The rattling of the Black Fang’s engine had traversed its way into Gravel’s bones. He exhaled, slow, steady, resting his head back against the bulkhead as his vision resumed its full capacity. His shoulder still ached from where the shrapnel had grazed him, but the pain was already dulling, blending into the background like every other wound he’d picked up over the years. The kind he just learned to live with.

  Hunter sat beside him, silent now. Her breathing had evened out, but she was still much too tense for her usual self. She wasn’t the kind of person to get sentimental, but she also wasn’t the kind to say things she didn’t mean. I was worried for you earlier. Gravel had heard a dozen variations of those words from a dozen different people, but coming from her, it carried a weight he wasn’t sure what to do with. It was made more than apparent to himself that he was never well-equipped for those conversations to begin with.

  That scrawny scrapyard back on Zizi’s planet doesn’t look so bad now.

  His gaze drifted toward the holo-display on his wrist. Of course, Zizi’s unread message was still there. The one he’d insisted to be no more than just a spare part dealer to him. Fang had taken quite a liking to her, calling her the sweetest girl she had ever met, which was probably equal part exaggeration as it was genuine. Priest had never met the girl, and Hunter had never commented on her.

  She’d sent it yesterday. He hadn’t even looked at it. Hadn’t had the time, between dodging bullets and barely making it out of Namor-4 in one piece. Now, with everything still and quiet, he realized just how long that was. Even if he replied right now, she wouldn’t get it for another week. And then it’d be another week before he heard back. They were too far away to establish a direct comm line.

  He dimmed the display. He’d reply. Soon. Probably.

  Gravel stared up at the ceiling like maybe an answer would be written there. “If only we would score big,” he muttered. “Say a billion ducats. Then we could walk away from this life for good. That would be a proper thanks to you.” He chanced another glance at Hunter, be careful not to make it too obvious. “Thanks for covering my back back there. Also, what I said wasn’t a pun.”

  Maybe I can ask her about what she meant earlier. About the mission, about the things she was about to say. Maybe one day we can have a talk, heart-to-heart or something. Ew. Too mushy. Let’s reword it to ‘talking it out like mature people’. Yeah. Maybe we can talk it out like mature people. Maybe that ‘one day’ can be now.

  He spoke, “So—”

  A voice crackled through the ship’s comms, dry and teasing. “I hear asteroid mining pays well.”

  Fang.

  Gravel’s head snapped toward the controls. “You eavesdropping now?”

  Fang’s laugh was light, but there was a sharpness beneath it. “Hard not to when you’re broadcasting existential crises on an open channel.”

  Hunter let out a relieved laughter. “Remind me to never doubt your getaway skills, Fang.”

  Fang scoffed, then came the clicking sound of her flipping a few stabilizers back online. “Then don’t cut me off your comms again next time.”

  “I didn’t do that. Rhyan did.” Hunter turned to Gravel.

  “Call me by my real name now, huh, Miss Felicia Rhodes?” He snorted.

  Fang exhaled. “You two gonna reminisce, or are we actually debriefing? Because last I checked, we barely got out of that hellhole in one piece.”

  Priest tapped his console, double-checking their heading. “She is right. We have got the drive, but we don’t know what is on it yet.” Then he looked up at all of them. “And we should have done much better than that, despite the mech.”

  Hunter and Gravel looked at each other, knowing that admitting fault would save them the lecture.

  Hunter spoke first, “Less quipping next time.”

  Gravel scratched the back of his head, a sheepish grin spreading across his face. “Hey, as long as we get things done, huh? It’s like our second ground mission ever. We’re still adjusting, you know? Transitioning from escorting cargo to. . . whatever this is—” he gestured at nothing in particular, “—hasn’t exactly been swell.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Third. It is our third ground mission,” Priest replied.

  Hunter chimed in, “Still . . . what’s up with that corpse? I’ve never seen anything like that before.”

  Gravel immediately diverted to another topic. “Maybe the drive will tell us. That thing is in the same facility they ran dubious experiments in anyway. Let’s crack it open and find out what’s worth dying over.”

