On Junction Gamma-9, a frozen, decaying black-budget cryogenic fuel cache in zero gravity, a suspected blockage has forced a squad of pressure-suited soldiers into the dark. Human insurgents have secretly weaponized the alien infestation by farming fragmented specimens in nutrient sacks to accelerate their seventy-two-hour regeneration cycle. The infantry team enters the junction to clear the main fuel flow, armed only with low-velocity weapons and hand tools because a single stray bullet could rupture the three-hundred-atmosphere pipes and flash-freeze the entire station.

The squad attempts a standard sweep, but the alien Silencers ambush them from compressed gaps in the machinery, pinning soldiers to the cryogenic manifolds and injecting proteolytic enzymes that dissolve human tissue into a nutrient slurry. When the team kills one creatur ...