The acid rain hammered against the reinforced plasteel windows of Hab-7 like bullets from heaven’s own machine gun. Tessa Rowe pressed her face to the glass, watching the storm strip paint from the colony’s outer walls in ribbons of chemical fury. Another beautiful morning on Vartis IV.
“Storm’s getting worse,” Eli muttered from behind her, his voice carrying that particular brand of exhaustion that came from breathing recycled air for twenty-three years. He was hunched over a salvaged datapad, trying to coax life from circuits that had given up hope sometime during the last corporate exodus.
Tessa didn’t turn around. The storm was mesmerizing in its violence—sheets of caustic precipitation that could dissolve human flesh in minutes, yet somehow the colony endured. Like everything else on this godforsaken rock, they’d learned to survive what should have killed them.
“Define worse,” she said, her breath fogging the window. “Yesterday it only ate through two layers of hull plating.”
“Today it might make it to three.”
She finally turned, catching Eli’s crooked grin. Twenty-three years old and he still found ways to smile on a world that specialized in grinding hope into paste. It was one of the things she loved about him—platonically, of course. Romance was a luxury they couldn’t afford when every day was a negotiation with death.
The colony’s morning briefing crackled through the comm system, Dr. Bhatt’s voice cutting through static like a scalpel through infected tissue. “Atmospheric toxicity at seven-point-four. Gravity holding steady at two-point-one Earth standard. Predator activity minimal due to storm conditions. In other words, another paradise day in paradise.”
Tessa snorted. Bhatt charged for medical services, bandages, even aspirin, but his sarcasm came free. Small mercies.
“Breakfast?” Eli asked, already knowing the answer.
“Protein paste and synthetic coffee. Living the dream.”
They made their way through Hab-7’s cramped corridors, past walls lined with jury-rigged life support systems and corporate logos so faded they looked like archaeological artifacts. Which, Tessa supposed, they were. The last corporate transport had left Vartis IV eight years ago, taking with it any pretense that the colony mattered to anyone beyond its borders.
The communal mess hall buzzed with the usual morning symphony of complaints, dark humor, and the occasional argument over resource allocation. Three hundred and forty-seven souls, give or take whoever had died in the night, all crammed into a facility designed for half that number. The air tasted of recycled breath and desperation.
“Rowe! Chen!” Cass Virek waved them over to a corner table, his pale face illuminated by the glow of multiple data screens. The colony’s chief hacker looked like he’d been assembled from spare parts—all sharp angles and nervous energy. “Got something interesting from the long-range sensors.”
Tessa slid into the bench across from him, noting how it creaked under her weight. Dense bones were one of Vartis IV’s gifts to its children—along with enhanced reflexes, increased muscle density, and pain tolerance that bordered on the supernatural. Evolution in fast-forward, courtesy of a world that killed the weak before they could reproduce.
“Define interesting,” she said, echoing her earlier conversation with Eli.
Cass’s fingers danced across his screens, pulling up sensor data that looked like abstract art rendered in green and amber. “Picked up some unusual readings about six hours ago. Could be nothing, could be—”
The lights went out.
Emergency illumination kicked in a heartbeat later, bathing everything in hellish red. The colony’s defense klaxons began their banshee wail, a sound that meant only one thing: incoming.
“All colonists to emergency stations,” came the announcement, but Tessa was already moving. Her body had reacted before her mind processed the threat, muscles coiling with predatory tension. Around her, the mess hall erupted into controlled chaos as three hundred people tried to reach their assigned positions simultaneously.
“Tessa!” Eli grabbed her arm as she headed for the exit. “Where are you going?”
“Defense station twelve. You?”
“Medical bay. Bhatt’s going to need all the help he can get.”
She nodded, started to leave, then turned back. Something in the air felt wrong—not just the usual wrongness of Vartis IV, but something else. Something final.
“Eli.”
“Yeah?”
“Be careful.”
His grin was smaller this time, but still there. “You too, Tess. Try not to break anything important.”
