TSD: 3049-10-07 — Local: 13:26
Galatea, Galatea System — Galaport City (Spaceport District / Pad C-17, Customs & Cargo)
The spaceport didn't feel like a gateway to the stars.
It felt like a throat.
Steel fencing and floodlights. Cargo scanners that swung like bored predators. Dockworkers in insulated jackets moving between pallets with the stiff rhythm of people who had learned not to look too long at anything expensive. The air was sharp with burnt fuel and cold wind, and everything smelled like metal that had been warmed and cooled a thousand times.
Kel brought the Zeus in slow, heavy steps across Pad C-17, keeping the left hip gentle—no hard pivots, no ego movements. The assault 'Mech's shadow rolled over ground crews and made them instinctively drift away from its feet.
Tessa walked beneath it, craning her neck to watch the actuator seam as it flexed. Today she'd zipped her coveralls up fully and tightened a utility belt around her waist, sleeves still rolled because she couldn't tolerate restriction when she was thinking. Her braid was wrapped in a bandana again, tidy and practical. She looked tired, but there was a small tension-relief to her shoulders now—like the machine had stopped feeling like it might betray her at any moment.
Mara handled the front of the operation at the customs table.
She stood with her tablet open, posture straight, high-collared jacket zipped, gloves on. Her hair was pinned tight, and her expression was calm—too calm—like she'd decided the best way to survive a public place was to look like she belonged there.
Avery and Jori took security positions automatically without being told. Avery stayed nearer the cargo line, flak vest cinched tight, hands near her weapon but not hovering. Jori lingered closer to the vehicles, scanning sight lines and exits like she was trying to memorize the space before it turned dangerous.
Nadia stood near the supply crate stack, coat still on, hair knot already loosening again. She kept making herself useful—moving small things, checking straps—anything that didn't require talking to strangers.
Sienna lounged at the edge of the pad with her helmet bag, pretending the whole thing was boring. Her eyes weren't bored. They kept tracking the edges—people who watched too closely, people who moved too smoothly, people who didn't look like dockworkers even when they wore dockworker clothes.
Elin stayed near the med crate on the service truck. She wasn't smiling. She rarely smiled now. Not after the MRB annex.
They'd been marked.
The port made that feel real.
---
The transport waiting for them was a leased Leopard-class DropShip, squatting on its landing struts with its ramps down like a crouched animal ready to leap. It was small enough to be believable for a unit their size and cheap enough to be rented without pretending they had noble backing.
The crew was mostly women too—dockhands and loadmasters—faces set in the practical neutrality of people who didn't ask questions about merc business.
Mara made sure they didn't have to.
She slid MRB codes across the scanner. "Cargo: one assault 'Mech, one light 'Mech, three support vehicles, field supplies, medical crate. Contract staging destination: Summer system."
The customs clerk—middle-aged, with tired eyes—scanned the codes and frowned. "Periphery corridor recon?"
Mara didn't blink. "Yes."
The clerk hesitated like he wanted to say something, then decided he liked breathing. "You'll want to clear fast. We've had… incidents."
Kel heard it from where he stood beside the Zeus's ramp line.
He didn't ask what "incidents" meant. He already knew: gunfire in places that used to be boring.
Mara's tone stayed professional. "We will."
She stepped away from the table and walked toward Kel—close enough that their shoulders nearly touched before she stopped.
"You're cleared," she said quietly.
Kel nodded. "Good work."
Mara's eyes flicked up to his face—held for a moment longer than usual—then she looked away like she'd remembered herself too late.
"Thank you," she said, and her voice came out softer than it meant to.
She immediately busied herself with a crate seal check to hide it.
Kel didn't call it out.
He just stayed near her while she worked.
Not because he needed to.
Because she seemed steadier when he did.
---
Tessa climbed onto the Zeus's loading ramp, palm pressed briefly to the armor plate beside the hip like she was feeling the machine's mood.
"Slow," she called down to Kel through her mic.
Kel's reply was calm. "Always."
Tessa snorted, then shifted position, moving down a rung. In the tight space of the ramp's side rail, her hip brushed Kel's thigh as she stepped past him.
It could have been nothing.
But her hand—grease-stained even now—caught lightly on his sleeve for balance.
She didn't pull away fast.
She didn't apologize.
She just kept moving like the contact was normal, acceptable—like she'd stopped treating him as a dangerous unknown and started treating him as hers to stand beside.
Rina Vale followed her up, clutching a small tool kit and a diagnostic patch lead. Today Rina wore a fitted mechanic's jacket zipped halfway over a thin work top and cargo pants tucked into boots. Her curls were stuffed under a cap again, but a few had escaped, springing around her temples.
