The Union's mech bay doors sealed with a final, hydraulic thud that felt like a lid going on a coffin.
Outside was night, dust, and whatever HRR decided to send after them. Inside was controlled air, harsh work-lights, and the low, settling groan of hot metal cooling down. The smell hit Dack the moment his cockpit equalized—burned insulation, scorched paint, hydraulic fluid, sweat trapped in fabric that wasn't meant to breathe.
He kept the Dire Wolf powered down but not dead. The reactor sat low, the way his father had taught him: enough to wake fast, not enough to announce itself.
The deck plates trembled under the last of the others coming aboard. Highlander. Griffin. Marauder. Each one a familiar weight now—familiar in the way a weapon becomes familiar after you stop thinking of it as something separate from your hands.
Then the overhead crane motors whined.
The Atlas rose into the bay on mag clamps, a blunt, ugly god lifted like it was just another salvage piece. Its armor was dull and utilitarian, scarred, with none of the vanity paint pirates loved. Whoever piloted it had never needed to be recognized by color. They'd been recognized by results.
Chain locks clacked into place around the Atlas's frame. Straps tightened. Restraint fields hummed.
A cage.
And inside the cage, a person who'd tried to put a collar on all of them.
Dack sat still a moment longer, hands resting lightly on the controls, and watched the Atlas through the Dire Wolf's forward glass like he was watching a predator behind bars.
He heard footsteps—real ones—on the metal deck below. Someone moving in the bay, too fast for a tech, too light for a porter.
Jinx.
Her voice came first, bright as a blade. "You alive in there, wolf?"
He keyed the hatch. "Yeah."
"That's the correct answer." A pause. "Also I'm taking credit for Sable's death."
Taila's voice followed, softer but steady. "You're taking credit for all of it."
"I am a hero," Jinx said, completely unbothered.
Dack pushed the hatch open and climbed down the ladder, boots hitting the deck. His legs felt heavier than they should, not from injury—just from the day. He'd been inside a cockpit too long. He hated that feeling. Like the world was smaller without armor around him.
Jinx was leaning on a crate, hair half-loose from its tie, cheeks flushed from adrenaline and victory. Her tank top was smeared with dust. Her eyes were still too bright. Taila stood close to Dack's Dire Wolf's leg, arms folded tight like she was holding herself together by force, dark hair pulled back, face smudged, expression trying hard to look calm.
Morrigan lingered farther back, half in shadow beneath the Marauder's silhouette. Her gaze was sharp, mouth set in that habitual scowl that fooled almost nobody now. She was still covered in grime and sweat, and somehow still looked like she was judging the whole mech bay for existing.
Lyra walked in last, calm as ever, tablet in one hand, headset cord trailing. Her pilot suit was zipped halfway down, dark hair stuck to her temples, and her eyes had that "I'm already ten steps ahead" focus that made Dack trust her more than he trusted most armor.
The bay felt crowded. Not with bodies. With consequence.
Dack's eyes went back to the chained Atlas.
A voice drifted down from the cockpit seam, smooth and amused. "You moved quickly."
He didn't look away from it. "You talked too much."
A soft laugh. "And yet you listened."
He didn't answer that. Because it was true. Because it made him angry. Because the person in the Atlas didn't deserve to be right about anything.
Lyra stepped up beside him. "We're clear of the pad. I'm running dark as long as I can. We got the ledger core out and the packet's already in multiple dead drops."
"Good."
Jinx tapped her boot against the deck. "So. Can I throw something at her?"
"No," Dack said.
Jinx pouted. "Can I say something at her?"
"You'll waste oxygen," Morrigan muttered.
Jinx grinned. "I have plenty."
Taila's eyes stayed on the Atlas. "She's not saying her name."
"She doesn't have to," Lyra said. Her voice didn't rise, didn't sharpen. It didn't need to. "We already have the chain. Whoever she is, she's connected."
Dack finally raised his chin and spoke toward the Atlas. "Terms stand. You power down. You don't get cute."
The Atlas stayed silent for a beat, then the voice returned, low and entertained. "And if I don't?"
Dack's reply came without thought. "Then I cut into your cockpit and drag you out."
Jinx made an approving noise, like she'd just heard a lullaby.
Taila swallowed. She didn't look away. Dack noticed that. She used to flinch from certain words. Now she held.
Morrigan's arms tightened across her chest. "If you cut into the cockpit, don't miss anything important."
Lyra didn't smile, but her eyes softened a fraction. "We're not doing surgery in the bay tonight."
Dack nodded once. "Nobody touches the Atlas without me."
Jinx's grin widened. "So we're keeping her?"
