The Foxfire Saga

The Sovereign's hangar bay was alive with motion. Crew members floated in controlled chaos, locking down crates, issuing final checks, voices clipped and focused. Every sound echoed faintly in the microgravity, sharp against the vast stillness of space beyond.

Cassandra drifted through the fray with her usual brisk precision, checking her gear straps one last time. The weight of the mission pressed down on her.

Ahead of her, the transport loomed: sleek, scarred, and cold. A compact vessel meant for rapid deployment, not comfort. She spotted her team clustered near the ramp, already suited up in EVA gear, their helmets clipped to harness rings or held underarm.

Protocol called for full suits before launch, given the field they were flying through and the unknowns waiting at the station. No one questioned it. They were treating this by-the-book.

Evelyn Maris sat cross-legged by the hatch, her helmet clipped to a suit hardpoint. Her brow was furrowed over a datapad, flipping through schematics of the station. She glanced up as Cassandra approached and offered a small, resolute smile.

"Need a hand with the seal ring?" Evelyn asked, rising smoothly.

Cassandra hesitated. Not because she needed help, but because Evelyn's offer was unexpected. There was no awkwardness to it. Just quiet competence.

"Thanks," Cassandra said, voice low.

Evelyn maneuvered close and locked the shoulder brace into place, then double-checked the wrist seals. Her touch was practiced, professional. Careful in a way that reminded Cassandra that this crew, young or not, had earned their place.

"You're annoyingly good at this," she muttered.

Evelyn smiled. "Occupational hazard. Navigators spend a lot of time fixing comm arrays and sensor relays."

Cassandra gave the barest hint of a smile. "Maybe you should be leading this mission."

Evelyn shrugged. "Not my style. That's for people like you."

The words caught Cassandra off-guard. She wasn't sure how to respond.

Inside, Mark Weston was already at work, adjusting a diagnostic tool strapped to the inner hull. Focused. Intent. Detached.

Victor Hayes stood at the periphery, arms folded, muttering to one of the security officers with low, pointed intensity. No doubt issuing final instructions. Cassandra didn't interrupt. He'd finish when he was ready.

Akiko wasn't among the team. That had been Ward's call, made late in the night after the final tactical adjustments.

No vote, no consensus, just a quiet decision delivered without ceremony.

Cassandra hadn't argued. She wasn't even sure she disagreed. Akiko had power, yes, but no unit cohesion, no formal training. And this mission was already crawling with unknowns.

Better to deploy her later, if needed. Surgically.

She floated into the center of the group.

"Rourke's team has already deployed," she said, voice crisp. "They're moving to secure the production bay. Our objective is the command core. Access the mainframe, retrieve drone data, and get out. Fast."

Evelyn raised a hand, eyes still on her pad. "And if the data's encrypted?"

"We grab everything we can. Hardware, backups, interface logs. If it's not readable now, Weston will make it readable back on the Sovereign."

Mark gave a distracted grunt. He didn't look up from his calibrator.

Hayes spoke next, tone flat. "And resistance?"

"We're not going in blind," Cassandra replied. "Rourke's team will cover our flank. But if we hit heavy resistance, we fall back and reevaluate. This is a data run, not a siege."

She turned to Evelyn. "You're our eyes once we're in. Use the transport's systems to track the station's interior layout. We can't afford to get turned around if conditions shift."

Evelyn nodded, her grip tightening around her pad.

Cassandra turned to Weston. "Your job is extraction. Whatever's useful, you rip it out and bring it home."

He smirked faintly. "With care. I know the drill."

Finally, she met Hayes' gaze. "You're in charge of keeping everyone breathing. This team doesn't leave anyone behind."

Hayes gave a curt nod, his face unreadable.

Cassandra gestured toward the ramp. "Let's move."

Inside the transport, the air was cold and dry, the soft hum of systems barely audible under the tightening silence. Cassandra strapped in near the cockpit, eyes flicking across the interior.

The others settled quickly. Harness clicks. Data pads secured. Breaths drawn and held.

"All systems green," came the pilot's voice. Young, steady, professional.

