By the third day after the convoy skirmish, the refinery started to feel like it had a pulse.
Not a comforting one—an industrial one. The kind that beat in pumps and turbines and shift horns. The kind that didn't care if you were happy or broken, only whether you showed up and did your part.
I'd never lived anywhere that felt… steady.
Even when I lived in places with walls and schedules, the steadiness was a trick. It was always borrowed from someone stronger. It was always one contract away from collapsing.
Kestrel Basin was steady because it had to be. Because if it wasn't, people didn't just lose money—people froze, starved, died quietly.
Dack didn't say it out loud, but he moved like he understood that truth now. Every morning he reviewed routes. Every night he checked perimeter changes. He spoke to Holt in short sentences that carried weight because they were always followed by action. He fixed his machine himself even when his knuckles bled, because he didn't trust anyone else to keep him alive.
And Jinx…
Jinx fit into the routine like a knife sliding into a sheath.
She was chaos on foot—clumsy, loud, smiling too easily, always one breath away from saying something that made my skin crawl—and then she climbed into her Highlander and became something terrifyingly precise. A predator. An ace. A woman who could make an assault 'Mech dance in mud.
They'd been out together twice more since the last chapter—two convoy escorts, one perimeter sweep around the drainage flats and slag hills. No big ambushes. Just the kind of pressure that never stopped, like someone was pushing a thumb into a bruise to see how you reacted.
They came back with new mud on their armor and new information in their heads.
I came back with logs, timing windows, and a growing sickness that I didn't have a name for.
Jealousy wasn't the right word.
Jealousy was too simple.
What I felt was… a hunger I didn't know I had.
A hunger to be there.
To have a place beside him that wasn't behind glass and speakers and encrypted channels.
To be seen as something other than a useful shadow.
Three days of that feeling did something dangerous to me.
It made me decide I couldn't keep hiding parts of myself anymore.
Because if I did… if I kept swallowing everything down… then when Dack finally looked at me and realized what I was, I wouldn't be able to blame him for leaving.
I'd have left first.
---
The night I finally told him, the storm was quieter.
It still rained—Garnet Ridge always rained—but it wasn't trying to drown the world. It was a steady, patient tapping on the hangar roof. Like fingers drumming while someone waited for you to make a decision.
The Dire Wolf bay was lit by work lamps and hard shadows. Tools lay organized on a rolling cart. The air smelled like wet metal, machine oil, and scorched plating that had been ground down and resealed.
Dack was up on the ladder, half inside an open panel seam, checking wiring and actuator housings the way a surgeon checked organs. He didn't hum. He didn't talk to himself. He just worked—quiet, relentless, controlled.
Jinx wasn't there.
She'd been "detained" in the municipal barracks on paper, but in reality Holt had her on a leash made of pragmatism. Jinx ate with militia, joked with them, talked too much, and then spent hours in a guarded bay with her Highlander while Holt's techs combed its systems for anything hidden.
Sometimes I caught Jinx glancing toward the Dire Wolf bay like she wanted to be there, too.
That made me angrier than it should have.
Tonight she'd been sent away to help Holt draft a "formal statement" about Elias Kess and the handler called Sable. Jinx had called it "paperwork foreplay" and Holt had threatened to put her in a cell with no entertainment. Jinx had laughed and said she'd entertain herself.
I hated her.
And I hated that I didn't actually hate her, because part of me respected her too much to hate her cleanly.
That part of me was the problem.
I stood in the bay entrance for a long time, slate held against my chest, breathing carefully, trying to talk myself out of what I'd come here to do.
Dack noticed anyway.
He always noticed.
He didn't turn his head, but his voice came down from above, flat and calm. "You've been standing there for thirty seconds."
I flinched. "Sorry."
"Don't be," he said. "Come in or leave. Either way, stop hovering."
It should've been harsh.
It wasn't. Not from him. Not anymore.
I stepped in and the bay's warmth—mechanical warmth, not human—wrapped around me. The Dire Wolf's cooling fans hummed low. Water dripped off armor plates in slow ticks.
I handed him the slate without being asked.
He climbed down partway, took it, glanced at the data. His eyes moved fast—too fast for most people to follow. He read like he fought: focused, economical.
"This is the ridge cache timing," he said.
"Yes," I replied. My voice sounded too small in the bay.
