Salt-Bridge-Seven is an automated orbital evacuation spine of cargo trams, flooded coolant galleries, and exposed vacuum trusses. Six months after an Ironmother infestation was declared cleared, Voss and three soldiers enter its corridors to guide refugees from seven shelter nodes toward the docking port before the radiation shadow closes.

Moving ahead of the column, the team checks pressure seals with ground-penetrating sonar and thermal scopes. But the Ironmothers have learned to hide inside the maintenance structure—and when one sprays medic Tamsin with formic acid, the compound bonds to her suit and turns her into a living beacon for every worker and winged disperser in the colony.

This is "Ironmother" by Sascha Schmidt