The airlock smelled like metal and fear.
Pressure rebuilt in a steady hiss, the kind of sound that should have been comforting—proof that seals were holding, proof that the universe hadn't found another crack to pour death through—but Dack didn't relax. Comfort was what you felt right before you got sloppy.
Talia stood with her back to the inner hatch, emergency breather still strapped tight over her mouth and nose. Her one good eye tracked him the way a cornered animal tracked the hand that might feed it or strike it. The corporate case was tethered between them like a hostage.
Outside, through the Dire Wolf's external sensors, the derelict corridor they'd fled was a shadowed throat. Every few seconds, the *thud* of mag boots or cutting tools translated through the hull as faint vibrations—ghost knocks that weren't really knocks at all.
They were coming.
Dack climbed the internal ladder to the cockpit fast, moving like someone who'd had too much practice leaving places before they turned into tombs. The suit's shoulder plate pulled with each motion where the boarder's shot had hit—pain sharp, insistent—but pain was just another warning light. You acknowledged it, you didn't worship it.
He sealed into the pilot seat, harness snapping shut around him.
Neurohelmet on.
Breath in.
Link.
The Dire Wolf answered like it had been waiting—reactor hum rising into his bones, gyro stabilizers whispering corrections, myomer bundles flexing under armor. The cockpit became the only "room" that mattered. Everything else was just a map.
He pulled up external cameras.
The *Sable Skiff* hung nearby, its torn flank still yawning open. In the darkness near the breach, tiny glints moved—helmet lights, suit lamps, weapon lasers probing. More than two. More than three.
A whole boarding team.
Worse: a craft.
A squat, ugly cutter clung to the derelict's underside like a leech—industrial docking clamps, maneuvering thrusters, a belly-mounted gun rack. Not a proper military ship, but not a junker either. Somebody had paid for it.
Dack felt the situation click into place with cold clarity:
The interceptors were the outer net.
The boarders were the knife.
The cutter was the bag you went into after you died.
He brought up the dropship's transponder shadow on passive scan—still tucked behind a slab of debris, still quiet. Good. But the cutter had line-of-sight now, and the boarders were close enough to start doing something stupid.
He opened an internal channel to the torso airlock.
"Talia," he said, voice low. "Sit. Strap in. Do not unseal anything."
He heard her breathing—ragged, controlled. "They're cutting through," she said, words muffled by the breather and the airlock's mic.
"I know."
"You can't carry me and that case and fight."
Dack's hands tightened on the controls.
He didn't answer her with reassurance. Reassurance was a lie you told because you needed to believe it.
He answered her with procedure.
"You keep the case tethered. If it alarms, you tell me immediately. If your mask fails, you signal immediately. If you panic—" He paused, because he didn't want to insult her and because he didn't have time to be gentle. "—you breathe anyway."
A beat.
Then her voice, smaller but steadier: "Understood."
Dack rotated the Daishi's torso and looked at his anchor clamps biting into the wreck's hull.
He didn't like leaving anything anchored to anything. Anchors turned into graves.
He released the clamps.
Thrusters fired—short bursts, carefully measured. The Dire Wolf drifted free of the derelict with a slow, deliberate grace that looked almost peaceful.
The boarders saw it and reacted instantly.
A flash of motion at the breach—one suit leaping, tether line snapping out, a harpoon-style mag grappler fired toward the Daishi's leg. It hit with a metallic *clack* and locked.
Dack felt the tug.
Someone trying to reel themselves onto a hundred tons of armored death.
Stupid.
Brave.
Dead.
Dack didn't waste heat on a full weapon discharge. Heat was a currency, and he wasn't rich yet.
He rolled the Dire Wolf slightly and fired a maneuvering jet in a lateral burst.
The sudden sideways acceleration yanked the tether taut like a garrote.
The boarder swung out into open vacuum, legs flailing, one hand clawing for stability as the line bit into the suit's joint seam. For a second, Dack saw the faceplate—reflections of stars, nothing human behind it.
Dack could have cut the line.
He didn't.
He let physics do what it did best.
He pulsed thrusters again—another sharp shift.
