Drop-Leviathans are giant space-born organisms. At the end of each life-cycle, one falls from orbit and becomes the seed of a new reef colony — a living mass that will one day send mature Leviathans back into space to seed more worlds.

One has crashed onto an acid-rain salt-pan colony, home to thousands of human settlers. Its carcass destroyed the colony landing pad and now lies near the city like a rotting mountain, full of eggs and larvae waiting for the right moment to spread, take the planet, and grow another Leviathan.

A sapper team enters the Drop-Leviathan husk to collapse it, along with the wreckage of the old landing pad, before its eggs can scatter.

But the creature’s dead tissue still reacts to vibration, punching jaw-stalks through walls, floors, and ceilings whenever something moves.

Every step, shot, cutter s ...