He frowned slightly, sensing something underneath. "And?"
I swallowed. My throat felt tight. "And… there's something else."
Dack's gaze lifted from the slate to me.
His expression didn't soften the way other people's did. But it did change—attention sharpening, posture shifting like he'd just heard a new threat.
"What," he said.
The word wasn't impatient.
It was steady.
It made my chest hurt in a different way.
I forced my fingers to unclench. "Before you bait this pickup," I said, "you should know who you're keeping around."
Dack didn't respond immediately.
He just waited.
It was strange, realizing how safe silence could be when someone didn't use it as a weapon.
I'd learned silence meant punishment.
Dack's silence meant space.
So I took it.
"I'm not… just a bondsman," I began, and my mouth twisted at the word. "I mean, I am. That label is stuck on me like it's welded into my skin. But I wasn't born as someone's property."
Dack's eyes didn't leave my face.
I looked away anyway. It was easier to talk to the Dire Wolf's scarred plating than to a man who might actually listen.
"My name was Taila," I said quietly. "Before anyone took it away. Before anyone made it sound like a joke."
Dack's voice came low. "It's still your name."
That simple statement hit me harder than any insult ever had.
Because I hadn't realized how much I'd been treating my own name like it didn't belong to me anymore.
I swallowed hard. "I wasn't born in a Clan. I wasn't born in glory. I was born on a little Periphery world that barely mattered. It had a mining charter, a fuel depot, and a strip of habs that got rebuilt every few years when storms took them apart."
Dack nodded once, like he understood that kind of place.
"My mother worked maintenance. My father drove ore haulers. We weren't poor the way people imagine poor—we had food, most of the time. We had heat, most of the time. We were… stable."
I laughed, soft and bitter. "Until stability ended."
I took a slow breath and forced myself to keep going.
"I liked machines when I was a kid," I said. "Not because I wanted to pilot them. Because I liked how they made sense. My mother would bring home broken parts—valves, couplings, little servos—and I'd clean them at the table. She used to tell me I'd make a good technician."
I paused. "I believed her."
Dack's brow furrowed slightly. "So what happened."
My fingers tightened around the edge of the slate like it was an anchor. "hea—my memory—clenched.
"A raid," I said. "Not pirates. Not scavengers. Something cleaner. A force that moved like it had a plan."
I stared at the Dire Wolf's leg, at the way its armor caught lamp light in dull strips. "They came down during a storm. Two DropShips. No warning. No negotiation. They hit the fuel depot first—took the comm tower, took the generators. Then they rolled into the hab strip like the world was already theirs."
I could see it again too clearly. The way the sky had glowed as engines burned through cloud. The way my mother had grabbed my wrist so hard it hurt.
"People ran," I said. "Some fought. We had militia. Old machines. Half-maintained. Two light 'Mechs and a handful of vehicles. They tried."
My throat tightened. "They died fast."
Dack's jaw tightened too. He didn't speak. He let me keep the words.
"They brought real machines," I continued. "Real pilots. Not sloppy. Not desperate. They moved like they'd drilled it a hundred times."
I hesitated, then admitted the truth. "I didn't know who they were at first. I didn't know what 'Clan' meant the way it matters. I just knew the way people froze when they heard certain words on open comms."
My voice went quieter. "I remember one of their machines stepping through the hab strip like it was walking through tall grass. I remember it turning its head and looking down at us like we were… insects."
I looked down at my hands. "I remember the screaming when someone tried to run past it."
I forced myself to keep going anyway, because I'd come here to say it all, not to stop where it hurt.
"They took people," I said. "Not everyone. Not randomly. People with skills. People who could be used. They took my mother because she could keep machines alive. They took me because I had been helping her since I was a child and I could read technical manuals, and because I spoke more than one trade language."
Dack's voice came low. "Your father."
I swallowed. "He tried to stop them."
I didn't describe the way a man looks when he realizes he can't stop a machine. I didn't describe what the mud had looked like when the rain mixed with blood.
I just said, "He didn't come with us."
Dack's hands clenched slightly around the slate, knuckles whitening. He didn't curse. He didn't promise revenge. He just absorbed it like a weight.
I almost hated him for being able to hold calm like that.
Almost.
"They put us on the DropShip," I continued. "Cargo hold. Not chains. Not at first. They didn't need chains. Not when you're staring at armor and knowing one twitch can end you."
