Lion and the ghosts

The final screech of metal died away, giving way to a silence almost as violent as the previous rumble. Emergency lights flickered erratically, bathing the shattered bridge of the Quetzal in an intermittent red glow, each flash illuminating specks of dust and smoke floating in the foul air. The smell was a nauseating mixture of molten metal, burnt insulation and the sweetish, metallic aroma of leaking hydraulic fluid.

"Status report?" squawked Lion, unbuckling his seat harness with hands he could barely feel, numb from adrenaline and shock.

"Alive," Hood replied from his console, his voice shaky but steady. His fingers flew over the touch panels, reviewing data. "All team vitals are green. Bruises and concussions, nothing critical."

"The Quetzal did not meet the same fate," Prince of Vael announced, his voice as devoid of emotion as the emptiness outside. He stood with a spectral calm and walked toward the jagged crack that had once been the panoramic window. Through it, the barren, icy landscape of Kalisto was visible. "Fuselage split in two at cargo sector height. Antimatter reactors... disconnected and scattered over a two-kilometer radius. We're grounded, Commander. Maybe permanently."

Un gruñido de pura rabia escapó de Corinelle. Su puño, vendado y ensangrentado, golpeó un mamparo abollado con un sonido sordo y resonante. "¡Años! ¡Esa maldita nave nos acompañó durante años! Atravesó tormentas de radiación, enfrentó corbetas piratas... ¡y esto es como acaba? ¡Hecha trizas por un maldito cañón orbital de pacotilla!"

Their frustration echoed the frustration boiling in everyone's chest. The Quetzal was more than a bunch of pipes and circuits; it was their sanctuary, their weapon, the only home they had among the stars. Now, it lay like a steel corpse on the icy surface. Prince of Vael, with a funeral solemnity, stepped out through a gap in the bridge, knelt on the ice beside the shattered wing and rested his gloved hand on the charred hull, as if bidding a final farewell to an old and loyal comrade.

"We can't just stand here and wait for a welcome," Lion said, his commander's voice taking over, choking back the lump of anger and pain in his throat. "If they had orbital defenses of that caliber, their ground forces will be an army. Bring out everything that might be useful to us: weapons, ammunition, emergency rations, medical kits, and above all, the long-range communications package. We leave in ten minutes. Light and fast."

The order was carried out with efficiency with their lives hanging in the balance. As the team sped away from the smoking wreck, they took a final look. Movement. Dark, hooded figures, dozens of them, emerged from between the rocks and crevices, circling the fallen ship like vultures descending on carrion. A collective shudder ran through them. They had made the right decision.

They walked for endless hours through a desert of grayish ice and stardust, under a black velvet sky dominated by the majestic, swirling sphere of Jupiter, a blinding giant that seemed to watch them indifferently. With each step, Lion's mind was a whirlwind of loose parts and ominous warnings. Kenji's last words, broken and distorted by static, echoed in a hellish loop inside his skull.

A trap, Lion... it's not human... it's... it's a God...

A God? Kenji, a scientist of the old school, a man who believed in mathematics and the immutable laws of physics, using a word like "God"? It wasn't just a piece that didn't fit; it was the piece that turned a counterinsurgency mission into a Lovecraftian nightmare, into something that defied all logic and chilled his blood more than Kalisto's icy wind.

After what seemed like an eternity, they reached the top of a steep hill. Below, at the bottom of a vast crater, lay the central mining area. But it was not the chaotic, half-demolished colony they expected to find. It was fortified with brutal crudeness. Makeshift walls, made of twisted scrap metal, rusted metal beams and sharpened wooden stakes, formed an irregular perimeter. Crude watchtowers, with the silhouette of snipers silhouetted against the sky, swept the horizon. This was no rebel miners' camp; it was a fortress, a nest of fanatical resistance.

"Hood, launch the recon drone. I want a close look, undetected," Lion ordered in a whisper that barely disturbed the silence. "Eldrinch, try to open a secure, low-probability intercept channel with Central Command. If we're lucky, they'll think we volatilized with the Quetzal. Better they think that than have our attempt at contact give away our position."

As Hood silently deployed a small stealth drone that was lost in the gloom, Eldrinch looked up at him, a wrinkle of confusion furrowing his brow. "Not reporting that we're alive?" he asked quietly, but seeing the steadiness in Lion's gaze, he nodded resignedly. He knew the real reason was another, darker one: he could no longer trust Central Command. Not after Kenji. He felt, with a certainty that weighed heavy on his soul, that he was missing the crucial piece of the puzzle, the one that explained why someone within his own side would want them dead.

A light tap on his shoulder brought him out of his musings. It was Airen, who, without a word, used the sturdy cover of his paper book to point with a subtle gesture toward the center of the fortress. Lion raised his high-tech binoculars, adjusting the zoom.

The scene unfolding in an inner courtyard took his breath away. Two burly individuals were dragging a third man, emaciated and dressed in rags, toward a raised platform. A tall, hooded figure, whose mere posture radiated glacial authority, approached the prisoner. The distance and thin atmosphere prevented any sound from being heard, but the ritual was macabrely clear. The hooded man seemed to utter a few words, perhaps an accusation or a sentence, and then, without the slightest hesitation, he raised a pulse pistol and shot the prisoner point-blank in the head. The body fell, limp, like a dummy.

"Bastards!" hissed Eldrinch beside him, his face, was now a mask of pure fury. He made an instinctive move to get up, muscles tense ready to act, to run over there and make someone, anyone, pay for what he had just witnessed.

"Freeze!" stopped Lion, gripping her firmly by the arm with a force that brooked no argument. His voice was a sharp knife. "To act now is suicide. We don't know how many there are, what weaponry they have, or what else is behind those walls. A frontal charge would make us martyrs, not heroes."

"Then call for reinforcements!" suggested Corinelle, her usual aggressiveness replaced by tense, urgent pragmatism. "One call, Lion! We can't take on that whole army alone!"

"No," Lion said, and his voice was cold and final as the ice beneath his feet. He looked into each of the faces of his team, seeing the fear, anger and uncertainty in their eyes. "We don't know who to trust up there. If there's a leak, if someone betrayed us to end up here, asking for help could be signing our own death warrant." He held his breath, letting the weight of his words settle in. "This time... we're on our own."

A high-pitched, shrill beep sounded on Hood's wrist. "They shot down the drone," he announced, his face shadowed. "They activated a short-range jammer just as it flew over the command center. But I managed to capture one last image transmission before it went down."

The photograph, grainy and with interference lines, appeared on Hood's datapad screen. It was a fleeting shot of the inside of the fortress, focusing on a metal wall. And there, spray-painted a garish, violent red, was the symbol. The same emblem of the Unified System Government, the stylized eagle with the globe in its talons, but now crossed out with a thick, defiant "X."

Lion's heart flipped wildly against his ribs. It was identical. Exactly the same one Kenji had shown him in the encrypted transmission. The confirmation brought him not relief, but a surge of coldness that settled in his gut and had nothing to do with the frigid temperature of the moon. He felt the urge to scream, to curse, to share the horrible discovery. But no. He forced himself to keep his face impassive, a granite mask. He controlled his breathing, wiped any trace of panic from his eyes. He couldn't alarm them, couldn't sow chaos. Not yet. Not until he understood what the hell was going on.

"Okay," he said, his voice a controlled whisper, a model of forced calm. "Get all the gear down. We'll camp on the other side of this hill, in that area of sharp rocks. That will hide us from their gazes." He paused, letting his next words, charged with steely determination, sink in. "We are going to watch. We are going to learn. Let's understand exactly what we're up against... before we decide on our first move."