Deployment to the battlecruiser was… an experience.

  They didn’t get a shuttle this time. They got an assault pinnace.

  It settled onto Einherjar Command's pad like a raptor, forty meters of faceted bone-white hull descending on its gear with predatory grace. On the prow, painted in stark black, was a wolf's head carrying a knife between its teeth. Underneath, the ship's name in crisp ásveldi block letters: GARM'S MAW. Below that, smaller: EHN – WOLF.

  Ralaen caught herself staring.

  Anastasia noticed and smirked. “Ours,” she said. “If we need to, we can operate out of it independently.”

  It still boggled Ralaen’s mind that the ásveldi Imperium could think like this. A forty-meter assault pinnace—hangar queen, dropship, gunboat—assigned to a single Einherjar squad as their personal ride.

  “We might let some Jaeger marines ride with us,” Thomas said as he passed her on the ramp, carrying a stack of crates. “If they ask politely.”

  “You’ll need it in the field,” Tina called, walking up with four armor racks—the “morgue” frames—rolling obediently behind her on motorized carriages. “Where do you want ’em, chief?”

  She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at the racks.

  “Starboard side of the drop compartment,” Anastasia said without looking up. “Line them along the right bulkhead.”

  Then she glanced at Ralaen. “You should get your gear stowed up top. Bunks are on the upper deck.” She nodded toward the front of the drop compartment, where a narrow set of stairs climbed up.

  “Right,” Ralaen said.

  She hooked her duffel—everything she owned in this life, plus a suspicious amount of new clothing—over one shoulder and headed up the ramp, weaving around Thomas and Eirik as they manhandled pallets into place.

  The upper deck opened into a compact crew section: a short corridor with four cabin doors, two on each side. Name tags glowed on three of them.

  One door: DRAGOMIR, A. Next: KENDRICKS, T.

  On the third, someone had slapped a strip of tape over the blank tag and scrawled:

  RALAEN / EIRIK

  with several hearts doodled around the names.

  Ralaen rolled her eyes so hard Artemis made a quiet there it is noise in her head.

  She slid the door open. Two narrow bunks, one on each side, lockers beneath, tie-downs, just enough space for two people to live without tripping over each other. Eirik’s duffel was already tossed onto the left bunk.

  She chucked hers onto the right, took a second to breathe, then headed back down.

  Thomas was still grinning when she returned. He was stacking ammo pallets now, big marked crates clicking into mag-clamps along the deck.

  “Found your room, maeja?” he asked, voice full of innocence.

  Little girl, Artemis translated, amused.

  “Yes,” Ralaen said levelly. “I found my room.”

  Then she grabbed the other end of a crate and helped him load.

  “Why are we loading the pinnace?” she grumbled aloud at one point, arms full of rations.

  “Two reasons,” Anastasia answered, not looking over from where she was locking down a weapons rack. “First, it’s good training. Second, this way we know what’s on our bird and where it is when we’re stuck in the field for longer than planned.”

  That was fair, Ralaen had to admit.

  Half an hour later, the pinnace had gone from being an “empty shell” to a “mobile war cupboard.” Ammo, rations, medpacks, spare parts, tools, field kit—all tagged, logged, and clamped. Their Mk.4 armors were secured in the drop compartment, each in its rack, waiting.

  “Strap in,” Anastasia said, jerking a thumb at the crash seats lining the drop bay. “We’re wheels-up.”

  Ralaen dropped into one of the crew seats, tugged the harness across her chest, and glanced around. “Who’s flying?” she asked. She hadn’t seen any pilot or flight crew anywhere.

  Anastasia tapped her temple with one gloved finger. “VI slaved to Xerxes,” she said. “My AI handles all the actual flying. So sit back and relax.”

  As if on cue, the pinnace hummed deeper. Gravity shifted minutely as countergravs spooled up, lifting them off the pad. The faint tremor ran through the deck plating, a subtle shudder she felt in her bones. It was the feeling of leaving a world behind, of stepping off a cliff into a silent, endless fall. For a heartbeat, her own breath sounded loud in her ears.

