A few days became routine.
Not peace—routine.
The Dire Wolf, Highlander, and Centurion came out of the yard looking like machines that had survived and learned from it. Armor plates were seated clean instead of welded in desperation. Actuator seals stopped weeping fluid. Heat sinks cycled evenly again. The kind of repairs you paid for when you expected to live long enough to regret the bill.
They trained anyway.
Every day—sims until Taila's hands shook, then sims again until the shaking stopped.
Dack ran them the way he fought: simple, brutal, repeatable.
"Don't stop moving."
"Don't fix mistakes by staring at them."
"Don't chase."
"Don't split."
Jinx complained the whole time and got better anyway.
Taila hated it and got better anyway.
Unit cohesion grew the way scars grew—slow, uncomfortable, and permanent.
In the sim pods, the three of them learned each other's timing. The pauses between words. The way Jinx always tried to flank one step too far. The way Taila still wanted to pull back when her armor alarms screamed. The way Dack anchored the center and expected the world to break on him.
One night, Taila came out of the pod soaked in sweat, furious and bright-eyed.
"I didn't freeze," she said, like she had to say it out loud or it wouldn't count.
Dack nodded once. "I saw."
Jinx grinned. "He's proud of you. He's just emotionally constipated."
Dack didn't deny it. He just looked at Taila and said, blunt, "You're doing the work."
Taila's face went warm. "Yeah."
And then Jinx kissed Dack in the open like she'd decided the whole port could go to hell if it didn't like it. Taila followed a second later—still shy, but no longer hiding.
Lyra pretended not to notice.
She was good at pretending.
But over the last few days, the Leopard's thin bulkheads had made it impossible not to hear what happened when the ship's lights went low and the three of them stopped pretending they were only coworkers.
Lyra had sat in her cockpit, eyes on invoices and burn rates and repair schedules, and listened to muffled laughter, breath, and the creak of a bunk that wasn't designed for… that.
She'd been embarrassed.
She'd also felt something warm and strange in her chest.
Not jealousy exactly—more like curiosity with teeth.
What would it feel like to have someone look at you the way Dack looked at them when he thought nobody was watching? Blunt and steady. Like you were part of the plan. Like you mattered.
She told herself it was stress.
She told herself it was loneliness.
She told herself a lot of things.
Then the contract came in, and all those thoughts got shoved into a locker and padlocked.
Because the pay was big.
And the job was a planet.
---
The briefing wasn't held in Crater Bay. It was held aboard an employer DropShip two jumps later, inside a hangar big enough to swallow their Leopard like a toy.
They'd hitched transport with a merc task force under a Taurian-brokered contract—enough money behind it that the paperwork smelled clean even if the job wouldn't be.
A holo map floated above a table, rotating slowly.
CANTORRELL IV
Periphery borderworld. Mining. Refinery grids. A single major city, Rook's Fall, built around a spaceport and a hardened comms station. Pirates had taken it three months ago, hijacking shipments and using the planetary defenses to make themselves expensive to remove.
The employer didn't want "harassment."
They wanted ownership.
A man in a worn dress uniform spoke with the tired certainty of someone who'd watched mercs ruin worlds and still hired them anyway.
"Objective is Rook's Fall spaceport," he said. "Secondary is the comms node. We take those, the planet folds. We do not need to chase raiders into the hills for months. We cut off their throat and let the body die."
A few merc officers nodded. A few smiled.
On the holo, drop corridors lit up, then blinked red where anti-air sites covered them.
The pirate 'Mechs were listed next—confirmed sightings and probable salvage:
Awesome
Orion
Catapult
Archer
Marauder
Hunchback
Shadow Hawk
Griffin
Panther
Jenner
Trebuchet
And that was just what they'd seen.
They were going in with three lances of their own plus attached merc muscle:
Alpha Lance (assault spearhead):
Atlas
Warhammer
Dire Wolf (Dack)
Highlander (Jinx)
Bravo Lance (heavy follow):
Marauder
Orion
Catapult
Archer
Charlie Lance (medium screen):
Shadow Hawk
Griffin
Wolverine
Vindicator
Taila's Centurion wasn't officially on Alpha—too slow for the spearhead on paper. But Dack had stared at the roster and said, "She's with me."
The officer had started to object.
Dack had talked more lately, but his voice was still a hard edge. "She's with me or I'm not."
That ended the discussion.
So Taila's Centurion became "attached element," riding Dack's wake. Not ideal. Not pretty. Real.
Jinx leaned over the holo and grinned. "Planetary assault. Finally."
Dack looked at the map. "Long fight."
