Ceres Junction looked like it had been built to disappoint everyone who ever believed in order.
A long, lopsided ring of docks and prefabs clung to a scarred rock that hadn't been a real colony in a century, just a transfer point that survived because people needed somewhere to trade what they shouldn't have. The station lights were dim and uneven, as if power was a suggestion. The traffic around it was worse—old DropShips with patched hulls, a pair of battered aerospace fighters that looked like hired threats, cargo pods tumbling in slow arcs like garbage.
Lyra brought the Union in under a shallow angle, engines kept low and patient, avoiding the bright lanes where a proper port would insist on registry pings and polite scanner sweeps.
Ceres didn't do polite.
They took a berth on the shadow side of the ring where the dockhands worked without uniforms and the "inspection" equipment looked like it had been salvaged from a museum. The clamp arms latched with a groan. The ship settled. Metal sighed.
Inside the mech bay, the air already tasted like old heat and fresh risk.
Dack stood under the chained Atlas again, staring up at the cockpit seam like he could see through ferroglass and hate alone. The brass bird insignia on its shoulder was still too clean.
Beside it, the captured Awesome sat in clamps, pirate paint scuffed and ugly, legs locked. It was awake enough for diagnostics, but not awake enough to walk. Not yet.
Rook and Rafe moved between them with a cart of tools and a discipline that looked effortless. They'd stripped the worst of the Atlas's hooks already. Now they were checking their own work like they didn't trust reality.
Lyra's voice came over bay comms, calm and clipped. "We have three hours before this berth cycles to someone else. No running reactors at full. No open-bay signatures. We get supplies, we take a cover contract, we leave."
Jinx leaned against the Dire Wolf's leg plating, arms folded, red jacket unzipped. "Cover contract," she echoed like it was a joke. "At a place called Ceres Junction. That's adorable."
Taila stood close enough to Dack that her shoulder almost brushed his arm. Tight black halter top, long combat leggings with red stripes—Moonjaw colors that still made her blush when she saw herself in reflective steel. She kept her gaze down and forward, trying to look like the kind of woman who belonged here.
She was starting to.
Morrigan lingered near the Marauder's berth, black dress and leggings, collar-harness, boots planted like she wanted the deck plates to know she was serious. Arms crossed. Glaring at everything.
Dack looked up one last time at the Atlas seam. "She awake?"
A faint hiss crackled from the Atlas emergency speaker—Mother Lark letting them know she was listening before anyone else could say it.
Lyra answered anyway. "She's awake."
Dack nodded once. "Good."
He turned toward the ramp.
"Jinx," he said.
Jinx straightened, grin ready. "Yes, sir?"
"Don't start trouble."
Jinx's smile widened. "Define trouble."
Dack didn't look back. "You know."
Taila's mouth twitched. "She will."
Jinx slipped closer and kissed Taila's cheek fast enough that Taila didn't see it coming. "I'll be good."
Taila's face went red instantly. "Jinx!"
Morrigan made a disgusted sound and walked ahead like she wasn't listening, but her pace slowed enough that she stayed with them.
Lyra met them at the ramp with her helmet under one arm and a slate in her hand. "We walk like we belong," she said. "We buy what we need, we sign a short ground contract, we don't dock long enough to be memorable."
Jinx laughed. "Too late."
Lyra's eyes flicked to her outfit—cropped armored tank, short shorts with holster points, red jacket cut high with straps, black boots that promised violence. Then to Taila's tight, practical curves and Morrigan's gothic silhouette.
Lyra looked at Dack last. "You're the least noticeable one."
Dack's voice was flat. "Good."
---
Ceres Junction smelled like metal, stale air, and cheap food that had no business being edible.
The dock corridor opened into a market strip where half the stalls were legal cargo and the other half were not—ammo sold under tarps, replacement actuators with serial numbers ground off, coolant jugs with someone else's brand label slapped over the top. A man with too many tattoos offered them a case of "genuine Clan-spec heat sinks" that were obviously not genuine. A woman with a respirator mask tried to sell Lyra a "new" transponder core that still had another ship's dust inside it.
They drew eyes.
Not just because they were attractive, though that mattered. It was the way they moved—together, alert, like people who had fought and lived. Moonjaw patch on black and red. That drew the kind of attention that could become a rumor by the end of an hour.
Lyra didn't seem bothered. She used it.
"See that?" she murmured over a tight internal channel, eyes on a cluster of cargo handlers by a security kiosk.
Dack's gaze tracked.
A stack of sealed containers rolled past on a crawler. The labels were clean. Too clean for Ceres.
On the side of one container was a small stamp: HRR.
Halden Risk & Recovery.
A salvage and recovery brand that didn't belong in a place like this unless it was hiding behind the dirt.
Jinx saw it too. Her grin sharpened like a knife. "There you are."
Taila's voice came tight. "That's them."
Morrigan's eyes narrowed. "I want to burn it."
"Later," Dack said.
Lyra tapped her slate. "We still need the cover."
Jinx sighed theatrically. "Fine."
