They got four hours of sleep.
Not because anyone felt safe—because bodies eventually demanded it.
Rook's Fall spaceport sat under merc control, but the city still burned in pockets. Smoke drifted across the tarmac in slow sheets. Floodlights swung back and forth like nervous eyes, catching the silhouettes of wrecks—dead Panthers, broken Griffins, the twisted carcass of a Catapult half-collapsed against a hangar wall. Infantry moved like ants around the hardpoints, dragging ammo crates, setting up barricades, stripping weapons off dead vehicles before the heat could cook everything into useless slag.
The contract wasn't done.
It had just reached the part where everything got expensive.
The pirate comms node sat on a basalt hill beyond the city's outer edge. A hardened station built around a relay mast and a bunker complex, with trenches carved into the slope and old mining roads turned into choke points. It was the last thing keeping the raiders organized—last thing letting them call in scattered cells, warn each other, coordinate retreats, and threaten orbital traffic.
Take the hill and the planet folded.
Leave it standing and the planet stayed infected.
Dack stood in the Leopard's 'Mech bay while techs did what they could with what they had. No full refit—just triage. Patch plates bolted over scorched seams. Ammo bins topped off. Coolant swapped. Quick diagnostics run by tired hands.
The Dire Wolf loomed over them like a patient predator. Missiles reloaded. Autocannon feed checked. Gauss capacitors inspected twice.
Jinx's Highlander was dirtier than it had any right to be. Armor scuffed. Jump jets still functional. She hovered near her machine like she was itching to climb in and start another argument with physics.
Taila's Centurion had fresh scorch marks on the shoulder where the Panther's PPC had kissed her. The plating was patched, ugly but solid. Taila stood by the Centurion's leg with her arms folded, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the work like she could will it into perfection.
Lyra moved through the bay with her tablet, calm posture, careful steps, eyes that didn't waste motion. She checked the Leopard's fuel state, ran the takeoff timeline, reviewed air threat projections. She looked like she was all business.
But Dack noticed little things now.
A faint flush when she caught Jinx and Taila kissing him goodbye before climbing into their cockpits. The way she didn't look away fast enough when Taila's hand lingered on his chest. The way her throat moved when she heard Jinx's low laugh in the corridor the previous night and remembered the bulkheads weren't soundproof.
She was embarrassed.
She was also… curious.
Dack didn't comment. He wasn't gentle with words. He was careful with actions.
Jinx, of course, wasn't careful with anything.
She slid up behind Taila, smacked her ass once—quick, casual, like it was part of the maintenance checklist.
Taila jumped. "Jinx!"
Jinx grinned. "Pre-battle luck."
Taila's face turned red. "That's not a—"
Jinx leaned in and kissed Taila once, firm and unapologetic, then kissed Dack too, slower, eyes half-lidded like she wanted the whole bay to know she wasn't ashamed of wanting him.
Dack didn't move away.
Taila followed a second later, shy but determined, kissing Dack quick and then kissing Jinx like she was proving to herself that she could.
Lyra looked down at her tablet so hard it was almost violent.
Jinx caught it and smiled like a demon. "Lyra."
Lyra didn't look up. "Yes?"
Jinx's voice went sweet. "You good?"
A pause—tiny. "Yes."
Jinx hummed. "You sure?"
Dack's voice cut in, blunt. "Jinx. Prep."
Jinx laughed, but she listened. "Yes, boss."
Taila climbed the ladder into the Centurion's cockpit without hesitating. That alone told Dack she was still steady.
He followed, then Jinx. The bay sealed. The Leopard's clamps released with a hydraulic sigh.
Lyra's voice came over internal comms, controlled. "Task force is moving. You'll be in the second wave with Alpha Lance. Primary objective: breach and seize comms bunker. Secondary: destroy remaining pirate heavy assets."
Dack keyed his mic. "Any changes."
Lyra exhaled. "Enemy consolidated. Confirmed: King Crab, pirate-marked Marauder, Archer, at least one Hunchback and a screen of mediums. Tanks present. Artillery likely still active—smaller pieces, maybe hidden among the mining cuts."
Jinx sounded pleased. "They really want to die on that hill."
Dack answered simply. "They want to take us with them."
Taila's voice was quiet. "How do we do it."
Dack didn't give speeches. He gave structure.
"Slow," he said. "We break the screen, kill spotters, then push in layers. We don't charge. We don't chase."
Jinx groaned theatrically. "You're no fun."
"I'm alive," Dack replied.
That shut her up for a moment.
Lyra brought the Leopard up and out, staying behind the main assault DropShips. In the canopy view, the hill rose beyond the city like a black tooth against dawn—relay mast blinking steadily, trenches visible as jagged lines, vehicles dug in behind berms and broken rock.
