The rain didn't stop after the raid.
It just changed rhythm—hard sheets at night, thin needles by morning, a constant wet pressure that turned the refinery's metal into something that always felt cold to the touch. Garnet Ridge was a planet that wanted you to remember the ground was heavier than vacuum.
Dack remembered.
Three days passed the way days passed in a contract zone: not with peace, but with maintenance—repair, patrol, watch, sleep in short chunks, wake too fast, repeat.
Day One
The Dire Wolf came back from East Pit looking like it had crawled out of a furnace and then been thrown into a swamp.
Armor plates were stripped down to scarred underlayer on one shoulder. Melt lines ran across the torso where heat had kissed the metal too long. Mud clung inside the ankle housings, packed around actuators like cement.
Dack didn't let anyone touch it except him.
Municipal mechanics offered—wide-eyed, eager, respectful—but he refused politely and firmly. He didn't know them. And the Dire Wolf was not a communal resource. It was a legacy, a weapon, and a coffin if you did it wrong.
Marshal Holt negotiated salvage rights in the yard anyway, standing in rain with her tablet pressed to her chest.
"We're not trying to steal your kill," she insisted. "But that heavy chassis… if we can strip parts, we can keep our militia running for months."
Dack stared at the downed Marauder through the fence—its torso wrecked, limbs half-buried in mud. Floodlights made its broken surfaces shine like wet bone.
"You strip the limbs," he said. "You don't touch the head. You don't touch the core. And you don't take any data without me there."
Holt hesitated. "We're not equipped to—"
"You're not equipped to survive if you let someone else have it," Dack cut in. "That machine didn't come from a starving pirate camp. It came from money."
Holt's mouth tightened. Then she nodded. "Fine. You're present for all data pulls."
Dack didn't thank her. He just moved on.
Talia stood under the hangar canopy, arms folded, watching the yard crews work. She looked better each day—bruises fading, color returning—but the old tension stayed in her shoulders, like she expected to be grabbed if she stood still too long.
She had made herself useful without being asked. That was new, too.
She helped organize Holt's relay logs. She cleaned comm lines, flagged interference patterns, and watched the militia net the way a predator watched a herd—waiting for one wrong sound that didn't belong.
She didn't smile while doing it.
But she also didn't look like she wanted to disappear.
That was progress.
Day Two
Dack ran perimeter patrols in the Dire Wolf along the refinery roads and the eastern approach to the pits, moving slow through mud, letting the locals see him in daylight.
It wasn't a fight.
It was presence.
He passed convoys and watched drivers loosen their shoulders when they saw his silhouette. Workers on scaffoldings pointed. Children pressed faces to rain-streaked windows. Militia troopers stood straighter, as if steel confidence could be borrowed from steel mass.
Dack didn't like being a symbol. Symbols got targeted.
But symbols also kept people alive.
He told himself that was the only reason he tolerated it.
That afternoon, Holt's scouts found what Dack had predicted.
A cache on the east ridge: a weatherproof crate buried in mud under a false rock sheet, with a powered relay tucked inside and a small antenna disguised as lightning rod scrap. It wasn't sophisticated hardware, but it wasn't junk either—too clean, too carefully placed.
Talia knelt beside it under a tarp while militia held lights.
"Someone built this to be found only by people who already knew where to dig," she murmured, fingers tracing the seal lines.
Dack stood over her, rain dripping off his jacket collar. "Can you pull logs?"
Talia's jaw tightened. "Yes."
She connected her slate and began to peel data out in careful layers, eyes narrowed as if the numbers could bite.
"There's a repeated handshake pattern," she said after a long minute. "Not a name. Not a voiceprint. But timing windows. Drop schedules. A signature in the way they compress packets."
Dack frowned. "Like ComStar?"
Talia's mouth twisted. "Not that clean. This is… someone who learned from people like them."
Dack stared into the dark beyond the floodlights. "So someone with money and patience."
Talia didn't look up. "And a reason."
Dack's jaw tightened.
He was tired of reasons.
Day Three
Talia insisted on the simulator again.
She didn't ask politely. She didn't frame it as a favor. She just said, "Again," like it was a debt she meant to pay off with sweat and humiliation.
Dack set it up without comment.
This time he didn't load anything complex. He didn't make it easy, but he made it simple: walking, turning, stopping. No enemy. No weapons. Just learning to exist inside mass without fighting it.
Talia sat in the chair like someone bracing for a punishment.
Her hands shook less than before.
