THE CORONA CALENDAR: KILLERS OF THE JOVIAN MOON

 

The Corona Calendar: KILLERS OF THE JOVIAN MOON

(Excerpt from Vol. VI The Big Planets, To Live and Die on Mars #58)  

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The jungle moon smelled like wet copper and burning sugar.  

Ari crouched in the undergrowth, his mech suit humming low, its digiton plating shifting colors to match the neon foliage. Beside him, Fozi’s massive ox-frame barely fit between the towering vines,  his claws flexing. Ren floated just above the dirt, silent, black eyes scanning.  

"You hearing this?" Ari pulsed through the telepathic link.  

"Hearing what?" Fozi’s mental voice was a slow grind of gravel.  

"The screaming."  

Ren’s telepathy cut in, smooth and cold. "Sí. Rebels dying."  

Ari grinned. "Music."  

The jungle erupted.  

A Jovian rebel—tall, chitinous, four arms swinging plasma machetes—lunged from the canopy. Ari didn’t move. His mech suit’s gravity field pulsed once. The rebel imploded mid-air, bones cracking like dropped glass.  

Fozi snorted. "Showoff."  

Ari wiped rebel guts off his face. "We’re getting paid for this, right?"  

"Royal family money," Ren confirmed. "Big."  

Ari’s grin widened. "Big like our space treasure?"  

Fozi’s massive shoulders tensed. "Don’t start."  

But Ari was already rolling with it, ducking under a plasma shot as he sent the thought: "Are we the richest dudes in the whole star system?"  

Silence. Then—  

"Maybe," Ren admitted.  

"Definitely," Ari corrected.  

Another rebel charged. Fozi tore him in half with his bare hands.  

---  

Lumo sat cross-legged on a floating divan, one of his four eyes twitching. The Jovian royal palace was a sprawl of bioluminescent coral and gold, open to the swirling gas giant looming overhead.  

Princess Veyla—all six limbs folded in regal irritation—tapped her claws on the table. "Your bandits are late."  

Lumo sipped something blue and toxic. "They’re dramatic."  

Across the room, Uncle J’xol lounged in a hammock of living vines, fanning himself with a ceremonial fan. "Relax, niece. The Blue Goo’s got money. Money means they won’t screw us."  

Veyla’s antennae flicked. "Money also means they’re targets."  

Lumo’s fingers danced over his Menu. Somewhere in orbit, Karla was probably redecorating their cruiser again. He sent her a wave—just a flicker of alive?—and got back a pulse of bored.  

J’xol chuckled. "See? Rich people problems."  

A tremor shook the palace. The holographic news feed above them glitched—MENU ALERT: CORONA COUNCIL VOTES ON TEMPORAL SANCTIONS.  

Lumo didn’t look up. "Your rebels got friends in high places."  

Veyla hissed. "Not for long."  

---  

Ari’s fist connected with a rebel’s face. The Hite energy in his knuckles discharged, sending the alien flying through three trees.  

"Pitt would cry if he saw this," Ari crowed.  

Fozi crushed a skull underfoot. "Pitt’s probably stealing someone’s wormhole tech right now."  

Ren’s black eyes gleamed. "We should buy wormhole tech."  

Ari paused. "...Can we?"  

"We’re rich," Ren reminded him.  

Ari’s laugh was cut short by the ground splitting open.  

A royal militia soldier—half-eaten by something with too many teeth—crawled out of the fissure. "Prince Jovi… they’re feeding him to the—"  

The thing that burst from the ground was all jaws and no face.  

Ari cracked his knuckles. "Okay. New plan."  

Fozi sighed. "We’re gonna die rich."  

---  

Karla stretched her legs across the heated lounger, flexing her toes against the textured surface. The snowcapped retreat surrounded her—a perfect simulation of the Martian polar spas, complete with the mineral scent of thawing permafrost and the distant rumble of calving ice shelves. The thermal springs bubbled nearby, their steam curling in precise fractal patterns that hovered just a little too perfectly in the Balae Estelara's artificial atmosphere.

Her Atkan dress shimmered like liquid metal, responding to her shifting mood by darkening at the edges. She swirled the Jovian gin in her glass, watching the Pluto ice—harvested from the dwarf planet's crystalline mantle—clink against the iridium-cut crystal.

alive? Lumo's message had pulsed through her Menu an hour ago.

bored she'd sent back, though that wasn't entirely true. There was something satisfying about lounging in this mobile palace while Lumo scraped through some moon's fungal jungles.

The thermal springs stuttered.

Not the natural ebb and flow of heated currents, but a hiccup—a single ripple moving backward. Karla set her glass down slowly.

Then the entire chamber exhaled.