She was halfway to the defense station when the first explosion shook the colony. The blast wave traveled through the superstructure like a seismic event, rattling her teeth and sending loose debris cascading from the ceiling. Through the reinforced windows, she caught her first glimpse of the attackers.
Ships. Sleek, organic-looking vessels that moved with insectoid precision through the acid storm as if the caustic rain was nothing more than a light mist. Their hulls gleamed with an oily iridescence that spoke of technology far beyond anything the colony possessed.
Vylar.
Tessa had heard stories, of course. Everyone had. The insectoid species that had been expanding through this sector for the past decade, absorbing worlds and civilizations with the casual efficiency of a corporation acquiring assets. They were supposed to be logical, methodical, and utterly without mercy for species they deemed inferior.
Which, apparently, included humans.
Defense station twelve was a joke—a salvaged plasma cannon mounted on a gimbal that had seen better decades, operated by a targeting system that required percussive maintenance to function. Tessa slapped the side of the console and was rewarded with a flickering display that showed multiple contacts descending through the storm.
“Come on, you piece of corporate trash,” she muttered, cycling the weapon’s charge. The cannon hummed to life with all the enthusiasm of a dying animal.
The first Vylar landing craft touched down in the colony’s central plaza with surprising gentleness. Tessa had expected a crash landing, but these aliens clearly knew what they were doing. The craft’s organic curves split open like a flower, disgorging figures in form-fitting armor that gleamed with the same oily sheen as their ships.
Through the targeting scope, Tessa got her first clear look at a Vylar warrior. Tall, maybe seven feet, with four arms ending in articulated claws. Its head was elongated, insectoid, with multifaceted eyes that reflected the emergency lighting like broken mirrors. Beautiful, in a way that made her skin crawl.
She squeezed the trigger.
The plasma bolt struck the lead Vylar center mass, and for a moment Tessa thought she’d scored a clean kill. Then the alien stood up, its armor smoking but intact, and turned those multifaceted eyes directly toward her position.
“Well,” she said to nobody in particular, “shit.”
The return fire came in the form of some kind of energy weapon that turned the reinforced window next to her into superheated glass fragments. Tessa threw herself sideways, feeling the heat wash over her as the targeting console exploded in a shower of sparks.
Time to relocate.
She grabbed the portable ammunition pack and sprinted for the emergency exit, her enhanced reflexes allowing her to navigate the debris-strewn corridor at speeds that would have been suicidal for a baseline human. Behind her, she could hear the distinctive whine of Vylar weapons carving through the colony’s defenses like they were made of paper.
The medical bay was three levels down and halfway across the complex. Tessa took the most direct route, which involved jumping down an elevator shaft and kicking through a maintenance hatch that hadn’t been opened in years. The colony’s superstructure groaned around her as more explosions rocked the facility.
She found Eli in the medical bay’s main treatment room, helping Dr. Bhatt prepare for casualties. The older man looked up as she burst through the door, his weathered face creased with concern.
“Rowe. Shouldn’t you be at your station?”
“Station’s gone. How bad is it?”
“Bad.” Bhatt gestured toward a wall-mounted display showing the colony’s status. Red indicators outnumbered green by a significant margin. “They’re not trying to destroy us. They’re trying to pacify us.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Pacification suggests they want something intact. Probably us.”
Tessa felt something cold settle in her stomach. “Slaves?”
“Or specimens. Does it matter?”
Before she could answer, the medical bay’s main door exploded inward. The blast wave knocked all three of them to the floor, and through the ringing in her ears, Tessa heard the distinctive chittering of Vylar communication.
Three of them entered, moving with fluid precision. Their armor was pristine despite the battle raging outside, and their weapons were trained on the humans with casual efficiency. The lead Vylar spoke, its voice a harmony of clicks and whistles that somehow resolved into accented Standard.
“Humans. You will comply. Resistance is inefficient.”
Dr. Bhatt struggled to his feet, his hands raised. “We’re medical personnel. Non-combatants.”
