The underground maintenance sector lacked artificial stars and plum-scented atmospheric scrubbers. Instead, it smelled of engine grease, recycled sweat, and real spices. For the first time since Squad 9 deployed, it actually felt warm.
The rebellion had thrown together a makeshift celebration. It wasn't much—scavenged glow-lanterns strung between coolant pipes and a dented steel drum serving as a fire pit—but the refugees' relief was palpable. POND had promised to protect them.
In the corner, someone plucked a battered, three-stringed instrument. The chaotic tune would have earned an immediate execution in the harmonious promenades above, but here, people were laughing. Unfiltered, messy human joy echoed off the rusted walls, entirely unsanctioned by the Heavenly Court.
Rigid near the camp's perimeter, Ravion hadn't relaxed for a second. The towering cadet gripped his plasma spear, his golden eyes tracking the dancing refugees and laughing mechanics.
To a POND hunter, this was a nightmare. Pure entropy. Inefficient, chaotic stagnation.
A small movement broke his sweep as a young mother approached tentatively. Exhausted and grease-stained, she held out a dented metal bowl. Steam rose from the synthetic protein and spices inside.
Ravion froze. His training screamed at him to decline—to maintain a sterile, authoritative distance from non-combatants.
But the smell hit him.
Roasted spices and woodsmoke bypassed his corporate conditioning entirely, triggering a visceral memory. He remembered the grand, chaotic feasts of his home planet, long before it burned and he was drafted into POND. He remembered the loud, messy people he was born to rule.
He looked at the mother, then the refugees laughing in the dirt. This wasn't entropy or weakness. This was the defiant, beautiful humanity his people possessed before the galaxy crushed them.
Slowly, the tension bled from Ravion's massive frame. With a sharp hiss, he collapsed his plasma spear and magnetically locked it to his back. He sank onto the rusted grating, bringing himself eye-level with the mother, and gently took the bowl.
"Thank you," he said. It wasn't a barked military command, but the quiet, profoundly formal gratitude of a dead prince.
Eventually, Darian, Zeri, and Ravion gathered around the dented steel drum. They rarely mingled outside combat simulations, but the adrenaline crash, cheap alcohol, and bizarre warmth of the underground stripped away their competitive corporate masks.
Zeri sipped her fermented rice wine, shooting a sideways glance at Ravion as he methodically ate his stew.
"Careful, big guy," Zeri said. "Eat too much of that peasant food and you might accidentally develop a personality."
Ravion didn't look up. He took another bite, swallowed, and stared blankly at the fire. "I would offer you some, Zeri, but I doubt your ego leaves room in your stomach for actual sustenance."
Zeri choked on her drink.
A breathless, unpolished laugh tore out of Darian's chest before he could stop it.
Zeri wiped her mouth, staring at him in shock, before a massive grin broke across her face. Soon, she was laughing too. Even Ravion let out a low, rumbling chuckle, his golden eyes bright with amusement.
As the sound faded, Ravion's gaze dropped back to the dancing sparks. The chaotic crackle of the flames echoed in the hollow space between them.
"My father's palace was a disaster," Ravion murmured.
The remaining laughter died away. The words fell out, heavy and unprompted.
"He was a loud man," he continued, watching the flames lick the steel. "His laugh rattled the stained glass in the high windows. Then he started a war he believed would make him powerful. When the Thalassa invaded, he died screaming in a bunker while his world burned. The planet was consumed within the month."
Ravion's expression remained perfectly still.
"I spent five years calculating that if I became a machine, I would never become a man like him."
He stirred the synthetic stew with his spoon.
"I thought the Heavenly Court had the right idea," he murmured, his brow furrowing. "Total perfection. No variables. No weakness. But Ms. Yan told me they execute infants to maintain that perfection. A system that requires the murder of a child to survive isn't order. It's just a different kind of slaughter."
The silence around the drum was absolute. Ravion, the unbreakable spearhead who lived and breathed POND doctrine, was openly fracturing.
Zeri stared at the fire's reflection in a puddle of leaking coolant. Instinctively, she threw up her familiar, cynical wall to ground him.
"Perfection is a myth for people afraid to get their hands dirty," she muttered, forcing a dismissive shrug. "My dad built the best hard-light tech in the sector. Turns out genius doesn't mean you stick around. I joined the military because they pay me to blow things up, and the gear doesn't walk out on you."
She took a sip from her flask, her knuckles white against the metal, and darted a glance at Darian, silently tagging him in.
Darian caught the cue and leaned back. "Exactly. Ares Corp didn't pull my file because I'm a messiah; they pulled it because my cheekbones test in the ninety-ninth percentile on broadcast nets. It's a transaction. I smile, they keep me out of the gutter, and everyone goes home happy."
Ravion looked at them. He saw the slight tremor in Zeri's hand and the way Darian held his breath beneath the corporate grin.
They were lying.
Yet, watching them desperately build a bridge over their own trauma just to pull him back from the edge... the math finally clicked into place.
POND and the Court tried forcing the galaxy into a sterile grid by cutting out the messy parts. But humanity was the variable. You couldn't protect a kingdom by suffocating it. True order wasn't about eliminating weakness; it was standing as a shield so the fragile things—like a crying baby in a shack, or two scared teenagers hiding behind sarcastic masks—could survive.
"If we follow POND's standing orders, we are supposed to report this camp to the Heavenly Court," Ravion said. His low, vibrating rumble brought their facades to a halt. "If we do that, everyone here dies. If we protect them, we become targets."
He set his bowl on a crate. As he looked at his teammates, the rigid line of his shoulders finally settled into something natural and fiercely protective.
"I do not know how to fix the galaxy," Ravion said. "But I will not let them touch this camp. And I will not let them touch either of you."
The weight of his words hung in the air. For ten suffocating seconds, no one spoke. The sheer sincerity of the vow threatened to overwhelm the fragile peace they had built.
Darian cleared his throat. Adjusting his collar, his shoulders dropped, and his voice came out incredibly quiet.
"I know what it looks like when someone is just playing a part," Darian said, his eyes drifting to the dancing flames. "Pretending you're unbreakable is exhausting. When the act fails, the people standing behind you are the ones who pay for it."
He met Ravion's golden eyes. "You can't fake being a shield. If you're actually offering to stand in front... I won't argue. We need it."
Ravion didn't see the PR-trained poster boy anymore. He saw the profound, quiet exhaustion of someone terrified of shattering.
Zeri snorted, capping her flask. "Please. He just knows without my hard-light tech, you two would be scrap metal. I'm the asset. You're just the meat-shield." Suddenly finding a scuff on her boot fascinating, she added softly, "But... yeah. A pretty decent meat-shield."
Ravion closed his eyes, letting out a low scoff. "Idiots," he muttered.
A massive, uncoordinated belch echoed from Zeri.
Darian jumped. Ravion's eye twitched.
Zeri wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, flushing bright red as she stared in horror at the cheap rice wine. "Oh my god," she wheezed. "Do not say a single word. I will incinerate both of you."
Darian stared at her. Then, unable to hold it back, he burst out laughing again, the sound echoing off the rusted pipes.
Zeri gaped in shock before a massive grin split her face. She joined in, leaning her head back against a pipe, clutching her cracked ribs and wincing through the giggles.
For a brief, beautiful window in the dark belly of a dead asteroid, they weren't POND's elite, ruthless weapons. They were just three terrified, broken kids finding comfort in the dark.