The pirates had built a fortress out of whatever they could steal and bury.
And they'd chosen it as a grave.
---
The ground fight started before anyone fired a shot.
Mines and rough terrain did more damage than pride ever wanted to admit.
Alpha Lance formed on a cracked mining road at the base of the hill: Atlas at point, Warhammer on its right, Dack's Dire Wolf center-left, Jinx's Highlander angling wide. Taila's Centurion held close to the Dire Wolf's left, positioned where her fire mattered and her smaller frame didn't become bait.
Bravo Lance fanned out behind—Orion, Marauder, Archer, Catapult—battered survivors from earlier. Charlie Lance screened the flanks with mediums—Shadow Hawk, Griffin, Wolverine, Vindicator—some limping, some fresh replacements pulled from reserve DropShips.
The hill answered them with silence.
Then the first shell landed.
Not Long Tom—shorter range. A heavy mortar or a mobile artillery piece, pre-registered to the approach road. The blast lifted ash and rock, peppering the Atlas with shrapnel that rang off its armor like hail.
The Atlas pilot swore and kept walking.
Dack keyed his mic. "Spotters are close. Eyes up."
Jinx's voice came light. "Always."
Taila's breathing was audible. Controlled, but there. "I'm scanning."
A second shell hit near Charlie's flank. A Vindicator stumbled, armor scored. The pilot didn't fall, but the warning tone in their voice went high and thin.
They hadn't fired a shot yet and already the hill was taking bites.
Dack didn't like slow deaths. He preferred clean ones.
"Move off the road," he ordered. "Spread. Use the cut."
They shifted into an old mining drainage channel—shallow, jagged, broken rock offering some cover from direct artillery. The Atlas stepped down first, then the Warhammer, then the Dire Wolf. The Highlander moved along the higher shelf, using elevation to scout, and the Centurion stayed tucked in the channel's shadow.
The hill waited.
Then it opened.
A Shadow Hawk and Griffin popped up on the left rim, firing down into the channel. A Hunchback stepped into view ahead, cannon already barking. On the right, an Archer appeared behind a berm, missile arcs lifting into the pale morning sky.
The first volley came hard.
The Hunchback's AC/20 slammed into the Warhammer's already-damaged side, ripping armor away and exposing internal structure. The Warhammer staggered and kept moving because pride is heavy.
The Archer's missiles rained down on the channel mouth, impacts walking across rock and steel.
Dack's voice snapped. "Jinx—right rim. Taila—hold. Don't chase. Cover the channel mouth."
"Copy," Taila said, tight.
Jinx jumped, jets roaring, landing on a broken ridge shelf and firing her gauss. The shot punched into the Griffin's torso, forcing it back. She followed with missiles, chewing through cover.
Dack fired his LRMs—high and wide—forcing the Archer to shift its position, then put a gauss round into the Hunchback's chest.
The Hunchback didn't go down.
It fired again.
This time the shell hit the Warhammer's torso and tore through a section of armor like it was wet paper. The Warhammer pilot screamed something incoherent and angry, then returned fire—lasers raking the Hunchback's cockpit area.
Taila fired her AC/10 once, precise, catching the Hunchback's shoulder and twisting the cannon mount slightly off alignment. She followed with her LRMs to keep pressure on it without overheating.
Dack heard her breathing steady.
No freeze.
Good.
"Good shots," he said—blunt praise, but praise.
Taila's reply came fast. "Copy."
The Hunchback tried to back into cover.
Dack didn't let it. Another gauss shot, then autocannon. The Hunchback's chest caved. It staggered, smoke venting, then collapsed into the drainage channel wall, sliding down in a shower of rock and hot metal.
It wasn't pretty.
It was dead.
The Archer broke line-of-sight, trying to keep missile arcs without exposing itself.
Jinx, above, laughed. "They're backing up. They want us up the cut."
Dack answered. "Yes. And we still go. We just go smart."
The screen mechs fell back in layers—Shadow Hawk hopping from ridge to ridge, Griffin limping away, an unseen Panther PPC snapping once from somewhere higher and scoring the Atlas's shoulder.
The pirates weren't trying to win the approach.
They were trying to bleed them before the real fight.
Dack's voice went cold. "They're feeding us to the hill."
Jinx sounded delighted anyway. "So we eat the hill."
---
They crested the first terrace and saw the comms complex properly.
The relay mast rose from a hardened bunker like a spear driven into rock. Around it, trenches and revetments zigzagged across the slope. Concrete emplacements held tank hulls dug in up to their turrets. Minefield markers weren't visible—because pirates didn't mark minefields for the enemy.
