The silence was the worst part. A ringing, goddamn abyss where the thrum of the *Icarus*'s engines used to be. Captain Jax Renner tasted blood and ozone, the metallic tang of utter failure. Outside the fractured viewport, the alien sky bled a sickly violet over jagged, obsidian peaks. They were marooned, a million light-years from anything that resembled home, with a busted ship and a skeleton crew of degenerates and liars. "Status report," he growled into the comms, the words scraping his throat raw. The only reply was static. Fucking perfect.
"Hold still, you brute," Dr. Sokolov snapped, her voice as sterile as the med-gel she was slathering onto Malik's arm. "Or I'll let this fester." Malik grunted, wincing as the gel hissed against the gash. "Just stitch me up, Doc. I've got to see what I can salvage from that heap of scrap we called an engine room." Mira's eyes, cold and calculating, met his in the reflection of a medical scanner. "Salvage? Malik, we're breathing poison and drinking recycled piss. The only thing you'll be salvaging is your own goddamn corpse if you don't get that through your thick skull."
Jax found it in the mangled heart of the engine room. The primary energy converter wasn't just broken; it was surgically removed. Clean cuts. Professional. He found Malik trying to hotwire a secondary power conduit. "Vega," Jax's voice was low, dangerous. He held up a severed plasma cable. "Care to explain this?" Malik didn't even look up. "Looks like we're fucked, Captain. What's to explain?" Jax slammed his fist against a bulkhead, the metal groaning in protest. "Don't play dumb with me, you son of a bitch. This has your handiwork all over it."
A screech from outside cut through their standoff, a sound like tearing metal that grated on the soul. Before Jax could react, a blur of chitin and claws shattered the reinforced glass of a nearby corridor. The thing was a nightmare of razor-sharp limbs and a gaping maw. "Jesus Christ!" Malik yelled, scrambling for a discarded maintenance jack. The creature lunged. Jax shoved Malik aside, firing his sidearm. The energy bolts sizzled against its armored hide, barely slowing it down.
From the relative safety of the medbay, Mira watched the chaos unfold on a security monitor. Her expression was unreadable, a placid lake over an abyss of calculation. The creature was a biological marvel, a perfect killing machine. A fascinating variable. She tapped a command into her console, diverting the last dregs of auxiliary power not to life support, but to her private research lab in the cargo bay. Priorities, after all. Some things were more important than survival.
The thing finally went down in a spray of acidic ichor that ate through the deck plating. Jax stood over the twitching carcass, chest heaving, the smell of burnt alien flesh filling his nostrils. He turned the gun on Malik, who was leaning against a wall, clutching his side. "We're done playing games, Vega. Who are you working for? Who paid you to sabotage my ship?" Malik just laughed, a raw, painful sound. "You still don't get it, do you, Captain? No one's pulling the strings. We're just rats in a cage, and the cage is on fire."
The lab was hidden behind a false bulkhead in the cargo hold. It was a sterile nightmare of specimen jars and humming stasis pods. Inside one, a smaller version of the creature that attacked them floated in amber fluid. "What the hell is this, Sokolov?" Jax demanded. Mira, cornered, didn't flinch. "Evolution, Captain. Perfection. I was commissioned to acquire a specimen. The crash... was a convenient complication." Malik stared at her, disgust and a dawning horror on his face. "You crazy bitch. You stranded us here."
"The company doesn't like loose ends," Mira said, a small, cruel smile playing on her lips. With a tap on her wrist-comm, another stasis pod hissed open. A new horror, sleek and twice as large, unfolded itself. "It's nothing personal. Just business." The creature shrieked, and the world dissolved into a blur of teeth and claws. Malik roared, charging forward with a salvaged metal pipe. Jax opened fire, shouting curses that were lost in the cacophony.
The fight was short, brutal, and wet. The creature caught Malik mid-charge, its talons tearing through him with sickening ease. But even as he fell, a bloody ruin, he threw the metal pipe with his last ounce of strength. It shattered against the lab's primary control console in a shower of sparks. Alarms blared. "You stupid, fucking ape!" Mira screamed as the containment fields flickered and died. The specimen in the main tank, the queen, began to stir.
Jax was the last one standing. Mira and her perfect creations were just so much shredded meat. He stood in the ruins of the lab, the alarms finally silent, the only sound his own ragged breathing. He had survived. But looking out at the violet twilight of this godforsaken rock, he knew the real monsters weren't the ones with claws and fangs. They were the ones who wore human faces, who whispered promises in boardrooms and signed death warrants from a million miles away. And he was one of them. He had always been one of them.
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