Outer Orbit of Saturn

  A dull thud reverberated through the cutter’s hull as the "Chimera’s" docking clamps locked the small transport onto the external mooring module. The steel door groaned open, letting in the dense air of the assault cruiser—dry, reeking of recycled oxygen, faint metallic char, and technical grease.

  Darina exhaled, cracking her neck, and stepped into the airlock first.

  "Thank the gods for normal gravity. One more day at one-and-a-half g, and I’d have married my bunk for life."

  "You’re already in love with that bunk," Talik snorted, stretching in the doorway. "But honestly—my ass feels like a tank’s now. I can count every damn vertebra."

  "You should just shut up," Miro cut in, kneading his shoulder after gearing up. "If anyone whined loudest, it was you."

  "At least I’m still kicking," Pops grinned. "You snipers are used to eating vacuum and breathing ambition."

  Michael slid into the chatter with a faint smirk:

  "Alright, enough kindergarten. Welcome to the 'Chimera,' kids. Best cruiser for the worst jobs. Get your asses to the hold for briefing—and yeah, showers for everyone except Yamada. He doesn’t sweat anyway."

  Yamada, as usual, said nothing.

  The "Chimera" was one of those ships that didn’t flash across news feeds or fire ceremonial salvos for the cameras. It was a workhorse of the Sky Legion—not the newest, but patched up with so many upgrades that the original blueprint was only recognizable by the hull’s outline. Its frame—reinforced sections with double internal bulkheads—was built for maneuvers under high gravity or heavy firefights. The outer armor—black composite with ceramic coating—bore scars of old battles, thermal burns, and dents from debris. The main deck felt less like a ship and more like a high-tech bunker. Lift shafts, armored to absurdity, narrow corridors lined with protruding tactical panels, their buttons glowing a dull red. Cameras everywhere, redundant life-support and atmosphere-control systems everywhere else.

  The command center—the "Chimera’s" heart—was a round chamber with a holographic tactical sphere sunk into the floor. Legion officers in dark blue-and-silver uniforms worked silently, trading clipped commands. The crew was a mix from across the Solar System—Earth natives, Martians, Jupiter moon vets, corporate war survivors, and ex-pirates who’d earned redemption through skill. Harrison’s squad was elite among elites—a core ripped from the maddest meat grinder in ONP history. But they weren’t alone. Five other strike teams roamed the "Chimera," each with its own flavor, style, and god complex.

  For people like Darina and her crew, the "Chimera" was a temporary home—a place where personal shit didn’t matter, and your worth was your work.

  When Harrison’s squad stepped onto the inner deck, no one turned, no greetings or jabs were thrown. This wasn’t a buddy club. Respect had to be earned. And everyone knew: if you were let aboard the "Chimera," you were either damn good or damn necessary to someone upstairs.

  "Come on, penguins, move your asses," Michael barked shortly. "They’re waiting."

  The squad marched silently across the metal floor as the "Chimera" prepped to cast another shadow over the Trojan cluster.

  The assault cruiser wasn’t a pinnacle of tech or a flex of United Nations of Planets (ONP) military might. It was a product of its time, born from the endless competitive grind the ONP got dragged into by corporations. By the mid-23rd century, the Solar System’s power balance had shattered. Corporations were basically states now. Resource miners, security firms, and transport giants bought warships from third-party contractors. Militarized corps like "Armotech" or "Tangent" built their own fleets, pumping out weapons systems that often outpaced ONP tech by a decade. Corporate private armies trained to bespoke programs, tailored to specific battlegrounds—dense-atmosphere firefights or covert ops among mining moons. The ONP couldn’t keep up with that tech frenzy. Budgets were stretched thin, doctrines shifting constantly to appease the Council. So they bet on numbers, modularity, and survivability. That’s how the fleet’s "heavy bones" came to be—multipurpose cruisers adaptable to any job in weeks.

  The "Chimera" wasn’t a masterpiece. It was a tool.