  Priest didn’t look up from his console. “We are not cracking anything open. We deliver the drive as-is. That was the deal.”

  Gravel scoffed. “You can’t be serious.”

  Hunter leaned forward, arms crossed. “Priest, they lied to us. We weren’t supposed to run into an entire kill squad and a damn murder-spider. The job was framed as a simple retrieval, not a death trap.”

  Priest met their stares. “That does not change the contract.”

  Gravel ran a hand through his hair. “We nearly died for this thing. You really don’t wanna know why?”

  Hunter exhaled through her nose, a slow, deliberate sound—half a laugh, half a sigh. “You ever regret this?”

  Gravel’s reply was instantaneous. “Regret what?”

  She gestured vaguely. “This. All of it. Waking up every day knowing some corporate asshole, warlord, or crime syndicate might screw us over just because they can?”

  Priest tilted his head. “Regret implies we had better choices.”

  Hunter stared at him for a long moment, then laughed. Her laughter was edged with exhaustion. “You ever think maybe we did?”

  He was about to say, well, you didn’t have a choice when they chased you out of your home planet twelve years back, but ultimately bit back the words.

  A silence settled over them, stretching just long enough for Gravel to shift uncomfortably.

  He knew what she really meant.

  There was a line that if they had crossed, they could’ve retired by now. But they couldn’t.

  The crew had made that decision years ago. It wasn’t just an unspoken understanding—it was one of the few rules written down, etched into the very foundation of their partnership. No stealing from innocent people. No raiding supply ships or emptying corporate accounts.

  Not long ago, they’d broken a contract—walked away from a job they weren’t supposed to walk away from. It had been a simple transport gig, moving a sealed crate from the outer colonies to a mid-tier Republic hub. No questions asked. No inspections. But Priest had checked the manifest anyway—because of course he had.

  The crate had been filled with people. Cargo.

  They had burned that job to the ground. Freed the people, scattered their contractor’s operations, and made enemies of some very powerful people in the process. They’d barely made it out alive. They were lucky because their contractor—Choudaury—went bankrupt, or else they would’ve still had internal bounties over their heads.

  Hunter hadn’t mentioned that job since. But Gravel could see it now, behind her eyes, weighing on her shoulders.

  Gravel muttered, his voice lower than usual. “We’re not making an enemy out of McPherson. We either deliver the drive and walk, or we open it, deliver it, then walk. I’ll make sure we won’t repeat our last mistakes.”

  Priest hesitated, just for a second, before shaking his head. “It does not matter. If we look inside, we make ourselves a liability, again. We are not getting hired for anything else.”

  “But what if that drive contains things that can wipe out a civilization? What about that then?”

  “Do you really want to find out?”

  Gravel didn’t give him an answer right away.

  Fang clicked her tongue, watching them through the rearview display. “Hate to break up the moral debate, but we’re an hour from rendezvous. You three better figure this out before we get there.”

  The screen flickered with navigational data: Departing low orbit of Namor-4. Trajectory set for deep-space relay at Gridpoint Theta-92.

  The once-distant planet shrank behind them, its storm-wracked surface a swirling mass of emerald clouds and jagged lightning. Whatever secrets had been buried beneath its shattered landscape, they were leaving them far behind.

  Hunter and Gravel exchanged a glance. Neither looked ready to let this go.

  The ship hummed softly as it cut through the void, its stabilizers adjusting automatically to the shift in trajectory. The silence between them stretched, thick with unspoken arguments.

  Hunter leaned back in her seat, boot tapping an impatient rhythm against the floor. Gravel had his arms crossed, gaze distant, jaw frozen as if nailed in place. Priest remained at the console with a blank face, fingers idly running through flight diagnostics. Probably pretending not to feel the weight of the others’ stares.

  Fang, ever the outsider to their moral dilemmas, sighed petulantly. “You know, if you’re all gonna sulk, at least do it somewhere other than my cockpit.”

  No one moved.

  She rolled her eyes and focused on the controls. “Fine. Keep brooding. Just don’t make it my problem when it blows up in your faces.”