DAY 77 — 04:58 (SHIPTIME)
The refinery flare was a dim orange bruise against the horizon when Lyra finally came back on comm.
"I have it," she said. Calm. Certain. "Retreat path confirmed. Their lights were disciplined—too disciplined. They funneled into the west ravine, then dropped into a dry wash that leads to a cut in the basalt. There's a hideout down there. Camouflage netting. Heat-masked shelters. A vehicle corral. And—" a beat, "—a mech lot."
Dack sat inside the Dire Wolf with the canopy dark and the sensors tuned low. The last fight still lived in his cockpit as heat-haze memory: fuel fire, smoke curtains, the Orion dropping to one knee. The Knives of Acheron running.
This was the part that decided whether the fear they'd earned stayed in their favor—or turned into a promise the raiders could cash later.
"Distance," Dack said.
"Thirty-two klicks," Lyra answered. "Rough terrain. Narrow approach. Two exits. I can mark an extract line that keeps you out of the tightest choke."
"Air?" Dack asked.
"The Leopard can stay high," Lyra said. "Passive. No broadcasting. But it can watch. If you say pull, I pull."
Dack keyed the crew channel. "We go. Limited. In and out. No hero chase."
Jinx's voice came instantly, bright with feral joy. "Finally."
Quill's response was clipped. "Confirm target conditions."
"Mech lot," Dack said. "We break it. We strip what we can. We burn what we can't."
Taila's voice was steady. "Copy."
Morrigan's voice was low and hungry. "Copy."
Lyra cut in once more, calm as steel. "Site manager is asleep. I didn't ask permission. I told them we were conducting 'extended perimeter confirmation.' They'll wake up to results and be too grateful to argue."
Dack didn't praise her. He didn't need to. "Mark route."
A thin line appeared on Dack's tactical display—Lyra's path sketched through ridges and washes, the terrain annotated with the kind of detail that kept people alive.
The pack moved.
The Dire Wolf led.
Quill's Awesome anchored behind him—slow, disciplined, built to make a line and hold it.
Jinx's Highlander took a slightly elevated trail where her long gun could see and punish.
Morrigan's Marauder slid along the left side of the route like a predator in shadow, already thinking flank kills.
Taila's Griffin stayed close, not crowding, screening the rear arc and watching for lights and movement.
They didn't talk much. They didn't need to.
The planet was cold in the pre-dawn, and the basalt ridges looked like teeth.
---
The west ravine narrowed into a dark throat.
Loose gravel and broken rock forced the mechs to move carefully—no sprinting, no reckless jumps. The Knives had chosen this place because it punished mass and punished speed.
Dack didn't give it either.
He walked the Dire Wolf forward in controlled steps, sensors sweeping, listening for the telltale heat bloom of active reactors.
Lyra's voice stayed low over comms from above. "You're two klicks out. I have visual on their camp. Multiple vehicles. Heat signatures from generator shelters. At least four active mech reactors. Possible more cold-sheltered."
Quill asked, "Any mines."
Lyra answered, "No obvious mine patterns. But there are dead zones where their sensors are masked. Expect infantry."
Dack didn't speak until they crested the last ridge and saw the hideout.
It was uglier than a proper base. Less permanent. More like a scavenger's den built out of stolen steel and arrogance.
Cargo containers stacked like walls. Camo netting stretched over pits. A crude landing pad made from flattened scrap—no dropship on it, just old scorch marks. A vehicle corral with trucks and fuel bladders. Floodlights on poles that could be dropped with a single shot.
And in the center, the mech lot.
A Cataphract stood under netting, hunched and brutal-looking—right arm heavy, left side squared. A Trebuchet sat nearby, missile doors half-open. A Hunchback crouched like a bulldog, its hump-mounted gun pointed at the ravine mouth as if it had been waiting. A Jenner was parked off to the side, still hot enough to show it had run recently.
The Knives of Acheron hadn't expected pursuit.
That was the only reason this was possible.
Dack keyed the crew channel. "Targets. Strip their mobility first. Then break their will."
