Samson scraped the remains of Commander Velez from the cryo bay bulkhead. 

   Her torso had been split open like a fruit, ribs peeled back, lungs deflated and dangling. The blood had dried into a black crust, but the smell lingered—iron, bile, and something fungal. 

   He worked in silence, his synthetic hands steady, his internal processors throttled to suppress unnecessary emotion emulation.

   The ship was quiet now. Too quiet.

   Sixty stasis pods lined the bay, each containing a diamond miner from Lira6B/A. Ten were open. Ten were empty. Ten were smeared with viscera and claw marks. The creature had fed again.

   Samson paused. A sound. Wet clicking. Like claws tapping steel. Like mandibles grinding bone.

   It was back.

   He turned, eyes glowing faint blue in the emergency lighting. The ship’s AI was offline. Life support was minimal. The crew—thirteen in total—were dead. Torn, hollowed, scattered. Samson had catalogued each death with clinical precision. But Velez’s was the worst. The creature had played with her.

   It had come aboard during final loading on Lira6B/A. No one saw it. No one knew. It had waited. It had learned. And then it had fed.

   Samson moved through the corridor, servos whispering. He passed the remains of Dr. Kwan—her legs missing, her chest hollowed out. The creature didn’t kill for survival. It killed for pleasure. It was intelligent. It was cruel.

   He reached the waste reclamation chamber. The creature nested there now, among the refuse and dead coolant.

   He brought with him a cracked stasis pod—bait. He dragged it across the floor, leaving a trail of synthetic blood from his own damaged arm. He had torn it open deliberately. The creature liked the scent of pain.

   He waited.

   The lights flickered.

   Then came the sound: claws on steel, wet breathing, a low hiss that vibrated the walls.

   It emerged from the shadows, unfolding itself like a nightmare.

   Eight legs, each ending in hooked claws. A carapace mottled with black and green, slick with mucus. Its head was triangular, eyes clustered like wet pearls, mandibles twitching with anticipation. It moved like a spider, but its body was armored like a cockroach. Fast. Silent. Unkillable.

   Samson stood his ground.

   “ Come, ” he said, urging the fight.

   The creature lunged.

   Samson dodged, barely. It was faster than before. Stronger. It had fed well.

   He struck with a plasma torch, slicing across its flank. Blood sprayed, it was hot, but harmless. The creature was warm blooded.

   It shrieked from the shock.

   It struck again, tearing into Samon's chest. Wires spilled out. He fell, then rolled, grabbing a shard of hull plating. He drove it into the creature’s eye cluster. It shrieked, flailing, smashing the stasis pod in rage.

   Samson crawled beneath it, reached up, and tore at the exposed nerve bundle near its thorax. 

   It spasmed, legs twitching, mandibles gnashing. He climbed onto its back, pounding its carapace with the torch until it cracked.

   The creature bucked, slammed into the wall, tried to crush him. But Samson held on, driving the torch deep into its brain stem.

   It shrieked once more, then collapsed dead.

   Samson lay beside the corpse, his systems failing. 

   He rerouted power, sealed his chest, and stood. Fifty miners remained. He activated the emergency beacon, rerouted life support, and set course for Earth.

   He did not speak. He did not mourn. He cleaned the blood from his hands and waited.