"Yeah," Jinx said, delighted. "We're getting paid for it."
Taila swallowed. "How long."
Dack answered simply. "Until they break."
The man in uniform pointed to the terrain around Rook's Fall: basalt ridges, ash plains, a dry riverbed that cut the approaches like a scar.
"Pirates dug in on the ridgelines," he said. "Expect mines, artillery, and ambushes. They've got ground vehicles too—Scorpion tanks, Manticores, missile carriers. Don't ignore them."
Dack's eyes narrowed. "Artillery positions?"
A second holo popped—likely sites circled. "We think they've got towed Long Toms and mobile launchers. They've been shelling anyone who comes close."
Dack nodded once. "We kill spotters."
Jinx's grin sharpened. "And then we kill the guns."
Lyra stood at the back of the hangar with her tablet, quiet as always, and watched Dack without meaning to.
He was younger than half the people in the room, average in the face, lean in the shoulders, nothing about him that screamed legend until you realized he didn't fidget, didn't posture, didn't ask for permission. He just… decided.
She wondered what it would feel like to have someone decide you were part of his center.
She shoved the thought away and focused on her role.
Because in a few hours she'd be flying through flak with their home strapped to her hands.
---
Drop day turned everything sharp.
The Leopard hung inside a larger assault DropShip's bay like a parasite riding a whale. Outside the bay doors, Cantorrell IV filled the view—cloud bands, a hard-lit terminator line, lightning storms over the southern hemisphere.
Lyra sat in her cockpit, hands steady on controls, hearing the comm net stack with voices that sounded brave because fear didn't help anyone.
Jinx's voice came through, bright. "Taila, you ready?"
Taila's reply was tight. "Ready."
Dack's voice cut in, blunt. "Breathe. Follow calls. Don't chase."
"Copy," Taila said.
Lyra listened to them and felt that warm ache again—an awareness that this wasn't just a job to them anymore. Not to Dack. Not with the way he checked their status. Not with the way his blunt words landed like hands you could hold onto.
The assault DropShip shuddered.
Bay doors opened.
The universe became noise.
"Green light in ten," an operator called.
Lyra swallowed and keyed her own channel. "Dack. I'm right behind you."
Dack answered instantly. "I know. Stay cold."
It wasn't sweet.
It was trust.
And it made her stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with gravity.
"Five."
The clamps released.
The Leopard dropped.
---
Atmosphere hit like a fist.
Heat washed the hull. The ship groaned. Warning lights flickered as the first bursts of flak snapped up from below—black puffs blooming like rotten flowers in the sky.
Lyra kept her voice calm because that was her job.
"Flak bursts at two o'clock. Missile tracks—multiple. I'm diving through cloud."
She rolled the Leopard, not elegant, just functional, letting the cloud layer swallow her and smear her signature. Alarms screamed. The hull rattled. A proximity blast punched the ship sideways.
She corrected.
Chaff dumped.
A missile detonated close enough to paint the cockpit glass with fire.
Lyra didn't scream. She didn't pray.
She flew.
Through a gap in the clouds, she saw the ground—ash plains, ridges, a distant grid of lights that had to be Rook's Fall. Laser fire stitched upward from defensive towers around the spaceport. Aerospace fighters knifed past, burning contrails.
The assault DropShips around her took hits too—one trailing smoke, one venting plasma in a glittering ribbon.
Somewhere in the chaos, Lyra thought of Dack's hands—steady, blunt, unshaking—and wondered if he ever felt this fear and just didn't show it.
Then the landing zone rose up fast.
"Touching down," she said. "Two seconds."
The Leopard's struts slammed into cracked basalt.
The bay ramp dropped.
Cold air rushed in.
And three giants walked out.
---
The Dire Wolf went first, as always.
It looked wrong on an Inner Sphere world—too clean in its lines, too heavy in its presence, Clan geometry carrying a promise of violence. Its feet hit basalt and cracked it, every step a statement.
The Highlander followed, heavier and older but stubborn as a mountain. Jinx's machine looked like it had been born in war and never learned another language.
Taila's Centurion came last, smaller but no longer timid. It moved with caution and purpose, staying in the Dire Wolf's wake where the enemy's first instincts would be to focus on the bigger threats.
Other lances deployed around them—Atlas stomping to the left, Warhammer to the right, and behind them the heavies and mediums fanning out.
The landing zone wasn't uncontested.
The first shells landed before the ramp even finished lowering.
Artillery.