Jinx purred. "Music."
Quill's voice was flat. "Hold discipline."
Morrigan's Marauder shifted in the shadows. "I'll take the left."
Taila swallowed once—Dack heard it over mic—and steadied. "I'm with you."
Dack didn't soften his tone, but something in him did settle into place. "Stay in your lane. You do that, you live."
Taila's answer came quiet. "Okay."
Dack's eyes stayed on the camp. "Lyra. If they scatter?"
"I have the exit lines," Lyra said. "I can call shots if they try to break out. But you'll have to decide what to let go."
Dack's reply was simple. "We don't die for pride."
Then he moved.
---
The Dire Wolf stepped into the ravine mouth like a closing door.
He fired first—LRMs in a tight spread, arcing down into the camp's floodlight line. The missiles detonated along the poles and generator shelters, shredding netting, knocking lights over, plunging the mech lot into chaos-lit darkness.
Jinx followed with a gauss shot from the ridge. The round slammed into the Trebuchet's torso plating and punched a crater deep enough to make its missile doors jerk open from shock.
The camp woke up screaming.
Infantry scattered out of shelters, some of them firing rifles at five-story machines like the universe owed them a miracle.
A raider voice howled over open-band, furious and disbelieving.
"Moonjaw! You weren't supposed to—"
Dack didn't answer.
Quill's Awesome fired a PPC bolt that cut through the dark and struck the Cataphract's shoulder armor. The impact lit the camp in blue-white for a heartbeat, throwing shadows like knives.
The Hunchback lumbered forward, hump gun barking—autocannon bursts tearing into the ravine wall near the Dire Wolf, throwing rock shards across Dack's forward view.
Taila's Griffin answered with LRMs that hammered the Hunchback's flank, forcing it to twist and protect itself instead of committing.
Morrigan's Marauder appeared on the left like a ghost with teeth and fired her PPC into the Jenner's leg assembly. The light mech buckled, tried to pivot, jump jets coughing—
—and landed wrong, scraping armor on the corral fence, suddenly trapped in its own speed.
Jinx's voice crackled, delighted. "Oh, she's mean."
Morrigan replied, flat. "Shut up."
The Cataphract pushed forward, trying to take the center and force a close brawl—its heavy arm raising, missile rack doors flexing.
Dack put a shell from his AC/10 into its knee plating.
The Cataphract stumbled.
Quill's Awesome punished it with another PPC bolt into the same side torso, heat and armor flaring.
The Cataphract's pilot kept coming anyway, stubborn and angry.
The Trebuchet tried to back up into cover, missile racks opening—
Jinx's Highlander fired again. The gauss slug smashed into the Trebuchet's shoulder and ripped the rack housing apart. Metal and fuel and fragments sprayed into the dirt. The Trebuchet staggered, suddenly a missile boat without a boat.
It tried to turn and run.
Dack didn't chase it past the camp line. He didn't need to.
He fired LRMs into the Trebuchet's retreat path, explosions chewing the ground under its feet until it stumbled into a container stack.
The impact crushed the Trebuchet's side against steel.
It didn't fall, but it was pinned in the worst kind of way—immobile and exposed.
Taila's Griffin stepped forward, voice tight but controlled. "I can finish it."
Dack replied, blunt. "Do it."
Taila fired her PPC once—clean bolt into the Trebuchet's torso where Jinx had already opened it up. The Trebuchet's reactor alarms screamed through the night in a visible tremor of heat shimmer, then it went still, smoke bleeding out of ruptured plating.
Taila didn't cheer.
But her breathing steadied.
Dack heard it and stored it like a win.
---
The Knives of Acheron didn't hold formation. They weren't a regiment. They were raiders with a shared name.
Once their missile boat went down and the Jenner got crippled, panic started to creep into their comm traffic.
The Hunchback tried to do what Hunchbacks did—close distance and end something violently. It advanced into the ravine mouth, autocannon roaring.
Dack didn't let it.
