It is a very calm day in comparison to the adventure of smuggling
Black Market Light Arms into Kusari.
We write the 1st of November 835 A.S., "The Sparrow" just docked at Ithaca Base
While on her way to one of the more private sections, she couldn't but double check her
surroundings every few minutes, playing with the switchblade in her hands.
After seemingly endless minutes she arrived at a meeting room.
Before she even sat down to relax, she pulled out a bug detector and scanned the room -
you can not be to careful these days - she thought, especially when going up against the Kusari Office of Intellegence and Samura.
After a quick yet thoroughly screening of the room, she was able to be sure,
they will not be spied upon.
Finally, she sat down, pulled out her data tab, and went over the upcoming topics with her crew,
who are en route to Ithaca to meet her to discuss the very important topics at hand:
Payment for Operation Drachenfeuer.
Standing with Bretonia.
Discussion of the change of operational parameters
and a discussion of the future.
The first one to arrive was "Wolverine" eagerly awaiting
his extended payment for Operation Drachenfeuer.
Entering the door he greeted Miss Brenner with:
"Maam, glad to see you in one piece. I seem to be the first ain't it?" -
"Yes, you are. Let's wait for the others.
Yet, I must remark... I am still deeply bothered.
Rheinland officials denying our very existence. And that dock officer...
a dear friend... she was frightened for us. she told me to leave, as fast as possible,
that we would not be safe there anymore.
When I asked for our Marinenachrichtendienst contact, she just got more nervous.
she told me to go, and for the foreseeable future, not to return.
she said they've declared all of us... dead."
With finishing the rest of this sentece, the rest of the crew entered the room.
"The Sparrow" took a calm breath before proceeding:
"My dears. Let's begin this little conference with some wonderful news.
I have routed the bonus payments for the
successful operation Drachenfeuer to your personal accounts.
I am so very proud of the work you have done."
Leaning casually back into the chair "The Sparrow" proceeds calmly:
"Since we 'were' engaged by Samura and KOI
in Bretonia, we shall check with the Bretonian government on our current standing.
We cannot allow those corporats to
twist the events in their favor. We shall see
what we can salvage."
Playing around with the switchblade in her hands,
"The Sparrow" very calmly proceeds:
"We have received a message from the Valkyrie.
We need to prepare a proper Base of Operations,
stronger alliances, and most importantly, new recruits."
She popped out the blade of her knife and cleaned her
fingernails while proceeding:
"Therefore, we need a change in our operational parameters.
We must discuss how we proceed, since it's obvious
our Zoner IFF is no longer a convincing cover in parts of this sector.
I am open for suggestions on which way you see fit to secure our operation.
Please, feel free to speak freely."
Raven waited until Sparrow finished speaking. The room had fallen into that heavy stillness that always came before difficult decisions. He rose slowly, resting both palms on the table. His eyes moved from Sparrow to Wolverine, then across the rest of the crew.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to us,” he began. “About what happened to the Valkyrie-E-1. We know the truth: that ship isn’t a tomb. Not yet. The people left aboard… they’re fighting to stay alive just like we did.”
He took a breath, steady but weighted.
“The only reason we made it back to Sirius was because we stumbled on a passage, an unstable, unpredictable fracture that won’t stay open long enough for anyone to control. That means something, and it means the clock is ticking.”
Raven straightened, crossing his arms.
“So here’s my proposal. We stop drifting. We stop pretending our Zoner signatures can cover our tracks forever. We build something of our own, somewhere the Houses can’t easily reach or silence us.”
His tone sharpened with purpose.
“The Independent Worlds.”
He let the idea sink in before continuing.
“A base..... small at first, nothing extravagant. But secure. A foothold where we can gather intelligence, resources, and expertise on jumpdrive technology. The knowledge exists out here, scattered between researchers, smugglers, and factions who don’t answer to any House navy. If we can piece together how that prototype drive malfunctioned, if we can understand the anomaly that swallowed the Valkyrie, we may be able to predict the next opening. Maybe even create one.”
Wolverine grunted in agreement. Sparrow’s knife stilled between her fingers.
Raven continued, quieter now but unwavering.
“And when the Valkyrie finally returns, if she returns, we need more than a landing pad. We need a place for them to live. A settlement. A future. After everything the Rheinwehr did to wash their hands of us, we’d be fools to think any House will welcome them back.”
