The debrief room smelled like burnt coffee and wet nylon.
There was a map on the wall—Kestrel Basin drawn in ugly blocks: refinery spine, East Pit, drainage flats, slag hills, the convoy roads that looked like veins if you stared too long. Holt stood with her sleeves rolled up like she could squeeze more hours out of her body by exposing more skin to the air. Two militia officers hovered near the door, stiff and suspicious, hands never far from their sidearms.
And Dack Jarn sat like a statue with a pulse.
He didn't take up much space physically—average height, average face, nothing "heroic" about him at a glance—but the room still bent around him. Like everyone's instincts were quietly agreeing that if violence happened, it would happen in relation to him.
Taila was at the corner table, slate open, posture rigid. Eye sharp. She looked like she'd slept maybe two hours in three days and blamed herself for the missing four.
Which… mood.
Holt gestured at me with a pen like I was a suspect and a resource at the same time. "Start from the beginning," she said. "Names, methods, timing."
I sat, swung one leg over the other, and tried not to grin too much. Grinning was my armor. People expected it. People believed it. If I looked too serious, they'd start wondering what I was hiding.
So I gave them what they expected.
"Okay," I said brightly. "Welcome to *Jinx's Terrible Life Choices: A Lecture Series.* Please hold your applause until the end."
Holt didn't blink. "Jinx."
"Right. Serious." I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. "I was contracted through a procurement broker. Not Kess directly. Kess doesn't do 'direct.' Kess does layers."
Dack's voice was flat. "Handler."
"Sable," I confirmed.
Taila's shoulders tightened at the name. Not dramatically—just enough for me to notice. Because I notice things. I can read a cockpit and I can read a room. Both will kill you if you don't.
Holt tapped her pen. "Describe him."
"Gloves," I said immediately. "Always. Even when it's stupid. Calm voice. Not loud, not cruel the way you expect. Cruel the way accountants are cruel—numbers and decisions with no emotion attached." I paused. "He smiles like he's practicing."
Taila's eye flicked up to me, then away.
Dack didn't react outwardly, but I saw the smallest shift—attention sharpening, the way it did when he caught scent of a real target.
Holt nodded. "Reporting method."
"Time windows," I said. "Tight beam bursts. Dead drops. No chatter. He doesn't trust voice comms. If he speaks, it's for control." I hesitated, then added, "He uses decoys."
Holt's jaw clenched. "We already suspected."
"Good," I said. "Because you should. Standard pattern: visible pickup, hidden vector. Sometimes second DropShip masked by terrain and jamming. Sometimes ground team. Always redundancy."
Dack spoke without moving much. "Objective."
"Keep the basin unstable," I said. "Bleed you slowly. Make you desperate. Make you make bad deals." I tapped the map near the refinery spine. "The Ash Hounds were the teeth. Not the brain."
Holt's mouth tightened. "And you?"
"I was the test," I said, and forced myself not to joke. "Sable wanted your Dire Wolf evaluated. If you were sloppy, you got collected. If you were too dangerous, I was supposed to disengage and report."
Dack's gaze held mine. "Why didn't you disengage."
I could've lied. I could've given a clever answer. I could've made it about money or pride.
Instead I shrugged lightly and told the truth in a way that still sounded like me.
"Because fighting you looked fun," I said. "And because I was tired of working for men who think people are equipment."
Dack stared at me for a long beat, then looked away like he'd filed the statement under *useful but not trusted.*
Fair.
Holt exhaled. "You said you met his representative in person."
"Yeah," I said. "Not Kess. Kess is a myth with bank accounts. But Sable met me. He likes to see what he's buying." I lowered my voice. "He also likes to see what other people can be made into."
Taila's fingers tightened on her slate.
I kept going, because this part mattered.
"Sable's phrase," I said. "His tell. When he's about to spring something, he always says—" I let the words hang for a half second, then delivered them in my best imitation of a calm man with gloves and no soul. "'Make it educational.'"
The room went colder.