“All humans are combatants until proven otherwise. You will be processed.”
Tessa was still on the floor, hidden behind an overturned medical cart. Her hand found a surgical laser that had been knocked from its mounting, and she slowly powered it up. The weapon was designed for precision work, not combat, but it would have to do.
“What about the wounded?” Eli asked, and Tessa’s heart clenched at the genuine concern in his voice. Even now, facing alien invaders, he was thinking about others.
“Wounded humans are inefficient. They will be disposed of.”
The Vylar raised its weapon toward Eli, and something inside Tessa snapped.
She came up from behind the cart like a missile, the surgical laser in one hand and a scalpel in the other. The first Vylar never saw her coming—the laser burned through its neck joint, and the scalpel found the gap between its helmet and chest armor. Green ichor sprayed across the medical bay as the alien collapsed.
The second Vylar spun toward her, but Tessa was already moving. Her enhanced reflexes, honed by twenty-three years on a world that killed the slow, allowed her to duck under its weapon and drive her shoulder into its midsection. The alien was larger, but she was denser, stronger, and absolutely furious.
They went down together, the Vylar’s weapon discharging into the ceiling. Tessa rolled on top of it and began systematically destroying its armor with the scalpel, her movements precise and economical. Green blood pooled beneath them as she worked.
The third Vylar had its weapon trained on her, but hesitated—probably trying to process how a small human female had just killed two of its companions with surgical instruments. The hesitation cost it its life as Eli, moving with desperate courage, tackled it from behind.
“Eli, no!”
But it was too late. The Vylar’s weapon discharged as they fell, the energy bolt punching through Eli’s chest and out his back. He hit the floor hard, his body already going into shock.
Tessa was beside him in an instant, her hands pressing against the wound even though she could see it was hopeless. The smell of burned flesh filled her nostrils as Eli’s blood seeped between her fingers.
“Tess,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “The… the thing about paradise…”
“Don’t talk. Bhatt, get over here!”
“The thing about paradise,” Eli continued, his eyes focusing on something beyond her shoulder, “is that it’s only paradise if you’re already dead.”
He smiled one last time, and then he was gone.
Tessa knelt there for a long moment, her hands still pressed against the wound, feeling Eli’s blood cooling on her skin. Around her, the battle for the colony raged on, but all she could hear was the silence where his heartbeat used to be.
When she finally looked up, Dr. Bhatt was staring at her with something approaching fear. She followed his gaze and realized she was still smiling—the same expression she’d worn while systematically dismantling the Vylar with a scalpel.
“Tessa,” Bhatt said carefully, “we need to get out of here.”
She stood slowly, Eli’s blood still wet on her hands. “No. We need to get them out of here.”
“What?”
“The Vylar. They came here thinking we were livestock. Time to show them what apex predators look like.”
She walked over to the dead aliens and began stripping them of weapons and equipment. The energy rifles were designed for four-armed users, but she could adapt. She’d adapted to everything else on this world.
“Tessa, this is suicide. There are dozens of them.”
“Then I guess I’d better get started.”
She slung two of the alien weapons across her back and tucked a third under her arm. The ammunition packs were heavy, but her enhanced physiology could handle the load. As she headed for the door, she paused and looked back at Eli’s body.
“Should’ve skipped leg day,” she said softly, then stepped into the corridor.
The colony’s main thoroughfare was a war zone. Smoke filled the air, mixing with the acrid smell of melted plasteel and something else—something organic and wrong. Bodies lay scattered across the deck plating, both human and Vylar, though the ratio was depressingly one-sided.
Tessa moved through the chaos like a ghost, her enhanced senses allowing her to navigate by sound and smell when visibility dropped to zero. The Vylar weapons felt alien in her hands, but the basic principles were universal: point, squeeze, watch things die.
