The yard lights strobed and flickered like they were afraid to watch.
Concrete dust drifted in slow sheets between two giants standing in the open center of HRR's pad—Dack's Dire Wolf and Quill's Zeus—their reactors humming with the kind of restrained violence that made smaller things feel fragile just by existing near it.
Around them, everything held a tense, ugly shape.
Jinx's Highlander sat half-up a broken embankment with her gauss rifle leveled, the barrel tracking every twitch of Quill's Warhammer and HRR's Thunderbolt like she was deciding which one deserved to stop breathing first. Morrigan's Marauder stood over Venn's cluster of bodyguards and the portable ledger core like a dark monument, PPC arm steady, lasers hot. Taila's Griffin kept tight to Dack's rear arc, not crowding him, not hiding—screening lanes the way she'd been drilled to do, eyes locked on the Phoenix Hawk that wanted to dart in and do something stupid.
Lyra's voice was the only calm thing left, thin over comms from the Union. "Dack, your exit corridor is marked. If this collapses, we pull you through the west slag cut. I can't lift hot with a full scan ping."
"Copy," Dack said. One word. Enough.
Quill's voice cut across the same channel, crisp and controlled. "No interference."
Jinx laughed once. "You're adorable."
Quill ignored her like she didn't exist. She only spoke to the man in the Dire Wolf.
"Begin," Quill said again, as if repetition made it law.
Dack didn't answer.
He moved.
The Dire Wolf stepped forward with a heavy, deliberate pace that made the ground feel smaller. He didn't charge. He didn't posture. He pushed space away from the Zeus with inevitability, like the yard itself was being compressed.
Quill met him halfway. The Zeus advanced with disciplined aggression, autocannon barrel and missile racks tracking—never over-aiming, never wasting motion.
The first exchange wasn't dramatic. It was method.
Dack fired his LRMs in a tight volley—enough to force Quill to adjust, to raise arms and twist torso to manage impact and preserve balance. The missiles hammered the Zeus's upper plating, detonations flashing off bone-white armor.
Quill answered with her own missiles and a hard autocannon burst aimed low, not at Dack's torso—at his legs.
Control shots.
The rounds and warheads chewed the ground around the Dire Wolf's feet, bit into armor plates, rattled warning chimes through Dack's cockpit. He shifted into cover without looking like he needed cover, using a fractured wall of cargo containers as a blunt shield.
His AC/10 barked once—solid recoil through the Dire Wolf's frame—and the shell punched into the Zeus's knee plating. Not enough to drop it. Enough to make Quill feel it in the way her mech hesitated for half a heartbeat before it stepped again.
Quill adjusted instantly. She angled her Zeus, using the pad's broken concrete ridges to keep her damaged knee out of a clean lane.
"Predictable," she said, not mocking—observing.
Dack's answer was flat. "It works."
He fired another LRM ripple, then moved—side-step, angle change, keeping the Zeus from settling into a stable firing platform.
Quill pressed anyway. Her autocannon hammered again, then her missiles, then a sharp rake of lasers—everything timed to build heat and pressure without spiking too high. She wasn't fighting like a brawler. She was fighting like a professional who wanted to win with minimum waste.
The yard paid for it.
A stray burst shredded a loader truck that hadn't gotten out in time. The cab flipped. A man inside didn't scream long.
HRR's floodlights flickered. One exploded as shrapnel took it. Shadows fell and rose and fell again.
Jinx's Highlander shifted, ready to intervene.
Dack's voice snapped, blunt. "Hold."
Jinx hissed, frustrated. "He's going to let her—"
"He's going to win," Lyra cut in, calm as ice.
Taila didn't speak. Her Griffin tracked the Phoenix Hawk, finger steady on triggers, waiting for the medium mech to try something. She didn't look away from the duel, but Dack could feel her attention like a hand at his back—present, supportive, terrified.
Quill stepped into a lane where the pad's broken ridge ended and the open center yard began. She wanted distance. She wanted a clean firing line for her autocannon.
Dack denied it.
He walked the Dire Wolf into her space, heavy and close, forcing her to either back up or commit.
Quill committed.
The Zeus surged forward, mass and intent, trying to push the Dire Wolf off his angle. She fired at Dack's hip line—another mobility kill attempt—and Dack felt the impacts like punches against a metal spine.
He didn't answer with rage.
He answered with math.
He shifted his torso, let armor take what it could, then fired the AC/10 again into that same knee joint.
The Zeus's damaged leg buckled a fraction—just enough.
Dack followed with a gauss shot—brief window, brutal timing—aimed at the lower assembly. The round struck plating, tore armor away in a spray of ferro and sparks.
