The main gate was a fortress in its own right: a single slab of phase-bonded alloy with a blue energy curtain riding over it, the light thinning and thickening as the field adjusted to air dust and temperature. After Rashid’s raid, someone had spent money and time. You could see the upgrade in the way the shield’s fringe crawled along the hinges and in the fine crackle where it met the ferrocrete.

  Under complex white search arrays, three Vanguard-22 mechs stood in a triangle with a squad of infantry at their feet. The oversized frames barely moved—only small servo checks to keep balance—while the human line shifted weight from heel to heel. Farther out, Cerberus-class mediums traced long ovals around the perimeter, their cannon mounts gliding on magnetic rings that let them swing and settle without visible shake.

  Six Wraiths came out of the dark together. The Tartarus Legion skull—chained and barbed—did most of the work for them. In the Draconian Imperium, that mark didn’t just mean elite. It meant the Emperor’s household soldiers, blood proven, loyalty audited. People learned that lesson young.

  Jack brought Thor to the front and stopped in line with the ranking officer, an Ensign somewhere in his late thirties. He said nothing. He let the machine’s stillness speak for him.

  In the other five cockpits, the Commonwealth soldiers watched as their own breath fogged the glass and then cleared again. The force at this gate could erase them if anything felt wrong—word choice, tone, a pause half a second too long—and the garrison wouldn’t even need to roll.

  Jack wasn’t worried. He had worked through The Plausible Imitation until it felt like muscle memory. This was the practical.

  Rashid’s packet on the Ensign ran through his head: age, rank, family marks. Thirty-something and still an Ensign. In the Commonwealth, that could mean a mistake, or bad luck with a superior. In the Imperium, which sorted people by bloodline and date of departure like items on a ledger, it meant something else: low birth, limited ceiling. A man without the correct name.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The Imperium was a hierarchy built on ancestry. At the top sat the Veborians, families that traced themselves to the first interstellar fleets. Below that came layered clans, with status mapped to how early they left Earth and how rich their worlds ultimately became. At the bottom were the conquered and the poor—the lesser clans barred from senior posts, elite schools, and upward marriages. For them, the uniform wasn’t glory; it was one of the few legal ways up a rung.

  The Tartarus Legion lived at the very top of that system. For a hundred years, its soldiers had all been Veborian, their lineage checked back six generations. A pilot under that skull didn’t just outrank you; he stepped out of the rank conversation entirely.

  So Jack thought, not kindly: when a low-born Ensign sees one of the “masters” on his doorstep, he doesn’t argue.

  He bows.

  Ensign Kael’s salute snapped tight. He kept his eyes below Thor’s canopy line.

  “Honored soldier, Imperial citizen Kael greets you,” he said, using the set phrases people like him learned to keep.

  Jack routed his voice through a modulator and let the patrician accent ride out over the external speakers. “Ensign. We are hunting escaped prisoners. I expect your full cooperation.”

  Kael hurried to meet the tone. “Of course, honored soldier! It would be a privilege. What do you require of us?”

  “Energy cells,” Jack said. “Resupply us. We’re entering to sweep the base. If I have to loop a hundred kilometers because one of them slides through your nest, I’ll see you all court-martialed.”

  In the other Wraiths, someone breathed in too sharply and caught it. Talking to an officer like that—here—felt like leaning over a cliff on purpose.

  “I’m sure you are right, honored soldier,” Kael said quickly, fear polishing every word. “We will cooperate immediately. The energy cells will be ready in ten minutes. Please, proceed.”

  Jack rode the small, clean hit of control and signaled the line forward. The main gate loomed. The shield thinned where the control stack parted it, a ripple moving across the surface as if the blue were a sheet being lifted by wind.

  “Honored soldier… please wait.”

  Jack turned Thor back on, damped pivots. His pulse hit once and flattened. He kept the machine big and his hands still.

  Kael stood with an electronic slate held up at chest height, face pinched by the kind of problem that belongs to paperwork, not war. “You know how it is, honored soldier,” he said, voice catching. “It’s a mandatory field for the log entry. I have to…” He swallowed. “I need your name.”

  [HUD: ENTRY SEAL OPENING | SECURITY OVERRIDE ACCEPTED]