Holt swore under her breath. One of her officers shifted like he wanted to leave.
Dack's eyes sharpened. "When did he say it last."
"Before the East Pit raid," I said. "In a packet. Text. Not voice. Same compression signature. Same cadence. Like he was amused."
Taila looked up sharply now. "Text can carry cadence?"
I glanced at her. "When you've been around someone enough, yeah. You start hearing them even when they aren't speaking."
Taila's expression tightened like that landed somewhere deep.
Holt planted her hands on the table. "Ambush plan," she said. "Now."
Dack didn't speak yet. He simply looked at Taila.
She understood immediately, pulled up the ridge-cache timing windows and overlayed them with the pattern I'd described. Her fingers moved fast, precise. The tactical map filled with predicted lanes and suggested pickup points.
"Two options," Taila said quietly. "Either they land near the drainage flats again because it's familiar… or they change and use the slag canyon corridor where sensor noise is higher."
Dack's voice was calm. "They'll change."
Taila swallowed. "Slag canyon, then."
I nodded. "That's what Sable would do. He hates repetition when people start learning."
Holt's face tightened. "We don't have enough armor to fight an off-world pickup team in open ground."
Dack finally spoke, flat and decisive. "Then we don't fight them in open ground."
He tapped the map—slag canyon corridor, a narrow basin with broken ridges and rust-colored hills, the kind of terrain that turned sensors into liars and made heavy machines stumble if the pilot wasn't disciplined.
"We set the field," Dack said. "We hide militia. We hide armor. We let the decoy show. We wait for the second vector."
Holt's jaw clenched. "And if we're wrong?"
Dack didn't blink. "Then we bleed anyway."
That was Dack. No comfort. No false certainty. Just a plan built on surviving the worst case.
Holt looked at me. "You're sure you're on our side?"
I smiled sweetly. "Marshal, I'm literally on probation. If I betray you, Dack turns my Highlander into a lawn ornament."
Dack didn't deny it.
Holt took that as confirmation and exhaled. "Fine," she said. "We do it. Tonight."
Taila's eye flicked toward the door, then back to her slate. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere else—like the word *tonight* carried a weight she didn't know how to hold.
Dack noticed. Of course he did. He always noticed the parts people tried to hide.
He didn't soften. He just said, "Taila runs comms and jamming from a safe node. She's not in the kill zone."
Taila's jaw tightened. "I can—"
"No," Dack said, voice calm but absolute. "Not tonight."
Taila went still.
I felt the tension in the room tighten like a cable.
And in that cable, I heard something dangerous: jealousy. Fear. Want.
Taila wasn't just scared of dying.
She was scared of being left behind again.
I knew that fear. Different shape. Same teeth.
The debrief ended with Holt barking orders and officers scattering. The room emptied fast, leaving only the hum of the building and the distant throb of refinery machinery.
Dack paused at the door, looked at me.
"Talk," he said.
"Always," I replied.
His gaze flicked toward Taila—still seated, still rigid.
"Not now," he said quietly. "Later. Don't poke her."
Then he left.
Which, obviously, meant my brain immediately went: *I should poke her gently and responsibly.*
I waited until Holt was gone. Until Taila realized she was alone with me and stiffened like I might bite.
I stood slowly, hands visible, tone careful for once. "Hey."
Taila didn't look up. "What."
"Congratulations," I said. "That was the coldest 'what' I've ever heard. You could freeze coolant lines with that."
Taila's eye flicked up, sharp. "Say what you want."
I hesitated.
Then I did something that would either help… or get me stabbed.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out my battered paperback.
Taila stared at it like I'd produced a grenade.
"What is that," she said.
"My emotional support garbage," I said. "A harem novel."
Taila blinked once, confused. "You read those."
"Religiously," I said. "I have opinions. I have tabs. I have *notes.*"
Taila's mouth tightened like she wanted to sneer but wasn't sure she was allowed to.
I sat on the edge of the table opposite her, far enough that I wasn't in her space. "Look," I said, quieter. "You hate me."
