A troop carrier has crashed into a bone-colored dust basin on a hostile colony world, its three-kilometer hull split open and half-buried in saltstone.

Inside the wreck is a navigational core holding the last clean vector to a hidden human fleet tender — and the enemy wants it before orbital sterilization erases the site.

A combat engineer team enters the tilted hulk to reach the forward bridge vault, but the ship is no longer just wreckage. The Groutbacks — alien centipedes armored like tanks and almost as long as two men — have turned its decks into a breathing brood nest, undermining floors, carving kill pits, sealing corridors with resin, and packing load-bearing walls with eggs.

By the time the team reaches the vault, the core is no longer just an objective.

This is "The Living Wreck" by Sascha Schmidt