the biggest threat was corporate espionage, not interplanetary extinction.

"Shipboard gravity compensation online!" Diego announced. "Should keep you from bouncing off the ceiling when we—¡Madre de Dios! Ark Ray coming around for the grapple!"

"All weapon stations, weapons free!" Otis commanded.

"Contact in thirty!"

Through the reinforced viewports, Lorna watched the Ironsides VII's point defense lasers paint brilliant blue lines across the void. They struck the Ark Ray in cascading patterns, each impact flaring against its mottled hide—brown flesh that looked almost bronze where the beams hit, ancient and weathered like leather left in the sun for centuries.

The creature's response was a sound felt more than heard, a bass note that resonated through the ship's superstructure. Its massive wings—each the size of city blocks—rippled with bioluminescent patterns. Beautiful, if you were the type to find wonder in things trying to kill you.

Lorna wasn't. Not anymore.

"Seen bigger, yeah." She checked Baldr's charge indicator. "The one at Sea of Japan last year made this look like a goldfish."

From the Ark Ray's ventral surface, black proboscises began extending—each the diameter of a subway tunnel, glistening with secreted mucus that helped them grip metal. They moved with disturbing purpose, seeking specific points along the Ironsides VII's hull.

The first tube latched on with a wet thunk that reverberated through the deck plates. Then another. Another. Each connection point sent tremors through the ship's frame, Lorna's teeth clicking together with each impact.

Through the translucent flesh of the tubes, she could see shapes moving. Pulsing forward like blood through arteries. The Fenris children that the Ark Ray carried, ready to spill into the battlecruiser Lorna's people now called home.

"Contact in five! Breach points confirmed—Sectors 7 through 12!" Diego's accent thickened with stress. "Whatever you do, don't die! The paperwork is brutal."

"Sector 7, we've got Bone Fiends!" A panicked voice over comms. "They're—shit, Johnson's down!"

"Sector 11 here, Skuggr pack just breached the armory! Engaging!"

"All teams hold position!" Diego's voice assured. "Medical team to sec 7 and 11."

Connected and synchronized with Ironsides VII's local network, Lorna's Quantum Watch showed '09:14. Sector 9'. They were right in the middle of the target zone.

The nearest tube pulsed, a peristaltic wave driving its cargo forward. Through the membrane, she caught glimpses—bone white and muscle red, too many limbs, too many teeth.

Her boots found their stance on the aluminum grating. Beside her, Xinsteadied his 10mm with both hands, glasses reflecting tactical data. Thomas and Emmanuel flanked them, weapons ready, breathing synchronized from countless operations together.

Four against whatever nightmares the Fenris Horde was pumping into their ship. Fair odds, considering.

The corridor shuddered. Somewhere past the bulkhead, metal screamed its surrender.

A section of corridor wall simply ceased to exist, vaporized by bio-acid that filled the air with the stench of dissolved metal and ozone. Through the gap, she saw them—Bone Fiends, their exposed musculature glistening, moving with pack coordination.

"Skuggr on the ceiling!" Emmanuel's warning saved her life.

Lorna rolled left as acidic bile splashed where she'd stood, eating through deck plating with a sustained hiss. The creature clung overhead, its cockroach carapace reflecting the emergency lights, canine head tracking her movement.

"Baldr, activate!"

Blue light erupted from the cylinder, quantum energy singing as it formed a blade of pure luminescence. The Skuggr launched itself, but Lorna was already moving, the sword carving an arc that bisected the creature mid-leap. Its halves hit opposite walls, twitching.

More poured through. A tide of chitin and exposed bone.

Thomas's titanium Fist Blades extended, cybernetic arms whirring as he carved through a Bone Fiend that got too close. "They're herding us!"

He was right. The Radi-Mons weren't attacking randomly—they pushed the team toward the ship's central corridor, away from defensive positions.

"50 Atomic Dollars say Watrous is involved." Emmanuel's voice carried certainty as he put seven rounds through a scuttling Maur's compound eyes. "Same tactics he used in Chicago. He wants us in the open."

