Rain poured over the jagged coastline, hissing as it struck the parched grass and black stone. The sea below was alive and furious—each wave hammering itself against the cliffs, breaking into spray that glittered briefly in the dull light before vanishing into mist.
High above that storm, a Harpy-class troop transport cut through the clouds.
Four tilt-jet engines—two mounted under its forward wings, two at the tail—kept it steady against the wind, their blue exhausts flaring in the gloom. The aircraft moved with an agility that belied its size, a sleek shape of armored plates and battle-scorched metal. Its hold could carry fifteen soldiers and even a small vehicle slung beneath its tail, yet today it carried only four.
Three of the passengers sat together near the center, armored in glossy black composite suits that reflected the dim cabin lights. Their helmets rested on their laps as they talked in low voices, the words lost in the hum of engines. They laughed occasionally—quiet, restrained—and more than once their eyes drifted toward the fourth figure seated alone at the rear.
He was massive.
Over two and a half meters tall, the man's armor looked forged rather than manufactured—thicker, heavier, and far older than theirs. Deep scars and long gouges marred the plating, reminders of a lifetime of battle. Across his left pauldron, painted stark white against the black, was a simple mark: 4. No unit emblem, no insignia—just that number, worn like a curse.
He sat with his arms crossed, staring blankly at the Harpy's metal bulkhead. To anyone else, he might have seemed lost in grim reflection, a soldier haunted by too many wars.
But Titan-4 was asleep.
Years of combat had taught him how—how to drift into the darkness even in a roaring gunship, armor pressing into steel benches, engines shaking the floor. He had learned to steal rest from motion, to close his eyes without fear.
A faint tremor passed through his gauntlets as he clenched his fists.
A murmur escaped his lips—too soft for the others to hear.
He was dreaming.
In the dream, the noise of the transport was gone. The smell of metal and fuel faded, replaced by the scent of warm air and the quiet hum of a city alive in the morning. His thoughts pulled him back—thirty years into the past, to a life that had once been good. The year was 2502.
He was home again.
Back then he had lived on the emerald jewel of the Empire—a world called Harvest. It was an agricultural planet, one of the Empire's most fertile worlds, its rich soil and vast plains feeding millions across the stars. Great irrigation rivers snaked through golden fields. Wind turbines and solar spires glittered like silver reeds against endless blue skies. It was a world of bounty, calm, and order—a place that never imagined war could find it.
He could still see it as clearly as if it were yesterday:
The shining cities rising above the plains, towers of white alloy and glass shaped like blades of light. Hydro-dams carved into mountain valleys, feeding entire continents. Farms stretching to the horizon under the watch of drones, where machines worked in silence beside human hands. Harvest was both paradise and purpose—a world that grew life for others.
And in one of its many cities—ten million souls strong, clean and modern but unremarkable among its sisters—he had found peace.
Far from the city's center, among the smaller apartment stacks where the towers gave way to trees and walkways, he lived with his wife, his daughter, and their newborn son. They shared the top floor of a modest complex with a view that opened toward the plains. He remembered the way the morning light spilled through their window, painting the kitchen gold as his daughter laughed over breakfast. He remembered the sound of the kettle, the smell of food, and the warmth of his wife's quiet smile.
He had not wanted greatness.
He had wanted this—a simple life, small but whole.
He could still recall his parents' disappointment when he left the family business, his brother's bewildered face. He was supposed to inherit something vast and influential—corporate holdings that reached across three systems—but he had walked away. He had wanted no empire, only peace.
On Harvest, he found it.
He joined the local garrison, trading boardroom politics for a uniform and a sidearm. The pay was modest, the work unglamorous—training recruits, patrolling quiet districts—but it was enough. Enough to feed his family, to live honestly, to wake each day beside the people he loved.
And for a time, it was everything.
The dream shifted. 31.7.2502. A typical morning. He buttoned his green uniform, settled the service pistol into its battered holster, and watched his family eat breakfast while the local news murmured from the wall screen. He took the plastic lunch container—his wife's pasta and venison meatballs—from the counter. To his right, his six-year-old daughter demolished her food with cheerful purpose.
