The derelict didn't look real until you were close enough to see the ice.
Not the romantic kind—no shimmering comet tail, no clean crystals. This was the ugly ice of a ship that had bled its air into the void. It clung to torn bulkheads and jagged seams in pale rinds, frost layered over scorch marks, frozen vapor trapped in dents like the ship had tried to inhale and died mid-breath.
Dack held the Dire Wolf steady on thrusters, drifting at a controlled crawl along the Sable Skiff's ruptured port flank. External cameras rendered the wreck in cold, clinical clarity: shredded plating curled outward like peeled skin; internal ribs exposed; wiring hanging in stiff, blackened ropes.
His heat gauge sat low—steady. The double heat sinks were working like patient lungs. In this moment, the Daishi felt less like a weapon and more like a vault: thick armor, thick systems, thick history. A place you hid inside while the universe tried to kill you.
He pushed that thought away.
A pilot who started thinking of his 'Mech as a home got careless.
He rotated the Dire Wolf's torso and let the sensors comb. There was faint power—still. Not the residual sputter of dying capacitors, but a deliberate trickle: someone had kept something alive in here. A beacon? A vault? Life support?
Or a trap that wanted him close.
Dack stared at the open wound in the ship and tried to remember how it felt to breathe without counting.
His father's voice still lived in the back of his head, a gruff echo that didn't care that the man was dead.
*You don't enter unknown steel without an exit plan. Steel is a liar. It always says it'll hold.*
Dack's jaw tightened. "Exit plan," he murmured, and the words fogged his visor internally even though the cockpit was dry.
He keyed the Dire Wolf's right-hand manipulator—massive, armored fingers that looked clumsy but moved with surprising nuance. OmniMech hands weren't made for gentle work, but they weren't useless either. With careful thrust, he brought the Daishi's feet toward a relatively intact section of hull, then fired magnetic clamps.
Thunk.
The vibration ran through the frame like a heartbeat.
He anchored the Dire Wolf to the wreck.
Then he waited.
It wasn't superstition. It was discipline. He watched his sensors for any reactive shift—any hidden turret waking, any powered suit stepping out, any silent mine drifting near.
Nothing moved.
Nothing *obvious* moved.
Dack didn't relax.
He transferred control back to the Dire Wolf's autopilot hold—clamps locked, thrusters ready to counter drift—then began the ritual of leaving the cockpit. It was always a small death: unstrapping from the harness, pulling his neurohelmet free, letting the mech's presence fade from his nerves until the world became smaller and more fragile again.
The dropship sat a few hundred meters out, hiding behind debris like a cautious animal.
He didn't go back to it.
Not yet.
Instead, he climbed down the Dire Wolf's internal ladder, moved through the service crawl, and entered the small airlock module built into the Daishi's torso—a mercenary aftermarket addition his father had paid too much for and used too little. It was a simple thing: a bubble of pressure and seals that let a pilot step into vacuum without begging a dropship for help.
Dack pulled on his suit.
It wasn't fancy. Grey polymer layers reinforced at the joints, scuffed boots, a helmet that had been resealed twice. He checked his seals by touch. He checked his oxygen twice. He checked his tether three times.
Then he armed himself.
A compact pistol mag-locked to his thigh—something meant for close quarters, something that wouldn't punch a hole through a bulkhead and turn the ship into a blender of shrapnel. A short, brutal blade clipped to his chest rig—not for heroics, but for cutting lines, prying panels, and doing the kind of work that the universe sometimes forced on you.
He stared at the airlock's inner door for a long moment.
This was the part his father never talked about in stories.
A 'Mech battle was loud and honest. You saw the enemy. You read the terrain. You made decisions measured in meters and heat.
Boarding a dead ship was different.
Dead ships lied.
They creaked. They shifted. They had sharp edges that didn't care if you were a legend or an idiot. They held pockets of pressure like loaded guns. They hid people who'd decided cannibalism was better than starving. They hid corpses strapped in like passengers waiting for a stop that never came.
Dack exhaled slowly.
"Work," he told himself.
The airlock cycled.
Pressure bled out with a hiss that became nothing as vacuum swallowed sound. The outer hatch disengaged, and cold darkness opened like a mouth.
He stepped out onto the wreck.
His boots magnetized to the hull with a soft vibration. His tether clipped automatically to the Daishi's external rail. He moved carefully, one hand on a guide line, the other holding his pistol close to his chest.
