The ore processor's inner yard was a slaughterhouse without the theatrics.
No cheering. No speeches. Just machines cooling in the rain, militia dragging prisoners out of puddles, floodlights washing the slag plateau in hard white until everything looked like it had been skinned down to truth.
Ash Hounds were breaking—one pocket at a time.
That part was straightforward.
The part that mattered was inside the command structure: welded containers stacked into a bunker, antenna spines bristling from the roof, a small data room hidden behind false bulkhead panels.
Holt called it "their brain."
Jinx called it "the money shrine."
Taila didn't call it anything. She just walked in with a slate under her arm and that thin, tight focus she wore when she was doing the one thing that kept her breathing: making sense of chaos.
I stood in the doorway while Holt's techs ripped open panels and found drives. Rain hammered the roof like it wanted inside. The air smelled of hot metal and wet rust.
Taila plugged in a portable decrypt unit, hands steady, face pale under the hood.
"Most of this is junk routing," Holt said, voice rough. "Payroll, fuel, bribes."
Taila didn't look up. "Bribes are never junk."
Jinx leaned in behind Taila's shoulder, entirely too close. "She's right. Bribes are the most honest currency in the galaxy."
Holt's glare could've melted armor.
Taila finally spoke, quiet but sharp. "There's a secure archive partition. Multiple layers. It's not militia-grade encryption."
My jaw tightened.
"Off-world," I said.
Taila nodded once, eyes locked on the slate. "Professional."
The decrypt bar crawled across the screen like a slow bleed. Holt paced behind us. Jinx bounced on her heels like a child waiting for a present.
Then the archive opened.
Not fully at first—just filenames, dates, and a structured ledger with neat columns. Whoever built it wanted it readable. Wanted it usable.
Taila's eyes moved fast. "Payments. Routing codes. Handler notes."
Holt leaned in. "Any names?"
Taila scrolled, then stopped. Her breath caught—small, involuntary.
I felt it.
I didn't ask. I already knew.
She turned the slate slightly so Holt could see.
Then she turned it toward me.
A line item sat there, clean and cold:
**E. KESS — DISBURSEMENT**
**Recipient:** *Grey Knife Recovery*
**Purpose:** *Asset Denial / Witness Removal*
**Reference:** *JARN — LINE TERMINATION*
**Addendum:** *DAISHI CHASSIS — RECOVERY PRIORITY*
**Handler:** *SABLE*
**Note:** *Make it educational.*
The world narrowed until it was only that text.
My hands didn't shake.
My vision didn't blur.
But something inside me went very still—like a reactor scramming.
Holt's voice turned brittle. "That… that's—"
"My father," I said.
The words came out flat. Not because I didn't feel them. Because feeling them would've broken my timing.
Taila's face tightened, guilt flickering like she thought she'd stabbed me by showing it.
"It's real," she whispered. "The timestamp matches what you told me. The routing codes—he paid for the ambush that killed him."
Jinx went quiet.
That was rare enough that I noticed it like a gunshot.
I stared at the ledger entry again, reading it until it stopped being symbols and became a memory.
A dusty landing field under storm clouds.
A contract that didn't smell right.
My father's voice on comms—calm, amused, telling me to "watch the angles."
Then the sudden violence, too coordinated to be "bad luck."
A heavy hit that shouldn't have been there.
A pilot who didn't fight like a raider—who fought like someone being paid to end a problem.
And my father dying in fire and metal while I was too far away to do anything but listen.
The Dire Wolf survived.
I survived.
That's what they hadn't planned on.
Kess had written *line termination* like my bloodline was a defective product.
I exhaled slowly.
Holt watched my face like she expected it to crack.
It didn't.
"I want the full archive," I said.
Taila nodded quickly, fingers moving. "Copying it now—multiple drives. If this is the same Kess who hired you to find me, to find the core that was with me... there'll be more—"
"There is," Holt snapped, stepping closer as Taila scrolled. "Look—this job code. That's the contract we intercepted three weeks ago. The one that drew you to the basin."
