Chapter 71: Recruitment Drive
The holographic projection of Pandora’s tectonic faults cast a cold, flickering blue glow across the mahogany layout of my private workshop. I paced the length of the room, aggressively digging my thumbs into my temples to dull the throbbing ache behind my eyes. Every few seconds, the data streams from the eridium mining sites below would glitch, a sharp reminder that while we were perfectly safe floating three thousand feet above the dirt, we were also effectively running in place.
Six months of drifting in the clouds had given us a perfect tactical sanctuary, sure, but it was absolutely stalling my grand plan.
Every time I closed my eyes, the Sentinel’s vision flashed behind my eyelids like a strobe light. It was an obnoxious, constant itch in the back of my brain. I knew how to wake the Warrior. I knew the exact geometric coordinates of its Vault. I had the map completely memorized down to the meter. The problem—the massive, glaring, irritating problem—was that I was missing the single most important ingredient in the entire recipe.
I needed an expendable Siren to pump eridium into the Vault Key until it clicked.
And I didn’t have one.
I did, mind you. It’s the whole reason I didn’t let Steele get turned into tentacle kabob, and the reason I’ve been trying so hard to keep her alive, despite how much of a massive bitch she is. But for her safety, I kept her off Pandora and Helios, back in a private cell at Hyperion HQ.
And since I’ve been “let go”, I don’t really have access to her anymore. I am shit out of luck.
Despite actually having other Sirens.
In another life, the original version of me would have just thrown Angel into a core injector, hooked her up to a few thousand gallons of liquid eridium, and called it a Tuesday. But I wasn’t that guy. I raised her right. She was finally living a life, dating Gaige, and actually smiling for once. There was absolutely no universe where I was going to turn my own daughter into a glorified battery.
And then there was Lilith.
I looked out the reinforced glass window toward the central spire, my chest softening just a fraction.
She was currently back at the quarters nursing our newborn daughter. I’d fought armies, thrown myself out of railguns, and taken down planetary dictators, but watching Lilith hold that tiny girl had fundamentally rewired my entire internal grid. Fucking dad horomones, man.
Not that I would have put her at risk either, even without the baby.
Six Sirens in all of creation, I had a third of them, and I still couldn’t get what I wanted.
They’d both been great, obviously. They’d volunteered to help out with a few minor, low-strain eridium resonance tests over the last couple of weeks just to keep our research from flatlining, but the output was entirely too slow. We were practically trying to fill a swimming pool with an eyedropper. At this rate, the Warrior would stay asleep until the turn of the century.
A sharp, red alert packet suddenly cut through the blue fault lines on my display, accompanied by the smug, digital chime of my intercepted spy network. I swiped my hand through the air, expanding the file.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” I muttered to the empty room, leaning over the console.
The encrypted Hyperion data streams were clear as day. Harold Tassiter hadn’t just sat on his hands after taking over the company. The old bastard had somehow managed to intercept the exact same geological coordinates for the Vault. And instead of playing it smart, he was throwing Hyperion’s entire remaining quarterly budget into a massive, heavily armored train transport cutting right through the Tundra Express.
He was importing fresh blood. A brand-new batch of sucker Vault Hunters, lured in by the classic corporate promise of fame and alien riches. Tassiter’s directive was painfully simple: use these new arrivals as an expendable vanguard to clear out the local wildlife, dig up the Vault of the Warrior, and systematically liquidate any of my remaining planetary mining assets along the way.
It was particularly insulting because Harold was literally running my old playbook from a past life. The train, the false promises, the grand bounty—it was my exact strategy, completely plagiarized by a geriatric hack who probably needed help opening a PDF.
I hate old people.
Am I really going to lose to one?
… no.
Nuh uh, nope, no way, not going to happen! It’s not over until it’s over, and I’ve still got one Ace left up my sleeve.
I stopped pacing, a slow, cold smile spreading across my face as the blueprint of the Hyperion express train rotated on the display. Tassiter thought he was setting a trap. He thought he was going to drop these poor idiots on the tracks and have his mercs execute them the second they outlived their usefulness.
“Well, Harold,” I said, tapping my earpiece to patch through to Fiona and Sasha’s frequency. “If you’re going to steal my ideas, the least I can do is steal your inventory.”