  Its design wasn’t dreamed up by concept artists but wrung out of budget limits by engineers. The base—an old multipurpose assault platform frame from the 2280s—had been modded into a patchwork beast. Every section was swappable: armor panels were standard production blocks, cargo bays retooled for anything from ammo storage to temp jails or labs. The "Chimera’s" armament didn’t scream elegance—two mid-range railguns on the sides, bulky cannon platforms under the belly, missile batteries for big targets. It wasn’t seamlessly integrated; it was crammed into the hull, like a ship stitched from different eras’ scraps.

  The "Chimera’s" real value was its assault complex.

  Beneath the armor hid a mobile fortress: capsule airlocks for rapid strike-team drops, armored hangars for heavy cutters, modular weapon caches, and—most critical—reinforced living blocks for Sky Legion spec-ops. No spacious cabins here—just sealed pods, each with an emergency suit, standalone breather, and weapon locker. This wasn’t a crew’s home; it was a weapon’s, built to operate solo. The "Chimera" could carry up to 150 troopers at once, mission depending. And 90% weren’t rookies—vets with dozens of ops under their belts. The Sky Legion wasn’t just ONP elite by name—it was the thin layer of pros holding the line between corporate chaos and the last scraps of real ONP power. Ships like the "Chimera" were made for one purpose—not to slug it out with corporate fleets. That was a lost cause. They punched through local defenses, ran covert strikes, seized key targets fast, and vanished. The "Chimera" wasn’t a battleship; it was a dagger. Sent where one quick stab could reclaim control—or at least fake it.

  Inside, the "Chimera" rocked utilitarian vibes. No frills. Floors—bare metal with anti-vibe coating. Walls studded with modular gear mounts. Every other compartment could reconfigure on the fly.

  The command block—a fortified capsule near the stern—was wrapped in defensive systems and backup comms loops. The med bay—compact but overstuffed with gear—handled gunshot wounds, burns, ruptures, and rad damage, not colds.

  The assault hold was the universe’s center for squads like Harrison’s. Their cells, their gear, their combat pods. Every Sky Legion fighter had a spot, a network hookup, personal tags scratched into steel walls. This wasn’t a lounge—it was a war temple.

  The ONP couldn’t afford a fleet for every new threat. Too costly, too slow. Corps churned out modular frigates tailored to the moment, while the ONP banked on versatility. The "Chimeras" were the compromise—mobility, toughness, adaptability. They could swap modules, weapons, layouts in days, morphing into assault platforms, mobile HQs, or search-and-rescue rigs.

  That’s why the Sky Legion bonded with ships like this. A symbiosis: flexible tools for flexible soldiers. The "Chimera" could enter atmo, land on a planet, loiter in asteroid fields, hide in a moon’s radio shadow, or storm an orbital platform. It could do it all—but it wasn’t the best at anything. That was the point: not to be the best, but to be the only option.

  The cargo lift screeched open, spilling Harrison’s squad into the "Chimera’s" assault hold. The air stank of metal, sweat, old oil, and a faint sweetness—ozone mixed with burnt plastic. This wasn’t a sterile fleet cruiser. It was a worn, pissed-off workhorse, just like its crew.

  "Well, fuck me, you again," Talik growled, slapping the hull. "How many years, you rusty bitch?"

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  "Shut it, romantic," Miro yawned, cracking his neck loud. "One-and-a-half g flatten your brain?"

  "One-and-a-half g?" Darina slipped past, yanking off her gloves. "That’s a beach stroll. Or did you all turn into rear-echelon pussies?"

  "Spare me, Vasilevich," Michael smirked, plopping his ass on an ammo crate. "You were born in this shit. We’re normal people. We like zero-g in space."

  "Shitty people, more like," Darina muttered, checking her armor straps. "Bunch of rags."

  "What, you’re our fucking virtue poster child now?" Singh barked a laugh. "One-and-a-half g’s no excuse to scarf stims straight from the pack, huh, sunshine?"

  "If I had stims, you’d be chewing your boot by now," Darina yawned.

  Laughter ripped through the hold—loud, sharp, like a shotgun blast. The kind of laugh only the dead-by-all-rules-but-still-here could muster.

