Inside Base Verte's department of intelligence sits a box. On the outside, that box is the same prefab walls and corporate mauve, but beneath the build lines and solder points are layers of soundproof foam, faraday meshes, and sheets of tamper-resistant alloy that will withstand everything except a second Fires. On the inside, it's a Charles Demuth print over one desk and two chairs, all of which are jointless, screwless, one-piece fabricator jobs that someone would have had a hard time putting a bug in during printing, and an even harder time hiding the evidence if they did it after. The electronics are air gapped from the rest of the base. The door is two layers of blast proof ceramite and keyed for exactly one person: O'Keeffe.

Hawkins had called his list of requirements 'paranoid', 'excessive', and 'way out of budget', but O'Keeffe just had to utter the words 42B for him to curse and deliver on the thing anyway. So he has Branch to thank for that. And he's keeping an eye on ADD for the next time he needs something paranoid, excessive, and way out of budget.

A knock on the ceramite. The door slides open with a hydraulic hiss, revealing Rusty and every eye in the department trained on him in awe. He steps inside with easy grace, liquid and deliberate, but he's still got that grim dagger-state he works himself into before any big sortie, mind sharp and focused and cutting down everything that falls beneath it. Hasn't shaken the adrenaline yet.

O'Keeffe nods. "Wallclimber."

He motions for him to sit, because O'Keeffe outranks him by one, and Rusty carries the kind of trained deference to authority that only comes from the ego death of military service that mostly follows protocol until someone with a higher number tells him he doesn't have to.

He sits. The door slides shut, leaving the rest of the world trapped on the other side.

"Wanted to get you my report — before I get it to ," he says.

What that means is, There are things you need to know that Snail doesn't.

O'Keeffe nods again, wordlessly reaching for a small switch. The box in intelligence is also the only place that O'Keeffe can justify an ECM shroud between his conversations and Arquebus' systems: a low drone of electronic interference coats the room, jamming his comm link, frying his HUD, and making the delicate augmentation behind his eyes whine and click.

Rusty's brow twitches with a watered-down annoyance, but the ECM shroud quickly slips into background noise, and he leans back in his chair. It's a transparent mirror of how O'Keeffe loosens his own posture with the shroud down, crossing his legs, steepling his arms on his knees. The debrief is precise and clipped, but O'Keeffe can feel the thread of tension running just under the formal delivery, something more unbalanced than an adrenaline crash.

"So what happened?" O'Keeffe asks.

Rusty's head cants, a left-and-right motion that reminds O'Keeffe of birds.

"There were two JUGGERNAUTs, for one," he starts. "First one, north side. On the ground. Chewed through two of my platoons before I could take it down."

"Second one?"

"On the Wall, like we planned. That wasn't the issue." He goes on, then sucks in air through his teeth for the start of a sigh. "Issue was, was ready to pull me out and let them wear each other down — but he never got the chance."

O'Keeffe hums, a genuine drop of surprise splashing down inside his stomach. It tempers the dread that's once again growing there. The knowing. "That fast?"

"Faster than it had any right to be." Rusty's tone shifts, something creeping in beneath the thread of tension. Something more volatile, more personal. Something like rusted pride. "Raven tore through it like it was nothing. Put me and my MTs on the north side to shame."

"Better than losing another platoon."

Rusty's gaze snaps to him, all that grim introspection immolated in an instant into something white hot. And then he catches his own gaze in O'Keeffe's glasses and sinks deeper into the chair.

"Honestly," Rusty admits, crossing his arms, "it scared the shit out of me. I'll send you the combat logs from STEEL HAZE — you can see for yourself."

O'Keeffe nods. Rusty's Vespers jacket swishes softly as he moves, and O'Keeffe sets his jaw, feeling the unformed words in Rusty's throat as if they were his own. And he waits. Lets the silence draw the words out of him like trawling fish in a net.

"What you said about the stolen licence," Rusty starts again, recalling a conversation they had weeks ago, when Pater first mentioned Walter and Raven in the same sentence and the look between them lasted a second too long. "I didn't believe you. I do now."