They wanted a war for the Vault? Fine. But if I was going to strike at Opportunity and wake the Warrior, I needed heavy-hitting, expendable assets who didn't share my last name or my bed. And Tassiter was delivering a whole trainload of them right to my front door.
Finders keepers.
…
The wind howling off the glacial shelf didn’t just bite; it felt like it was actively trying to peel the skin right off Fiona’s cheekbones. She adjusted the brim of her hat, pulling it down against a sudden flurry of ice crystals, and squeezed her eyes shut for a brief second to stop the stinging.
Pandora was an absolute nightmare of a planet, but the Tundra Express was its own special brand of miserable.
She leaned tighter against the frozen ridge, peering through a pair of heavy, high-magnification binoculars. The gray, icy landscape below was split perfectly in two by the gleaming, yellow-and-black steel of the Hyperion rail lines.
“Sasha, tell me you’re almost done with those receivers,” Fiona muttered, her breath pluming into a thick cloud of white mist that instantly froze against the casing of the binoculars. Awesome. “I can’t feel my fingers, and if I drop these, I’m pretty sure Jack’s going to take it out of my cut. My salary? What do we call it?”
“Finders fee.” Sasha’s voice came from a few feet down the slope, muffled by the thick woolen scarf wrapped around her face. “He can’t actually charge you for those, can he?”
“They are his. And rich people are so cheap.” Fiona shrugged, blowing onto her fingers to try and put some warmth back to them. That backfired. Her lungs are ice bags. “Shit! Why is it so cold?!”
“Climate change?”
“What climate change?!” She demanded. “Nobody mines oil anymore!”
“Nobody mined for oil before, either.” Sasha noted, as she stood knee-deep in a drift of snow, her fingers working with nimble, practiced speed to strip a pair of copper wires and twist them into a magnetized Dahl demolition charge clamped straight to the rail junction. “They drilled.”
“Well nobody’s drilling, either!” Fiona scoffed, with a roll of her eyes.
“What about Eridium?”
“Oh…” Would that affect the weather? Probably, right? “Maybe? Huh… okay, bored now. Are you done?”
“Almost. I’m just dialing in the frequency.” Sasha reassured her. “Jack’s little holographic blueprint made it easy. We aren't blowing the track to pieces; we’re just... altering its trajectory. Popping the pins right when the engine passes so the passenger cars split off cleanly.”
“You can cleanly split a train?”
“… relatively.”
Not as reassuring.
Fiona went back to scanning the eastern horizon.
It really was deeply, profoundly bizarre how quickly her life had derailed over the last six months. Half a year ago, her biggest concern was whether a mark would notice the fake gold plating on an elemental shield core, or if Felix was going to skim a little too much off the top of their latest vault-key con.
Now?
Now she was lying in a snowbank, wearing a coat that still smelled faintly of Moxxi’s bar, coordinating a high-tech train robbery for a man who literally controlled a flying city.
A con artist doing corporate espionage for a displaced executive. Felix would have laughed his ass off before stealing the binoculars.
But Jack’s data had been terrifyingly specific. When he’d patched into their earpieces an hour ago, he hadn't just told them a train was coming; he’d given them the exact tonnage of the locomotive, the exact speed it would be traveling when it hit the canyon bridge, and the specific cabin numbers of the four incoming targets.
Four idiot “Vault Hunters” who thought they were riding a golden ticket to a corporate paradise, entirely unaware that Harold Tassiter had already signed their death warrants.
Fiona adjusted the focus wheel on the binoculars as a low, rhythmic thrumming began to vibrate through the frozen stone beneath her elbows.
A sharp, yellow wedge cut through the gray mountain mist in the distance. The Hyperion express train was a sleek, terrifyingly massive bullet of corporate engineering, cutting through the pristine snow like a razor blade through silk. It was beautiful, in that sterile, aggressive way all Hyperion tech was.
“Heads up, sis. It’s on approach,” Fiona whispered, her internal clock ticking down the seconds.
She tracked the train as it neared the bridge, her eyes drifting away from the passenger cabins toward the heavily armored center cars. Jack’s spy network hadn't just found the targets; they’d caught the deployment logs. Tassiter wasn't taking any chances. Wilhelm and Nisha—Jack’s former enforcers turned corporate hit squads—were sitting just three cars back from the suckers.