Stars stared back at him—indifferent, bright, infinite.
The wreck's torn seam yawned ahead.
Dack angled his helmet light into it.
The beam struck floating debris: scraps of insulation, ragged paper sheets frozen stiff, a child's toy drifting slowly like it didn't know it was in space. The sight hit him harder than it should've.
A toy meant someone had once thought this ship was safe enough for a kid.
Now it was just another piece of orbiting trash.
He pushed forward.
Inside, the Sable Skiff was a ribcage.
He moved through a corridor where the walls had buckled inward. Frost coated everything in pale scabs. A half-melted fire extinguisher floated near the ceiling, trapped by a web of wiring.
His helmet light caught something else.
A human hand, frozen around a grab bar.
The body it belonged to was still strapped into a crash seat that had snapped loose from the deck. The pilot's visor was cracked. The face behind it was dark in the wrong places, lips pulled back from teeth, eyes open and glassy.
Dack's stomach tightened.
He didn't stop. Not because he didn't care.
Because stopping didn't change anything, and it might get him killed.
He continued down the corridor toward the faint power signature his sensors kept whispering about.
It led him deeper, toward the ship's belly—toward compartments that had been sealed off from decompression. That was the only reason power could still exist: someone had locked down bulkheads fast enough to keep some atmosphere inside.
He reached a pressure door half-shut, its edges crusted with ice.
A warning blinked in his visor: **PRESSURE DIFFERENTIAL DETECTED.**
Good.
Also terrifying.
He checked his tether, anchored it to a structural rib, then leaned close to the door's manual override. The ship's emergency system had forced it shut, but not fully. There was a gap—thin as a finger—where frosted air bled out in a slow, constant stream.
A leak.
A timer.
He slid a wedge into the seam, careful not to widen it too fast. A rapid decompression would tear anything unsecured into the corridor—and if there was someone alive inside, it would tear them too.
Dack worked the override with slow, deliberate movements.
The door opened with a reluctant groan that he felt through his gloves.
Beyond it, the ship changed.
The frost thinned. The air thickened behind his visor in a faint fog as his suit read micro-pressures. Not enough to breathe without a helmet—nowhere near—but enough to carry smell through tiny leaks.
Metal. Burnt plastic. And something else.
Blood.
Not fresh. Stale. Rusted. The scent of iron that had dried and been re-wet and dried again.
Dack eased through.
The compartment was a cargo handling bay, smaller than the main hold. Crates floated at odd angles, some strapped down, some torn free. One wall was pocked with bullet impacts—small caliber, close range. Someone had fought in here.
Someone had died in here.
His helmet light swept across the floor.
A trail of frozen droplets led toward a maintenance alcove.
Dack followed it.
He kept his pistol up.
He didn't call out.
Calling out told predators where you were.
The maintenance alcove had a hatch, half-open, held by a jammed tool.
Dack approached, then stopped.
A sound vibrated faintly through the metal—not audible in vacuum, but detectable through suit contact.
A tapping.
Three taps, pause, three taps.
A deliberate rhythm.
Human.
Dack's breath slowed. He crouched, brought his light close, and angled it into the hatch.
There was a face inside.
A woman.
Her helmet was off. Her hair—dark, cut short and ragged—floated slightly in the thin air like seaweed in slow water. Her skin was pale from lack of light, lips cracked. One eye was swollen shut, bruising dark as oil. The other eye was open and sharp, tracking him with the focus of someone who'd survived by refusing to blink.
A gun was pressed against the inside lip of the hatch, aimed at his throat.
Not a big gun. Not a hero gun.
A small, cheap pistol held in a hand that trembled from exhaustion but didn't waver in intent.
Dack froze.
His visor read her heat signature: weak, but alive.
He kept his own pistol trained low—not pointed at her head, not pointed at her chest. Just ready.
The woman's mouth moved.
No sound came out—too little atmosphere.
But he could read lips.
*Don't.*
Dack stared at her and thought: she's young.
Not a kid. Not fragile. But young enough that the galaxy hadn't had time to soften her edges into cynicism the way it did to older mercs. Early twenties, a bit older than him, maybe. Adult. Hard-eyed. Cheekbones sharp from hunger. A thin scar ran from the corner of her mouth toward her jaw, the kind you got from shrapnel or a knife that didn't go deep enough.
