Thirty men stood at attention on an open field, rain pinned flat by a crosswind. They formed three neat ranks. An old, ribbon-stacked officer limped down the line, calling each name. One by one he pressed a medal into a waiting palm and a sealed envelope into the other—first orders, first destination. No speeches. No families. Just metal, paper, and the long shadow of duty.
They were a fresh class of Drop Shock Corps—orbital insertion specialists trained for the hardest jobs the Empire could invent. Two years of back-breaking instruction had emptied them of celebration. When the last name was called, trucks carried them straight to an army aerodrome. Weapons were issued. Armor fitted. Transport bays swallowed them whole and spat them toward war.
The news from the front was a drumbeat. The Harvesters were pushing rimward, system by system, and the Empire bled to hold them. A fleet of over a thousand hulls had met the swarm and failed. In barely two years, three of humanity's twenty-eight worlds were gone. On the ground the cost was uglier: the enemy took no prisoners and showed no fear. They were a species built for war.
Worse, victory seemed to multiply them. Where once the Miasma traveled as a single continent of living hulls, it now calved into smaller swarms, each menacing a different sky. The conflict spread like fire through dry brush. Orders broadened: more battlefields, more worlds, more drops.
He went with the rest.
His ten-trooper talon dropped in Javelin pods: burn from orbit, hit hard, leave faster than the enemy could adapt. Secure choke points. Extract VIPs. Rip data cores from failing cities. Cut the heads from key Harvester nodes. Repeat.
Because the Harvesters were not mindless.
No language bridged the distance between species, but intelligence was obvious in the way the swarm maneuvered, guarded, and learned. The enemy was a hive. At the apex was a queen organism; beneath her, a tier of lords—command biostructures that pulsed orders through the fleet like electricity through muscle.
During the space battle over Karn, Imperial sensors caught their clearest glimpse yet: deep in the swarm a dense wheel of guardian vessels revolved around a floating mass like a colossal brain trailed by coiling tendrils. Every alien ship kept station relative to that organ, rarely daring far from its gravity of command. Strategists named it what it could only be: the queen.
Assassination plans followed. Most were fantasies that died on whiteboards. One—the cheapest in risk, ruinous in cost—was tried. From extreme range the Empire hurled everything designed to end worlds: the largest kinetic rods, nuclear lances, cascade warheads. The guardian wheel absorbed, deflected, and died in layers; the barrage thinned it but never reached the pulsing core. When the light and debris cleared, the brain still drifted, unblinking. The attempt had failed.
So the war went on. Drop after drop. Mission after mission. Names crossed off, then replaced by new ones who learned fast or didn't. In time, their ten dwindled to one.
Only Number Four, call sign Genesis, remained.
Eighteen years into the fight, a door opened that almost never opened for anyone. He was summoned to a classified program: ELPIS-1.
The offer was simple in words and staggering in implication—a body re-forged. Augments beyond the piecemeal repairs he already carried. He had lost pieces of himself over the years; robotics filled the gaps. Elpis promised more than replacement. It promised leverage: speed, strength, reaction curves no baseline human could meet.
He signed without hesitation.
Two more years vanished into surgery, rejection, acceptance, and training—a grind that shaved off what softness remained. When they were done, the doctors declared him "optimized." He slept less. He healed fast. Rage came cleaner, colder. Memories slipped: names, streets, small birthdays. The past lost its edges until all that stayed sharp were the worst images—the ones that fueled the motor in his chest.
He stopped using the name his parents gave him. The Corps didn't need it and the war didn't care. He was Genesis now. Four. A tool with a purpose he had chosen and that, in choosing, had chosen him back: exterminate the Harvesters, safeguard humanity, and make sure no one else learned the taste of ash the way he had.
The dream lurched forward, and he was on a tower with the wind in his teeth, hands welded to the grips of a machine gun that bucked and sang. Below, an endless carpet of Harvesters surged through ruined streets. Around him, aircraft slashed the sky and rained fire until the tower must have looked, from a distance, like a rocket taking off—flame blooming at every level, smoke sheathing the spine, a single bright needle holding against the dark.
Then everything shook as a voice cracked across the dark, and the dream tore loose.
"Earth to Number Four. You in there? Earth to Four—wake up."