They had a full battalion of automated loaders and Hyperion shock troops primed to vent the passenger cars and turn the new arrivals into fine pink mist the second the train cleared the sector.
It wasn't a transport. It was a rolling execution chamber.
Fiona let the binoculars drop against her chest, her hand instinctively drifting down to the cold, reassuring grip of the hollow-point pistol strapped to her thigh. She glanced down at Sasha, who was already scrambling back up the ridge, the remote detonator clutched tightly in her gloved hand.
“The signal is green, Fee,” Sasha said, her thumb hovering over the red toggle switch as she looked up with a sharp, dangerous little grin. “Whenever you’re ready to play hero.”
“I’m not a hero, Sasha. I’m a Vault Hunter-hunter.” Fiona replied, her mouth twisting into a sharp, tight smirk as she tapped her earpiece to open the line to the floating fortress above them. “Jack, the package is entering the kill zone. Tell me your vanguard loaders are primed, because this is about to get incredibly loud.”
…
The sun hitting the master bedroom window didn’t feel like a warm invitation to a new day. It felt like a personal insult.
Lilith sat on the edge of the bed, her hair a wild, unwashed nest of crimson strands that felt suspiciously like they had dried formula matted into the back. Her eyes were bloodshot, her dark circles had dark circles, and her left eyelid was twitching in a rhythmic, terrifying cadence that matched the screaming.
Oh, God, the screaming.
Diana wasn’t just crying. She was a Siren-blooded, hyper-advanced auditory torture device. For a human being who currently weighed less than a standard Dahl assault rifle, she possessed lungs that could rival a Rakk Hive. She’d been at it since three in the morning.
Not because she was hungry—she’d rejected the bottle. Not because she needed a diaper change—Lilith had changed four, each one an escalating biohazard. No, Diana was crying because she had apparently decided that sleeping was for cowards.
I could walk into the sun, Lilith thought, her brain firing on exactly half a cylinder as she rocked the tiny, screaming bundle in her arms. I could just phase-shift right into the upper atmosphere and let the vacuum take me. It would be so quiet. Just cold, empty, beautiful space.
Don't get her wrong. She loved her daughter. She really, truly did. If a single Hyperion engineer so much as breathed too loudly in Diana’s direction, Lilith would personally rip the skin off their face, set them on fire, and then tear a hole through the fabric of reality just to throw the ashes into a black hole. She was a protective, fiercely loyal mother.
But mommy was about to commit a planetary atrocity if she didn't get to close her eyes for five consecutive minutes.
The heavy blast doors to the quarters hissed open, and Jack strode in, looking entirely too clean, entirely too sharp, and entirely too energetic. He was tapping his blue holographic earpiece, a cascade of train telemetry scrolling past his corporate mask as he muttered commands to his loaders.
“Yeah, Fiona, I see the velocity. Just make sure the Vanguard units deploy after the derailment, not during. I don't need a million credits of automated muscle turned into a hood ornament because Sasha got trigger-happy with the—"
Jack stopped dead in his tracks.
He looked at Lilith. Then he looked at the purple, screaming burrito in her arms. His eyes widened, his jaw fell, and his confident, badass-protector posture suddenly stiffened like he’d just stepped on a bouncing betty.
Lilith didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. The raw, unchecked amethyst light leaking out of her eyes—a byproduct of her sheer, unadulterated exhaustion warping her Siren energy—was a universal sign for approach at your own peril.
“Uh. Hey, babe,” Jack said, his voice dropping an octave as he carefully took a half-step back toward the door. “Wow. You look... vibrant. Really capturing the, uh, apocalyptic chic today. Listen, I’m right in the middle of intercepting Tassiter’s little toy train, so I’m just gonna head back to the bridge and—”
Lilith stood up. The floorboards groaned. A stray coffee mug on the nightstand slowly lifted three inches into the air, caught in a mini-gravity pocket of her pure, unfiltered rage, before shattering against the wall.
She marched across the room, her knees cracking with a sound like a sniper rifle firing, and stopped right in front of him. With one smooth, practiced movement, she thrust the screaming, writhing bundle straight into his pristine, custom-tailored gray lapels.
