Chapter 70: The Ups and Downs
The air down here tasted like iron filings, cheap grease, and just a hint of Eridian ozone. It was a massive step down from the filtered, lavender-infused atmosphere of my old executive suite, but given that my old executive suite was currently scattered across three different zip codes as a smoldering pile of radioactive scrap, I wasn't exactly in a position to be picky.
Six months.
Six whole months since I packed myself into a metal box, shot myself out of a railgun, and nearly turned Rhys and Vaughn into grease spots on the Pandoran dirt. Since then, the debris field of Helios had basically become the planet’s largest, most lucrative yard sale.
Scooter, Janey, and Gaige’s scrap crews had spent twenty-four hours a day picking the skeleton of my beautiful station clean, dragging back every loose wire, reinforced bulkhead, and thruster relay they could hitch to a runner. It was amazing what a bunch of rednecks and a teenage genius could accomplish when the alternative was getting evaporated by Hyperion orbital bombardments.
Oh? Did you think that Hyperion only had one mega space-station?
So did I!
But, it turns out, Harold Ass-iter has commissioned a new one for little old me… to take out little old me. Which was particularly insulting, given I was neither little, nor old, nor particularly happy to know we can just order space stations whenever we want now.
Would have been nice to know!
Still, nothing to it. Just got to buckle down and get to work… eventually.
I leaned back, enjoying the flawless, contour-hugging perfection of my golden ergonomic chair. Salvaging it from the wreckage had been an absolute non-negotiable, and right now, it was bolted securely to a floating maintenance platform hovering fifteen feet above the structural underbelly of Sanctuary.
And I can’t move this anywhere.
That’s right, kiddos! From here on out, Handsome Jack’s office is wherever the fuck he wants it to be. Working from home? No problem. Going overseas? Easy peasy Japanesey. Want to work on the thrusters for your soon to be airborne Capitol?
Piece of fucking cake.
Below me, the massive, salvaged Helios Warp Drive was suspended in a web of heavy-duty crane cables, humming with a deep, resonant vibration that I could feel right through my tailbone.
Now, I’m officially closer to perfecting my beautiful city than Hyperion is even half-finished starting theirs. Not that what I’ve seen so far has been much to look at… It was a beautiful piece of cosmic irony.
Harold Tassiter didn't just fire me and try to have me liquidated by what should have been my original employees; the old bastard took my entire vision for a bright, shining, corporate utopia on the surface and completely butchered it. The reports filtering in from my remaining spy network were frankly offensive to anyone with an ounce of taste.
Opportunity had officially been established on the coast, but it wasn't the vibrant, marble-and-gold monument to progress I’ve been drafting for years. No, Harold turned it into a gray, brutalist, soul-crushing corporate campus.
It looked like a cross between a maximum-security prison and a dental convention, populated entirely by Hyperion’s “legitimate” settlers who probably thought unseasoned chicken was a culinary thrill. To top it all off, he’d surrounded the whole pathetic complex with a massive orbital defense blockade just to keep me out.
We’ll just see about that.
“Hey, sweetie, you seeing this telemetry?” I tapped my earpiece, pulling up a cascading waterfall of blue data diagnostics on the holographic display floating over my lap. “The thermal distribution on thruster four is spiking. Tell me Gaige didn't use bandit pipe-clamps on a Hyperion plasma conduit again.”
“She used the clamps, Dad, but she reinforced them with slag-infused resin.” Angel’s voice echoed in my mind, smooth and comforting, though I could hear the faint, rapid-fire clicking of a keyboard in the background. “The structural integrity is actually within safe parameters. I’m pushing the final H-Source network sync to your terminal now.”
“Slag-infused resin. Brilliant. Chaotic, but brilliant.” I muttered, reviewing the code. The H-Source data I’ve spent months organizing was finally locked down, stripped of any rogue Claptrap protocols, and serving as the primary operating system for the entire town. It was pristine.
