Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 18: The Fall of Light
The lights died in sequence.
Not all at once, but deck by deck, corridor by corridor, each section going dark as the reactor choked on its own failing shielding. Inaya watched it happen on the tactical display before the console itself flickered and went black.
Emergency strobes kicked in, red pulses that turned the bridge into a crime scene, all harsh shadows and blood-colored light, making it impossible to see anything clearly.
“Reactor core breach imminent. Containment is at fourteen percent. Failure in seven minutes,” Echo-9’s fragmented voice announced.
Inaya’s hand found the comm panel in the dark. Her muscle memory from a thousand drills had never prepared her for this.
“All hands, this is the Commander. The reactor is critical. Emergency protocols are in effect.”
The deck lurched again; that breathing thing beneath them, whatever monstrosity the Griss had left sleeping in their planet-ship’s depths, was still waking. She felt its movements through the bulkheads, through the air itself.
The noise of multiple sets of running footsteps reached her ears. Inaya turned as Lynk entered the bridge first, his face still marked by Quinn, then Rex behind him, his weapon drawn. Finally, Xavia, supporting Issis, who’d taken shrapnel across her shoulder.
“Where’s Quinn?” Inaya asked.
“Gone,” Lynk said.
She noted his voice had no inflection; he’d just delivered a fact in that measured tone he used when emotions would complicate things.
Xavia eased Issis into the communications chair. Blood soaked through the makeshift bandage on her shoulder, but her eyes tracked clear and focused.
“He sealed himself in medical and won’t respond to comms,” Xavia said.
’Coward,’ Inaya thought.
The word sat in her throat, but she swallowed it. Quinn’s choices didn’t matter now; nothing mattered except the next seven minutes.
Correction: six minutes and forty seconds.
The emergency strobes painted Rex’s face in alternating red and black. He’d lost his helmet somewhere, and blood matted his hair above his left ear. But his hands stayed steady on his rifle, and his breathing was controlled and even.
“What’s the play, Commander?” Rex asked.
Inaya pulled up the emergency schematic on her wrist display. The small screen glowed weakly, showing the Falcon’s skeletal layout with multiple sections already marked in failure red.
“The reactor’s eating itself. Microorganisms got past the shielding.”
She traced the path to engineering and said, “If we lose power, we lose defenses. Those things outside will peel us open.”
“How long until the turrets go dark?” Rex asked.
“Four minutes, maybe three.”
Lynk stepped closer to the display, his movements precise despite his exhaustion.
“The backup generator in the secondary core could restore partial function, enough to maintain weapons systems and basic life support.”
“For how long?” Inaya met his eyes.
“Eighteen hours ... twenty at the most.”
Eighteen hours. Just enough time to watch the end come slower.
Rex shifted his weight, checking his rifle’s charge.
“Where’s this backup core?”
Inaya knew before she pulled up the schematic: it was on deck five, in the aft section, in the maintenance warren that ran beneath engineering. That area was all cramped corridors and exposed conduits where a person had to crawl through spaces designed for service drones.
That was the same section where they’d sealed the last breach, near where Griss hatchlings had flooded in, and Geo had died buying them time.
“Deck Five; maintenance shaft seventeen leads directly to the manual override panel,” Inaya said.
Rex nodded once and said, “I’ll go.”
“It’s a one-way trip,” Lynk said.
Not argumentative, just stating the probability.
“The shafts are compromised; structural integrity has degraded by forty-seven percent since the last breach,” Lynk shared.
“Got a better option?” Rex asked.
Silence.
The emergency strobes pulsed. Outside, through the viewport, the ice field continued cracking in geometric patterns that followed ancient design rather than geology. The thing beneath them breathed again, and the Falcon tilted another half-degree.
Inaya’s hand found the edge of the console and gripped it until her knuckles became white.
She’d given these orders before on Firebase Keswick, where they’d needed someone to hold the perimeter while the others evacuated. And at the Meridian Station, when radiation containment failed, and someone had to stay behind to vent the core.
She’d sent her share of people to die carrying out necessary orders, and she remembered every name.
Rex was already moving toward the corridor.
“Lieutenant.”
Her voice stopped him at the threshold.
“Get to the override panel, restore power to the defensive grid, and then extract via maintenance shaft twenty-one. It’s longer, but the structural integrity there reads stable.”
“Copy that,” Rex said, giving her a smart salute.
She recognized that he wasn’t even pretending to believe the extraction route would work. They both knew the numbers, knew what compromised structural integrity meant in those cramped spaces when something went wrong.
Lynk stepped forward.
“I should go.”
There was no hesitation or uncertainty in his voice.
“My reaction time is superior, and I can navigate the shafts more efficiently,” Lynk said, making his case.