The sim link engaged.
She flinched—still—her stomach still protesting the false sense of weight and the feedback bands punishing her body for wrong tension. But she didn't rip the straps off. She didn't bolt.
She breathed through it.
The simulated 'Mech took one step.
Then another.
Then a third.
It wasn't graceful. It wasn't good.
But it didn't fall.
When the scenario ended, Talia sat there drenched in sweat, pale, jaw clenched so hard Dack could see muscles jump.
She swallowed, then spoke through clenched teeth. "I didn't throw up."
Dack nodded once. "You're learning."
Talia's expression tightened, as if she didn't want to accept praise.
Then she stood too fast and had to grab the wall for balance.
Dack didn't touch her. He'd learned she hated being steadied like a child.
Instead he said, "Go drink water."
Talia glared—then did it anyway.
That night, the refinery quieted in the way industrial places did: not silent, but softened. Pumps still thumped. Distant engines still rumbled. Floodlights still hummed in the rain.
Dack went back to the Dire Wolf bay and worked.
He stripped mud out of ankle housings, scraped grime from actuator seams, and re-seated a scorched armor plate with careful torque, fingers stiff in the cold. He liked the work. Machines made sense. Machines didn't lie.
He was halfway through resealing a panel when he heard footsteps.
He didn't turn right away. He listened.
Not militia boots. Not heavy. Light, careful.
Talia.
She stopped near the bay entrance, hesitating like she wasn't sure she was allowed in. She'd been doing that less lately, but the habit still lived in her bones.
Dack kept working. "You need something?"
Talia didn't answer for a second.
Then she said, quiet, "Can I help?"
Dack paused, glanced at her. She held a tool bag awkwardly, hood down, hair damp from rain. Her face looked softer in the bay light, but her eye was sharp, defensive.
"You know how to use a torque wrench?" he asked.
Talia's mouth tightened. "I'm not helpless."
"I didn't say you were," Dack replied, and handed her the wrench.
Talia took it like it was an offered weapon.
They worked in silence for a while—Dack guiding her without lecturing, Talia following instructions with the intensity of someone who had learned that mistakes got punished. She was careful. Too careful. Like she expected him to snap.
He didn't.
After ten minutes she spoke, voice tight. "Why do you do your own maintenance? You could make them do it."
Dack kept his eyes on the panel seal. "Because if something fails in a fight, it's my fault. Not theirs."
Talia's fingers tightened on the wrench. "That's… honorable."
Dack snorted softly. "It's selfish."
Talia hesitated. "Is it?"
Dack didn't answer. He didn't know.
The rain drummed on the hangar roof, steady and patient.
Talia's voice came again, quieter. "When I was… where I was… I cleaned machines too."
Dack looked up slightly. "Clan?"
Talia flinched at the word like it burned. "Around them. Not of them."
Dack let the silence hold. He didn't push.
Talia swallowed. "They let me see cockpits sometimes. They let me run sims sometimes. They told me if I worked hard enough, maybe I could earn a place."
Dack's jaw tightened. "Did you?"
Talia's mouth twisted. "No."
The word came out flat, like it had been stamped into her tongue.
Dack waited.
Talia kept her eyes on the wrench, not on him. "I froze. The first time the sim fed back pain, I froze. I got sick. I—" Her breath hitched. "—I embarrassed myself."
Dack said nothing.
Talia's voice got sharper, anger rising to cover shame. "Warriors laughed. Not all of them. But enough. And then the ones who didn't laugh… looked at me like they were sorry."
Dack's hands stilled.
He hated pity too.
Talia continued, words coming faster now, like she needed to get them out before she could swallow them again. "After that, I stopped trying. I told myself I didn't want it. I told myself I was meant to do other things. Protocol. Keys. Logistics. Translation."
She stared at the wrench like it could answer. "I became very good at being useful."
Dack's throat tightened.
Talia's voice dropped, brittle. "Useful is safe. Useful gets fed. Useful doesn't get thrown out an airlock."
Dack set down his tool slowly. "You were afraid."
Talia's eye snapped up, hard. "Of course I was afraid."
Dack held her gaze. "You still are."
Talia's jaw worked. Then she looked away.
For a while, the only sound was rain and the low hum of the Dire Wolf's cooling system.
Then Talia spoke again, and her voice was so quiet Dack almost didn't hear it.
"I've never dated anyone," she said.
Dack blinked once, surprised by the direction. He didn't react beyond that. He let her speak.
