Mars Time: 22:33, March 2, 2295

  En route to Deck 2, ISV Polaris, In Transit

  The corridor was amber hell.

  The walls groaned around them, stressed metal singing under the Kraken's grip. The air tasted different here, thinner somehow, touched by the Void Vault's influence. Warm when it should have been cold.

  Diego's voice crackled through their Nucleus Watches. "Decks 3 and 5 holding. You lucky ones get the main party on Deck 2. Don't let them redecorate my ship, sí?"

  The voice came from inside Sigrun's head. Not through her ears. Through her skull, vibrating behind her eyes, intimate in a way that made her jaw clench. Her blue watch dial glowed azure, showing the active connection, but knowing the mechanism didn't make it less invasive.

  She'd gotten used to men inside her body. This was different. This was something in her mind.

  She forced herself to breathe through it, let the sensation settle into background noise. By the third breath, it felt less like violation and more like...just another voice. Distant but clear. "Good enough."

  Sigrun led with Marcus at her side. Xin stayed behind them, H?kon tense on his shoulder. Jabari moved on their left flank, Oya raised. Iron Roach brought up the rear, his double-barrel sweeping the darkness.

  The first Bone Fiends hit them at the junction of Deck 2's main corridor.

  They poured from a breach in the port bulkhead, pale bodies scrambling over each other. Smaller than their Jupiter cousins, dog-sized, but faster in the ship's artificial gravity.

  Sigrun raised Skuld.

  The gun barked twice. The lead Fiend's skull exploded in black spray that spattered the walls. The second shot caught another mid-leap, spinning it into the bulkhead with a wet crunch.

  "I'm picking up signals from the maintenance shaft!" Xin called, his glasses flickering. "Forty meters, coming at us!"

  Marcus planted himself at the junction, Bulwark raised. The next wave of Fiends crashed against him like water against a seawall. Justice flashed in tight arcs, leaving cauterized wounds.

  "I've faced worse in Sheffield back alleys!" His Yorkshire accent thickened with battle fury.

  More pushed through. A Skuggr launched acidic bile from behind the Fiend pack. The yellow-green spray arced toward Marcus's exposed flank.

  "Scutum Solis!"

  Golden light erupted from his shield, a Solar barrier. The acid sizzled against psionic energy, steam rising as the barrier held for seconds before Marcus dropped it, pivoting to catch a Fiend on Justice's edge.

  Jabari moved like water, Sankofa slicing. The Skuggr that engaged Marcus tried again. Jabari ducked the spray, closed the distance, and opened the creature from throat to belly.

  "Behind you, left!" he called to Marcus.

  The Stalwart pivoted, shield deflecting a Fiend. Justice took its head off before it hit the deck.

  More Skuggrs pushed through the breach now, skittering across the walls. They preferred range, launching bile from elevated positions. The acid hissed where it hit deck plating, eating through composite.

  Sigrun collapsed Skuld and drew Járn. The Thermal Axe hummed to life.

  Whump.

  Blue-white heat washed across her face as the blade ignited.

  A Skuggr dropped from the ceiling toward Xin's exposed back.

  "Xin, down!"

  He dropped without hesitation. Then she stepped forward, Járn held low.

  "Valfall!"

  The J?turmál word shaped her Lunar energy. She felt it lock into place, manifesting as quantum blue wisp on her axe blade, enchanting its next cleave.

  She swung.

  Járn came around in an arc. Its thermal edge met the Skuggr's neck, and the combo of psionically enhanced strike and superheated blade took the creature's head off in one clean motion, cauterized halves tumbling past her.

  "More overhead!" Xin called, rising to one knee. His left hand moved in a precise gesture, fingers tracing symbols Sigrun thought she'd seen before but couldn't recall.

  "Bheda Atisīmā." His Nucleus Watch's dial pulsed green. Void energy rippled along Jade's barrel, the 10mm Magnum wreathed in emerald light. The AI-enhanced targeting kicked in. His glasses lit up with projected firing solutions, red targeting reticles appearing.

  He fired three times.

  Each shot found its mark. The Void-enhancement punched through chitin like it was paper, two rounds carrying enough force to pin a Fiend to the wall. The third shot made it fall twitching, black fluid pooling beneath its corpse.

  Diego chimed in again. "Deck 3 reports they're running low on ammo. Might want to support them before we all get very intimate with our Radi-Mon friends."

  A baritone voice sounded on the channel. "Thomas here. Deck 5 clear. On our way to 3."

  "Gracias." Diego's response was brief, relief palpable.

  The next Fiend broke through Marcus's line, lunging straight for Xin.

  H?kon's tiny body tensed. His scales flashed bright azure.

  "K?LD KEILA!"