Rex turned, and something passed between them in the flickering red light; not quite friendship—it was too soon for that. It was recognition of a kindred soul, the acknowledgment of soldiers who’d fought together and might die together gave one another.
“Negative. You’re our only advantage against those things. Your combat efficiency is three times the human standard. I need you to stay and fight,” Rex said.
“And you die,” Lynk said.
It wasn’t a question; it was laying bare what Rex was volunteering for.
“We all die, kid; it’s just a question of when and what for.”
The deck shuddered, and distant sounds of tearing metal filtered through the bulkheads. The Griss were probing for weaknesses while they waited for the guns to go dark.
Inaya opened her mouth, the words forming behind her teeth: ’Stand down, Lieutenant. Lynk goes. That’s an order.’
She could say it, should say it. The replicant was more durable, faster, and designed for precisely this kind of mission. He was the logical choice.
But she remembered Lynk in the corridor after he’d found Quinn’s files, the blood on his face from the wound that shouldn’t have mattered to something built in a lab. She recalled the way he’d asked if she thought he could be good.
She remembered creating him and choosing the adaptive model; it made him capable of this exact moral decision.
Rex locked eyes with her.
“If we lose power, we lose the guns. Then those things get in, and nobody survives. You need Lynk at the perimeter. You know I’m right, Commander.”
Three minutes until the reactor failed.
Inaya’s throat closed, but she forced the words through anyway.
“Affirmative. Second Lieutenant Harley, proceed to Deck Five and restore backup power. That’s an order.”
Rex nodded once, crisp and professional, the gesture of a soldier who’d accepted his death before the commander finished speaking.
He moved toward Lynk and extended his hand.
Lynk stared at the offered hand for two full seconds before he took it.
“Don’t let them in,” Rex said, giving Lynk the last order he would ever give.
“I won’t.”
Rex released his hand and turned to Inaya. His posture straightened, shoulders back, the muscle memory of parade grounds and ceremonies that felt like they’d happened in another lifetime.
“Commander.”
“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”
He disappeared into the corridor, his footsteps fading into the ship’s ambient groans and the distant breathing of whatever massive thing continued waking beneath them.
Inaya counted seconds in her head, reaching forty-three before she heard the maintenance hatch cycle open three decks below. The sound carried through the ventilation system, sharp and metallic.
“He’ll make it,” Issis said from the navigator’s chair.
Her voice was weak but certain, like faith could override probability.
Lynk moved to the tactical station, and his fingers worked the failing controls, pulling up what remained of the internal sensor grid.
“Rex has entered shaft seventeen. No hostiles detected in the immediate vicinity.”
Two minutes until reactor failure.
The emergency strobes pulsed. Inaya watched Lynk’s reflection in the dark viewport, saw his jaw tighten as he tracked Rex’s progress through dying systems.
One minute and thirty seconds.
“Contact,” Lynk said. His voice dropped half an octave as he said, “Thermal signature in shaft seventeen; multiple hostiles. Rex is—”
Gunfire.
The sound came through the walls, through the deck, impossibly loud in the confined spaces where Rex crawled toward the backup core. His gun fired in rapid bursts, controlled fire, the rhythm of someone who knew exactly how many rounds remained and refused to waste a single one.
Inaya’s hand found the comm panel.
“Rex, report.”
Static.
More gunfire; this time, more sustained, sounding like someone making a last stand in a corridor too narrow to dodge, too dark to see clearly.
Then silence.
The kind that meant everything or nothing.
“Rex!” Inaya’s voice cracked. “Lieutenant, respond!”
The tactical display flickered, and power readings spiked across multiple sectors as the backup generator came online. The emergency strobes steadied, and the overhead lights struggled back to partial illumination.
Outside, the guns hummed to life.
Inaya stared at the display. Rex’s biosign should have appeared in shaft seventeen, should have shown movement toward the extraction route.
The screen remained empty.
“I’m not reading his signal,” Xavia said quietly.
Lynk’s fingers moved across the console, checking, rechecking, running diagnostics that wouldn’t change what they already knew.
“Backup power is restored; defensive systems are at forty-three percent capacity. That is sufficient to maintain the perimeter,” Lynk said.
Sufficient.
The word almost broke Inaya.
Rex had made it, had crawled through compromised shafts, fought past Griss hatchlings, and reached the override panel. He’d given his life so they could live for another eighteen, maybe twenty hours.
Lynk’s wrist device vibrated.
The sensation registered through neural pathways, but something else accompanied it: recognition. The memory of Chyna’s hands calibrating this same device three weeks ago, her fingers careful and warm against the interface.
His device pulsed again; it was syncing with a protocol that had been initiated without his authorization.