"We're using her," Dack said.
The words were blunt. But the decision behind them wasn't simple. He could feel the weight of it—the way taking her alive changed everything. The way it gave them leverage and made them a target.
Lyra's gaze flicked to him. She understood the unspoken part. We're also becoming something bigger than a contract crew.
Then the bay's side hatch hissed.
Someone stepped through who didn't belong in Moonjaw's rhythm yet.
Quill.
She wasn't in a cockpit now. Just a pressure suit and exhaustion, helmet under one arm. She moved like she expected to be shot for entering. Her face was pale under grime. Her eyes were sharp, but not steady.
She stopped when she saw Dack—really saw him, not the silhouette of a Dire Wolf.
"I'm here," she said. No apology. No pride. Just fact.
Jinx leaned closer to Dack, voice stage-whisper loud. "She looks like she's about to cry."
Quill's gaze snapped to Jinx. "If you think that's funny, I'll—"
Dack cut through it. "Stop."
Quill stopped.
So did Jinx, immediately, like she'd been slapped by a switch.
Dack held Quill's eyes for a long second. "You follow ship rules."
Quill's jaw clenched. "I already did."
"You followed orders," Dack said. "Different thing."
Quill flinched—tiny, involuntary.
Lyra stepped in smoothly. "Quill. We'll sort your status after we jump. For now you're a guest. You stay out of restricted compartments. You don't approach the Atlas without Dack present."
Quill's gaze flicked to the chained machine. Something tightened in her throat. "She's alive."
"She lost," Dack said.
Quill's voice went rough. "That doesn't happen often."
Dack didn't answer. He didn't want to hear admiration from someone who had walked onto a pad intending to take his head as a job requirement.
He turned away from the Atlas and started walking toward the tool benches. The others fell in around him without thinking. That part—that automatic proximity—hit him like a pressure wave.
A few weeks ago he would've hated it. People in his space. People leaning on him.
Now he noticed when they weren't there.
That realization sat heavy in his chest, uncomfortable as armor that didn't fit.
Lyra fell into step at his left. "We need a plan before we dock anywhere."
"We need money," Morrigan said.
Jinx lifted a finger. "We need money and a better bed situation. I'm just saying. The floor is criminal."
Taila's cheeks warmed, but she didn't deny it.
Dack kept walking. "We need repairs. Ammo. A place to sell without questions."
Lyra nodded. "And we need to decide what to do with her." Her eyes flicked upward toward the Atlas.
Dack's answer was immediate. "We keep her alive."
Jinx blinked. "That's… surprisingly responsible."
"It's leverage," Dack said.
"And what if she's more dangerous alive?" Taila asked. Not challenging. Just honest.
Dack looked at Taila. Really looked.
She'd changed. Not in a dramatic way. In small, hard-earned ways—holding lanes under pressure, speaking up when it mattered, staying close in the aftermath without acting like she was asking permission to exist.
He didn't like thinking about how she'd been treated before him. It made his hands want to do things his brain had to stop.
"We don't let her move," he said.
"Simple," Taila murmured.
"Simple works," Dack said.
They reached the workbench area. Rook and Rafe—Rook and Rafe—were already there, hunched over a cracked casing and wiring harness. They moved like one machine split into two bodies.
Rafe looked up first. "We—"
Rook finished. "Saw."
Rafe: "Atlas."
Rook: "Chained."
Rafe: "Good."
Dack nodded. "You two did well."
Their faces did something that might've been pride if they were normal people.
Lyra's tablet chimed. She glanced at it, expression unreadable, then tucked it away. Her eyes briefly met Taila's. Then Jinx's. A look passed between them—fast and quiet, like a sealed door closing.
Dack noticed.
He didn't ask.
Not yet.
Because he'd learned a thing about the women around him: when they were hiding something, it wasn't usually betrayal. It was usually fear. Or care. Or both.
And he didn't know what to do with being cared about. Not cleanly. Not without wanting to shut it down before it could hurt.
He caught himself thinking about Ronan again.
His father's hands on the control sticks. His father's voice—low, patient, rarely wasted.
Don't talk to fill silence, kid. Silence is information.
Dack had learned to live in silence.
Then Jinx happened. And Taila. And Lyra. And Morrigan. And the twins. And now Quill, and an Atlas full of poison hanging from the ceiling like a trophy he hadn't asked for.
He watched Jinx lean into Taila's space, teasing something under her breath, Taila blushing and trying not to smile. Watched Lyra's gaze soften despite herself. Watched Morrigan pretend she didn't like any of it.
He felt something unfamiliar move through him.
Not desire. Not just that.
