Rook's Fall looked like a city that had been built to survive war—then lost the habit.
From the ridge line, the lights were a dirty smear behind smoke. Refinery towers blinked red through drifting ash. The spaceport's hardened floodlights cut pale cones across tarmac and hangars, sweeping like search eyes. Above it all, the comms mast on the far hill flashed a steady pulse, a lighthouse telling every pirate with a transmitter that the world still had a voice.
Dack's Dire Wolf stood at the lip of the city's outer industrial belt, heat sinks ticking, armor blackened and re-scored from hours of fighting. To his right, Jinx's Highlander shifted its weight like it was impatient to start punching buildings. Taila's Centurion held close on his left, not hiding—just positioned where her guns mattered and her fear didn't get to make decisions.
They weren't fresh. None of them were.
But they were still standing.
Across the net, other lances reported in rough, tired voices:
The Atlas in Alpha was breathing fire and running on stubbornness, armor shredded into exposed frame in places.
The Warhammer was missing an arm and pretending it didn't care.
Bravo Lance was down a machine and limping.
Charlie Lance was scattered and battered, but alive.
The pirates had fallen back into the city on purpose.
Urban meant corners. Kill zones. Short ranges. Mines and ambush 'Mechs that didn't need to be better than you—just close enough to take something with them.
Jinx sounded almost gleeful. "We're really doing this."
Dack's voice came blunt over the lance channel. "We take the spaceport perimeter first. Don't get pulled deep. Urban eats you if you chase."
Taila's reply was tight but steady. "Copy."
Lyra's voice came from above, clipped by interference and strain. "Leopard holding at altitude. I'm seeing pirate aerospace activity staging near the spaceport—likely Shilone or Sabre class. Also… ground radar spikes. There's a SAM battery somewhere in the industrial belt."
Dack didn't like that. "You stay cold."
Lyra paused—just a fraction. "Copy."
Jinx cut in, too casual. "Stay cold, Lyra. We'll come back to the ship and do… morale-building."
Taila made a small choking noise on comms.
Lyra's voice went a shade tighter. "Understood."
Dack's tone sharpened. "Jinx. Focus."
Jinx laughed, but she backed off. "Yes, boss."
The city waited.
Dack pushed forward.
The Dire Wolf's feet hit broken pavement and turned it to rubble. Smoke rolled between warehouses like fog. Shipping containers lay tipped and welded into barricades. The outer industrial belt of Rook's Fall was a maze of pipe forests, loading gantries, and half-collapsed structures that could hide anything from infantry with satchel charges to a brawler 'Mech waiting with its reactor cold.
The first ten minutes were too quiet.
Then the ground detonated.
A mine went off under the lead elements of Charlie Lance—an unseen pressure plate buried in cracked asphalt. The blast tore a crater wide enough to swallow a light 'Mech. A Wolverine stumbled at the edge, one leg actuator suddenly screaming, pilot cursing as he fought to keep upright.
A second mine popped—less lethal, more directional—throwing shrapnel into a Griffin's hip plating and making it spin into a warehouse wall hard enough to knock down part of the façade.
"Minefield," Dack said. "They're funneling."
Jinx's Highlander stepped left, jump jets flaring briefly just to clear a crater edge rather than leap fully. "Where's the funnel end?"
Dack scanned. "Ahead. Pipe yard. Overpass."
Taila's Centurion's sensors flickered through smoke. "I'm picking heat blooms—multiple. On the elevated walkway."
"Spotters," Dack said. "Or a trap."
"Both," Jinx said, pleased.
They reached the mouth of the pipe yard and the city bit down.
A heavy silhouette stepped out from behind a refinery support tower—blocky and purposeful.
Hunchback.
The shoulder-mounted cannon stared at them like a single dead eye.
On the elevated overpass above, a Hatchetman revealed itself in a slow, deliberate motion—stepping into the open with that stupid hatchet raised like it thought drama made it deadlier.
The Hunchback fired first.
The blast was close-range, ugly, and loud enough that even through cockpit insulation it felt like being punched in the teeth. A merc Vindicator caught the edge of it and lost half its torso armor in one savage hit, stumbling backward trailing smoke and screaming alarms.
Jinx swore. "AC/20. That Hunchback wants blood."
Dack's voice stayed flat. "It'll get metal instead."
He fired his LRMs to bracket the overpass and force the Hatchetman to move. The missiles detonated along the concrete lip, blowing chunks of guardrail and sending shards raining down. The Hatchetman ducked back for a moment—but it didn't retreat. It was waiting for them to commit under it.
The Hunchback shifted, trying to line up the Dire Wolf again.
Dack answered with a gauss shot and followed with a short, heavy autocannon burst—enough to tear armor plates off the Hunchback's chest and force it to twist away. It didn't drop. Hunchbacks rarely died clean. They died angry.