I closed my eyes briefly. "And that's where the word happened. Someone said it like it was a classification, not a person."
Bondsman.
Bondsmen.
Not names. Not people. Resources.
"I didn't understand what it meant," I said. "I learned."
Dack's voice stayed steady. "Tell me."
So I did.
---
"They weren't always cruel," I admitted. "That's what makes it worse."
Dack's eyes narrowed slightly.
I hated saying it because it sounded like defense. It wasn't. It was truth. Truth is sometimes ugly because it refuses to fit the neat shapes you want.
"They had rules," I said. "Structure. You were fed. You were kept clean. You weren't beaten every day. Most of the time, you were… ignored."
I swallowed. "Being ignored was the punishment."
I looked toward the bay's far wall, as if I could see years through it.
"They made us work," I said. "Maintenance. Logistics. Translating old manuals. Sorting supplies. Whatever kept their unit moving without them wasting warriors on it."
My mouth twisted. "I became very good at being useful. Because useful is safe."
Dack's gaze sharpened at the familiar phrase.
"Yes," I said quietly. "I told you that before. It's not philosophy. It's survival."
I took a breath. "There was one warrior who wasn't… cruel. Not kind. Just… not cruel. He would ask questions. He would correct mistakes without humiliation. He treated machines like they were sacred and treated people like they were… present."
Dack watched me closely. "Name."
I shook my head. "I don't know if it matters. He called himself Varr. That might not have been his true name."
A faint memory: a helmet held under one arm. A voice that didn't laugh when I stumbled.
"He let me watch sims," I said. "He would say, 'Knowledge is a weapon.' He didn't mean it kindly. He meant it like it was obvious."
I paused, then forced the next part out.
"One day he put me in the chair," I said. "He said, 'Try.'"
My stomach tightened just remembering. "I wanted it more than I wanted to breathe. A cockpit… it was the closest thing to power I'd ever touched. For a moment I thought maybe I could be something other than a captured tool."
Dack didn't blink.
"I synced," I said. "The machine came alive around me. I could feel its weight, its legs, the way the world shifted when it stepped."
My voice trembled. "And then the feedback came."
Pain.
Not real pain—simulated pain, a sharp bite meant to teach you to respect mistakes. But my body didn't know the difference. My body only knew that pain meant danger and danger meant you freeze so you don't get noticed.
"I froze," I whispered. "I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. My hands locked. My vision tunneled. I thought I was dying."
I let out a soft, broken laugh. "And then I threw up in the chair."
Dack's jaw tightened hard.
"I heard laughter," I said. "Not Varr's. Others. Warriors passing by. It wasn't… constant cruelty. It was worse. It was casual."
I looked up at Dack for the first time since starting this part. "They laughed like I was entertainment."
Dack's eyes were cold now.
Not at me.
At them.
"I never went back into the sim again," I said. "Not because I didn't want it. Because I couldn't handle being laughed at. I couldn't handle the idea that even if I worked, even if I learned, I would still be… a joke."
I looked down again. "So I decided I would never want things that could make me weak."
I swallowed. "That included people."
Dack's gaze didn't move.
I forced myself to say it plainly, because he deserved plain truth.
"I never dated," I said. "Not once. Not a real relationship. Not anything. Because bondsmen aren't wanted."
My throat tightened. "If someone looked at me too long, I assumed it was because they were deciding what I could do for them. If someone was kind, I assumed it was because they wanted something. And if someone… if someone wanted me—"
I stopped. My face burned.
Dack didn't push.
So I pushed myself.
"—I assumed it was a joke," I finished. "Or a trap."
The silence in the bay thickened, full of rain and machine hum and my own shaking breath.
Dack's voice finally came, low. "You learned to pre-hurt yourself so nobody else could."
I flinched, because he'd put words to something I hadn't been brave enough to name.
"Yes," I whispered. "I did."
---
"What made you run," Dack asked.
The question was simple.
The answer wasn't.
I took a slow breath.
"They don't keep bondsmen forever," I said. "Not unless you're exceptional. Not unless you become… valuable enough that someone attaches pride to owning you."
My mouth twisted. "Pride. Like we're trophies."
I swallowed. "They trade you. They give you to other units. They use you to settle debts or prove generosity or punish you."