The steam froze mid-curl. The distant ice sounds cut out. For half a breath, the spa simulation flickered, revealing the cruiser's true architecture—the sinewy curves of bio-synthetic support beams, the faint pulse of quantum-charged fluids threading through the walls. Then the illusion reset.

Karla was already upright when Lumo's transmission appeared across from her.

"You're getting better at bypassing firewalls," she said, adjusting the fall of her dress as she settled back.

Lumo's projected form gleamed cobalt-green—a hue that read as blue to most eyes, but held that telltale Xerran undertone. His four eyes flickered with data she couldn't parse. He looked worn. A fresh fracture split one of his cranial plates. "You're getting worse at keeping me locked out."

The springs hissed sharply. A bubble burst, sending up a spray of droplets that hung a millisecond too long before remembering to fall.

Karla arched an eyebrow. "This suite is supposed to be transmission-shielded."

"And you're supposed to be slumming it in standard orbit lodgings." Lumo leaned forward, the holographic lounger groaning under his shift. "Yet here we are."

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling viewports, Jupiter's storm belts churned—great rivers of ammonia and hydrogen in ceaseless motion. The Balae Estelara was nearing its closest approach, skimming the gas giant's magnetosphere to catapult toward the inner system. Karla watched a vortex large enough to swallow Mars whole spin lazily beneath them.

"We found the prince," Lumo said.

Karla kept her eyes on the storms. "Alive?"

"Mostly."

Now she looked at him. "Define mostly."

Before he could answer, the spa simulation disintegrated.

Not the graceful shutdown of a Menu disengagement, but a violent unwinding. The ice walls liquefied upward. The thermal springs inverted into static. The faux-permafrost floor dissolved, revealing the cruiser's true skeleton—the arched struts of its biomechanical framework, the glowing channels of ionized plasma snaking through bulkheads.

And standing at the room's center—

A figure in Corona Council robes, face obscured by a shifting fractal visor. The air around them warped with the distinctive shimmer of a military-grade dampening field.

Karla's Atkan dress solidified into armored segments along her limbs and torso. "Charming," she said dryly. "Do you make a habit of crashing private parties?"

The intruder lifted one hand. Karla's Menu shrieked a warning directly into her neural feed—UNAUTHORIZED WAVE DETECTED—as every system aboard the Balae Estelara convulsed.

Emergency lumens flared crimson. The gravity matrix stuttered, sending Karla's stomach lurching as the field destabilized. Somewhere in the cruiser's core, the living leviathan that formed the ship's foundation loosed a subsonic keen that vibrated through the deck.

Lumo's transmission glitched violently, his image fracturing into jagged shards. "Karla—" his voice distorted, "—they're not—static—Council—static—"

Then the world dissolved into white noise.

The last thing Karla saw before systems failed entirely was the intruder stepping closer, their fractal visor retracting to reveal—

Darkness.

Silence.

The acrid tang of overloaded conduits.

And then, from somewhere deeper than the ship's schematics should allow, the leviathan called again—a resonant, echoing cry that shuddered through the walls.

Somewhere on a jungle moon four hundred thousand kilometers spinward, Lumo's physical form jerked as the link severed. The prince's partially consumed body lay at his boots. Royal guards were shouting. The thing that had been wearing the prince's skin still twitched.

And the Balae Estelara had just vanished from every scanner.

Lumo triggered seven backup channels in rapid succession.

No response.

He checked the chrono.

The cruiser should have initiated its gravity assist ninety-three seconds ago. No engine signature painted the scopes. No debris field.

Just like that, the most advanced private vessel in the Corona system—and the woman aboard it—had winked out of existence.

Lumo's fingers moved toward his Menu.

Then stilled.

Karla's consciousness reassembled like a shattered mirror pulling itself together. One moment - void. The next - the scent of ionized air and the too-perfect chill of simulated mountain wind. Her fingers clutched the lounger's armrests, the material yielding like real leather beneath her grip.  

The Balae Estelara's spa simulation had reset.  

Steam curled from undisturbed thermal springs. Pluto ice cubes floated untouched in her glass.

Karla blinked as the world reassembled itself. Then she saw him.  

Lumo's transmission flickered into existence across from her, his usual cobalt-green hue slightly distorted at the edges. He looked... different. Softer around the eyes.  

"Karla, my love," the transmission said, voice dripping with uncharacteristic sweetness, "whatever I told you in the past was all bullshit. You're my love and I'm here to save you!"  

Karla arched an eyebrow. She took a slow sip of her gin, letting the Pluto ice clink against the crystal. "Really."  

"Really!" The projection leaned forward, holographic hands clasped dramatically over its chest. "I've seen the error of my ways. You're the stars in my sky, the—"  

"—the plasma in my conduits?" Karla finished dryly. "Did you hit your head on a bulkhead?"  

