Violent bursts of noise and light. Screams and gunfire outside the port airlock. A psionic storm of fear. Inside, plasma—bolts of high-energy particles tailored to stun unprotected nervous systems and disable unshielded tech—hammered down from the main vent, blasting bins of recyce.

Hunched behind a crate, Kaplan squeezed his Jinn's trigger. Pain—alien—flashed across his overloading senses. A piece of the subhive intelligence spreading over the port's C-Deck died.

A dog-sized body dropped from the airlock's vent.

Another four limp, multi-legged forms followed in quick succession, brought down by his team. Xykeree vent crawlers. Infiltration units. Dual-barrelled guns drooped on the aliens' black carapaces: plasma weaponry twinned with a small-calibre ballistic.

More life forms seven metres up.

Kaplan signalled his team to hold position. Another wave of crawlers inbound. Aggressive. Hunting. Close enough for him to sense their separate consciousnesses.

The overarching presence of the attack force hummed beyond them. The subhive, the collective mind that formed when large groups of Xykeree left their ships. The psionic construct removed any reliance on technology-based coms. Even with intense jamming, ground troops could act as one cohesive organism.

Kaplan gauged its size: big enough to spread beyond his range. To interfere with it or gain some control over it, he and Sun would need time and a secure place to focus. They weren't their grandparents. The Originals could infiltrate Xykeree subhives in a minute or less, control large groups or blow out multiple minds at once to destroy hive cohesion and disorient troops. Later generations of Rha Si, whether newly altered or tank bred, hadn't achieved that level of skill and power.

As the units above closed in, the subhive's intent bled into Kaplan's consciousness: capture, harvest, consume. Senseless instinct.

But if organics were the goal, why target a rock-bound port? Why draw the wrath of the Coalition to fill a few ships' larders?

He filed his questions and 'pathed his team, warning them of the inbound threat and ordering them to board the Fire Witch the second the crawlers had been terminated. Fero had finally forced open the external exit. The ship's crew were piling into their cargo hold—Jinx with them, thrown on board by Tras. The trader was yelling at his people to load the warp isotopes and—

Kaplan dove out the exit, a plaz bolt from one of the inbound crawlers barely missing him. In the space of two heartbeats, he had his pistol at Tras' temple and mental claws in the trader's brain, stopping him from closing the vessel's hatch. Triggering a number of spinal cord nerves, Kaplan debilitated the man. No telepathic mind trick, but the use of the weak kinesis he'd developed over the last year, powered by the wep-tech trader's own combat suit, the energy stores in it.

Tras dropped to his knees with an agonised scream.

Kaplan shoved him away from the hatch and turned to check on his team and the Fire Witch's crew. Sun and Sketski—the pilot not slowed by his head injury—were through and covering the exit as the rest of the team took out the second wave of crawlers. Tras' ship engineer, Konnu Phang, was in the engine room, loading the warp isotopes. A Throlean mind was on the top deck: Ike, the co-pilot. She was at the ship's controls, her fractious, reptilian thoughts a haze of confusion.

That only left Tras' ginger-goateed muscle—Dorf Gorstav—and Jinx in the cargo hold to stare slack jawed as Tras shuddered, wrenched off his battle suit's mask, and threw up in pain.

Kaplan avoided Jinx's gaze and bent to unclip a few of the directional charges Tras wore across his chest. He tossed them to Shio as the young ensign rolled clear of the airlock, the rest of the team on her heels. Shio caught the explosives and planted them inside the dark chamber. She set their motion detectors an instant before Trippoli closed the airlock and the ship's hatch.

A concussion sounded only seconds later. More alien minds—cerebral cells of the subhive—winked out.

A bigger boom. Out on the landing platform.

The ship shuddered, its dock clamps squealing. Debris clattered across the outer hull.

Kaplan tuned his tech and senses beyond the ship. Muffled explosions. Building panic in the mind of the Throlean on the upper deck.

"The Bullhead has deployed infantry," Sun voiced his thoughts. "We need to move."

Kaplan dragged Tras upright. "You've had your one warning. Ready your ship for takeoff."

Tras' gaze promised vengeance for the micro shock tech he assumed had been used on him, but the trader knew how to prioritise. Jerking loose, he sliced a look across the armed individuals in his hold, then snarled at his crewman. "Dorf, secure the last of the cargo, and strap the fucking CI down, somewhere away from the bloody merchan—"

Another blast rocked the ship. Metal screeched. Lights flickered. Heavy debris thudded against the hull. Everyone scrambled to keep their footing.

Tras grabbed the auto-ladder by the cargo hatch and triggered its conveyor rungs. "Ike!" he yelled to his co-pilot as he shot upward. "You bloody alive? Start pre-flight!"

"Fero, Sun—engine room." Kaplan headed after the captain. "Sketski, on me. Everyone else, get this crate locked down and find a jumpseat."