On the central terrace, the King Crab stood.
It was scarred from earlier fights—one autocannon housing blackened, armor plates bolted on mismatched. But it was still a King Crab: thick, heavy, brutal, built for one thing.
Close-range murder.
Beside it, the pirate Marauder held a high position near the bunker entrance, weapons tracking smoothly. An Archer was tucked behind the comms building itself, missile doors open.
There were tanks everywhere—Manticores, Scorpions, missile carriers—plus infantry heat signatures in the trenches, likely with SRMs and satchel charges waiting for anyone to step too close.
Lyra's voice came over comms, quieter now. "They're dug in deep. I'm seeing portable AA—shoulder-launch class. No SAM like the Chaparral, but enough to make low passes dangerous."
"Stay high," Dack said. "Feed me targeting."
"Copy," Lyra replied.
Jinx's voice went tight. "That King Crab's mine."
"No," Dack said immediately.
Jinx paused. "Excuse me?"
"You don't duel it," Dack repeated. "We kill it together."
A beat of silence.
Then Jinx, softer than usual: "Copy."
Taila's voice was small. "How do we—"
Dack cut in, blunt structure again. "We break the Archer first. Kill the Marauder second. Then we choke the King Crab in crossfire."
Jinx laughed once, grim. "That's smart. Hate it."
Dack didn't respond.
He moved.
The Dire Wolf advanced behind a basalt outcrop, using it as partial cover. The Centurion stayed near, firing only when the angles were clean. The Atlas and Warhammer pushed center to draw attention, because the Atlas could take punishment and the Warhammer didn't have a choice anymore.
Bravo Lance started pounding the trenches from range—Archer missiles from their side, Catapult arcs, suppressing infantry and tanks.
The pirates answered with coordinated violence.
The Archer behind the comms building launched a full volley. The missiles rained down on Alpha's center, detonations walking across the Atlas and Warhammer.
The Marauder fired, precision shots that punished anyone who paused.
The King Crab didn't fire yet.
It watched.
Like it was saving its teeth for when it could taste blood.
Dack waited for the Archer's second volley timing.
Then he stepped out and fired his LRMs—tight pattern—forcing the Archer to shift or get bracketed.
Jinx saw the opening and moved, jump jets flaring just enough to reposition to a flank terrace. She fired her gauss and the shot punched through the comms building's outer wall near the Archer's cover, collapsing part of the structure and exposing the missile boat's side.
Taila fired her AC/10 once into the exposed panel, then followed with LRMs.
The Archer lurched.
It tried to backpedal.
Dack put a gauss round into its torso.
The Archer didn't explode. It sagged, missile doors hanging open, then started venting smoke like a dying furnace.
"Archer is crippled," Lyra called. "Good hits."
Dack didn't let it stay "crippled." He fired again—autocannon follow-up—and the Archer finally collapsed into the rubble of the comms building, its missile racks cooking off in ugly pops.
One threat removed.
The pirates answered by committing the Marauder.
It stepped forward into a better angle and fired into Jinx's Highlander position, trying to punish the flank. Jinx took a hit that gouged armor off her torso, alarms spiking.
She swore. "He's good."
Dack's voice stayed steady. "Yes. Don't duel him."
Jinx's laugh was sharp. "I'm not. I'm flirting."
The Marauder kept firing—controlled, professional, ugly.
Taila's Centurion caught a stray hit from a tank battery—impact rocking her frame, alarm tones squealing.
Taila's breathing spiked.
Dack snapped. "Taila—status."
A beat. Too long.
Then Taila's voice came back tight. "Yellow. I'm up. I'm moving."
Good.
Dack's chest unclenched again. He hated that it did that now.
"Keep moving," he said.
The Marauder tried to reposition, stepping along the bunker's side to deny crossfire.
Dack didn't allow it.
He called to Bravo and Charlie lances on the wider net, voice carrying more authority now because he was the one making sense.
"Bravo—pressure the Marauder's right. Charlie—flush the trench infantry. I need the Marauder exposed."
A tired merc commander responded. "Copy that, Dire Wolf."
Copy that.
Not "kid."
Not "who are you."
They were listening.
The Marauder took fire from multiple angles. Its armor started to peel. It tried to back into the bunker shadow.
Jinx fired again, gauss punching into its shoulder.
Dack added his own gauss shot.
Taila fired her AC/10 once into the same torn section—simple, disciplined.
The Marauder staggered.
It didn't fall.
It took one step—
—and then the Atlas finally landed a brutal hit from the center, punching into its torso.
