The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novices Earthly, Hunter Giles, Non Limwattanaporn, Lenny XinHua, Isaiah, Vidvan Rubcic, Brommier, The Synonym, Mendacius the Trkstir, suspicious, Retroburn, and Tyler Gamer.
Operatives Pascal L, Monijay, and mitchell blake.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
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Back in the city, the shift from a bustling morning of hopeful expansion to a terrifying, colony-wide lockdown was instantaneous. One moment, the streets of the small city were filled with the chatter of civilians heading to the food processing plants and the thud of machinery preparing the day's materials. The next, the blaring, multi-tonal wail of the Condition Red siren ripped through the basin, drowning out everything else.
The warm-spectrum floodlights that had just deactivated suddenly flared back to life, bathing the entire city in a stark, blinding white glare that washed out the daylight of the red dwarf suns. High above on the perimeter walls, the automated laser turrets whirred with synchronization. Their ruby-red targeting optics snapped outward, sweeping the jungle's dense tree line with predatory speed, their capacitors whining as Marcos removed their safety inhibitors and granted them autonomous free-fire authorization.
"Attention, everyone. The colony is now operating under Condition Red," Marcos's voice echoed over the sprawling PA system. When addressing the entire colony, the AI used a cold tone, like a military intelligence matrix preparing for war. "All civilian personnel are to seek immediate shelter within the nearest structural module. Evacuate the streets. Cease all industrial activity. This is not a drill. This is not a drill. This is not a drill."
Panic immediately seized the populace. Tools were dropped where they stood on the factory floors. Mothers grabbed their children, and the streets cleared in a matter of seconds as people bolted for the safety of the identical, twenty-foot-tall residential modules. The doors hissed shut, their magnetic locks engaging with heavy thuds that echoed through the empty avenues.
Near the northern gates, the atmosphere was utter chaos, narrowly held together by the iron discipline of the Peacekeepers, as the seventy-five civilian miners who had marched out with such defiant pride just an hour earlier were now sprinting back toward the city in a desperate, breathless stampede. The automated logging crawlers had been abandoned in the brush, their engines still idling and their treads caked in fresh mud.
"Keep moving! Do not look back!" Aurelia barked over the external speakers of her armor, running backward as she covered the retreating civilians. Her magnetic rifle was raised to her shoulder as her thermal optics burned through the canopy, searching for the unidentified shooters Mark had warned them about.
Just as the exhausted and terrified civilians crested the final hill leading to the main gates, the deafening roar of three armored transport trucks tore past them. Juan and fifty Vanguard mercenaries poured out of the vehicles before their massive tires even came to a complete stop. The mercenaries formed a solid wall of carbon-weave and magnetic rifles, kneeling in the dirt and aiming directly into the dense northern tree line that provided an impenetrable screen of covering fire as the civilians funneled through the gates.
Sarah, the ice-miner Mark had spoken to earlier, stumbled through the threshold, dropping her loaded survey pack to the ground as she gasped for air. She looked up just in time to see the slatted S-Alloy gates grind shut, the locking mechanisms engaging with a sound like a bank vault sealing forever.
Behind the walls, the crashed bulk of the Shepherd underwent its own transformation. Its main blast doors covering its hangar bays and exposed corridors slammed shut, sealing the interior off from the outside world. Deep within its hull, the thermal baffles engaged, shielding the frigate's reactor output to minimize the city's thermal footprint from any orbital or high-altitude scanners the unknown enemy might possess, and they hadn't managed to spot before making their way down to the planet.
The city went dead quiet, save for the hum of the turrets and the distant slicing of the wind turbines on the ridge. The sanctuary had become a fortress, braced for an attack from an enemy they knew existed, but didn't know where it was.
Thirteen kilometers to the east, deep within the humid, violet labyrinth of the alien jungle, the tension was just as thick.
Mark stood in the center of the wolf den, his rail-pistol raised, his eyes locked on the canopy above. The four black-armored Elites held the perimeter around the massive tree root, their weapons steady, their breathing strictly controlled. At their feet, Octavia knelt beside the dying white wolf, her hands applying agonizing, relentless pressure to the catastrophic five-inch exit wound in an attempt to stem the massive blood loss.
The dark burgundy alpha male paced frantically near his mate, his massive paws making absolutely no sound against the ground. He would stop, lick the female's snout, let out a heart-wrenching whine, and then resume his pacing, his glowing eyes darting toward the sky.
