The corpse was dressed in a tattered Republic uniform, suspended by thick, coiled cables wrapped around its torso like constricting vines. His face was slack, eyes sunken, mouth ajar as if frozen mid-scream. Blood had dried in dark streaks along his neck and chest, though the exact cause of death wasn’t clear. Gravel couldn’t help but think he looked like a macabre pi?ata.
Priest stepped forward, scanning him with his Anvilx, one of the newer versions of the wristband device every crew member needed to have. The holographic interface flickered—processing, processing—then spat out results. “No vital signs. Been dead for less than a week.”
“Why was there no smell?” Gravel said. He studied the way the body hung, how the cables seemed intentional. Like something had dragged him up there. He glanced at the walls, noticing deep gouges in the metal. At a week, humans would start to melt, and the smell would have been obvious from miles away. So what stopped that from happening here?
“Good question,” Priest replied before proceeding to not answer the question.
Gravel tried to summon his Morkanium, but the material stopped effusing as soon as it coated his fingers. The space before him swiveled like he just got out of a roller coaster. Shit. My ink armor is on time-out. He had depleted his reserves trying to coat the material around his body earlier, and if he were to overdo it, the terrible migraines, dizziness, and loss of motor function would be the least of his problems.
Hunter exhaled slowly, her rifle trained on the corpse, while murmuring something intelligible.
Priest tuned his wrist device to scan the surrounding area. His display flickered again. “Wait. There is residual power flowing through them. Barely active, but—”
A sudden snap shattered the silence.
The cables twitched.
A synthetic tendril lashed down like a viper.
“Shit! Hunter’s tentacle!” Gravel grabbed Priest’s shoulder and shoved him aside. He lunged forward, trying to snatch the tendril with his Morkanium-infused arms. The tendril slipped through his grasp. Then it lunged in again.
Gravel twisted his body, channeling his mutation’s energy to redirect the oncoming strike. The tendril slammed into the reinforced floor and left a jagged dent as it echoed.
“Good work,” Priest said. “We move.”
Hunter’s laser gun barked out a quick burst. The beams tore into the cables, but instead of severing, they were deflected, vanishing into the ceiling with a sizzling hiss.
“Phase-shifting material?” Hunter murmured. Those cables must be important.
The corpse swayed from the impact, but remained suspended, its hollow eyes staring at nothing.
“That thing is alive?” Hunter snapped, already reloading.
“Probably semi-autonomous,” Priest muttered, scanning again. “Maybe rigged into the bunker’s power. Some kind of defensive system, or a leftover experiment. I detected three heat signatures earlier; this might be one of them. There might be at least one more.”
Gravel deadpanned. “Then let’s not give it another chance to grab us.”
The team pressed forward, stepping over the cracked floor where the cable had struck. The corridor stretched ahead. Silent again.
A putrid, organic rot clung to the back of Gravel’s throat. He could see Hunter fighting the urge to gag. He put a hand on her back, nudging her. She glanced at him, nodding.
With a swoosh, the cables behind them shifted. Hunter glanced back once, saw nothing, then continued trudging forward.
The further they went, the colder the air became. The scent of decay faded with each step they took, overtaken by the metallic smell that wasn’t akin to blood. At least not human blood.
Hunter heaved a sigh. Her breath was visible in the chill.
Priest’s scanner flickered again. “Power fluctuations ahead. The main server room should be twenty meters away.”
Gravel didn’t slow. He could feel it too. An almost imperceptible thrum in the air.
Hunter swept her rifle across the corridor. “Gravel. How was that thing back there able to move? I saw its finger twitching. It wasn’t just a cable.”
“I don’t know about it any more than you do.” He shook his head. “If Priest doesn’t have an answer, no one does.”
The hallway stretched ahead, and the only sounds were their footsteps against the cold metal floor.
Then, the lights pulsed. Once.
A low hum vibrated through the walls.
Hunter stopped mid-step. “That’s new.”
Priest frowned, looking at his scanner.
[STATUS: Unidentified Energy Surge Detected. 87% Power Spike]
[SOURCE: Central Core - Primary Systems]
He said, “Something is—”
A deep, grinding noise cut him off. Metal shifting. Machinery stirred to life.
Gravel’s gut twisted. “Yeah, we gotta go.”
They broke into a run, boots pounding against steel. The hum grew louder, turning into a pulsing rhythm, like an artificial heartbeat.
Then, ahead of them, the walls opened up.