  A cone of frost erupted from the little Diabolisk. Short range but intense, the air crystallizing. The Fiend froze mid-leap, momentum carrying it forward until it shattered against Xin's hastily raised left arm.

  Xin stared at his shoulder, then at H?kon. "Buddy... when did you learn that?"

  H?kon's scales were proud azure now, puffing his small chest. "HAW-koon learn in dream! Practice lots-lots when Pappa work on magic box!"

  Despite the carnage and the voice still echoing in her head, Sigrun almost smiled.

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  "Dream, huh?" Jabari paused mid-reload, surprise in his voice.

  "Frost Man teach HAW-koon in dream!" The little Diabolisk chirped, looking at Sigrun, tiny claws gesturing excitedly. "Frost Man swing blue glowing sword, nice man, shiny yellow hair like Sky Lady, show HAW-koon ice-ice words!"

  Something cold settled in Sigrun's chest. Her sapphire eyes widened as she stared at H?kon.

  Shiny yellow hair. In dreams. A man with 'blue glowing sword', wielding power of frost.

  Only one man in her life fitted that description.

  No. Not now. Later.

  Iron Roach's double-barrel thundered behind them. She glanced back to see him standing over two dead Skuggrs, smoke rising from his weapon.

  "Been fighting since I ran from the Imperium," the old man growled, racking fresh shells. "These things ain't nothing."

  Jabari appeared beside Sigrun, Sankofa dripping black fluid. "We're all some real machines of violence here, hey?"

  Sigrun put Járn through a Fiend that was trying to rise. "Eleven years in Xing Hong can do that to you."

  But her mind wasn't fully on the banter.

  That voice from the Kraken. That familiar cadence of arrogance and self-loathing twisted together.

  Who are you?

  They pushed forward.

  The corridors were littered with Radi-Mon corpses now, black fluid pooling in the amber light. The ship still groaned, still captured in the Kraken's grip, but they were winning.

  Diego's voice returned, more serious now. "I'm reading something big ahead of you. One Draug, but…the other's heat signature's all scrambled. Be ready for—"

  Static cut him off.

  Xin brought up fresh targeting data, his glasses flickering green. "He's right. One large contact, roughly humanoid but the proportions are off. And something else nearby. I can't get a clean reading. It's like it's... there but not there?"

  Then Sigrun saw him.

  A figure blocking the corridor ahead, standing in the amber emergency lighting. Tall. Wrong.

  Gray mottled flesh stretched over a frame that had been pulled in directions bones weren't meant to go. Limbs bent at angles that defied skeletal structure, joints swollen and misplaced like tumors. The torso was elongated, ribs visible beneath skin so thin she could see them shifting with each breath. Arms hung too long, fingers ending in what might have been claws or might have been fingernails that had never stopped growing.

  But it was the face that hit worst.

  She could still see Professor Lokki H?gberg in there. The sharp nose, the high forehead, the particular jaw structure that wore his features like a badly fitted mask. One eye sat slightly higher than the other, both glowing faintly red.

  When he moved, his joints popped wetly. Tendons creaked.

  "Princess Sigrun." He spread his arms in theatrical welcome, and something in his shoulder dislocated and immediately popped back. The sound was like wet wood breaking. "How delightful to see you again. You've aged remarkably well. The specimen of Nordic vitality. The years have been far kinder to you than to those of us who stayed on Europa to face the consequences of your cowardice."

  His voice was the same. That lecturing, condescending tone she'd endured for an entire semester of Evolutionary Biology at Jotunheim Institute. The voice that had discussed "biological imperatives" and "reproductive strategies" while his eyes lingered too long on female students.

  Sigrun's jaw tightened. "Lokki."

  "Professor H?gberg, if you please! Even transformed, I retain my academic credentials." He tilted his head, vertebrae clicking. "I've often wondered what became of my most spirited student. You had such potential. Such fire. Such face and body. I had hoped to continue our...educational relationship once you graduated."

  Behind her, Marcus made a disgusted sound. Jabari's grip tightened on Sankofa.

  "You were always a fucking creep," Sigrun said flatly. She let Járn's thermal core power down with a soft hiss, securing it at her belt. "The Draug transformation just made it visible."

  Lokki laughed. The sound bubbled up from a throat rebuilt for something other than human speech, wet and wrong. His head tilted further than any neck should allow, almost perpendicular to his shoulders.

  "Such hostility! And here I thought we had rapport." His grin stretched wider, pulling at scars and folds. The second row of teeth was visible now, smaller but just as sharp.

  One of his fingers twitched, the claw scratching against the bulkhead with a sound like nails on metal.

  "Your mother, High Queen Maren of the Commonwealth, sends her regards. She is quite eager to have you home. She's planned a rather elaborate... reunion. Multiple candidates for breeding partners, all genetically compatible. She's quite thorough in her planning, your mother. Always was."