  Ralaen wasn’t sure exactly where the line between atmosphere and vacuum passed, but she felt a faint tremor as the pinnace switched from countergravs to its gravity drive—space bending instead of air. On a Confederacy gunship, that would have been the moment the g-load hit—weight slamming her into the couch, teeth buzzing, inner ear howling while the grav plates and acceleration couches did their best to offset the g-forces. Here… nothing. The harness stayed snug but not crushing; her stomach never lurched. She remembered a dry tech report she’d skimmed back in Confederacy special forces, one paragraph about “something called an inertial compensator” on Imperial ships. It was supposed to dump the acceleration into some kind of field instead of into the ship and crew. Whatever the exact details, this felt like that in practice. It was clearly working. If anything, the lack of strain made the invisible power under her feel bigger, not smaller.

  She craned to see out the transparisteel ports near the drop compartment but only caught glimpses of Earth receding below and sky darkening above.

  If you want a better view, go forward, Artemis suggested. Cockpit has front ports. Just don't touch anything. Xerxes can be… possessive.

  Ralaen unbuckled, made her way forward, and found the cockpit hatch. It slid open at her approach.

  Inside: a compact two-seat cockpit, side by side. The pilot’s seat was empty; displays and controls were moving themselves under invisible hands. She slid into the co-pilot’s chair, mindful of her tail, and looked out.

  They were bearing down on a moon.

  “That’s Luna,” Eirik’s voice said behind her. She hadn’t heard him come in. “I’m guessing Draupnir’s on maneuvers out here.”

  As they closed, Luna resolved into a mixture of old scars and new work: ancient craters, modern bases, domes and pits and long trenchlike structures, docking towers glittering with nav beacons. Traffic crawled around it: shuttles, tugs, the occasional bigger hull.

  One of those hulls was bone-white.

  The pinnace banked toward it.

  From a distance, the battlecruiser looked less like a ship and more like a phenomenon: a sliver of sharp-edged purpose against the black. It didn't have the blunt utilitarianism of a Drakari battleship or the elegant sails of an Azelari cruiser. It was a shard of brutalist art, a weapon given life and told to hunt.

  As they closed, the color resolved: not bright parade white, but a cold, matte bone-white that seemed to drink the starlight, only revealing itself in the hard, knife-thin highlights along the beveled edges of its armor plates. The hull form embodied controlled violence, an elongated shape that swelled, narrowed, and bulged from bow to stern like a coiled muscle. The cross-section was all hard angles and facets, creating a silhouette of layered lethality.

  The bow was violence given form. A vicious, wedge-shaped ram etched with intricate Norse knotwork, gold and crimson inlay gleaming against the bone-white armor—designed for intimidation and impact, its surfaces angled to deflect fire that wasn't a direct, head-on strike. At the very center of that wedge, a dark circle—the spinal graser aperture—stared back like a pupilless eye.

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  That’s the main graser, Artemis supplied, her voice a low murmur of professional appreciation. It can core a cruiser-weight target in a single shot.

  As the pinnace swung around for its approach to the port flank, the full profile of the ship revealed itself. The hull swelled dramatically at its forward third, a thickening of mass where the magazines and primary systems were housed. From that bulge, it narrowed through the midsection, before bulging again near the stern where the reactors and drive systems lived. A subtle, sharp dorsal ridge ran the length of the spine, adding a line of severity to the otherwise flowing form.

  Here and there, lighter-toned scar plates from old repairs were bolted and welded into the belts, telling a story of battles fought and survived. This was a ship that wore its history.

  Artemis highlighted them on the pinnace's HUD. The dorsal and ventral surfaces were lined with low-profile hexagonal housings, almost invisible against the armor until you knew what to look for.

  Graser turrets, Artemis identified. Thirty-six total. Eighteen per aspect. They'll iris open when they fire.

  The flanks carried their own hexagonal grid—missile cells, fifteen launchers per side.

  Just aft of the ram, the hull changed. The seamless armor was broken by five massive, armored sections on their side, each sitting on heavy rails, articulated like the claws on a hand.

  Hangar band, Artemis said. Watch.

  As the pinnace’s transponder keyed with the cruiser, one of the armored petals shuddered. It slid outward on its tracks with the slow, deliberate grace of a predator waking, then split and retracted to either side. Behind it, a rectangular bay opened into the ship, framed by darker internal bulkheads and the shimmering cobalt blue of a magnetic containment screen.

  The pinnace banked, its nose dipping toward the opening. From this angle, Ralaen could see the other four closed bays, their armored petals blending back into the hull, ten doors in total on this side of the ship.