The wolf's acute hearing picked up the drones before Mark did. The low, vibrating hum began to bleed through the natural sounds of the jungle, growing louder with every passing second, shifting into the distinct, high-pitched whine of industrial thrusters pushing against the atmosphere.
"Mark, the lifter drones should be arriving within your coordinates and descending right about now," Marcos's voice crackled over the private comms. "I've got visual contact. Lowering the cargo flatbed."
The canopy directly above the clearing began to thrash violently. Leaves, branches, and glowing blue moss were stripped from the ancient trees by the massive downdraft of the six heavy-lifter drones descending through the gap. Slung beneath them, swaying slightly in the turbulent air, was the reinforced S-Alloy cargo flatbed.
The moment the drones broke through the canopy and became visible to the den, absolute chaos erupted.
The seventeen pups scattered instantly, diving deep into the cavernous hollows of the ancient roots, yipping and howling in sheer terror. The other wolves, previously held in check by their alpha, completely lost their minds. To them, the whirring, metallic machines descending from the sky were no different than the unnatural, metallic crack of the railgun that had just torn their pack mother apart. For all they knew, machines meant death, and these machines were invading their home.
A chorus of furious, blood-curdling snarls ripped through the clearing. Five of the massive, horse-sized adult wolves charged directly at the descending flatbed, leaping impossibly high into the air, their jaws snapping wildly at the thick carbon-weave tow cables and the underbellies of the drones, their claws swiping at the S-Alloy metal.
"Hold your fire!" Mark screamed over the comms, watching a massive grey wolf miss one of the lifter drones by mere inches, its jaws snapping shut with a sound like a steel trap. "Do not shoot them!"
"They are going to take down the drones, sir!" Lucius yelled back, tracking a charging wolf with the barrel of his rifle. "If they sever those cables, that flatbed is going to drop and crush us all!"
Mark raised his rail-pistol, aiming it at the dirt just in front of a charging wolf, preparing to fire a warning shot into the ground to scare them back.
But he didn't have to pull the trigger as the dark burgundy wolf suddenly spun away from his dying mate and planted his massive paws into the earth, throwing his head back and releasing two deafening barks.
BARK!
BARK!
The acoustic force of the command was staggering, releasing a physical wave of pressure that reverberated right through Mark's chest plate.
The effect on the pack was instantaneous, and the wolves, mid-leap, twisted their bodies to land awkwardly in the dirt. They aborted their attack on the drones immediately, hitting the ground and sliding backward, visibly shaking with aggression, the fur on their spines still standing straight up, their teeth bared in deep, rumbling snarls directed at the hovering machines. But they did not dare take another step forward.
The alpha male stared them down, his lips pulled back in a silent warning. He had watched Mark and the others heal the shattered leg of the armored water buffalo just days prior. He didn't understand the drones, and he clearly didn't trust them either, but he knew what the metal-clad beings were capable of, and saving its mate was in the realm of possibilities. He turned his massive head back toward Mark, letting out a short huff that granted them permission to proceed.
"Bring it down, Marcos," Mark ordered, his voice tight. "Put it right next to her."
The flatbed settled into the bloody dirt with a solid thud, just a few feet from the dying white female. The other wolves continued to growl from the edges of the clearing, their glowing eyes full of intense distrust, but they held their ground.
"Alright, we have to move her manually," Mark said, holstering his weapon and stepping up to the beast. "Severus, Lucius, grab the hindquarters. Be extremely careful with her pelvic area. The bone is completely shattered, and if it shifts, it could sever her femoral artery. Valerius, Titus, take the front. Octavia, keep pressure on that wound."
The five armored super-soldiers and Mark moved in to lift the massive animal. The sheer weight of the wolf was staggering, easily over three tons of dense muscle, bone, and thick fur. Even with the hydraulic assistance of their armor, the Elites grunted with exertion as they hauled the beast upward.
The white wolf let out a weak, agonizing whimper as she was moved, her dark blood soaking into the black plating of their armor. The dark burgundy male stood right beside Mark, his massive head hovering over the female's shoulder, whining softly in solidarity as the humans hauled her onto the cold S-Alloy surface of the flatbed.
"Secure her," Mark breathed rapidly, stepping back and wiping a smear of blood from his gauntlets.
As the Elites strapped the thick, specialized medical restraints over the wolf to keep her stable during the flight, Mark tapped his comms. "Marcos, she's loaded. Get her back to the agricultural sector as fast as you can."
"Ascent vector is locked," Marcos replied easily. "You don't have anything to worry about. I'll make sure Corven has the medical frame prepped and ready for her, Mark."
