Barrik stood quietly at the helm of the Leuteria. In one corner of the viewport, the official signing of the Human Domestication Treaty was ongoing. In another, dozens of monitored Terran Navy channels were feeding information to the bridge. Known fleet positions were listed, constantly updating with size, power, and intention. None posed any real threat to the Affini, but efficient domestication after the official signing would certainly be appreciated. The viewport itself was mostly empty space - the Leuteria had stationed itself near the gas giant Jupiter, waiting for soon-to-be-feralist Terrans to fall into their reach.

The Terra system was beautiful, Thern thought. At least, it had the potential to be. A few years of proper domestication, a few more of biosphere repair, and the planet had some real potential under its layers of smog and storm. Maybe, after this was all over…

“Captain, Terran vessels are inbound. Terran Cosmic Navy, Fifteenth Division, including two cruisers and support vessels. Communications suggest they plan to regroup near our position before making a jump to deep space.”

Thern half-smiled, then fired off a pre-recorded message to the Leuteria’s Affini channels.

“Leuteria, Captain Thern speaking. We have some runaway Terrans headed our way. If you have florets, we recommend you keep them away from the main hangar, primary veterinary clinic, and main causeways for the next few hours. If you’ve signed up to participate in a Centaurus team, please report to the main hangar. Thern out.”

The captain turned to the lead Affini engineer, a twentieth-bloom who had recently transferred to the Leuteria. “We do things a little differently here, Lieutenant Lycola, as many of our crew prefer a more… vines-on approach. Our transports will handle the domestication, we will step in if there are any hiccups. For now, no need to engage the cargo chutes. Naturally, engage Drive suppression once all vessels are accounted for, but let’s not doom them to hypermetric disintegration.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Have you participated in a Centaurus domestication run?”

“No, Captain.”

“Hm. Next time, then, if you’re interested. It is one of the great draws of Leuteria, after all.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

Thern smiled, looking over the viewport again. All that was left to do was wait.

Day Three Hundred and Ninety-One.

Leigh sat back, atop the wreckage of the Weaver, gazing out into deep space. This was their favorite part of their daily routine — Widow and their obsessive doomsday preparations had been sated, they’d taken care of the general upkeep and maintenance around the base, and now, finally, Leigh could relax with Emi. 

The medical bot had quickly grown from an assistant into a precious friend to Leigh, though it never could quite grasp that the Vulkan subnet communications would never be turned back on. It was constantly asking to be connected to the outside world, and it broke Leigh’s heart to deny it every time. Yes, things were lonely, but it was a small price to pay for anonymity. Maybe, someday, Widow would consider themselves prepared enough to risk a call. Leigh doubted it.

Still, Widow and Leigh had done well. After about a week of frantic preparation, relentless training, and near-constant monitoring of the bunker’s sensor array, Widow had finally accepted that the Affini had moved on, and allowed them a day’s rest. Soon enough, they had settled into a comfortable routine — Widow and OCNI idle routines took up the mornings, including training simulations, physical conditioning, bunker preparation, and on and on. Eventually, after all the daily tasks were swiped away, and Widow quieted down, Leigh could manage the smaller, more laid-back tasks of their own. Check on the hydroponics systems. Tinker with Emi. Meditate. Take a walk outside. The remnants of the Weaver, in particular, made for an excellent vantage point. Over time, Leigh had brought out a cot and even a small charging brick for Emi. They spent plenty of time out here. It was peaceful, quiet. Sometimes they watched the stars, other times the churning atmosphere of Eupheme. Every so often, they’d catch a glimpse of Thalia, or feel the faintest ripple of a hypermetric kick as ships traveled in and out of the system.

Stars, how Leigh wished they could be on one of those ships. Leave their entire past behind, go find joy among the stars. Visit planet after planet, star after star, hop from one ship to another across the universe. Of course, that could never happen. They couldn’t outrun their past, no matter how hard they tried. OCNI, Widow, and all those horrors were stuck with them. And they were stuck orbiting Eupheme.

Another hypermetric kick rolled across the moon, and Leigh barely caught their breath before another, much larger kick thrummed in their chest. That was odd. Jumps didn’t normally resolve this close to Eupheme, and never among the moons. What was going on? Leigh sent a mental command to their visor, and their vision quickly expanded. 

There, on the horizon. The dull glint of spacecraft steel, with smoke billowing out, obscuring Hephaestus’ light. And just behind it… a huge starship, one they could recognise anywhere, and a smaller transport that they’d looked into once before. Affini inbound. It is time, Widow thought, with what Leigh considered was a bit too much joy.

They swept Emi up, and the bot made a startled beep. “What’s going on?” it asked though Widow’s helmet.

