The dead cargo platform drifted like a picked-clean skeleton, its lattice of beams and docking arms silhouetted against starlight. No beacon. No transponder. No reason for honest ships to come close.
Perfect.
Dack kept the dropship tucked into its shadow, engines throttled to the kind of low heat that made you invisible to lazy scanners and only *mostly* invisible to the hungry ones. The Dire Wolf rested in the bay behind him, mag-clamps locked, reactor idling at the lowest safe hum—still awake, still listening.
Talia sat strapped into the crash chair again, her bruising darker in the cockpit's pallor. She had stopped shaking. Not because she felt safe. Because she had crossed that quiet line where fear turned into function.
Between them, on the deck, the corporate case blinked its slow, patient light.
Dack stared at it until his eyes hurt.
"You said they can keep pinging it," he said.
Talia nodded once. "If they have the handshake keys."
"And if we don't stop it—"
"They'll keep finding us," she finished. "Eventually they'll bring something bigger than a corridor team."
Dack's jaw tightened. Bigger than a corridor team meant one of two things: a merc lance with a bounty, or an Inner Sphere authority with paperwork and guns. Either way it ended with him bleeding, the Daishi taken, and Talia back in a cage.
He'd already made one pact. Now he needed an **end**.
He looked out at the starfield, then at the old platform's dark framework.
"Who can kill a handshake?" he asked.
Talia didn't answer immediately. She didn't like saying names.
Then she spoke, quiet and bitter. "People who live in the wires."
Dack's eyes narrowed. "ComStar."
Talia's one good eye flicked to him. "You already knew."
Dack didn't reply. He'd learned about ComStar the way every merc learned: you could ignore nobles, you could dodge pirates, you could outshoot local militias… but you didn't truly outrun the people who owned half the communications in human space.
He hated the thought of inviting them into his life.
He hated more the thought of being hunted forever.
Dack reached down, flipped open a battered comms panel, and pulled out a coil of fiber line and an old transponder module—something his father had once called "a prayer to the wrong god." He had never used it before.
He plugged it in anyway.
The module chirped once.
Then it went quiet.
Then—without any normal handshake, without any public ID exchange—a single line of text appeared on the cockpit display like a whisper in the dark:
**YOU ARE BEING OBSERVED.**
Talia's shoulders tensed.
Dack didn't move.
He typed with two fingers, slow and deliberate:
**THEN OBSERVE THIS: I WANT THE PING DEAD. I WANT A CLEAN SKY.**
A pause.
Then new text, colder and more precise:
**COMSTAR DOES NOT "CLEAN SKIES." COMSTAR BALANCES ACCOUNTS.**
Dack's mouth tightened. "Figures."
He typed again:
**NAME YOUR PRICE.**
The reply came faster.
**A SERVICE. A SINGLE ACTION. THEN SILENCE.**
Dack glanced at Talia. "They're offering."
Talia's lips pressed together. "They always offer. They always take."
Dack stared at the blinking case, felt the weight of his father's name on that paper he'd read. He had no illusions about saints in space.
He typed:
**WHAT SERVICE?**
The screen shifted. A data packet unspooled—orbital coordinates, a ship profile, a time window.
**TARGET: "KITE" — COURIER DROPSHIP (OFF-BOOKS).**
**CARGO: DATA VAULT / ENCRYPTION KEYS.**
**OBJECTIVE: RECOVER VAULT MODULE INTACT.**
**CONDITION: NO PUBLIC SIGNALS. NO MRBC FILING. NO HOUSE NOTIFICATION.**
**PAYMENT: BEACON TERMINATION. TRANSponder REFIT. ID SCRUB. ONE ADDITIONAL FAVOR TOKEN.**
Dack's eyes narrowed as he absorbed the profile.
Courier DropShip. Off-books. Data vault. Encryption keys.
The cell's mobile node.
This wasn't just killing a ping. This was ripping out the teeth that kept biting them.
Talia leaned forward, voice low. "If that vault holds the handshake keys—"
"It ends," Dack said.
Talia swallowed. "Or it becomes bigger."
Dack stared at the packet, then typed one more line:
**IF I DO THIS, THE BONDSMAN IS RELEASED.**
The reply came after a longer pause.
