Chapter 12
KYLDAK
The sand tastes like rust and dried blood this morning.
Not that it ever tasted much better.
Jurtik doesn’t do mornings. It doesn’t do anything but burn and kill and chew the weak into paste. But today, the wind’s light, the sun’s low, and the blood hasn’t started steaming yet, so I call it a win.
The cage match is already roaring.
Two men circle inside the pit—if you can call them men. One’s a broken-toothed bastard with Coalition ink scorched across his chest. The other’s a skinny little scrapper missing three fingers and still swinging like he’s got something to prove.
Spoiler: he doesn’t.
I sit on the salvage-throne welded from IHC drop pods and bones—some human, some not—and watch the violence unfold like I’m flipping channels. The crowd howls around me, every freak and cutthroat within fifty clicks crammed into the pit, screaming for guts. For blood. For a limb.
I don’t cheer.
I don’t blink.
I just sip engine-filtered blackroot and wait for the point where one of them screams in that final kind of way. The kind you can’t fake.
Because that’s justice on Jurtik. Ain’t nothing written down. Just pain, and how well you deliver it.
The big guy wins—barely. Rips the other’s ear clean off and holds it up like a trophy. His mouth opens, ready for some kind of war cry, but I raise a hand.
Silence drops like a guillotine.
“Crow calls guilt,” I say, voice low, thick, ragged from smoke and years of dust. “Pit gives trial. But I judge.”
The big man sneers. “He stole rations, Red Eye. That’s death.”
“Maybe.”
I rise slow. The armor creaks—a mess of burn-plated gauntlets and old Alliance plates I tore off a corpse three winters back. The left pauldron’s still got the insignia. Sometimes I think about ripping it off. Most days I leave it.
Just so they remember.
I step into the sand, boots sinking deep. The crowd backs away without being told. No one touches Red Eye’s shadow.
I look the bastard in the eye.
“You took his food?” I ask.
“He took mine first!”
“He have a mouth to deny it?”
The man glances at the corpse. Shrugs. “He had his chance.”
I nod.
Then I punch him.
Hard. In the throat.
He goes down choking, clawing at the dust like it owes him something. I let him wheeze. Let them all watch.
“Justice ain’t revenge,” I say to the crowd. “Justice ain’t panic.”
I turn to them, voice rising like a blade unsheathed.
“It’s order.”
They nod. Murmur. A few even salute. Because they know what happens to those who don’t.
I don’t rule by mercy. I rule by survival. And survival means fear. Discipline. Loyalty. My word—clean or bloodstained—is law out here. And I keep it.
Always.
Later, I sit alone in my tower.
It’s not a real tower. Just a repurposed refinery silo that’s half-collapsed and smells like old coolant and bad decisions. But it’s mine.
The wind outside howls like the dying. Inside, it’s quiet. For once.
I sit on the floor, armor stripped to the waist, scars glowing under old biolights like faded tattoos. My cybernetic leg’s twitching again. Feedback loop from the shoulder port, probably. Gotta reroute the pulse dampeners later.
I should sleep.
Instead, I drink.
The bottle’s half-engine oil, half-booze, and one-hundred percent brain poison. Perfect.
I stare at the ceiling until my vision blurs.
Then at the stars.
That’s the worst part about Jurtik—sky’s too clear.
Back in the war, space was fire and black glass. Nothing to see but hull flashes and incoming missiles. But here?
Here, the stars watch. Mocking. Distant. Unmoving.
And every damn night, I see her face in them.
Jaela.
The name still tastes like flame in my mouth. Like regret soaked in sweetness.
I try not to say it. Try not to feel it.
But I do.
Stars help me, I do.
The knock comes just past midnight.
Raxl—one of the few I trust not to steal my boots while I’m still in them—sticks his head in.
“Boss,” he grunts, scratching at a sunburn shaped like a clawprint. “Scouts found somethin’.”
“Tell them to bury it.”
“It’s a shuttle. Crashed. South ridge near Black Scar.”
That gets me blinking. I sit forward. “Whose?”
“Dunno. Weird sigs. One of the boys swears it pinged Earth before it went dark.”
My blood goes cold.
“You sure?”
Raxl shrugs. “We pulled a fragment of nav code from the wreck beacon. Earthblock encoding.”
Earth.
I haven’t heard that word out loud in years.
“Engine type?”
“Old. Civilian. But tricked-out. Someone wanted in without being seen.”
My jaw tightens.
I should say leave it. Strip it. Burn it.
But something clicks in my chest. Like a gear unsticking. A door creaking open that should’ve stayed sealed.
Earth.
Crashed shuttle.
Black Scar.
Gods damn me.
I mount up.
The cruiser’s a beast.
Three meters tall, four tons of growling metal, scavenged from a dozen wrecks and held together with hate. I built her myself—salvaged a twin-core from a failed Reaper crawler, twin turbines from an Alliance driller, and a chassis from hell.
She purrs under me like a dragon that only listens to my voice.
“Take point,” I growl to Raxl, strapping my rifle across my back.
He grins like a feral dog and revs his own ride.
We ride hard.
Engines scream across dunes and scorched rock, the night turning to ash behind us. The wind is sharp with silica. The air stinks of ozone and rot.
But I don’t stop.
Because something’s pulling me.
Something old.
Something real.
We hit the crash site at dawn.