Rina looked at the Zeus like it was holy.
Tessa noticed and barked, "Eyes on the straps, not the poetry."
Rina flushed. "Yes—ma'am."
Tessa didn't correct the "ma'am." She just handed Rina the strap calibrator and said, grudgingly, "Good grip. Don't drop it."
Rina's eyes went wide as if she'd just been given a medal. "I won't."
---
The loading started.
The Valkyrie went first, guided by ground crew. Its smaller frame made the Leopard feel bigger than it really was.
Then the Zeus.
Kel walked it up the ramp with careful, precise steps. The DropShip's deck plates groaned under its mass. Struts flexed. A dockworker on the left side winced at the sound.
Tessa watched the hip joint like a hawk.
Mara watched the people watching them.
Sienna watched the far fence line.
Avery watched hands.
It was Avery who saw it first.
A dockworker—wrong posture, wrong walk—moving too close to the Zeus's left side. Tool bag in one hand. His gaze fixed on the actuator housing.
Avery's voice was low in the team channel. "Kel. Left side. Dockworker doesn't match."
Kel didn't move his head. "Mark."
Jori shifted subtly into a better line. "I see him."
Mara's voice tightened. "He's not on the crew list."
Kel's tone stayed calm. "Avery—intercept. Polite."
Avery moved—quick but not aggressive—stepping into the dockworker's path like she belonged there.
"Hey," Avery said, voice steady. "That's not your lane."
The dockworker stopped.
Then he smiled.
Too calm.
Too ready.
He shoved Avery hard, trying to create a gap.
Avery staggered back—boots scraping—then recovered and reached for her weapon.
The man didn't go for a weapon first.
He went for the Zeus.
His hand darted into the tool bag and came out with a small magnetic puck—flat, metal, with a blinking red light.
A charge.
He slapped it toward the actuator housing.
Kel moved the Zeus half a step without thinking—too late to stop the placement but enough to shift the surface.
The puck clacked onto armor plate instead of the actuator seam.
Tessa screamed through comms, raw. "NO—"
She lunged down the ramp ladder, wrench in hand, not even thinking.
Mara surged forward at the same time, shouting for the dock crew to back away.
The attacker pulled a pistol.
Everything went sharp.
Kel's voice cut through, calm and absolute. "Down!"
The attacker fired anyway.
The round hit a dockworker in the neck.
It wasn't dramatic. It was disgusting.
The dockworker's hands flew up, fingers spreading as blood poured through them in thick, dark sheets. His mouth opened. A wet choking sound came out. He dropped to his knees and fell sideways, twitching as his boots scraped helplessly.
Elin was already running.
She slid to the dockworker's side, hands pressing hard into the wound. Blood pushed between her fingers like it had a will of its own.
"Pressure!" Elin snapped. "NOW!"
Nadia froze—eyes huge—then forced herself forward, shaking, dropping to help. She pressed her hands where Elin pointed, her gloves instantly soaked red.
"I—I can't—" Nadia's voice broke.
Elin's tone was brutal because it had to be. "You can. Push. Don't look at it. Push."
Nadia did, jaw clenched, tears standing in her eyes.
The dockworker's legs kicked once, twice, then slowed.
His eyes rolled.
Elin's face tightened. She kept pressure anyway. Kept trying to bully death back into its corner.
---
Avery fired.
One clean shot into the attacker's shoulder.
It spun him, but it didn't drop him.
He fired again—wild—round cracking into the ramp rail and throwing sparks.
Jori put two rounds into his chest.
The man stumbled backward, hit the concrete hard, and tried to crawl, leaving a smear of blood behind him like a dragged paintbrush.
He reached for the detonator in his other hand.
Kel shot him through the wrist.
The detonator skittered away.
The attacker screamed—high, broken—and then tried to reach for it with his other hand.
Sienna put a round into his thigh from ten meters away, controlled, non-lethal on purpose.
The impact shredded muscle. The leg buckled at a wrong angle, and the man collapsed into his own blood, gasping like a fish on pavement.
He wasn't dead.
Not yet.
Kel didn't waste time watching him suffer.
He stepped the Zeus's foot down beside the attacker's torso with a controlled tremor of weight that made the man freeze, eyes wide, breath hitching.
Kel's external speaker came on, low and calm. "Don't move."
The attacker didn't move.
Tessa had reached the charge on the Zeus's armor plate.
Her face was pale. Her eyes were furious.
She didn't hesitate.
She slapped her wrench against the puck's edge and popped it off with a sharp twist.
The red light blinked faster.
Tessa's breath hitched.
Rina, above, cried out, "Tessa—!"
Tessa hurled the puck away from the ramp like it was a burning coal.