The air thickens, and Rusty's gaze goes to O'Keeffe, goes to the Demuth, goes to some other point O'Keeffe can't trace, maybe within his own HUD. However much of it still works. "That wasn't Branch out there."

"I know," O'Keeffe recrosses his legs and sighs. The ice that took up residence in his veins three days ago grows points and those points tell him, might as well do this now. "I ever tell you about the Island Four Disturbance?"

Rusty stops looking at whatever he was doing. "You don't tell me anything. Not unless you have to."

"Yeah. Well. What do you know about it?"

Rusty shrugs, his body language shifting. To him, Sol and anything that happens there is just a point in the sky, and mentions of it are rare enough that he has to pause. "Not a lot of info about Sol coming to Rubicon. Mostly just runs the other way. I know it's where Freud made his name... and I know it's where you met him."

Met him, O'Keeffe thinks. He shot me right out of the sky.

O'Keeffe raises a hand, floating it across the air like a kite in the wind. "The habitats on Jupiter, they're a few kilometres above the surface, skimming the clouds," like you. "Call them Islands. The Fires sent the corps into a panic, sparked proxy wars in every system to secure whatever Coral wasn't burning."

Rusty makes a noise, guttural and indignant. O'Keeffe keeps talking.

"Lotta industry in Sol is locked up in the jovian moons. Io, Europa, Ganymede. They had the firepower to fight back because they were making the firepower. Anyone who disagreed with a buyout took their work and left — and they went to Island Four. The dissidents from Schneider were the first to go, so they got the naming rights. Called it the NEST. And they called their mercenaries Ravens."

Rusty says nothing, but watches him with a rapt intensity that would make him shiver in any other context. His eyes rake over O'Keeffe, measuring, gauging, picking out the details O'Keeffe leaves out just as easily as the ones he's giving.

"They fought back hard. Stretched the war out eight years longer than the corps were expecting. Eventually, the corps got sick of losing. Put aside their differences."

O'Keeffe swallows. His throat hurts. He's been talking too much lately.

"Balam sent Furlong's whole fleet to occupy the Island. Arquebus pushed for an embargo and sent the Vespers after anyone who tried to intervene. And for the Ravens, they sent Freud." His tone darkens. "Not the Vespers: Freud. Nobody else could even touch them. But he downed every last Raven on that Island and he did it in two months."

In the garage of Base Verte, LOCKSMITH looms in its brutal navy and abyssal blue, a middleweight mass-production assembly with an ADD generator specced for energy weapons Freud doesn't even use. The flat faces of LOCKSMITH's MELANDER legs are a checkerboard of victory markings, from roundels to extinct corporate logos to the emblems of every mercenary he ever confirmed a kill on. He had less on Island Four. It was still too many.

"You know Freud. He keeps score." O'Keeffe draws tallies in the air as he speaks, twelve in all. "Those feathers on LOCKSMITH? That's them. When there wasn't anyone left to defend Island Four, the corps scavenged everything the NEST took from them and sunk it into the clouds. Branch's Raven, they're wearing that name like a coat. Can't say they haven't earned it, but it's still pastiche. They're not one of the first. Walter's Raven is."

He lets the words coat the whole room like the ECM drone, heavy and cold. Rusty's eyes flicker with something — curiosity, disbelief — and his lips part and close. "Then how are they here?"

Behind Rusty, in the shiny new ceramite, O'Keeffe sees himself haloed by the dancers of the Demuth print like an angel-devil pair. It clashes with the mauve. That bothers him, but not enough to do anything about it.

"'Cause they died before it. Or should have," he says. "Guess they were in cryo right under our noses the whole time. Mine, the corps', and the NEST's."

"And Freud's," Rusty adds.

"And Freud's," he echoes. It's grim.

Silence again. Rusty's brow furrows, and the edges of his thoughts skittering beneath his cooling exterior. It's the kind of silence they often come to, sitting a desk, an ideology, a whole war apart, unwilling to damn the other to action with too strong an implication. It's understanding, the same way he understands the cycle speed of his generator and the controlled feed of his SAMPU.

"Haven't heard you talk this much in months. That bad, huh?"

He says that bad, but he might as well say you're really freaking out about it. Because he is.