Talia's fingers curled around the wrench until her knuckles whitened. "Not once. Not… anything."
Dack kept his posture neutral. "Why."
Talia's laugh was small and ugly. "Because who would?"
Dack's eyes narrowed.
Talia stared at the floor. "Where I came from, bondsmen are… lesser. Even if you're smart. Even if you work. People don't want to be seen with you. They don't want your name attached to theirs. They don't want—" Her voice cracked slightly, and she swallowed hard. "—they don't want you."
Dack didn't interrupt.
Talia's shoulders tightened as if bracing for a blow that never came. "And even outside that world, it's in my head. I walk into a room and I can feel it on me. Like a mark." She lifted a hand, gesturing vaguely at her chest. "I assumed if I let anyone close, they'd eventually realize what I am and leave. Or they'd use it."
Her one good eye flicked up, sharp with bitterness. "So I didn't let anyone close."
The admission hung in the air like smoke.
Dack's first instinct was to say something that would fix it.
He didn't have that kind of language.
He had only truth.
"You're not cargo here," he said.
Talia flinched anyway, like her body didn't trust kindness. "That's easy for you to say."
Dack's jaw tightened. "It's not easy for me to say anything."
That earned a faint, involuntary twitch at the corner of her mouth—almost a smile, quickly killed.
Dack continued, voice steady. "I'm not going to pity you. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen. But I'm also not going to treat you like you're worth less because other people did."
Talia's throat worked. She stared at him like she was trying to decide if he meant it.
Dack pointed at the Dire Wolf's open panel. "You helped fix that. You caught a comm lie that saved a convoy. You muted an enemy net mid-raid. That's not nothing."
Talia's voice came out strained. "It's not a cockpit."
"No," Dack said. "It's real."
Talia looked away, blinking hard.
Dack didn't move closer. He didn't reach out. He let her have space—because he'd learned she needed it.
After a long silence, Talia spoke again, quieter, more honest.
"I don't want you to… think I'm pathetic."
Dack's brow furrowed. "I don't."
Talia's eye flicked up. "You don't even know me."
Dack nodded once. "Then tell me."
Talia's breath hitched, like the offer itself was dangerous.
She looked at the Dire Wolf, then at the tools, then at the hangar roof where rain kept falling like it had all the time in the universe.
Finally she said, "When I was taken… I learned quickly that if you didn't make yourself useful, you stopped being seen. And if you stopped being seen, you stopped existing."
Dack listened, still.
Talia's voice was steadier now that she'd started. "So I made myself sharp. I made myself necessary. I told myself I didn't need anyone to want me, because wanting was weakness."
She swallowed. "But it still hurt."
Dack nodded once. Not sympathy. Recognition.
Outside, somewhere in the refinery, a horn sounded—a shift change, distant and lonely.
Talia exhaled slowly and handed the torque wrench back like returning a borrowed weapon.
Dack took it.
Talia stood there for a moment longer, as if waiting for him to dismiss her.
He didn't.
He simply said, "If you want to keep learning the sim, we keep doing it. Slow."
Talia's eye hardened. "Even if I fail."
"Especially if you fail," Dack said.
For the first time, her expression softened without immediately turning bitter.
"Okay," she whispered.
A short, sharp chirp cut through the quiet—an external alert from Holt's yard perimeter sensors.
Dack's head snapped up.
Talia's eye narrowed instantly.
Another chirp.
Then Holt's voice came over the secure channel, tense. "Movement near the salvage fence. Multiple heat signatures. They're trying to get to the Marauder."
Dack's hands moved without thought, sealing the Dire Wolf's panel in two quick motions.
Talia stepped back. "They came back?"
Dack's voice went cold. "Not to fight. To steal."
He moved toward the Dire Wolf ladder.
Talia followed, slate already in hand. "What do you need?"
Dack glanced at her—really glanced—and heard the change in her voice. Less bitter. More *with him.*
"Eyes," he said. "And your ear for lies."
Talia nodded once. "Then go. I'll listen."
Dack climbed into the cockpit.
The Dire Wolf woke.
Rain hammered armor.
Floodlights painted the yard in harsh white.
Beyond the fence line, shadows moved—fast and low—trying to reach the downed Marauder's head before anyone could stop them.
Dack stepped out into the mud.
Not as a symbol.
As a mercenary doing his job.
And somewhere behind him, in the control shack light, Talia began to listen—not like a bondsman trying to survive, but like a partner trying to protect something that was starting to feel, dangerously, like a place.