"I don't—" Taila began automatically.
I held up a hand. "You do. It's fine. But it's not because I'm loud."
Taila went still.
"It's because I'm in a cockpit," I continued. "Because I get to stand beside him in a way you want to."
Taila's eye hardened. "I don't want—"
I leaned forward slightly, voice gentle but firm. "Taila. I can smell a lie through a cockpit filter."
Her breath hitched.
For a moment, she looked… young. Not the hardened bondsman mask. Not the sharp-eyed survivor. Just someone confused by feelings she'd never been allowed to have.
I softened. "You're not wrong for wanting it," I said. "And you're not wrong for feeling angry that you can't do it yet."
Taila's fingers tightened on her slate. "You don't get to—"
"I do," I interrupted softly, "because I've never been in a relationship either."
That stopped her.
Her eye flicked up fully now. "What."
I shrugged, forcing a little humor back in so it didn't feel like an exposed wound. "Turns out being the best at something makes some people weird. They either want to own it, or they want it gone. Nobody wanted me.They wanted the idea of me. Or the bragging rights."
Taila's expression shifted—skepticism, then something like reluctant understanding.
I tapped the paperback. "So I read these instead," I said. "Because in these, people say what they feel like idiots and then they learn. And everyone is stupidly hot and somehow nobody files taxes."
Taila stared at the book, then at me. "Why are you showing me this."
"Because," I said, choosing my words carefully, "you're thinking like a trapped person."
Taila's face flashed with anger.
I held her gaze. "You think there's only one slot beside Dack. One place. And if I'm in it, you're out."
Taila's jaw clenched so tight I thought her teeth might crack.
I lifted the paperback slightly like it was evidence. "Harem novels taught me something dumb but true," I said. "Sometimes there's more than one place. Sometimes people can be… chosen more than once."
Taila's eye widened a fraction.
I continued before she could shut down. "I'm not telling you what Dack feels. I'm not telling you what you should feel. I'm telling you that this doesn't have to be a war between us."
Taila's voice came out rough. "You don't even know him."
I smiled slightly. "I know discipline. I know boundaries. I know what it looks like when someone doesn't use power to crush people. He could've killed me. He didn't. He could've treated you like cargo. He doesn't."
Taila stared.
I leaned back and added, lightly, "Also, if this *is* a harem, I would like to formally submit my application early so I can claim seniority and annoy you forever."
Taila's eye narrowed. "You're insane."
"Correct," I said cheerfully. "But I'm also loyal. And I'm trying—very clumsily—to not be your enemy."
Taila looked away, breathing tight.
For a long moment, I thought she was going to tell me to get out.
Instead she asked, very quietly, "Why."
I blinked. "Why what."
"Why do you care," she said, voice tight. "You could just… take your place and laugh."
The question hit harder than I expected.
Because the honest answer was dangerous.
I swallowed, then said it anyway, but softly, so it didn't feel like a weapon.
"Because I know what it's like to feel unwanted," I said. "And I saw you looking at him like he's the first person who didn't treat you like inventory."
Taila went very still.
"And," I added with a crooked smile, "because if we're going to get out of this alive, we can't afford you spiraling in your head while Sable tries to turn all of us into lessons."
Taila's throat worked.
Then, finally, she looked at the paperback again and said, almost accusingly, "Show me."
My eyebrows shot up. "Seriously?"
Taila's eye narrowed. "Don't make it weird."
I grinned. "Impossible. But I'll try."
I slid the book across the table.
Taila picked it up like it might bite, then flipped it open. Her gaze snagged on my margin notes. Her expression shifted—confusion, then the tiniest flicker of amusement she tried to kill immediately.
I leaned forward and whispered like it was classified intel. "Rule number one is the most important."
Taila read it again, then muttered, "Bite him."
I beamed. "See? You're learning."
Taila shoved the book back at me, cheeks slightly warmer. "This is stupid."
"It is," I agreed. "That's why it helps."
A comm chirp cut through the moment.
