Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 19: The Last Stand
The tactical display erupted in red.
Thermal signatures swarmed across every sensor grid, converging on the Falcon from multiple vectors. Inaya’s stomach dropped as the count climbed past two hundred, then three hundred, still accelerating.
“Exterior cameras are offline. Hull sensors register multiple impact points, starboard side, aft section ... frak!” Xavia reported as the feed cut out.
Her fingers flew across the navigation console, trying to reroute feeds.
Then the sound started; it was no longer the wind and ice crystals hammering the metal exterior. This was a thousand claws scraping across the Falcon’s hull in a rhythm that made Inaya’s teeth ache. The ship groaned under the weight of bodies pressing against every surface, probing for weakness.
“Full defensive posture,” Inaya said.
Her voice came out steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her. She turned her focus to Lynk.
“Lynk, coordinate the fire teams. I want overlapping fields at every potential breach point.”
Lynk’s head tilted fractionally; he was already thinking three steps ahead.
“Acknowledged. Plasma turrets one through four are covering the primary hull sections. Manual targeting is required because automated systems are compromised.”
He moved to the weapons station, his hands dancing across the controls with inhuman precision.
“Rex has more drones that are still operational in cargo. I can route them to breach points,” Lynk added.
“Do it.”
The bridge lights flickered again as power was diverted to the defense grid. Through the viewport, crimson lightning split the sky, each bolt illuminating shapes moving across the ice. The Griss loped toward the ship on powerful hind legs, their claws extended, their eyes reflecting in the storm’s glow.
Inaya pulled up internal schematics, checking seal integrity on every deck, every corridor, every vulnerable seam in the Falcon’s dying hull.
“Lynk, I need you at the forward turret control. Quinn—”
She turned to find him still standing there, cradling his wrists, that thin smile fixed in place like a death mask.
“Quinn, get to medical and stay there. Lock the door.”
“You’re making a mistake,” he said.
“Out.”
He didn’t argue, just straightened his collar and walked toward the exit with measured steps, as though he had all the time in the galaxy. The door sealed behind him with a hydraulic hiss.
Inaya turned to the remaining crew and gave them what very well may be their final order.
“We’re under assault. Seal all interior bulkheads and arm yourselves with whatever’s available. Do not attempt to engage unless a breach is imminent. Conserve ammunition, conserve—”
The first hull plate buckled.
Deck Three, starboard section. Inaya watched the structural integrity readout plummet as something tore through reinforced titanium alloy like wet cardboard. Atmosphere vented in a white plume that frosted instantly as Oblivion’s freezing atmosphere penetrated.
“Emergency seal activated. Deck Three quarantined,” Lynk reported.
Another plate failed, then another. The Griss weren’t trying to get inside anymore. They were peeling the Falcon apart layer by layer, systematically dismantling their shelter with coordinated efficiency that spoke of intelligence rather than just brute force.
Plasma turrets opened fire.
Inaya felt the recoil through the deck plating as superheated bolts screamed through the storm. The tactical display showed impacts as bodies vaporized, limbs severed, Griss warriors thrown back smoking and shrieking across the ice.
But for every one that fell, three more took its place.
“Airlock One breach imminent. Pressure differential critical,” Lynk called out.
Inaya’s fingers flew across the command console, pulling up the camera feed for Airlock One, and she froze.
Issis stood at the inner door, her burned arm tucked against her chest, while Xavia sprinted down the corridor toward her, carrying something heavy. Inaya realized it was a welding torch; they were going to seal the door from the inside manually.
“Negative, belay that,” Inaya snapped into the comm. “Fall back to secondary—”
The outer airlock door exploded inward.
Three Griss warriors poured through the gap, their bodies wreathed in frost that sublimated off their scaled flesh. They moved with terrifying speed, claws gouging deck plating as they launched themselves at the two women.
Xavia didn’t hesitate; she swung the welding torch like a club, catching the lead Griss across its skull with enough force to crack bone. It stumbled sideways, shrieking. The second one hit her low, talons punching through her abdomen and out her spine in a spray of arterial red.
Issis screamed as she threw herself at the manual override, violet eyes wide with terror and absolute determination.
The Griss caught her before she reached it. Claws raked across her chest and opened her throat in a single, efficient motion. Blood painted the bulkhead in an arc that looked almost artistic against the gray metal.
But her momentum carried her forward; her good hand slapped the override even as she collapsed, even as the light died in those genetically edited eyes.