“Take her,” Lilith rasped. Her voice sounded like she had been chewing on glass and washing it down with battery acid.
“Whoa! Whoa, hold on!” Jack’s arms instantly flew up, his corporate data pads scattering across the carpet as he awkwardly cradled the baby against his chest like she was an unexploded nuclear warhead. “Lil, honey, sweetie, I am literally managing a live tactical asset acquisition right now! Wilhelm is on that train! Nisha is on that train! I have to be the mastermind!”
“I am going to sleep,” Lilith told him, her voice terrifyingly flat, her finger poking aggressively into the center of his chest. “I am going to close my eyes, and I am going to sleep until the next corporation falls. If I hear her voice, if I hear your voice, if I hear so much as a stray echo-ping before noon... I will phase-shift your favorite ergonomic chair directly into the molten core of this planet. Do you understand me, Jack?”
Jack looked down at his daughter, who had suddenly paused her screaming for a fraction of a second to blink her big, watery eyes up at his mask, before letting out a massive, wet, high-pitched shriek right into his collarbone.
“Okay! Okay! Got it! Message received, loud and clear, honey!” Jack scrambled backward out of the room, cradling Diana with one arm while trying to wipe baby drool off his silver-threaded shoulder with the other. “Sleep! Go to sleep! Go to the land of nod, Firehawk! Daddy’s got this!”
The blast doors slammed shut, sealing Lilith inside a glorious, blessed, soundproof vacuum.
She didn't even make it back to the mattress. She collapsed straight onto the pile of soft laundry on the floor, buried her face in a bunch of clean towels that smelled vaguely of detergent, and was dead to the world before her head even hit the floor.
Out in the hallway, Jack stood entirely alone, frozen in place as his earpiece crackled with the frantic sound of wind and frozen ice.
“Jack? Jack, are you there?” Fiona’s voice hissed through the comms. “The train is hitting the bridge in exactly sixty seconds! Where the hell are the override codes for the cabin doors?”
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, bouncing slightly on his heels as Diana let out another ear-splitting wail that vibrated right through his chest. He swiped his free hand through the air, bringing up the holographic security grid while aggressively whispering into the mic.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here! I’m typing them in now!” Jack hissed, his voice a frantic mix of corporate panic and desperate parental soothing. “Just... hold your horses, Fiona! And keep it down! If you blow those tracks too loudly, you’re going to wake up a monster worse than anything inside a Vault!”
“I heard that!” Lilith screamed into her pillow. But the sound definitely carried.
“You’re just dreaming, my sweet, happy, intelligent, and terrifying girlfriend!”
She had better be.
…
I have so much to do, right now!
Babysitting, backseat shooting, showboating. How am I going to do this all?! Huh… is that a baby carrier? Like for carrying babies? Brain blast!
“Diana.” I whispered to the baby. What? I can’t name my little girl after the Roman Goddess of Hunters? And Wonder Woman? “Let’s let Mommy have some alone time. You and me are going on a little trip.”
“Tri.” She babbled.
“That’s my girl!”
…
The pristine, sterile gleam of the Hyperion passenger car was a massive contrast to the jagged, frozen wasteland Maya had been staring at through the window for the last three hours. She kept her posture loose, sitting perfectly still on the slick, molded white plastic bench, though her fingers idly traced the edge of her heavy cloth coat. It was a habit from the monastery.
A way to anchor herself when surrounded by things that felt entirely too quiet.
She wasn’t the only one in the cabin. The company had packed this specific transport with an aggressively mismatched collection of travelers, none of whom had spoken a single word since they left the station. Across the aisle, a man in a crisp, discarded military uniform was meticulously checking the firing pin of a collapsible turret system, his movements rigid and practiced. His attitude… not so much.
Next to him stood a tall, completely silent figure clad in sleek, silver-and-charcoal armor, wearing a full-face helmet that projected a glowing zero across the visor. On the far end of the car, a remarkably short, stout man with an absurdly large beard was dual-wielding automated pistols, practically vibrating with a manic, localized energy.
Total sausage fest so far.