**COMSTAR DOES NOT RECOGNIZE "BONDSMAN." COMSTAR RECOGNIZES "PERSON OF INTEREST."**
**THE PERSON OF INTEREST WILL BE REMOVED FROM ALL TRACKING ARRAYS AFTER SERVICE COMPLETION.**
Talia's face tightened at the phrasing. Like being freed by someone who refused to admit you'd been chained.
Dack didn't care about their language. He cared about results.
He typed:
**WHERE IS THE KITE?**
The packet updated: a flight path skimming a moon's night side, using the same kind of low-heat discipline Dack used—because whoever ran the Kite knew they were dirty.
ComStar's final line appeared:
**DO NOT FAIL. WE DO NOT OFFER TWICE.**
Then the module went dead.
Dack sat very still for a full ten seconds, letting the implications settle. He had just agreed to a ComStar job—whether he liked it or not.
Talia's voice came softly. "They've put a leash on you."
Dack looked at her. "They've pointed me at the hand holding your leash."
That earned a flicker in her expression—something close to relief that she didn't fully trust.
Dack exhaled through his nose and began moving.
"Suit up," he said.
Talia blinked. "I don't have a suit."
Dack stood, grimacing as pain tugged his shoulder. "Then you're staying on board. You'll be my hands for the vault once it's in the bay."
Talia's jaw tightened. "You don't trust me."
"I trust you to want to live," Dack said. "That's enough."
It wasn't kindness.
It was the kind of trust mercenaries used: functional and conditional.
Dack ran through prep like a ritual.
He checked the dropship's thruster assemblies. He patched the rear fin damage with sealant and a reinforcement plate. He powered the Dire Wolf up to a warm standby—hot enough to move fast, cool enough to not announce itself.
He rigged the corporate case inside a crude Faraday wrap: layered foil, insulated foam, a ground strap clipped to the dropship frame. It wasn't perfect.
But it was a gag.
Then he loaded a boarding kit: cutting tools, adhesive patches, short-range comm repeaters that might survive jamming, and a compact breaching charge designed to blow a door without blowing the ship.
He looked at his own reflection in a scratched panel—average face, bloodshot eyes, a bruise forming at his hip, shoulder still stiff.
Eighteen.
And already living like an old war dog.
He hated it.
Then he hated how little it mattered.
"Let's go," he said.
The dropship slipped away from the dead platform's shadow and fell into the moon's night side like a stone.
---
They spotted the Kite by absence first.
No transponder. No broadcast. No active scans.
Just a shape against starfield—small DropShip silhouette running cold, hugging the moon's limb so its own thermal profile drowned in the planet's faint reflected heat.
Dack didn't chase it like a fighter jock.
He treated it like prey.
He matched velocity from far out, letting the dropship drift, letting his sensors do the work. He used debris and the moon's shadow as cover. He didn't close fast, because closing fast was how you got noticed.
Inside the cockpit, Talia watched his hands on the controls. She didn't speak. She learned.
Finally the range closed enough that he could see the ship clearly on camera.
It wasn't a Union. Not a Mule. Too sleek in the wrong places. A courier conversion—cargo space sacrificed for speed and stealth. External hardpoints that didn't belong on civilian frames.
Someone had paid to make it quiet.
Someone had paid more to make it deadly.
Dack's sensors pinged a threat: two small contacts riding close to the Kite—escort fighters, running dark, tucked into its wake.
Of course.
"You see them?" Dack asked.
Talia's voice was tight. "Yes."
"You know their pattern?"
"They're disciplined," she said. "Not pirates."
Dack's mouth tightened. "Good. Then they'll die clean."
Talia flinched at the bluntness, but she didn't argue.
Dack eased the dropship lower and opened the Dire Wolf bay.
He didn't deploy the Daishi immediately.
He waited until the geometry was right.
He moved until the Kite's escorts were forced into a tighter orbit band—close enough that maneuvering options shrank, far enough that they felt safe. The kind of safe that made you lazy.
Then he dropped the Dire Wolf into open space.