He opened his eyes with a slow, reluctant blink. Annoyance tightened his jaw. The memory had finally reached the part where purpose burned brighter than pain—and now it was gone.
Year 2532. The present was uglier than any nightmare. Thirty years of war had eaten the map; tens of billions were dead. Most colonies were ash. Earth and a scattering of worlds still held, but the Empire fought from inside its own last circle, trading blood for time and getting neither in return.
Desperation had pushed humanity outward in panicked arcs—seed fleets launched toward deep frontier and even intergalactic dark, new colonies founded far from the front. Last-ditch hope. He didn't buy it. Not with crews this small and shipyards this thin. Even if they slipped the Harvesters, it would take millennia to grow a civilization strong enough to matter. He frowned and focused on the intruder who'd hauled him back to waking.
A young man stood in front of him, head tilted to look up—lean frame, maybe one eighty-two, the wiry build of someone who trained because failing to wasn't an option. Twenty, if that. Drop Shock sergeant stripes. Two troopers behind him.
Too young, all of them. Too young to be wearing black armor with that many hard edges.
Genesis cut a glance left and measured the rest. The first was a broad-shouldered Black heavy gunner, taller than the sergeant by a few centimeters and carrying the weight like he meant to keep it. The other was compact and coiled, a woman maybe one-sixty, the quiet set of a sniper who spent more time with scopes than people. Good kit. Clean plates. Faces that hadn't learned how to hide what they felt. Another sign of how thin humanity was stretched: children in special operations suits.
He let the silence stand until it said what he wanted it to say. Then, flat: "What is it, boy? Couldn't you see I was resting?"
The sergeant flinched back a half step, then dipped his head. "My apologies, sir. It's just—" His gaze snagged on the white 4 painted across Genesis's pauldron. "I noticed your mark. You wouldn't happen to be Number Four—Genesis? The one who held the line at Argran?"
Genesis didn't uncross his arms. "Yeah. What of it."
The kid's face lit like someone had switched on a room. "That's… that's incredible."
"It isn't," Genesis said.
All three troopers made the same small intake of breath. The sergeant shook his head. "Please don't say that, sir. I know we lost in the end—and we lost Argran—but without what you did, a lot more would've died." He swallowed, steadied his voice. "We're from there. All three of us. I… requested this mission specifically so we could serve under you."
The cabin hummed. Rain drummed the hull. Genesis looked at them one by one, at the hope they hadn't yet learned to hide, and said nothing.
The Harpy shuddered as the pilot dropped a notch of altitude.
The young sergeant paused, then fumbled a photograph from his side pocket and pushed it forward. "This is my wife and kids," he said, voice thick. "Ever since Argran they've been—well, they're big fans. Could I have your signature? It would mean everything."
Genesis took the photo. It shoved the past into his hands: four faces on a bench, the sergeant holding a small boy, the woman cradling a girl on her lap. The children were the same age his had been. A cold tightness rolled through him; for a long second old grief made his fingers numb.
He shoved it back, clipped. "Fine."
The sergeant's grin lit up like sunrise. He produced a pen and watched with stupid, grateful reverence as Genesis scrawled across the margin: 4 — Genesis.
That broke the dam. The heavy gunner proffered a photo of his girlfriend. "Please? We're huge fans. I heard you took down a Harvester Lord at Argran single-handed—must've been a sight."
Genesis signed without looking up. "I put a beacon in it. Missiles did the rest."
The gunner laughed, delighted. "You make it sound small. Those lords are always surrounded by ten warriors. Not many could get close."
Before Genesis could respond the sniper shoved past, thrusting a glossy in his face. It was all her—no family, no child—the picture ended with a smile and a slant of lipstick.
She bit her lip and said, half-joking, half-serious, "You don't need to sign this. Keep it. Surprise on the back."
He turned it over. A number had been scribbled on the reverse in red: a phone, an invite. She was pretty; the gesture would have meant something once. Now it registered as a small, almost vulgar act of normalcy. He slid the photo into a back pocket anyway.
The others rolled their eyes. The sniper beamed. "What? A woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do."
The pilot's voice cut through the cabin. "T-minus two minutes. Get ready—no word from the research base. Something's wrong. I'll set us down by the access road; you'll hike the rest. Helmets on, weapons hot."