Vol 3: Chapter 1

Alex left Veridia for Ironwood Junction, a thousand kilometers of frontier crossed in the Iron Mule with Ziya and Rhian at his side. Ironwood met him with more opinions than welcomes: guilds circling his technology, a Resource Council split on whether he was worth keeping, and Commander Thane, who made him earn trust through a proving trial instead of granting it outright.

His crew saved a merchant named Sela Vantram on the road, and her estate took them in as family rather than clients. Dr. Korrin, a guild sensor analyst, took a genuine interest in his tactics. Dallin, a Rank 6 Warden, had already lost his squad to something no one could yet explain.

Contracts followed: Crag-Stalkers in the Fault Scarp closed without incident, then the Ashwing, whose behavior made no sense until four Titans revealed themselves as one, moving under a single will. A shot from Lyra broke the coordination in an instant. The figure directing them escaped, leaving behind only a pendant marked with a symbol no one recognized, now sitting in a drawer in Thane's office.

He closed both contracts. He earned the Chasm permit and chose not to use it, the team not yet ready. Thane had already approved a production facility weeks before, an offer left untouched while one contract led to another.

The workshop was still the same building Sela had gotten from Goran, the old Molten Forgers bay on Forge Street, plain enough that nobody in Foothill Row looked at it twice. Alex preferred it that way. A building that didn't draw attention was worth more to him than one that looked the part.

By the time he got there that morning, the place was already moving without him. Ziya had the workbench near the door buried in ledgers, a cup of something cold at her elbow. Fia drilled against a support beam that wasn't rated for it. Lyra sat cross-legged by the parts racks, more interested in recalibrating a torn-down sensor rig than anything happening at ground level. Seraphine reorganized the med supplies for the third time that week, mostly to keep her hands busy. Rhian trailed in behind them, already arguing with Fia over whose turn it was to update the Arosaurer's maintenance log.

None of it added up to a business yet. It just looked like one from a distance.

Fia spotted him first and threw both arms up like he'd just cleared a solo Titan hunt.

"There he is! The man himself, gracing us with his presence at the reasonable hour of mid-morning!"

Anya didn't look up from the crate she was cataloging.

"It's a workshop, Fia, not a coronation."

"Let a woman have her moment."

"You've had four moments already this week."

Rhian abandoned the maintenance log mid-argument and crossed the floor at a run, catching Alex around the middle before he'd even gotten his coat off.

"You said sunrise."

"I said I'd try."

"That's not the same thing."

Alex scrubbed a hand over his face.

"No. It really isn't."

Lyra kept her eyes on the sensor rig in front of her.

"For the record, actual arrival time was sunrise plus three hours and forty minutes."

Fia threw her hands up again, this time at Lyra.

"Nobody asked for the report."

"Somebody should be keeping one."

Seraphine gave the only greeting that came without a punchline, a small nod across the room, already back to refolding a stack of bandages nobody had touched since the last time she'd done it.

Ziya finally looked up from the ledger.

"Everything settled with Thane?"

"Signed off this morning. We don't owe her anything else."

"Good." She capped her pen and set it down. "So what's actually on the table today?"

Alex looked out at the half of the shop still sitting empty.

"Zoids. Ones we build to sell."

Fia dropped her stance entirely.

"Sell? You mean actual customers, not us?"

"Anyone who can pay for one gets one."

Lyra turned from the sensor rig for the first time since he'd walked in.

"Does that include us?"

Alex held her gaze a beat too long before he answered, the guilt already there ahead of the words.

"No. Not this round."

Fia crossed her arms.

"You promised us Zoids after the Ashwing job. That's what you said."

Alex ran a hand through his hair.

"I remember. I meant it too. I still do."

"Then what's stopping you?"

"Money. We don't have enough of it yet, not for four proper builds on top of everything else."

Anya's arms loosened, the frustration in her posture easing into something more measured.

"So the sale Zoids come first, and we take whatever's left after that."

"That's the plan. Once we've got starting funds moving, your builds come right behind them."

Fia clearly didn't like sitting inside that sentence.

Alex scratched the back of his neck.

"Unless you'd rather start with something like the Godos. Ballistic, cheap, gets the job done."

Fia's face screwed up like he'd suggested she fight barehanded.

"No. I'm not doing that. I didn't wait through half a war for a rifle with legs."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want something strong." She threw a hand out like she was measuring its size in the air. "I want something heavy enough that it doesn't even flinch when it gets hit, something that just walks straight through whatever's in front of it and doesn't stop."

Alex nodded slowly.

"I get it. I do."

"But?"

"But that's still a ways off. Right now you're going to have to be patient."

Anya tilted her head.

"So do you already have something in mind? Is it the Godos?"

"The Godos, yeah, that's part of it." Alex rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't want it to be just the Godos, though. I want a couple different designs so we're not selling one thing to everyone."

Ziya set her pen down entirely this time.

"And who's building all of that? You can't run four separate lines by yourself, not on top of everything else."

"I know."

"We need actual craftsmen, people who know fabrication, not just the two of us patching things together in a back room."

"I know that too."

Ziya kept going anyway, counting it off like she'd already made the list twice in her head.

"We need to hire people. We need to train them. We need materials contracts and a real supply chain instead of whatever we've been improvising. That's before you even get to designing anything new."

Alex dropped down onto the nearest crate and rubbed both hands over his face.

"One thing at a time. That's all I've got right now."

Nobody argued with that, though nobody looked especially reassured by it either.

The workshop kept moving around him anyway, Ziya back to her ledger, Fia back to the support beam, Lyra back to her rig, the list of everything still undone stretching out longer than it had that morning. Alex sat with it a while, and for the first time all day, didn't reach for a wrench or a blueprint. He just let himself feel how big the whole thing actually was.

Advance chapters on my p@tR$0n/Najicablitz.