The Daishi drifted out of the bay like a black tower stepping off a cliff, maneuvering thrusters pulsing in short controlled bursts. Dack's consciousness slid into it, cockpit link grabbing his spine.
Reactor hum rose.
Weapon pods stabilized.
Heat sinks primed.
The moment the Dire Wolf appeared, one escort flared thrusters and broke position—panic.
The other held formation—discipline.
Dack respected discipline.
He killed it anyway.
He didn't fire at the fighters first.
He fired a single shot at the Kite's maneuvering thruster cluster—precise, measured. A UAC/5 burst that chewed plating without detonating the core.
The Kite's nose yawed.
Its stealth profile meant nothing once it started bleeding attitude control gas into space.
The escorts reacted instantly, both turning toward the Dire Wolf.
Now the fight had shape.
The panicked escort dove toward Dack's dropship—exactly what Dack wanted, because it took itself out of position.
Dack snapped the Dire Wolf's torso and fired an ER Large Laser across its path—not a killing beam, a warning cut that forced it to juke hard.
It juked.
And in doing so, it drifted straight into the moon-shadow corridor Dack had planned.
A blind zone.
No line-of-sight to the dropship.
No support.
Dack pulsed thrusters and closed the distance just enough to lock a missile solution—then didn't fire missiles.
Missiles made mess.
He wanted control.
He fired the UAC/5 again, clean short bursts aimed at the fighter's engine bell.
The shells punched through.
The fighter's engine flared unevenly, then died.
The craft spun, helpless, tumbling in silence.
Dack left it alive.
A spinning coffin was still a coffin.
The disciplined escort stayed near the Kite, trying to protect the ship while it fought to stabilize. That escort didn't waste shots. It waited, probing for angles.
Dack admired that.
Then he ended it the way his father had always said to end disciplined enemies:
Make them choose between two bad options.
Dack rotated the Daishi and presented a clear firing line to the escort.
The escort took it—fired.
Rounds sparked off the Dire Wolf's shoulder armor, shallow, testing.
Dack answered by firing another precise burst into the Kite's drive housing—crippling it further.
The escort hesitated.
Protect the Kite or fight the Daishi.
Dack didn't give it time.
He surged forward, thrusters firing hard, and brought the Dire Wolf's massive frame into close range. Then he did something brutal and simple:
He rammed.
Not full force—just enough to shove.
The Daishi's shoulder slammed into the escort fighter like a truck hitting a motorcycle. The fighter crumpled, cockpit canopy cracking, fuselage folding. A brief puff of atmosphere bloomed and froze.
No drama.
Just physics and death.
The Kite was alone now, drifting and wounded, trying to broadcast something—anything—before it died.
Dack snapped comms open and jammed it with a tight-beam noise burst from his dropship's kit. It wasn't perfect. But it made the Kite's transmitter struggle.
"No public signals," Dack muttered, hearing ComStar's condition like a knife at his throat. "Fine."
He moved in.
He brought the Dire Wolf's hand up and clamped onto a docking rail on the Kite's hull. Metal groaned. The Kite shuddered under the Daishi's mass like a small animal under a predator's paw.
Dack anchored.
Then he pulled the Kite toward his dropship.
Slow. Controlled. No tearing the hull. No puncturing the wrong compartment and venting the vault.
He guided the crippled courier ship into a shallow embrace with his dropship bay, aligning the hull so the vault module was accessible.
Talia watched on the cockpit monitor, eyes wide. "You're towing it."
"I'm stealing it," Dack corrected. "Towing is polite."
---
Boarding a ship you didn't want to destroy felt like surgery in a slaughterhouse.
Dack left the Dire Wolf anchored to the Kite and moved back into his own suit. He checked his seals, checked his tether, checked his blade.
Then he opened the dropship's airlock and stepped into the gap between ships—two metal bodies drifting together like predators mating.
The Kite's hull was clean—too clean. No salvage patches, no honest scarring. Someone maintained it.
Someone cared about it.
That meant the vault inside mattered.
Dack found the access panel ComStar's packet had indicated—beneath a false cargo stripe, a hatch disguised as a maintenance seam. He cut it with a torch, peeled it open, and climbed into the Kite's interior.