She found her first target at the intersection of corridors seven and twelve—a Vylar warrior directing a group of human prisoners toward the landing craft. The alien never heard her coming over the noise of battle. Her first shot took off its primary right arm, the second punched through its thorax. Green ichor painted the walls as it collapsed.
The human prisoners stared at her in shock. She recognized most of them—colonists she’d grown up with, people who’d shared meals and complaints and the quiet desperation of life on Vartis IV.
“Get to the emergency shelters,” she told them. “Stay low, stay quiet.”
“Tessa,” one of them said, “what about you?”
She was already moving toward the sound of more Vylar voices. “I’ve got an appointment.”
The next group was larger—six warriors escorting a column of prisoners toward the central plaza. Tessa studied their formation from the shadows, noting their spacing and movement patterns. Logical, efficient, predictable. They moved like a machine, which meant they could be broken like one.
She started with the rear guard, the surgical laser burning through armor joints with clinical precision. The Vylar’s death scream was a sound like breaking glass, high and sharp and utterly alien. Its companions spun toward the sound, but Tessa was already gone, melting back into the smoke and shadows.
The second kill came thirty seconds later—a plasma bolt to the head that turned the alien’s skull into green mist. The remaining four began to panic, their formation breaking as they tried to locate the threat. Panic made them sloppy, and sloppy got them killed.
Tessa moved through them like a scythe through wheat, her weapons singing their deadly song. When it was over, six more Vylar lay dead, and another dozen humans were free to find shelter.
“It’s smiling,” one of the aliens had said in its death throes, the words translated by its suit’s communication system. “Why is it smiling?”
Because, Tessa thought as she reloaded her weapons, this is what I was made for.
The colony’s central plaza had been transformed into a staging area for the Vylar operation. Landing craft sat like metallic insects among the ruins of the colony’s administrative buildings, their holds being loaded with human prisoners and salvaged equipment. Vylar warriors moved with mechanical efficiency, their multifaceted eyes reflecting the emergency lighting as they went about their work.
Tessa counted at least twenty aliens, plus whatever crew remained aboard the ships. Bad odds, even for someone with her advantages. But then, she’d been living with bad odds her entire life.
She found what she was looking for in the ruins of the colony’s main power station—a plasma cannon that had been torn from its mounting but was still functional. The weapon was designed to be operated by a full crew, but Tessa’s enhanced strength allowed her to manhandle it into position overlooking the plaza.
The first shot took out the nearest landing craft, the plasma bolt punching through its hull and detonating something important inside. The explosion lit up the plaza like a miniature sun, and suddenly every Vylar in sight was looking for the source of the attack.
Tessa gave them a target.
She stood up from behind the cannon, her small frame silhouetted against the burning wreckage, and waved. Several of the aliens raised their weapons, but she was already moving, the cannon’s targeting system tracking her movements as she sprinted across the plaza’s elevated walkways.
The second shot destroyed another landing craft. The third scattered a group of Vylar warriors like bowling pins. By the fourth, they’d figured out where the shots were coming from and began returning fire, but Tessa was no longer there.
She’d abandoned the cannon and was now moving through the plaza itself, using the burning wreckage as cover. Her stolen Vylar weapons cut through their former owners with satisfying efficiency, each kill accompanied by a spray of green ichor that painted the colony’s walls in alien blood.
“You came for livestock,” she called out, her voice echoing off the plaza’s walls. “You found a butcher.”
A group of Vylar warriors tried to flank her, moving with coordinated precision through the smoke and debris. Tessa let them come, then triggered the improvised explosive she’d assembled from medical supplies and power cells. The blast wave knocked her flat, but it turned the aliens into component atoms.
She rolled to her feet, spitting blood and grinning. Her left arm hung useless at her side—dislocated shoulder, probably some torn ligaments—but her right hand still held a weapon. That was all she needed.
The remaining Vylar had regrouped near their command ship, a larger vessel that squatted in the plaza’s center like a mechanical spider. Tessa could see their commander through the ship’s transparent canopy—a larger specimen with more elaborate armor and additional cybernetic implants.
