The jungle canopy rippled as an Imperial Iron Eagle combat shuttle tore overhead, its Vulcan-series engines turning silence into raw concussion. Jack’s first instinct was to duck. His second—the other mind they once called Loki in the Crucible—took command.

  Thor’s sensor suite whispered awake. Not the half-blind army surplus package, but Seventh Lab’s unacknowledged gift. Data scrolled across the holographic pane like scripture written in light.

  “Iron Eagle, Mark Six,” Jack muttered, eyes narrowing. “Heat plume wide as a furnace mouth. Recon optics and IR composite scan—twenty years old. Stinger’s ECM will blind it. Armor’s sloped, yes, but the rookies are right: hard to swat if you’ve only got iron sights.”

  The shuttle prowled in widening arcs, its search pattern half-hearted, then waggled its wings and vanished north.

  The column moved faster, fear in their stride. Jack knew the pattern: air first, then ground sweeps. The Imperials would not give up.

  By dusk, the sky had become a net of contrails. Dozens of search craft laid down a relentless grid. Only when Thor’s radar painted a faint diversion—a battalion diverted toward a collapsed highway tunnel—did their path open.

  Yet Jack felt no relief. His gut had survived thirteen escapes; it now hissed warnings like a faulty pressure valve.

  They reached the high ridges at nightfall. One more crest, and the hidden logistics base lay beyond. That was when Stinger’s radar pinged once, sharp and clean.

  A new shuttle descended low, sleek as a scalpel, unmarked except for a sigil painted in ash-white: a dragon’s skull strangled by chain.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Jack’s chest iced over. Tartarus Legion.

  It didn’t scout. It landed precisely at the only viable pass for heavy mechs. Thor’s geological scanner had proven it weeks ago. They weren’t hunting. They were tracking.

  “Contacts—ten,” the comms officer rasped. “Dropped from transport. Stealth engaged.”

  On Thor’s screen, Loki’s stolen Seventh Lab code unpeeled the shadows. Ten faint signatures spread in a fan—predator geometry, non-humanoid, smaller than Paladins yet blazing with energy curves no human frame could match.

  Arrogance, Jack thought. Ten monsters for two hundred men. Not confidence. Contempt.

  The coward in his skull shrieked for flight. Loki felt something fouler—a sick excitement.

  He drew the plan: the column would push toward the base under Paladin cover. The rearguard—Juggernaut, Stinger, third squad—would lay the trap. They had thirty minutes, the edge of ECM, to butcher the hunters, steal their comms, and vanish.

  Possible? Against Imperials, five minutes was enough. Against Tartarus, even with surprise, it was like stabbing a shark with a screwdriver.

  Major Caleb took the order with a grim salute. His squad marched into the dark to bait the jaws of legend. Watching them go, Jack’s chest twisted with guilt. He was gambling with their blood, buying time for a conjurer’s trick.

  In the cockpit’s cramped shadow, he pulled Nya and Meadow close. The tactical display burned across his face, pale fire across his heavy features.

  “We may not meet again,” he said flatly. No bravado, no theater. Only numbers in his voice.

  Meadow kissed his cheek, soft against stubble. “You come back, Jack. If you don’t, I’ll hunt you down in hell and drag you back to me.”

  Nya’s gaze was sharper, colder, yet laced with something new. Tenderness. “Same for me,” she murmured. Then she smiled—a strange, defiant curve touched with grief.

  Slowly, deliberately, she unzipped the front of her flight suit. Jack’s breath halted. But what he saw was no fantasy of flesh.

  Grenades. Military-grade, taped to her ribs, each pin linked by wire to her suit’s lining. Her body had become a dead man’s switch.

  Jack’s heart wrenched. Nya only smiled wider, radiant in the glow of self-destruction.

  “They will never,” she whispered, voice low and venomous, “take me alive again.”