Mac Watrous. The turncoat professor who'd been a grating annoyance for the last three months.

A new voice echoed through the ship's communication system, gravelly and amused. "Your man's got a brain. Pity I'll have to spill it."

"Who's this? You hijacked the voice comm?"

"Primitive protocols, easy hack." The gravelly voice replied.

Lorna felt her blood chill. "All units, do not enter Sector 9. Repeat, avoid Sec 9—"

The blast doors behind them slammed shut, emergency protocols overridden. Ahead, more doors sealed with definitive clangs. They were trapped in a hundred-meter stretch of corridor, emergency lights casting everything in hellish red.

"Well, shit." Emmanuel's Kinetic SMG hummed to life. "I should buy myself some lottery when we get back."

The temperature dropped twenty degrees in seconds. Frost spread across the walls in fractal patterns, and Lorna's breath misted in the suddenly arctic air. Through the far breach, something massive squeezed through—a polar bear standing on hind legs, in runic stone armor, ice-blue crystals pulsing.

Ulrik.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Behind it, a figure in a tattered leather jacket stepped through, smoke wisping from his shoulders. Mac Watrous, the Draug that'd been a nuisance since Chicago, looked exactly as repulsive as she remembered—skull-like face, flesh mottled and scarred, rotten chest weeping organic fluids, eyes blazing furnace-red.

"Ms. Weiss." His voice scraped like gravel over glass. "I'm hardly surprised Yosemite did not swallow you."

"Not really in the mood to chat." Lorna shifted her stance, Baldr humming.

"The feeling's mutual. You've come to our home turf uninvited." He raised one gnarled hand. "Ah—but Ulrik here's been dying to test himself against Alliance's finest once more."

Ulrik stepped forward, his one-handed warhammer Rimfrost materializing from frozen air. When he spoke, his voice carried ancient dignity despite the monstrous form. "You fought well in Yosemite. But here on the Planet of Fenris, you shall die with honor."

"How about—" Thomas's blades spun. "You die disappointed!"

Ulrik moved faster than his size suggested. Rimfrost the hammer swept horizontally, and Thomas barely got his arms up in time. The impact sent him flying, cybernetics sparking as he hit the wall hard enough to dent steel.

"Baw-lah-eh See-kah!" Emmanuel opened fire, but his psionically-enchanted rounds sparked off runic armor without effect. The polar bear backhanded him almost casually, sending the Maridian Psi Lynx skidding across frost-slick flooring.

"Glacies Lunae Fulgur!" Lorna's Lunar bolt struck Ulrik center mass in a burst of crystalline energy shards. The bear Radi-Mon staggered but didn't fall.

"Your Aether feeds mine, Sigrún Fjeld." Ulrik's laugh rumbled. "I am wintery moon given form."

Behind him, Watrous began to chant, fingers weaving sickly green patterns in the air. "Rís, Beinagrind!"

The fallen Bone Fiends around them shuddered. Exposed muscle tissue twitched, severed limbs dragged themselves across the floor. The bisected Skuggr's halves began pulling toward each other, acidic bile still dripping from its maw.

"Xin, the corpses!" Lorna dove aside as Ulrik's hammer pulverized the deck where she'd stood, leaving a crater in the aluminum.

Xin's 10mm barked repeatedly, each AI-assisted shot shattering reanimated skulls with unnerving accuracy. But the pieces kept moving, kept crawling. "They're not staying down?

"Sever the neural clusters!" Lorna dove left as Rimfrost cratered the deck where she'd stood. The impact threw her off balance—she couldn't even think about blocking that kind of force. "Base of the skull!"

"Okay! Trying again—" Xin raised his gun again.

That's when Lorna's heard it—a deep, resonant hum building somewhere above them.

"Director Otis to all units!" The Valoran elder's voice cut through combat noise. "The Ark Ray is preparing to deploy a second wave—three times larger. I'm authorizing Liberty Cannon deployment. All personnel in Sectors 7 through 12, find cover immediately!"