Responsibility.
Attachment.
The problem was—attachments were targets.
He'd lived his life as if being alone was armor. The Dire Wolf was the only thing he couldn't lose.
That lie had died somewhere along the way, and he hadn't even noticed the moment it happened.
---
When Dack was a kid, he thought his father was a myth.
Not because Ronan told stories. Ronan didn't. Ronan barely talked.
But people did that thing around him—voices lowering, glances sliding away, respect given too quickly and too carefully. Ronan wasn't loud. He wasn't charming. He was average-looking in a way that made him easy to overlook in a crowd.
Until you watched him move.
Until you saw how he stood like the world couldn't push him.
Dack remembered being nine years old, sitting on a crate outside a repair bay while Ronan watched techs tear apart an actuator assembly. The air had smelled like oil and burnt metal. Dack had been bored. Hungry. Angry that no one would tell him what was happening.
He'd said something stupid—some kid complaint about why they were wasting time fixing old parts instead of buying new.
Ronan hadn't looked at him right away. He'd watched the techs finish, watched them torque the bolts, watched them set the seals.
Then he'd crouched in front of Dack, eye level, and said, "Because the world doesn't give you what you want. It gives you what you can keep running."
Dack remembered frowning. "So we're poor."
Ronan had almost smiled. Almost. "So we're alive."
Later, when Dack was older, he'd asked why Ronan didn't join a big unit. Why he stayed on the edges. Why he kept the Dire Wolf like it was a secret he didn't trust anyone to hold.
Ronan had taken him into the simulator pod and made him run the same scenario six times until his arms shook and his throat felt raw.
Only then did Ronan say, "Because units come with politics. Politics come with knives. I'd rather face enemies in front of me."
Dack had asked, "What about friends?"
Ronan had been quiet for a long time. Then: "Friends get you killed if you trust wrong."
Dack had believed him.
He'd built his whole life around that sentence.
And now he was standing in a mech bay with women who trusted him enough to follow him into a trap, and he couldn't tell if he was becoming better or just easier to kill.
---
Lyra's voice pulled him back. "Dack."
He looked up.
She was standing close, not invading, just present. Her eyes were steady. "We need to decide what port we can touch. I can plot three options. All of them risky."
"Pick the least stupid," Dack said.
Lyra's mouth twitched. "They're all stupid."
"Then pick the one where we live."
She nodded. "Okay."
Jinx wandered over, hands on hips, looking pleased with herself. "So. We won. We got a prisoner. We got proof. We're basically unstoppable."
Morrigan snorted. "That's how you get killed."
Jinx shrugged. "I get killed cute."
Taila's hand brushed Jinx's arm—quick, unconscious reassurance. Dack saw it.
He saw a lot more now than he used to.
Quill stood off to the side, watching the dynamic like she was watching a foreign language being spoken. Her posture was rigid, but her eyes kept flicking to the Atlas.
Dack walked to her. Stopped at a respectful distance. "You know her."
Quill's jaw tightened. "I know what she built. I know what she… represents."
"She didn't give you her name either," Dack said.
Quill's gaze sharpened. "No."
Dack nodded once. "Good. Then she's still hiding."
Quill swallowed. "Or she doesn't think she needs one."
Dack glanced up at the chained Atlas. "Everybody needs one."
A soft sound came from above. The Atlas's pilot listening. Breathing. Smiling, probably.
Dack didn't give her the satisfaction of another threat.
He turned away and climbed back up the Dire Wolf's ladder.
Not because he wanted to hide in the cockpit.
Because the cockpit was where he thought clearly.
Inside, the world narrowed to instruments, heat readouts, stability, and the low hum of a machine that had carried his father's hands.
He sat down, sealed the hatch, and let the dim cockpit lights wash over him.
He stared at the control sticks.
Then, very quietly, he opened his personal log.
He didn't write poetry. He didn't rant. He didn't spill feelings onto screens like that made them smaller.
He just did what he'd always done.
He counted.
One more line added—only because the Dire Wolf's interior made the day feel real.
He stared at it a moment after. The number. The ritual.
Then he closed the log and leaned back in the seat.
Outside the cockpit glass, he could see shadows moving—Jinx leaning into Taila again, Lyra speaking to Morrigan, Quill standing too still under the Atlas.
He cared.
He was starting to understand that he cared in a way that would make him do stupid things.
He didn't know yet whether that was weakness.
But he knew one thing with absolute clarity:
Anyone who tried to take them from him was going to find out what the Dire Wolf was built for.
And next time?
Next time he wouldn't accept a trap just because the contract looked clean.
He'd bring the trap to them.