Taila highlighted another entry.
**E. KESS — PROCUREMENT JOB**
**Objective:** *Basin destabilization / asset reacquisition*
**Reference:** *DAISHI—HEIR MONITORING*
**Handler:** *SABLE*
So yes.
Same man.
Same chain.
Same reason.
The job that brought me here wasn't random merc work.
It was a leash.
Kess had thrown a paycheck into the dark and expected me to bite—expected the Daishi to come where it could be isolated, assessed, taken… or destroyed.
Holt's voice went low. "He's here."
I looked up from the slate.
"Where," I said.
Taila's eyes flicked to her sensor overlay. "There was a clean, high-power uplink spike earlier—origin central yard, then moving east. Someone's coordinating an evacuation."
Jinx finally spoke, voice tight. "Boss. You don't send a handler-lance and a scuttle ship unless the person paying is watching close."
Holt pointed at the tactical map. "East service road leads to the old landing pad."
I stared at the map for half a second.
Then I keyed my comms.
"Holt," I said. "Lock down the yard. Secure this archive like it's oxygen."
Holt hesitated. "And you?"
"I'm going to collect," I said.
Taila's voice came quickly, anxious. "Dack—don't let him leave."
"I won't," I said.
And I meant it with a calm that scared even me.
---
The service road was slick black mud over ancient rock, cut between slag ridges that rose like broken teeth. The Dire Wolf's steps were heavy and sure, sensor suite painting the world in heat and geometry.
A low-profile armored crawler tore through the rain ahead of me—fast for what it was, hugging the road, kicking up dirty spray.
It wasn't running like a militia vehicle.
It was running like someone important was inside.
I pushed the Dire Wolf forward.
The crawler fired smoke and chaff, cheap desperation.
My sensors cut through it.
Ahead, the landing pad glowed under floodlights, and a DropShip's engines were already spooling—rain turning to steam around its thrusters.
An escort 'Mech stood near the ramp—light and fast, Wolfhound silhouette sharp against the fog.
It moved to screen the crawler's approach.
I didn't waste time.
I sent a missile ripple wide to force it to shift, then punched it with a gauss strike that clipped its shoulder hard enough to spin it. As it tried to dart in close under my angles, I cut its leg with a short, hot line and backed that with an autocannon bite.
It stumbled, recovered, and ran.
Not dead.
Removed.
The crawler reached the ramp.
The ramp began to lift.
I fired once into the hinge assembly—just enough. Metal sparked. The ramp jammed halfway, shuddering like it wanted to obey and couldn't.
The DropShip tried to lift anyway.
I did what I'd done in the canyon.
I made it impossible.
The Dire Wolf surged forward and climbed onto the ship's side plating as it strained upward, my machine's mass turning its graceful escape into a groaning, unstable lurch. The hull flexed under my weight.
Rain hammered my canopy.
I keyed the secure line.
"Taila," I said. "Cut its comms."
"I'm on it," she replied, breath tight. "He's got a strong uplink—"
"Cut it."
Taila went silent for half a second—then her voice came back steadier than before.
"Copy."
The uplink died mid-spike.
The DropShip's thrusters flared unevenly, confused, suddenly deaf to whatever calm voice had been guiding it.
I drove the Dire Wolf's fist into the ramp seam.
Once. Metal screamed.
Twice. The seam buckled.
I fired a short, brutal burst into internal braces—controlled, not catastrophic. I wanted access, not debris.
The ramp gave way and slammed down into the mud with a heavy, wet clang.
Inside the bay, the crawler sat like a beetle in a jar.
And in front of it stood a man in a raincoat too clean for this planet.
Average build. Soft hands. Shoes that didn't belong in mud. Like I had last seen him... when he'd offered me my first contract and wanted to clean up lose ends.
Elias Kess.
He looked up at my machine with a face that tried to stay calm and failed.
Then he raised an external comm unit and let his voice roll out through the DropShip speakers—smooth, practiced, confident like it had bought every room it ever entered.