"Launch," Cassandra said.

The deck rumbled. The ship shuddered forward.

As the hangar doors opened, the Sovereign fell away behind them.

Ahead loomed the station. Black silhouette. Angular. Dead. Except it wasn't.

Cassandra's stomach tightened.

"Stay sharp," she said. "This is just the beginning."

The first jolt hit hard. A sharp jerk that snapped her forward in her harness. She gripped the armrests instinctively, glancing toward the pilot's console.

"Hold it steady," she barked.

The pilot's voice crackled back. "Trying, ma'am. Debris field's denser than projected. We're weaving through unstable vectors."

Another jolt rocked the hull. Cassandra clenched her jaw.

Evelyn hunched over her display, eyes racing across data. "Telemetry feed's degrading," she muttered. "We're losing resolution on the Sovereign. Not just distance. Interference."

"What kind of interference?" Cassandra demanded.

Evelyn hesitated. "Could be localized jamming. Something in this sector is pushing a signal. It's affecting both external telemetry and internal sensors."

She looked to the cockpit. "Adjusting vector packets now. Uploading to the nav board."

Another scrape, a metallic hiss, as a shard of debris skimmed the hull. The ship listed, corrected, groaned.

The pilot's voice was tight. "Got the data. Adjusting now."

Cassandra turned to Evelyn. "How confident are you?"

Evelyn looked up, her eyes steady despite the rising tension.

"Confident enough to keep us in one piece."

"Good," Cassandra muttered, settling back against the seat. "Keep feeding him the corrections."

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Outside, the station grew larger.

The atmosphere in the cabin was thick with tension. Each shift of inertia, each subtle vibration of the hull added weight to the silence between words.

Evelyn's murmured calculations played beneath the steady thrum of the engines, a rhythm of quiet urgency.

"Almost there," Evelyn said at last, a thread of relief in her voice. "Aligning for docking bay approach."

"Let's hope it's as empty as it looks," Mark muttered, eyeing the looming silhouette of the station through the viewport.

Cassandra didn't respond. Her gaze stayed fixed on the structure. Dark, massive, and utterly still, save for the way faint glints of light caught on its battered surface. It felt less like they were approaching it and more like it was waiting.

"Eyes sharp," she ordered. "If something's lying in wait, I want to see it first."

The transport settled into the docking bay with a muted thunk. The hull vibrated softly, then went still. Silence pressed in.

Cassandra floated, bracing herself with an overhead grip as the ship's systems powered down. Through the reinforced glass, the bay stretched out. Vast, skeletal, washed in the ghostly light of external floods. Shadows clung to every edge.

Evelyn broke the quiet. "Pressure's at vacuum. Final EVA checks."

Someone called out, "Seals confirmed. Helmets on."

Cassandra twisted her helmet into place with a soft hiss and a click. "Let's get to work."

The airlock hissed, pressure dropping. The inner hatch opened to a wall of stillness.

They stepped into the docking bay, magnetic boots clicking faintly against cold steel. The space was immense. Emptier than expected, lit only by flickering maintenance floods. The silence pressed in from every direction, broken only by the occasional hiss of a suit seal or the crackle of comms.

Mark dropped to one knee beside the inner airlock's control panel. "System's locked out. No power to external commands. Somebody didn't want company."

Evelyn drifted beside him, holding a flashlight steady. "Can you bypass it?"

"Can I? Yes. Should I?" He glanced up. "That's a moral question."

Cassandra didn't hesitate. "We didn't come here for the view. Get it open."

Mark sighed and pulled a thin tool from his kit. Sparks danced as he tapped into the wiring.

"Could trigger a failsafe. Or do absolutely nothing. Flip a coin."

Cassandra folded her arms. "Make it nothing."

"Working on it," he muttered.

Seconds passed. Then, beep. A quiet metallic thunk. The panel lights flickered. The lock disengaged.

Mark stood, brushing imaginary dust from his gloves. "You're in."

They moved forward carefully.

The inner corridor had the same skeletal utilitarian design as the bay. Stark metal, stripped panels, a feel of something long-abandoned.