"The Liberty Cannon?" Diego's voice crackled with alarm. "Boss, that thing draws power from the entire ship! We'll lose shield battery—"

"It's our only option to break that creature's hold!" Otis interrupted him. "Ten seconds to firing!"

"Your old fool." Watrous's red eyes widened tauntingly. "The feedback alone can kill him!"

"Nine..."

Ulrik swung again, the hammer's passage creating a visible pressure wave. Lorna threw herself backward, feeling the wind of its passage. Ice crystals formed where Rimfrost passed, the very air freezing in its wake.

"Eight..."

Thomas regained his feet, one arm hanging limp. A crawling Bone Fiend torso latched onto his leg—he stomped down with his cybernetic foot, shattering its spine.

"Seven..."

Emmanuel flanked Ulrik, trying to draw his attention. The Radi-Mon bear spun with surprising grace, Rimfrost's haft catching the Psi Lynx in the ribs and sending him tumbling.

"Six..."

"Fall back, everyone!" Lorna scrambled away from another hammer strike that left frost-covered cracks spider-webbing across the wall. "Find cover—now!"

"Five..."

The reanimated corpses surged forward in a grotesque tide, Watrous conducting them with strange gestures. Severed hands scuttled like spiders, torsos dragged themselves forward on exposed ribs.

"Four..."

Ulrik laughed, an aura of frost forming around his massive frame. "The ship will be your tomb!"

"Three..."

"Maybe. But not today." Xin's free hand found something in his jacket. "Pawan! Execute EMP shockwave!"

He threw the device—his modified drone. The little mechanical marvel launched itself, no longer the simple green surveillance or healing bot Lorna remembered from their first date in Illinois and time on Shashan. Pawan had evolved into something else entirely—a sleek sapphire beetle the size of her fist, its carapace gleaming with the same white racing stripes as Emmanuel's Kuma. Two articulated, hooked legs tucked tight against its body as it flew, the translucent dome of its head pulsing with building charge.

It struck the ceiling dead center and erupted—an EMP, but more akin to a localized photonic storm. Blue-white energy cascaded outward in perfect concentric rings, overloading every psionic circuit in range. The reanimated corpses dropped like cut strings as Watrous's Void threads severed. Even Ulrik's runic armor stuttered, ice crystals falling from suddenly powerless nodes.

"Two..."

"Nice upgrade," Lorna gasped, grabbing Xin's arm. "Remind me to be impressed later!"

"Oh—!" Xin's olive cheeks flushed red. "I'm glad you like it—"

She hauled Xin behind a structural support beam. Thomas and Emmanuel dove for cover on the opposite side.

"One..."

The universe screamed.

The universe screamed.

Through every viewport, through every transparent section of hull, azure light bloomed. The Liberty Cannon—a psionic artillery system running half the length of the Ironsides VII—drew on Otis's Lunar attunement and magnified it a thousandfold. The weapon's crystalline focusing arrays converted raw Aether into coherent destruction, painting the Martian sky electric blue.

The beam carved through the Ark Ray like a surgical laser through flesh. Where it touched, organic matter simply unraveled at the molecular level. The bioship's death cry reverberated through every surface—a sound below human hearing that they felt in their bones. Bioluminescent patterns raced across its dying flesh randomly, desperately, then not at all.

The Ark Ray's psychic wail cut off as the gigantic Radi-Mon's nervous system collapsed, severing its literal fusion with the vessel.

The feedback hit every Radi-Mon like a sledgehammer. Ulrik dropped to one knee, Rimfrost clattering against the deck. The reanimated corpses collapsed into truly dead flesh. Watrous doubled over, light flickering in his glowing red eyes.

"Thomas! Emmanuel! Keep the bear busy!" Lorna didn't waste the opening.

The two men moved as one—Thomas low, Emmanuel high, forcing Ulrik to defend from both angles while his nervous system rebooted.