He looked each of them in the eye, voice firm but honest.
“Let’s be real: our last ‘mission’ didn’t exactly win us friends in Kusari or Bretonia. If anything, it gave their intel agencies more excuses to treat us like threats. So we stop trying to impress them.”
A faint, cold smile touched his lips.
“We build bonds with people who actually need us. Junkers. Zoners—real ones, not the ones sitting in House pockets. Freelancers, miners, workers, the ones who get shoved around by the corporations that tried to kill us.”
He stepped back from the table.
“We carve out a place the Valkyrie’s survivors can call home. A place that belongs to us. And until the day we can pull those people out of deep space, we make damn sure we have the strength and the allies to defend it.”
He lowered himself back into his seat, voice dropping to a final, resolute line:
“That’s the direction I believe we need to take. And I’m ready to start the moment you give the word.”
The Wolf had been silent through Raven’s speech, the lines around his eyes tightening with each word. When Sparrow’s datapad buzzed and the room shifted, he rose, one hand flat on the table, the other sliding a worn transponder core across the polished metal.
“Enough masks,” he said, voice steady, clipped. “Zoner signatures won’t buy us another hour in the lanes. Not with Samura’s dogs sniffing and KOI compiling our movements in Bretonia. We’re not wanderers playing at neutrality - we’re professionals with teeth.” He tapped the core with a finger. “We switch. Freelancer IFF. Clean, convincing, and flexible. We’ll re-burn our codes and cycle our overlays through non-House registries - no sponsorship flags, no charity banners. We run contracts under our own terms, pick our patrons carefully, and let the Houses see what they expect to see: independent operators, deniable and disposable. That buys us room.”
He glanced at Raven, then back to Sparrow, eyes cold and clear. “And we use that room to move. Not just anywhere. Vespucci.”
A murmur rippled; Wolverine leaned forward. The Wolf continued, unfazed.
“Independent Worlds are already fractured - Magellan’s trade veins, Cortez’s corporate shadows, the Barrier Nebula’s fog in Coronado. Vespucci sits in the windbreak, somewhere the big navies don’t commit long leashes. It’s seen insurgents, smugglers, research teams going quiet, and patrols too thin to stamp the truth into the rock. That makes it dangerous. And perfect.” He drew a rough map with the blade of his thumbnail on condensation pooled on the tabletop. “We approach from the edges. Staging in the Barrier. Supply through Junker brokers - Rochester contacts can broker anonymous cargo swaps and we keep their ledgers clean. IMG crews know the belt routes - they’ll sell us passage in ore haulers if we pay and don’t ask questions. No House filings. No Bretonian formality. We enter Vespucci the way ghosts do.”
He straightened, shoulders set like armor. “We start small. A hidden depot, not a monument. Hull plates and ribs scrounged from scrapyards and derelicts. A sealed hangar for ‘The Sparrow’ and two wings’ worth of fighters. Hab modules enough for a crew rotation, water reclamation reliable enough to survive a siege, and a compartment where we lock down what matters - jumpdrive notes, anomaly telemetry, and the kind of data that got the Valkyrie swallowed and might get her back out again.” His jaw tightened. “We don’t advertise. We don’t fly banners. We keep our logistics simple: nanocapacitors, superconductor spools, and field coils to rebuild drive instrumentation; med gel, rations, and oxygen bricks for the inevitable bad week; spare reactor plates and shield emitters to make sure a slim patrol can’t pry us open. Junkers will move bulk. Freelancers will move quality. Zoners - real ones - will keep their mouths shut if we pay up front.”
He let that sit, then cut through the stillness. “IFF shift first. We run the cascades tonight. I’ve got three clean transponder chains we can seed through non-aligned relay buoys beyond Manhattan’s radar and two in Cortez that never ping Liberty’s logs. We’ll scrub ship signatures, retune the comms etiquette to Freelancer standard, and change our docking handshake to the freelancer registry that doesn’t scream charity work.” He looked at Sparrow’s knife, then at her hands. “We keep our callsigns consistent enough to honor our past, but not so consistent anyone connects dots across eight sectors.”
His tone darkened, practical. “Contacts: Junkers at Rochester for parts and quiet labor - gritty crews who don’t ask names if your credit is good. IMG foremen at Barrier’s fringe for towage and cover shipments - ore manifests can hide almost anything if you weight a container right. Freelancers at Freeports who owe us favors: a scout wing for corridor mapping, a pair of couriers with clean holds who’ll run sealed packages and not break them open if they see a House crest on wax.” He tapped the table twice. “We spread the risk. No single route. No single broker. If one line burns, the others still breathe.”