She looked like someone who'd been beautiful once in a clean world.
This was not a clean world.
Dack raised his left hand slowly, palm open. Two fingers pointed toward her pistol, then toward his own weapon, then down.
A silent question.
*Lower?*
Her eye narrowed.
Then she shook her head, a small motion that still radiated defiance.
No.
Dack didn't argue. He couldn't. He needed her to keep breathing long enough to matter.
He angled his helmet light away from her face—less threatening.
Then he did something that made his instincts scream.
He holstered his pistol.
The woman's one good eye widened slightly.
Dack pointed to his suit oxygen gauge, then to her bare face, then made a cutting motion across his neck.
*You're running out.*
She swallowed, throat working painfully.
Her lips formed words again.
*Who… sent you?*
Dack lifted two fingers and tapped his own chest once.
*Me.*
Then he pointed up and traced a circle—debris field, the stars, the emptiness. He mimed a ship drifting, then two fighters exploding.
Her expression tightened.
She understood more than she wanted to.
Dack leaned closer, careful, slow.
He pointed to the hatch. Then to himself. Then to the corridor behind him.
*Come out.*
She didn't move.
Her gun stayed on him.
Dack's patience held. He didn't rush her. People rushed died.
He pointed to the compartment's pressure door, then mimed air leaking away with a fluttering hand.
Her face twitched—anger or fear or both.
Then she moved, inch by inch, emerging from the alcove like a cornered animal.
She was slim under the grimy shipwear—mechanic's coveralls cut down and stitched to fit. Her left arm was wrapped in a bloody bandage stiff with dried red. Her right hand held the pistol. Her boots were magnetized, but one boot was cracked at the toe and patched with tape.
She stepped fully into the alcove's opening.
And Dack saw the thing she'd been sitting on.
A small crate, opened.
Inside: a black case marked with a corporate seal he didn't recognize—but the coding style screamed **House contractor**, not pirate. Neat. Formal. Expensive.
Beside it, a body.
A man in security armor, floating slightly off the deck where his straps had failed. His throat was open in a clean line. The blood had sprayed in a fan across the wall and frozen into a dark lace.
Dack's stomach turned.
The woman followed his gaze, then lifted her chin as if daring him to judge her.
Her lips formed words.
*He wasn't leaving me alive.*
Dack looked at the cut.
Clean. Controlled.
Not a panicked slash.
A decision.
He nodded once.
No condemnation. No praise.
Just acknowledgment.
Because the Reach didn't reward morality; it rewarded outcomes.
He pointed to her, then to the sealed case, then to himself.
*You're the cargo.*
Her one good eye narrowed hard.
Then she shook her head.
*No.*
She pointed to the case.
*That's the cargo.*
Then she pointed to herself, stabbing her finger into her chest.
*I'm the mistake.*
Dack stared at her.
That was… interesting. And dangerous.
He reached slowly for the corporate case, but stopped when her pistol lifted a fraction.
He froze again.
She mouthed, slow and clear:
*Touch it and it screams.*
Dack's hand stopped midair.
A trapped case. Alarm. Beacon. Something meant to broadcast.
That meant the ambush wasn't just "kill the merc." It was "kill the merc *and* recover the case."
Or "recover the case and erase witnesses."
His eyes flicked to the dead security man.
Witness.
He looked back at the woman.
Also a witness.
He pointed to his helmet and mimed speaking, then pointed to her ear.
She shook her head and mouthed:
*Comms jammed. They cut it. I can't—* She grimaced, frustration warping her face. *—I can't call out.*
Dack believed her. The fighters hadn't hailed. The trap was designed to keep things quiet.
He made a decision.
He pointed toward the hull breach he'd entered through, then mimed climbing out, then pointed to the Dire Wolf, then to her.
*I can get you out.*
Her expression didn't soften.
She mouthed something else.
*Why?*
Dack blinked.
It was the most honest question anyone had asked him since his father died.
Why save a stranger in a wreck? Why risk it? Why not take the case and leave her to die so she couldn't complicate things?
Dack's answer came from a place deeper than logic.
He pointed to the dead pilot in the corridor—the corpse he'd passed—and then pointed to his own chest.
*Enough dead.*
Her eye searched his face like she was trying to find a lie.
Then she lowered her pistol a few centimeters.
Not trust.
A ceasefire.