The Marauder collapsed into the trench line, half falling, half sliding, crushing infantry positions under its weight. Heat signatures inside the cockpit spiked, then flatlined.
The pilot didn't eject.
There wasn't time.
The hill got quieter for a moment.
Then the King Crab moved.
It stepped forward down the terrace like an executioner walking toward the block. One autocannon still functional, the other half-jammed but dangerous. It fired at the Atlas.
The impact tore into the Atlas's already-wrecked side and nearly dropped it. The Atlas pilot shouted something ragged but kept moving because assault pilots were stubborn animals.
The King Crab turned its torso toward the Dire Wolf.
Toward Dack.
Jinx's voice went low. "Boss—"
Dack answered immediately. "I see it."
The King Crab wanted the biggest threat.
Dack didn't flinch.
He shifted behind a basalt spur, forcing the King Crab to commit if it wanted a clean shot.
"Do not get close," Dack said. "It wants to gut you."
Jinx sounded almost offended. "I know what it wants."
Taila's voice was thin. "How do we kill it."
Dack's answer was cold math. "We break legs. We keep distance. We cook it from angles. If it reaches you, you die."
Blunt. True.
The King Crab advanced anyway.
Tanks supported it—Manticores rolling forward, missiles and shells adding chaos. Infantry in trenches fired SRMs whenever they caught a gap.
Dack targeted the tanks that mattered—those with clean lines.
He fired LRMs to force them to shift, then gauss to punch through armor when they did. A Manticore's turret exploded in a bright bloom. A Scorpion flipped onto its side, burning.
Jinx kept flanking, using short jumps to keep high ground without overexposing, firing gauss when the King Crab's armor seams showed.
Taila stayed with Dack, firing AC/10 and LRMs when called, not wasting ammo on bad angles, not chasing.
The King Crab took hits.
It didn't care.
It kept walking.
And then it committed—turning away from the Atlas and charging toward the Dire Wolf's cover.
It wanted close range.
It wanted to make the fight simple.
Dack spoke, sharp. "Back. Now. We give ground."
Jinx's voice rose. "You're letting it—"
"Yes," Dack snapped. "We don't fight it on its terms."
They backed along the terrace edge, keeping spacing, forcing the King Crab to keep moving through open ground where every step could be punished.
Lyra's voice cut in, tight. "I can mark it. Laser designation. But I'll have to dip lower to keep the lock through terrain."
Dack's response was immediate. "Don't."
Lyra paused. "Dack—"
"Don't," he repeated, harder. "Stay alive."
A beat.
Then Lyra, quiet: "Copy."
The King Crab's autocannon fired again.
The shell hit near the Dire Wolf's feet, blasting basalt into shards that hammered armor plating. Warnings screamed. The cockpit shook.
Taila made a sharp sound on comms.
Dack didn't swear. He didn't panic.
He fired—gauss and autocannon—into the King Crab's leg joint when it stepped into the open.
The shot tore armor away.
The King Crab staggered slightly.
Jinx saw it. She fired her gauss into the same leg, then followed with missiles.
The King Crab's leg started leaking smoke.
It still kept moving.
It reached the terrace lip and stepped down, trying to close the last distance.
Dack shifted again, backing further, keeping range.
The King Crab's second cannon tried to cycle. Jammed. Unjammed. Jammed.
It fired anyway—imperfect, but dangerous.
A shell struck the Warhammer, already half-dead, and the heavy 'Mech finally collapsed, its reactor alarms screaming across open net. The pilot ejected at the last second—tiny capsule firing into the air like a bullet.
The Warhammer's wreck hit the ground with a thud that felt like a period at the end of a sentence.
Dack's voice went colder. "We end it. Now."
"Copy," Jinx said, no humor now.
Taila's voice was tight. "Copy."
Dack made the call on the wider net, voice carrying like command. "All units—focus fire on King Crab leg. Right leg. Bring it down."
The hill answered with a storm.
Missiles from Bravo lances arced in. Autocannon shells hammered. Lasers raked. Tanks exploded under stray fire. Trenches became meat grinders.
The King Crab absorbed it like a dying god.
Then its right leg actuator finally failed.
The assault 'Mech lurched.
Its foot sank into broken basalt.
It tried to correct—
—and the leg buckled.
The King Crab went down hard, collapsing onto one knee with a crash that shook dust off the bunker walls.
It was still alive.
Still firing.
Still trying to crawl forward like an animal too angry to accept death.
Dack didn't let it get back up.
He fired again—gauss into the torso seam, autocannon follow-up.
Jinx put a gauss round into the cockpit area.
Taila added her AC/10 into the exposed section like she'd been trained to do—disciplined, controlled, no wasted motion.