He shifted, voice lower now, but sharper. “Lore stays intact. We don’t pretend Houses forgot us. Bretonia will watch. Liberty will interdict if we light up wrong lanes. Kusari will remember operation Drachenfeuer and KOI will file us under ‘problems that return.’ So we don’t ask for applause and we don’t offer apologies. We keep the Freelancer profile clean - take public contracts that don’t paint us into politics, and run the ones that matter in shadow. We don’t thump our chests at Freeport bars about Valkyries or fractures. But in our sealed room, we solve the drive. Raven’s right: anomalies don’t wait for permission. If Vespucci’s edges whisper, we listen. If the math offers a window, we prepare to leap.”
He looked around the table - Wolverine, Raven, Sparrow - then the rest, letting the silence press. “Recruitment follows the same cut. Not heroes. Survivors. Hauler crews who’ve paid off corporate debt with blood. Miners who know belt currents better than patrol charts. Freelancers with clean records and dirty hands. Zoners who never sold their ideals for docking privileges in House space. We test them. We don’t sell them a religion. We offer a home and a job that matters. They earn their place.”
The Wolf slid the transponder core back to the center, a small, quiet declaration. “Operational parameters: shift to Freelancer IFF by dawn cycle. Break our routes east into Cortez and south into Magellan - rotate, never repeat timestamps, never ping a beacon twice in a week. Split the crew: one wing scouts Barrier corridors and logs radiation and drift; one wing secures Junker contracts and unmarked cargo; the rest start sourcing habitat toolkits and structural members. We secure a berth in Vespucci’s shadow, build nothing you can spot on a wide sweep, and grow in layers. Every piece we add is a piece we can strip if someone knocks too hard.”
He finally turned to Sparrow, the edge of a hard smile barely there. “We stop apologizing for surviving. We stop asking permission from Houses that wrote us out of their ledgers. We take the mask that works and go where their patrols get thin. Freelancer IFF gets us through doors. Vespucci gets us distance. The rest we carve with grit and planning.”
He sat, but his voice carried one last line, firm as steel. “Give the word, and I’ll run the cascade, pick the routes, and put our first struts into Vespucci’s dark. When the Valkyrie calls, we’ll have more than a landing pad. We’ll have a place that answers back.”
"The Sparrow" watched "The Wolf" slide the transponder core across the table. The click of the metal against the surface echoed in the silence that followed his speech. She looked from the device to "Raven", and then finally to "The Wolf", her expression unreadable, though the rhythmic flicking of her switchblade had ceased. She let the blade slide back into its housing, then placed the hilt gently on the table. It was a silent, but clear, signal.
"Your assessment is sharp, gentlemen," "The Sparrow" said, her voice calm but carrying the weight of the command. "And your logic is sound."
She tapped the map "The Wolf" had drawn in the condensation.
"To ensure I have the tactical landscape perfectly clear: We are abandoning the Zoner ruse. It has served us, but as you noted, with the fallout from Operation Drachenfeuer, we have drawn eyes we cannot afford to keep on us. Samura and the Kusari Office of Intelligence are not merely curious; they are hunting. They will be looking for Zoners drifting in the lanes, not Freelancers cutting their own path."
She traced a line with her finger along the edge of the table, simulating the route.
"So, we disappear from these parts of the sector, for now. But we do not force a path through the ice - that is a fool's gamble. Instead, we put it between us and them. We utilize The Barrier for exactly what it is named: a wall. The corporate fleets of Samura and the patrols of the Kusari Office of Intelligence rely on clean scans and predictable intercept vectors. They will not risk their hulls trying to pierce a frozen nebula on a mere hunch. We let the ice block their sight and their sensors. It becomes the shield that distances us from the border worlds, granting us the cover to operate in the Independent systems unnoticed while they stare at a frozen dead end."
"The Sparrow" looked up, meeting "The Wolf"'s eyes.
"And the destination is Vespucci. A system defined by what isn't there - no heavy Navy presence, no corporate stranglehold. A place of shadows where the 'Valkyrie' can eventually return to a home, not a prison. We will build this settlement, this... 'foothold' "Raven" speaks of, to study the anomaly without the Houses breathing down our necks."