The auto-ladder dumped him outside the ship's dilapidated-looking galley, Sketski on his heels. A few strides had them on the bridge.

Kaplan took it in with one glance. Dislodged panels spewed wires. Alerts flashed and urgent protocols scrolled on the vessel's HUD-enhanced windshield. Beyond, heat and russet dust swirled, stirred by ship exhausts and secondary thrusters—nearby ships priming their engines.

A red lizard in a beige jumpsuit swung about in the co-pilot seat, gesturing frantically at Tras as he slid into the pilot seat. The retro-kitsch hula doll hanging above the female Throlean jerked and bobbed as another explosion sent the Fire Witch shuddering. The alien whistled shrilly.

"Save it, Ike." Tras punched icons on his control screen with a vigour that spoke of bone-deep rage. "Run hatch checks. Get ready to detach us the second we get power to the engines."

"Sketski, assist Captain Tras." Kaplan dropped into the auxiliary workstation behind the trader. "He has the helm." Sketski was one hell of a pilot, but Tras knew his ship—his highly, illegally modified ship.

Sketski took the station behind the Throlean co-pilot and slapped it on. Kaplan activated his and gave Tras a mental nudge to grant system access. Warnings bloomed on screen: proximity alerts, power issues, damage reports.

Something struck the ship then skipped down the outer hull with sharp clangs.

Jinx lurched onto the bridge, eyes wide behind her goggles. "Half a surface skimmer just blew past one of the frigging portholes."

"Traffic's shite today." Tras slapped and punched his way through check protocols. "And I thought I told Dorf to shove you—"

"He's got more important things to tie down right now." Jinx strapped herself into a fold-away jumpseat on Kaplan's left then flipped out a console from the armrest—clearly familiar with the craft. "And FYI, I don't give a flying fuck what illegal tech you've got stowed under your deck plates, unless it can paste goddamn roaches. We still got no coms?"

"Forget it, pu'ta." Tras' mood boiled to the surface—acid on Kaplan's psi-tech. "The fuckers are jamming everything to hell. Soh's on her own, like we are."

Kaplan disengaged his amp tech, but with Tras only a metre away, that did little to dull the man's psionics. Whoever Soh was, she was more than a valued warp tech. More than a pretty diversion on a backworld rock.

Swiping away alerts, leaving them to Sketski and Tras, Kaplan brought up the external sensor feeds. Infrared and other non-visible spectra showed the myriad energy signatures of ship engines, weapons, and fires on the landing platform. Smoke and the planet's red dust obscured the visual feeds, but he caught snatches of detail: explosions; out-of-control craft; the green flashes of high-yield plasma weaponry; and the staccato bursts of kinetic guns—ships with turrets returning fire. A dorsal vid feed revealed their targets.

Two hundred metres up, on the underside of the port's second platform, B-Deck, large metal bodies glinted in Tirus 7's hostile light. Spider-like exskels.

"Ten huntsmen above us on the port structure." Kaplan zoomed in the vid feed to note weaponry and exskel positions then accessed the Fire Witch's battle systems. "Captain, what's the hull rating of this vessel? We got any chance of surviving plasma cannon fire or hammer-breach missiles while unshielded?"

"She'll take a few solid hits." Tras shot a black look over his shoulder. "But we take too much damage, forget launch."

"I think that's the plan," Jinx interjected. "The roaches are targeting fleeing vessels, nailing their main engines."

"Same strategy as inside the port." Kaplan caught the jolt of Jinx's pulse on his tech, but only a whisper of fear. Emotions ran high in the cabin—especially the Throl's—but willpower as much as aberrance locked the CI's down. She competently manipulated the sensor and vid feeds she'd brought up on her console.

"Monitor their activity," Kaplan directed. "And Koel." He drew her gaze. "Negligible toxin got on board. Save your resp supplies."

The hitch in her respiration before she jerked down her breather told him she got the message. There was no guarantee they were getting off the landing platform. And with the Xykeree's current non-fatal offensive, they could end up facing the port's toxic air again or the planet's inadequate atmosphere.

Kaplan turned back to the ship's battle systems. Better than average defence and offensive capabilities. The Fire Witch was no typical hauler. Tras had to have more than a few decent military contacts. Unfortunately, with the main power down while the warp isotopes were loaded, only basic ship systems were operational, those for docking and ship management.

Kaplan re-engaged his amp tech to contact Sun in the engine room. What's the hold—?

The world flashed hellish green. Noise and force struck.

The Fire Witch lurched backwards, squealing on her dock clamps. Heavy debris and roiling black smoke clawed over her windshield.

Kaplan glimpsed the blackened remains of a ship's aft section. "The Fat Goose supply hauler in front of us got its pipes cleaned. Anti-vehicle plasma bolt."

"Damage report!" Tras barked.