The King Crab's cockpit glass shattered.
Heat signatures inside spiked.
Then stopped.
The pirate warlord died with his hands on the controls, still trying to squeeze one more kill out of the universe.
Silence hit the net like a wave.
Then the hill started to fold.
Without the King Crab, the remaining pirates broke. Tanks attempted to withdraw and were cut down. Infantry ran and got shredded. A battered Shadow Hawk tried to jump away and caught a missile volley mid-air, crashing into the trench line and burning.
The comms node was theirs.
For about ten seconds.
Then Lyra's voice snapped, urgent. "Dack—reactor spike at the comms bunker. They're scuttling it. Overload or demolition charges. You have maybe two minutes before it goes."
Jinx swore. "Of course."
Taila's voice went high. "We're still on the terrace—"
"Back out," Dack ordered. "Now. All units. Clear the hill."
He didn't argue with pride. He didn't argue with victory.
He argued with physics.
They withdrew fast, assault machines retreating in controlled motion, dragging wounded units where they could, leaving wrecks behind because sometimes you couldn't carry everything and still live.
Dack kept checking comms.
"Taila—move."
"I'm moving," she snapped, then steadied. "I'm moving."
"Jinx."
"Still alive," Jinx replied, breathless.
Lyra's voice was clipped, professional, but there was strain under it now. "You need to be clear—now."
Dack didn't hesitate. "We're clear."
They reached the base of the hill as the comms bunker died.
It didn't explode like a clean bomb.
It tore itself apart.
A deep, hungry roar as the bunker's core overloaded, collapsing inward and then outward. The relay mast snapped and fell like a dead tree. The terrace cracked. Trenches caved. Fire erupted from vents and seams, a bright orange wound in black stone.
Debris rained across the slope—metal, concrete, bodies, and pieces of machines thrown like toys.
The shockwave hit them even at distance, rattling cockpits and making alarms chirp.
Then the hill went quiet.
The comms mast stopped blinking.
The planet's throat was cut.
Dack watched the fire through his cockpit glass and felt nothing like triumph.
Just the familiar, cold awareness: it cost them a Warhammer. It cost them blood. It cost them time.
But it was done.
Jinx's voice came through, rough. "So that's the last stand."
Dack answered, blunt. "Yes."
Taila whispered, almost to herself. "We won."
Dack didn't correct her. He just said the truth that mattered. "We lived."
Lyra's voice came quieter now, controlled again. "They can't coordinate anymore. Scattered cells will run. The employer will call it a success."
Dack stared at the burning hill. "Scattered cells still kill people."
"Yes," Lyra admitted. "But not like this."
A pause.
Then Lyra spoke again, and this time there was something personal slipping through the professionalism—small, but real. "You kept them together. You kept… all of them together."
Dack didn't pretend he didn't understand what she meant.
He answered the only way he knew how. "That's my job."
Lyra's breath hitched—tiny. "Yeah."
Jinx, of course, had to ruin the moment. "Lyra, you sound emotional. You want a hug?"
Lyra's voice went instantly tight. "No."
Taila made a small embarrassed sound.
Dack's voice cut in, flat. "Jinx. Stop."
Jinx laughed, but she quieted.
The task force regrouped at the spaceport by nightfall. Wounded 'Mechs were dragged into bays. Techs swarmed wrecks like vultures. The employer's officers walked around like they'd personally fought the King Crab.
Dack didn't care about their posture.
He cared about three things:
The Dire Wolf still stood.
Taila still answered comms.
Jinx still joked, even if it was rougher now.
And Lyra—
Lyra walked past the bay door later, tablet tucked under her arm, face composed, eyes tired.
She paused when she saw Dack.
Just a pause.
Then she spoke quietly, like she didn't want anyone else to hear.
"I heard you on the net," she said. "How you kept checking them."
Dack's voice was blunt. "They're my people."
Lyra swallowed. "Yeah."
Her cheeks went faintly pink.
She looked away, then back, like she was trying to decide if she was allowed to say what she wanted to say.
In the end, she didn't say it.
She just nodded once—small, respectful.
And walked on.
Jinx watched her go from the Highlander's ladder and grinned like she'd smelled blood.
Taila looked conflicted—embarrassed, but not angry.
Dack stared at the burning horizon and thought of the thin bulkheads of the Leopard and the warmth he'd built by accident.
The hill was dead.
The contract was nearly done.
And the next problems were already waiting: salvage fights, payment tricks, pirate remnants, and the long road to being more than one Dire Wolf with two women and a DropShip.
But for the first time in a long time—
Dack didn't feel like he was running alone.