Dack exhaled slowly and stepped closer, careful not to loom. He gestured for her to put her helmet on—then realized she didn't have one.
He paused.
Swore silently.
Then he unclipped his own emergency breather mask from his suit belt—small, ugly, designed for exactly this. He offered it to her.
Her hand trembled as she took it.
Her other hand stayed on her pistol.
She fit the mask over her mouth and nose, sealed it with practiced efficiency, and took a shaky breath of processed oxygen like it was a drug.
Dack pointed again at the corporate case.
She mouthed through the mask, muffled but legible:
*It's tagged. It will beacon if moved wrong. There's a code. I don't have it.*
Dack's eyes tightened. He pointed to the dead security man's wrist.
Data-bracelet.
She followed the gesture, then nodded once.
Dack moved to the corpse, careful with the straps and floating limbs. He didn't treat the body gently—gentleness wasn't possible—but he treated it with a grim respect. He found the bracelet, pried it loose, and kept his movements slow so he didn't send the corpse spinning.
The woman watched him with that one sharp eye, and Dack could feel her recalculating him.
Not a scavenger.
Not a House dog.
Not a pirate.
Something else.
He took the bracelet, returned, and held it up.
She mouthed:
*I can try.*
Dack didn't like "try." But it was what they had.
He braced himself against the wall, tether taut, while she knelt by the case and tapped the bracelet against a recessed panel. A faint light blinked.
Then another.
Her fingers flew, typing a sequence like she'd done it before.
Dack's visor caught the case's internal readout—his suit's sensors interpreting the light pulses.
**AUTHENTICATION…**
**SECONDARY TOKEN…**
**CONFIRMATION REQUIRED…**
The woman's shoulders tightened.
She mouthed:
*It wants a voiceprint.*
Dack's eyes narrowed. "Whose?" he asked out loud, then realized how stupid that was in thin air.
She pointed to the dead security man.
Dack looked at the corpse.
Then back at her.
She mouthed:
*I can fake it. Maybe.*
Dack hated "maybe" even more than "try."
But they didn't have time.
The pressure differential warning blinked again. The compartment was leaking. They were on a clock.
She leaned close to the case's mic port and spoke—low, clipped words. Dack couldn't hear them, but his visor recorded her throat movements. She was imitating someone. Tone, cadence, authority.
The case paused.
Then the indicator light shifted from red to amber.
Not safe.
But not screaming.
The woman sagged slightly, relief flashing across her face so fast it looked like pain.
Dack nodded once, then reached for the case—
—and froze.
A new vibration ran through the wreck.
Not the gentle creak of drifting debris.
A thud.
Then another.
Mag boots.
Multiple.
Coming from deeper inside the ship.
Dack's blood went cold.
He signaled the woman: *stay behind me.*
She didn't argue. She moved, quick and silent, drifting into cover with the case half-tethered to her belt.
Dack pulled his pistol back out.
He moved toward the corridor entrance, braced himself against the bulkhead, and angled his helmet light low—enough to see without turning himself into a beacon.
The footsteps approached.
Three figures emerged from the darkness.
Not in fighters. Not in vacuum suits like his.
These were boarding suits—armored, bulky, with patchwork plating and painted markings that meant nothing official. Their helmets were sealed. Their rifles were compact, ugly, designed for ship-killing at close range.
Pirates?
Maybe.
But their movement was disciplined. Too disciplined.
One of them raised a hand, signaling. The others halted instantly, weapons sweeping.
The lead figure's helmet turned toward Dack, light reflecting off his visor like a dead eye.
Then the figure lifted a weapon and fired.
The first shot slammed into the bulkhead beside Dack's head, punching metal inward and spraying flakes that glittered in his helmet light. The second shot came lower—aimed for his chest.
Dack twisted, the round clipping his shoulder plate, impact slamming him sideways.
Pain flared—sharp, immediate—even through his suit.
He didn't scream.
He fired back.
His pistol barked—muffled, weird in thin air—but the rounds struck the lead boarder's chest plate and sparked, failing to penetrate.
Too armored.
Dack's mind snapped into brutal clarity.
He couldn't win a gunfight here with a sidearm.
He didn't have to.
He had something else.
He slapped his suit control and toggled a maintenance panel on the wall beside him—one he'd noticed earlier.
Old ship. Old systems.
Manual overrides.
He grabbed a lever and yanked.