“The core configuration is stable, Jack.” Felicity’s calm, digitized voice chimed in alongside Angel’s, her presence in the mainframe providing the heavy-duty computing power we needed to bridge the gap between human scrap-metal and advanced Hyperion engineering. “The structural dampeners are holding at ninety-eight percent. If we initiate the launch sequence, the town will not pull itself apart. Probably.”
“I’m going to ignore that last word, Felicity, because I’m a positive thinker.” I swiveled my chair around, looking out past the hanging wires and the massive, pulsing thruster arrays toward the sprawling, ramshackle foundations of the city above us.
The system sync reached one hundred percent.
All hail the power of positive thinking!
The hum of the Warp Drive shifted, deepening into a low, predatory growl that made the metal scaffolding beneath my chair vibrate in sympathy.
We weren't hiding anymore. We weren't just ducking under the table every time a Hyperion satellite drifted overhead. We were about to take this entire, beautiful, mismatched pile of garbage and lift it straight into the stratosphere.
“Alright, ladies.” I said, snapping my holographic display shut with a flourish and grabbing the guidance controls of my floating platform. “Let’s go tell the Crimson Raiders it’s time to pack their bags. We’re moving on to bigger and better places, and I’ll be damned if I let Harold Tassiter have the high ground for one more second.”
…
The morning sun over the outer cliffs didn’t warm the air; it just turned the frost on the rocks into a thin, miserable mist that smelled like wet iron. Mordecai adjusted the scope of his sniper rifle, his thumb absently rubbing the worn wooden stock as he looked out across the canyon. Down in the valley, a broken bandit technical—a rusty chassis stripped of its wheels and half its armor—lay upside down in the dirt.
A shadow swallowed the ledge. It wasn't the small, sharp silhouette of a hunting bird anymore. It was massive, a sweeping patch of darkness that made the gravel rattle before the wind from her wings even hit him.
Bloodwing hit the canyon floor with a heavy, dust-billowing thud that shook the lens of Mordecai's scope. Thanks to Jack playing mad scientist to fix Zed’s mistake with the Hyperion gene-splicers six months ago, she wasn't coughing up purple slag fluid anymore, which was the good news.
The bad news was she was still roughly the size of a small dropship and still possessed the mind of a bird who thought everything that moved was a mouse.
She leaned down, snapped her massive, razor-sharp beak around the technical's rear axle, and lifted the two-ton chunk of iron into the air with a proud, high-pitched screech that echoed off the canyon walls.
“No, girl! Drop it! That’s not a fetch toy!” Mordecai shouted over the edge, cupping a hand around his mouth. “You’re gonna break a talon doing that shit!”
Bloodwing tilted her massive head, her yellow eyes blinking with a look of profound, avian confusion. She gave the technical a gentle shake, sending a rusted muffler clattering into the rocks, before dropping it with a loud, metallic crunch that completely pancaked the remaining frame.
“Told you! I told you she needed more pizzazz!” Tiny Tina scrambled out from behind a pile of boulders, her tiny legs kicking up dirt as she dragged a wooden crate filled with clanking glass bottles and bundles of dynamite. “The big birdy is bored, Morty! She’s bored because her clothes don't have enough boom-boom!”
Mordecai let out a slow, haggard sigh, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his goggles. “Tina, for the last time, we aren't putting explosive reactive plating on her leather harness. She’s a living animal, not one of Roland’s turret emplacements.”
“But she’s a giant animal!” Tina protested, dropping the crate with a heavy thud and pulling out a bundle of tallowed dynamite sticks. She began waving them around to emphasize her point, nearly whacking Brick—who had just strolled up the mountain path with his arms crossed—in the shins. “Look at her! She’s like a dragon! A big, beautiful, feathery dragon that wants to see things go poot! If the metal city goes up-up into the sky, the sky-people are gonna shoot at her! She needs the spicy vest!”
Brick looked down at the crate, then out at Bloodwing, who was currently trying to use a large boulder to scratch an itch on her chest. “The kid’s got a point, Mordy. If Jack’s crazy sky-engine actually lifts the pavement today, we’re going to be a giant, slow-moving target. Hyperion’s new space station isn't just up there for decoration.”