Panels slid back with sharp hisses, revealing mechanical arms folded into alcoves. At first, they seemed inert—lifeless remnants of an abandoned defense system.
Then they moved.
Hunter swore in her native language—Solmense of Haret, which sounded like a dialect of Spanish than an actual, distinct language—as she raised her laser rifle.
The first arm shot forward, metal claws snapping as it lunged for Gravel. He ducked, narrowly avoiding being skewered. Another swung toward Hunter. She dropped into a roll, firing upward as she moved. Sparks flew, but the arm recoiled and reset, recalibrating.
Priest shouted, dodging a clawed appendage. “They are tracking us. Left.”
Gravel gritted his teeth. He slammed his shoulder into one of the mechanical arms, forcing it back into its alcove just long enough to pass. The hallway was turning into a gauntlet, with defense systems springing to life all around them.
Priest skidded to a stop, his wrist device flashing red. “Server room’s ahead. Ten meters!”
“Override that door,” Gravel ordered.
A metal arm lashed out, striking the side of his rifle and sending it clattering to the floor. He didn’t stop. No time. He pulled his sidearm, firing at a cluster of wiring in the wall that was already riddled with bullet holes. Probably the best decision to shoot them where they had been hit. One of the arms spasmed, then went still.
Hunter sprinted ahead, leaped, and slid up to the reinforced door. “Priest, now!”
Priest was already there, tapping furiously at the control panel. “Almost—”
A mechanical screech rang out from behind them.
Something bigger was waking up. Gravel was pretty sure that was the third signature.
Gravel didn’t look back. “Priest, open it!”
The door hissed, then slid open.
The three of them dove inside.
Priest slammed his hand against the emergency override. The door groaned, then locked shut just as the corridor outside erupted in motion.
A single bang thundered on the other side of the door. The screeching stopped.
Silence settled over them, save for the quiet purr of servers lining the room.
Hunter shook. She shook, and shook again. Her claustrophobia was already in the work, but Gravel was not one to comfort her. Hunter didn’t need comfort. Hell, she wouldn’t even admit she was claustrophobic. If anything, she would be pissed at herself if she couldn’t get her fear in check and have him step in and do it for her.
Finally, she bit her lips, and the shake on her shoulders was no longer visible. “What is this place? It has tech that should not be on an uninhabited planet.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“You wanna go back and find out?” Gravel asked.
“I’m good.” She caught her breath. Gravel knew that look, that subtle furrow of her brow that slowly, deliberately deepened as she squinted her round eyes. She was annoyed with something. With him, in particular.
“What’s wrong?” He asked. “Don’t say ‘nothing’. Let’s save ourselves from days of stupid cold war where nobody says anything.”
She scrunched her nose, then turned her gaze away from him and onto the safety latch of her laser gun where her fingers had been fidgeting on. “We should not have taken this mission, Gravel.”
Now it was his turn to furrow his brow. “Because it’s dangerous?”
“Because the reward is too good for the task.”
“And you’re saying it now, after the fact. When I briefed the mission to y’all all you said was ‘sure’.”
Hunter didn’t reply.
Priest was already scanning the server racks. “Where is it?”
“We need to help him.” Gravel exhaled, sweeping his gaze over the rows of humming servers—tall, dust-coated monoliths blinking with weak status lights. The air was warmer here, thick with the scent of old circuitry: heated metal, faintly burnt insulation, and the stale tang of dust long settled in forgotten corners. The low, vibrating croon of the server pressed against their skulls non-stop. Every few seconds, a dying coolant system let out a strained hiss, like an old man straining his coughs.
Hunter ran a hand through her hair, glancing at the sealed door behind them. “I think they might’ve found a way to activate residual nerve activities in corpses. You know, like how frog legs can still move after they’ve died? Or maybe they’ve found a way to stimulate muscles through those cables.”
“Are you still caught up on that?” Gravel asked. “Hunter, we’ve got a Republic murder-spider outside.”
“It’s not just science experiments, Gravel. It’s relevant. If they’re messing with nerve activity in corpses, what’s stopping them from doing it to live subjects?”
“Well, they would probably need to implant something, which would require the subject to be still for a minute,” he replied.
Priest didn’t look up. “Statistically unlikely. The energy required to sustain that level of neural reactivation in a corpse would be impractical for large-scale deployment. But . . .” His fingers danced across his wrist device, cycling through security logs. “. . . it would explain why this bunker’s power grid is still active.”
Hunter was about to say something, but Gravel signalled for her to not bother Priest. “What are we looking for?” Gravel asked.