Quill's Zeus stumbled one step.
Not down.
But compromised.
For the first time, Quill's voice changed. Not fear. A razor-thin thread of anger.
"You're good," she said.
Dack's reply was simple. "I know."
Quill exhaled once, controlled. "Then die well."
She fired again—autocannon, missiles—forcing Dack to keep moving. Heat climbed. Warning indicators blinked. The Dire Wolf's cockpit smelled faintly of hot electronics and sweat under filtered air.
Dack's hands stayed steady on controls.
Because the fight wasn't about pride.
It was about who got to decide what happened next.
Behind them, HRR security tried to take advantage of the duel's focus. The Orion shifted its angle toward Morrigan's Marauder, autocannon lining up on the spot where Venn was crouched behind wreckage with his portable ledger core pressed to his chest like it could protect him.
Morrigan saw it and didn't flinch. She fired her PPC.
The bolt struck the Orion's shoulder plating and blew armor away, forcing it to stagger sideways. The Orion returned fire anyway, rounds tearing into the Marauder's torso, plating screaming.
Morrigan didn't retreat. Her voice was low and vicious. "Stay. Away."
Taila's Griffin launched a controlled LRM volley into the Orion's flank, just enough to keep it off balance.
Jinx chuckled over comms. "That's my gremlin."
Morrigan snarled something that wasn't a denial.
Quill's Warhammer twitched like it wanted to intervene, but Quill snapped a command without raising her voice. "Hold the perimeter."
Her unit obeyed.
They were loyal to her discipline.
They didn't yet know they were standing inside a lie.
---
Lyra's slate lit up in the Union like a corpse deciding to talk.
The portable ledger core—ripped from Venn's custody in the first moments of the raid—was encrypted, layered, and designed to look like it contained nothing but shipping schedules and audit summaries.
Rook and Rafe had been cracking it the way they cracked armor seams: patiently, ruthlessly, together.
Now the core bled data.
Lyra's face didn't change, but her eyes hardened.
She saw the routing chain:
FEATHERLINE → HRR → LIC PROCUREMENT SECTION
She saw the contract tags:
ASSET: DIRE WOLF / OWNER: RONAN JARN / STATUS: NONCOMPLIANT
She saw the authorization stamp:
REMOVAL APPROVED / RECOVERY PRIORITY
And then she found the part that made her stomach go cold.
A contingency file with an innocuous name.
FINAL DISPOSITION
She opened it.
The words inside were clean, short, and lethal.
IF RECOVERY COMPROMISED: SANITIZE SITE.
TERMINATE WITNESSES.
TERMINATE ASSET "LARK."
TERMINATE OPERATORS IF COMPROMISED.
Lyra didn't swear. She didn't gasp.
She patched the file into a broadcast burst, cleaned it into something that could not be denied, and pushed it onto an open channel.
Not screaming.
Not dramatic.
Just truth, sharpened and thrown.
"Wing Captain Quill," Lyra said calmly. "Your orders include killing Mother Lark."
The duel's noise didn't stop.
But something in it shifted.
Quill's Zeus hesitated for half a heartbeat—micro-pause in actuator rhythm.
Dack saw it. He didn't waste it.
He fired.
The Dire Wolf's gauss rifle thundered, the round slamming into the Zeus's chest plating and tearing a crater into armor. The Zeus lurched backward, alarms screaming in Quill's cockpit.
Quill recovered—discipline forcing motion—but her voice cracked through comms sharp as a cut.
"Repeat that."
Lyra repeated nothing.
She played it.
The sanitize directive filled the channel—cold words delivered in someone else's voice, corporate and indifferent, as if they were ordering office supplies.
Quill went still for a fraction longer than her training would allow.
And behind Morrigan's Marauder, Alaric Venn—who had been clinging to arrogance like it was armor—finally broke.
"No—" he shouted, voice thin and panicked. "That's—standard! That's not—personal! That's protocol!"
Morrigan's Marauder rotated its torso slightly, PPC barrel centering on him like a warning.
Venn swallowed hard and kept talking anyway because fear made him stupid.
"They were never going to take her back," Venn blurted. "Do you understand? She knows the chain. She knows the names. She's a loose end! You're all loose ends! Even you, Quill!"
Silence hit the channel like a fist.
Quill's voice came lower. "Even me."
Venn's laugh turned hysterical. "You think LIC keeps contractors alive once they've seen the inside of the machine? You think they keep anyone alive?"
Quill's Zeus took a step back—just one—like the ground had shifted under her.