“I know what’s up there.” Mordecai said, his voice dropping into that quiet, hard register he kept for when things were genuinely turning south. He looked back toward the high walls of Sanctuary.
From this distance, you could see the massive structural braces Jack’s crews had welded along the outer rim, looking like silver staples holding a cracked plate together.
“Birds are meant to fly.” He pointed out, rather obviously. “My girl is meant to fly. But an entire town made of scrap iron and concrete? It’s against nature, man. If one of those salvaged thrusters blows while we’re three thousand feet up, we aren't just losing a battle. We’re cratering the whole valley.”
“Jack says the math checks out.” Brick shrugged, his massive shoulders shifting under his leather straps. “Math is really hard, Mordy. I can’t do it. Can you? No? Then let’s just trust the professionals.”
“Jack also thought shooting himself out of a moonshot cannon was smarter than using an escape pod.” Mordecai whistled, a long, three-note cadence that cut through the wind. “I wouldn’t trust his judgment.”
Down in the canyon, Bloodwing’s crest feathers snapped upright. She turned, her massive talons gouging deep trenches into the dirt as she launched herself into the air. The downforce from her wings nearly took Tina’s hat off, sending a flurry of gravel over the ledge as the giant bird circled up into the grey sky, catching an updraft with effortless grace.
Mordecai watched her go, his fingers tightening around his rifle. “If we’re doing this, we do it right. Tina, put the dynamite away. If you want to help, go find Scooter and make sure he didn't use moonshine for the primary thruster coolant again.”
“Fine, fine, killjoy Morty!” Tina huffed, kicking a loose pebble over the cliff face before hoisting her heavy crate back into her arms. “But if the sky-men start popping caps at us, I’m taping a rocket launcher to her tail! You can't stop the future!”
Brick chuckled, clapping a massive hand onto Mordecai's shoulder that nearly drove the sniper into the dirt. “Come on, bird-man. Let’s go get the rest of our gear packed. If Jack’s house is going airborne, I want to make sure my weights are bolted down. Don't want them to get loose, and hurt someone. That’s my thing.”
“Yeah,” Mordecai muttered, squinting up at the cloud layer where the silhouette of Hyperion’s new orbital platform was waiting, cold and silent. “Let’s go see if the bastard’s actually built a miracle, or just the world’s biggest coffin.”
…
The makeshift marketplace on the lower tiers of Sanctuary smelled like rancid grease, desperation, and the distinct, burning-plastic odor of a failing generator. Rhys carefully adjusted the collar of his shirt—or what was left of it—wincing as the coarse, unwashed burlap chafed against his neck.
Six months on Pandora had done wonders for his survival instincts, but it had completely decimated his wardrobe.
Vaughn sat cross-legged on a rusted dahl ammunition crate next to him, his shirt-front parted to display a set of abs that had become alarmingly defined since they’d been forced to eat nothing but skag skewers and localized dust storms. He was idly picking a piece of dried desert weed out of the hem of a pair of sweatpants that looked like they had been salvaged from a literal landfill.
“Rhys,” Vaughn muttered, keeping his eyes locked on a pair of sleek, pristine Hyperion corporate jackets draped casually over the back of a nearby merchant stall. “They’re right there. I can see the custom silver threading from here. My monogrammed cuffs are mocking me, bro.”
“Stay focused, Vaughn.” Rhys whispered back, his cybernetic eye whirring softly as he adjusted the internal focal length to scan the perimeter. “We are business professionals. We are data architects. We do not beg. We leverage.”
“We’re wearing garbage bags, Rhys.”
“They are utilitarian tunics, and they build character.” Rhys snapped, though his resolve wavered the second Fiona and Sasha stepped out from behind the canvas awning.
Fiona adjusted the brim of her hat, her fingers lightly tapping the hollow-point pistol strapped to her thigh as she looked down at them with a look of pure, unadulterated amusement. Sasha stood just behind her, leaning against a stack of structural beams with her arms crossed, a half-eaten piece of local fruit balanced on her thumb.