And then there was the giant, Krieg. The massive, shirtless lunatic sitting three rows up, wearing a psycho mask and muttering a low, rhythmic string of gibberish about meat bicycles and shiny poop decks. He saved her though, so he was cool. She thinks?
Maya opened her mouth to ask the soldier exactly what kind of corporate contract he had signed to end up in a room like this, but the thought never made it past her lips.
The entire world violently tilted.
A deafening, metallic shriek ripped through the floorboards as the train’s emergency brakes locked up, sending a shockwave of grinding steel straight up Maya’s spine. The pristine passenger car bucked like a wounded skag. Outside the viewports, the frozen mountains scrambled into a blur as the rear cars broke away, followed instantly by the deep, thunderous thoom-thoom of high-precision explosives popping the tracks ahead.
Maya was on her feet before the car even stopped sliding, a swirl of bright, ethereal amethyst energy already crackling across her knuckles. She raised her palm, ready to summon her Phaselock and drag whatever corporate firing squad was waiting outside straight into a localized gravitational vortex.
The soldier dropped into a low, defensive stance, planting his heavy boots against the tilted floor. The bearded man let out a feral, bloodthirsty roar, spinning his twin pistols around his thumbs, while Krieg violently yanked a cord, revving a gas-powered buzzaxe with a sound like a chainsaw tearing through tin foil.
The heavy passenger doors didn’t just open; they blasted inward in a cloud of pressurized hydraulic smoke and twisted aluminum.
Maya braced herself for the impact of Hyperion shock troops. Instead, a man in pristine, custom-tailored armor stepped casually through the haze. He looked entirely like a corporate executive, right down to the sharp jawline and the arrogant tilt of his head, but he was completely lacking the standard corporate panic.
He was also wearing a baby.
A tiny, remarkably fat infant was securely strapped to the center of his chest plate in a bright purple papoose, looking absolutely delighted by the collapse of the train. Flanking the man was a sharp-eyed woman in a wide-brimmed hat, her hand resting easily on a hollow-point pistol, along with a squad of massive, heavily modified vanguard loaders that didn't look like any standard Hyperion model Maya had seen in the brochures.
The soldier raised his rifle, aiming it straight between the executive’s eyes, but the man just let out a long, heavy sigh. He didn't even draw a weapon. He just held up a small, glowing blue holographic bypass key and tapped it twice against his palm.
Above their heads, a row of concealed ceiling panels hissed open, revealing a hidden grid of automated laser turrets that suddenly whined, dropped their barrels, and completely powered down into a dead standby mode.
“Yeah, yeah, hold your applause, kiddos,” the executive announced over the roar of the wind whipping through the ruined doorway. “The corporate suits down the hall were about to turn this car into an oven. If you want to live, you’re coming with me... and I hope you all appreciate my restraint in not saying: come with me if you want to live.”
Maya lowered her glowing hand an inch, her eyes darting from the deactivated laser turrets to the cheerful baby drooling on the man’s silver-threaded collar. “You just did, though.”
“Damn—darn it.” The man blinked, instantly looking down at his chest with a look of genuine horror. “Sorry, Diana. That’s not appropriate language... don’t tell Mommy I said that.”
The baby blinked her big, watery eyes up at him, letting out a soft, wet burp. “Mmmma.”
“No, don’t tell Momma,” the man corrected, his voice hitting a frantic, hushed whisper as he bounced slightly on his heels to soothe her. “You’re on Daddy’s team, remember?”
“Dadadadada,” the child babbled, her tiny hand smacking against the executive's chest piece.
“Nailed it. Proud of you.” The man grinned, completely ignoring the fact that he was currently standing in a demolished train car surrounded by five heavily armed strangers.
The silent figure in the helmet tilted his head, the glowing zero on his visor briefly flickering into a bright red question mark.
“A child on the field? / Is no one going to talk / About the baby?”
The executive scoffed, throwing his hands up in a theatrical gesture of annoyance. “What? It’s not weird. Plenty of parents take their kids to work. Right, Diana?”
“Die-die,” the baby cooed, reaching her tiny fingers toward the glowing blue light of the holographic key in his hand.
The executive’s face instantly melted into a look of pure, unadulterated adoration that felt entirely out of place on a man wearing military-grade plating. “I love you so much.”