Priest said, “An encrypted storage unit. Should be somewhere.” He turned toward a terminal and hooked in his device. A stream of old data scrolled across the screen, fragmented and corrupted. “The system is barely holding together.”
Gravel tried to look for clues in a server stack. Hunter moved to a nearby stack, sweeping dust off a cracked ID plate. “Any chance we rip it out and sort the decryption later?”
“Not unless you want to trigger a failsafe,” Priest muttered. “Wait.”
Hunter crossed the room, scanning the rows of hardware, and she shook again, but in a more controlled manner this time. She stopped at one of the larger units near the back with an ajar casing. Subtle scratches marred the metal near the access panel. She narrowed his eyes, reaching out to pry it open.
The panel gave way with a quiet creak, revealing the tangled mess of cables and drives within. Her gaze swept over the components, and his gaze followed hers. His instincts bracing for something to lash out. But nothing did. No automated defenses, no sudden alarms, no more dangling corpses. Just old, neglected hardware vibrating in the darkened space.
She took a deep breath.
“Priest,” she called, stepping aside. “This might be it.”
“Good job,” Gravel said to her and realized that his tone was more neutral and less encouraging than he had wanted.
Priest was already moving, his scanner whirring as he crouched beside the open casing. “Looks promising. Give me a minute.” His fingers danced over his wrist device, syncing with the system, tapping into the drive’s interface.
Gravel leaned against a nearby rack, arms crossed. “You know, Priest, if I had a ducat for every time you said ‘give me a minute,’ I’d own this bunker by now.”
Priest didn’t reply.
Priest’s scanner emitted blue lights as he ran decryption protocols. The server cooed, then purred, then shuddered in response, data streams flickering across his wrist display.
“Come on,” he muttered. “Give me something useful.”
Gravel asked, “Any idea what exactly we’re pulling?”
Priest didn’t look up. “Could be fleet routes, supply chains. Even R&D projects.”
Hunter chimed in. “Maybe there will be data to explain the diamond-skinned tigers out there. Or that moving corpse.” His brow furrowed. “Whatever it is, someone thought it was worth burying in a death trap.”
Gravel scanned the room again. “How long?”
“Another couple of minutes,” Priest said.
Hunter sighed. “Famous last words.”
A low vibration thrummed through the floor. Subtle, but distinct.
Hunter’s jaw tightened. “Tell me that was the server.”
Priest’s fingers hesitated over his device. “That wasn’t the server.”
A deep clunk echoed from somewhere beyond the room. Then the metal again moved.
The lights sputtered. Then, the unmistakable click of a security system rebooting rattled the walls.
Priest cursed. “The bunker just sealed itself.”
Hunter groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her breathing became slightly irregular.
Gravel whispered at her, “Stay cool, Hunter. Just because the door’s closed doesn’t mean space got any smaller.” She didn’t give him a response.
Priest was already working on his wrist device, fingers flying across the interface. “Security protocols just locked every entrance and scrambled the external comms.”
“Perfect,” Gravel muttered. At least I won’t have to deal with Fang for a hot minute, he thought.
Hunter paced, eyes flicking between the reinforced doorway and the still-whirring servers. She looked up and down as she sidled, but then stopped on her track. Her voice was quiet, the kind of unsure she had rarely exhibited in her life. “. . . What if we don’t go through the door?”
Gravel raised an eyebrow. “Did you miss the part where we’re underground?”
“Yes, but . . . the giant murder-spider outside isn’t.”
Gravel blinked. “You want to call the Spider mech? The same one that tried to vaporize us five minutes ago?”
Hunter tapped her feet against the ground furiously. “That thing’s got enough firepower to rip a hole through this entire bunker. If it’s recharged its plasma cannon already, then we can get it angry in the right direction.”
Gravel stared at her. “That is either the dumbest or the smartest idea I’ve heard today.” And her body language didn’t help her case, either. It was like she didn’t believe in her own plan.
Both he and Hunter turned to Priest. Priest stared back at them for a moment, then said, “I would take that chance. Also, extraction completed.” He raised the drive in front of him.
Hunter let out an extremely prolonged exhale. “You heard him. Get your inky armor ready, boulder boy,” she replied. “You’ll need to tank when it hits.”
Gravel tried to summon his Morkanium again. The material formed around his hands more easily now, but from his experience, that would not be enough. “I won’t be able to summon it to cover more than the top half of my body.” He did not say it, but he was hesitant. Hesitant of their chances if the plasma beam managed to reach his body.