Inside, the air smelled like sterilized metal. No grime. No human warmth.
It had that controlled scent of professionals.
A corridor stretched ahead, lit in dim red emergency strips. The ship's power was low, but not dead.
Someone was still inside.
Dack moved like a shadow, boots quiet, blade ready. His pistol stayed holstered; gunfire inside a ship was always a negotiation with decompression.
He reached a junction and saw the first body.
A guard in sealed armor slumped against the wall, visor cracked, blood floating in slow droplets inside the helmet like a private storm. The cut was clean and close.
Not Dack's work.
Someone else had already fought inside.
His skin prickled.
He advanced.
Two more bodies—one with a throat crushed, one with a stab under the arm seal. Efficient kills.
Dack didn't like unknown players.
He reached the vault compartment.
The door was heavy, reinforced. Not House decor. Not MRBC standard. It had the same subtle Clan-coded etching he'd seen on the data core casing.
Someone had built Clan logic into House theft.
Dack hated it.
The door's lock panel blinked.
A prompt:
**TOKEN REQUIRED. VOICE REQUIRED. KEY REQUIRED.**
Dack swore softly.
He tapped his suit comm. "Talia, I'm at the vault. It's three-factor."
Her voice came back instantly. "Show me the panel."
Dack angled his helmet cam.
Talia inhaled sharply. "That's not House design. That's… borrowed."
"Can you open it?"
A pause, then: "I can try."
"I don't want try," Dack said.
"I don't care what you want," Talia snapped, the first real anger he'd heard from her. "You want it open or not?"
Dack held still. "Open it."
Talia's breathing steadied. "Use the bracelet from the dead handler."
Dack pulled it from a pouch, pressed it to the panel.
The panel blinked.
**TOKEN ACCEPTED.**
"Now voice," Talia said, coldly focused. "I'm going to mimic again. Put the mic close."
Dack leaned in.
Talia spoke through comm—low, clipped, perfect imitation of authority. Words he couldn't place, cadence like a code phrase.
The panel paused.
**VOICE ACCEPTED (LOW CONFIDENCE).**
"Low confidence," Talia hissed.
"What now?" Dack asked.
"The third key," she said. "The handshake key might be inside. Which means—" Her voice tightened. "—this door is designed to stall you until security arrives."
Dack stared at the door.
A trap meant to delay.
Delay meant ComStar's "single action" turned into a bloodbath.
He didn't have time.
He looked at the door's hinge seam.
Then he looked down at his breaching charge.
He didn't want to blow it. But he could blow it **precisely**.
He planted the charge along the hinge line, angled to shear the pins rather than blow the seal. He set it to minimal yield.
"Talia," he said, "I'm forcing entry."
"Don't rupture the compartment," she warned.
"I won't."
He triggered the charge.
A muted thump vibrated through the hull. The hinge line spit metal fragments. The door sagged and dropped half an inch.
Dack grabbed it and heaved.
The door opened.
Inside was the vault module: a black coffin-sized container bolted to the deck, wrapped in shock foam and antistatic mesh, with a ComStar-style connector port on one side.
Dack's stomach sank.
ComStar connectors on a black-ops vault meant ComStar had been sniffing this for a while—or someone had stolen ComStar hardware too.
Talia's voice came tense. "That's it. That's the node."
Dack moved fast. He latched a tether to it, cut the bolts with a torch, then dragged it out, inch by inch. Heavy. Awkward. Real.
Behind him, a sound vibrated through the ship—footsteps, faint, approaching.
Someone alive.
Dack didn't hesitate. He pulled the vault module into the corridor, then did the one thing he'd promised himself he wouldn't do again unless forced:
He prepared to kill in close quarters.
A figure rounded the corner—armored, sealed, rifle up—
—and froze.
Not because of fear.
Because the figure saw Dack and then glanced at the vault and made a decision.
The figure's helmet was marked with a small symbol—subtle, professional.
A ComStar ROM operator.
The ROM agent's rifle dipped a fraction, not surrender, but evaluation.
"You're late," the agent said over a tight-beam comm, voice calm and flat. "We were already inside."
Dack's blood went cold. "You didn't say you'd be here."