Holt's channel. Tight, urgent. "Movement on the canyon approach. Unknown contacts. Possible incoming DropShip. Everyone to stations."
Taila's posture snapped back into hard focus instantly. Slate up, fingers moving.
I stood, shoved the paperback into my jacket like it was contraband. "Okay," I said, voice turning professional. "Time to stop being emotionally vulnerable and go back to murder logistics."
Taila looked up at me, eye sharp. "Don't die."
I blinked.
It wasn't warm. It wasn't friendly.
But it wasn't hate either.
I grinned. "Not without permission."
Taila's mouth twitched—almost a smile—then she caught herself and looked away like she was angry it happened.
Good.
That meant she was still human.
We moved.
---
The slag canyon corridor looked like the planet had been cracked open and left to rust.
Broken ridges rose on both sides like jagged walls. The ground was churned mud and black runoff that tasted metallic on the sensors. Fog clung low, mixing with rain so visibility was a lie even with floodlights.
Holt's militia had dug in along the ridgeline with portable barriers and concealed firing pits. A pair of APCs sat under camo netting, engines off, crews breathing quietly like prey pretending they weren't alive.
Taila was in a hardened comm node tucked behind a ridge spur—safe, but close enough to run jamming and sensor analysis. I could hear her voice on the secure channel, clipped and controlled.
Dack's Dire Wolf waited half-submerged in mud behind a slag outcrop, hulking and silent. My Highlander stood two hundred meters away in another pocket of cover, jump jets cold, reactor humming low.
We were baiting a trap with our own bodies.
Dack's voice came through the link, calm. "Hold until we confirm second vector."
Holt replied, tense. "Primary contact is on approach. DropShip signature."
Taila cut in. "Jamming spike. Someone's painting the ridge with noise."
My skin prickled. "That's them," I murmured.
On the canyon's far mouth, engines roared through fog. A DropShip's silhouette emerged—ugly, broad, descending too confidently. It wasn't trying to hide. It wanted to be seen.
Decoy.
It came down into the basin like a fat insect settling into a puddle, thrusters blasting mud outward in a dirty halo. Its ramps didn't open immediately—another tell. It was waiting.
Dack didn't fire.
He didn't move.
He let the decoy sit there and pretend it mattered.
Taila's voice tightened. "Secondary signatures—faint—right ridge, high altitude, masked by the jamming."
Holt swore. "Second DropShip?"
Taila's answer came fast. "Smaller. Faster. Coming in low behind ridge line—using terrain shadow."
There it was.
The real pickup.
A sleeker craft slid into the canyon behind the ridge like a knife, barely visible until it was already committed. Its thrusters flared, cutting through fog, aiming for a tight landing pocket where it could grab whatever it came for and leave before the basin could bleed it.
Dack's voice went cold. "Now."
The world exploded into motion.
The Dire Wolf rose from cover like a nightmare standing up, and I pushed my Highlander forward in the same instant, mud ripping at my feet.
Dack opened with a heavy missile ripple into the decoy DropShip's ramp zone—detonations walking across the mud and forcing its point defense to react, bright tracers cutting fog.
I jumped my Highlander up onto a ridge spur to get elevation, landing hard enough to shake my cockpit. From there I had eyes on the real pickup ship's landing pocket.
And what came out of the fog to meet us made my stomach drop a fraction.
Not pirates.
A disciplined escort lance.
Silhouettes resolved—heavy and aggressive shapes moving with spacing and intent. One of them stepped forward and my HUD tagged it with a grim little certainty:
Warhammer.
Another: Catapult.
Another: Thunderbolt.
Not junk. Not raiders. Professionals.
Someone had decided "educational" meant blood.
Dack didn't hesitate.
He drove the Dire Wolf into the basin between the decoy and the militia positions, taking the center like he was building a wall out of himself. He hit the Catapult first—missiles to disrupt its launcher rhythm, then autocannon bursts to chew at its leg plating when it tried to reposition.