  They slid through the mag-screen into the hangar, the light shifting from the hard glare of space to the cooler, industrial glow of internal floods. The space was vast, a cavern of metal and activity that swallowed their forty-meter craft. Gantry cranes the size of buildings loomed overhead, and service modules trundled on the deck. It made the main hangar at Einherjar Command look like a personal garage.

  Docking clamps thudded home with a solid, reassuring jolt. The pinnace’s drives fell silent, leaving only the deep, steady thrum of the battlecruiser itself—the sound of a sleeping giant that had just pulled them into its maw.

  By the time Ralaen made it back to the drop compartment, the others were already moving. Anastasia and Thomas were halfway out of their fatigues, bodygloves laid out on the deck.

  “You might as well get used to seeing us all naked, maeja,” Thomas chuckled when he caught Ralaen’s wide-eyed, embarrassed look.

  Anastasia just jerked her chin at Ralaen’s locker and armor rack. “Strip and glove up. We’re taking the Mk.4s aboard ourselves.”

  “Right,” Ralaen said, ears hot.

  On Asuar, you didn't strip in front of packmates who weren't pack. But this was her pack now, whether her instincts had caught up or not.

  She got herself under control, yanked open her rack locker, and pulled out her bodyglove. She undressed quickly, then sealed the glove properly, tail threaded through, circuitry snug against fur.

  By the time she turned, Anastasia and Thomas were already stepping into their armors. Ralaen approached her own Mk.4; at her mental command, the rear armor segments slid smoothly aside, opening the spine channel. She stepped forward into the gap. Contact points aligned along her spine and limbs; plates slid back into place, locking with a series of soft, decisive clacks. Systems lit as the suit did its handshake with her interface and Artemis.

  Green across the board.

  She grabbed her helm, sealed it, and turned to join the others at the ramp.

  Anastasia slapped the hatch control. The ramp dropped with a hiss, opening onto a hangar where crews were already moving: hoses being connected, tags slapped onto access panels, drones trundling. A few deckhands stopped what they were doing to stare openly at four fully armored Einherjar walking down the ramp of a pinnace with a wolf's head on the nose.

  Ralaen tried not to think too hard about what she looked like from the outside.

  The hangar was big—overhead gantry cranes, other small craft lined up along the deck, work lights cutting through the haze of lubricant and ozone. A second assault pinnace sat nearby, a coiled serpent painted on its nose. Cobra Squad's ride, probably.

  Deck crews moved around them with the careful efficiency of people who knew not to get underfoot. A chief petty officer glanced up from her datapad, did a quick double-take, then went back to her work.

  They crossed the deck and passed through a blast door into the ship proper.

  Inside, the corridors felt different from Einherjar Command's. They weren't wider, but the proportions were perfect—high ceilings and unobstructed sightlines created a sense of openness that defied the ship's armored exterior. The walls were seamless, brushed-metal panels, the color of cool graphite. All the conduits and cable runs were hidden behind this plating, leaving the surfaces clean and unbroken. This was a warship where technology was integrated into the structure, not bolted onto it.

  Information was provided not by cluttered physical tags, but by subtle strips of integrated light that glowed softly along the base of the walls, their color shifting to indicate deck and section. But the true soul of the ship was in the details.

  Running the length of the main passageway, intricate knotwork and geometric Norse patterns had been etched directly into the metal bulkheads. They were backlit by a cold blue light, tracing the patterns like glowing pathways. Artemis highlighted them in her HUD. Power conduits and system status veins, she said. They'll pulse dimmer or brighter depending on the ship's alert status.

  The effect was a calm, controlled environment that felt less like a machine and more like a living artifact. At major junctions and framing the hatches to key sections like the bridge, engineering, and armories, the knotwork became more elaborate, inlaid with traditional colors—gold, red, blue, and white—that stood out against the cool metal and blue light. It created a sense of ceremony and significance, marking the important spaces within the vessel.

  Her suit systems highlighted hallway codes and hatches; Artemis overlaid a nav-line on her HUD, guiding her toward Marine Country and the Einherjar morgue.

  Even here, among tall humans, she stood out. Out of armor, she was a respectable 170 cm; but in Mk.4, with digitigrade legs and helm, she was about 220 cm—topping many of the crew by a noticeable margin. People made way quickly. A pair of ratings flattened against the bulkhead as Wolf Squad passed, and a petty officer coming the other direction simply stopped and waited until they were gone.