Except it wasn't.

A camera protruded from the far corner. Ugly. Improvised. Its housing cobbled together from mismatched components and bolted directly into the wall.

It moved. The lens swiveled smoothly, too smoothly, tracking their entry. Pausing on Mark, lingering on Cassandra, then sweeping back to Evelyn.

Mark froze. "Okay. That's not standard issue."

Evelyn's voice came through the comms, low and uneasy. "Does it seem... alive to anyone else?"

Cassandra frowned. "It's a camera, Maris. Don't give it sentience."

"Then why's it watching us?"

The lens turned again, slow, deliberate. Curious.

Mark straightened, tension in his stance. "Power's still running through the system. That means something's online. Either automated defenses or someone, or something, is running the station."

Cassandra stepped forward, boots clicking softly. She met the camera head-on. Her own reflection looked back. Distorted, warped by the glass.

"Could it be tied to the drone production?"

Mark shrugged. "Possibly. Or it's just surveillance. But the fact that it's still operational?" He hesitated. "We're not alone."

Evelyn's voice was tight. "Should we disable it?"

Cassandra raised a hand. "No. Not yet. We're already on its radar. If we start dismantling things now, it might escalate."

The camera blinked. Just once.

They stared.

Then Cassandra turned back to Mark. "How long to breach the next door?"

Mark pulled out a secondary pad, connected it to the terminal. "If the trick I pulled earlier still works? Two minutes. Maybe less."

"Good," Cassandra said. "Keep us moving."

She didn't look back at the camera, but she could feel it watching.

Mark's voice crackled over the comms just as the inner airlock hatch slid open.

"Interior hatch is open... but this doesn't look right."

The team stared into the corridor beyond.

Dim emergency lights flickered down the length of the passage, casting long, warped shadows that stretched and shrank with every stuttering pulse.

The metal walls were gouged and torn, whole panels ripped away to expose tangled nests of conduit and fiber that pulsed faintly with residual energy.

In some places, crude mechanical growths jutted from the bulkheads and ceiling. Assemblies of scavenged parts, fused and fused again, forming shapes that were wrong. Not just alien. Wrong.

Runes shimmered faintly across those protrusions, layered into the metal like scar tissue. They glowed with a low, oily light, casting a sickly sheen across the floor.

"It's a vacuum," Evelyn murmured. Even through the comms, her voice was hushed. "Why would a manned station look like this?"

"Sabotage? Or a battle gone very bad," Cassandra replied.

She stepped through the hatch first, her magnetic boots clicking faintly against the scarred floor. Her eyes tracked the glowing runes along the wall, their shifting angles and barely perceptible pulses.

"And those?" she added. "What the hell are those things?"

"Nothing good," Mark muttered behind her.

His helmet lamp swept across one particularly grotesque construct, an articulated claw fused into the wall itself, its plating mismatched, its edges gleaming with surgical sharpness.

"These aren't repairs. Someone's rebuilding this place. Reshaping it."

The vacuum made the silence oppressive. No footsteps. No ambient hum. Just the close hiss of breath over the comms and the faint whine of their suit systems in their ears. Every movement felt too loud. Every breath, too heavy.

Evelyn crouched near a section of wall. "These runes... look."

Her gloved hand hovered just above a glowing segment, fingers trembling slightly.

"They're not just decoration. They're embedded into the structure. It's like they're... integrated. Powering something."

"Don't touch," Cassandra barked. Her voice was sharp, reflexive.

Evelyn flinched back but didn't move far. Her gaze was fixed on the symbols.

"They move," she said quietly. "Not much. Just enough that when you look away... they're never quite in the same place. Like they're watching."

Cassandra frowned, eyes scanning the corridor. The runes pulsed with an unsettling rhythm, almost organic. Like the station was alive. Or becoming alive.

"This isn't damage," Mark said. "This is a metamorphosis. Something lives here. And it's been busy."

No one spoke.

They continued forward, steps slow and deliberate, deeper into the corridor. The light narrowed. The silence grew heavier. And the runes followed them, glowing softly like veins beneath skin, always just on the edge of perception.