“We’ve got company. Come on, we need to go,” they replied. They vaulted off the Weaver, tucking into a roll as they hit the dust and came up running. Resist and Evade Capture. Obtain weaponry. Leverage tactical advantages. We have prepared for this.

At top speed, it took barely five minutes to get to Vulkan. The terminal recognized their touch, now, and slid open without hesitation. As the clean cycle ran, Widow started giving commands. “Vulkan Base, Commander Howells, Tripcode 35095-Delta. Prepare countermeasures one through three. Unlock armory. Prepare sensor array and track inbound Affini craft. I need to know everything about what’s going on outside before I head back up.”

Vulkan’s Dryad AI flashed green in response. “Orders received. Executing.”

The elevator opened, and Widow sprinted down the hall for the armory. Stupid, stupid, I should have brought the rifle with me.

When they reached the armory, their combat suit, sniper rifle, and sidearm were already laid-out for them. They shimmied quickly into protective overgear, grabbed the rifle, and holstered their sidearm. “Dryad, how’re things looking?” Emi was gently tossed to one side, and whirred as it reoriented itself, skating against the floor. It beeped indignantly, and scuttled off to the medical bay. Widow didn’t notice, or care.

“The larger Affini craft is maintaining distance from Vulkan’s moon. A Cosmic Navy starship is on a direct collision course, one kilometer south. A smaller Affini craft is in pursuit.”

“Information on the Accord ship?”

“Technical specifications match those of the Navy’s Scorched Earth. However, the ship’s broadcast frequency identifies it as the Terran Resistance Vessel New Ironstone. Crew capacity of sixty, with an additional twenty for passengers. Broadcasting red alert on all Terran Navy channels.”

“Goddamned fools. Of course they’re being pursued. Dryad, prepare armory and medical bays for use.”

“Confirmed. Countermeasures prepared.”

“Tap me into their broadcast frequency, too. We’ll have to bring them in if we want to stand a chance here.”

“Confirmed, Commander.”

The elevator slid back open, and Widow stepped in. It hummed as it ascended back to the surface, and Widow took a stabilizing breath. We’ve prepared for this.

Their helmet flashed with a familiar HUD — local maps, downloaded from Vulkan. New Ironstone’s broadcast frequencies and communication channels. A small readout of Affini and Terran locations. Automatic range-finding, targeting systems, and environmental factors, all beamed directly to Widow’s visor. The information would have been overwhelming for anyone else. For Widow, it was comfortable, thrilling, even.

They scrambled up a rocky dune, expertly navigating the terrain as they headed for the crash site. Moments later, Dryad crackled in their ear. “New Ironstone will crash in two minutes. The Affini craft is closing. Shall I patch you in?”

“Do it,” Widow replied cooly.

Instantly, their helmet was filled with overlapping voices, shouting, panicked.

“We’re falling fast! What’s the deal with this moon?”

“Engines are stabilized, but we’re out of power!”

“Any Resistance vessels, mayday, mayday!”

“Everyone out! Abandon ship!”

Widow reached the top of the dune, keeping up a crisp jog. The New Ironstone was in a slow spiral towards the moon, and the Affini were close behind. The Terrans’ point defense systems weren’t firing, not like that mattered anyway. The Affini ship swept up behind the failing vessel, quickly ensnaring it in vines and slowing its descent. Through their enhanced vision, Widow could see the figures of a few Affini start to move along the vines and breach through the hull. Widow found a small natural berm and hunkered down behind it, quickly deploying their rifle and looking through the scope.

In a sudden flurry of steam and smoke, a dozen escape pods burst out from the New Ironstone, targeting the moon and rapidly escaping the oncoming Affini. The pods jetted wildly for the surface, but at least they were clear. One after another, they impacted the moon, sending up scattered clouds of dust as they crash-landed.

“Attention New Ironstone, this is Commander Widow Howells of Vulcan Base,” Widow said calmly. “There’s a bunker one kilometer north of your projected crash site. I hope you brought isolation suits.”

“Vulkan base, this is Captain Whittaker. Damn, are we lucky to have found you!”

“You aren’t out of the woods yet, Captain. I will be providing overwatch for as long as I can, but my resources are limited.” From their vantage, Widow saw as a few escape pods’ doors burst open, spilling the occupants out onto the moon. Slowly, stumbling under the unfamiliar gravity, they started to head for Widow and Vulkan.

Above them, the New Ironstone was fully entangled, and Affini started to drop out of their own transport’s vines and fall towards the moon — tangled masses of vines that lacked any distinct form. Plumes of dust kicked up everywhere they impacted, and dark shapes writhed within as they got their bearings.