The compartment's emergency door behind the boarders began to close, hydraulic motors groaning.
The boarders reacted instantly, one spinning to stop it—
Dack moved.
He slammed forward, using mag boots to anchor and momentum to drive. He collided with the nearest boarder, shoulder into armor, and the two of them spun slightly in low pressure. Dack jammed his blade up under the boarder's arm joint—into the soft seal line.
The suit punctured.
A thin jet of air and blood hissed out, instantly crystallizing.
The boarder convulsed, hand clawing at the tear, then—because physics was cruel—got yanked backward by his own escaping atmosphere. He slammed into the closing door, pinned, legs kicking.
Dack didn't look away.
He shoved the boarder's rifle aside with his forearm and drove the blade deeper, twisting.
The boarder's movements became frantic, then slow, then nothing.
The second boarder lunged at Dack, rifle swinging like a club.
Dack ducked, felt the impact graze his helmet, saw stars explode behind his eyes. He stumbled, mag boots catching, and he fired his pistol again—not at armor, but at the boarder's visor.
The round struck the edge of the faceplate.
Cracked it.
Not enough.
The boarder raised the rifle to finish him—
—and the emergency door finished closing.
It slammed shut between them with brutal finality, sealing Dack inside the compartment and cutting the other two boarders off from their pinned teammate.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then pounding.
The boarders on the other side hammered the door with fists and rifle stocks.
Dack leaned against the bulkhead, chest heaving, pain throbbing in his shoulder. He glanced back.
The woman was staring at him, mask fogged with breath, one eye wide.
Not fear.
Assessment.
She mouthed through the mask:
*You're insane.*
Dack managed a grim, humorless expression.
He pointed upward—toward the Dire Wolf anchored outside.
Then he mouthed back, slow:
*No. I'm armed.*
He moved to the emergency door control and locked it manually.
The pounding intensified.
Dack knew what came next.
They'd cut through.
Or they'd vent the compartment.
Or they'd circle to another entrance.
They had time and numbers.
He had one assault OmniMech and a half-bled shoulder.
Dack turned to the woman and pointed to her, then to the case, then to the hull breach route.
*We leave now.*
She nodded once—sharp.
Then she mouthed something that made Dack's blood chill.
*They weren't sent for you.*
Dack stared at her.
She pointed at the case.
*They were sent for that.*
Then she pointed at herself.
*And to make sure I don't talk.*
Dack's jaw tightened until it hurt.
"Who are you?" he whispered, even though it didn't matter if she heard.
She met his gaze and mouthed a name:
"Talia."
Then, after a pause, her lips formed the second part like it was poison.
"Bondsman."
Clan word.
A word soaked in wars older than Dack.
His father's death. The Daishi. Outreach. This contract.
Pieces started to align in his head like the teeth of a trap.
The pounding on the door turned into a new sound: a cutting tool biting into metal.
They were coming through.
Dack grabbed the case, tethered it to himself, then grabbed Talia's wrist and pulled her toward the corridor.
She didn't resist.
She ran with him.
And as they moved through the derelict's guts—past frozen corpses and drifting debris and the ugly ice of spilled air—Dack realized something with cold certainty:
This wasn't just his first solo job.
It was the first time someone had tried to use him.
And Dack Jarn—eighteen and piloting a machine that made people pray—had no intention of being anyone's tool.
Not ever again.
They reached the hull breach.
Stars opened before them.
The Dire Wolf waited, anchored and patient.
Dack keyed his suit comm to the Daishi's external receiver and sent the simplest command he knew:
OPEN.
The mech's torso airlock cycled.
A mouth opened in the god of metal.
Dack shoved Talia inside first, then followed—just as a burst of rounds sprayed from the derelict's shadow behind them, sparks snapping off the hull around his boots.
He slammed the airlock shut.
Darkness swallowed them.
Pressure began to rebuild.
And in that tiny chamber between death and survival, Dack felt the universe tighten around him like a noose—because now he wasn't alone anymore.
He'd saved a witness.
A Clan bondsman.
A woman tied to a corporate-tagged case that people were willing to die for.
Outside, the boarders would follow.
And somewhere out there, the anonymous employer would be watching to see if Dack Jarn was dead yet.
Dack's eyes hardened.
"Let them come," he muttered, breath fogging his visor.
The Wolf was awake.
And so was he.