The drones whined loudly as they hauled the bloody flatbed back up through the canopy, the downdraft once again kicking up a storm of dirt and leaves.
"Listen to me, Marcos," Mark continued as he watched the flatbed disappear into the sky. "We may not know whoever it was that shot that wolf, but whoever it was, they should probably be able to leave some sort of footprints. Hell, they also should have body heat. I want you to dedicate a massive chunk of your processing power right now to fabricating a specialized drone."
"What exactly do you have in mind, Mark?" Marcos asked, processing the request.
"If you have the schematics for it, then equip it with some deep-penetrating thermal optics, calibrated to detect micro-fluctuations in ambient temperature," Mark ordered, pacing around the blood-soaked dirt of the den. "I want it to be able to see the heat left behind by a boot print on a crushed leaf hours after it was made. I want ground-penetrating radar to look for subterranean hides, and chemical sniffers tuned to track the isotopic residue of that alien alloy Octavia found on its wound. Build it, print it, and launch it into this quadrant. Find me that shooter before it finds us and decides we've trespassed for long enough."
"I'll cook something up and begin building it in a few minutes," Marcos confirmed smoothly. "Since it's for tracking, I believe naming it a Bloodhound will be fitting. It should be airborne within the hour. You and the squad should probably start hiking back. Everything around us could be compromised right now, Mark, let alone a jungle 13 kilometers away."
"We're moving," Mark said, cutting the channel before turning to his elites. "Keep your eyes peeled for any possible attacker, and form up. We're heading back."
The six armored figures fell into a standard combat patrol formation, leaving the bloody clearing behind and pushing back into the dense, violet brush. The adrenaline of the medical evac was fading, replaced by the cold, creeping dread of being hunted in a terrain where they held zero tactical advantages.
But ten minutes into their steady jog, Lucius, taking the rearguard, let out a nervous chuckle over the comms. "Uh, Sir? You might want to take a look behind us."
Mark slowed his pace, glancing over his shoulder, and almost raised his railgun out of instinct. Through the dense foliage, gliding silently over the roots and through the hanging moss, were the wolves.
The massive dark burgundy wolf was walking just ten feet to Mark's right, keeping perfect pace with him. Behind him, the ten horse-sized wolves flanked the human squad in a loose but protective perimeter. And darting between the massive legs of the adults were the seventeen pups, their varying coats flashing through the shadows as they effortlessly kept up with the adults.
A few of the adult wolves even sprinted ahead, completely ignoring the humans as they vanished into the brush forward of their position, essentially acting as an organic forward scouting element for the group of humans.
"Well, I'll be damned," Juan's voice suddenly crackled over the radio, having patched into their squad feed from his position near the northern gates. "Looks like you picked up some strays, Mark."
"Yeah, they seem insistent on coming with us," Mark realized, looking at the massive wolf pacing beside him. The beast had its glowing eyes locked forward, focused entirely on the path to the city where his mate had been taken. "I think they might be escorting us."
"I am uncomfortable with this," Severus muttered, his rifle held tightly to his chest as a massive grey wolf silently brushed past his armored shoulder. "We are walking amidst a dozen apex predators who could tear our armor open like tin cans if they choose to."
"Relax, Sev," Lucius teased lightly, keeping his own weapon lowered so as not to provoke them. "Just don't make any sudden movements, and maybe don't smell like fear. I think they like the Commander."
The thirteen-kilometer hike back to the colony, which should have been a nerve-shredding, terrifying ordeal through hostile territory, became surreal. The wolves dominated the environment. Smaller predators in the brush, animals no human had ever even seen before, fled long before they approached. The pack moved with a unified purpose, ignoring the armored soldiers in their midst, driven solely by their leader's determination to follow the machines that had taken his mate.
By the time the slatted walls of the city came into view, the red suns were burning high in the late-morning sky, their glare beating down across the basin.
The southern gates hissed open as Mark and the Elites approached. But as the humans stepped onto the paved streets, the vast majority of the wolf pack stopped. The adult wolves and most of the pups lingered at the edge of the tree line, sniffing the cleared earth around the perimeter walls.
They circled a few times, and then, remarkably, began to lie down in the tall purple grass, making themselves completely comfortable well within the engagement zone of the automated laser turrets. The ruby-red targeting lasers swept over the pack, painting their fur, but the weapons did not fire. At these distances, the lasers' accuracy was pinpoint, but per Mark's earlier directives, Marcos had hardcoded the turrets to flag the wolves as conditional targets, meaning they would only be fired upon if the wolves initiated an attack.