It hit concrete and skittered toward an empty cargo pallet stack.
Kel rotated the Zeus's torso and fired a short laser burst—precise, not a beam meant to kill, a beam meant to cook electronics.
The puck exploded.
Not a Hollywood fireball—an ugly, concussive pop that threw shrapnel and shredded pallet wood. A pressure slap hit faces. A shower of fragments pinged off the DropShip's hull.
Silence followed, ringing and thin.
Smoke curled in a pale thread.
Tessa stood there breathing hard, hands shaking around the wrench like she'd just ripped a heart out of something.
Kel stepped down from the ramp line—on foot now—closing the distance to her.
He didn't grab her.
He didn't smother her.
He simply stood close enough that she could feel the steadiness in him.
"You did well," Kel said calmly.
Tessa's eyes snapped to his face.
For a second she looked like she might argue.
Then her breath shuddered once, and she looked away, jaw tight, like praise was a thing she didn't know where to put.
"Yeah," she muttered. "Whatever."
But she didn't step away from him.
She stayed near.
---
Mara was already on the attacker.
Not with fists.
With focus.
She crouched beside him, keeping her distance from his blood, tablet in hand like a weapon.
"Who sent you," she asked, voice flat.
The attacker spit—blood and saliva. "Too late."
Mara's eyes were cold. "Answer."
The attacker laughed wetly. "Periphery… you'll die out there…"
Kel stepped closer, calm shadow falling over the man.
The attacker's laughter stopped.
Kel's voice was quiet. "Name."
The attacker's eyes flicked to the Zeus behind Kel—then to the women aiming rifles—then to the dead dockworker still twitching under Elin's hands.
His bravado crumbled into something uglier: fear.
"C—Coda—" he gasped. "We were told… stop the ship…"
Kel didn't ask again.
Because Elin's voice cut through, hard. "He's gone."
Nadia made a small, broken sound and leaned back, hands dripping, shaking.
The dockworker's eyes stared at nothing.
Elin closed them with two fingers, jaw clenched so tight it looked like it might crack. Then she turned and snapped at the dock crew. "Get him covered. Now."
Mara went still for a half beat—eyes flicking to the dead man.
Then she forced herself back to motion.
Because grief wasn't safe here.
Not on a pad where someone had just tried to bomb their 'Mech.
Mara stood and walked to Kel—fast, controlled.
She didn't speak at first.
She just stopped close—so close their sleeves nearly brushed.
Her voice came out quiet. "They're escalating."
Kel's reply was calm. "Then we leave faster."
Mara's gaze lifted to his face. It lingered.
Not romantic—yet.
Something like trust trying to become something else, and not knowing how.
"All cargo loads now," she said, voice regaining its sharp edge. "No delays."
Kel nodded once. "Do it."
---
They finished loading under heavier security.
Avery stayed tight and pale, eyes haunted by how quickly blood happened.
Jori's hands were steady, but her face had gone slightly gray. She kept glancing at Kel like she wanted to ask if she'd done enough and didn't know how to ask.
Rina hovered near Tessa like a shadow, trying to be useful without getting in the way. Tessa didn't chase her off.
Nadia scrubbed her gloves clean, but the red didn't come out of the seams. She kept staring at them like they were proof she'd crossed a line she couldn't uncross.
Sienna didn't joke again.
Elin washed her hands in a portable basin until her knuckles went raw.
Then they boarded.
The Leopard's ramp rose.
The pad fell away.
And Galatea—its hiring halls, its rules, its blood-soaked annex—stayed behind them.
---
Travel Lock for Continuity
Route: Galatea → Jump Point → (1 jump) → Summer system (staging)
Estimated transit: ~12–15 days surface-to-orbit-to-surface, assuming standard 1G legs and a booked jump window.
Contract clock: starts on arrival in Summer (so travel doesn't consume the 21-day mission).
---
Unit Ledger — Iron Inheritance (Running C-Bill Log)
(Maintained by Mara Saito; updated end of TSD 3049-10-07, 13:26)
Starting liquid (from end Chapter 12)
Liquid on hand: 79,450
Restricted/held: 25,000 (not accessible)
Mandatory reserve floor: 60,000 (do not spend below)
Portside incident costs (immediate)
Emergency port security fee / incident filing (spaceport authority): −2,000
Replacement straps / damaged ramp rail hardware (shared liability): −1,200
Medical resupply used (trauma kits, clotting packs): −900
Total new expenses: −4,100
Current balances
Current liquid on hand: 75,350 C-bills ✅ (above 60,000 reserve)
Operating liquid above reserve: 15,350 C-bills
Restricted/held: 25,000 C-bills