Mining Colony Found An ALIEN ARTIFACT. It Turns Human Flesh Into Puppets

Seven weeks after an orbital mining platform stops transmitting, the first thing a containment team hears is the rattle of human teeth.

Their orders are: retrieve a strange object from the assay bay and leave the dead to the company chaplain. For the breach specialist sent in first, the payout is worth three years of ordinary wages. Then something built from welded human bones rolls out of the dark, and the team discovers that the missing miners have not finished working.

Whatever came up from the planet's deep bore has turned the station's...