"We're good, Captain." Sketski scrambled to review dozens of flashing alerts. "Lost nothing but paint."

"We're going to lose more." Jinx's taut words snapped Kaplan's gaze to the dorsal vid feed on her console. "The roach that just fired still has its cannons directed along the docks."

"It's targeting vessels as they fire up engines." Kaplan looked back to the ship's inactive battle systems. "Standard Xykeree infantry cannons take fifty seconds for pulse recharge. Thirty seconds until next pulse."

Tras punched icons rapidly. "Ike, detach us." At the Throlean's shrill protest, the trader cursed and slapped on the vessel's internal com. "Konnu, you useless prick, I need fucking power. Now! If you haven't got that isotope loaded in four fucking seconds, I'm feeding you to the goddamn warp core."

"Captain." A breathless voice crackled over the com. "The casing's jammed and—"

A curse then a clang and a thump sounded next. A familiar growl followed: Fero's. "Fuel cells loaded. Main power coming online now."

The stats on the HUD showed a surge in available power for the ship's thrusters, but the ready lights on Kaplan's console stayed dim as various systems reinitiated.

"Fucking two-bit system mech." Tras fired the ship's ventral and starboard thrusters as his co-pilot released the docking clamps. He hit the com again. "All crew and other useless wankers, strap the fuck in."

Kaplan 'pathed Sun: Get everyone clear of the engines. "Five seconds until plaz pulse." He tightened his harness.

"Twenty seconds until main engines ready to fire," Sketski warned. "We need launch space, Captain."

Tras jerked the ship clear of the port. "Hang on a sec—"

A spine-snapping wave of force. Everything jolted sideways, went dark, then roared back.

Tumbling wires and panels. Wailing system alerts.

A chilling sense of déjà vu washed through Kaplan.

"Ike! Sitrep!" Tras batted away dangling cables. "Tell me that damn pulse only took out the dock."

The Throlean whistled and waved her clawed hands.

Sketski spoke over the irate co-pilot. "We've lost a rear thruster. Nothing essential. Just waiting on—"

The Fire Witch's engines came online with a thrum of power, setting another panel and more cabling falling as everything vibrated. Other systems flared to life, lighting up Kaplan's console—at damn last. He reviewed his options. Not many. Most of the combat systems were design for use in space, not on the ground.

"Green for launch the second you have a window, Captain." Sketski slapped off a few alerts. "Debris and multiple civilian vessels to port."

"Find a hole and move fast, Captain." Kaplan glanced to Jinx's sensor feeds. "Our engines are live. They'll know they missed."

"That bastard roach's still aiming along the docks," Jinx reported tautly. "And its nine shiny friends are taking out vessels on the platform. We're screwed."

"They're prioritising those firing on them." Kaplan shifted his hand from the ship's auto-cannon controls. "If we avoid offensive action, we might last longer."

Fero's voice scraped out of the ship's com: "Communications are still being jammed, but the Xykeree's hive frequency just opened. We've got one Cetus and two Goblins inbound. ETA two minutes."

The deployment of surface raiders is a major escalation, Reid, Sun 'pathed from the stern. The ships in orbit are now involved. This could be a planetwide attack. We could possibly disable the hive mind on the ground, but the forces in orbit...

Cold reality stole through Kaplan. They were beyond outnumbered and outgunned. I don't know why they'd target this rock for organics, but they want live bodies, Sun. That gives us a chance.

"Tras, a hundred metres to port!" Jinx snapped straight in her seat. "Few engine signatures. There might be space to launch. Can you get through the crap around us?"

"Fucking oath." Tras set his ship lurching sideways—lower and lateral thrusters firing in concert. With a speed and grace that said a lot about her pilot and her falsified specifications, the Fire Witch moved out into the manic landing and take-off lanes adjacent to the dock.

A pit-pod mining shuttle spewing smoke appeared out of the orange haze. It barged past a sand-skipper and the Fire Witch's nose. Tras swore, hit the fore and starboard thrusters to slide with the craft rather than collide—

Hot white light and force.

The Fire Witch punched backwards, fire and smoke roaring past. A piece of landing gear and the one-man sand-skipper caught in the explosion flew up over the nose, clipping the windshield.

Kaplan ducked instinctively then looked up to see what the hell had annihilated what, no questions asked, no second chances given. No organics left to be collected.

"Shit." Jinx sucked in air. "That pit-pod and skipper just got—" She broke off as a distinctive black, plated tail curved up over smoke and dust. "Oh, God."

"Scorpion infantry unit. Two hundred metres, thirty degrees to starboard. Just fired a hammer-breach missile." Kaplan whipped his attention back to his console, to weapon and defence systems. "We've got an increase in heat on its tail turret. Two-K plaz repeater cannon preparing to fire in three, two..."

The crowded flight lanes outside disappeared in a cataclysmic ball of fire.