The impact cratered basalt, threw ash into the air, and flipped a supply truck end-over-end like a toy. A second shell hit near the Charlie Lance staging line; a Vindicator staggered, armor shredded, pilot swearing across comms as he tried to keep his machine upright.
Dack's voice came immediate and loud on the lance channel—more talkative than he used to be, but still blunt.
"Spread. Don't bunch. Find spotters."
Jinx: "Copy."
Taila: "Copy."
The Dire Wolf pushed forward, using its bulk as moving cover without letting anyone get close enough to hide behind it. Dack didn't like clustering. Clustering got people killed.
They crested the first basalt rise and the pirates showed themselves.
A screen of lights and mediums erupted from behind ridges and slag heaps:
A Jenner sprinting. A Panther holding angle. A Griffin stepping into view with the confidence of someone who'd killed men for less. Two Trebuchets farther back with missile doors open like jaws.
"Contact, front," Dack said. "They're screening."
Jinx sounded thrilled. "Let's break them."
The Dire Wolf fired first—LRMs arcing overhead, not to kill, but to force movement. The Trebuchets shuffled and split. The Jenner cut left, fast. The Panther's PPC snapped, blue-white, carving a line of molten glass across the basalt near the Dire Wolf's feet.
Dack answered with a gauss shot that tore a chunk out of the Panther's ridge cover.
Jinx's Highlander jumped—just a short hop to a higher shelf, landing hard, and fired. Her gauss round punched through the Griffin's shoulder plating and spun it half a step, forcing it to backpedal.
Taila tracked the Jenner, breathing audibly in comms.
Dack caught it. "Taila. Ignore the bait. Hold your lane."
The Jenner tried to dart behind the Dire Wolf, looking for the Centurion. Taila didn't chase; she pivoted, kept distance, and fired her AC/10 when the Jenner committed.
The shot clipped the Jenner's leg.
Not a kill. A punishment.
The Jenner stumbled, lost speed, and suddenly the Atlas on the left had a clear line. One savage volley later, the Jenner vanished in a flash of metal and fire.
Dack didn't celebrate. "Good. Keep discipline."
Taila's voice trembled with adrenaline. "Copy."
The screen broke—lights and mediums falling back toward the city, drawing them in.
Jinx laughed. "They're running."
"They're leading," Dack corrected.
A new wave of shells fell.
This time aimed.
One hit close enough to the Dire Wolf to rattle Dack's teeth. Another landed between Alpha and Bravo, forcing the formation to split around a fresh crater of molten basalt.
"Spotter's close," Dack said. "Raven?"
Lyra's voice came from above, tight. "I'm seeing electronic noise on the ridge line. Could be a Raven or a fixed observer."
Dack didn't hesitate. "We cut the ridge."
They advanced into the dry riverbed—an ancient channel that offered cover from direct artillery line-of-sight. Basalt walls rose on both sides like teeth.
That's where the pirates hit them properly.
A Hunchback stepped into the riverbed mouth, broad and ugly, autocannon arm already spitting. A Shadow Hawk popped up on the left rim. A Panther on the right rim. Crossfire.
The Hunchback's volley slammed into a merc Wolverine ahead of Charlie. Armor peeled away. The Wolverine staggered, smoke venting, pilot screaming as alarms flooded his cockpit.
Dack's voice snapped, hard. "Charlie, pull back. Alpha pushes through."
Jinx: "On it."
The Dire Wolf drove forward into the choke point, taking the worst of the fire because that was what it was built for. Dack fired his LRMs high to bracket the rim positions, then drove a gauss shot into the Hunchback's torso.
The Hunchback staggered but didn't drop. It was piloted by someone mean.
Jinx jumped again, landing on a shelf with a clean angle. She fired and the Hunchback's right side exploded outward—armor, actuator, and cockpit plating shattering in a bright spray.
The Hunchback didn't explode clean.
It died ugly—pilot trapped, machine collapsing into the ash, smoke pouring out like breath leaving a body.
Taila's Centurion fired on the Shadow Hawk, her missile rack whining, forcing it to duck back behind the rim.
"Good," Dack said. "Keep them honest."
The Panther's PPC snapped again—caught the Centurion's shoulder and turned plating into molten streaks.
Taila gasped.
Dack's voice came fast. "Taila, status."
"Armor breach shallow," she said, tight. "I'm okay."
"Don't lock up," Dack warned.
"I'm not," Taila snapped—then steadied herself. "I'm not."
Dack felt something in his chest unclench. He hated that he felt it. He didn't deny it.
They pushed through the riverbed choke, broke into open ground—and saw the real line.
The pirates had staged their main defense outside Rook's Fall along a ridge network bristling with dug-in armor and camo nets.