The boarder's body snapped against a spinning hull fragment, suit slamming hard enough to crack plating. A mist of red vented in a thin jet and froze instantly into glittering crystals.
The body kept spinning.
The tether stayed attached, dragging the corpse behind the Dire Wolf like a warning banner.
Dack swallowed once.
Not regret.
Just the familiar, sour taste that came after killing—proof you were still human enough to notice.
Then the cutter moved.
It pushed off the derelict, thrusters flaring hot. Its belly gun rack rotated toward him—compact autocannon pods, maybe missiles, something designed for cutting through ship plating, not dueling a Clan OmniMech.
But in space, you didn't need to "beat" a Daishi. You just needed to cripple the dropship and make Dack come to you.
Dack's sensors chirped a new warning.
Two more small contacts—fast—rising from behind debris.
More interceptors.
Not the same ones. New.
So the first wave wasn't "the team." It was the opener.
Dack exhaled slowly and felt the Dire Wolf's mass settle into his hands like a familiar blade.
"Alright," he murmured. "You want loud. You get loud."
He rotated to put the dropship between himself and the cutter's direct line-of-fire, using his own bulk as a moving shield. The Dire Wolf's torso aligned, legs angled. Thrusters pulsed to keep relative position.
Then the cutter fired.
Rounds stitched across the void. They weren't "tracers" in any cinematic sense—just tiny impacts, flashes on armor when they hit, silent violence. The Daishi's right shoulder took three hits. Armor plating sparked and shed flakes.
Warning lights blinked.
Dack didn't care.
He fired back with a short burst from one of the UAC/5s—measured, disciplined, just enough to tell the cutter that its bravado had a price.
The shells slammed into the cutter's forward plating and ripped open a seam near a maneuvering thruster. A puff of vented gas burst out, then froze into a thin white bloom.
The cutter's nose yawed awkwardly.
Not disabled, but hurt.
Good.
The interceptors came in next, fast and hungry, trying to bracket him—one going wide to hit the dropship, one diving toward his torso to distract.
Dack felt the old rule in his bones:
When outnumbered, you don't chase targets. You control space.
He turned the battlefield into geometry.
He used debris like walls.
He drove the Dire Wolf into a corridor between two drifting hull sections, forcing the interceptor that was trying to go wide to either slow down or collide. It tried to thread the gap anyway—cocky.
Dack punished cocky.
He snapped the Dire Wolf's right arm toward it, compensating for the tiny gyro drift he'd learned to anticipate like a limp in a friend's stride, and fired a clean, controlled burst.
The rounds tore through the interceptor's wing root. The craft shuddered, spun, and then its own momentum slammed it into a sheet of broken armor plate.
It detonated in a bright, brief bloom.
Inside the explosion, for a heartbeat, Dack saw a silhouette—pilot and seat—then nothing but expanding fragments.
Heat rose in his cockpit, alarms chiming.
He didn't let it spike. He throttled down immediately. Heat sinks hissed. The Daishi breathed.
The second interceptor dove straight at him, trying to force a flinch.
Dack didn't flinch.
He waited until the craft was close enough that its pilot couldn't easily juke.
Then he fired an ER Large Laser—not a sustained beam, just a hard, decisive cut that sliced across the interceptor's fuselage.
The craft split.
The pilot didn't even get the dignity of a scream.
Space took everything in silence.
The cutter, seeing its escorts vanish, changed tactics. It dumped a cluster of small objects from its belly—mines, drones, something ugly.
Dack's sensors lit up like a warning choir.
If those drifted into his dropship's hiding spot, he'd lose it.
He couldn't shoot them all.
So he did something his father had always called "mean."
He surged forward, thrusters firing hard, and put the Dire Wolf directly between the cutter and the mine cluster. Then he fired his LRM rack—not at the cutter, but at the *mines*.
It was wasteful.
It was expensive.
It was correct.
The missiles blossomed among the cluster, detonating multiple drones in quick succession. The chain reaction lit the void with stuttering flashes like a broken strobe.
Shrapnel pinged off the Daishi's armor. One piece struck the left torso and gouged deep enough to trigger a brief red warning.
Dack ignored it.
He locked onto the cutter's crippled thruster seam and brought both UAC/5s to bear.
