On an agricultural moon, a former farming paradise has become a dead crust of stripped fields, shattered greenhouse glass, and gnawed cattle bones.

Thumb-sized Titanomyrma ants have turned the thriving colony into a sealed quarantine nightmare in less than a month.

A quarantine engineering team is sent to locate and destroy the hidden hive breeding new queens before the colony can spread through the orbital cargo elevator shaft and reach the system’s planets and orbital cities. The ants consume everything organic, exploit every crack and suit seam, and launch winged queens toward the elevator mast that leads to orbit.

The mission begins as a demolition run beneath stripped terraces and broken greenhouse glass, but the swarm keeps adapting faster than the soldiers can seal it out. Narrow maintenance passages, damaged suit joints, ...