The desert swallowed sound until only alarms cut through. The firebase sirens shrieked across the Martian night, a sound that clawed into the bones like panic made mechanical. The perimeter’s lamps burned red through clouds of dust, light bending into haze, flickering against the armored bulkheads of the outpost. The air was iron and ozone, every gust carrying grit that rasped against the skin. Inside, soldiers moved like a machine with parts ground down: weapons checked with trembling hands, faces streaked with sweat and dust, the dread of what waited beyond the gates making every step heavy. The plan was simple in theory, reckless in practice. Van Wyk — still bound to a hover-gurney, his veins pulsing with the faint green glow of the Rake infection — would be their lure. A mind-control beacon in flesh. Helene’s special ops squads had formed around her like wolves around a chained prey. Weapons were primed, barrels gleaming with frost from cryo-cartridges. I stood with my own team

The dust had now settled from the breach when Amani found me. His face was streaked with grit, his armor dulled with soot, but his eyes carried something sharper than exhaustion: recognition. He had seen a pattern, and in this war, patterns were as dangerous as blades. He had the kind of eyes that caught things others missed, details carried in the quiet margins. His voice was low, almost conspiratorial, but in the tense air of the command deck it landed like thunder. “General,” he said, his breath fogging against the visor of his helm, “the infected—when they froze under Van Wyk’s call—it wasn’t random. Their clicks… they followed cadence. Not frenzy. Obedience. He steadied them. Even when Helene broke it with that shot, they hesitated first.” I turned to him, the weight of his words pressing harder than the alarms. “You’re certain?” Amani nodded. “I’ve listened to beasts before, sir. The sound of a pack is different from the sound of prey. Those things weren’t hunting. They were…

The air was still bitter with smoke when I bent to Van Wyk. He had crumpled under his own weight after the fight with wave of the infected, half-man, half-ruin, veins glowing like fissures in volcanic rock. His breath rattled in short, broken bursts, every inhale a gamble. I caught him beneath the arms, his body fever-hot, slick with ichor and sweat, and hauled him upright. For a moment I thought he would collapse again, but his legs found purchase, trembling, refusing to betray him entirely. His eyes met mine, pupils ringed in that impossible green, and there was no plea in them—only a strange, stubborn loyalty. It unsettled me more than despair would have. I turned him toward the horizon. We both saw it. Not a storm, though it looked like one: a long, rising wall of dust rolling across the Martian plain, stretching from one jagged ridge to the next. The sun, low and pale above the desert, caught the edges of that dust and set it alight as though a fire moved beneath it. Then came t

The hum of the repair bay still clung to my ears when the call came through. Olympus never waited for silence, it always pierced through noise, the way gods cut through prayer. Helene was already there, her visor reflecting the pale green shimmer of the command-link. I joined her reluctantly, my body heavy from Aftermath Schema, but there was no time for weariness. The hologram unfolded in the center of the chamber, Adebayo’s silhouette framed by the polished obsidian glare of her council. Her voice was calm, almost bored, which made the words that followed colder. “A technosignature has been detected,” she said. “Patterned. Non-random. A vessel, or what remains of one, sits beneath the desert haze. It emits across spectrum bands. Ordered energy. Not natural. This cannot be ignored.” Helene stepped forward before I could answer. “Then we will not ignore it. My unit will investigate immediately.” She didn’t even look at me, but I could feel the weight of her challenge, the way she ma