  They reached the Einherjar morgue—a pristine, heavily secured armor bay with individual racks and work stations. The air was cool and smelled faintly of the specialized lubricants used in powered armor maintenance. A tech team was waiting for them, four men and women in coveralls who moved with the quiet competence of people who worked on equipment worth more than most starships.

  They stripped out of their armor one piece at a time, the techs guiding the suits into their racks and running cables before the Einherjar had even finished stepping out. Ralaen felt the familiar sense of loss as her Mk.4 closed behind her—the world suddenly smaller, quieter, less present without Artemis running through the suit's full sensor suite.

  I'm still here, Artemis reminded her.

  Quick status checks with the techs. Green across the board. They grabbed their duffels and headed for quarters.

  Walking the ship in just her bodyglove felt… exposed. Technically it covered everything. Practically, it mapped every line of muscle, every curve, with smooth black fabric shot through with faint circuitry. She could feel eyes on them as they passed—not just the simple curiosity she was used to, but something heavier. Awe from the junior crew, a flat, professional assessment from the officers, and from a few, a frank, predatory appreciation that made the fur on her neck want to bristle.

  They hit Marine Country: bulkhead stencils, unit patches on doors, the background hum of a battalion settling onto a new ship.

  Anastasia stopped at a junction and pointed.

  “This is me,” she said, indicating the first cabin. “Thomas, that’s you.” She pointed at the second. Then she turned to the third and gave them both a wicked little grin. “And for you two lovebirds, that one,” she said, nodding at the last door. “Try not to dent the bulkheads.”

  Ralaen opened her mouth to protest something—she wasn’t sure what, exactly—but Eirik just caught her hand and gently tugged her toward the indicated door.

  Inside, Ralaen stopped dead.

  Her eyes went straight to the bed.

  It was a double. Not just big enough for two people to avoid each other, but properly, intentionally built for two. It was wide, the frame seamless with the deck plating, with built-in storage drawers beneath. Her brain stuttered.

  In the Asuari special forces, on a Confederacy cruiser, you were lucky to get a bunk that wasn't a triple-decker stacked in a room with ten other people. Personal space was a theoretical concept. Privacy was a luxury you bought with rank, and even then, it was a tiny, single-person cubicle designed for maximum cram-and-stuff efficiency. A double bed on a frontline warship, for a line unit, was unthinkable.

  "Why is the bed so big?" she blurted, staring at it like it had no business existing.

  Eirik, who was halfway through tossing his duffel onto the left side, paused and blinked at her. "What do you mean?"

  "It's a double," she said, gesturing vaguely at the piece of furniture that was currently short-circuiting a decade of military conditioning. "On a Confederacy ship, this space would be filled with hot-racks for a whole squad. Why do we get this?"

  He tilted his head, listening for a moment. "Apollo says Einherjar quarters are part of the compensation package," he said. "Same as officers. Private cabins, double berths, priority on amenities." He shrugged. "We're expensive to train, expensive to maintain, and the Imperium wants to keep us happy."

  He's not wrong, Artemis added. Einherjar retention rates are nearly perfect. Partly because of the sense of purpose. Partly because the benefits are excellent.

  "Also," Eirik added, deadpan, "most Einherjar end up paired off eventually. So double berths are just... practical."

  Design follows reality, Artemis agreed, warm and amused. Statistically, you were all going to end up sharing anyway.

  Ralaen's gaze finally pulled away from the bed and took in the rest of the room. The desk and wall locker were integrated into the bulkhead, their surfaces perfectly flush with the walls, as if grown from the metal rather than bolted on. It was all so seamless, so permanent. It felt less like a barracks and more like a home. A very heavily armed, very mobile home.

  She shook her head, a small, disbelieving laugh escaping her. "The Asuari military would have a fit. They'd see this and immediately try to figure out how to fit two more people in here."

  Eirik sat down on the edge of the bed and tested the mattress. "We could have had this at Command, apparently. Apollo says there were double rooms available once we were sworn in. We just didn't know to ask."

  Ralaen stared at him. "We spent months in those tiny singles."

  "Yep."

  Her ears flattened. "Remind me to put in that request the moment we get back."

  He grinned. "Deal."

  They unpacked in comfortable silence, duffels emptying into lockers, the small rituals of making a space theirs. By the time they were done, the room felt less like a berth and more like somewhere they belonged.