“Well, look at the corporate royalty.” Fiona said, leaning against the wooden counter of the stall and tapping the shoulder pad of Rhys’s former, immaculate gray blazer. “Come to admire the inventory? I have to say, the whole 'desert ascetic' look really suits you two. Very chic.”
“We’re here to negotiate, Fiona.” Rhys stood up, trying to puff out his chest beneath the burlap, though the effect was somewhat ruined when a loose thread caught on his mechanical hand and threatened to unravel his entire sleeve. “Six months. You’ve had our property for six months. The joke’s over. We’ve integrated into the community, we’re official citizens, and frankly, Vaughn’s lower back is starting to break out from those sweatpants.”
“They don't breathe, Sasha!” Vaughn added, gesturing wildly to his legs. “The fabric tech is entirely non-porous! It’s an ergonomic disaster!”
Sasha took a slow bite of her fruit, chewing deliberately before she pointed the core at Rhys. “You guys don't have any leverage. Those suits paid for our ammo supply through the winter. Technically, we’re leasing them back to the market. If you want them, the price is three thousand credits each. Cash. No corporate vouchers.”
“Three thousand? That’s highway robbery!” Rhys yelled, his voice cracking slightly before he quickly lowered it, glancing around the busy marketplace. He leaned in across the counter, his cybernetic eye flashing a brief, sharp blue as he tapped into a localized data stream. “Okay, look. Cash is an outdated concept. How about we talk about something with actual value? Like... the complete operational schedule for Hyperion’s new orbital supply line.”
Fiona stopped smirking. Her eyes narrowed, her gaze shifting from Rhys’s face to the faint, flickering blue projection currently displaying across his synthetic palm. “Where did you get that?”
“The Opportunity blockade isn't as tight as Tassiter thinks it is.” Vaughn said, sliding off his crate and stepping up beside Rhys, his posture instantly shifting back into the confident stride of a high-level financial analyst. “They’re routing their secondary data packets through the old Helios relay station near the coast. They think because the station’s abandoned, nobody’s listening. But Rhys’s eye has an encrypted back-door into the old corporate grid, and I’ve been running the logistical math on their encrypted streams for the last three weeks.”
“They’re moving a major weapon shipment through the northern quadrant tomorrow morning.” Rhys said, his voice dropping into a smooth, calculated baritone that finally made him sound like a man who belonged in a boardroom instead of a ditch. “A complete load of automated constructors, high-grade shields, and about forty cases of actual, unexpired corporate rations. We have the exact arrival times, the guard rotations, and the override frequencies for the cargo locks.”
Fiona exchanged a quick, calculating look with Sasha. The younger sister lowered her fruit, her expression shifting from bored amusement to genuine, professional interest.
“You’re telling the truth.” Fiona muttered, her eyes tracing the encrypted data lines scrolling across Rhys’s palm.
“Of course we’re telling the truth.” Rhys smiled, a sharp, dangerous corporate grin that he’d learned entirely from watching Jack handle the board of directors.
Who said internships are a waste of time?
Rhys learned a lot. Manipulation, extortion, deception, you name it!
He pulled his hand back, the holographic data vanishing into thin air. “We might not have our original clothes, ladies, but we still have our brains. We’re the best information brokers this floating city’s got, even if we look like we were dragged behind a technical. Now... do we get our jackets back, or do I sell this telemetry to Marcus for a premium?”
Fiona let out a short, sharp laugh, reaching behind the counter and tossing Rhys’s gray blazer directly into his face. “One jacket. For the telemetry. You get the pants back when the cargo actually clears the border.”
Rhys caught the jacket, the familiar, high-quality fabric feeling like heaven against his fingers. He pulled it on over the burlap, instantly feeling about eighty percent more powerful. “Pleasure doing business with you, Fiona.”
“Don't get cocky, corporate.” Sasha said, tossing her fruit core into a nearby trash bin as she turned toward the armory. “You still look ridiculous from the waist down.”
For now.
But so help him God, he will get. His. Pants. Back.
…
The air in the Crimson Raiders headquarters was choked with the smell of old cardboard, gun oil, and stress. Lilith leaned heavily against the main tactical table, her hands flat on the scarred metal surface as she tried to ignore the dull, throbbing ache in her lower back.