“Get going, Captain. It’s time to cut your losses and get to safety.” Cooly, Widow squeezed the trigger, and a bolt of white-hot projectile mass arced across the moon, impacting a few dozen meters ahead of an Affini. Of course, gravity is a thing. Stupid mistake.

The resistance was starting to spread out, some taking wild over-the-back shots as they ran, others simply going as fast as they could to get toward Widow. They would only have to hold off the Affini for a few minutes. Widow finished recalibrating their rifle, and fired another round over the heads of the fleeing Terrans. From here, Widow could barely see a vine sever, dropping to the ground and hemorrhaging sap. Beautiful. Widow settled into a flow. Find target. Charge rifle. Adjust for distance. Trigger squeeze. Find target.

As the crew of New Ironstone neared, though, things started to fall apart. Widow was tracking eight different Affini, and they weren’t going down — multiple had tanked three shots and were still coming, and all of them were starting to evade Widow’s shots, bending and stretching impossibly to avoid being hit. Multiple of the crew were down — the Affini would whip their vines in one particular way, and a few seconds later, one of the crew would just collapse. Bodies started to drop along the path to Vulkan. Things were about to get messy.

The first of the crew scrambled over the berm — an engineer, by the looks of his uniform, and looked to Widow. “What the hell is the plan here?” he shouted, breathing heavily.

“The entrance to the bunker is just a little bit away. Get as many people inside as you can, Dryad will lead you from there. We’ll all lose if we stay out here,” Widow replied. Another shot arced across the battlefield. “Get moving!”

The engineer, and a few others who’d made it over the berm, scrambled away, sliding down the embankment towards the bunker.

The Affini were closing the distance quickly, and Widow was making out more and more details as they came. Some were vaguely humanoid, but their lower halves disintegrated into sharp, spiking roots that dug into the ground and hauled them forward. Many others were little more than tangles of vines and thistles, bristling with sharp thorns and long spines. The facsimiles of faces, if they even existed, were twisted into leering grins and hungry mouths, and eyes shone with dark, twisted glee. One looked up to Widow and planted itself in the dust. It made an odd, full-body rippling motion, like it was folding in on itself, until a single vine flung out from overtop and hurled a thorn for the sniper. Swearing, Widow rolled out of the way, and the thorn flew wide over their head. “Shit! Time’s up!”

Widow scrambled down the berm, slinging their rifle over their shoulder as they bounded away. Ahead of them, a sparse trail of surviving Terrans were headed down into the bunker, picking their way between outcroppings of rock and half-sliding down the ridge. “Move it, all of you!” Widow yelled through the comms channel. “We are out of time!”

They set up on another rock outcropping, leveling their sniper at the berm. Maybe they could get a free shot off as an Affini came over the top. They hazarded a glance at Dryad’s updates. Ten men were inside and armed, and another four were on the way down now. In total, they could get maybe— Fire. Widow squeezed the trigger, and their shot blasted into an Affini, knocking it backwards off the berm. They hopped off the rock and ran full-tilt for the elevator. As Widow passed a stumbling Terran, who promptly collapsed as a thorn appeared in their back. Widow left them in the dust.

“Dryad, close and seal the door, now!”

The AI chimed a confirmation, and the elevator doors slid shut just as Widow ducked inside. A bang and a significant dent appeared in the elevator doors, but a bead of thermite Widow had rigged up nearly eight months ago melted the door into a solid piece of metal. It wouldn’t hold forever, but it would keep the Affini busy long enough for everyone to get inside.

The clean cycle ran in silence, and Widow looked over the last batch of refugees. Dirty, tired, and malnourished beneath their isolation suits. They’d been on the run for a long, long time. Hm. Not exactly an ideal fighting force, but they would do.

The elevator doors slid open, and Dryad started to speak up. “Those who are injured, follow the blue line to the medical bay! Everyone else, follow the red line to the armory! Regroup at the end of the hallway and await further instruction!”

Widow ushered the group out of the elevator, then spoke across to the bunker. “Dryad, seal interior doors and notify me when the elevator shaft is breached.”

“Yes, Commander!”

The last group dispersed, and Widow looked over their new armed bunker defense. A tall, bulky man stood out in front, flamethrower at the ready. Widow looked up at him. “Captain Whittaker, I assume?”

“Commander Widow. Thanks for saving our hide.”

“Don’t mention it. I figure we have about six minutes until the Affini bust these doors down. We can talk more after we survive that, deal?”

“Deal. What do you need done?”