An Awesome stood on the central ridge like a monument, PPCs tracking slowly. To its right, an Archer behind cover, missile arcs already rising. To its left, an Orion moving forward as a mobile anchor. Farther back, a Catapult on elevated terrain, its missile racks opening like wings.
This wasn't a scattered pirate gang.
This was a pirate warlord's army.
Jinx's voice went low. "That's a real line."
Dack answered. "Yeah. That's why we're paid."
Lyra's voice cut in. "I'm seeing multiple artillery signatures behind the ridge. They're firing in rotation. They've got spotters and pre-registered zones."
Dack took a breath, then spoke more than he would've a month ago.
"Listen," he said, to Jinx and Taila both. "We don't win this by being brave. We win by breaking pieces. One at a time."
Jinx: "Say the word."
Taila: "Copy."
Dack watched the ridge. Watched the Awesome's slow tracking. The Orion's steady gait. The Archer's missile arcs that never stopped.
Then he made the call.
"Alpha pushes center," he said. "Atlas draws the Awesome. Warhammer and Jinx take the Orion's flanks. Taila stays on my left knee—close enough to cover, far enough not to get splashed."
Taila's voice came quick. "Yes."
Jinx laughed. "He's giving us knee assignments now. We're a real unit."
Dack didn't bite. "Move."
They moved.
The ridge line opened up in fire.
The Archer's missiles came down like rain—impacts walking across the ash plain. The Catapult added its own volleys, saturating. The Awesome fired, PPC bolts cracking, one after another, punching craters into the ground and turning chunks of basalt into glowing glass.
The Atlas took the first clean hit—PPC slammed into its chest, armor flaring and smoking, the pilot swearing and pushing forward anyway.
The Dire Wolf answered with LRMs, forcing the Archer and Catapult to keep shifting, then fired its gauss again—aimed at the Orion's exposed torso as it stepped forward.
The shot hit hard, tearing armor away.
The Orion didn't fall. It kept coming. A stubborn thing with a stubborn pilot.
Jinx's Highlander jumped to a side shelf and fired. Her gauss round punched into the Orion's side, then her missiles followed, chewing into the gap. The Orion staggered, tried to rotate to face her—
—and the Warhammer on Alpha's right lit it up from the front, lasers raking.
The Orion finally started to die.
Not dramatic. Mechanical. A machine losing the will to stand.
It fell forward in the ash like a collapsing building.
"Orion down," Jinx said, breathless and pleased.
Dack didn't celebrate. "Good. Next."
The Awesome was still standing, still firing, still a threat that didn't care how brave you were.
The Atlas hammered it head-on, absorbing punishment that would've cored lighter machines. The Awesome kept firing anyway, stripping armor, trying to reach the Atlas's cockpit with raw power.
Dack shifted left, trying to get an angle.
Taila's Centurion stayed glued to his guidance, firing when she had clean shots, not wasting heat or ammo when she didn't.
"Taila," Dack said, "you're doing fine."
There was a pause on comms—Taila startled by the praise mid-battle.
Then: "Copy."
Jinx's voice cut in, teasing even through chaos. "He complimented you. Mark the calendar."
Dack snapped, not angry, just sharp. "Focus."
The Archer tried to reposition, missile arcs shifting.
Dack saw it. "Archer's moving—"
A shell landed close.
Artillery.
The blast lifted the Dire Wolf's left side enough to make the cockpit jolt. Warnings screamed. Taila shouted. Jinx swore.
Dack's voice stayed brutal and steady. "I'm up. Taila, you up."
"Yes!" Taila said.
"Jinx."
"Always," Jinx replied.
Lyra's voice came tight, suddenly not as calm. "Dack—spotter confirmed. It's a drone team on the ridge flank, painting you. I can't hit them without exposing the Leopard."
"Don't," Dack said immediately. "Stay alive."
The words left his mouth fast—too fast.
He heard the tiny pause in Lyra's breathing on comms.
Then she answered softly, controlled again. "Copy."
Dack shoved the thought away and pushed forward.
They hit the ridge like a slow avalanche.
The Atlas finally got inside the Awesome's comfortable range and slammed it with brutal fire. The Awesome's PPCs fired one last time, then stuttered—one arm blown off, the other sparking. It tried to backpedal.
It didn't make it.
It went down in pieces, collapsing into the trench line like a monument dragged into the dirt.
The pirate line wavered.
That was when the Catapult and Archer did what missile boats did when they started losing ground.
They saturated everything.