She picked up the transponder core "The Wolf" had offered.
"We switch to Freelancer IFFs. We vanish into the ice of The Barrier. And we build our future in the dark of Vespucci."
Reclining, she brought the cigarette to her life. She exhaled a long, slow breath, the grey smoke swirling with delicate ribbons of amethyst:
"Wolf", make it happen. Switch out the transponders provided by the LSF and make sure the Freelancer IFF is broadcasted, then, I want to know how you all wish to proceed with the construction in Vespucci. We need a foundation that is secure, but I want to hear your thoughts on how we lay the first stone without drawing attention."
She took another drag, watching the smoke curl towards the ceiling.
"And regarding our funding... what is the consensus on accepting bounty contracts besides our current business? It is dirty work, but it pays. I want to know where you stand on hunting others to feed our own."
She scanned the faces around the table one last time.
"Is there anything else you want to address also?"
The heavy blast door of the meeting room hissed shut behind him, sealing away the smell of recycled air and stale cigarette smoke. For a moment, "The Wolf" just stood there in the corridor, the silence of the station humming in his ears - a low, industrial thrum that vibrated through the deck plates and into the soles of his heavy combat boots.
He didn’t head immediately for the crew quarters. He never did. While others decompressed with alcohol or sleep, "The Wolf" found his clarity in the machine.
He walked the long gantry toward Docking Bay 4, his footsteps echoing rhythmically against the metal grating. Below him, the cavernous hangar of Ithaca Base was alive with the controlled chaos of commerce. Loaders whined, lifting crates of optical chips; sparks cascaded from a welding torch where a mechanic was patching the hull of a battered Clydesdale freighter. It was the noise of life in Sirius. A life that his crew aboard the Valkyrie, trapped in the dark beyond the edge of the map, no longer had.
"The Wolf" clenched his jaw, pushing the thought away. Focus on the task. Emotion is a luxury for the rescued, not the rescuers.
He reached his ship. It wasn’t pretty - stripped of its Rheinland Navy identifying marks years ago, patched with hull plating from three different Houses, and scarred by micrometeoroids. To the untrained eye, it was just another heavy lifter. But "The Wolf" knew every bolt, every bypassed circuit, every hidden weapon mount that lay dormant beneath the civilian facade.
He climbed the access ramp, the hydraulic hiss welcoming him home. Inside, the air was cooler, smelling of ozone and hydraulic fluid. He moved straight to the avionics bay, a cramped crawlspace beneath the cockpit floor. This was the heart of the lie they lived.
Dropping to his knees, "The Wolf" pulled a heavy multitool from his belt and unscrewed the maintenance panel of the transponder array. The unit hummed with a soft blue light - the digital soul of the ship. Currently, it was broadcasting the standardized, neutral signal of a Zoner Independent vessel. A lie that had kept them safe. A lie that was now obsolete.
He pulled the transponder core from his vest - the one he had shown "The Sparrow" in the meeting. It felt heavy, dense with encrypted algorithms.
"Freelancer," he muttered to himself, the word tasting like iron. "Mercenaries. Drifters. Guns for hire."
It was a step down for an officer of the Rheinwehr. Or so the Admiralty would say. But the Admiralty wasn't here. The Admiralty hadn't heard the screaming static of the Jump Drive failure. "The Wolf" disconnected the primary coupling of the Zoner module. The cockpit lights above him flickered and died as the ship’s identity was severed from the Neural Net. For a few seconds, the ship was a ghost. No name. No allegiance. Just metal in the void.
He slotted the new core into the mainframe.
Click.
Sparks jumped as the connection seated. He began typing furiously on his datapad, hardlining the new codes into the ship's subsystem.
Quote:> INITIATING SYSTEM OVERRIDE...
> SCRUBBING REGISTRY: ZONER ALLIANCE ... [DELETED]
> UPLOADING NEW PROTOCOLS: INDEPENDENT FREELANCER REGISTRY...
> MASKING MILITARY SIGNATURES...
> 100% --- Completed
The lights flickered back on, but the ambient hum of the console changed pitch - sharper, more aggressive. The screen blinked green.
Quote:> IDENTITY CONFIRMED: FREELANCER.
"The Wolf" sat back on his heels, wiping grease from his hands onto a rag. It was done. They were no longer pacifist wanderers. They were now part of the chaotic, bloody ecosystem of Sirius.