However, the massive dark-burgundy alpha did not stop and walked right through the open gates, his massive paws clicking softly on the metal streets. And trotting fearlessly right beside his thick legs was one of the pups, a pure white little ball of fur, no bigger than a golden retriever, looking around at the towering metal structures of the city with wide, curious eyes.
"Keep the gates open for now," Mark ordered the Peacekeepers stationed at the entrance, who were gripping their rifles and staring at the incoming predators with wide, terrified eyes. "Let's get to the enclosure."
The agricultural sector was bathed in the blue light of the extensively modified medical frame.
When Mark, the Elites, the giant alpha, and the curious white pup arrived at the reinforced pen, the scene inside was chaotic. In the far corner of the massive enclosure, as far away from the medical pad as physically possible, the original armored water buffalo and three new ones they had captured over the past two days were huddled together in shivering terror. The scent of the alpha wolf entering the pen sent them into a fresh wave of panicked grunts, pressing their massive bodies desperately against the solid S-Alloy fencing.
But Mark's attention was on the center of the pen.
The dying white wolf was laid out on the reinforced diagnostic bed. And standing over her, her white lab coat completely ruined and soaked to the elbows in dark crimson blood, was Dr. Aris Corven.
She wasn't just observing. She was elbow-deep in the wolf's shattered flank.
"Forceps!" Dr. Corven barked, snapping her bloody hand back. One of her terrified civilian assistants fumbled with a tray of freshly printed surgical tools, slapping a thick set of metallic clamps into her hand.
"Dr. Corven," Mark called out, stepping up to the medical frame, the dark burgundy male right beside him. The wolf whined, resting his massive chin on the edge of the bed, staring at his unconscious mate.
"Mr. Shephard," Dr. Corven acknowledged without looking up, her face tight with intense concentration. She dug the forceps deep into the pulverized exit wound. "I have stabilized her hemodynamics, and Marcos is keeping her heart beating, and the damage to her bone structure is catastrophic, though not impossible to solve."
With a sickening crunch, Dr. Corven pulled her hands out of the wound, holding up a jagged, pulverized chunk of pelvic bone. Mixed into the bloody marrow were the glittering, dark metallic shards of the alien railgun slug. She unceremoniously dropped the debris into a metal tray held by an assistant.
"The projectile shattered the left ilium and pulverized the acetabulum," Dr. Corven explained rapidly, wiping her brow with her forearm and leaving a smear of blood across her forehead. "I am currently extracting the residual alloy shrapnel to prevent toxicosis. The cellular stimulators will heal the muscle and tissue, but they cannot bridge a skeletal gap this massive. There is simply nothing left for the bone to grow back onto."
"So we print a new one," Mark said simply. "Marcos can extrude some sort of biological prosthetic, right?"
"Yes, we can," Dr. Corven agreed, finally looking up at him. "But I cannot ask Marcos to print a prosthetic without a perfect structural blueprint of the wolf's pelvic region. Their skeletal anatomy is vastly different, vastly denser than anything our forefathers on Earth ever bore witness to. We can't just guess the geometry, since if it's off by even a millimeter, she'll never walk again."
Dr. Corven looked past Mark, her eyes locking onto the massive dark burgundy alpha whose head was resting on the bed.
"I need a scan of a healthy specimen," Dr. Corven said, wiping her bloody hands on a towel. She looked back at Mark, her scientific curiosity overriding her survival instincts. "Mr. Shephard, considering that animal just followed you into a fortified city without eating you, is there any possible way you can control it long enough for me to run a deep-tissue skeletal sweep with a handheld scanner?"
Mark looked at the doctor, then down at the alpha. "Control it? Doc, I don't control him. I just try not to piss him off."
"Try," Corven insisted, holding up a sleek, rectangular medical scanner.
Mark let out a long sigh. He took the scanner from Corven's hand and looked at the alpha male, who had turned his intelligent eyes to watch the exchange.
"Alright, big guy. We're going to play charades again," Mark muttered.
Mark held the scanner up so the wolf could clearly see it. He turned to the unconscious white female on the bed and started to deliberately and slowly run the scanner over her uninjured shoulder. The device emitted a soft, harmless green glow, and a soft beep echoed in the quiet enclosure.
Mark then turned back to the massive male. He pointed the scanner at his own chest, and then pointed a finger directly at the wolf.
The wolf's ears twitched. He stared at the small metal box in Mark's hand, then down at his mate, processing the action before letting out a loud snort, shifting his massive weight, and taking a single step backward, offering his broad side to Mark. He stood perfectly still.
