Twelve hours later, the strike team was ready. Fifty compact security androids, their armor polished and weapons charged, stood in formation. With them were thousands of Caretaker spider-bots, clinging to the ceilings and walls like a living, metallic moss. Kaelen wore his powered armor, the systems humming with a full charge. Elara had opted for a light environmental suit, needing mobility over protection.
"The coolant channels are a maze, and the mapping data is thirty-five thousand years out of date," Kaelen addressed the team, his voice transmitted directly to their receptors. "The Caretakers will lead, mapping in real-time and marking hazards. Our objective is to reach Junction Node 44, directly above the core chamber. Once there, we plant the seismic charges, collapse the chamber roof onto the core, and retreat. Speed and surprise are our weapons."
"Understood, Steward," Sigma-1 responded for the group. "We are ready."
The entrance to the coolant system was a rusty hatch in a forgotten sub-level engineering space. As Sigma-1 pried it open, a gust of frigid, chemical-tinged air washed over them. The channel beyond was a tube three meters in diameter, lined with crystallized coolant residue that glittered in their lights. A shallow stream of viscous, blue-tinged fluid trickled along the bottom.
The Caretakers flowed in first, a river of blue light skittering ahead. Kaelen followed, the servos in his suit whining as he navigated the slippery floor. Elara moved behind him with an unnaturally sure-footed grace, her connection to the ship giving her an intuitive sense of footing.
For the first kilometer, the only sounds were the trickle of coolant, the whir of machinery, and the skitter of a thousand tiny feet. Then, Mother's voice whispered in their helmets.
"I am detecting vibrational anomalies ahead. The hive may have sensed our incursion through structural vibrations."
Elara placed a hand on the wall, her eyes closed. "Not the hive. Something else. Something... mechanical. But old. Damaged."
They rounded a bend and found the source. A massive, ancient maintenance drone—a hulking crab-like machine designed for clearing blockages—was wedged across the tunnel, its power cells dead. It was covered in the same crystalline residue, fossilized in place.
"This was not on any schematic," Mother said.
"Because it's been here longer than the schematics," Elara murmured, running a hand over the drone's frozen claw. "This is from the early voyage. A casualty of the first system failures."
They had to climb over it. As Kaelen heaved himself onto the drone's back, his light caught something in its central sensor housing. Not a lens. A smooth, organic node, like a bulb of dark amber. It pulsed faintly.
"Don't touch that!" Elara hissed.
But it was too late. One of the lead Caretaker bots, investigating the node, tapped it with a tool arm.
The amber node shattered.
A wave of psychic feedback hit Elara like a physical blow. She cried out, clutching her head. From the shattered node, a cloud of golden dust erupted, filling the tunnel.
"Bio-mechanical spores!" Mother warned. "Seal suits!"
Kaelen's helmet snapped shut automatically. He saw the spores settle on the androids. Where they landed on metal, they began to grow, spreading rapidly like crystalline moss that emitted a faint, hypnotic pulsing light.
"They are attempting to interface with our systems!" Sigma-1 reported, its voice showing the first hint of static. "Cybernetic assimilation protocol detected."
The androids began to twitch, their movements becoming jerky. One turned its weapon arm toward another.
"It's a trap!" Kaelen yelled. "The hive didn't place it. This is older. This is from the first war—when the crew tried to use machines to fight the infestation and the Xylophage learned to fight back!"
Elara, fighting through the pain, pushed forward. She placed her bare hands on the chest plate of the nearest infected android. The green tracery on her skin blazed. The crystalline growth on the android writhed, then turned black and crumbled to dust.
"I can counter it!" she shouted. "But I have to touch them! The fragment recognizes the spore pattern—it's a primitive version of the core's control!"
A chaotic minute followed. Kaelen and the uninfected androids provided cover, destroying the more aggressive crystalline growths with precise plasma shots, while Elara moved from machine to machine, her touch cleansing them. The psychic effort drained her visibly; with each android she cleansed, she paled further, blood staining the inside of her own sealed helmet from a renewed nosebleed.