Everywhere she looked, the room was a logistical nightmare.
Overturned ammunition crates, half-packed weapon lockers, and rolled-up map schematics littered the floor, making the already cramped command center feel like a claustrophobic cage.
And then there was the noise.
“If we don’t establish a tight three-tier interlocking grid then the second the thrusters clear the bedrock, the northern quadrant will be completely exposed to orbital tracking.” Roland’s voice was a low, steady rumble that usually calmed her down, but right now, it was just grating on her last nerve.
He was leaning over a holographic map of the valley, his finger pointing aggressively at a sector they wouldn’t even see for another three hours. Frankly, Lilith had another idea about where he could shove that finger… wait. That might sound dirty.
She meant up his ass. Not hers. Obviously. Her body was overcapacity as it was.
“Your grid assumes Hyperion is going to use standard atmospheric entry protocols, Commander.” Athena replied, her voice completely flat, unyielding, and entirely too calm for someone about to ride a flying city into the sky.
Wannabe spartan…
She was leaning against a stack of crates, her heavy shield strapped to her forearm as she idly checked the seal on her gauntlet. “Tassiter’s blockades don't play by the manual. They will drop automated containment units directly onto the upper decks. We need a fluid perimeter, not a rigid line.”
“We need an organized deployment, Athena. If the civilian sectors panic—”
“Oh, will you both just shut up?!” Lilith snapped.
The moment the words left her mouth, a sudden, violent surge of raw amethyst energy flared through her veins. The overhead fluorescent bulb flickered wildly before shattering with a sharp pop, raining tiny glass shards onto a nearby weapon locker. On the table, three loose pistol rounds and a coffee mug slowly lifted off the metal, hovering a few inches in the air in a halo of crackling purple static before dropping back down with a clatter.
Lilith squeezed her eyes shut, pressing a hand against her swollen stomach.
Ever since Jack had bolted that massive, Eridian-hybrid Helios warp drive into the city’s underbelly, her Siren powers had been acting like a broken radio. Every time her temper spiked—which was roughly every five minutes these days—the local gravity went haywire. It was humiliating.
She was one of the most powerful beings on the planet, and right now, she couldn't even lose her temper without turning the office into a zero-G salad bar.
“Lilith.” Roland stepped away from the table, his stern expression instantly melting into that quiet, careful look he used whenever he thought she was about to explode. “You need to sit down. You’ve been on your feet since the first siren went off.”
“I’m fine, Roland.” She muttered, though the lie felt incredibly hollow.
She wasn't fine.
She was terrified.
She was a Siren, a soldier, a woman who walked through fire and tore apart armies with her bare hands. She knew how to survive a wasteland, but she had absolutely no idea how to be a mother. Especially not in the middle of a literal war zone, on a city held together by scrap metal, duct tape, and her boyfriend’s borderline psychotic confidence.
Jack was down there right now, laughing and playing the brilliant engineer, entirely convinced that lifting a million tons of concrete into the stratosphere was a perfectly reasonable weekend project.
What if the thrusters failed? What if Tassiter’s new space station blew them out of the air before they even cleared the mountain peaks? She looked down at her stomach, her fingers tightening against the fabric of her shirt.
She couldn't protect a child from a falling city.
A sudden, sharp jab from the inside made her gasp, her knees instantly buckling. She caught herself on the edge of the table, her knuckles turning white.
“Ow.”
Was she crazy, or was the baby kicking way more than usual? Over the last six months, she’d gotten used to the gentle, rhythmic thumping, but this was different. This felt heavy, frantic, and sharp—like a localized electric shock pulsing right against her ribs. It was actually starting to hurt, a deep, tightening ache that radiated straight through her hips and made it impossible to draw a full breath.
“Lilith?” Roland was at her side in an instant, his heavy hand hovering near her shoulder, completely unsure of what to do. For all his tactical genius, the man was utterly useless when faced with a medical emergency that couldn't be fixed with a bandage or a reload. “Is it the drive? Is the Eridian radiation affecting you?”