"It's new, which might as well be bad," O'Keeffe finishes, and the switching off of the ECM generator signals that conversation's end no matter what else Rusty might have invested in that line of thought. "Just keep your head on a swivel. If they want to make problems, they will."

"That's just independents, O'Keeffe," he says, but stands anyway. "I'll send you that combat log."

O'Keeffe gives a lazy wave. "Good luck with Snail."

Rusty makes a noise like a laugh. There's no humour in it, but just for an instant it thaws some of the ice under O'Keeffe skin anyway. "I'll need it."


LOADER 4 is collecting marks.

Aside from critical damage that would compromise the AC during a sortie: structural, mechanical, and electronic, 621 has taken to leaving the scorched paint and bullet scuffs alone, letting it build like a patina. Over those scratches and dents they're laid on the bright white victory markings of every mission they've completed since landing on Rubicon, and then they let the patina build over that, too.

The catwalk is pushed up against the AC's thigh, so 621 can take a wedge-shaped applicator and work the tiny bubbles out of their newest mark, earned for downing the JUGGERNAUT.

It's the fourth tally next to the RLF flag, above the emblem of BURN PICKAXE.

It's the fifth tally next to the RLF flag, above the emblem of BURN PICKAXE.

It's the fifth tally next to the RLF flag.

Balam's logo and three notches sit next to it, along with DEEP DOWN's mother and calf.

The Dafeng student pilot didn't have an emblem, so 621 just lumped them in with the other notches.

The Dafeng student pilot didn't have an emblem, so 621 just lumped them in with the other notches. But HEADBRINGER and CANNON HEAD are there, too.

Walter's cane taps its slow rhythm against the mesh catwalk, drawing closer as 621 smooths out the last bubble in their new mark. They barely look up, fingers brushing over the victory marks with a sense of satisfaction. The patina of dents and scratches from each mission has become a point of pride, but the shiny acknowledgements of recent triumphs are nice, too.

"I saw you placed in the Arena this season," Walter says, his voice carrying that low, measured tone, with a hint of expectation just beneath the surface.

That's technically true. They'd done a few matches, mostly for the COAM and for the fact that seeing UNRANKED every time they opened ALLMIND's menu made them itchy. But they hadn't gotten far. Raven's lack of rank meant they either placed so low they were knocked out when the season reset, or they never used it enough to be placed to begin with, and 621 respects the callsign too much to assume the first.

It doesn't help that the Arena is a data collection scheme under the flimsy guise of a level playing field for mercenaries to judge their skill. The punishment for not giving ALLMIND your data is starting at the bottom. 621 had been defrosted late into the current season, and there just hadn't been enough time to throw themselves at the deluge of fights ALLMIND demanded of unranked mercenaries to get anywhere, and so they finished the E rank promotion qualification but the season ended before they could work their way into D rank proper.

That said, it was a clean 5-0 set every time. And they'll be clean 5-0 sets when the new season starts, too.

621 grins, giving him an aside glance that glints with Coral, but also more than Coral. "Here for my bonus?"

He frowns. "Not for a D."

"Long shot."

621 hops up onto the catwalk railing with ease, bringing another box of that coffee-soy drink with them as they go. Their legs hook the lower rail and hold them there as they tear the straw free. Without the fabricators running, the small pop of the straw puncturing the top is audible. They talk around it.

"You saw the changes to my licence too, then."

"I did," Walter nods curtly. "And approved them."

They grin. Their eyes go to LOADER 4 in all its silver-grey glory, patchwork Schneider-BAWS-Balam assembly wrangled together through the flexible RaD OS, and for the first time they're seeing their AC. Not LOADER 4.

QUIXOTIC.

"Thanks," they say. It does well to underplay the effervescent joy alight in their nerves, pushing their smile wider, into something more genuine.

O'Keeffe made his peace with how things turned out, and 621 doesn't fault him for it. But he's wrong about the knife: O'Keeffe pulled something out of his chest and named it grief because once it was gone, there was no more hurting. The work was done.

But 621 calls it hope. And they're going to keep grabbing for that blade no matter how many times it cuts them.