They reached the contract board—a cracked holo wall set between a bar and a pawnshop. Jobs flickered in ugly colors: convoy escorts, anti-pirate sweeps, salvage recovery, depot defense. Most paid in scraps and promises. A few paid real.
Lyra scrolled fast, eyes scanning for something short and plausible. "Here," she said.
She highlighted a contract:
Ground Escort — Slag Run / Depot K-17
Local industrial route, low-grade ore convoys, raiders hitting from badlands.
Pay: modest C-bills + partial salvage rights + fuel credit.
Jinx made a face. "That's boring."
"It's believable," Lyra said.
Dack's voice was blunt. "We take it."
Taila looked relieved. Morrigan looked annoyed. Jinx looked disappointed like she'd been promised a knife fight and given paperwork.
Lyra transmitted acceptance. A payment handshake flickered and confirmed.
Then a message pinged in the corner of her slate—quiet, low-level, the kind of back-channel note you only saw if you knew where to look.
Lyra's eyes narrowed.
Dack noticed. "What."
Lyra angled the slate toward him, just enough for his cockpit-trained eyes to catch the phrase buried in the routing tags:
FINAL DISPOSITION PROTOCOL — ACTIVE
Dack stared. "Sanitize."
Lyra nodded once. "Someone expects cleanup."
Jinx's grin died. Taila's throat tightened. Morrigan's fingers curled like she wanted to break something.
Lyra's voice stayed calm. "We do the cover job. We watch HRR's yard. We identify Venn's movement. We hit when it's clean."
Dack nodded once. "We move."
---
Depot K-17 sat on the planet's surface, not far from Ceres Junction's orbital shadow—an industrial scar carved into a slate-gray valley.
The sky down there was dirty. Not from weather. From dust and smoke and the residue of a world that had been mined until it bled.
They dropped fast.
The Union stayed in a low-profile hover line behind a ridge, engines muted. The mechs went down in the belly of the bay and walked out onto crushed rock.
Dack stayed in the Dire Wolf. Taila took the Griffin. Jinx's Highlander moved like it wanted to kick the horizon. Morrigan's Marauder prowled the convoy line, PPC capacitors humming like restrained anger.
The convoy itself was pathetic—hauler trucks with armored cabs and ore containers chained behind them like they were dragging their own graves. A handful of local security vehicles followed, too light to matter.
The depot manager met them over comms, voice thin. "Moonjaw, yeah? We heard you were… effective."
Jinx laughed. "We're adorable too."
Dack didn't play. "Route."
The manager stammered coordinates.
Lyra fed overlays from the Union, tracking terrain: slag dunes, broken ridgelines, narrow cuts between basalt teeth. Perfect raider country.
They moved.
The convoy crawled like it was afraid of its own shadow. Dack hated convoys. You couldn't make a convoy brave. You could only make it survive.
Fifteen minutes into the route, Lyra's voice snapped through comms. "Contacts. Multiple heat blooms at two o'clock ridge. Light and medium signatures."
Dack didn't hesitate. "Jinx high ground. Morrigan left cut. Taila stay tight."
"Copy!" Jinx sang.
Morrigan didn't answer. She just moved.
Taila's breathing spiked over comm for half a second, then steadied as she forced it down. She slid her Griffin into the lane Dack had drilled into her in sims—support position, not exposed, ready to screen.
Raiders crested the ridge.
A Flea first, tiny and fast, trying to slip behind the convoy for easy kills.
A Jenner, sleek and mean, laser arms already warming.
A Panther behind them—PPC ready, using its heavier armor as confidence.
And a Vindicator, medium weight, moving like it was the leader.
They didn't waste time with warnings.
The Jenner fired first—lasers lancing into the lead hauler's cab, armor flaring.
Dack answered with LRMs, sending a controlled ripple into the ridge line. Explosions kicked up dust, forcing the raiders to scatter.
Jinx's Highlander stomped onto a slab of basalt and fired her gauss rifle—thunder cracking the valley. The round slammed into the Panther's torso plating, blowing armor away and forcing it to stagger back.
Morrigan's Marauder slid into the left cut and fired her PPC into the Flea the moment it tried to flank. The bolt caught it mid-step, ripping into its side. The Flea lurched, half its speed gone in a heartbeat.
Taila's Griffin fired its PPC at the Vindicator—shot striking the shoulder and making the medium mech recoil. She followed with a short LRM volley, forcing it to back away from the convoy lane.
The raiders were better than desperate amateurs. The Jenner boosted forward, trying to close on Taila, choosing her as the "softer" target.
Taila didn't panic.
She backed into cover, keeping the convoy between her and the Jenner's clean line. She fired her PPC again when the Jenner overcommitted—bolt catching it across the torso, not killing it, but scorching the plating enough to make it reconsider its approach.
Dack saw the move and used it. He stepped forward, Dire Wolf's bulk making the ridge feel smaller, and fired the AC/10 once. The shell punched into the Jenner's leg armor.
The Jenner stumbled.
Jinx laughed like she was enjoying herself too much. "Oh, that's going to hurt."