She crossed the distance to Watrous in three strides. Vali in her left hand fired three shots before she brought her Psytum Sword Baldr down in a decisive arc. The Draug twisted, but not fast enough—the blade took his left arm at the elbow, cauterizing as it cut.

His scream mixed rage and disbelief. "The Primarch won't be pleased—"

A Void bolt erupted from his remaining hand, catching her shoulder and spinning her into the wall. The necrotic energy burned through her coat, leaving flesh numb and tingling.

"So many years." She pushed off the wall, Baldr steady despite her burning shoulder. "So many years you've been Skarn's lapdog. Chicago. Yosemite. And now on this blasted backwater planet."

"Is that so different from you?" Watrous raised his hand for another spell.

Xin's 10mm barked twice—precise, AI-assisted shots that punched through augmented organs. Watrous stumbled, blackish fluid leaking from ruptured bio-mechanical connections.

"I suppose death sees us all equally." Xin's voice was ice.

Watrous clutched the wounds, legs failing. "I am... but a messenger... Primarch Skarn will..."

"That fucker will find another puppet." Lorna stood over him, Baldr's point finding the gap between scarred flesh and collar. "This is for Chicago. For everyone you helped harvest."

She drove the blade home. Mac Watrous's eyes widened—surprise, perhaps, that it ended so simply. The quantum blue energy severed instantly. His skull-like head rolled free, expression frozen in that final moment of disbelief.

Behind them, Ulrik had regained his footing. Thomas's cybernetic arm hung limp, sparks flying from torn connections. Emmanuel favored his left side where Rimfrost had caught him.

"Two to one. Honor-less dogs!" The white bear hefted his hammer. "There is no wisdom in staying here."

"Structural breach in Sectors 7 through 12!" An automated voice blared. "Atmospheric venting detected. All personnel—"

Through the gaps in the hull, they could see the Ark Ray's corpse falling away, Ironsides VII no longer held by tentacles. It fell towards teh Martian surface—rust-red plains and ancient impact craters.

Ulrik looked at the widening breach, then at Lorna's team, then back at the seven-hundred-meter drop to the surface. His deep chuckle rumbled like an avalanche.

"You have cunning companions in battle, Sigrún Fjeld. Until next we meet."

He backed toward the breach. Thomas moved to stop him—

Ulrik jumped.

Through the howling wind, Lorna saw the massive bear plummeting toward Mars. No fear in his posture. No concern. He hit the red sand in an explosion of dust, then simply... stood up. Shook himself like it was nothing. And began walking north, Rimfrost over his shoulder, as if he'd stepped off a curb instead of fallen from a battlecruiser hundreds of meters in the sky.

"Sealing breach!" Diego's voice came. Emergency response teams flooded the corridor with foam barriers. "All personnel clear the area! Repair teams, deploy!"

"Director Otis hasn't spoken after…" Lorna sheathed Baldr with trembling hands before pushing at a speaker on the wall. "Diego. What's going on? Our boss still on the channel?"

"His vitals are dropping!" Diego's panic cut through comms. "Liberty Cannon chamber—the feedback—Dios mío, he's burning up from the inside!"

They ran. Through corridors filled with damage control teams, past viewports showing the Ark Ray's mountain of flesh sprawled across the Martian desert. The Liberty Cannon chamber sat at the ship's heart, and even from outside they could smell ozone and scorched metal.

Otis lay crumpled beneath the cannon's primary focusing crystal—a three-story azure spire now cracked down the middle. Psionic burns covered half his body, the distinctive blue fractal patterns of Aether overload. His white coat was smoldered.

"Manny, call Doctor Nikki. Get her in here now!" Lorna dropped beside him, checking for a pulse. Weak but present.

Otis's weather eyes fluttered open, those silver irises staring up at Lorna. "You've made it…I'm glad…you've won us the battle."

"No, sir. We all did it together." She held his wrinkled hand in hers, speaking softly.

The battle for Ironsides VII was won. But staring at Otis's burned form, at Thomas's damaged bionic arm, at the earlier gaps in their hull—Lorna wondered how many more such victories would leave them with anyone left to celebrate.