Short burst.
Short burst.
Short burst.
Each volley chewed through plating like teeth through meat. The cutter tried to roll away, tried to backpedal, tried to angle its belly gun again.
Dack didn't let it.
He kept pressure steady, not letting heat spike, letting the Daishi do what it had been built to do: apply inevitable violence.
Finally the cutter's main drive coughed—then failed.
The ship drifted, wounded and helpless.
Dack could finish it.
He didn't.
Not yet.
Because killing the cutter wasn't the only goal.
Leaving survivors meant questions.
Questions meant answers.
He snapped his comm channel open to the dropship—low power, tight beam. "Bay doors, now. Clamp ready. Silent running."
The dropship responded with a faint acknowledgment ping and slid out from behind debris like a cautious animal.
Dack guided it in with micro-bursts from thrusters, using the Dire Wolf's bulk to keep the cutter's line-of-sight blocked. His right arm lifted slightly, cannon ready, a warning in metal.
The dropship's bay yawned open.
Dack drifted the Dire Wolf backward into it, precise as a docking maneuver. Mag-clamps seized the Daishi's ankles with a heavy thunk.
He killed the Daishi's thrusters.
Then he did something that made his own skin prickle:
He turned his external cameras back to the derelict one last time.
The breach glowed faintly with helmet lights. The boarders were still there, still scrambling, still angry.
One of them—maybe the leader—lifted a weapon and fired toward the dropship's open bay, rounds sparking uselessly off distance and drifting debris.
It was rage fire.
It was also proof.
They wanted the case.
They wanted Talia.
They wanted Dack dead.
Dack sealed the dropship bay doors.
Darkness enclosed him and the Dire Wolf like a coffin that moved.
He didn't love it.
But it was better than a coffin that stayed.
"Get us out," he told the dropship's autopilot, then overrode it manually anyway because trusting automation was how you ended up a smear.
Thrusters fired.
The debris field slid away.
The Garnet Gate graveyard became a glittering wound behind them.
And Dack Jarn—with blood on his suit and a Clan monster in his bay—left a trail of wreckage that would be found later and argued over in whispers.
---
They didn't go straight back to the public docks.
Dack didn't trust Outreach's main approach lanes right now, not with anonymous money moving pieces in the dark. Instead he took the dropship into the kind of berth mercenaries used when they didn't want to be seen: a shadow-side maintenance ring where the lights were dimmer, the cameras older, and everyone pretended not to notice anything as long as nobody shot holes in the pressure seals.
He landed hard, fast, and quiet.
When the bay doors finally opened and the Dire Wolf's bulk settled into hangar air again, Dack climbed down with his shoulder burning and his nerves still humming from combat.
Talia waited at the bottom of the internal ladder, breathing through the emergency mask. Her steps were steadier now. Not healed—just fueled by the fact that she hadn't died yet.
Dack motioned her toward a cramped side-room—part storage closet, part tool cage, part mercenary confession booth. A single table bolted to the deck. Two chairs that didn't match. One wall covered in old MRBC compliance posters that had been half-torn down.
He shut the door behind them.
Then he put the corporate case on the table and stared at it like it might bite.
"You said it screams if moved wrong," Dack said.
Talia nodded once. "It's tagged. It's not a normal lock."
"Is it Clan?"
"No." Her eye narrowed. "But it uses Clan things."
Dack didn't like that answer. It sounded like the universe threading needles with blood.
He sat heavily, shoulder protesting.
Talia stayed standing.
Good. She wasn't comfortable yet. Comfort was dangerous.
Dack slid the dead security man's bracelet onto the table beside the case. "This got you to amber."
Talia's gaze flicked to it, then back to Dack. "It wanted a voiceprint. I faked it."
"And it accepted."
"It hesitated," she corrected. "Which means the system is looking for *something else.* A confirmation token. A second key."
Dack's eyes hardened. "Like you."
Talia didn't deny it.
Instead she pulled a small object from a pocket sewn into her coveralls: a thin strip of metal and polymer with Clan-style glyph etching—subtle, almost hidden. It looked like a personal token. A bondsman marker. A thing you wore when your identity was a leash.