The Warhammer answered with crackling energy that lit the fog in violent pulses, slamming into Dack's forward armor and turning rain to steam.
I didn't wait for orders. I cut left and hammered the Thunderbolt with a heavy opening, then followed with a jump to shift angle and keep it from lining up on Taila's comm node.
Taila's voice snapped through the channel. "They're trying to split you. The real pickup is deploying a ground team—fast movers—heading for the Marauder data crate!"
Of course they were.
Not here for us.
Here for what we were protecting.
Dack's voice was razor calm. "Holt, intercept ground team. Jinx—on me."
I grinned despite the fear. "Yes, boss."
We pushed together—two assault machines moving through mud and fog like the world belonged to them.
The Warhammer tried to hold the center with raw firepower. The Catapult tried to flank. The Thunderbolt tried to anchor and punish anyone who overextended.
Dack didn't give them the luxury of a long fight.
He snapped a missile salvo into the Catapult's cover to flush it, then stitched autocannon fire into its exposed leg as it stumbled out, forcing it to limp. The Catapult's return fire howled into the fog, rockets screaming past, some detonating too close for comfort.
I jumped again—short, controlled—landing on a ridge lip and dropping down behind the Thunderbolt's angle. I raked it with focused fire, forcing it to turn, and that turn exposed it to Dack's centerline.
Dack punished the exposure immediately—laser heat carving across armor seams, then a brutal follow-up that made the Thunderbolt stagger.
Holt's militia opened up from concealed pits—disciplined bursts from anti-armor teams hitting legs, joints, vulnerable plates. Not enough to kill a heavy 'Mech, but enough to make it flinch and bleed time.
The Warhammer—smart—realized the militia mattered and tried to pivot toward them.
Dack stepped into its path like a closing door.
At one point, the decoy DropShip's turret swung toward the ridge where Taila was hidden, trying to rake the comm node with suppressive fire.
I saw it and felt something hot spike in my chest.
Not protectiveness. Not romance.
Something simpler.
Mine.
Not like ownership—like responsibility.
"Dack," I snapped. "Turret on Taila."
He reacted instantly—missiles into the turret mount, then a hard, focused follow-up that turned the emplacement into smoke and sparking debris.
Taila's voice came tight. "I'm fine."
"Good," I muttered. "Stay that way."
The real pickup ship's ramp dropped.
A ground team poured out—fast, armored, moving like they'd trained for this exact moment.
Dack couldn't chase them without exposing the militia.
So he did what Dack always did.
He made the field impossible.
He turned and fired a wide missile pattern into the mud corridor between the ground team and their objective, detonations chewing the earth into a cratered mess. The ground team had to slow, had to reroute, had to bunch.
Holt's hidden APCs roared to life and surged out of concealment, cutting off their new path.
The basin became a kill box.
The ground team tried to fight through anyway.
They died in the mud, fast and ugly.
The Warhammer saw its mission failing and tried to disengage, backpedaling toward the decoy DropShip, hoping to extract.
Dack didn't let it.
He closed in, weapons cycling, heat climbing, and drove a final, disciplined sequence into the Warhammer's weakened side until it staggered and collapsed into the mud with a sound like a building giving up.
The Catapult limped back, smoke venting, then turned to run.
I let it.
Not mercy. Math.
We couldn't afford to chase into fog while a DropShip could lift and rain fire on the basin.
The real pickup ship's engines spooled—prepping to lift now that the ground team had failed.
Dack's voice cut through the channel, cold. "Jinx. On the hull."
I blinked. "You want me to—"
"Do it," he said.
So I did.
I jumped.
The Highlander's jets roared and I vaulted onto the pickup ship's lower hull plating, landing in a spray of rain and steam. For a heartbeat, I was standing on a ship in a canyon, looking down at a battlefield through fog—exactly the kind of insane image that belonged in a novel and nowhere else.
I fired downward—targeting thruster housings and control surfaces—forcing the ship to hesitate, to bleed stability, to choose between lifting and surviving.