"Jinx," Dack said. "Take high. Flush the Hatchetman off that overpass. Taila—hold my left. Watch for flankers."
Taila's voice came immediate. "Copy."
Jinx's Highlander jumped, jets roaring, landing on a lower gantry to gain height without exposing herself above the skyline too long. She fired her gauss and the round ripped through the overpass support, collapsing a section of concrete. The Hatchetman lurched as the platform bucked beneath it.
It didn't fall.
It jumped down.
Straight at Taila.
Taila's Centurion backed up instinctively—one step. Then another. Her breathing spiked on comms.
Dack heard it. "Taila. Don't run. Angle. Keep moving."
The Hatchetman hit the ground and charged like it wanted to solve everything with a blade.
Taila fired her AC/10 once—clean, controlled—then followed with her LRMs. The shells tore armor chunks off the Hatchetman's torso, but the pirate pilot didn't care. The hatchet came up.
Taila's Centurion pivoted to keep distance, but the ground was uneven—pipes, debris, broken asphalt. The Hatchetman closed fast.
Dack shifted his Dire Wolf one step forward—not to block, not to play hero, but to change the angle.
"Taila, right," he snapped. "Now."
She obeyed. Centurion sidestepping hard.
The Hatchetman's hatchet came down where she had been, burying into a thick pipe line and showering sparks. The impact jarred the Hatchetman, locking it in place for a half second.
That half second was all a Dire Wolf needed.
Dack fired again—gauss first, then a brutal autocannon follow-up—punching into the Hatchetman's torso. Jinx's Highlander added a missile volley from above. The Hatchetman staggered, tried to pull its hatchet free—
—and then its reactor went unstable.
It didn't explode like a movie.
It died like machinery dying—violent, messy, hot.
The Hatchetman slumped, cockpit glass spiderwebbing. Fire blossomed inside for a moment. A scream cut across open channel and then went static.
Taila's voice shook. "I— I didn't—"
"You did what you had to," Dack said, blunt and immediate. "Keep moving."
The Hunchback tried again, cannon tracking Dack.
Jinx landed hard, stepped into flank, and fired her gauss. The round tore the Hunchback's shoulder mount half apart. The AC/20 barrel twisted at a broken angle like a snapped bone.
The Hunchback kept coming anyway, trying to ram.
Dack didn't let it. Another gauss hit, then a second. The Hunchback finally collapsed forward into a pipe rack, crushing steel and sending a chain reaction of ruptures through the yard. Steam and burning fuel vented into the air in a hissing cloud.
Urban warfare wasn't elegant.
It was work.
And it kept finding new ways to punish you.
"Pipe yard clear," Dack said. "Keep the pace."
Taila's breathing steadied. "Copy."
Jinx sounded satisfied. "Taila didn't freeze."
Dack answered, more talkative than he used to be—still blunt. "She listened."
Taila didn't speak, but the quiet pride in her "Copy" was audible.
They pushed deeper.
---
The industrial belt narrowed into a corridor of warehouses and stacked containers, all of it built to channel vehicles. Pirates had turned it into a killing ground.
A Demolisher tank—twin cannons—popped out from a side alley at close range, firing into the Warhammer's damaged side. The impact rocked the heavy 'Mech, tearing more armor away.
The Warhammer pilot cursed and returned fire, but the Demolisher backed into cover like it had done it before.
A Manticore rolled into view farther back, missile rack opening.
Dack's eyes narrowed. He didn't like tanks. Tanks were cheap and cruel, and the Periphery loved cheap cruelty.
"Armor on the left," he called. "Don't ignore it."
Taila tracked the Manticore, fired her LRMs to force it to reposition. Jinx dropped a gauss shot into the Demolisher's alley mouth—enough to punch through the wall beside it and pepper the tank with debris. The Demolisher reversed in panic, then tried to re-emerge—
—and caught a direct hit from the Atlas's autocannon, exploding into a fireball that lit the alley like a furnace.
Dack didn't celebrate. "Move."
They reached the first spaceport perimeter fence.
Hardened barriers. Concrete revetments. Anti-vehicle trenches. Floodlights sweeping.
Pirates had turned the spaceport into a fortress.
On the tarmac beyond, hangars sat like sleeping beasts. A grounded Union—different from Kappa-Seven's corpse—was parked near a fuel depot with scorch marks on its hull. Probably stolen. Probably held together by prayer and stolen parts.
And there—near the radar tower—something that made Dack's gut tighten:
A Chaparral missile carrier tucked behind a hangar, angled upward like it was waiting for something in the sky.
SAM.
Lyra's earlier warning snapped into focus.
"Lyra," Dack said immediately. "SAM at the spaceport. Chaparral. You stay high."
Lyra's voice came back calm, but there was tension under it now. "Copy. I see it."
Jinx's voice went sharp. "Can we kill it?"