And then Quill spoke, and the control in her voice was still there, but something personal had bled through it.
"Lady Lark is under my protection," she said.
Lyra answered, cold. "Not according to your handler."
Quill's breath hitched over comm—tiny, involuntary.
Dack didn't soften. He didn't comfort. He didn't pity.
He said what mattered.
"They'll kill her," Dack said bluntly. "Then they'll kill you."
Quill's response came slower than anything she'd said all night.
"That…" she said, and the word tasted like betrayal, "…was not the mission."
Dack stepped forward again, Dire Wolf looming. "It is now."
Quill's Zeus raised its autocannon again, and for a second it looked like she was going to keep fighting anyway because discipline was easier than grief.
Then Quill's private channel pinged.
A message, tight-beamed, encrypted—someone who thought they were speaking only to her.
Lyra caught it anyway.
She injected it into the open net like a knife.
A handler's voice—calm, bored—spoke the final confirmation:
"Quill. Recovery failed. Initiate sanitize. Confirm prisoner termination. Do not return with loose ends."
Quill stopped breathing for one full second.
Then she exhaled.
And in that exhale, a different person stepped out of the soldier.
Her Zeus didn't point at the Dire Wolf anymore.
It pivoted.
Hard.
Fast.
Its autocannon leveled at HRR's Thunderbolt.
Jinx's voice went very quiet. "Oh."
Quill fired.
The burst hammered the Thunderbolt's torso plating, tearing armor away in a spray of sparks and gore—because there were men standing too close to that mech when it took the hit, and they became red mist against concrete.
The Thunderbolt staggered, shocked.
The Orion tried to swing toward Quill, autocannon raising—
Quill's Zeus launched missiles into its flank, ripping plating and blowing one of its side bays open. The Orion stumbled, alarms screaming.
Quill's voice snapped, cold and absolute. "HRR security—enemy."
Her Warhammer hesitated.
Her Catapult hesitated too.
The Phoenix Hawk twitched like it didn't understand which side of the line it belonged on.
Quill didn't negotiate.
"Disengage and cover me," she ordered. "Or I will put you down myself."
The Warhammer moved first, loyalty to Quill overriding confusion. It pivoted and fired PPCs into the Orion, forcing it to back up.
The Catapult followed—LRMs arcing into HRR's yard perimeter, detonations chewing through parked vehicles and turning the inner ring into chaos.
The Phoenix Hawk froze for a half second longer—then boosted into a flanking lane, acting on instinct: protect the commander, protect the unit.
Dack didn't waste time admiring it.
He spoke once, blunt and practical. "Lyra. Extract. Now."
Lyra's voice was steady. "West slag cut. Move."
Jinx laughed like she'd been given a gift. "Quill's on our side. I could kiss someone."
"Not now," Dack said.
Jinx pouted. "Fine."
Taila's voice came tight, shocked. "She—she's helping."
Dack's reply was flat. "She's saving her own."
Quill's voice cut through, low and sharp. "Dack Jarn."
Dack answered without hesitation. "Talk."
Quill's pause was brief. "Lady Lark—she's on your ship."
"She is," Dack said.
Quill's voice tightened in a way that made her age suddenly visible—26 pretending to be older because war demanded it. "They were going to kill her."
"Yes," Dack said. "Now they don't."
Quill swallowed something. "I'm coming with you."
Jinx cackled. "Told you she was hot."
Quill ignored her too.
Dack didn't argue. "Keep up."
---
The yard became a slaughterhouse in motion.
HRR's remaining security vehicles tried to form a line—machine guns and rockets screaming into the dark. Quill's Catapult erased them with a single LRM spread, explosions ripping men apart and flipping trucks like toys.
The Orion, smoking, tried to retreat toward the warehouse spine.
Morrigan's Marauder stepped into its lane and fired her PPC again.
The bolt hit the Orion's already-damaged side and blew it open—internal structure visible, sparks and flame bleeding out like a wound.
The Orion's pilot ejected a heartbeat later.
His seat shot upward, canopy exploding.
He didn't clear the blast radius.
A fragment of burning ferro took him midair and he came down in pieces.
Taila swallowed hard inside her Griffin and kept moving, because looking too long got you killed.
Jinx's Highlander took advantage of the chaos to do what she loved: end problems loudly. She fired her gauss rifle into the Thunderbolt's center torso—clean shot, brutal impact.
The Thunderbolt's chest plating caved. It staggered, then collapsed into the concrete with a scream of tearing metal.
Jinx's laugh crackled over comms, bright and savage. "Night-night."