The inner airlock door slammed shut with a gunshot-like sound.
Emergency foam flooded the corridor on the other side, sealing the breach, trapping the Griss warriors inside with two corpses and no way forward.
Inaya’s hands shook on the console.
Two more names, two more faces added to the thousand she already carried. Xavia, with her dry humor and steady hands; Issis, who saw poetry in soil samples and believed in harmony over dominance.
Gone in eleven seconds.
“Breach contained,” Lynk reported.
His voice held no inflection, just fact delivered without weight or grief.
“Airlock One compromised but sealed. Structural integrity holding,” Lynk said.
The plasma turrets fired again, and again. The Falcon shuddered under the assault, metal screaming as the Griss tore through external systems, including sensor arrays, communication relays, and anything vulnerable.
Inaya forced herself to breathe, to think past the rage and grief threatening to paralyze her.
“Casualty report,” she said.
“Xavia Kerr and Issis Star are deceased. Remaining crew: you, me, and Quinn Vaughn.” Lynk paused. “Only the three of us are left.”
Three out of a thousand and fifty-one.
Outside, the crimson aurora spiraled faster.
Echo-9’s voice fractured mid-sentence.
“Contain—ment bre—ach ... prim—ary hull comp—romised ... mul—tiple sec—tors—”
The words dissolved into white noise. Lynk tilted his head, filtering through the corruption, searching for coherent data in the degraded signal, but found nothing of use. There was just static peppered with ghost fragments of the AI’s original code, looping and collapsing into meaningless noise.
The ship’s consciousness was dying.
Lynk’s fingers moved across the weapons console without conscious thought, coordinating turret fire patterns while his primary awareness tracked the expanding breach signatures on his internal display. Deck Two, starboard aft; Deck Four, port side.
He routed auxiliary power to the emergency seals and bought them another forty seconds of integrity on Deck Two. Not enough, just a slight delay. All conclusions pointed to the inevitable. The Falcon had sustained critical damage before the first Griss even touched it, and now, under coordinated assault, structural failure was a matter of minutes, not hours.
They couldn’t win this.
The realization settled in his gut with the weight of absolute certainty. No anger accompanied it, no fear, just cold understanding. He’d been designed to protect the crew, to ensure mission success through tactical superiority and adaptive problem-solving. But some problems had no solutions, and that led to mission failure, no matter how many variables you optimized.
Inaya’s voice cut through his thoughts.
“Lynk, bridge access. Now.”
He was already moving, leaving the weapons station on autonomous fire pattern delta-seven, crossing the bridge in four strides, and reaching the manual override panel beside the blast door. His hands knew the sequence before his conscious mind processed it.
The heavy door began sliding closed with ponderous mechanical certainty.
“What are you doing?” Lynk asked.
Inaya stood at the command console, her fingers dancing across tactical displays. She didn’t look at him.
“Sealing the bridge. If they breach the secondary hull, we’ll have perhaps thirty seconds before they reach this deck. I want one barrier between them and us.”
“That door won’t hold.”
“It’ll slow them down.”
The blast door met its housing with a solid thunk as magnetic locks engaged. The bridge became a tomb, with two people and a dying ship’s ghost as its only occupants.
Lynk studied Inaya’s face in the crimson glow of the tactical display. She’d aged a decade in the past hour: lines carved deep around her mouth, shadows pooled beneath eyes that had watched too many people die. The scar on her left cheek looked like a wound that had never properly healed.
She was calculating, too; he could see it in the set of her shoulders, the mechanical efficiency of her movements as she routed power. The way she sealed bulkheads and triggered every last defensive protocol that the Falcon’s crippled systems could still execute.
Looking for a solution that didn’t exist.
“We can’t win this,” he said.
The words hung in the recycled air between them. It was the first truly human thing he’d said in hours that wasn’t a strategic assessment delivered with clinical detachment, but an acknowledgment of shared mortality.
Inaya’s hands stilled on the console.
For three seconds, she didn’t move, didn’t breathe, just stood there staring at readouts that painted their extinction in cascading red.
Then her shoulders dropped fractionally, and the rigid military posture that had held her upright since the first Griss emerged from the ice finally cracked.
“No, we can’t,” she said quietly.
Another hull breach could be heard.
Lynk moved to the secondary console and began rerouting plasma turret targeting to priority threats. His hands performed the task automatically while he watched Inaya in his peripheral vision, and he offered an alternative to just dying.
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