"Not yet," Dack said. "We take perimeter first. Then we push inside and knock out air defenses."
Taila's voice came quiet. "They're forcing us to fight without extraction."
"Yeah," Dack said. "So we don't need extraction."
Jinx laughed once. "That's insane."
Dack replied, deadpan. "Correct."
They breached the perimeter the hard way.
The Atlas led, smashing through concrete barriers like they were paper. The Warhammer followed, laying down fire on the nearest hangar corners where pirate infantry clustered with portable launchers.
A Shadow Hawk darted between cargo stacks, trying to flank the assault line. A Griffin popped from behind a fuel tank. A Panther held a tight angle on a control tower balcony like it wanted to repeat the riverbed trick.
Dack moved like a wedge.
He fired LRMs high to keep heads down and break line-of-sight, then put a gauss round into the Shadow Hawk's hip. Jinx's Highlander jumped to a hangar roof edge—brief, careful—and fired down into the Griffin, forcing it into retreat.
Taila stayed close, exactly where Dack had told her. Her Centurion fired in controlled bursts—AC/10 once, LRMs once—never dumping everything, never chasing. She held the lane like she belonged there.
That was her victory.
Not killing the most enemies.
Not being flashy.
Just not breaking.
A pirate Hunchback—another one, different paint—lunged from behind a hangar corner, trying to catch Taila in close range.
Dack saw it and spoke immediately. "Back. Two steps."
Taila backed.
The Hunchback fired—missed the cockpit, chewed armor and pavement instead.
Taila fired back, AC/10 slamming into its chest and stopping its rush cold.
Jinx laughed, wild. "Yes. That's it."
Dack's voice came low. "Good discipline."
Then the sky screamed.
Lyra's voice snapped into the net. "Aerospace—two contacts, inbound. Likely Shilones. They're coming in low under cloud, using the city skyline."
Dack looked up through smoke and saw them—sleek dark shapes knifing through the haze, aiming toward the spaceport, probably looking for an easy kill on a DropShip or a cluster of assault 'Mechs.
The Chaparral's radar dish turned.
The SAM battery was tracking—but it didn't fire.
Pirates weren't trying to protect the city.
They were trying to own the sky.
Lyra's voice tightened. "They're painting me. Dack, they're going to try to force me lower into the SAM envelope or run me off."
Dack's jaw flexed.
He had two choices: let Lyra stay safe and lose air support completely, or risk the Leopard to keep the mission coherent.
He cared now. Too much.
He kept it blunt anyway. "Don't come lower."
Lyra hesitated—tiny. "If I stay high, I can't help if you need extraction."
Dack answered fast. "We don't need extraction."
Jinx cut in, suddenly serious. "Boss, they're going to make us need it."
Taila's voice was small. "Lyra—"
Lyra's breathing came through the channel. Controlled. Focused. But not distant.
"I can run behind the hangars," Lyra said. "Low approach, line-of-sight masked. If I can get close enough, I can drop chaff and force the fighters into a bad angle."
"That puts you near the Chaparral," Dack said.
"Yes," Lyra replied.
Dack hated it. He didn't hide it. "Don't die."
Lyra's voice went softer for half a second. "Copy."
Then she did it.
The Leopard dropped, cutting thrust, sliding behind the hangar line like a predator skimming water. Floodlights painted her hull for a heartbeat. The Chaparral's launcher pods angled—
—but the Shilones came in too fast, too low, trying to line up a run on the Leopard's last known position.
Lyra dumped chaff.
A shimmering cloud bloomed behind the hangars.
The first Shilone's targeting got dirty. It pulled up hard, avoiding a collision with a crane tower. The second committed anyway—because pirate pilots were brave when they were stupid.
It screamed low over the tarmac—
—and a mercenary anti-air turret on the far side of the port finally got a clean shot.
The Shilone took a hit, trailing smoke, banking hard.
The Chaparral fired late, missile streaking upward—
—but it wasn't aimed at the fighters.
It was aimed at the Leopard.
Lyra swore—quiet, controlled—and rolled the DropShip behind a fuel tank, the missile detonating against hangar wall instead, showering the tarmac with debris and fire.
Dack's voice was immediate. "Lyra, out. Now."
Lyra's breathing was tight. "Copy."
She climbed hard and vanished into cloud again—alive.
Jinx let out a harsh laugh. "She's crazy."
Dack replied, blunt. "She's good."
Taila didn't speak, but her breath on comms steadied like hearing Lyra survive had anchored her too.
The SAM was still there.
And now it was angry.
"Chaparral is priority," Dack said. "We remove it or Lyra can't come near us again."
"Finally," Jinx said, gleeful.
They pushed.
---
The fight for the spaceport perimeter became a long, grinding crawl.
Hangar to hangar.
Barricade to barricade.