"You didn't ask," the agent replied.
Dack tightened his grip on the tether. "Are you going to try to take it from me?"
The ROM agent stared at him for a long moment, then shook their head once. "It's yours. You earned it. We only needed confirmation."
"Confirmation of what?"
"That you would do what you said," the agent answered. "Violence with control. No public broadcast. No collateral venting."
Dack's jaw clenched. "You set this up."
"We offered," the agent corrected. "You chose."
Dack's hand flexed on his blade.
The ROM agent continued, unbothered. "Bring the module to the coordinates in the packet. Your transponder scrub will be ready."
Dack held the agent's gaze, trying to find the human behind the mask. There wasn't one.
Just purpose.
Then the agent stepped back into the shadow and disappeared like they'd never existed.
Dack dragged the vault module toward the dropship bay.
He didn't feel relief.
He felt watched.
---
Back aboard, Talia met him at the bay threshold, moving like someone who'd forced her exhaustion into a corner.
"Did you get it?" she asked.
Dack nodded and slammed the vault module onto the deck.
The module's indicator light flickered—then stabilized into a steady green.
Talia's face tightened. "It's active."
Dack stared at it. "Kill the handshake."
Talia knelt, fingers trembling only slightly now. She opened a panel on the module and exposed a nest of fiber lines and encryption boards—dense, elegant hardware built for secrecy.
Her mouth went dry as she recognized the pattern.
"This is… sophisticated," she whispered.
Dack's voice was cold. "Do it."
Talia pulled her bondsman token free and held it over a small port. "If I'm right," she said quietly, "this will authenticate my biometrics. Then I can force a key reset."
Dack didn't reply. He didn't want to hear doubt.
Talia pressed the token in.
The module chimed.
A prompt appeared on a tiny display:
**IDENTITY: TALIA (BONDSMAN) — STATUS: RESTRICTED**
**AUTHORIZATION: PARTIAL**
**REQUEST: HANDSHAKE KEY ROTATION?**
Talia's lips pulled back from her teeth. "It still calls me that."
Dack leaned closer. "Rotate."
Talia's hand shook once.
Then she pressed confirm.
The module beeped.
**ROTATING…**
**INVALIDATING PRIOR HANDSHAKES…**
**PRIOR ARRAYS DISCONNECTED…**
The corporate case on the deck—still wrapped in Faraday layers—blinked faster for a heartbeat, as if struggling—
Then its light died.
Dead.
Silent.
Talia froze, staring at it like she couldn't trust what she was seeing.
Dack felt something unclench in his chest.
Not peace.
But the first absence of a knife at his throat in days.
Talia exhaled shakily. "It's gone."
Dack nodded once. "Good."
Talia's gaze dropped to her bondsman token in her hand. It looked smaller now. Just metal. Just a stamp.
She stared at it like it might still bite.
Dack didn't offer a speech.
He just held out his hand.
Talia hesitated, then placed the token in his palm.
Dack looked at it for a long moment.
Then, without ceremony, he took the torch and heated the token until the metal glowed dull orange. He set it on a scrap plate and struck it with a heavy wrench.
The token bent.
He struck again.
It snapped.
Talia flinched at the sound.
Then she closed her eyes for a heartbeat, and when she opened them, her one good eye was wet but hard.
Not gratitude.
Not weakness.
Just… something like reclaimed air.
Dack looked at the vault module. "Now we see what's inside."
Talia's voice steadied. "This module will have the handshake keys, the routing tables, and likely the operator chain."
"And the patron?"
Talia swallowed. "If they were arrogant."
Dack leaned in. "They were."
Talia began pulling data—copying to a local slate, isolating the key material, stripping the parts that were dangerous to keep on the ship.
Minutes passed in tense silence.
Then Talia's breath hitched.
Dack's eyes snapped to her. "What."
She pointed at a line of text on the display, voice tight. "It's not just the local cell."
Dack stared.
On the screen: a routing tree, branching into multiple nodes—stations, DropShips, shell companies, escrow accounts.
A pipeline.
Bigger than Outreach.