… okay, she can hear him out.
…
The metal roof of the passenger car bucked beneath Fiona’s boots, nearly throwing her over the side and into the thousand-foot drop of the canyon below. Wind ripped through the gorge like a physical fist, carrying with it the bitter smell of burning oil and ozone. They were moving entirely too fast, and the bridge beneath the tracks was a blur of rusted iron girders.
“Sasha, hit the rear couplings now!” Fiona screamed into her comms, bracing her weight against a heavy ventilation housing as she raised her pistol. “We’ve got company!”
Tassiter’s execution squad wasn't waiting for the train to stop.
From the front of the roaring locomotive, a massive, heavily augmented man with a cybernetic arm swung down onto the roof of the adjacent car, his mechanical eye glowing a cold, lethal red. Wilhelm. And right beside him, a woman in a low-slung cowboy hat and a leather duster leveled two pistols with terrifying, casual grace. Nisha.
Behind them, an absolute flood of sleek, yellow Hyperion shock troops and automated loaders began spilling out of the cargo bays, their red targeting lasers painting the snow-choked air.
It was an absolute logistical nightmare, but before Fiona could even attempt to direct a retreat, the five new targets she’d just helped pull out of the cabin decided to completely rewrite the rules of engagement.
Fiona watched in a mixture of utter awe and mounting horror as the new Vault Hunters simply went to work. The soldier in the military green vest sprinted past her, slid on his knees across the icy metal roof, and slammed a heavy metal pod onto the plating. A massive, dual-barrel automated sabre turret deployed with a mechanical roar, instantly chewing through a front line of Hyperion engineers.
Before the metal scraps could even hit the tracks, the silent assassin in the full-face helmet literally vanished into thin air. Fiona blinked, and a split second later, a brilliant blue holographic decoy flashed on the far side of the roof, drawing the loaders' fire while the real assassin reappeared behind a cluster of shock troops, his sword a lethal, fluid blur of severed synthetic limbs and oil.
“Ha-ha! More meat for the grinder!” the short, bearded man yelled, his voice a manic roar that cut right through the howling gale. He didn't even bother taking cover. He just pulled a second, massive assault rifle out of absolutely nowhere and began walking forward, unloading a deafening wall of lead that completely pulverized an entire squad of oncoming corporate heavies.
The giant in the psycho mask was even worse. He leaped entirely over the gap between the decoupling cars, his buzzaxe revving at an ear-splitting pitch as he threw himself directly into a cluster of automated loaders, hacking through reinforced plating with a terrifying, feral strength that made Fiona’s stomach turn.
They weren't just surviving. They were thriving.
Right in the center of the chaos, Jack was completely in his element. He was ducking behind a reinforced structural beam, one arm securely cradling the baby against his chest plate while his other hand perfectly aimed an elegant Hyperion pistol.
He was executing his self-styled “Badass Protector” persona flawlessly, snip-shooting engineers through the visors with terrifying precision, all while leaning into his earpiece to loudly broadcast over the open corporate frequency.
“Oh, wow, Nisha! Look at you! Really moving up in the world, huh?” Jack shouted, his voice dripping with that smug, insufferable arrogance that made Fiona want to punch him even when he was saving her life. “Working for Tassiter? Seriously? The guy’s a geriatric hack! He probably thinks a spreadsheet is a type of blanket! You used to have taste, girl, this is just embarrassing!”
A stray bullet pinged off the metal right above Jack’s head, but he didn't even flinch.
He just leaned down, giving the baby a quick, gentle bounce. “Don't listen to the bad lady, Diana. Daddy’s just doing some corporate restructuring. Oh! I can’t wait to teach you all these buzzwords that don’t mean anything!”
“Jack, we’re out of track!” Fiona yelled, stumbling backward as Wilhelm effortlessly backhanded one of Felicity’s vanguard loaders off the roof, his massive mechanical boots slamming closer and closer. The giant cyborg punched straight through the metal roof of the cabin below them, his heavy frame dropping down to cut off their only exit.
“Yeah, yeah, relax, Fiona, I’ve got the parameters right here,” Jack said, completely unfazed.
For evidently, a pretty good reason.