Time for introductions.
She approached the ship directly, making no attempt at stealth. The remaining warriors opened fire, their energy bolts scorching the air around her, but Tessa moved like liquid mercury, her enhanced reflexes allowing her to slip between the deadly beams.
The ship’s boarding ramp was guarded by two warriors in heavy armor. Tessa hit the first one at a dead run, her momentum carrying both of them into the ship’s hull with bone-crushing force. The alien’s armor cracked like an eggshell, green fluid leaking from the joints.
The second warrior tried to bring its weapon to bear, but Tessa was already inside its reach. She grabbed its primary arms and twisted, the sound of breaking chitin echoing through the plaza. The alien screamed—a sound like tearing metal—and collapsed.
The ship’s interior was a maze of organic curves and bioluminescent displays. Tessa moved through it like a predator in its element, following the scent of fear and the sound of chittering voices toward the command center.
She found the Vylar commander surrounded by its staff, all of them focused on displays showing the battle’s progress. They looked up as she entered, their multifaceted eyes reflecting her image in a thousand fragments.
“Impossible,” the commander said, its voice a harmony of clicks and whistles. “You are damaged. You should be dead.”
Tessa looked down at herself. Her clothes were torn and bloody, her left arm still hung useless, and she could taste copper in her mouth. But she was still standing, still fighting, still smiling.
“Death’s been trying to collect on Vartis IV for twenty-three years,” she said. “I’m not ready to pay up yet.”
The commander’s staff reached for their weapons, but Tessa was already moving. The surgical laser burned through one alien’s neck, the scalpel found another’s heart, and her bare hands did things to the third that would have made a coroner weep.
When it was over, only she and the commander remained. The alien stood perfectly still, its weapons lowered, studying her with those impossible eyes.
“You are not what we expected,” it said finally.
“What did you expect?”
“Soft things. Weak things. Things that break easily.”
Tessa wiped green blood from her hands on what remained of her shirt. “You came to the wrong neighborhood.”
“Perhaps. But you are only one, and we are many. This changes nothing.”
“Doesn’t it?”
She gestured toward the displays, which showed the battle’s aftermath. The plaza was littered with Vylar dead, their ships burning or destroyed. The few surviving aliens were retreating toward their remaining vessels, their formation broken and their confidence shattered.
“Your warriors came here thinking they were hunting sheep,” Tessa said. “Instead, they found wolves. How do you think that’s going to play with the rest of your species?”
The commander was silent for a long moment. When it spoke again, its voice carried a note of something that might have been respect.
“You would make an excellent Vylar.”
“Thanks, but I’m already taken.”
She raised the energy rifle, but before she could fire, alarms began sounding throughout the ship. The displays showed new contacts approaching through the storm—human ships, battered but armed, burning through Vartis IV’s atmosphere like falling stars.
“The cavalry,” Tessa said. “Right on time.”
The Earth Defense Force fleet that dropped out of hyperspace above Vartis IV was a patchwork of military vessels, corporate security ships, and converted freighters. They’d received Tessa’s distress signal—broadcast on every frequency she could access—and had come running.
The remaining Vylar ships tried to fight, but they were outnumbered and demoralized. The battle was over in minutes, the alien vessels either destroyed or fleeing into hyperspace.
Tessa watched from the command ship’s bridge as human shuttles began landing in the plaza. Rescue teams, medical personnel, military investigators—all the apparatus of civilization arriving to clean up the mess.
She should have felt relief. Victory. Something.
Instead, she felt empty.
The rescue team that found her was led by a young lieutenant who couldn’t have been much older than she was. He took one look at her—covered in alien blood, surrounded by corpses, still smiling that terrible smile—and reached for his sidearm.
“Easy,” Tessa said. “I’m one of the good guys.”
“Are you?”
She considered the question. Around her lay the bodies of beings she’d killed with her bare hands. Her clothes were soaked with blood—some of it alien, some of it human, some of it her own. She’d turned a medical bay into an abattoir and a plaza into a graveyard.
