Kaelin’s power armor shoulder was still embedded with a rusty fragment of a xenomorph’s claw, huddled in the corroded ventilation duct of Io-7 Outpost🚀, the familiar icy chill of the Star Trench Hive Strike Dagger settling in his palm. This was the exclusive standard sidearm of the 12th Star Assault Battalion; its hive-bionic grip texture was engineered to fit power armor anti-slip gloves, and the blade was integrally printed from condensed star-debris alloy via a field 3D module, maintaining a Mohs hardness of 9.2 even at -120℃, slicing through xenomorph chitin exoskeletons like dehydrated resin🪲. Three days prior, the outpost’s quantum early warning system fell silent without warning, a tide of xenomorphs surging from crustal fissures. The communication tower was reduced to corroded slag by strong acid, and Kaelin was the only survivor of his battalion, clutching a chip containing the coordinates of the xenomorph mother nest. The screech of xenomorph arthropods scraping metal echoed outside the duct. He touched the lanyard hole at the dagger’s pommel—originally a clip for power armor straps, now strung with half a broken ID tag from his fallen comrade📛. Suddenly, the duct’s grille buckled violently, a pair of scarlet compound eyes squeezing through the gap, acid from the xenomorph’s mandibles dripping onto the duct’s inner wall, billowing acrid yellow-white smoke💨. Kaelin slowly raised the strike dagger, his fingertips brushing the grooves of the hive texture, the blade glinting with the emergency lamp’s faint blue light. He knew piercing the scout bug’s ganglion would buy him time to repair the communicator—but the other end of the duct held a writhing, endless horde of xenomorphs, and his power armor’s energy core was down to 17%……