Dack didn't celebrate. He moved through the west slag cut exactly as Lyra had marked—Dire Wolf leading, Griffin tight behind, Marauder guarding the center where Venn and the ledger core were being dragged along by sheer threat.
Venn stumbled, trying to run like a rat finding a hole.
He made it three steps before Morrigan noticed.
The Marauder's foot came down.
Not fast.
Not dramatic.
Just final.
Concrete cracked. Something soft inside the boot gave with a wet, ugly sound.
Venn's voice cut off into a red smear that the yard lights didn't bother to hide.
Jinx made a pleased noise. "Morrigan…"
Morrigan's voice was quiet and satisfied. "He was loud."
Taila's stomach rolled. She swallowed it down. She didn't look away. She didn't want to be the girl who couldn't handle reality anymore.
Quill's Zeus moved to the rear guard position without being asked, taking hits meant for the retreat lane. Her Warhammer and Phoenix Hawk fell in around her, covering her flanks.
Lyra's voice cut in. "More contacts. Light mechs on approach. A Jenner and a Panther. They're trying to cut you off from the ridge."
Jinx snorted. "Adorable."
Dack answered with an LRM ripple from the Dire Wolf, missiles arcing over the slag ridge and raining down where the Jenner and Panther were trying to sprint into position. The explosions forced them to scatter, breaking their line.
Taila added her PPC—one sharp bolt that caught the Panther's leg and made it stumble into rubble. She didn't finish it. She didn't have to. The mech was out of the lane.
Dack didn't praise her.
But he said, blunt, "Good."
Taila's chest tightened at the word. She kept moving.
They cleared the last ridge.
The Union sat beyond it like a dark animal crouched in shadow, ramp already lowering.
Lyra didn't lift. She didn't flare engines. She held position—quiet, smart.
Because lifting would light the sky.
But the ramp was open.
And open meant home.
Dack pushed the Dire Wolf up the ramp first, heavy feet thudding against deck plating. Taila followed. Morrigan's Marauder came next, smoke streaking its armor. Jinx's Highlander clomped in last with a cheerful little shimmy like she hadn't just turned a battlefield into a graveyard.
Quill's Zeus reached the ramp edge—
—and hesitated.
Her voice came through comms, tight. "I can't bring the Zeus inside."
Dack answered without looking back. "You don't."
Quill's breath hitched. "Then—"
Lyra cut in, calm. "You park it behind the ridge. You board in your fighter bay shuttle if you have one."
Quill's voice was hard. "I don't trust leaving it."
Dack's reply was simple. "Then you die for it."
Quill froze—then exhaled. The kind of exhale that came from someone forcing herself to choose life.
Her Warhammer and Phoenix Hawk moved to cover her Zeus as it backed behind the ridge line.
"Catapult?" Lyra asked.
Quill's voice sharpened. "It stays with my people. They didn't sign up to die for a lie."
Jinx muttered, "I kinda did."
Morrigan replied, "You're insane."
Jinx grinned. "Yes."
---
Inside the Union, the mech bay doors sealed.
The air changed.
Not safer.
Just controlled.
Lyra's voice came over internal ship comms. "We have the ledger. We have proof. I'm pushing the packet now—multiple dead drops. If anyone tries to bury it, it will surface somewhere else."
Rook and Rafe were already at the workstation, hands moving, finishing the job.
Rafe: "It—"
Rook: "Spreads."
Rafe: "Everywhere."
Rook: "Enough."
Lyra nodded to herself. "Good."
Dack stood under the chained Atlas again, helmet off, sweat cooling on his skin. His black pilot suit clung to him, smelling faintly of metal and heat.
He looked up at the cockpit seam.
"Still alive?" he asked.
Mother Lark's voice slid down, smooth and satisfied. "You killed my leash."
Dack's reply was blunt. "They were going to kill you."
A pause.
Then Mother Lark laughed softly—no humor, just recognition. "Yes. I told you."
Jinx strolled up behind Dack, looping her arms around his shoulders from the side like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her cheek pressed against his collarbone. Her blue eyes tracked the Atlas like she wanted to take it apart with her teeth.
Taila came closer too, shy in the way she still got when emotions were too big. She touched Dack's arm, fingers curling into the fabric like an anchor.
Morrigan lingered a few steps back, arms crossed, pretending she didn't care, black-red clothes sharp against the bay's gray steel.
Lyra stood to the side, watching everything with calm eyes.
And then the bay comm chirped again—an external shuttle docking.
Quill arrived.
Not in an armored mech.
Not in a cockpit.
In a simple pressure suit with her helmet tucked under one arm, hair dark and damp with sweat, face pale from adrenaline and the shock of betrayal.