Hunter pursed her lips for a second then replied, “Take cover.”
Priest tapped his comms, flipping to an emergency frequency. Static hissed in his ear as he adjusted the signal, searching for anything that could still transmit past the bunker’s jamming.
Then, he heard a faint, rhythmic pulse. The spider-like mech’s automated targeting system.
He keyed in a command, overriding the transmission filter. “You want to taunt it, Gravel?” He turned to him.
There was no choice but to commit to the bit.
Gravel gave a grin as he stepped forward. “Oh, absolutely,” he said, but his grin was not convincing. He then leaned into comms. “Hey, bitch-ass-faced arachnid. Should’ve killed me earlier, but you were weak.”
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a distorted beep, sharp and aggressive, crackled through the channel.
Gravel nodded. “Oh yeah, I think it remembers us.”
Priest scanned the telemetry feed. “It’s redirecting. You have about twenty seconds before it locks onto this location.”
Gravel exhaled. “Let’s hope this bunker wasn’t built to last.”
Outside, the jungle trembled as the Spider mech adjusted its stance. Servo motors whined, and a deep, throaty whirr signaled the charge-up of its primary cannon.
Priest’s screen flared with warnings. “About to fire.”
Hunter and Priest found cover, Gravel behind an overturned console, and Priest behind the most reinforced server stack labelled ‘Classified’. Hunter was moving away, but Gravel signalled for her to come over. There wasn’t enough reinforced cover where she stood, and in that split second, he’d made the decision that she was better off with him.
She ran over. Gravel grabbed her by the arm and pulled her in, shielding her with his body as Morkanium surged over his back like living ink.
“Armor ready,” Gravel spoke, but the dizziness had returned. It felt like his mind was infested by termites, and tickled his eardrums as they walked in. Soon, they would grind their antennae against his skull.
No full body armor or he would black out.
“Rhyan,” he could hear the murmur from underneath him. Her uneven breathing against his chest. “If we die today . . .”
“Shut up, Felicia,” he said. “You’re going to hate yourself for what you will say when we walk out of here alive.”
A second of silence.
The kind of silence he had felt in an airlock, the last time they were this close to dying.
It hadn’t been his idea, that time. It had been Hunter’s.
It was also a data drive, but there was a catch. They weren’t the only ones after that data. A merc crew with military-grade weaponry had gotten there first. And by the time the Black Fang’s crew realized they were walking into a kill box, the station’s life support systems had already been compromised.
The only reason they’d survived was an airlock malfunction.
The merc leader had tried venting them all into space, but the station’s failing software had glitched, sealing half the bulkheads instead of opening them. It bought them just enough time for Gravel to force a manual override, and Hunter to put a bullet through the merc’s visor at point-blank range.
It was their last ground mission as a duo, before the duo ceased to exist (as it was then a trio with Priest in the mix). She hadn’t pitched another one since. She just went along with whatever he pitched now.
Then, “Nice knowing you,” she said.
The air thrummed.
Then another boom.
The explosion roared through the bunker like a thunderclap. Metal screeched as a section of the ceiling buckled inward, debris crashing down in a storm of dust and shattered panels. The blast wave knocked a server rack and tore some cables. Some energy reached Gravel, but the bunker walls had absorbed the bulk of the damage.
Gravel shielded both his and Hunter’s face. “That—cough—was reckless. Love it.”
Hunter wiped the grime from her cheek. She was about to say something, probably something snarky, but ultimately never found her voice.
“Do not move yet,” Priest warned.
Above them, twisted metal groaned, and daylight poured in through the gaping hole the mech had blasted open.
Then came the high-velocity railgun rounds.
Sparks rained down as ruptured power lines burst overhead and server racks were punctured.
The rail slug slammed into his Morkanium-coated forearm and back with a crack. Across the room, Priest raised his arm, releasing a gravitational pulse. The energy unfurled like an invisible barrier, distorting the air around it. As incoming bullets entered its field, their trajectories warped, slowed, then collapsed, plummeting to the ground.
Then the railgun volleys halted.
“Hurry before it reloads,” Priest moved with the drive already in his hands. “My cyberhand will overload if I try to make another barrier.” The others followed suit.
A burst of static crackled in Gravel’s earpiece, followed by Hua Fang’s voice, sharp and urgent.
“Glad to catch you again, guys,” she said, breathless. “I’m right outside—but I’ve got company. And they fly.”
Who would be the most likely to get a speeding ticket?