His mind drifted to "The Sparrow"’s question about the bounty contracts. Hunting others.
He stood up, navigating his way to the cockpit. He sat in the pilot’s chair and looked out through the viewport at the starfield beyond the forcefield of the hangar. The stars looked the same, but the context had shifted.
"We are not murderers," he said to the empty cockpit, testing the logic aloud. "We are sanitation."
He pulled up the tactical map of the Vespucci system on the secondary monitor. It was a mess of radiation belts, nebulae, and the graveyard of ships that had foolishly tried to navigate them. To most, it was a death trap. To "The Wolf", looking at the logistical data, it was a fortress waiting to be claimed.
He traced the route with a calloused finger. They would need lead shielding for the habitat modules. They would need hydroponics recycled from the wrecks. They would need to hunt pirates in the Cortez and Magellan lanes to fund the purchase of heavy water and fuel rods.
It’s just logistics, he told himself. War is just logistics with a higher heart rate.
If they had to hunt down a few Hessian cutthroats or Corsair raiders to pay for the fuel that would eventually bring the Valkyrie home, he would pull the trigger himself. He wouldn't enjoy it - he wasn't a sadist like some of the scum they would be imitating - but he would do it with the professional efficiency of a Rheinland Gunnery Officer.
He tapped the comms panel, opening a secure, low-frequency channel to the rest of the crew's ships docked nearby.
"Sparrow, Raven, Fortress..." "The Wolf"’s voice was calm, stripped of doubt. "IFF cycle complete across all units. Transponders are reading Freelancer green. The Zoner mask is gone."
He paused, his hand hovering over the engine ignition sequence.
"I’ve already flagged three potential bounty contracts in the Magellan system on our route towards Vespucci. A wing of Lane Hackers disrupting food convoys. They have a price on their heads. We can liquidate them on the way. It’s efficient."
He leaned back, the leather of the pilot seat creaking.
"Logistics are green. We are ready to depart. "The Wolf" stands ready."
*Raven rose from his seat with a nod toward Sparrow and Wolf, fingers brushing across the surface of the table as if to gather the last of his thoughts.*
“Then I’ll move. The sooner that Vespucci passage is verified, the sooner we have a way home for the Valkyrie.”
*He didn’t wait for ceremony. He dipped his head, turned on his heel, and slipped out of the meeting room, letting the heavy blast door seal the planning session behind him.
The last echo of Wolf’s report still hung in Raven’s mind as he stepped out. The corridor lights of Ithaca Station flickered with their usual Omega-7 fatigue too many power drains, too much dust, too many unregistered haulers hiding in its shadow. It fit the moment.
He needed to move.
He needed to vanish before someone decided the Expendables weren’t dead enough.
The walk to Bay 3 took him past stacked coolant drums, torn open cargo crates, and the sour smell of volatile silver ore from the nearby miners. The hum of his own engines resonated even before he reached the gantry.
His ship, the patched up, battle scarred Longhorn frigate, waited like an old warhound that had forgotten how to bark but remembered perfectly how to bite.
The new transponder ID [EX]-Raven FREELANCER REGISTRY CONFIRMEDpulsed steady and clean on his datapad.
Wolf’s override was flawless.
If anyone ran the codes, they’d see nothing but an independent Freelancer with an ugly ship and a lonelier flight path.
Exactly what Raven needed.
He ran his hand along the hull plating, checking for tampering, habit from a life where the wrong touch could blow you out of an airlock. Everything looked normal. Too normal, given Ithaca's reputation.
He climbed the ramp.
The moment the inner hatch sealed behind him, Raven knew something was wrong.
A faint distortion in the air.
A breath he didn’t take.
The whisper of polymer boots trying too hard to be silent.
He dropped low.
A stun rod slashed through the space where his head had been an instant earlier.
Three shapes emerged from the shadows of the cargo hold, matte black armor, helmets unmarked, weapons suppressed. No insignia. No voices.
But he knew that gait.
That formation.
That hesitation at close quarters.
They were trained the way he was trained.
MND's cleanup crew.
Sent to finish the job his own superiors had started on paper.
Two moved too slow.
Raven lunged. Elbow to visor. Knife drawn from the small of his back in one fluid motion. A choke, a twist, a drop, the man collapsed before he could wheeze. The second agent rushed him; Raven pivoted, slamming him into a bulkhead hard enough that the helmet cracked. A short, sharp punch to the throat ended his involvement.
