Banded Iron

In their Sunday Morning Transport debut, T. K. Rex delivers us to a terrific story of science and monsters.

~ Julian and Fran, June 8, 2025

For June, Sunday Morning Transport authors Sarah Monette (aka Katherine Addison), T. K. Rex, Maurice Broaddus, and C. C. Finlay bring you tales from near and (very, very) far. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

We are grateful to our paying subscribers, who allow us to keep rolling throughout the year. If you haven’t already, please consider signing up or giving a gift subscription.

---

Banded Iron

by T. K. Rex

(*Content warning: off-screen violence)

The iron below you was born in the center of a star your people named Coatlicue, long after she was gone. You might say the iron killed her, or she died to make the iron. Or you might describe the subatomic particles and how they fused, because you are a scientist, and you know how metaphors can lie.

Coatlicue was the mother of our sun, and of yours, too, and of all the worlds woven from the dust between.

You see, in a way, we are twins.

#

I asked my great-grandmother, before she died, what she did in the Fourth Ravaging. She said, “I was a child. They were monsters, Murren. Hundreds of feet tall. Like skyscrapers made out of lightning.” She sipped her black coffee and looked out the window, where the mourning doves were nesting. “They took everything from me,” she said, “and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do.”

My suitcase lies half-packed on the greenstone floor, and the transport back to Earth is leaving in an hour. Jessa is already packed. She packed last night. She expects me to be on that transport with her when it leaves, and she’s my friend, and maybe more if I go, and it’s the right thing to do. Go home and fight the monsters. Stop the Fifth Ravaging.

What good will any of our research be, way the fuck out here on Imari 625e, if they win? We’re not making weapons, or armor. We’re interns, mapping a banded iron formation so better scientists can use the data. So what. Finish packing, Murren. Go home. Join the fight.

But my socks are still on the clothesline.

And I can’t get them, because I’m suffocating.

I can hear my own heart as my chest tightens around it.

It’s so loud.

I have to get away from this suitcase, and the tablet next to me on the bed, with feeds full of monsters lurking just below the black screen. I have to get away from the bed that wouldn’t let me sleep, from this room, from the whole fucking greenstone layer it’s carved into.

The banded iron quarry is always empty this early. I’ll go down there.

#

Both of our worlds were born wet. Just warm enough for oceans, waves that could sparkle in the light of our suns. Water is a bond between two elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The bond is hard to break, but sunlight can do it if you have the right tool. It happened fast, on both of our worlds. As soon as there were seas, there was life, and life learns far quicker than stone.

The tool was photosynthesis. Our oceans and yours—once the same cold, interstellar dust—both learned how to wield it on their own. The minuscule life that did the work was different on each of our worlds, but the same thing happened: oxygen, free from its bonds, filled the sky.

#

Siddiq stumbles into me on his way out of the shower, long limbs flailing, shoulder-length black hair still wet and tucked behind both ears. His nineteen-year-old’s stubble is no closer to his aspirations of a beard than it was yesterday. “Whoa, Murren, you’re up early.”

I have to get out of this hallway. My entire chest cavity is collapsing in on itself. Can’t he see I’m dying?

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I shake my head and shove past him.

“Hey, are you okay? What happened?”

I ignore him and keep walking. It’s not that I don’t . . . Yeah, it is. Nothing matters anymore, not him, not this internship, not the banded iron formation we came here to study, even though leaving it now will mean I never get the chance to do this kind of research again. I’ll get caught up in the recovery on Earth—or I’ll be one of the millions of names on a memorial somewhere. Or just a corpse, or ashes, if we lose.

Siddiq doesn’t understand. He’s not from Earth, it’s not his fight. He was born here, on Imari 625e, at the mining colony. Sometimes school groups show up and he knows the kids. I can’t explain it to him, the way it feels when the ruins are places you’ve been. When the fires are forests you’ve played in.