"Dack Jarn," Kess said. "This is unnecessary."
I powered down enough to open my cockpit.
I climbed out.
Not because I needed to.
Because I wanted him to see me as a man, not a myth inside armor.
I hit the mud and walked to the base of the ramp.
Kess's guards leveled rifles—then hesitated.
They weren't afraid of my pistol.
They were afraid of the Dire Wolf behind me.
Kess lifted a hand. "Don't," he told them, and they lowered their rifles like they hated themselves for it.
He stepped forward, boots staying suspiciously clean.
He smiled like we were negotiating a contract over coffee.
"You're one pilot," he said. "One machine. You can't win long-term."
I looked up at him.
"I'm not trying to win long-term," I said. "I'm collecting debt."
His smile tightened. "I can pay you. Ten times what Holt can. You work for anyone who pays well."
I didn't answer immediately.
Because that line would've worked on the man I'd been when I took the contract in Chapter One—before I knew the chain behind it was wrapped around my father's throat.
So I answered with the ledger.
I reached into my jacket and held up the slate Taila had handed me—screen facing him, rain beading on the glass.
His eyes flicked down.
He saw the entry.
**JARN — LINE TERMINATION.**
**DAISHI CHASSIS — RECOVERY PRIORITY.**
**Handler: SABLE.**
His smile didn't disappear.
But something behind it did.
A flicker. A crack.
"Business," he said softly, like that explained everything.
"My father," I said.
Kess exhaled as if inconvenienced by memory. "Your father refused a profitable arrangement."
That was all.
Not regret. Not justification.
Just irritation that a man had failed to be useful.
The cold in my chest settled into a shape.
Kess's right hand drifted toward his coat.
I saw it.
I didn't give him time to pretend he was brave.
I drew my sidearm and fired once.
Kess jerked backward, shock written across his face more than pain, and fell onto the ramp with rain splashing around him.
His guards froze. And then decided that their lives weren't worth the price of putting me down, they lowered their weapons, gaze still locked on my Dire Wolf behind me.
I stepped up the ramp.
Kess tried to speak—wet breath, blood at the corner of his mouth.
"You—" he rasped.
I looked down at him.
For a moment, I saw my father's hands—grease-stained, steady—showing me how to tighten a coupling, how to respect a machine, how to read danger before it arrived.
Then I saw the ledger again.
A clean line item.
A paid death.
Kess tried to smile through it. "You could've—"
"Make it educational," I said quietly.
Then I fired again.
Kess went still.
The rain kept falling like the planet didn't care which men died and which men lived.
I stood there for a long moment, weapon lowered, feeling no triumph—only a cold finality.
Because killing Kess didn't bring my father back.
It just stopped Kess from writing any more names into his ledger.
Behind me, comms crackled.
Holt's voice, tight and disbelieving. "Is he—"
"Yes," I said. "He's done."
Taila's voice came smaller than I'd ever heard it. "You saw the entry. You *knew*."
"Yes," I said again. "I knew."
Jinx's voice cut in, too light because that's how she survived heavy things. "Boss just executed a man who thought the universe was a spreadsheet."
Holt snapped, "Jinx—"
"Sorry," Jinx said, then quieter, "Good work, boss."
I looked out across the plateau.
In the distance, Ash Hounds' positions burned in pockets. Holt's militia moved with purpose, securing prisoners and weapons. The funding chain had lost its face and its teeth in the same night.
But I didn't let myself pretend it was over.
Because Kess had a handler.
And handlers don't die just because the employer does.
I keyed the secure channel one more time.
"Taila," I said. "Save everything. Mirror it. Triple it. If Sable exists, we drag him into the light next."
Her voice steadied. "Copy."
I turned, walked back down into the mud, and climbed into my father's Dire Wolf.
The cockpit sealed.
The HUD lit.
The world became lines again.
And somewhere beneath the cold, something else hardened too:
A line.
Not for money.
For family.
For anyone Kess would've written into a ledger next.