“No... it’s just...” Lilith gritted her teeth, waiting for the sharp, twisting sensation in her abdomen to pass. The violet light in her eyes flared again, a tiny arc of static jumping from her fingers to the metal table. “She’s just being stubborn. Like her idiot father.”
Athena watched her from across the room, her sharp eyes tracking the way Lilith was breathing. The mercenary didn't say anything, but her posture shifted, her hand dropping away from her shield as she stood up straight. “The atmospheric pressure is dropping as the primary cores prime. If you’re experiencing a somatic reaction to the warp drive's hum, we should move you to the medical bay before the lift begins.”
“I said I’m fine.” Lilith managed to stand up straight, wiping a bead of cold sweat from her forehead. The pain was receding, fading back into that dull, heavy ache, but a lingering sense of dread remained coiled in her chest.
Something felt off.
The vibration in the floorboards from the engines below was growing louder, a deep, rhythmic thrumming that seemed to match the frantic pulsing in her own body.
She looked back down at the holographic map, trying to force her mind back into the role of a commander, even as her body reminded her with every agonizing beat that time was rapidly running out.
What the fuck was happening?
…
The structural groaning was the worst part. It wasn't a clean, mechanical whine; it was the sound of a million tons of rusted Pandoran civilization screaming in agony as the underbelly thrusters fought gravity. I gripped the edge of the primary command console, my knuckles aching as the floor beneath my boots tilted a hard fifteen degrees to the left.
“Scooter!” I yelled into the comms, my voice straining against the deafening, bone-shaking rumble vibrating up from the bedrock. “Tell me that tilt was a stylistic choice! Tell me you’re just showing off!”
“Aw, heck, Jack, she’s just shaking out the cobwebs!” Scooter’s voice crackled through the static, sounding entirely too thrilled for a man currently riding a kinetic bomb. “Primary core is red-lining, but the H-Source is pushing the juice right where it needs to go! Hold onto your butt, brother, we’re tearing grass!”
The viewport showed nothing but a swirling, violent wall of grey dust as Sanctuary literally ripped itself out of the planet's crust. It was a beautiful, terrifying mess. My brilliant engine was doing exactly what I designed it to do, but actually feeling the pavement beneath you turn into an aircraft was enough to make my stomach attempt a violent mutiny.
I looked over at the main tactical grid, trying to focus on the telemetry, trying to keep the cool, composed, and at this point literal mask of control in place.
Then the blast doors hissed open, and the mask didn't just slip—it shattered into a million pieces.
Lilith stumbled onto the bridge, her face a mask of pale, sweating agony, practically leaning her entire weight against Roland’s shoulder. Athena was right behind them, her shield up as if she could protect the commander from her own anatomy.
“Jack,” Lilith gasped, and the sheer terror in her voice made my heart stop dead in my chest.
She didn't get to finish the sentence. Her knees buckled completely, and she collapsed onto the vibrating metal floor, her hands clamping around her stomach as a wave of brilliant, unchecked purple fire erupted from her skin, short-circuiting a secondary telemetry monitor above her head.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” I scrambled over the console, completely abandoning the flight controls and sliding across the tilting floorboards until I hit the deck right beside her. I grabbed her hand, the raw Siren static biting into my palm like a dozen tiny needles. “Lil! Babe! Look at me. What’s going on? Did you get up too quickly or something?”
“No, you idiot!” She screamed, her teeth gritted so hard I thought they’d crack as she squeezed my hand with enough pressure to crush a Loader Bot. “She’s coming! She’s coming now!”
“Now?! Like, right now?!” My voice hit a pitch I didn't even know I was capable of. “Lilith, we are currently passing three hundred feet! We are in a vertical ascent! This is the single worst logistical window for a birth in human history!”
“Tell her that!” Lilith growled, her eyes flaring with a dangerous, blind amethyst light as another contraction hit, making the loose clipboards on the command table lift into the air and hover in the haywire gravity field.
The bridge instantly devolved into absolute, unmitigated tactical panic.