“For now, we wait. Anyone without plasma weaponry or a flamethrower needs to be out of this hallway, pronto. Once the elevator shaft is breached, we’re fighting in vacuum again. I’m fresh out of mobile cover, so we’ll have to shelter around the corners. Try not to get cut in half by the isolation doors when they close.”

Widow glanced at Dryad’s report. “Outer doors are gone. Shit, that was fast. Once the Affini show their faces, light them up. Hopefully we can pour enough firepower into them to push them back for a little while.”

“That’s a stars-sized if, Commander.”

“You have a better plan?”

“Touche.”

A bang reverberated through the hallway, and Widow turned to face the elevator. “Last chance, all. Keep your helmets on.”

The isolation doors closed. A few crew members stepped forward, kneeling on the ground and pointing flamethrowers toward the elevator shaft. Many others ducked behind nearby corners, pressing themselves between the wall and the doors.

The elevator shaft doors bent, then buckled, and a familiar pink gas started to pour in through a small hole punched through the door.

“Keep it steady, lads,” commanded Whittaker. The assembled Terrans shifted hesitantly as the gas curled around their feet and up through the air. The comms channel fell silent, only the faint hiss of gas reaching Widow’s ears. Any second, now…

The gas pump sputtered, and the door was suddenly rent in two, forced apart by impossible strength. But where an Affini may have expected a group of unconscious Terrans in need of pressurized shelter, they instead found a hallway bristling with armament. A flood of napalm and plasma rushed forth, and Widow could hear a horrific, piercing shriek of pain through the quickly-thinning air. It sent a chill up their spine in spite of themselves. The entire hallway became an inferno of white and blistering red, a fireball that could rival Hephaestus itself, if only for a moment.

The torrent slowed, then came to a stop, and Widow waited on edge for more vines to come twisting through the hallway. None came. When the smoke cleared, the door had been reduced to little more than sludge, and wisps of ash were being whisked up and away by the last of the wind.

“Dryad, what’s going on out there?”

“Seven Affini are fleeing the crater. One seems badly wounded, but the others appear unharmed.”

“Keep an eye on them. Everyone else, fall back. We’ll use the second hallway as an airlock.”

“Yes, Commander,” replied Dryad, though it was barely audible over the din of celebration in Widow’s ears as the New Ironstone’s crew cheered.

“What kind of planetwide rot happened down there?” Thern churned furiously. “I turn my back for ten seconds and you come back with half your vines burned away and Lieutenant Lycola needing a rebloom? The moon was abandoned! How did a half-ship of ferals manage to stop the best Centaurus this side of the galactic plane?” 

Vitache Illana, Twelfth Bloom, shifted uncomfortably. Their body was charred and burned, and a significant portion of their biomass was completely disintegrated. Their body, normally an elegant weave of plant matter, was currently little more than a scaffold in the vague shape of a Terran. “Captain, they were not alone. There was another on the moon, the commander of an underground bunker.”

Thern whirled around. “We knew about the bunker! Terran records showed it abandoned months before the fleet first arrived in this system. Even if there was a Terran there, I fail to see how that could make a difference!”

“Clearly not,” Illana snarled, flaring up with indignation. “Do you truly think I would lead my team into a death-trap? There was no hint that it was even accessible, let alone that it would be as heavily fortified as it was.”

The two Affini stood nearly nose-to-nose, bristling with aggression. Eventually, Thern stepped down. “You- you are right.” Their body started to reform, thorns folding back into a smooth outer surface and leaves falling back into place. “It is not your fault that Terran records were incomplete. It is good that nobody was killed.” Thern closed their eyes, gently nudging themselves back into calm. “How many made it to the bunker?”

“Twenty-three, but I doubt that many are in fighting shape. We got thirty-six, with minimal injuries. They’re being treated now.” Illana also took a half-step back, and her whip-like hair calmed down to a gentle sway. A datapad chimed from somewhere within her. She retrieved it, and after a moment relayed the message. “And… there’s more information on the bunker, or rather, its most recent inhabitant.”

Thern looked at the Centaurus leader, eyes flickering. “Go on.”

“Cynthus Tey recognized this during the skirmish, thought we might want to hear it.” She pressed a digital button, and a static-laden playback started, recorded from the Affini’s listening channels.

“…Ironstone, this is Commander Widow Howells of Vulcan…” A clear, cool voice, even through the static— a far cry from the brash, hot-headed ravings of most Terran fleet commanders.

Barrik frowned. That name was familiar. No, it couldn’t have been. “Widow Howells… where have I heard that—”

The realization dawned on both Affini simultaneously. “When we were last in this system—”

“That flytrap operation, with the special task force—”

“We only got five.”

“Oh, stars above.” Illana clasped a vine over her simulated mouth. Thern was silent. “We left them behind.”