The Panther tried to return fire—its PPC swung toward Jinx's ridge—
—and Morrigan punished it with a laser rake, cutting into the damaged torso where Jinx had already cracked armor.
The Panther backed up fast.
The Flea tried to flee.
Morrigan's PPC caught it again, and this time the light mech's leg actuators gave. It collapsed into the slag like a puppet with cut strings.
The raiders broke.
Not because they were dead, but because they'd learned the lesson convoys were supposed to teach: you don't get paid if you die.
The Vindicator covered the retreat with a burst of autocannon fire, then ran.
The Jenner limped after it.
The Panther limped too, smoke trailing.
Dack didn't chase far. "Let them run."
Jinx pouted. "But I was having fun."
Lyra's voice came in, crisp. "We got what we needed. This job looks clean. We don't linger."
Taila exhaled shakily. "Convoy's intact."
Dack's voice was flat. "Good."
The depot manager's voice came back, shaken. "Payment's transferred. Salvage rights—"
Jinx cut in. "We'll take the Flea."
The manager sputtered. "The—what?"
"The Flea," Jinx repeated, cheerful. "It's ours now."
Dack didn't argue. A Flea wasn't worth much, but everything was worth something when you were building a unit and paying for fuel.
Lyra confirmed the transfer while Rook and Rafe guided remote winch drones from the Union to snag the downed mech without anyone leaving their cockpit.
Clean.
Professional.
Fast.
They returned to the Union with convoy dust still clinging to their armor.
---
Back in orbit, Ceres Junction looked uglier now.
Not because the station changed.
Because Dack knew what was inside it.
They had the cover. They had a paid contract on record. They had salvage on the books.
Now they had a window.
Lyra met Dack in the bay under the chained Atlas. She held her slate up, projecting a ghost map of the station's underside docks—cargo lanes, HRR yard location, security patrol patterns.
"HRR's pad is here," she said. "They run 'audits' in a fenced zone with private security."
Rook and Rafe stood nearby, synced even in stillness, listening.
Jinx wandered in behind them, wiping grease off her fingers, eyes bright. Taila followed, quieter. Morrigan drifted in last, arms crossed as always.
Lyra tapped a time block. "This is the audit window Mother Lark mentioned. Venn arrives with a portable ledger core."
Jinx's grin returned. "So we take him."
Taila's voice was tight. "Alive?"
Dack's answer was blunt. "Alive until he isn't."
Morrigan's mouth curled. "I want him to see us."
Lyra nodded once. "We move hard and fast. We don't stay to celebrate."
A faint hiss crackled overhead.
Mother Lark's voice slid into the bay again, smooth and amused.
"You're learning," she said. "You're becoming something a House cell should fear."
Dack looked up at the cockpit seam. "You said they'd kill you."
Mother Lark's pause was minimal. "They will."
Lyra's eyes narrowed. "You're sure."
Mother Lark's laugh was soft. "You saw the words, didn't you? Final disposition. Sanitize contingency. I'm not exempt."
Jinx's voice turned sharp. "Why would they kill you? You did what they wanted."
Mother Lark's tone cooled. "Because I know their names."
Taila swallowed. "So Quill…"
Mother Lark's voice softened in a way that made Taila tense. "Quill is loyal."
Jinx scoffed. "Quill tried to kill us."
"Quill tried to complete her mission," Mother Lark corrected. "There is a difference."
Lyra's gaze sharpened. "You care about her."
A long pause.
Mother Lark didn't deny it. She didn't confirm it either. But her voice changed just enough to make the truth obvious.
"Quill is… competent," she said.
Jinx grinned. "That's a yes."
Morrigan muttered, "She's obsessed."
Mother Lark ignored them and aimed her voice at Dack again, always at Dack. "If the LIC intends to erase me," she murmured, "Quill may not know."
Dack's voice stayed flat. "She'll find out."
Mother Lark laughed softly. "Yes."
Lyra's slate pinged.
Her posture stiffened. "Contact."
Dack's eyes narrowed. "From."
Lyra's fingers moved. "Passive sensor echo. Drop signature entering system."
The holo shifted, painting a faint wedge of heat and mass.
A Leopard.
No transponder.
Ghost approach.
Jinx's grin sharpened. "Quill's here."
Taila's throat went dry.
Morrigan's eyes darkened. "Good."
Dack stared at the holo until the faint wedge burned into his mind.
"Then we hit HRR tonight," he said.
Lyra nodded. "We hit hard."
Jinx leaned in close to Taila and whispered, gleeful, "Welcome to the fun part."
Taila didn't look away from the holo. Her voice was small but steady. "We're going to end this."
Dack's hand rested against the Dire Wolf's leg armor, familiar steel under his palm.
Blunt voice. Cold certainty.
"We're going to start," he said.
Above them, Mother Lark's Atlas remained chained and silent—except for the faint, pleased hum of a woman who knew the knife was coming.
And somewhere in the dark beyond Ceres, Quill's Leopard dropped toward the station like a predator returning to a kill she didn't realize was about to turn on her.
The cheap lights of Ceres Junction flickered.
Moonjaw moved anyway.