Page 140 of Alien War Daddy's Got Rizz
No signal jamming. No ghosts. Just a man and his vendetta. And us. Together.
The moon—Orbital Body 4—doesn’t have a name anymore.
Not one anyone uses, anyway. The charts call it an auxiliary body—catalog numbers, mineral density, orbital decay. The kind of place that only exists to be forgotten. That’s why it was perfect once. That’s why it’s perfect now.
We come in dark. No transponder. No fanfare. Just the low, patient hum of the engines and the ache in my jaw that always shows up when something unfinished is about to be finished.
Yara stands beside me in the cockpit, arms folded, eyes fixed on the pale curve of the surface ahead. The moon looks bleached and scarred, like a bone left too long in the sun. Old impact craters catch the starlight like scars you never quite forget how you got.
“Telemetry confirms it,” I say, fingers dancing across the console. “Subsurface heat signatures. Power draw that doesn’t belong to a mining outpost.”
Her voice is calm when she answers. Too calm, maybe. “Coordinates?”
I send them to her display.
She inhales. Slowly. Like she’s bracing herself for something she already knows is there.
“That facility,” she says. “It was flagged as decommissioned before my father died.”
I glance at her. “But?”
“But CY8 records from that era were… curated.” Her mouth tightens. “If someone kept it running under the table, it would’ve been buried under his authorization codes. His name.”
The words land heavy between us. Ghosts don’t stay dead if you never bury them.
We set down in a shallow basin, the ship’s landing struts crunching against regolith that’s older than any lie humanity ever told itself. The airlock cycles with a hiss, cold and dry, carrying the faint metallic tang of recycled oxygen and dust.
The base is cut into the rock like a wound someone tried to stitch closed without anesthesia. Old CY8 architecture—angular, efficient, built to disappear. I recognize it immediately. I helped secure places like this once. Not this one specifically, but close enough that my muscles remember the geometry.
Yara’s boots hit the surface beside mine. She doesn’t hesitate. That matters.
We move through the outer corridor in silence, helmets sealed, comms tight. The lights flicker to life as we pass, motion sensors waking from long sleep. Everything smells like cold metal and old power—ozone and neglect and the faint, sour memory of human presence.
“This place was never meant to see daylight,” I murmur.
Yara’s reply is quiet, edged. “Neither were the things they did here.”
We reach the central chamber and that’s when I feel him. Not literally. Not mystically. Just that old, familiar pressure at the base of my skull that says you’re not alone anymore.
“Grau!” A voice booms out of the shadows, amplified, distorted just enough to sound larger than life. “You always did know how to make an entrance.”
I step forward, weapon lowered but ready.
“Fenn,” I say, my voice echoing off the cold walls. “I heard whispers you crawled out of the grave. Took you long enough to show your face.”
Lights flare.
He stands on the raised platform near the command core, flanked by half a dozen mercs who look tired, wired, and just smart enough to know they’re in over their heads. Fenn Kreuger hasn’t aged well. The years have sharpened him into something lean and bitter, eyes too bright, smile carved from old grudges.
“Whispers?” He laughs. It echoes, brittle and sharp. “Is that what they’re calling it? I thought I was screaming.”
“You were loud enough,” I admit. “My contact in Sector 4 picked up your scent weeks ago. I was just waiting for you to make a mistake.”
Fenn’s smile falters, just for a second. “Waiting? Or hiding?”
“Preparing,” I correct.
Yara steps into view beside me.
