Chapter 17: The Swarm

The Falcon groaned.

Not from metal fatigue or stress, but from something alive dragging itself across the hull plating, deliberately testing for weakness, the way predators probe soft tissue before the kill.

Lynk’s hand found the bulkhead. Through his palm, vibrations translated into information his enhanced nervous system cataloged automatically: seventeen distinct impact points across the starboard side. Those were coordinated strikes at structural joints where ice damage had already compromised integrity.

The alarms caught up three seconds later, shrieking through corridors already thick with recycled fear. Breach warnings layered over proximity alerts, building into a chorus that mimicked the dying sounds of animals.

Inaya’s voice cut through the noise, issuing orders Lynk barely heard over the scraping that intensified above his head. Something heavy moved across the Falcon’s spine, claws finding purchase in seams the engineers had promised would hold.

The overhead lights flickered.

Then went dark.

In the sudden blackness, Lynk’s vision adjusted, pulling ambient radiation into something approaching sight. He watched the ceiling bow inward—it was just millimeters, but that was enough.

Outside, the Griss had stopped waiting.

The hull screamed as they began tearing it open.

Lynk moved before thought caught up, using muscle memory from combat protocols he hadn’t known existed until his hands found the emergency panel. His fingers danced across the controls, rerouting power from life-support sectors already compromised.

“Seal off decks four and five.”

His voice didn’t belong to him: it was too steady and certain, sounding like Inaya when she switched into command mode.

“Redirect power to internal turrets.”

Crew members appeared in the corridor, stumbling through the darkness; their panic had become a living thing. Rex shouted something about the reactor; Xavia clutched her arm where blood seeped between her fingers. The Falcon shuddered again, and somewhere below, metal shrieked its surrender.

Inaya pulled herself upright against the bulkhead, one hand pressed to her temple where blood ran in a thin line down her jaw. She blinked twice, too slowly, her pupils tracking movement that wasn’t there.

Concussion?

“You’re not in command, Lynk!”

The words came out ragged, stripped of the authority she’d wielded like armor for three weeks.

He turned and looked at her, not through her the way he’d done when he first woke in the printer bay, cataloging weaknesses and calculating probabilities. Now, he saw the woman who’d created him, who’d given him autonomy when regulations demanded compliance. Who’d told him he was trying to be good when he’d needed to hear it most.

She was bleeding, and her ship was dying, and even with all that, she still believed in the chain of command.

“Then give the order yourself, Commander.”

The space between them compressed, while around them, the crew waited: Rex, with his hand on his sidearm; Issis braced against the wall. Quinn emerged from the bridge access corridor, something calculating in his eyes.

Inaya’s jaw tightened, and blood dripped from her chin onto the deck plating, each drop a small red accusation.

“Do it,” she said. “Everything he said.”

Lynk’s hands moved. The panel lit up in sequence as lockdown protocols engaged, turret systems cycling online, blast doors slamming shut across the Falcon’s midsection. He sensed the ship reorganizing itself, sacrificing parts to save the whole, becoming smaller, harder, and meaner.

The overhead lights stabilized.

On the tactical display, seventeen Griss signatures surrounded the Falcon, with more crawling up from fissures that webbed the ice field like cracks in porcelain. The turrets tracked movement, but Lynk’s finger hovered over the firing authorization.

Not yet.

“They’re testing our response patterns and learning which sections respond to breach attempts. If we fire now—” was all Lynk got out.

The hull above them burst inward.

Lynk grabbed Inaya and threw them both sideways as a section of ceiling crashed down where she’d been standing. Metal fragments scattered across the deck like shrapnel from some ancient artillery shell. The temperature dropped ten degrees in three seconds as the arctic air flooded through the wound. It brought with it the scent of alien sweat and something else, something that bypassed his olfactory sensors and triggered responses coded into DNA he didn’t actually possess.

Prey recognition.

Through the breach, a Griss warrior hung suspended, its claws embedded in the torn edges of the hull. Golden eyes locked onto Lynk, and its pupils contracted to vertical slits that reminded him of targeting lasers: cold, precise, measuring the distance between hunter and prey.

It cocked its head; the gesture was almost human, almost curious.

Then it dropped into the corridor.

Rex fired first, three rounds that caught the creature center mass and did absolutely nothing except make it faster. It crossed the distance in a movement too fluid for something that size, its claws extended and jaw unhinging to reveal rows of teeth designed for one purpose.

Lynk met it halfway.

His enhanced reflexes gave him the fraction of a second he needed to sidestep the first strike. Claws gouged the bulkhead where his throat had been, carving through reinforced steel like it was tissue paper. He drove his elbow into the creature’s thorax and felt something crack, saw it stumble.

But it wasn’t enough.

It spun, its tail whipping around with enough force to shatter bone. Lynk ducked and felt displaced air across his scalp, then came up inside its guard. His fingers found the pressure point beneath its jaw, and the Griss convulsed, but didn’t go down.