Three remained, the smarter ones, keeping their distance.
Blaster fire lit the hold.
Raven juked behind a stack of modular crates, forced them to reposition, pressed the remote sequence on his wrist-tool. The frigate vibrated, docking clamps disengaging. Engines priming.
He sprinted up the forward ladder, bolted into the cockpit, and hit the ignition the moment the hangar shield cleared.*
“You picked the wrong ghost to chase,” *he muttered.
The frigate thundered out of Ithaca Station.
Only once he had distance, once the station was shrinking behind him, did Raven unlock the command seals on the internal bulkheads.
The three agents were trapped in the cargo bay now.
He keyed in the sequence.*
Datapad Wrote:CARGO BAY DOORS — MANUAL OVERRIDE — OPEN
*The doors peeled apart with a violent shriek of hydraulics.
Decompression blasted outward into open space.
The three armored bodies were ripped from the hold and flung silently into the black, drifting debris, indistinguishable from the Furstenfelde Cloud fields of Omega-7.
No corpses in the station hangar.
No witnesses.
No trail.
Exactly the way an Expendable ties loose ends.
Raven sealed the bay, rerouted pressure, and pushed the engines toward the Walker cloud's edge. His hands were steady, but he felt the old instinctual burn in his chest the one that told him this wasn’t a coincidence.
Someone had checked the old kill list.
Someone had noticed he wasn’t on it anymore.
He opened a secure burst channel encryption that only three people should still remember.*
“Wolverine. Sparrow. Wolf.” His voice was low, precise. “This is Raven.”
*A beat. Static.*
“I was hit by a cleanup team aboard my ship. Five operatives. Two neutralized before undocking. Three jettisoned after departure. No survivors. No trail left inside Ithaca.”
*He punched in the first waypoint toward the Vespucci corridor.*
“I’m proceeding with route verification. But there’s something I can’t explain…”
*A pause the kind a soldier only allows when the truth feels wrong.*
“Rheinland filed us dead. They buried the Valkyrie and the Crew, years ago. So why… why send a kill team after ghosts?”
*His breath tightened. Not fear, calculation.*
“If they’re still hunting us, then someone in Rheinland didn’t get the memo… or didn’t want that memo to be true.”
*The frigate angled toward the cloud’s distant glow.*
The secure channel crackled in "The Sparrow"’s earbud,
the static of the nebula doing little to mask the tension in "Raven"’s voice. Kill team. Inside the perimeter.
She stopped dead in the middle of the gantry walkway.
The sounds of Ithaca Base - the hydraulic whines, the distant shouting of stevedores - seemed to fade into a dull roar.
Her hand drifted instinctively to the pocket where her switchblade rested.
"Raven," she replied, her voice dropping to a whisper that cut through the interference.
"Copy that. I am glad you are still with us."
She resumed walking, but her pace was different now - measured, predatory.
She scanned the shadows between the cargo containers.
"Listen to me closely, all of you. This isn't just a cleanup of loose ends. It’s political containment.
I’ve suspected it since we first realized the drive on the Valkyrie wasn't standard military issue."
She paused by a stack of crates, checking her datapad to ensure the encryption was holding.
"The experimental Jump Drive we were testing... it wasn't just classified. It was illegal.
The development of independent jump technology is a direct violation of the Planet Baden-Baden Treaty regarding jump technology.
If the other Houses found out Rheinland built a capital-class drive capable, in theory, of bypassing the gate network and bringing an
invasion fleet to another houses heart, it wouldn't just be a scandal.
It would count as an act of war."
She took a breath, the weight of the betrayal settling cold in her stomach.
"They aren't hunting us because we failed, gentlemen.
They are hunting us because we are living proof that the Rheinwehr broke a very important treaty in Sirius.
We are the smoking gun. As long as we breathe, Rheinland is vulnerable. That is why the MND won't stop."
She reached the blast door leading to her personal hangar bay. She didn't open it yet.
"Command Override: Delta-Nine. Scatter. Immediately. Do not fly in formation. Do not use the trade lanes until you are three systems away.
Wolf, take route to the Magellan you plotted and hit those Lane Hackers on the way - no witnesses.
Wolverine, filter through the miner traffic in the Omega-3. Leave no trails, no signatures, nothing but vacuum behind you.