He ruffled her hair and kissed her cheek. "Goodbyes," he said.
"Dad, when you come home can we go to the park and play?" she asked.
"After work," he promised. "All of us. In the meantime, be good. Be nice to your mother, okay?"
She nodded hard, thumb up. "Okay, Dad. Leave it to me."
He patted her head again and crossed to his wife. She sat lost in thought, nursing their newborn son, eyes soft with that fierce, quiet love. He kissed her hair instead of her lips so he wouldn't break the peace. She looked up and told him she loved him; he said it back and meant it. Everything felt exactly as it should.
He touched the baby's crown, gentle, and turned for the door.
The anchor's voice pulled his gaze to the screen: "The families of the three missing deep-space exploration crews gathered today to demand immediate action from their planetary governors. After more than three months, no wreckage or signal has been found. In other news, scientists say the approaching Miasma cloud poses no threat. Latest projections indicate it will pass Harvest and is—"
The picture snapped to static. A dry hiss filled the room.
His daughter pouted; his wife cocked an eyebrow. "Honey," she said, sweet as a knife, "did you pay the bills this time?"
He rolled his eyes. "That was one time. It's the Miasma. They said it'll pass soon. Don't worry."
She snickered. "Okay, okay. We can live without TV for a day. Go, before you're late."
His daughter beat small fists on the table in protest as his wife shooed him out. The door closed on his last half-sentence.
On the stairs he greeted neighbors, all heading to their own mornings. Outside, the city felt darker than it should. He checked his phone for the time—no signal, no clock, only a dead rectangle. Around him people frowned at their own silent screens. The air had that brittle stillness that comes before a storm.
He stepped into the crosswalk toward the bus stop, then glanced back up at their window. His daughter stood behind the glass with arms folded, performing the fiercest pout in the city. He laughed and waved. She tried to stay stern, then broke into a grin and bounced as she waved back.
Shadow fell across the block like a lid lowering. Blue sky turned green.
He looked up. What he'd dismissed as a drifting cloud unfurled into something vast—a stained canopy veiling the sun. An omen tunneled into his gut. He looked back at the window. His daughter's wonder turned to worry. His wife appeared, reaching for her hand.
The sirens started.
Go down. Go now. Doors opened; some people ran, others froze because their minds couldn't change tracks fast enough.
Then, less than a blink later, a green sphere of living flesh slammed into the top of his building. The roof blew outward. A chain of detonations zipped floor to floor. The whole tower went white, then orange—glass to knives, walls to dust—and the shockwave swept the street, throwing bodies backward.
He hit the pavement. Silence swallowed the world; sound returned thin and wrong. He pushed up on slick hands. Where his home had been, fire howled up from a forest of torn rebar. Heat pressed the rain back into a hissing halo. The window where she'd stood was gone so cleanly his mind kept insisting he'd miscounted floors.
The sky was wrong because it wasn't sky. It was the Miasma—not weather, but a swarm: millions upon millions of living vessels meshed into a drifting continent of flesh and cobalt carapace that quilted the heavens. From it, pods budded and fell like fruit.
They were falling everywhere.
One of the pods that hadn't detonated clawed open in a crater down the avenue and peeled back like a flower. Six shapes spilled out.
Closer—right out of the fire at his feet—a creature stepped onto the street. Bone-white where soot hadn't touched, vital plates armoured in deep cobalt, reverse-jointed legs, forearms ending in scissoring blades. Its mouth opened too wide; the sound it made cut through the ringing in his ears.
People ran. Traffic jammed. Some tripped; others vaulted hoods. The creature moved like a raptor the size of a big dog, leapt onto the nearest man, drove its blades into his ribs, and fed.
Rage burned away his shock. He drew his pistol, charged, and fired three shots into the creature's head. Stone on slate—the rounds chipped the carapace but didn't break through. It hissed and lunged.
He pivoted right, planted, corrected his aim, and put a single round through the eye. The thing spasmed and went still in the street.
