Aboard the Foretold Reckoning, the air inside breathed heavily with the pulsing heat of something intangible. The sensation vibrated at the edges of John’s awareness like a scream bouncing around inside a glass bowl. Somewhere deep within, a signal emitted. They had to find it to learn the truth. If they found it, they might learn actionable intelligence about the Hyperions and maybe Thariel’s whereabouts on Eurynome.

  “Structural readings are unstable,” Sam said. “But the gravity is holding. Air pressure’s…” She paused. “It shouldn’t be this breathable. Not after all the hull breaches. That’s strange.”

  “Is the ship adapting to us?” John said, voice low.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I think something is here. Something is watching us.”

  The central chamber inside the vessel was massive and interlaced with alien architecture. Nothing about it conveyed conventional design. The walls curved and twisted, covered in thick biomechanical tubing and translucent membranes like stretched skin. Underneath the layers, pulses of light moved slowly as if a slumbering neural network processed the ship’s thoughts. Judging by its erratic pattern, it wanted them to leave.

  Sasha whispered in their comms. “The ship is using multi-modal encryption. It’s not Dependency, like I would expect. It’s something ancient, which doesn’t make any sense. I can barely parse it.”

  “Can you crack it?” asked John.

  “Give me a minute. There are vulnerabilities…this old dog was never meant to defend against modern intrusion. My AI is working. I’m pushing through.”

  The lights in the chamber shifted. It was subtle at first. But then the circuits ignited like veins under skin. Lines of red and gold danced across the walls in a sequence too rapid for the eyes to follow.

  The heavy door began to close behind them.

  “Sasha!” John yelled.

  “I’m in,” Sasha said. “Go! Now!”

  A pressure plate beneath John’s feet hissed and retraced more light. It cracked and tore away the organic material which revealed a hidden corridor beyond a sliding organic threshold. The smell that rushed forward was rotten and wet like decomposing fruit baked in ammonia.

  John took point, rifle raised. Samantha followed. She swept left. The corridor narrowed and the walls became less structured. The design gave way to the chaos of whatever infected the place. Filaments draped from the ceiling the color of bruised fungus. It smelled like a stale wound.

  “These are Braccari growths,” Sasha said.

  Alien pods hung from the walls like bloated sacs of amber-colored flesh. They could have been eggs, or something worse. Inside, twisted silhouettes came to life and twitched.

  “What is this…” Samantha muttered.

  A sound erupted like metal dragging against bone.

  Two Braccari dropped from the ceiling and landed in front of them. Their limbs hung like swords. Their carapace gleamed with wet mold.

  John raised his VX-88 Scorcher submachine gun and fired a barrage of slugs. He clipped one through its thorax. It shrieked—not with pain, but outrage. The second Braccari lunged at them. Samantha rolled beneath its swing and emptied three high density slugs into its underbelly. It folded and died.

  John stepped toward the remaining Braccari. He unsheathed his combat knife and jammed the blade into the back of its cranial ridge. The creature spasmed, then collapsed and went still.

  “My suit is compromised,” Samantha gasped. She pressed her hand against her shoulder. Blood trickled from a rupture where the armor plating had been pierced. “Left side. It’s deep.”

  John looked down at his thigh—a thin spike pierced through the flex point. Pain lanced up his side, but he remained upright. The pain flashed. It felt like a railroad spike was driven through his skin. “I—I don’t know if I’m still mobile. You?”

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  “Yeah. I’m good.”

  “No,” Sasha said. “You’re both not good. I’m activating automatic medical procedures. Standby.”

  John staggered as a dozen microneedles punctured the inside of his thigh and flooded the wound site with hemostatic foam and neuro-inhibitors. The pain flared. It was sharp and blinding. He sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. His vision dimmed at the edges.

  Samantha let out a ragged gasp beside him. Her own suit flooded her shoulder with regenerative compounds. Her fingers clawed at the air as the pain invigorated her.

  Once the procedure was completed, the pain in John’s thigh vanished and left behind a deep and tingling numbness.

  Sam breathed. “Was I just stabbed with needles and then kissed by an angel?”

  John winced as the foam hardened and sealed the breach. A warm pulse moved through his leg as nanofilaments knitted synthetic mesh through torn muscle fibers. The HUD blinked—MOBILITY 82% —FUNCTIONAL.

  “Pain suppression nominal,” Sasha reported calmly. “You’re both stable. Your adrenal response has dampened. Continue forward at your leisure.”

  John exhaled slowly. His pulse leveled out. The pain was still there. It was like a ghost, a muted bruise on his memory. But he could move.

  He flexed his leg once and nodded. “We keep going.”

  Samantha checked her weapon. She rolled her shoulder once then fell back into formation. “Next time, let’s not wait for the stabbing bugs to fall from the ceiling.”

  They pushed forward. More growth stuck to the walls. More disgusting twitching sacs hung from the ceiling. A dozen more Braccari emerged in the corridor ahead of them.

  “Do it,” John ordered.

  Samantha tossed two grenades. They detonated and stuttered the entire corridor. The Braccari were cramped within it. They reeled and shrieked as their fungal synapses misfired causing them to run into each other from mass confusion. A pair of Braccari soldiers in the front of the pack surged forward, blades out, slashing their bladed arms and screaming toward them but he was trapped by the fallen debris.

  John raised his VX-88 Scorcher and unleashed hellfire into the corridor. He dumped his entire mag toward the burning Braccari while Samantha dumped round after round from her revolver toward the others.

  Once the terrible screaming stopped, John said, “Clear.”

  A single Braccari in the back twitched. Samantha raised her revolver and fired. The round smashed through what could conceivable be called its head, spattering dark blood on the wall. It went still.

  “Clear,” Samantha confirmed.

  They came to a shattered bulkhead. Inside, the remains of a makeshift barricade lay in ruin composed of laser-scored crates, rusted rifles, and mismatched human armor.

  Samantha crouched and examined a shoulder patch which still clung to the armor: a red crescent with a jagged star. “Pirates,” she said. “I’ve read about these guys. They’re raiders and slavers. They must have killed the original crew and hijacked the vessel years ago.”

  “Why are they all dead?” John asked.

  “My guess? The Braccari infiltrated a weak point and ate them for lunch.”

  “What about the Braccari hatchlings? Someone signaled them to attack us. Those little cretins burst from their egg sacks to attack us at every opportunity. There’s no telling how many we’ve killed this far.”

  “You think we walked into a trap?”

  John nodded grimly. “This has to be Thariel’s work. He lured the ship to Eurynome. He released the ship into orbit, knowing we would investigate. It explains the presence of Braccari on Eurynome. They probably activated the same kind of trap on the colonists.”

  “Why?”

  “My guess? They’re hiding something. This isn’t random. Not if Thariel’s involved.”

  “I’m getting a new reading,” Sasha said. “The Hyperion signal is stronger. The origin is just ahead.”

  They entered another chamber. Half entombed in a pillar of neural mesh and writhing data vines stood the top half of a Hyperion. Its legs were buried under Braccari fungal growth. It was a model that John had never seen before, and vaguely female. It was sleek, feminine, and masked.

  The female Hyperion’s arms were folded across her chest, head bowed as though in mourning. A pulse emitted from her chest. It was slow and rhythmic.

  “She’s still alive,” Sasha said.

  John aimed his VX-88 Scorcher at the Hyperion’s drooping head.

  Samantha aimed her revolver. “That’s the source. Is that…Thariel?”

  Sasha whispered in their ears. “That’s not Thariel. She’s emitting a completely different energy signature. It appears that she’s…dreaming.”

  The signal spiked.

  The chamber door closed behind them.