  Sigrun raised Skuld, the shotgun leveled at his chest. "Then you can give her mine. In Helheim."

  Lokki's red eyes gleamed, pupils contracting and dilating independently. "Oh, how I've missed that fire. But I'm not the one you should be worried about tonight, Princess."

  He stepped aside with theatrical flourish, gesturing toward the darker section of corridor with an arm that bent in one too many places.

  "Allow me to introduce the true commander of this operation. Someone who has been eager to see you again."

  Movement in the shadows behind Lokki. Something floating.

  Sigrun's breath caught. Her finger tightened on Skuld's trigger, but she didn't fire. Couldn't fire.

  First she saw the bottom.

  Dark chitinous hide coiling through the air, segmented like a serpent but thicker. Bioluminescent cyan patterns pulsed along its length, illuminating the corridor in electric blue. The segments moved independently, each writhing with its own rhythm.

  The thing had weight. She could see the way it displaced air as it moved, the way shadows played across its articulated plating.

  Then she saw the gown.

  White fabric, long and flowing, hanging from a human waist. The kind of dress Nordic nobility wore to formal functions. Clean. Pristine. Completely at odds with the alien flesh carrying it.

  The dress swayed as the symbiote moved, liquid grace. Where skin should meet fabric, there was only smooth transition into chitin.

  Higher.

  A slender torso, fully human. Pale arms. Shoulders draped in white.

  And at the throat, catching the cyan light.

  Blue stone on a silver cord.

  Sigrun's world narrowed to that single point of color. The symbol of House Fjeld's eldest. The heir's marker. The stone passed down through generations.

  She'd seen it every day for eighteen years.

  No.

  The figure drifted fully into the light.

  Platinum blonde hair arranged in a delicate bun, the style she'd always preferred. The style that kept hair away from her face when she worked, when she read, when she plotted and planned from that wheelchair.

  A face Sigrun knew better than her own reflection.

  High cheekbones that caught the light. Straight nose. Lips that had smiled at Sigrun's jokes, that had laughed when Sigrun did something reckless, that had whispered encouragement when Sigrun doubted herself. Blue eyes darker than Sigrun's own but the same shape, the same slight upturn at the outer corners. The eyes that had watched Sigrun grow up.

  Beautiful. Unchanged above the waist. Perfect, like time had stopped for he.

  The face she remembered from pushing that wheelchair through the corridors of the Fjeld Palace in Bj?rgvin II, capital of Nordic Commonwealth. From late nights in the bedroom when they'd studied together, when Sigrun had been the body and she had been the mind.

  Below, the symbiote coiled and writhed, its eyeless head emerging beside her hip. The thing's maw opened slightly, nested teeth visible in the cyan glow, tasting the air with movements that seemed almost protective.

  Behind Sigrun, someone made a sound. She saw Marcus in her peripheral vision, his usual combat focus wavering. The Stalwart stood frozen, Justice held in hand, Bulwark half-lowered, idling and staring with an expression that mixed revulsion and something like fascination.

  Xin had gone very still beside her, H?kon's scales flickering between confused beige and anxious brown on his shoulder.

  The floating woman's lips curved. A smile that held no warmth, only bitter amusement.

  "You've grown." Her voice was clear now, no psionic distortion. Just the voice Sigrun remembered from childhood. The voice that had read her stories, that had helped her with mathematics, that had called her 'little storm' when she got angry. "suppose eleven years would do that. You and Ivar were barely more than a children when you fled."

  "Pretty-scary lady?" H?kon whispered from Xin's shoulder, his small voice cutting through Sigrun's paralysis. "Like...like star and monster make lady together?"

  The woman's gaze shifted to the Diabolisk, something flickering across her face. Curiosity? It vanished too quickly to read.

  "Yes, little one." She said softly. "That's exactly what I am."

  Sigrun's grip loosened. Skuld dipped, its barrel pointing at the floor. The heat from the Polaris's air conditioning washed over her face, but she felt cold.

  Behind her, Marcus and Jabari were saying something. Xin was calling her name. Iron Roach's growl of warning.

  She couldn't hear them.

  She could only see the familiar face above that writhing horror. The pendant of House Fjeld. The platinum hair she'd helped brush a thousand times. The blue eyes shaped the same way as her own.

  All of it preserved. All of it perfect. All of it floating and concatenated to a Fenris Draug like conjoined twins.

  Horror crashed over her like a wave. Grief. Guilt. Anger at the universe, at House Fjeld, at Skarn, at herself for running when she should have—

  Sigrun's hands were shaking. Eleven years. Eleven years of nightmares and guilt and wondering what happened to the family she'd abandoned.

  This was the answer. This was what she'd left behind.

  One word escaped her lips. Barely a whisper, breaking on its way out of her throat.

  "Sister."