1. Deathwatch on the Harbinger

With a hole in its starboard side and a dead fusion core, the colonization vessel Harbinger is doomed. Captain Jarvis is serving deathwatch with the ship AI when he receives an alien hail coming from the direction of quarantine space. A mind-controlling race of tick-like parasites, the Braunts are only recently known to humanity but already greatly feared. The Harbinger's only hope turns into a deal with the devil when the aliens offer Jarvis a choice: hand over ten humans to become their mind-slaves in exchange for the safe passage of the 1400 surviving colonists still slumbering in their hiber pods.

An apeXeno story
Cover art by @xxNadiaPxx