"I'll be damned," Lucius whispered to Severus from the edge of the pen. "He actually understands."
Mark stepped forward, raising the scanner to the male's flank.
"Wait!" Dr. Corven suddenly interjected, holding up a bloody hand. "Don't bother, Mr. Shephard. It won't work."
Mark stopped, looking at her in annoyance. "You just asked me to scan him."
"And I just realized my own biological oversight," Corven corrected herself rapidly, her scientific mind churning. "Look at the sheer mass of him. The sexual dimorphism in this species is profound. His musculature, his bone density, and his pelvic structure will be significantly wider and structurally different from those of the female to support his excess weight. If we use his pelvic blueprint for her prosthetic, her gait will be completely ruined."
Corven looked frantically around the enclosure. "We need to scan a female. Preferably one that is genetically related to ensure structural continuity."
Mark lowered the scanner. He turned his head, his eyes falling on the pure white pup that had fearlessly followed them into the city.
The pup was currently standing on its hind legs, its front paws resting on the edge of the diagnostic bed, curiously sniffing its unconscious mother's face.
Mark looked at the pup, then back at the dark-burgundy wolf. He raised the scanner again. He went through the exact same pantomime, running it over the mother's shoulder, pointing at his own chest, but this time, he pointed his finger directly at the white pup.
The alpha male stared at Mark. The silence in the enclosure was tense, thick with the weight of two entirely different species trying to bridge a gap of understanding.
The massive wolf snorted and let out a complex, multi-tonal sound. It was like a rolling guttural rumble, something that sounded almost conversational.
Hearing the sound, the white pup immediately dropped back down to all fours. It turned its head, tilting it curiously at the massive wolf. The male rumbled again, letting out a different short, sharp note.
The pup immediately trotted over to the alpha, sitting down obediently right beside his massive front paw. It looked up at Mark, its tail giving a single, tentative wag, and sat perfectly still.
"Holy shit, it's like I'm some fairytale princess," Mark said as he let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. He walked over, knelt in the dirt, and ran the green light of the scanner over the pup's hindquarters. The device beeped, confirming the deep-tissue mapping was complete.
Mark stood up, tossing the scanner back to Dr. Corven. "Will that work, Doc?"
Corven caught the device, immediately analyzing the holographic data blooming from its projector.
"Yes," she breathed, a triumphant smile breaking through her exhaustion. "We can digitally scale the pup's pelvic geometry up to match the mother's adult proportions. It should be a perfect fit. I'll send the data to Marcos for immediate extrusion."
Mark looked back down at the dark burgundy wolf, who had resumed his vigil over his mate, the white pup leaning against his thick leg.
"It's incredible," Mark said softly, almost to himself. "I've never seen an animal that smart. The way he controls the pack, the way they instantly obey the alpha..."
"That's because you're applying outdated human concepts to a fundamentally misunderstood biological dynamic, Mr. Shephard," Dr. Corven said, her tone slipping back into the lecturing cadence of a university dean as she prepared the surgical site for the incoming prosthetic.
Mark looked at her. "What do you mean? He's the alpha. He fought his way to the top of the pack."
"That is a myth, even for Earth wolves," Dr. Corven corrected, not looking up from her bloody work. "The idea of an 'alpha' and 'beta' fighting for dominance in a wild pack was debunked centuries ago. A wild wolf pack is not a military hierarchy, Mr. Shephard."
She pointed bloody forceps toward the massive male and the white pup.
"It's a family," Corven explained softly. "That male didn't fight those other wolves to become their leader. He is their father. The injured female on this table is their mother. The other adults in that clearing you saw? Those are their older offspring from previous litters, helping to raise the new pups."
Mark stared at the massive beast, the realization hitting him with the force of a physical blow.
"They don't obey him because he's the biggest or the strongest," Dr. Corven continued, her voice gentle over the hum of the medical frame. "They obey him because he's their patriarch. Challenging him wouldn't be so much a fight for dominance than a child challenging their parent. That pack out there followed you to wait for their mother to come home."
Mark looked at the dark burgundy wolf. The terrifying apex predator wasn't a monster. He was just a father, terrified out of his mind, doing everything in his power to save his family from a threat he couldn't fight or fully understand.
Mark felt a sudden, profound kinship with the beast.
"Print the bone, Doc," Mark said quietly, his eyes hardening as he turned away from the table, his hand resting on the hilt of his rail-pistol. "Fix the mother. I'm going to go find out who or what shot her."
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