He fired LRMs into its forward arc, then another AC/10 shell into the hip plating—enough to knock its gait off.
Quill fired a PPC bolt that struck the Hunchback's chest plating. The armor flared and peeled away.
Morrigan took the opening. Her Marauder's lasers raked the exposed section, carving deeper. She didn't overcommit. She just made the wound.
The Hunchback pilot ejected a heartbeat later—canopy blowing, seat rocketing up into the thin dawn light—
—and an unlucky piece of shrapnel from a collapsing floodlight pole caught the seat as it rose.
The pilot came down wrong.
No long scream.
Just a short, ugly end in the dirt.
Jinx made a pleased sound. "Oops."
Taila went quiet.
Dack didn't comment. Not here. Not now.
He had a camp to break.
---
The Cataphract tried one last push, its pilot furious enough to keep moving even while crippled. It fired missiles into Quill's Awesome, trying to drown her in detonations and force her to step back.
Quill didn't step back.
She held, heat discipline perfect, and fired another PPC bolt into the Cataphract's damaged leg assembly.
The Cataphract's knee failed.
It dropped to one knee like the Orion had at the pump yard.
Dack stepped the Dire Wolf forward, gauss rifle lined up, and fired.
The gauss round struck the Cataphract's torso and punched through plating with a brutal, clean violence. Sparks and smoke and fragments erupted.
The Cataphract sagged.
Still alive.
But finished.
The camp's open-band voice came back—ragged, desperate now.
"Batchall—" the voice spat, like the word itself could rewrite reality. "Batchall, Moonjaw! You want us? Take it proper!"
Jinx laughed, bright and cruel. "Oh my God."
Dack answered, blunt and cold. "No."
He didn't give them the dignity of ritual.
This wasn't Clan honor.
This was raiders trying to survive consequences.
He fired LRMs into the generator shelters instead—detonations turning their power into darkness, their comm relays into static.
The camp went quiet in the way things went quiet when they realized they were about to die.
---
Infantry tried to run.
Some threw down weapons. Some kept firing like idiots.
Morrigan's Marauder moved through the corral line, stepping around trucks with controlled menace. She didn't stomp people. She didn't need to. The people who didn't run learned to.
Taila's Griffin held rear lanes, preventing escape through the narrow wash.
Quill's Awesome anchored the center and fired only when needed—PPC bolts punching holes into anyone who tried to bring a mech back online.
Jinx's Highlander stayed on overwatch and did what she loved: long-range judgment.
The Jenner—crippled, half-collapsed—tried to limp away.
Jinx put a gauss slug through its back plating and ended the attempt.
Then she exhaled, satisfied, and said over comm, "Okay. I'm content."
Morrigan's voice came sour. "You're disgusting."
Jinx replied, cheerful, "Thank you."
And then—without warning—Dack laughed again.
A short sound. Real.
It came out of him like a reflex.
The comm channel went dead for half a beat.
Taila froze mid-step in the Griffin. "Dack…?"
Quill's voice came, controlled but genuinely confused. "Again."
Even Morrigan paused long enough to sound offended. "Stop doing that."
Jinx's laugh turned delighted. "He's evolving."
Dack's voice came back, dry as dust. "Don't make it weird."
Jinx chirped, "Too late."
Dack replied, deadpan, "I'll trade you for a Locust."
Jinx screamed laughter. Taila made a stunned little sound like she didn't know whether to be happy or terrified.
Quill said nothing after that, but her posture eased just slightly—as if the pack being alive in the middle of blood and smoke meant something.
Dack didn't analyze it.
He just kept moving.
Because he could feel the truth settling into him now, heavy and undeniable:
He cared.
Not in theory.
Not as "crew."
As people.
And that meant the rules changed.
Not the tactical rules.
The personal ones.
If anyone came for them… he'd do whatever it took.
---
Lyra's voice cut in, calm from above. "I have movement at the east exit. Two trucks. They're trying to flee with a cache."
Dack looked at the tactical overlay. The exit was narrow. The trucks would be fast.
He didn't chase.
