Chapter 1 Illegal Reentry

Names defined people. To know a person's name was an honor. To use it was a privilege. To own a name was a right.

So what did it say about her, that she sold her own name?

"We're close to Rubicon." The Handler spat. "Wake the dog up."

Sparked back into consciousness against her will, she jolted sharply against her restraints, gasping at filtered air fed to her face via a tube. Targeting lasers shot into her barely opened eyes, calibrating her head's up display and weapons systems.

And then the memories came. Haunted screams and a shattered mind. The longing for the intimacy of another's palm in her hand. The tickle of another's hair against her nose. The brush of lips against her cheek.

/HANDLER "WALTER": VERIFIED

/ACTIVATING CEREBRAL CORAL CONTROL DEVICE

The regulation AI activated the glowing red ring on her neck, and her mind turned to ice. Eyes refocused with the purpose of the mission, the certainty of combat. The longing, the yearning, the desperate desire to utter another's name, all taken, all gone.

Looking down with the sensors of her descent pod, she saw the world that was not her home.

Rubicon III. Forge world in a distant sector of space so far from old Earth. Cold and dusty and grey, and built up with massive megastructure industries that spanned the planet, covering half the surface in a metal shell. Above the world, six rings, all artificial, in various states of functionality. Two of the rings lined with millions of mirrors, doing their damnedest to warm and lighten the world, a task the cold dead star wasn't up to alone. A pair of weaponized rings crossed the planet at an angle, keeping a tight defense grid that shot at any unauthorized entry, and occasionally reached down to the surface to glass anyone dumb enough to stray within their targeting range. The fifth ring was obliterated, denying the sky with it's billion fragments of metal traveling at orbital velocity.

The sixth ring, the highest and the oldest, was also the most dead. It had been built before the unnatural death of the star, back when Rubicon had been the new center of human mega industry, meant to surpass the Earth with it's output. Now, the shattered and unrecognizable sixth ring had settled into a more natural orbit along the planet's equator, a relic of a time before.

Retro thrusters burning her speed down, her descent pod slowed and fell near vertically, face first for herself. This aggravated one of the defense stations on the nearest ring, causing the red eye of an angry god to regard her with deadly malice, and fire a massive rail gun at her descent pod.

Knocked off course, the rear half of the descent pod was destroyed, allowing her to survive. Dropping down below the layer of unnatural golden red clouds that shined brilliantly from the dim light of the cold star, the descent pod continued falling.

Explosive bolts fired, freeing her from her falling tomb, and ejecting her tool of the trade. Armored Core. Sixth Generation. A millennium of combat and then some proving that these were weapons with no equal. War after war, and battle after battle, with no end in sight.

Falling towards the planet spanning industrial city, the roof of which sat some seven kilometers above the surface, where the massed network of transportation lines ran. Hung under this roof and in between the kilometer wide mega-pillars holding it up were tens of thousands of industrial stalactites each at least five kilometers tall.

The reentry vehicle exploded behind her, her Armored Core in free fall, she slipped in between the holes of the roof and onto the vast industry below the outer shell.

/AUGMENTED HUMAN "C4-621" HAS AWAKENED

With nothing in her heart but the mission at hand, 621 moved with the familiar motions of war. To take lives. To take names.

Author's Note: I've decided that I hate myself and that I want to start sharing this. Couple things right off the bat.

1.) This is the sequel to Obligation To Keep. They take place in the same timeline, though this story takes place a significant number of years later.

2.) Reading Obligation To Keep is not necessary to understanding this story. Most everything is new enough or explained well enough. You'll just understand some of the references better.

3.) This is technically a 3-way crossover, with characters/setting/ships/events from The Expanse being mentioned or being important. For my returning readers, that does mean to expect random intervals of Belter Creole, both from the show and some that I make up. Though I do have to mention, The Protomolecule is not in this story. There's enough bullshit already in AC6 and MD to make up for that.

4.) This is probably going to be my darkest story in terms of themes/events/violence. Yes, somehow this will be far darker than OTK. I'll have to remember to warn y'all repeatedly of this fact.

Otherwise, this story will be slowly posted as I am quite stupid and am still working on DBB. But I couldn't resist sharing this with y'all. It's my addiction, am I am very excited to be writing it. I hope you enjoy it as well.

Come, and let us suffer across Rubicon together.