The Mercenary's Ledger

Heaven's Fury sat dark at the far end of the dock, engine housing peeled open, scaffolding crawling up her flank. Angelus didn't look at her long. Looking didn't fix drive couplings. He reworked the picket spacing twice that morning, pulling Abadon and Apolion tighter to Heaven's Gate's flanks instead of running them wide. "Fury stays. She doesn't fly half-repaired. Wings launch on schedule. Nobody covers for a ship that isn't there. We just don't leave the gap open."

What came through hyperspace to test that gap was six ships in standard combat formation around the battlecruiser Final Arbitration, a mercenary contract fleet running under a PMC banner, calling itself professional and meaning it. "This is nothing new for you all. Bonuses or paycheck penalties will be based on individual performance along with the overall battle result. BATTLE POSITIONS!" Angelus opened with Wing 1's probing pass before the mercenary formation had finished settling, testing shields before their doctrine could spin up — and found dedicated point defense crews waiting for exactly that. One fighter took the brunt before it could break the intercept line. "They've got dedicated point defense crews. Not conscripts."

A corvette blockade run broke off clean before Angelus's wings could close the gap — too clean, he judged, and refused to chase it into whatever kill box was waiting on the other side. He redirected onto the exposed frigate line instead, and Wing 2 and 3 found something the mercenaries hadn't planned for: a hit that cascaded into a genuine problem. A frigate's own munitions stockpile cooked off, secondary explosions rolling through her hull until her engines cut and she drifted, out of the fight entirely. "Amateur hour. That'll be coming out of all your paychecks."

The mercenary fleet answered by changing shape rather than conceding ground, an ECM wave rolling out from the escort carrier and amplified by Final Arbitration, static blooming across every display on Heaven's Gate at once. Angelus compartmentalized what he could and kept fighting through it. The heavy turbolaser fire that followed found a gap the earlier volleys hadn't, punching through the forward shield generator and leaving it degraded rather than intact. "Reroute what you can spare from aft. Fire is split between two targets instead of one. Take the opening while it's there."

The exchanges kept splitting close, and by the numbers Angelus's wings won more of them than they lost — three rounds to two, the crippled frigate the difference nobody on the mercenary side could argue with. But a won skirmish wasn't the same thing as a safe one, not with Heaven's Fury still grounded and only one carrier left to protect. Angelus watched Wing 3 clear a hurting pair of corvettes, weighed what Heaven's Gate's shields still had left in them, and called it before pride could spend any more of it. "For now... we retreat..."