  Harrison appeared in the doorway—polished to a mirror shine, tactical suit, no jacket. Shoulders like a cargo drone’s, arms pure living steel. All atop that doll-like, sterile face with idiot platinum hair yanked into a tight knot.

  "Half an hour to gear check," she said, voice level. "Then asses to the hangar. Briefing. Anyone out of shape gets a penalty lap through the vent shafts."

  "Yes, ma’am, Mama Carnage," Singh quipped, snapping into a mock salute.

  Harrison didn’t even glance at him. Just swept the rest with a scanner’s gaze—not looking for flaws, but sizing up which part to rip out first if it broke.

  "Vasilevich, Johnson, Stoyanovich, Singh, Yamada—I want your asses in the hangar in twenty-five minutes. Not a second late."

  "Yes, ma’am," the squad barked in unison.

  When Ksenia moved further down the corridor, Michael let out a loud exhale.

  "Well, fuck me. Here we go."

  "What’d you expect? Butterflies?" Darina was already digging into a locker, snagging her pocket scanner. "Harrison’s not here for smiles."

  "No, she’s here for blood," Miro added. "Our job’s to spill it, hers is to count it."

  "Enough yapping," Michael stood. "Anyone who doesn’t check their systems before the briefing gets my personal dick-o-meter up their ass, full depth."

  "Your dick-o-meter’d fit in a teaspoon," Singh snorted, pulling on his jumpsuit.

  "But it’s calibrated," Michael shot back. "So fuck off and get to work."

  Noise, clanks of gear, snaps of locks, AI system checks. No one asked "why." They all knew—tomorrow they’d load onto the "rusty shitcan" handed to them for cover and barrel toward a shitstorm.

  The "Chimera" knew them. She lived in their smells, their sweat, their jokes, their screams in sealed pods when someone cracked under the strain. She wasn’t new—her hull carried scars from dozens of fights, each dent telling a story of another crew already rotting in the void. Still, she was the best the ONP could afford. Not a shiny parade cruiser with sleek panels and pompous names, but a rough combat bitch stitched together from the best tech the corps hadn’t swiped. The ONP couldn’t match corporate fleets anymore. Corps built custom armadas: "Galactic Mining" with armored assault crafts, "Armotech" with feral drones, "Cybergen" with self-regenerating chimera-ships grown right in orbit. Regular ONP fleets were stuck playing catch-up. They leaned on numbers. For the elite, like the Sky Legion, they made the "Chimeras"—mongrel ships pieced from mismatched projects, from old nuke cannons to experimental grav-guns. The "Chimera" didn’t shine. But she was tough as a barracks whore, unbothered even by cosmic radiation.

  "So, you bitch," Darina whispered, brushing her fingers over the rough wall, "gonna pull us through again, or we dying together this time?"

  The ship didn’t answer. It just waited.

  "To the hangar, freaks!" Michael roared.

  And the squad moved—hard, tight, like a living machine that didn’t care where it died, as long as it went out swinging.

  ***

  The briefing kicked off with no frills. The room on the "Chimera"—low ceiling, gray walls, an old tactical table with scuffed edges, and a projection screen so dusty it looked untouched since the first Triton war. On it—Patroclus. A pitted rock slab scarred with mines and abandoned quarry shafts, hanging in the Trojans of Jupiter like a chunk of shredded armor from some ancient ship.

  Alexander Reynolds scanned the room, eyes locked on the screen. His voice was low, harsh, metal grinding on metal.

  "Lab. Illegal. Three levels underground. Self-sustaining—own life support, generators, defenses. Zero orbit security; it’s all inside. Your job—get in, grab every data carrier, and turn it into a tech-fucked mess. Wipe it clean so in a couple hours even the rats won’t know who hit it."

  He leaned forward, knuckling on the table.

  "And yeah. I’m not going with you. This is your gig. I’m staying here, coordinating over the link. I only care about the result."

  Michael Johnson smirked crookedly but kept quiet. Everyone knew if Reynolds wasn’t tagging along, the shit ahead was waist-deep.