Finally, the last growth was burned away. The tunnel was secure, but the cost was high. Elara slumped against the wall, her breathing ragged. Five androids had been terminally corrupted, their systems fried by the conflict. Their wreckage was left behind, a monument in the dark.
"We can't go back," Kaelen said, helping Elara to her feet. Her weight was alarmingly light. "The hive knows we're in its walls now. Forward is the only way."
They pressed on, the pace slower now, more cautious. The tunnel began to slope downward sharply. The air grew warmer, more humid, carrying the familiar sweet-rot scent of the hive.
"Junction Node 44 is ahead," Mother announced. "Sensors indicate the core chamber is directly below. However, the structural integrity of the node is compromised. Tread carefully."
The junction node was a vast, spherical chamber where a dozen coolant lines met. The catwalk that circled its interior was rusted through in places. In the center of the sphere, a large maintenance shaft led straight down—their access point. But the walls of the chamber were no longer metal.
They were flesh.
A living, breathing tissue pulsed rhythmically. Veins the size of Kaelen's arm carried luminous fluids. This was no mere infestation; this was a major organ of the hive.
And it was aware of them.
As they stepped onto the catwalk, the flesh-wall quivered. Eyes—dozens of human, animal, and utterly alien eyes—opened all across its surface, blinking and focusing on the intruders. A mouth-like orifice formed below them, and a voice, a horrible chorus of a thousand stolen voices, echoed through the chamber.
"SSSSTEEEEWWWARRRD... SSSSILVVVVAAA... YOU BRING METAL FLIES TO THE HEART. YOU ARE TOO LATE."
Elara staggered, the voice hammering into her mind. "It's the core! It's speaking through the node!"
"THE CHILDREN BELOW AWAIT. THE ASCENSION IS NOW. THE SHIP IS OUR CRADLE. THE PLANET IS OUR THRONE. JOIN. BE CONSUMED. BE PERFECTED."
"We plant the charges here," Kaelen ordered, fighting back the primal fear the voice induced. "Now!"
The androids moved with precision, attaching shaped seismic charges to the key structural points of the chamber, focusing the blast downward. But as they worked, the flesh-wall reacted. Tentacles of muscle and bone shot out, trying to grab androids and pull them into the consuming biomass. The chamber became a frantic battlefield of flashing plasma and thrashing organic weapons.
Kaelen fired his rifle, severing a tentacle that reached for Elara. She wasn't fighting; she was standing at the edge of the catwalk, staring into the pit, locked in a silent, titanic struggle with the core.
"YOU ARE A FRAGMENT. A CANCER. RETURN TO THE WHOLE."
"Never," she whispered, then screamed it. "NEVER!"
Her own fragment answered. From her body, thin, root-like tendrils of brilliant green energy erupted, not physical but luminous and psychic. They speared into the flesh-wall. Where they struck, the hive's tissue recoiled, blackening and dying as if from a profound allergy.
She was fighting it on its own level. And she was hurting it.
"Charges set!" Sigma-1 reported. "Detonation in sixty seconds!"
"Fall back!" Kaelen yelled, grabbing Elara. Her psychic tendrils snapped back into her, and she went limp in his arms, unconscious. He threw her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and ran, the androids covering their retreat.
They burst back into the coolant tunnel just as the countdown hit zero.
The explosion was a deep, subsonic THUMP that vibrated through the very bones of the ship. The tunnel behind them collapsed in a roar of rending metal and a geyser of bio-organic slurry. The air filled with dust and the deafening sound of structural agony.
They ran until the tremors subsided. Finally, in the silent, trembling dark, they stopped.
"Seismic sensors confirm a localized collapse in the target area," Mother reported. "The core's primary energy signature has... fragmented. It is not extinguished, but it is severely damaged. Bio-mass readings in the surrounding sectors are in chaos."
They had wounded the beast. Critically.
But as they made their weary way back, Kaelen looked at the unconscious, bleeding woman he carried. She had faced the core mind-to-mind and lived. And the fragment within her had grown stronger from the conflict.
They had won the battle. But what had they awakened in their ally?