She walked into the mech bay like she expected someone to shoot her.
Dack didn't move. "You left your Zeus."
Quill's jaw clenched. "I left my people with it."
Jinx murmured loudly, "Aww, she's noble."
Quill ignored her, eyes searching the bay until they locked on the chained Atlas.
Her breathing caught.
Just once.
Then she stepped forward, slow and careful, and stopped under the Atlas like someone standing under a storm cloud.
"Lady Lark," Quill said, voice rougher than it had been in combat.
Mother Lark didn't soften. She never softened. But her voice changed—barely.
"Quill," she said.
Quill swallowed hard. "They were going to kill you."
Mother Lark's laugh was quiet. "Yes."
Quill's hands curled into fists at her sides. "I… didn't know."
Mother Lark's voice cut clean. "You were loyal. That is your flaw."
Quill flinched like she'd been struck—then steadied. "I'm still loyal."
Jinx grinned. "Gay."
Taila hissed, "Jinx!"
Quill didn't even look at them. Her eyes stayed on the Atlas seam like she was trying to memorize it.
Dack broke the moment with one blunt question. "Why."
Quill's head turned toward him, eyes sharp, and for a second she looked like she might refuse to give anything human.
Then she spoke anyway—short, raw pieces, like she hated the sound of them.
"I had one girlfriend," Quill said. "She died in a pirate raid."
Silence tightened.
Quill's voice stayed flat, but the words carried weight. "I wasn't a mechwarrior yet. I was… softer."
Jinx's teasing grin faltered.
Taila's hand tightened on Dack's arm.
Quill continued, eyes still on Dack now. "After that, I learned to fight. Learned to kill. Learned not to trust men with anything that matters. I've never—" She stopped, jaw clenched, then forced the rest out. "I've never been with one. Not once."
Jinx blinked, unusually quiet.
Quill's gaze flicked back to the Atlas. "Lady Lark was the first person who made the world feel… ordered again."
Mother Lark didn't deny it. She didn't accept it either. "Order is a lie," she said softly. "But loyalty is real."
Quill's throat bobbed. "Then I'm real."
Dack watched her for a long second.
Then he said what mattered. "You stay, you follow rules."
Quill's eyes narrowed. "Your rules."
"Our rules," Lyra corrected calmly.
Jinx's grin returned, sharp. "And if you're joining the pack, you'll get a uniform."
Morrigan muttered, "Of course."
Taila's cheeks warmed, but she didn't protest. Not this time.
Quill looked at Dack again, searching his face for something she could trust.
Dack didn't give warmth for free.
He gave clarity.
"You tried to kill us," Dack said. "You switched when you saw the truth."
Quill didn't flinch. "Yes."
Dack nodded once. "That's enough."
It wasn't forgiveness.
It was permission to exist.
Quill exhaled, shoulders easing a fraction like someone had taken a weight off her spine.
Behind Dack, Jinx shifted, suddenly pressing a hand to her stomach again. She made a face, swallowed hard, and then forced a smile like she could bully her body into behaving.
Taila noticed instantly. "Jinx…?"
Jinx waved it off too fast. "I'm fine."
Lyra's eyes narrowed, thoughtful.
Dack didn't comment. Not now. He stored it.
Because that's what he did.
He stored threats. He stored tells. He stored the things that mattered until there was time to address them properly.
Lyra's voice came over ship intercom, crisp. "Jump window in thirty. We'll be out before Ceres decides what just happened."
Jinx looked up at Dack with bright eyes. "We did it."
Taila whispered, almost disbelieving. "We survived."
Morrigan's mouth curled like she didn't want anyone to see it. "Of course we did."
Quill stood under the Atlas, eyes still locked on the cockpit seam, loyalty radiating off her like heat. Mother Lark listened from inside her machine-cage, dangerous and amused, and for the first time in a long time she sounded… uncertain.
Not weak.
Just aware the board had changed.
Dack turned toward his Dire Wolf's berth.
He didn't smile.
But his voice, when he spoke, carried something heavier than vengeance now.
"We have proof," he said. "We have a name. We have a House cell that thought it could erase my father and steal his mech."
Jinx's arms tightened around him. Taila's fingers curled into his sleeve. Morrigan watched like she was daring the universe to try again. Lyra stood steady. Quill held her loyalty like a blade.
Dack's eyes were cold.
"We're not erased," he said.
Outside, the Union's engines warmed in controlled silence.
Ceres Junction's cheap lights flickered.
And Moonjaw slipped away into the dark—alive, paid, armed, and finally holding the truth sharp enough to cut back.
END