  "Eight-day haul on the 'Dusk Hound,'" Reynolds went on, "a refitted garbage scow. You’ll crawl at low speed to blend into local traffic. Cover’s set—smugglers hauling scrap from Ganymede. No one should touch you."

  He flipped the projection—internal lab schematics.

  "Key detail—Patroclus has its own grav-generator, installed when the first mining complexes wrapped up. Full Earth-standard gravity across the drop zone. So you’re descending old-school—on ropes, like infantry from last century. No smooth entry. Fast or dead."

  "Why the hassle?" Singh grumbled, scratching his stubble. "Wouldn’t a drone be simpler?"

  "Because someone upstairs wants the Legion to do it. Your squad, specifically." Reynolds slammed a fist on the table. "Mission’s flagged first-tier clearance. Initiator’s orders: Harrison’s unit, no subs. Talk was about ‘high performance.’ Off the record—fuck knows. You’ve got a day to swallow it and get it done."

  "So we were picked ahead of time?" Miro clarified. "No other options even on the table?"

  "Yeah. And I don’t like it either," Reynolds’ gaze flicked to Ksenia, standing against the wall like a statue. "But we’re not playing games here. Orders are orders."

  "Bullshit," Singh muttered, eyeing the map. "Easier to just blast the whole hole with an orbital torp."

  "Because the carriers have to be pulled out," Reynolds’ voice cut through again. "No clue what kind of backup loop they’ve got. Burn a carrier, you burn the data. And the data’s critical. So no ‘pretty’ fixes. Just dirty work, your style."

  "Someone wants warm intel in their pocket?" Miro mumbled, shaking his head.

  "I don’t know and don’t wanna know," Reynolds wrapped up. "Not our business. ONP gave the order. We follow it."

  "Got it, boss," Michael nodded shortly. "Same as always. Work first, think later."

  Ksenia stepped forward, face unchanged.

  "Plan’s standard," her voice rang flat, like an auto-gun burst. "We pose as the 'Dusk Hound,' drop to trade speed, enter the 'Patroclus' zone, and park in a small asteroid’s shadow. After a quick silence check, we deploy—ropes, two streams, perimeter sweep. First team cuts external sensors and sets jammers. Second cracks the tech airlock. Infiltration by levels—our usual: floor by floor."

  She highlighted zones on the schematic with one finger swipe.

  "Level one—technical. Two—labs. Three—servers and archive. We need all carriers. Personnel—liquidate on sight, no chats, no prisoners. No noise, no traces. Screams, shots, air leaks—unacceptable. Use blades if needed. Silenced weapons—standard."

  "Beautiful," Michael snorted. "Like a family picnic."

  "If you think this is easy, you don’t get where you’re going," Reynolds straightened. "This isn’t some cartel lab. Someone big’s got its back. And if it’s been untouchable this long, there’s something worth the risk. Your job isn't to figure out who—just do it."

  "Whoever pays calls the shots," Singh summed up, tightening his belt.

  "Exactly," Reynolds exhaled. "Tomorrow, 06:00 sharp, you load onto the 'Dusk Hound.' Eight days—no vacation. On arrival, local briefing, data sync, and go. Anyone’s got cold feet—speak now."

  Silence. The Legion doesn’t ask questions.

  "Then hit the bunks. Harrison, stay a minute."

  When the rest cleared out, Ksenia didn’t budge. Reynolds rounded the table, faced her.

  "You get the feeling this shit’s not random either?"

  "Of course," she nodded. "But I don’t dig into other people’s games. Not our lane."

  "And you’ll still go?"

  "It’s your order. I don’t debate orders."

  Reynolds paused for a couple seconds, then nodded.

  "That’s why I picked you."

  Ksenia gave a faint nod back and turned to leave. Steady steps, predator’s grace, zero emotion.

  "Major," he called before the door. "Don’t forget—I’m here, on the line."

  "I don’t," she said, not turning.

  The door hissed shut behind her.

  Reynolds stood alone in the quiet.

  "Not that it’ll necessarily help you," he muttered under his breath.