It’s a crater now—metal bones half-buried in sand, twisted and smoking. Black Scar Canyons loom in the background, jagged teeth chewing at the light.
I dismount slow. My boots crunch on scorched glass.
The shuttle’s a wreck. Civilian hull. Alliance patching. Hacked drive signature.
Raxl kicks a door open with a grunt.
“Anyone alive?”
“No body in the main cabin,” he says.
I crouch by the cockpit.
And then I smell it.
Not blood. Not fuel.
Something sweeter.
Spice. Soap. Sweat.
My heart slams against my ribs like it’s trying to escape.
“Red Eye?” Raxl calls.
But I don’t answer.
I press a hand to the still-hot hull.
And I know.
She was here.
Jaela.
I don’t know how the hell I know it—hell, maybe I do—but the second my palm touches the heat-warped hull, something in me locks. A click, deep in the marrow. Like the universe just threw a match into my ribcage and whispered burn.
Jaela.
The scent is faint—buried under smoke and iron—but it’s hers. I’d know it in the middle of a firestorm. That sharp, clean note of solder flux and citrus. The sting of antiseptic. The whisper of something warm and electric, like spice scraped off a live wire.
I drop to one knee and scan the sand.
Raxl kicks debris out of the way, one hand on his pulse rifle. “No body,” he mutters. “No ash shadows, no burns. Think they made it out?”
“Not they,” I snap.
He blinks. “Right. She.”
I don’t correct him.
There’s a blood smear on the side hatch. Not a lot. Just a smear. Bright red, sticky. Fresh enough it hasn’t dried fully in this heat.
Human.
I follow it. Knees cracking as I crouch, armor plates hissing. The smear turns to drips. Then to boot prints. Small. Light. Not limping—running.
“She ran,” I murmur, tracking them. “No drag marks. No collapse. Straight line south. No shoes—print’s too clean. She was movin’ fast.”
“Someone picked up the trail, boss,” Raxl says behind me. “Look.”
Another set of prints—bigger. Heavy. Irregular spacing.
Raiders.
The kind of mutant swamp-things that grew out of the cracks in Jurtik like mold with teeth. Half of them don't even remember what planet they're from. The other half were born here, shaped by chaos, carved out of old meat and hate.
I straighten.
“I want eyes in the Scar,” I bark. “Now. Use the bone-rotters if you have to. Find who took her. Find where.”
“You want backup?”
“No.”
Raxl opens his mouth. Closes it.
He knows better.
I mount the cruiser again. She roars under me like she’s tasted the same scent—blood and thunder and fury.
And I ride.
The wind cuts like razors through the canyon. Sharp turns, broken stone, dead things rotting in the crevices. The ground’s littered with old bones and fresh ones—some cracked open like shellfish, marrow sucked out clean.
I follow the tracks, heart pounding a rhythm that ain’t war. It’s worse.
Because war’s tactical.
This?
This is personal.
I hit the ambush point five clicks out.
The rocks are too clean. Too symmetrical. Crows circle, lazy and low, and there’s no wind here, just the breath of something waiting to kill.
They think I’m stupid.
They think I’m slow.
They think Red Eye walks into a trap blind.
I laugh. Loud. Ugly. A sound with teeth.
Then I dismount.
I draw both axes from the sling across my back—twin slabs of forged steel and Reaper bone, heavy enough to crack tanks, sharp enough to peel flesh off the soul.
And I walk in.
The first one lunges out of the rockface—mutant, half-shriveled, mouth full of wire. He swings a cleaver the size of my thigh.
I bury my left axe in his gut.
The blade hums as it shreds meat and metal, vibrating down to my elbow. He gurgles. Collapses. I don’t watch him die.
Because the next bastard is already flying at me—jumpsuit smeared with dried viscera, cyber-eye blinking like a drunk beacon. He gets a blade through the throat before he lands.
I twist.
Something snaps.
The others hesitate.
I smell fear now. Real. Wet. Desperate.
They know who I am.
But they still come.
Six more.
I tear into them like hunger incarnate.
One loses an arm. Another loses both legs. One gets smart and tries to run—I split him mid-stride, spine to crotch.
My blades sing.
My blood roars.
And over it all I scream.
“WHERE IS SHE?”
The last one drops his weapon. Tries to crawl.
“Red Eye!” he cries. “We didn’t take her—it wasn’t us!”
I yank him up by the collar, lift him like a rag doll. His skin peels where my gauntlet presses.
“Then who?”
“Ghost Jaws,” he pants. “The—the rival camp, three ridges over. We—we just tracked her signal. They got her first. Swear it.”
I drop him.
Let him scramble.
Let him live.
Just long enough to warn the others what’s coming.
I march through the rest of the camp, stepping over corpses, breathing like a storm engine. My armor’s slick with blood. My hands tremble—not from exhaustion.
From rage.
In the center of the clearing, under a rusted-out solar dish, I find it.
Her scarf.
Torn.
Stained red.
Still warm.
I sink to one knee, fingers trembling as I lift it to my face.
It smells like her.
Jaela.
She’s bleeding.
She’s hurt.
And she’s not in my hands.
A low growl builds in my chest. Grows. Grows.
Until I throw back my head and roar.
The sound cracks off canyon walls. Shakes loose dust. Startles crows into flight.
It’s not just rage.
It’s warning.
Because no one touches what’s mine.