Another impact thumped behind him. He turned. A fresh pod had carved a two-meter scar into the avenue. Its shell opened and six more monsters unfolded, immediately cutting down the nearest civilians. Two patrol officers fired as they fell back. He climbed onto the hood of a stalled car for a clear lane and sent fast, clean pairs into the pack. One creature dropped; another staggered. The officers steadied and finished the rest.
Distant guns woke—a staccato flutter—and the city's anti-air started clawing at the green ceiling. Dog-sized fliers poured from the Miasma and hurled themselves into the red-hot barrels until the batteries choked and died.
He and the officers moved together toward the garrison—short sprints, cover, fire, move—while more pods rained down and the city burned. Sirens keened. Tires burned. Somewhere a hydrant geysered sideways. Children cried. Someone prayed. The air tasted of acid and copper.
Tears of fury burned behind his eyes, but he forced them back. He wouldn't mourn yet. He couldn't. He would do what training demanded. Though he hadn't seen the bodies and could not make himself accept it, he knew—deep as bone—that his family was gone.
Aboard the Harpy in the present, a single tear slid along the inside of his helmet seal as he relived the day he'd relived every night for thirty years. His jaw hardened; the dream kept going.
Sunlight never pierced the Miasma again. Night fell on Harvest at noon. Fires raged through the ruins while men and women stood in broken streets, firing rifles and launchers into the oncoming tide. Five-meter brutes, sheathed in carapace, crashed through buildings and ripped defenders apart with bladed hands. Winged things swarmed the AA turrets and jammed the barrels with their bodies. In the alleys, some creatures spat gobs of acid; others fired long bone-spikes that punched through armor. Most simply charged and died and kept coming.
On a rubble heap he screamed his rage and poured an assault rifle into the mass, bullets heavy and hot and endless compared to his pistol. Beside him a tank roared, its main gun turning monsters to paste and hurling limbs into the street. It didn't matter. Like ants, they came.
Five days and five nights later, the defenders were driven to the last spaceport. Evacuation transports loaded in a continuous line. Then—like a flare of sanity—massive explosive shells lit the green sky and blew a window through the Miasma. Transports clawed for it. He refused to board, holding the line a moment longer, until hands dragged him bodily into the last ship.
The scene shifted. He stood at the rear viewport as the transport climbed. Harvest lay below, wrapped in the Miasma like a shroud. In orbit, thousands of lights flickered where the Empire's reinforcing fleet met the swarm.
The enemy "ships" were organisms—vast, slow giants that vented acid and birthed more pods into the fight. The Empire's warships burned them with forward lances and raked the skies with side batteries. Fighters swarmed from the hangars—small craft with flickering shields and teeth enough to matter.
There were sixty Imperial hulls—a ragged composite from nearby systems—and for minutes the stars looked like hope. Enemy bodies tore and bled vapor. But the swarm kept coming. From within atmosphere he had seen it clearly: the Miasma was not a cloud at all, but a fleet of fleets, a living night.
As the transport fled, the fleet's lights dimmed and disappeared inside the mass. People around him gasped. He sank to his knees. Regret crushed his lungs. If only he'd recognized the signs, if only he'd done more—any more—maybe, maybe…
When the evac ship finally docked at a waystation, he wandered in a daze until the newsfeeds found him. The aliens had a name now: Harvesters, after the world they'd taken. All sixty Imperial ships were gone—about one hundred fifty thousand souls. Estimated civilian dead on Harvest: one billion and rising.
He stood on a sidewalk staring at nothing until a passing soldier pressed a flyer into his hand: DROP SHOCK CORPS—GRAV-DROP INFANTRY. Recruitment had surged in every system after Harvest fell.
Something lit inside him. A purpose. He swore, there on the street, to see the Harvesters erased from the galaxy.
The dream slammed him into mud and wire. An instructor bellowed. Machine-gun fire cracked overhead. Training grenades thumped a safe distance away to simulate pressure and shock. He crawled, elbows and knees burning, teeth grit around a mouthful of grit and promise.
He didn't want greatness. He wanted justice. And he would earn it one brutal inch at a time.