The sky filled with contrails. The ridge became a storm of impacts. The Atlas took hit after hit, armor shredded. The Warhammer's left arm went dark. A merc Marauder behind Bravo stumbled, leg actuator blown, pilot screaming as the machine fell on its side.
Dack's voice cut across the chaos. "Push. Don't stop. They're panicking."
They reached the ridge crest.
That's where the pirates met them with reserve.
A Marauder—pirate-marked, brutal, stepped into view at close range, firing into Alpha's flank. Behind it, a Catapult rose from a concealed pit, missile racks opening point-blank.
And then—like a final insult—another heavy silhouette crested behind them:
A King Crab.
Twin autocannons like jaws.
Jinx's voice went quiet. "Oh, hell."
Dack's hands tightened on his controls. "That's the warlord."
The King Crab didn't care about tactics. It cared about intimidation.
It fired.
The impact tore a chunk out of the Atlas's side armor big enough to see internal structure. The Atlas staggered, almost fell, then kept moving because that's what assault pilots did when they didn't want to die.
Dack spoke, more than he used to, voice hard with urgency and something personal.
"Taila," he said, "stay with me. Don't get pulled by that King Crab. It wants you scared."
"I'm here," Taila said, tight.
"Jinx, you can't duel it," Dack warned.
Jinx laughed, wild. "Watch me try."
"Don't," Dack said.
She paused—half a second where her usual chaos met his tone and realized he meant it.
"Fine," Jinx snapped. "But I'm gonna hurt it."
"Good," Dack said. "We all are."
The fight turned into a grinder.
Minutes became hours.
Ridge to ridge. Trench to trench. Smoke thick enough to choke sensors. Ash plains turned to mud under constant impacts. Wrecks piled up—Scorpion tanks burning, a Manticores' turret blown clean off, a Trebuchet lying open like a gutted animal.
Merc 'Mechs died too.
A Griffin went down hard, cockpit breached. A Vindicator tried to withdraw and caught a missile volley mid-step, collapsing in a bright, ugly bloom. A Shadow Hawk limped on one leg, pilot refusing to eject until his machine literally couldn't stand anymore.
Dack watched it all with a cold focus.
But he kept checking his comms.
"Taila—status."
"Yellow," she'd answer. "Still moving."
"Jinx."
"Still pretty," she'd say, breathless, then: "Green enough."
Lyra, from above, voice controlled but not distant anymore. "Leopard is safe. Fuel stable. I'm tracking your ammo burn. If you need extraction I can punch in."
"Not yet," Dack would say. "Stay alive."
And each time he said it, Lyra's mind would flicker back to those nights on the ship, to muffled sounds and laughter and the warmth of being wanted.
She'd shake it off and keep flying.
Because right now, wanting things got you killed.
---
They broke the pirate ridge line near dusk.
Not because the pirates ran out of courage.
Because they ran out of machines.
The King Crab was still alive—scarred, smoking, one autocannon jammed. The pirate Marauder had lost an arm and kept fighting anyway. The Catapult pit was a crater now, missile racks twisted and burning.
But the pirates were withdrawing toward Rook's Fall.
Toward the city.
Toward buildings that could hide ambushes and short-range killers.
Jinx's voice came rough. "We're pushing into urban?"
The Atlas pilot answered on net, exhausted. "We take the spaceport. We end this."
Dack looked toward the distant lights of Rook's Fall, shimmering through smoke and ash.
Urban combat meant corners. It meant traps. It meant short-range shots that didn't give you time to react.
It meant Taila's nerves would be tested in the worst way.
He spoke, blunt but more human than he would've been two weeks ago.
"Taila," he said, "you don't have to be fearless. You just have to keep moving."
Taila's voice came small but steady. "Copy."
Jinx cut in, quieter than usual. "Boss… you're worried."
Dack didn't deny it. "Yeah."
That silence that followed was heavy and real.
Then Dack pushed forward.
They advanced on Rook's Fall under smoke and flickering fires, the ground shaking with every step of assault machines.
Lyra circled overhead in the Leopard, watching the three dots that mattered most to her move into the city's shadow.
She felt embarrassed by her own thoughts.
She also felt something else.
Pride.
Because they weren't just three separate pilots anymore.
They were becoming a unit.
A lance in all but paperwork.
And as the first city lights reflected off the Dire Wolf's armor, Lyra caught herself wondering—just once—what it would feel like to be part of that closeness when the battle was over.
Then a missile warning shrieked in her cockpit.
Her eyes snapped back to instruments.
Professional again.
Because Cantorrell IV wasn't done bleeding.
And neither were they.