“Zed! Get up here right now!” Roland was screaming into a dead comm line, his military discipline completely fracturing as he slammed his fist against the console. “The mayor is down! I need a medical unit on the bridge! Zed!”
The doors banged open again, and Dr. Zed came sliding into the room, dragging a stainless-steel medical gurney that immediately rolled backward down the inclined floor, crashing violently into a weapon locker. “I’m here! I’m here! But the damn gravity dampeners are messing with my tools! Everything’s sliding, Roland!”
“I don't care about your tools, fix her!” I yelled, my composure entirely evaporated. I was on my knees in the dirt and the grease, holding the most powerful woman on Pandora while the city groaned around us like a dying beast.
It’d be poetic, if it weren’t literally the most stressful point of my life. And please consider, I’ve been shot of a space canon, fought eldritch gods, and entire armies. So when I say I’m stressed, I mean I’m on the border of a panic attack.
This was not how I envisioned having kids. At all.
Another violent shudder rocked the ship as we hit maximum atmospheric pressure.
The cloud layer outside the window turned pitch black, heavy with localized lightning that cracked against the reinforced glass. The ceiling structural supports shrieked. It felt like the town was about to pull itself apart, a giant scrap-metal coffin dropping straight back into the valley, and I was entirely powerless to stop it.
I couldn't shoot this problem. I couldn't build a robot to fix it. I could only sit here, watching the woman I loved scream in agony, terrified that I had built a sky-tomb for my own family.
“Jack…” Lilith whimpered, her knuckles white as she buried her face in my shoulder, her body trembling from the sheer exhaustion of the pain and the shifting gravity. “I can’t protect her from this.”
“Yes, you can.” I whispered, my voice fiercely cracking as I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing her tight against the violent bucking of the floor. “You’re the Firehawk, Lil. You’re the toughest, meanest bitch on this planet, and I’m right here. I’ve got you. We’re going to clear the clouds. Just hold on.”
“Push, Lilith! You gotta push!” Zed yelled, abandoning his rolling gurney entirely and dropping to his knees on the floor, his bloody apron wiping against the composite tile.
The next sixty seconds were a blurred, deafening eternity of screaming metal, blinding purple Siren fire, and the terrifying, heavy thud of the engines pushing against the barrier of the sky. Lilith let out a final, shattering cry that echoed over the roar of the thrusters, her fingers digging deep into my jacket—
And then, the world stopped shaking.
The violent vibrations suddenly smoothed out into a majestic, frictionless glide. The groaning of the bulkheads subsided into a deep, peaceful purr. Outside the massive viewports, the suffocating grey storm clouds of Pandora suddenly parted, shattering like glass as Sanctuary punched through the upper atmosphere. Brilliant, untainted, golden sunlight flooded the bridge, painting the scarred metal and the tactical maps in a warm, blinding radiance.
Through the sudden, breathless silence of the airborne room, a new sound cut through the quiet. A sharp, fragile, high-pitched cry.
Dr. Zed let out a breath that sounded like a deflating tire, wrapped a clean white cloth around a tiny, squirming bundle, and carefully handed her forward.
I sat there on the floor, the golden sunlight warming my back, and took my daughter into my arms for the first time. She was so small. So impossibly light. Her tiny, wrinkled fingers twitched against my thumb, and as she slowly opened her eyes, I could see the faint, undeniable shimmer of her mother’s amethyst light buried deep within them.
I looked up at Lilith, who was leaning back against Roland’s jacket, covered in sweat and breathing heavily, but looking at us with a soft, tired smile that made everything else in the universe fade into background noise.
I… I had no words.
“Holy shit.”
“Jack!”
Those were the wrong ones, apparently.
…
The roof of Moxxi’s bar offered the best view in Sanctuary, which was really saying something now that the view didn't consist entirely of rusted scrap metal and desolation. Fiona leaned her forearms against the reinforced metal railing, a biting, high-altitude wind tugging at the brim of her hat as she took a slow sip straight from a green glass bottle of stolen Hyperion champagne.