We regroup in the dark of Vespucci."
"Sparrow out."
She killed the link. Then, she keyed the door code.
The heavy steel doors hissed open. Her ship, a heavily modified armored transport disguised as a battered independent hauler,
sat in the gloom of the private bay. It looked dormant.
Yet it was not.
"The Sparrow" stepped onto the deck, her eyes adjusting to the dim light. She sensed it before she saw it -
the displacement of air, the smell of gun oil that didn't belong.
Two figures detached themselves from the landing gear struts. A third dropped from the maintenance gantry above,
landing silently behind her. They wore the same matte-black void armor "Raven" had described. MND. Efficient. Faceless.
"Captain Brenner," the one in front said, raising a suppressed carbine.
"It’s time to close the file once and for all, that you and your crew may never return."
Lia didn't monologue. She didn't hesitate.
She quickly stored her datapad in her pants. As the lead agent's eyes flickered down for a fraction of a second, she moved.
The switchblade snapped forward, flashing in the low light as she lunged not away from the gun, but inside its guard.
She drove the blade into the unarmored joint of the agent's neck, pivoting his body to use him as a shield.
The agent behind her fired. The rounds slammed into her human shield with wet thuds.
Lia shoved the dying man backward, knocking the second agent off balance, and drew her sidearm - a small, yet very capable pistol she had kept from the old days. She fired twice.
The second agent’s visor shattered, and he crumbled.
The third agent, the one who had dropped from the ceiling, charged with a knife.
Lia sidestepped, the "Shepherd's" grace turning into the "Captain's" brutality.
She caught his wrist, twisted it until the bone snapped, and pistol-whipped him across the temple.
He hit the deck hard, dazed and disarmed.
Lia grabbed him by the throat guard of his armor and dragged him up the ramp, kicking the other two bodies ahead of her.
She threw him into the airlock chamber, his armored form skidding against the deck plates until he collided with the cooling corpses of his squadmates.
He scrambled backward, expecting to be givin the final mercy, but Lia didn't raise her weapon. She didn't speak.
She simply stepped back out of the chamber and slammed her hand on the locking mechanism.
The heavy inner blast doors hissed shut, disabling the inner controls of the airlock, sealing him in the cramped darkness with his dead team.
Lia moved to the cockpit with terrifying calm. She punched the ignition sequence, tearing the ship free of Ithaca’s docking clamps after recieving clearance.
She didn't plot a course for Vespucci - not yet. She burned hard for the jump gate, slipping out of Omega-7 and into the cold expanse of Omega-3.
She ignored the trade lanes. She drove the ship straight toward the system's heart, toward the searing corona of the medium blue sun.
The cockpit temperature began to rise. The hull groaned under the gravitational and thermal stress as she brought the transport dangerously close to the star's photosphere.
Radiation alarms began to chime, a rhythmic, panicked heartbeat. Only when the shields were flaring under the solar assault did she engage the station-keeping thrusters.
She left the pilot's seat and walked back to the airlock. She tapped the console, and the inner door cycled open.
The agent was huddled in the corner, sweating profusely inside his armor, the heat of the nearby star baking the small room. He looked up, squinting as the blinding blue light of the sun flooded in through the external viewport behind Lia.
Lia loomed over him, the barrel of her pistol pressed against his cracked visor. The heat radiating from the hull was suffocating, but her voice was ice cold.
"Open a channel to your handler," she commanded, her voice dangerously soft. "Now."
The agent hesitated. With her thumb she tapped the back of her pistol and he tapped a sequence on his wrist unit, the light blinking amber.
"Tell him the targets tracked from Ithaca are liquidated. Tell him the remaining heat is too high for extraction and you are going to dark to wait it out," she said, her eyes reflecting the burning star outside. "Tell him: Mission Accomplished."
The agent, breathing raggedly, relayed the message. A confirmation chirp echoed in the small steel room. Received. Go dark. Out.
"This was not this hard, wasn't it", Lia asked rhetorically while givin a playful kiss on the agents helm.
"You do not know what I - we have sacrificed for Rheinland, you traitor! You will pay for that!" the agent hissed, frightened.
Lia started to smile. It wasn't the warm smile she gave her crew. It was a sweet, terrifying expression that didn't reach her eyes. A sadist's grace underlined by a light purple
shimmer in her iris.