The maintenance bay loomed ahead, lit only by flickering overhead lights and the eerie glow of runes etched into the walls and machines. The team moved cautiously, headlamps cutting long arcs through the darkness. Their beams landed on a disassembled drone splayed open on a makeshift workbench, its insides a chaotic snarl of wires and components.

Beside it stood something worse.

A humanoid figure, cobbled together from jagged, mismatched parts. Its elongated limbs ended in claw-like manipulators. Its head was a lopsided construct, a single glowing rune where one eye should be, surrounded by metal shards twisted into the rough outline of a face.

Cassandra raised a fist. Halt.

The marines froze, weapons raised.

The humanoid drone didn't react. It worked with disturbing grace, its claws moving deep inside the open drone. The movements were fluid, too fluid. Then...

A sickening crunch. The drone spasmed violently.

A geyser of black oil sprayed upward, coating the humanoid. The liquid clung to its frame, seeping into etched runes that flared brighter at contact.

The humanoid paused. Then turned. Its glowing eye locked onto the team.

It tilted its head, not like a machine scanning for threat, but like a predator studying prey.

The runes on its body pulsed faster.

Her finger hovered near the trigger. Tense, waiting.

"Weapons hot," she whispered over comms. "If it moves, drop it."

The marines steadied their aim.

The construct took one step forward.

"Open fire!"

Kinetic rounds tore through the thing's frame, ripping metal and tubing free. The force sent it tumbling back, trailing fragments and dark fluid. It slammed into the far wall and hung there, limp.

Then, a low hum. A shimmering shield snapped around its body.

Magnetic clamps sparked as its legs slammed down onto the deck. It stood up. Smooth. Unhurried. Like being torn apart meant nothing.

"Back up!" Cassandra snapped. "New target behavior. Shielded!"

Bullets hit the shield and ricocheted harmlessly. One round pinged off the wall near Cassandra's helmet.

"Stop firing!" she barked. "You're going to kill us before it does!"

Too late. The construct lunged.

Its claw snapped forward, grabbing a marine mid-drift. He grunted in pain, caught off-balance in the zero-g. His combat knife flashed, then plunged into the exposed cavity torn open by the earlier gunfire.

The effect was instant.

The construct spasmed, its body glitching, movements jerking, erratic. Sparks erupted as it released the marine, who floated free, spinning. Warning lights blinked across his chest plate, oxygen leaking from a deep gash.

"He's losing air!" Evelyn cried out, already in motion.

"Cover him!" Cassandra shouted.

Mark surged forward, grabbing the injured marine, stabilizing his spin. "Hold still. I've got you."

Evelyn slapped a patch over the tear in one smooth motion. A hiss of sealing foam. Stabilized.

"We're good!" she called. "O2 flow's holding."

But the construct wasn't finished. Its eye flicked to life again, turning toward Cassandra.

Another marine opened fire, desperate.

"Cease fire!" Cassandra shouted. "It's bouncing off the shield!"

She ducked just as a bullet slammed into the bulkhead inches from her.

Her eyes scanned the room. Debris, scattered tools...

There.

A metal pipe, thick and solid.

She dove for it.

The knife worked, her brain told her. Physical intrusion. Not velocity. Not force.

She grabbed the pipe, turned, and advanced.

"Cover me!" she snapped.

The construct twitched, stabilizing. Its claws flexed. Its shield flickered.

Now or never. Cassandra lunged.

The pipe slammed into the opening in its chest, right into the chaotic runes writhing beneath.

The drone jolted violently. Its claws grabbed for the pipe.

Cassandra shoved harder, pushing with her legs, driving it deep.

The pipe burst through the back of the construct, punching it into the wall with a reverberating clang.

The rune-eye blinked wildly, then dimmed. Sparks sputtered. The drone slumped, still.

"Is it… dead?" Evelyn asked softly.

Cassandra's fingers tightened on the pipe before she finally released it.

She floated back, chest heaving.

"For now," she said. "But we need to move."

Her eyes swept the shadows.

"If there's one of these things, there are more."