Below me, Dack's Dire Wolf braced and hammered the ship's landing gear zone with focused fire, forcing its ramp to buckle and its stance to shift.
The pickup ship tried to lift anyway.
It got maybe two meters off the ground before its damaged thrusters stuttered.
Then it slammed back down into the mud with a violent crash that shook the canyon.
For a moment, the whole world went still except for rain.
Then Holt's voice came hoarse. "They're trying to scuttle it."
Taila cut in, sharp. "Reactor spike—internal timer—if it blows, it takes half the basin with it."
Dack's voice went flat. "No."
He moved like inevitability—Dire Wolf stepping in, massive arms bracing against the pickup ship's hull like he was forcing a beast to stay down.
"Jinx," he snapped.
"I'm already on it," I replied, I popped my cockpit open and was scrambling out of my mech, and down along the hull plating toward the access seam, mud and rain making everything slick. I chuckled at everyone's sharp intake of air as I slid down my mech, I surprised even myself that I hadn't fallen on my ass... again.
I found the panel—maintenance hatch, sealed. I tore it open with a tool I didn't technically have permission to carry, because I am who I am.
Inside, wires. Timers. A scuttle device with a smug little blinking light like it thought it was smarter than everyone.
I yanked the wrong wire on purpose.
Just kidding.
I yanked the right wire because I'm not actually incompetent when it matters.
The light died.
I exhaled hard.
"Scuttle disabled," I said, breathless.
Taila's voice came through the channel, tight with relief. "Confirmed. Spike dropped."
Holt exhaled like she'd been holding her breath for years.
Dack didn't celebrate. He just said, "Good."
Then, quieter—only on our secure line—he added, "Get off the hull."
"Yes, boss," I replied, and jumped down into the mud like a heroic idiot.
The canyon was littered with wrecks now—broken machines, dead ground team, smoke rising into rain. The decoy DropShip had begun to pull back, thrusters roaring, but Holt's militia kept it honest with concentrated fire and the knowledge that if it stayed, it would die too.
It retreated into fog.
Not a victory parade.
A survival.
That's what merc work really was.
---
Afterward, as Holt's people secured the downed pickup craft and dragged wounded machines into salvage lanes, I caught Taila outside the comm node.
She looked exhausted. Mud on her boots. Rain on her hood. Eyes too bright, like she'd been close to losing something important and didn't know how to name it.
She spotted me and stiffened.
I lifted my hands. "Hey," I said gently. "Still alive?"
Taila's jaw tightened. "Yes."
"Good," I said. "I'd hate to lose my future co-wife in the hypothetical harem."
Taila stared at me.
Then, unbelievably, she said, very flat, "Stop talking."
I grinned. "Okay."
I leaned closer just enough to be heard over the rain, voice quieter than my usual chaos.
"You heard what I said earlier," I murmured. "This doesn't have to be a war."
Taila's eye flicked toward where Dack stood in the distance, speaking to Holt, posture calm, armor-splattered, unreal.
Then she looked back at me.
"I don't know what I am," she admitted quietly.
That confession was raw. Brave.
I softened. "You're alive," I said. "That's a start."
Taila's throat worked. "You really think… we both could—"
I cut her off gently. "I think Dack chooses who he trusts. And trust isn't a one-seat cockpit."
Taila stared, rain dripping off her hood.
Then she said, barely audible, "I don't want to be left behind."
I understood that too well.
So I didn't joke this time.
"Then don't," I said simply. "Train. Learn. Be there in the way you can, until you can be there in the way you want."
Taila's eye narrowed slightly. "And you?"
I smiled, crooked. "I'll try not to be an asshole grenade."
A tiny twitch at her mouth—almost a smile—then gone.
But it existed.
That was enough.
Behind us, Holt called for Dack. The basin's lights flickered through rain. Salvage crews moved like ants around the fallen pickup craft, already stripping it for clues.
Sable had made it educational.
He'd taught us what the next level looked like.
And we'd survived the lesson.
For now.