He used the pack.
"Taila," he said. "Hold the wash. Stop them."
Taila's voice steadied instantly. "Copy."
Her Griffin moved—controlled, no panic—stepping into the exit lane and firing LRMs into the dirt ahead of the trucks. Explosions churned the ground and forced the convoy to brake hard.
One truck tried to swerve.
It rolled.
Men spilled out and crawled.
Taila didn't stomp them.
She didn't need to.
Quill's Awesome turned slightly and fired a PPC bolt near the second truck—close enough to make the driver understand the next one wouldn't miss.
The truck stopped.
Hands went up.
Lyra said, "Good. You can strip that cache later. It looks like parts and ammo."
Dack answered, "Logged."
Jinx purred. "Loot."
Morrigan muttered, "We're not looters."
Jinx replied, "We're mercenaries."
Morrigan hissed. "Shut up."
---
By the time the sun finally cleared the basalt teeth, the Knives of Acheron's hideout was broken.
Not cleanly.
Not politely.
But completely.
Mech hulks smoked in the camp. Containers burned. Fuel bladders leaked into dirt. Their comm mast lay snapped.
A name meant something in this line of work.
Moonjaw had just made theirs bigger.
Dack didn't linger.
He took what mattered.
Lyra directed him to a small shelter half-buried under netting—ledger slates, route maps, a list of contacts and fuel buys and "clients" that weren't clients so much as fences. Nothing tied to Sable. Nothing tied to the bigger hunters.
Just raiders with a network and enough money to keep being a problem.
Until now.
"Time," Lyra warned. "Local militia will sniff this out by noon. You don't want to be on the ground when they arrive asking questions."
Dack replied, "We're leaving."
He keyed the crew channel. "Fall back. Same route."
They moved out the way they came—disciplined, controlled, not chasing the last scraps of blood.
As they crested the ridge and the ravine fell away behind them, Taila's voice came quiet. "We… did it."
Jinx answered softly for once. "Yeah."
Quill said, "This is what professionals do."
Morrigan didn't speak. But her Marauder stayed close to Dack's Dire Wolf like it belonged there.
Dack looked at his tactical overlay and then, without thinking too hard, spoke into the channel—blunt, real.
"No one dies," he said. "Not on my watch."
The words surprised even him.
And in the silence that followed, he realized something with sharp clarity:
They weren't temporary.
He wasn't just passing through contracts anymore.
He had a pack.
And he'd burn worlds before he let anyone take them.
---
When they returned to Garrison Pump Complex 12, the workers stared at them like they'd come back from hell carrying proof.
The corporate manager ran out in a panic, saw the soot streaks and the fresh scorch marks, and opened his mouth—
Lyra cut him off before he could ask questions he didn't have the spine to hear answers to.
"Extended perimeter confirmation," she said smoothly. "Threat eliminated."
The manager blinked twice. Then his knees nearly gave out with relief.
"Thank you," he whispered.
Dack didn't answer.
He didn't need thanks.
He needed fuel, steel, and the next job.
But as he guided the Dire Wolf back toward the Union's ramp, Jinx's voice came over comm, bright again.
"So… after we sell the Hatchetman, can we buy matching jackets that make you look less like a funeral?"
Morrigan snapped, "No."
Taila choked out a quiet laugh.
Quill sounded faintly offended. "Uniforms are not tactical priority."
Dack paused just long enough to surprise them all one more time.
He said, dry, "If the jacket comes in 'intimidating,' maybe."
The comm channel went silent.
Then Jinx screamed. Taila laughed for real. Lyra's calm mask cracked at the corner. Even Quill made a tiny sound like she didn't know what to do with joy.
Morrigan muttered, disgusted, "You're all idiots."
Dack didn't deny it.
He climbed back into the Dire Wolf cockpit, sealed the hatch, and let the hum of the reactor settle his blood.
Only then did he speak the number, once, for himself.
"Seventy-seven."
And for the first time, it didn't feel like counting down alone.
It felt like counting forward—toward something worth surviving for.