But the important thing—the thing Dack needed right now—was another line:
**HANDSHAKE ARRAYS: LOCAL NODE ONLY — TERMINATED.**
Local node only.
Terminated.
Meaning: the people hunting them couldn't ping the case anymore.
They could still hunt with eyes and guns.
But they'd lost the invisible leash.
Dack exhaled once. "That's enough."
Talia looked up sharply. "Enough? This is proof. This could burn them."
Dack's gaze went distant. He saw his father's name on that paper. He saw Kess's involvement. He saw the quiet, sterile professionalism of the operators in his hangar.
He wanted justice.
But justice was loud.
And loud got you killed before you could collect your next paycheck.
"We keep a shard," Dack said. "A bite-sized piece. Something that proves motive and names if we need it. The rest—" He nodded at the module. "—we trade to ComStar for the scrub."
Talia's jaw tightened. "They'll bury it."
"They'll own it," Dack corrected. "That means the cell loses control, and the hunting stops."
Talia stared at him like she hated how reasonable it was.
Then she nodded once, bitterly. "Fine."
She copied a single encrypted packet to a slate—Halvec Jarn's incident resolution, Kess's name, the patron tag. Not the whole pipeline. Just the knife tip.
Dack took the slate and slipped it into a hidden pocket in his suit.
His future debt.
His future revenge.
Then he gestured toward the vault module. "We deliver."
---
The ComStar rendezvous point was an empty coordinate in deep space where nothing should be.
But something was.
A small craft slid out of darkness like it had been there the whole time: unmarked, cold-running, with maneuvering jets that barely flared.
It didn't hail.
It didn't threaten.
It simply matched their drift and opened a bay.
Dack guided the dropship closer and used the Dire Wolf to hand off the vault module—Daishi fingers gripping the container with careful precision and sliding it into the unmarked craft like a burial offering.
The craft's bay doors closed.
No thanks.
No confirmation.
Just a single comm burst—tight-beam, encrypted—landing in Dack's cockpit like a stamp on paper:
**SERVICE COMPLETE.**
Then a second packet, heavier:
**TRANSPONDER REFIT KEYS**
**NEW ID SET**
**FAVOR TOKEN: ONE**
Dack stared at the words.
A new identity.
A clean sky, at least from the beacon.
Talia sat behind him, silent, watching the unmarked craft drift away until it vanished.
"Do you feel free?" she asked finally.
Dack didn't answer for a moment.
Then: "I feel… less hunted."
Talia gave a small, humorless sound. "That's the closest anyone gets."
Dack didn't disagree.
He powered the dropship and turned away from the rendezvous.
As the stars shifted and the ship slid into a new vector, a new ping appeared on his private merc channel—one he hadn't seen in days because he'd been running for his life.
A contract offer.
Legit.
Stamped.
Paid escrow.
Short description:
**EMPLOYER: LOCAL GOVERNMENT / VERIFIED**
**JOB: RAID DEFENSE — CONVOY ESCORT**
**PAY: HIGH**
**DETAIL: PIRATE ACTIVITY INCREASING — NEED HEAVY ASSET**
Dack stared at it.
A normal job.
A mercenary job.
The kind of thing he'd wanted before the universe stuffed a blinking case and a bondsman into his cockpit.
He looked back at Talia.
She met his gaze steadily now. Not pleading. Not demanding. Just present.
"What will you do?" she asked.
Dack's hands settled on the controls, steady again.
"I go back to work," he said.
Talia's mouth tightened. "And me?"
Dack didn't soften his voice, but he didn't make it cruel either. "You're still a liability."
Talia nodded once, accepting the honesty like a bruise.
"But," Dack continued, "you also know how to keep us alive. And you're tied to this whether you like it or not."
Talia's eye narrowed. "So I'm—what—crew?"
Dack stared forward at the stars. "You're a passenger until you earn more."
Talia exhaled slowly, then nodded. "Fair."
Dack accepted the contract ping with a single motion.
The escrow confirmation chimed.
Money coming.
Work coming.
War coming—the honest kind, the kind mercenaries understood.
Behind them, the shadow war didn't disappear.
But it stepped back.
And for Dack Jarn, that was enough to start hunting his own future instead of being hunted by someone else's.