A massive, crackling ring of digital yellow matrix lines suddenly erupted from his palm, expanding to encircle the entire group of them on the roof. “Alright, new guys! Hope you don't mind a little corporate travel! Sanctuary network, override code alpha-one-five, execute!”
The world didn't just blur; it turned into a blinding, instantaneous flash of blue Fast-Travel energy right as Wilhelm’s metal fist shattered the frame of the door.
…
The blinding, electric-blue flash of the Fast-Travel matrix vanished with a sharp, pressurized pop that always made my ears ring. My boots slammed down onto the solid, reassuring metal of the Sanctuary central plaza, and I immediately did a quick mental inventory. Head? Attached. Mask? Secure. Baby?
I looked down. Diana was staring up at me, blinking her big, watery eyes before letting out a soft, joyful little burp.
“Good job, sweetie,” I muttered, gently patting her back. “You handled the spatial reorientation like a champ. Let’s never tell your mother about the train.”
Around us, the five brand-new, wildly disoriented pieces on my chessboard were staggering out of the teleportation rings. Axton immediately spun around on his heels, his jaw dropping as he stared over the edge of the guardrail, trying to process the fact that the entire Pandoran horizon was currently sitting three thousand feet below his boots.
The blue-haired Siren didn’t panic; she just tilted her head back, her perceptive eyes instantly locking onto the massive, humming violet core of the Eridian-hybrid warp drive towering over the city spires. Couldn’t blame her.
The short, bearded guy, Sal-something, looked disappointed that there was nothing left to shoot, while Zer0 crossed his arms, a giant digital exclamation point flashing across his face. And Krieg (who was also there, apparently, wish I knew about that earlier) just slumped onto a nearby scrap metal bench, loudly muttering something about a sky-palace made of ribs.
A crowd of curious onlookers—scrappy mechanics, off-duty Crimson Lance deserters, and a few of Felicity’s freshly painted vanguard loaders—began to gather around the perimeter of the plaza, whispering and staring at our ragged new guests.
Fiona stepped up beside me, leaning heavily against her knees as she took a long, ragged breath. “Next time... we use a vehicle that stays on the ground, Jack. My heart can’t take the vertical drops.”
“Oh, please, Fiona. Where's your sense of corporate showmanship?” I scoffed, lightly brushing a stray speck of Tundra Express soot off my custom-tailored lapels.
I checked the baby carrier one last time, made sure Diana was tucked in snug, and stepped confidently up onto a raised cargo platform overlooking the plaza. It was time to give the pitch.
I looked down at the five of them. I didn’t offer them some cheap, holier-than-thou savior speech. I didn't give them a cheesy, warm hero’s welcome, because I wasn't a hero, and they sure as hell weren't boy scouts. They were killers, survivors, and mercenaries who had just been handed a one-way ticket to a corporate firing squad.
I looked them dead in the eye, letting my voice carry across the open plaza.
“Alright, all eyes on me,” I said, folding my arms over Diana’s purple papoose. “Let’s skip the corporate orientation and get straight to the brass tacks. Harold Tassiter bought your contracts, he put you on that train, and he rigged the whole damn thing to explode the second you cleared the station. To Hyperion HQ, you’re not legendary explorers. You’re not pioneers. You’re disposable asset liquidation. You’re bait.”
Axton’s grip tightened on his rifle, his eyes narrowing as the reality of the situation finally clicked. Maya’s gaze drifted from the warp core down to me, her expression completely unreadable but intensely sharp.
“But here’s the good news,” I continued, a slow, confident grin spreading across my face as I gestured broadly to the sprawling, sunlit sky-fortress surrounding us. “Pandora doesn’t belong to a bunch of geriatric suits sitting in an orbital boardroom. It belongs to the people who are actually big enough, bad enough, and smart enough to hold it. Right now, I am building a rebellion, and I need heavy-hitting, highly motivated, beautifully expendable assets to start tearing my old company down piece by piece. Starting with Opportunity.”
I unlocked my arms, holding my hands out wide to welcome them to the absolute peak of Pandoran civilization.
“Welcome to Sanctuary, kiddos,” I said, my voice dripping with the arrogant promise of total victory. “Grab a gun. We’re going to go take my company back.”