"You poor thing," she whispered, leaning in close again, as she backed out of the chamber and hit the door controls. "You think you're the one making the sacrifices?
If you only knew what deal I cut to save my crew, you'd realize... death is so much more easier on ones soul."
She slammed her hand on the cycle button.
The outer doors blew open. The sudden decompression howled, a violent, short-lived scream that silenced instantly as the atmosphere vented.
The agent - and the secrets he carried - were sucked out into the void, tumbling away to be consumed by the fires of the star.
Lia watched the airlock cycle shut, the red warning light turning back to a calm, steady green.
She walked back to the cockpit, lit a cigarette, and watched the smoke curl with light purple accents in the console lights.
She pushed the throttle forward, disappearing into the void.
Wolverine had listened to Sparrow’s transmission in silence, standing just outside the maintenance corridor of Bay 6, a half-lit artery of Ithaca Base where coolant vapor hung in the air and the lighting flickered like a pulse under strain. He leaned forward, palms pressed against the cold metal railing, letting the words settle into him.
A cleanup team.
MND killing its own.
And now Raven and Sparrow had both faced death squads within minutes of each other.
They’re scared of us, Wolverine thought, jaw tightening. Not because we’re dangerous… but because we know too much.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, like a man bracing for recoil.
Then he moved.
He reached his ship the Red Fenrir a retrofitted combat freighter more muscle than elegance, its hull marked by decades of patchwork repairs and “field-improvised upgrades” that would make a Rheinlander engineer weep. The new Freelancer IFF pinged green across the surface of his wrist-HUD.
He climbed up the side ladder, boots ringing against the hull. Before stepping inside, he paused, breathing through instinct, letting the hairs on the back of his neck rise or fall.
Quiet.
Too quiet.
He slid his hand into his jacket.
The moment his fingers touched the concealed switch inside the seam of his flight jacket, the Fenrir’s external sensors kicked to life silent mode. No lights, no startup hum, just the faintest whisper of electromagnetic reply on his HUD.
Motion. Inside the cockpit. Wrong place. Wrong weight.
Wolverine bared his teeth in something between a grin and a warning growl.
They’d made a mistake.
They thought they were hunting a pilot.
They’d forgotten he used to hunt people.
He moved along the hull, silent as vacuum, tapping into the vent access he’d modified years ago standard infantry would never think to check it. He slid in, body contorting through the narrow crawlspace until he reached the environmental duct just above the cockpit.
Inside, three MND operatives waited in ambush silent, disciplined, too still to be scavengers or local thugs. Their posture told him everything: short-range kill zone, cross-fire angles, and the unmistakable patience of trained executioners.
Same as Raven. Same as Sparrow. They want us erased.
Wolverine shifted his weight slowly until the duct panel loosened under his boot. He wrapped one hand around a pipe, steadied himself… and then kicked downward with everything he had.
The panel crashed onto the lead operative’s helmet, crushing the visor and dropping him instantly. Before the second could react, Wolverine dropped from the ceiling like a meteor, landing hard enough to break the man’s clavicle. The third raised his silenced pistol....
but Wolverine was already moving.
He caught the agent’s wrist, twisted, and dislocated it with a single brutal crack. The pistol clattered to the deck. The agent tried to reach for a blade; Wolverine slammed his forehead into the man’s helmet, denting the composite plate and sending the operative reeling. He followed with a knee to the gut, a twist, and a knife drawn across the man’s suit’s pressure seal.
The hiss of leaking air drowned out the man’s scream.
Moments later, only Wolverine remained standing.
He wiped a smear of blood off his cheek and retrieved the sealed packet from the pocket of the dead team leader: a small, embossed MND data wafer.
So they were still issuing orders on “Expendable Valkyrie Personnel.”
He crushed it under his boot.
Inside the cockpit, Wolverine keyed a burst comm.
His voice was gravel, low and edged with a restrained fury.
“Sparrow, Wolf, Raven. Wolverine reporting.”
He eased into the pilot’s seat, engines humming to life beneath him.
“My ship was hit as well. Three-man death squad. They’re not amateurs… but they’re not enough.”
He flicked a switch and the Fenrir’s sensor suite ran a clean sweep. No more intruders. No leaks. No trackers.
“Rheinland didn’t just file us dead. They’re making sure we stay dead.”
He pushed the throttle, breaking from Ithaca’s hangar with a hard burn into deep Omega-7.