"My token," she said, voice flat. "It's keyed. It shouldn't work on House hardware, but—" She gestured at the case. "—this isn't normal House hardware."
Dack's jaw tightened. "What are you?"
Her eye flashed. "A person."
"What were you to them?"
Talia's fingers tightened around the token hard enough that Dack saw the tremor. "Property."
The word hung in the small room like smoke.
Dack didn't soften. Not because he didn't care—because he didn't know how to care safely right now.
"Open it," he said.
Talia stared at him for a long moment.
Then she set the token against a recessed panel on the case's side and pressed.
A light blinked.
The case's surface chimed softly—subtle, expensive.
**SECONDARY TOKEN ACCEPTED.**
**FINAL CONFIRMATION REQUIRED.**
Talia's face tightened. "It still wants a voiceprint."
Dack leaned forward slowly. "Whose?"
Talia's lips pressed together. "Not mine."
She tapped the bracelet again, then looked at Dack. "I can try the voice again. But if it decides I'm wrong, it'll beacon."
Dack's mind ran possibilities.
If it beacons here, the people who hired those boarders will triangulate. This ring might not have cameras worth a damn, but the wrong kind of attention didn't need cameras.
He glanced at the MRBC posters on the wall, the smiling recruitment slogans and legal disclaimers.
Outreach was supposed to be civilized.
Civilization was just violence with paperwork.
Dack made the call anyway.
"Do it," he said.
Talia leaned close to the mic port and spoke again—low and clipped, imitating the dead security man's cadence. This time she added something else: a phrase, tight and formal, like a command code.
The case paused.
For a long second, nothing happened.
Then the lights shifted—from amber to a calm, neutral green.
ACCESS GRANTED.
Talia sagged slightly, breath catching. Dack felt his own shoulders unclench by a fraction.
He reached forward and opened the case carefully.
The lid rose with a soft hydraulic whisper.
Inside wasn't gold or jewels or anything cinematic.
It was worse.
A data core—black, dense, sealed in shock foam. Beside it, a thin folder—physical paper, because sometimes you didn't trust digital.
And underneath the foam, a small metal tag stamped with a serial format Dack recognized immediately from his father's old logs:
OMNI POD INVENTORY — CLAN SPECIFICATION
His throat went dry.
Talia's eye flicked to his face, watching the shift.
"What is it?" she asked.
Dack didn't answer yet. He lifted the folder first.
The paper was crisp, expensive. The ink was chemical-resistant.
He scanned the header.
**MRBC ESCROW NOTICE — PROCUREMENT ADDENDUM**
**SUBCONTRACTOR: BLACK LEVEL CLEARANCE**
**SUBJECT: ACQUISITION / DISPOSITION OF CLAN OMNI TECHNOLOGY**
Dack's eyes narrowed. His heart began to beat louder.
He flipped pages.
Names.
Locations.
Transfer routes.
Gate-scrip payments.
And then the list that made his blood turn to ice:
A manifest of Clan OmniMechs—designations, conditions, intended "buyers," and redacted shipping lanes.
Dire Wolf. Timber Wolf. Mad Dog. Summoner.
Some listed as "battlefield salvage."
Some listed as "intact acquisition."
Some listed as "disputed—requires correction."
Dack's fingers tightened on the paper until it creased.
Talia watched, silent.
Dack turned another page.
And there, in clean, typed lines, was a short section titled:
INCIDENT RESOLUTION — JARN, HALVEC (OPERATOR)
Dack's vision tunneled.
He read.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
It wasn't a battle report.
It was a plan.
A description of how Halvec Jarn's Dire Wolf had become "compromised property," how an "anonymous arbitration challenge" would be arranged to remove him, how the machine would be forced into an engagement "with deniable oversight," and how the outcome would be framed as "honorable conflict" if questions arose.
Dishonorable murder, dressed up in Clan language.
Dack's stomach knotted so hard he tasted bile.
He forced himself to keep reading.
Near the bottom, an authorization stamp—partially redacted, but not enough.
A patron designation.
Not a full name.
A title.
A House-affiliated procurement office with a liaison signature and a private security subcontractor identifier.