Pirate infantry tried to swarm with portable launchers; merc machine guns and lasers cut them down in brutal arcs, leaving bodies in the open where nobody could retrieve them.
A Catapult appeared on the far side of a hangar roofline, launching missiles down the tarmac. A merc Marauder returned fire and took a hit that peeled armor off its shoulder like skin. It didn't fall. It kept stepping forward because that's what mercs did when money and pride held them upright.
Dack kept his lance together.
He talked more now—still blunt, still clipped, but present.
"Taila, hold your angle."
"Jinx, don't jump blind."
"Stay out of the open. Use the hangars."
"Don't chase into alleys."
Taila listened.
Jinx complained and listened anyway.
The Chaparral fired again, this time at the Atlas—missile detonating close enough to rattle the assault 'Mech and turn its damaged armor into a new pattern of scars.
Dack saw the launcher pod reposition, saw the timing.
He moved.
The Dire Wolf stepped out just enough to draw attention, then fired LRMs to bracket the Chaparral's cover and force it to hesitate. Jinx's Highlander shifted to the flank and put a gauss shot straight through the hangar wall beside the Chaparral, collapsing its cover.
Taila saw the opening and did the brave thing without chasing.
She fired her AC/10 once.
The shell punched into the Chaparral's launcher housing.
The vehicle didn't explode immediately—just started burning from the inside. Missiles cooked off in sequence, detonating one after another until the entire battery became a chain of fire and shrapnel.
The spaceport's air defense died in flames.
Lyra's voice came back in, controlled but warmer. "SAM is down. Good work."
Dack answered immediately. "Stay high anyway."
Lyra paused. "Copy."
Jinx cut in, delighted. "Taila killed it. Taila's officially dangerous."
Taila's voice was embarrassed but proud. "I… I did what you said."
Dack's reply came blunt and honest. "You did it under pressure. That's what matters."
Taila's breath hitched, then steadied again. "Copy."
They finally secured the spaceport perimeter—enough that the employer's follow-on forces could land heavier logistics and begin occupying.
But pirates didn't collapse like normal armies.
They dissolved into corners, leaving traps behind.
As dusk bled into night, the fight shifted from "take the line" to "survive the teeth."
A Panther popped from behind a control tower and took a shot at Taila's Centurion—PPC bolt carving across her shoulder plating, melting armor into glowing slag.
Taila gasped. Her machine rocked.
Dack's voice snapped. "Taila—move."
She moved.
She didn't freeze.
She backed into cover, fired her LRMs to suppress, and kept breathing.
That was the win.
Jinx's Highlander jumped and returned fire, gauss round obliterating the Panther's cover. The Panther tried to retreat—
—and caught a finishing shot from the Warhammer's remaining arm, collapsing into the tarmac and burning.
The battle didn't end.
It just… slowed.
Like a wound that refused to stop bleeding.
Hours later, Rook's Fall's spaceport was under merc control.
And the pirates were still fighting.
Just somewhere else.
Lyra's voice came through, calmer now. "Dack. Sensors show pirate comms traffic consolidating at the comms node hill. They're pulling remaining heavy assets there."
Dack looked toward the far hill beyond the city lights.
The comms mast still blinked.
Still steady.
Still arrogant.
Jinx's voice went low. "They're setting up a last stand."
Dack's answer was immediate. "Yeah."
Taila asked, quiet. "Is that where the King Crab is going."
Dack watched the far hill and felt the old, familiar cold settle into place. Not fear. Not excitement. Just the next problem.
"Yes," he said. "That's where it'll be."
Lyra hesitated, then spoke—professional, but with something else underneath that she hadn't let slip before. "You three… you're moving like a lance now. Like you've done this together for years."
Jinx laughed softly. "We're cute."
Dack didn't correct her. He just said, blunt, "We're alive."
Lyra's voice went quiet for half a second. "Yeah."
Dack didn't say what he could feel—that Lyra's voice had started to matter to him too, and that thought was dangerous.
Instead, he focused on the next fight.
He stared at the comms node hill and imagined trenches, kill zones, pre-registered artillery, and a wounded King Crab cornered and angry enough to make the final hours expensive.
He'd broken pirate lines before.
A fortified last stand was different.
It wasn't about winning.
It was about what it cost.
Dack's voice came across the channel, blunt and steady. "We rest. We reload. We patch what we can. Then we take the hill."
Jinx's grin was audible. "Finally. The boss fight."
Taila swallowed. "Copy."
Lyra's voice was soft, controlled. "Copy."
And as the comms mast blinked steadily over Rook's Fall like an accusation, Lyra found herself thinking—not during battle, not while flak was bursting, but now in the thin quiet afterward—what it would feel like to be included in the warmth she'd heard through bulkheads.
Then she shoved it away.
Because tomorrow was going to be ugly.
And the hill was waiting.