Lumo's transmission had the audacity to look wounded. "Can't a man have an epiphany?"  

Outside the viewports, Jupiter's storms swirled in hypnotic patterns. The thermal springs bubbled with their usual artificial perfection. Everything looked normal.  

Too normal.  

Karla set her glass down with deliberate slowness. "Let me guess—this is some future echo of you? A command subroutine you buried in the Menu in case of emergencies?"  

The projection's grin was all teeth. "Maybe."  

"And now you're here to... what? Serenade me?"  

"Save you," Lumo corrected. "From—"  

Karla waved a hand. "Yes, yes, imminent doom, very dramatic." She stood, her Atkan dress swirling around her like liquid metal. "You realize this is the worst rescue attempt in history."  

The transmission threw up its hands. "I'm baring my soul here!"  

"And doing a terrible job of it." Karla stepped closer, studying the flickering edges of the projection. Somewhere beneath the sarcasm, a warmth spread through her chest. Stupid, sentimental fool.  

She reached out, letting her fingers pass through the hologram's cheek. "You're an idiot."  

"Your idiot," the transmission countered.  

Karla rolled her eyes—but she was smiling now. "Fine. I love you too, you ridiculous man." She leaned in and kissed the flickering image, tasting static and something that might have been desperation.  

The projection shimmered at the contact. For half a second, Karla could have sworn she felt actual pressure against her lips.  

Then the ship's alarms blared to life.  

The mountain simulation dissolved in jagged fragments, revealing the Balae Estelara's true architecture—the organic curves of its bio-mechanical framework now pulsing with emergency crimson.  

"Took you long enough," Karla muttered, already moving toward the control panel.  

The transmission flickered wildly. "I told you there was danger!"  

"Yes, yes, you're very clever." Karla's fingers flew across the interface. "Now are you going to help or just stand there looking pretty?"  

Lumo's projection solidified, his usual sharp-edged smirk returning. "What do you need?"  

Karla grinned. "Same as always. A miracle."  

The transmission's eyes gleamed. "Coming right up."  

Outside the viewports, the stars burned cold and steady as the Balae Estelara prepared to dance with danger once more.  

The Jovian jungle exhaled sulfur and blood as Lumo guided Prince Jovi through the carnage. The boy's chitinous limbs clicked nervously, his four hands trembling where they clutched Lumo's sleeve. Around them, the royal guard formed a protective diamond, their plasma pikes cutting through the lingering rebel forces.  

“Boss," Lumo pulsed across time and space, his telepathic voice threading through the channels Amara had forged. “Karla's safe. Your temporal nudge worked."

The reply came wrapped in static and distance, Amara's consciousness bleeding through from some undisclosed when-and-where: “Don't thank me yet. The Zemord infiltration runs deeper than we thought."

Ahead, the military extraction shuttle burned through the ammonia clouds, its pulse scattering the neon foliage. Lumo nudged the prince forward while keeping one eye on the chrono display in his Menu. The numbers flickered unnaturally—Amara's time manipulation leaving ghostly afterimages in reality's code.  

“The prince's memories?" Amara's thought-voice carried the weight of Deimos' forges.  

“Still fragmented." Lumo ducked as a stray plasma bolt sizzled overhead. “But he remembers the black temples. The singing statues."

A royal guard collapsed mid-stride, his chest blooming crimson. Not from rebel fire—from something inside him tearing its way out. Lumo didn't flinch as the guard's ribcage split open, revealing glistening fractal patterns beneath the skin. Zemord infiltration.  

The prince whimpered. Lumo tightened his grip on the boy's shoulder. "Eyes forward, your highness. Almost there."  

Amara's telepathic presence pulsed like a dying star: “They're accelerating the timeline. We need—"

The connection stuttered. Lumo's vision doubled as two timelines briefly overlapped—one where the shuttle door opened normally, another where it exploded outward in a hail of shrapnel. He blinked hard, forcing reality to settle.  

“Boss?"

Silence. Then, faint as solar wind: “Stick to the plan."

The shuttle ramp descended. The royal guard captain—her carapace cracked from recent battles—you gestured urgently. "Hurry! Before the atmospheric—"  

Her head exploded.  

Not from weapons fire. From the inside.  

Lumo shoved the prince down as the captain's skull fragments pinged off his mech suit. The remaining guards raised their weapons—not toward the jungle, but at each other. Zemord sleeper agents awakening.  

"Run!" Lumo barked, yanking the prince toward the shuttle. Behind them, guards tore into one another with bare hands and teeth, their bodies unraveling into fractal shapes.  

The prince stumbled. "They're... they're all..."  

"I know." Lumo activated his suit's gravity field, yanking them both into the shuttle’s pull as its defensive weapons spun to life. "Don't look back."  

