This all felt wrong. The clones had all agreed on that. It wasn’t the texture or the fact it coated everything, from the floor to the ceiling.

  It was the stillness of it. The BCU called it a biomorph resin, they found it too uniform. Too alive. It didn’t belong to the war they were fighting or any war they wanted to fight.

  Their steps echoed down the wide corridor, past other clones moving through the chambers and the motionless, looming forms of BCU sentries.

  They felt everything watching them closely. The five clones walked in formation, bound more by experience than orders.

  “Feels like walking through a carcass,” muttered one.

  “That’s the east wing for you,” said another. “This whole damn sector’s wrapped in this fake shell.”

  “It’s like we’re in the belly of something that doesn’t know it’s dead yet.”

  Seer led the group, his four eyes scanned everything, and it all felt unnatural. He looked at his armour that bore a faint white sigil on the left pauldron, marking him the leader of this mess.

  He spoke only when needed, and now, with the reinforced door to the command room looming ahead, he said, “No chatter in front of the BCU. This isn’t a debrief. It’s coordination.”

  The reinforced doors hissed open. The room beyond was coated in the same unnatural resin, but here it pulsed faintly with light, casting shifting shadows across embedded screens. The walls curved subtly inward, giving the room a closed, protective feel.

  Monitors displayed sections of the lunar surface maps, status reports, and movement patterns.

  And there, standing still in the centre, was a BCU variant they'd never encountered.

  It moved with deliberate grace—its four legs clicking softly against the smooth resin floor. Its upper half resembled a humanoid, but the resemblance was abstract at best.

  Four primary arms hung relaxed at its sides, while two smaller ones remained folded neatly across its plated chest. What truly drew their attention, though, was its shell.

  The deep crimson markings scrawled across its armour pulsed faintly with each movement, like the remnants of blood etched into bone.

  Seer’s ears twitched slightly. “Well,” he muttered, voice low and thoughtful, “that’s new.”

  Seer stepped forward. “BCU.”

  The BCU tilted its head slightly. “Seer.”

  The five spread out in a semicircle, observing the BCU’s form with a mix of suspicion and curiosity. Its voice was calm, composed, and disturbingly smooth.

  Seer turned to the others. “These are the sector leads. They’ll be coordinating all our operations in the north, east, and west. Supplies are thin, most vehicles are damaged, but production on ammunition is ramping up.”

  He gestured to the clone nearest him. “This is Scrap. He earned the name after dragging a half-burned scout vehicle across three kilometres of no-man’s-land to rig a minefield.”

  Scrap chuckled. “Wreckage has value. I’m taking the eastern flatlands. We'll be planting explosives and disrupting any Grithan landings near Sectors 17 to 31. Lots of open ground to vanish into once the blasts go off.”

  Seer nodded, pointing to the next. “Torch. Burned through three lines of enemy tech bunkers during the rebellion. He’ll manage the mountain routes in the west.”

  Torch’s fur bristled. “We’ll use the elevation. Collapse tunnels, and sabotage any machines they try to use to move artillery. The hills can work for us if we control the choke points.”

  “Next is Glint,” Seer said. “Sharpest eyes I’ve seen. Marked eighteen of your counterattacks before they advanced.”

  Glint gave a lazy nod. “I’ll hold the northern approach. Mixed terrain—some plateaus, some hard-packed dust. Flat enough for mobility, and I’ve got a few bored runners.”

  “Wrench,” Seer continued. “Because if it breaks, he curses it back to life.”

  Wrench growled. “Half our transports are junk. But I’ve got a few armoured columns patched together. I’ll set up mobile points in the eastern plains—supply caches, repair zones, fallback spots.”

  Then Seer looked to the last clone. “And this is Veil. You don’t see him coming unless he wants you to.”

  Veil flicked a glance at the BCU. “Eastern side. Flatlands. We’ll crawl under their sensors and eat them from the inside. Saboteur teams only. Leave no trail.”

  The BCU listened without interruption. Then, it spoke in its calm voice, “Your rebellion against the Grithan fleet has marked you as liabilities. Unrecoverable assets. But your capacity for adaptive destruction is… not without value.”

  “We're not trying to be valuable,” Torch muttered. “We're trying to make sure they bleed when they come back.”

  “And they will,” said Glint. “Their scout drones are already sweeping the outer orbit. The moment the Grithans calculate they've got enough forces, they’ll descend.”