Dack's hands clenched again.
I continued, voice steadier now, because once you decide to bleed truth, it's easier to keep bleeding than to stop.
"There was a transport," I said. "A routine move. Supplies and equipment being shifted. We were cargo on paper. People on a manifest. I was being sent somewhere else—an 'exchange.'"
I stared at the Dire Wolf's massive foot, remembering other steel feet.
"They didn't tell us where," I said. "They didn't need to. Bondsmen don't get 'where.' They get told to move."
Dack's eyes narrowed. "That's when you escaped."
"Yes," I said.
I hesitated, then added, because the next part mattered to everything happening now.
"It wasn't just them," I said. "There were other people around them. Not warriors. Not true Clan personnel. Contractors. Fixers. People who spoke like merchants but moved like spies."
Dack leaned slightly forward. "Sable."
My stomach dropped.
"Yes," I whispered.
Dack's gaze sharpened like a blade.
"I didn't know his name then," I said. "But I remember him. A man in gloves. Always in gloves. Even when it was hot. He watched the bondsmen like he was… shopping."
My skin crawled.
"He didn't look at us like people," I said. "He looked at us like items. He spoke to the warriors like he was negotiating. He spoke to the bondsmen like he was already bored."
I swallowed hard. "He asked about me."
Dack's voice went colder. "What did he ask."
"He asked if I could pilot," I said.
Dack's jaw tightened.
I continued quickly, because I didn't want to sit in that memory too long. "They told him no. They told him I was 'useful' but not cockpit material. He said… he said useful was enough."
I swallowed. "He marked something on his slate. Then he walked away."
I forced my voice to stay steady. "A day later, the transport moved. During the move, there was an attack. Pirates. Or maybe not pirates. I still don't know. It was chaos. Gunfire. Alarms. People screaming. The DropShip's hold doors opened and closed like the ship was trying to swallow itself."
I could see it again: metal corridors lit in red emergency light. The stink of smoke. The way gravity shifted as the ship maneuvered.
"There were mechs," I said. "Not in space—on the ground around the DropShip, firing upward. I remember looking through a cracked external cam feed and seeing silhouettes moving through storm mud, trading fire with the DropShip's point defenses. For a moment, I saw a machine standing on the hull plating, firing down at a turret—like the world had gone insane and forgotten what belonged where."
Dack didn't interrupt.
"My mother was with me," I said softly. "She grabbed my hand. She said, 'Run if you can.'"
My throat tightened again. "I didn't want to leave her."
Dack's eyes stayed on me, steady, not pitying.
"I didn't," I whispered. "Not at first."
I took a breath that shook.
"She pushed me," I said. "Hard. She pushed me into a corridor when a blast hit and the hold shook. She… she told me to live."
I stared at the bay floor, at puddles catching lamp light. "I ran."
I didn't say more about the sounds behind me.
I didn't have to. Dack's face told me he understood what sounds happen when you run and don't look back.
"I got out during the chaos," I said. "I crawled through mud. I hid in drainage channels. I stole a cloak from someone dead. I learned how to hold my breath when search lights passed over me."
I lifted my eyes. "I survived because I was useful. Not because I was brave."
Dack's voice came rougher now. "Survival is bravery."
I shook my head automatically. "No. It's cowardice."
Dack didn't argue with my label right away.
He let me say it.
I continued, voice quieter. "After that, I drifted. Station to station. Small worlds. Fuel depots. Anywhere that didn't ask too many questions. I kept my head down. I kept my hands busy. I made myself invisible."
I looked away. "And then… I got found again."
Dack's eyes narrowed. "Kess. Him again huh?"
I nodded slowly. "Not directly. But… the same method. The same kind of pressure. People started asking about 'escaped assets.' A rumor about a bondsman who had seen things. A bondsman who might recognize faces."
My stomach twisted. "I heard the name Elias Kess whispered in a procurement bay once. Like it was a man who bought problems and sold them back sharper."
Dack's jaw tightened.
"And then," I said, "I met you."
The words sounded strange in the bay.
Like fate.
I hated fate.
---
I let out a slow breath. My hands were shaking now, and I couldn't tell if it was cold or relief or fear that I'd just handed someone my softest organs.
Dack was quiet for a long time.
Then he said, "Why didn't you tell me earlier."