Below them, the endless, undulating sea of grey Pandoran clouds stretched out like a dirty blanket, completely obscuring the wretched wasteland they had called home for their entire lives. Up here, the sun was blindingly bright, casting a brilliant, golden glare across the patchwork metal rooftops of the city as it drifted smoothly through the stratosphere.
“You know, I thought the engine blowing up was a statistical guarantee,” Sasha said, leaning back against a cluster of cooling pipes with her ankles crossed. She held her own bottle up to the light, watching the tiny bubbles rise with a look of quiet disbelief. “I had a whole exit strategy mapped out. Jump off the eastern tier, catch an updraft with a glider pack, and hope I didn't paint the rocks. But this... this is actually smooth.”
“Don't get used to the tranquility,” Fiona replied, a small, genuine smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth as she looked back toward the center of town. “Knowing the people running this place, someone’s going to accidentally pipe moonshine into the oxygen scrubbers by midnight. Enjoy the clean air while your lungs can still get it.”
The heavy metal door leading to the roof creaked open, and the distinct, triumphant sound of a high-end cybernetic eye whirring cut through the whistling wind.
Rhys stepped out onto the gravel-strewn roof, running both hands down the front of his pristine, custom-tailored gray Hyperion blazer with a look of pure, unadulterated ecstasy. He looked down at his matching slacks, letting out a long, theatrical sigh of relief.
Behind him, Vaughn marched out like a man who had just won a war, his thumbs hooked proudly into the waistband of his salvaged corporate trousers, his chest puffed out so far his abs looked like a topographical map.
“Oh, sweet, beautiful, breathable, moisture-wicking synthetic blend,” Rhys murmured, lightly patting his own lapels as if checking to ensure he wasn't dreaming. “Goodbye, burlap. Goodbye, chafing. I am officially a human being again.”
“The fabric memory tech survived the winter, Rhys! It perfectly conformed back to my lumbar support!” Vaughn cheered, slapping a hand against his thigh. “My lower body hasn't felt this structurally sound since the fall of Helios. We are back, bro. We are so back!”
Fiona turned around, leaning her back against the railing as she raised her bottle in a mock toast. “Look at that. The corporate tools finally got their handles back. I have to admit, Rhys, the jacket almost makes you look like you know what you’re doing.”
“I always know what I’m doing, Fiona. It’s called executive presence,” Rhys said, walking over to the railing and looking out over the endless expanse of clouds with a sudden, quiet shift in his expression. The goofy corporate pride faded slightly, replaced by the heavy reality of the view. “Wow. We’re really up here, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sasha said, walking over to join them, her eyes tracing the massive, glowing blue structural rings of the H-Source integration network anchoring the upper tiers of the city. “We’re really up here. Old Pandora is officially a long way down.”
The four of them stood in silence for a moment, the steady, rhythmic purr of the salvaged Helios warp drive vibrating faintly through the soles of their boots. It was a strange, fragile kind of peace.
Just an hour ago, the entire town had been screaming in a panic as the city tore itself out of the dirt, and rumors were already flying through the marketplace that the Mayor had just given birth to a Siren baby right on the command deck while Jack was having a literal meltdown.
They looked toward the high, reinforced spires of the Crimson Raiders headquarters, where the golden sunlight was reflecting sharply off the glass viewports. Down below, Harold Tassiter’s gray, brutalist nightmare of a corporate campus was completely cut off from them, trapped beneath a ceiling of clouds they couldn't penetrate.
“He really did it,” Fiona muttered, taking another sip of her champagne as she realized exactly how much the board pieces had shifted. “The lunatic actually built a flying nation out of spite and an ergonomic chair.”
“And we’re officially tied to the lease,” Rhys pointed out, a sharp, dangerous little grin creeping onto his face as his cybernetic eye flickered blue, picking up the distant, scrambled corporate frequencies of the Opportunity blockade helplessly searching the empty valley below. “Which means Tassiter’s going to be looking for a new job very, very soon.”
“Here, here!” Fiona cheered. “Counting down the minutes until he’s gone. I can’t stand corporate assholes. Offense.”
“Um…” Rhys blinked. “Don’t you mean no offense?”
“I meant what I said.”