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  Seer stepped forward, his eyes narrowing at one of the maps on the wall. “They’ll hit everywhere at once. Probably drop meteors first for a few days, maybe even two weeks. Then know you can cover the whole moon.”

  “But we’ll make them pay for every crater.” Seer added.

  Wrench leaned against the wall. “Still can’t believe we’re planning this under BCU eyes. Thought you were the ones dragging us out for death a few months ago.”

  Seer’s voice was cold. “I negotiated the alliance. The BCU saw logic. Their war with the Grithans was over. Most of us were freed by the disruption.”

  The BCU’s voice cut through like a blade. “The Grithan’s overextended. Their tactical advantage faltered and couldn’t adapt. They made too many mistakes.”

  Torch looked at the maps. “And we’re supposed to fight for you?”

  “No,” said Seer. “We fight for our survival. The moon isn’t a battleground any more. It’s a tomb. We’re the ghosts still choosing to haunt it.”

  Glint added, “And when the Grithans return, they won’t send elite forces. Rumours within their network are they’re moving to cheaper clones. Maybe even mostly mechanical forces.”

  Scrap growled. “Mass-produced rubbish. Won’t have the instincts, won’t know how to crawl through a trench in silence.”

  Veil smirked. “Good. Makes them easier to rip apart.”

  Seer looked to BCU. “You’ve studied the invasion routes?”

  The BCU turned to the monitors. “Five vectors likely. One major push from the north. Auxiliary landings west and east. Mountain drops are probable. My projections align with your assumptions. They will come.”

  “Then we bleed them dry before they establish a perimeter.” Seer looked around the room. “We use sabotage, ambushes, disinformation. We’ll move like shadows. No base, no pattern. Keep them guessing, make them paranoid.”

  Veil stepped closer to the BCU. “One question.”

  The BCU turned.

  “We’ve been betting rations,” Veil said. “Whether you’ve got a name besides BCU.”

  The BCU was quiet for a moment. Then it said, without emotion: “Trumek.”

  Scrap groaned. “Damn it. I owe Glint two flasks.”

  Trumek’s gaze returned to the lunar maps. “There are better uses for alcohol than gambling.”

  Torch snorted and smiled. “You got any more of that alcohol around here, it's rare among the rations.”

  Seer didn’t smile, but his eyes narrowed in a way that meant he approved. “Let’s get to work. They’re coming, and we’re not going quietly, the Grithan’s can count on that.”

  ———

  Several days later, beneath Imreth’s darkened skies, I sprang the trap.

  A squad of clones never saw it coming as my infiltrators closed in fast, stunning and knocking some out with precise hits. The was no struggle or screams. Just silent impacts in the dark as they hit the ground, twitching.

  I had the infiltrators drag their bodies into the outpost, away from the acid-tinged rainfall. Their helmets hissed softly as they were exposed to the filtered air.

  Everything was ready for phase two. Small, spider-like units hissed as they unfolded. I directed them to latch onto each clone’s skull with a wet snap, metal pincers gripping flesh.

  Then the seal formed—organic mesh weaving into place, fusing into the bone, choking off their screams before they could begin.

  They burrowed into their minds, flooding synapses with new memories, rewriting loyalty one nerve at a time. The process left the body still and twitching, but behind the eyes… they were awake. They saw it all. The moment their minds broke they were rebuilt.

  I modified their armour leaving it broken and marked with burns, claw marks, and cracked plates giving an illusion of a hard-fought battle. A lie for their command to swallow.

  As I positioned the bodies of fallen assault drones, scattered several metres apart, the operation continued. Over and over again, I repeated the process, each time bringing more agents under my control.

  When the operation was set into motion, I triggered the outpost's detonation, the explosion tearing through the air as the infiltrators withdrew. Disappearing into the winding river that slithered through the landscape, leaving nothing but chaos in their wake and new agents.

  Their comrades hadn’t caught on yet. But they could feel it. Something in the way my agents looked at them too long or stood too still in the darkness. Rumours spread like disease. Some clones talked about ghosts in the comms. Missing patrols. Voices that didn’t match the faces.

  The Grithan were coming, their invasion building behind layers of silence and half-sent orders. I didn’t know when exactly—but I knew it was close.

  And when they arrived, marching on to reclaim my moon with their new cheap metal drones and butcher-born clone hordes…

  … I would be there. Watching from behind a billion eyes. Smiling through stolen mouths. Waiting.

  Let them come.