And beneath that, a smaller line that was meant to be overlooked:
**LOCAL FACILITATOR: KESS, I. — DOCKSIDE LOGISTICS / COMPLIANCE GREASE**
Dack's hands went very still.
The room felt colder.
Talia's eye widened a fraction as she saw the name on the page. "You know him."
Dack didn't blink. "He handed me the contract."
Talia swallowed. "So this wasn't random."
"No." Dack's voice came out rough. "It was *maintenance.*"
Talia looked down at the case again, then back up at him. "They're moving Clan tech through MRBC channels?"
"They're abusing them," Dack corrected. "Using the legitimacy as a mask."
He stared at his father's name on the page until the ink seemed like a stain.
Then he lifted the data core.
It was heavy in a way that didn't match its size—dense with secrets.
He turned it over and found a small etched mark on the casing.
Not House.
Not MRBC.
A Clan glyph—subtle.
A warning.
A claim.
Talia's voice was tight. "That core is why they want me dead."
Dack's eyes didn't leave the core. "And why they want the Daishi."
Talia hesitated, then spoke like she was stepping onto thin ice. "Your machine… its lineage matters to them."
Dack looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"
Talia's jaw clenched. "I don't know everything. I wasn't freeborn. I wasn't trusted with everything. But—" She gestured at the paper, the list, the plan. "—this is bigger than a single 'Mech. Someone is building a pipeline. A way to buy Clan power."
Dack's shoulder throbbed. His pulse felt loud.
He set the core down and forced himself to think like a mercenary instead of a son.
"Who hired the boarders?" he asked.
Talia's eye flicked away. "I don't know. I was moved like cargo. I was the authentication token. The men on the ship were… handlers. Security."
"And you cut one's throat."
"He would have vented me," she said flatly. "He said it."
Dack nodded once.
Then he leaned back in the chair, staring at the ceiling like the answers might be written there.
Kess.
The contract.
The trap.
His father's death wasn't an accident. It wasn't "war." It was a controlled removal.
And now they'd tried to remove Dack the same way, before he could learn what the Wolf really was and what it meant to own it.
A soft beep came from the table.
Talia stiffened. "What was that?"
Dack's eyes snapped down.
The case's indicator had changed—one small light blinking in a slow, patient rhythm.
Not an alarm siren.
Something worse.
A silent beacon handshake.
A countdown.
Dack felt the blood drain from his face.
"It's waking," Talia whispered, horror threading through her voice. "It shouldn't—unless—"
Unless someone was pinging it.
Unless the people who owned this pipeline were close enough to reach out and check their asset.
Dack stood so fast the chair scraped.
He grabbed the data core, shoved the papers back into the case, and slammed the lid shut.
The light kept blinking.
Talia's breathing went fast behind her mask. "They know."
Dack didn't argue.
He moved to the door, pressed his ear against it.
At first, nothing.
Then—faint, distant, but unmistakable:
Boots.
Not mag boots.
Normal boots on metal decking, moving with purpose.
Multiple sets.
Closing.
Dack's hand tightened on the door latch.
Talia's voice came small. "Dack…"
He looked back at her.
She held her pistol again, the cheap little thing that had kept her alive in a tomb ship.
Her eye was sharp, afraid, and stubborn.
"I'm not your star-mate," she said, like she was daring him to misunderstand. "I'm not your anything. But if you leave me—" Her jaw clenched. "—they'll take me back. And they'll take that core. And they'll bury your father twice."
Dack stared at her.
For a second, he saw something that made him angrier than the paperwork ever could:
He saw that she was right.
He didn't want responsibility.
He didn't want attachments.
But the universe had already handed him both, wrapped in a case that blinked like a heartbeat.
He didn't promise her safety.
He didn't promise her trust.
He gave her the only honest thing he could.
"Stay behind me," he said.
Talia nodded once, savage relief and grim acceptance mixing in her gaze.
The boots outside drew closer.
Dack opened the door.
The corridor light spilled in, harsh and unforgiving.
And in that slice of space between his safe room and the rest of Outreach, Dack Jarn faced the next truth:
In the Reach, you didn't get to choose when your war started.
You only chose whether you ran from it…
…or whether you let the Wolf loose.