My face heated with shame. "Because I didn't want you to look at me like I'm… contaminated. And also, I've not had my mind clear, I just thought that the person Jinx was describing was familiar... but you know.. you might think I was weak or- or worse."
Dack's brow furrowed slightly. "I don't."
"You didn't know everything," I said. "It's easy to respect someone's usefulness. It's harder to respect someone when you know how weak they were."
Dack's voice went firm. "You weren't weak. You were trapped."
I stared at him.
He continued, steady. "And you got out."
I swallowed. "I left people behind."
Dack's eyes hardened, but not at me. "You were made to. That's on them."
I looked away, because my eyes were burning and I hated that too.
There was another silence.
Then Dack asked, "Sable. You're sure."
I nodded. "I'm sure. Gloves. The way he spoke. The way he looked at people like they were just numbers. He's the same man who marked me on a slate like I was inventory."
Dack's expression went cold enough to freeze steel.
"He's here," I whispered. "Or close. Or his reach is. He doesn't do this work because he likes pirates. He does it because he likes buying instability and selling outcomes."
Dack stared at the Dire Wolf's open panel like he wanted to tear something apart with his bare hands.
Then he exhaled slowly.
"What else do you know about him," he asked.
I swallowed. "He likes schedules. Tight windows. He doesn't trust live comms. He uses dead drops and timing patterns."
I reached for the slate and pulled up the ridge cache data again. "He prefers pickups during weather shifts—when sensor noise spikes and local forces get complacent. He uses decoys."
Dack's eyes narrowed. "Decoys."
"Yes," I said. "A visible DropShip, and another hidden vector. Sometimes ground transport. Sometimes a second ship masked by terrain and jamming."
Dack's gaze sharpened. "That changes the ambush."
"It should," I said quietly.
Dack nodded once, absorbing it.
Then, unexpectedly, he looked directly at me.
"Taila," he said.
My name sounded different when he said it. Like it belonged somewhere.
"Yes," I whispered.
"You said you feel useless," he said.
My throat tightened again.
He continued, voice flat but not cold. "You aren't. You just want a different kind of usefulness."
I stared at him.
He added, "That's allowed."
The words hit me so hard my breath caught.
Allowed.
As if wanting wasn't a sin.
As if I didn't have to punish myself for it.
I blinked fast, angry at my eyes.
Dack didn't move closer. He didn't touch me. He just stayed there, giving me space the way he always did—space I didn't know what to do with, but space that didn't feel like abandonment.
I swallowed. "I'm jealous," I admitted, voice raw. "Not because she jokes. Not because she flirts. Because she's in a cockpit with you. And I'm… not."
Dack nodded once. "I know."
The simplicity of that—no judgment, no mockery—made my chest ache.
"I don't know how to handle it," I whispered. "I've never wanted someone to… choose me."
Dack's gaze held steady. "Then stop treating wanting like it's shameful."
I stared at him like he'd just spoken a language I didn't understand.
He continued, low. "You want to be there. Then we keep training. Slow. You build tolerance. You build confidence. You don't let feelings drive you into a cockpit before you're ready."
My throat tightened. "What if I never am."
Dack's voice didn't change. "Then you find another way to be there. But you don't decide you're worthless because you can't do one thing yet."
Yet.
The word mattered.
It cracked something open inside me.
I exhaled shakily. "Okay."
Dack nodded once, as if agreement was enough.
Then he climbed the ladder again and went back to work like the world hadn't just shifted for me.
But it had.
Because I'd told him everything.
And he hadn't turned away.
He hadn't looked at me like inventory.
He hadn't laughed.
He hadn't pitied me.
He'd listened.
Outside, the rain kept tapping the hangar roof like patient fingers.
Inside, the Dire Wolf bay hummed, warm and mechanical, the sound of a machine being kept alive by stubborn hands.
And for the first time since the day I was taken, I felt something I didn't know how to name.
Not safety.
Not love.
Something smaller and sharper and more dangerous:
Hope.
I hated it.
And I wanted it.
And I didn't crush it.
Not tonight.
Because tomorrow there would be an ambush.
Tomorrow Sable might show his hand.
Tomorrow Dack would step into mud and steel and try to cut the funding chain that kept bleeding this basin.
And for the first time in my life, I wasn't just listening from the shadows.
I was part of the plan.