“I’m alive,” she said finally. “That’s going to have to be enough.”
The lieutenant lowered his weapon but didn’t holster it. “We need to get you to medical.”
“I need to find my friend first.”
But when they returned to the medical bay, Eli’s body was gone. Dr. Bhatt explained that the Vylar had incinerated the human dead before retreating—standard procedure for a species that viewed other life forms as potential contamination.
Tessa stood in the empty medical bay, staring at the bloodstain where Eli had died. The rescue team waited patiently while she processed the loss, their faces carefully neutral.
“Ma’am?” the lieutenant said eventually. “We really should get you checked out.”
She turned away from the bloodstain. “What’s the point?”
“Ma’am?”
“The point of checking me out. Of patching me up. Of any of it.” She gestured toward the ruined colony around them. “This place is dead. Has been for years. We just didn’t have the courtesy to lie down.”
“The Earth government is prepared to offer full relocation assistance to all survivors. New homes, job training, psychological counseling—”
“Psychological counseling.” Tessa laughed, and the sound made the rescue team take a step back. “You think this is trauma? This is Tuesday on Vartis IV.”
She walked past them, heading for the exit. The lieutenant called after her.
“Where are you going?”
“To find a drink. Maybe several.”
“Ma’am, you’re a hero. The footage of your fight is already going viral across human space. They’re calling you the Butcher of Vartis IV.”
Tessa paused at the doorway. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you feel proud.”
She looked back at him, and for a moment her smile faltered. In its place was something raw and broken and utterly human.
“Pride’s a luxury I can’t afford, Lieutenant. Just like everything else.”
She left them standing in the medical bay and walked out into the acid rain. The storm was finally breaking, the caustic precipitation giving way to something that was merely toxic. Above her, the clouds parted to reveal Vartis IV’s pale sun, casting everything in sickly yellow light.
The colony was already being stripped by salvage teams, its useful components loaded onto transport ships for relocation to more hospitable worlds. In a few days, there would be nothing left but empty buildings and the ghosts of three hundred and forty-seven people who’d tried to make a life in hell.
Tessa found a bottle of something that might have been alcohol in the ruins of the colony’s bar. She sat on the steps of what used to be the administrative building and watched the humans pack up their lives into cargo containers.
“Tessa Rowe?”
She looked up to see a woman in a crisp military uniform, her insignia marking her as a colonel in the Earth Defense Force. The woman’s face was professionally sympathetic, the kind of expression they taught in officer training.
“Colonel Sarah Chen, EDF Intelligence. I’d like to talk to you about your future.”
“My future’s right here,” Tessa said, gesturing toward the bottle.
“The Defense Force could use someone with your… unique qualifications. Special operations, deep reconnaissance, situations that require unconventional solutions.”
“You want to weaponize me.”
“I want to give you a purpose.”
Tessa took another drink. The alcohol burned, but it was a clean burn, nothing like the acid rain or the smell of burning flesh.
“I had a purpose. I had a friend. I had a life. The Vylar took all of that.”
“And you made them pay for it. The entire galaxy is going to know what happens when you threaten humanity.”
“The entire galaxy is going to know that we’re monsters just like everyone else.”
Colonel Chen sat down beside her on the steps. “Maybe. But we’re monsters who protect our own.”
They sat in silence for a while, watching the salvage teams work. Finally, Tessa spoke.
“What happened to the Vylar commander? The one I left alive?”
“Escaped with the retreating fleet. Why?”
“It said I’d make a good Vylar. I think it was right.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
Tessa finished the bottle and threw it into the ruins of the colony. It shattered against a wall, the sound echoing through the empty streets.
“Ask me in a few days, Colonel. When the nightmares start.”
She stood up and walked away.
The last transport lifted off from Vartis IV, carrying the survivors toward new lives on distant worlds.
The galaxy had learned what happened when you threatened humanity.
She’d learned what happened when humanity threatened back.