The pull sealed with a hiss of purified air. As the drive roared, Lumo caught the prince staring at his own trembling hands.  

"They were inside me too, weren't they?" the boy whispered.  

Lumo didn't lie. "We cut them out."  

The shuttle punched through the atmosphere. On the viewscreen, the jungle moon shrank below them, its surface now crawling with unnatural geometric patterns visible even from orbit. The prince's black temples awakening.  

Lumo's Menu pinged—an encrypted wave from Karla, timestamped three hours from now. He opened it with his mind:  

A single image of her smirking, holding up two fingers.

Their private code. Alive. Annoyed. Coming for you.

Lumo allowed himself one quiet chuckle before turning to the shuttle's comms officer. "Set course for the Jovian fleet. And someone get this kid a drink."  

As the prince was led away, Lumo pressed a hand to the cold viewport. Somewhere across time, Amara was moving pieces on a board only they could see. Somewhere closer, Karla was undoubtedly stealing something expensive.  

And beneath it all, the Zemord stirred in their black temples.  

Lumo exhaled, watching his breath fume. The numbers in his Menu continued their erratic dance—Amara's temporal manipulations still rippling through local spacetime.  

There would be a price for this. There always was.  

But not today.  

Today, the Jovian whirlpool swallowed Lumo whole, its violet currents wrapping around his failing mech suit like liquid chains. The creature's tentacles—pulsing with fractal patterns that made his Menu scream in static agony—dragged him deeper into the crushing dark. He'd stopped struggling minutes ago, conserving the last sparks of his energy for what came next. The squid-thing's beak clicked in anticipation somewhere below, a sound like bones breaking in reverse.  

His final transmission began as a whisper in the datastream, fragments of consciousness pulled from undisclosed moments across time:  

There was the Lumo who'd watched Karla sleep on Mars Prime, memorizing the way her hair caught the artificial dawn. That memory folded into the Lumo who'd taken a plasma bolt for Ari during the Ceres job, the scent of burning synthetic flesh still vivid. Another shard came from the quiet hour he'd spent with Ren in a derelict freighter, teaching the Grey Martian how to swear in Xerran through telepathic laughter. The transmission wove together moments never meant to be shared—the time he'd vomited from fear after escaping Pitt's ambush, the private victory when Amara first called him "partner" instead of "asset," the way Fozi's massive hand had felt when it caught his shoulder mid-fall on Phobos.  

The creature shrieked as Lumo's Menu ignited, every locked memory and buried feeling surging through corrupted datastreams. Undisclosed transmissions flooded the void:  

A pulse of raw terror from his first spacewalk at twelve years old.  

The exact pressure of Karla's teeth on his lower lip during their worst fight.  

The smell of Fozi's bergundy fur after their first successful heist—sweat and gunpowder and something inexplicably like old books.  

Ari's voice slurred with painkillers after the Hite job: "Worth it, you blue bastard."  

Ren's telepathic whisper during the Siege of Corona Hills, just before the walls fell: "Sobreviviremos juntos."  

Amara's hand on his shoulder in the war room, the weight of the Keri Alu between them.  

The transmission built like a collapsing star, each memory compressing into something brighter, harder, more enduring. The squid-thing convulsed as Lumo's consciousness overwrote its fractal patterns with stolen moments—a first kiss against a dying reactor core, the taste of Jovian gin shared from the same glass, the way Karla's Atkan dress had rippled when she'd first said "I love you" like it was a threat.  

Darkness came in waves. First the crushing pressure of the depths. Then the failing of his mech suit's final systems. Last the quiet unraveling of his mind as the transmission tore itself free.  

Somewhere beyond the whirlpool, undisclosed echoes of his transmission reached their recipients:  

Karla's Menu activated without input, projecting a memory she'd never witnessed—Lumo watching her from a security feed on Mars, his fingers tracing her hologram with unbearable tenderness.  

Ari's gold chain heated against his skin, releasing a burst of Lumo's laughter from their stupidest heist.  

Ren's telepathic channels flooded with the Xerran lullaby Lumo had hummed only once, when the Grey Martian had been dying in his arms.  

Fozi found his favorite plasma rifle inexplicably loaded with a data cartridge containing schematics for a joke weapon they'd dreamed up drunk.  

Amara's chrono display glitched, revealing coordinates to a hidden vault and a single line of text: "For when you need to cheat."  

And in the Jovian depths, as the squid-thing's tentacles went slack and the whirlpool stilled, the last undisclosed transmission pulsed once—a final heartbeat in the datastream—before dissolving into the eternal dark.  

The message repeated across every connected Menu in the Corona system, a whisper fading with each echo:  

“TELL THEM I'M JUST LATE."

Then silence.  

Then stars.

———

ATILA

———