With Alessio's team inside the portal, the creature stream had stopped. The overflow was being handled. Which meant the only monsters left to deal with were the human kind.
Luca watched Keane walk toward the Specter and stop beneath them. His Orion team had halted at the portal's edge, unable to follow.
"Your brother?" His voice carried up. Something that might have been curiosity. Or hunger. Hard to tell with those lizard eyes of his. "Brave boy. Reckless, though."
"Runs in the family," Luca said.
"Now then." Keane's attention moved to the fragment still clutched in Luca's hand. "About that evidence. Why don't you come on down so we can discuss this like civilized folk?"
Below them, the Centurion's repulsors flared. Chris brought the armored reconnaissance vehicle down, setting it between the Specter and Keane's advancing forces. The stabilizers extended with a mechanical thunk. A moment later, the shield generator hummed to life, and a shimmering blue bubble expanded outward, encasing the vehicle in a dome of protective energy.
Luca smiled.
"Take us down," he said to Zoe.
The Specter descended into the Centurion's shield. The blue light washed over them as they passed through, and then Luca's boots hit sand. Emily was already climbing out of the Centurion, her blasters holstered. Chris followed, his own weapon at the ready. Inside the bubble, surrounded by his crew, Luca felt the balance shift.
It wasn't safe, not by a long shot, but it wasn't helpless either.
Keane stopped at the edge of the shield, his expression flat. But something flickered behind those lizard eyes as he studied the Centurion. The shield dome. The TL9 rifles Emily and Chris carried. The armor they all wore.
Orion must have spent a fortune building their System Store army. Every vehicle, tank and flier would have been purchased at their Houston hub, then flown out here and staged for exactly this kind of response. A cool billion credits, plus contribution points, which were the painful part. Likely took them months of planning.
"Well now." Keane's voice was slow. "That's some interestin' hardware you got there."
Luca tucked the fragment into his kit bag. He did not owe this man an explanation.
Keane's jaw tightened. The silence stretched a beat too long.
"The debris field is Orion property," Keane said, each word slow and deliberate. "Anythin' recovered from it belongs to us."
Orion property. Keane had just claimed it. Either the man was stupid, which Luca doubted, or he was so confident in his leverage that he didn't care about the implication.
"Interesting," Luca said slowly. "You're saying Orion Horizons owns the equipment that was used to push this portal into overflow?"
Something shifted in Keane's eyes. The first real mistake, and he knew it.
"I'm sayin' we got a UER contract to support this region. Debris field's under our operational control." The words came out slower now. Keane knew he'd slipped.
"Right. Debris." Luca pulled the fragment back out, held it up where Keane could see it. "Except this isn't just random debris. This is evidence. Evidence that someone deliberately sabotaged this portal. And you just told me it's yours."
"Captain." Keane's voice dropped to that gravelly edge. "I ain't askin'."
So that's how it was going to be, corporate muscle flexing at a crime scene.
Beyond the shield's blue shimmer, Orion personnel were repositioning. Two of their gunships had repositioned and were circling the area, their energy weapons not quite pointed at the Centurion but close enough that the message was clear. More vehicles arriving by the minute. The perimeter tightening.
Forty miles south, creatures were still streaming from OP-131. UER troops were finally making progress in containing it.
Luca watched another Orion gunship take position. Then another.
"You know," he said, loud enough for Keane to hear, "if Orion's really here to help with the overflow, shouldn't your forces be at OP-131?" He gestured vaguely south. "Forty miles that way. The other portal. The one that's still spawning monsters."
Keane's expression didn't flicker. "We got teams en route."
"Do you?" Luca looked pointedly at the growing ring of Orion hardware around them. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks like you brought your whole response force here. To this portal. The one that's already being stabilized." He paused.
The silence stretched.
Zoe grabbed his arm. "South. Something's coming."
Luca squinted into the glare, wishing his helmet was back on. The Sonoran sun was doing its level best to burn his retinas out of his skull, and for a moment all he could see was white.
Then the sky darkened.
Orbital dropships were falling from the sky, Genesis built. They came in waves, streaking down from the heavens, leaving trails of superheated air in their wake. Luca counted them as they fell. One, two, five, a dozen.
All of them heading straight for the portal site.
He didn't know whether to be relieved or worried. More players meant more chaos, but it also meant Orion couldn't just pull whatever they thought they were going to pull.
Keane's head snapped up. For the first time since Luca had known the man, something like uncertainty flickered across his face. Good. Let him sweat.
The first dropship touched down hard enough to rattle Luca's teeth. Its hatches blew open before the jets had fully cycled down, and armored operatives poured out. More dropships landed behind it. Valkyrie buggies with mounted miniguns. Personnel carriers disgorging strike teams in gear that looked every bit as professional as Orion's, if a bit more worn.
Different logos, different colors, and where Orion's hardware gleamed factory-fresh, Hyeon's showed years of hard use. Scorch marks and patched armor.
And at the center of the formation, a command vehicle descended one of the ramps. The LCV Strategos, painted in white with gray streaks, its reinforced hull and extended communications array giving it the silhouette of a mobile fortress.
The hatch opened.
A girl stepped out.
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She was eighteen, maybe. Medium armor, energy carbine slung across her back, and a grin that belonged on someone who lived for exactly this kind of chaos. Director of Hyeon Logistics. Another one of those System prodigies who'd grabbed the world by the throat and refused to let go.
Izumi Tomiko.
"Matteo fucking Rossi," she called toward the Centurion's shimmering shield, and something in the way she said his brother's name made Luca's eyebrows climb. That wasn't just professional warmth. "Should've known his brothers would need saving eventually."
Behind her, Hyeon Logistics teams were still deploying, spreading out from their ships. More than a hundred already on the ground, and more dropships still descending.
But it was Izumi's own squad that caught Luca's attention.
Three women, all of them young. Their armor was sleek black trimmed with neon pink, 현 LOGISTICS emblazoned across their shoulders in sharp Korean characters. Each carried a different melee weapon: an energy glaive, a curved energy blade, and twin energy daggers. All of them carried melee weapons with no ranged backup visible. These three had apparently decided they didn't need the option.
They fanned out around Izumi, their weapons lit up even in the desert sun. The tallest, a Korean woman with electric-blue streaks in her hair and a glaive resting across her shoulders, caught Luca watching and winked. Beside her, a smaller woman with bright pink hair spun her daggers in lazy circles, scanning Orion's forces.
Luca stepped through the shield's edge. The blue light rippled around him. Leaving the protection felt like stepping off a cliff, but staying inside while someone else handled his problems felt worse.
Emily followed while Zoe and Chris stayed behind by the Centurion.
Izumi walked over like she owned the desert, her squad falling in behind her. Up close, Luca could see Japanese characters on her armor alongside the Hyeon Logistics logo. 富子. Probably her name.
"Matteo called from orbit," she said, stopping a few meters away. "Said you needed some help." She shrugged, still grinning. "Rossi boys. Always drama."
"We're not all—"
Her eyes sparkled with amusement. "You're exactly as dramatic as your brothers."
Keane's expression had smoothed back to neutral. He walked forward, his escorts falling in behind him, but Luca caught him glancing up as the last of the dropships descended from orbit. He hadn't planned for this.
"And who might you be?" The Texan drawl tried for casual, but there was an edge underneath. "This here's a secured site."
Izumi's smile didn't waver, but Luca caught something shift in her posture. The older man with the unblinking stare and the cowboy hat clearly gave her the creeps.
"Izumi Tomiko. Hyeon Logistics." She tilted her head. "And you are?"
"Samuel Keane. Orion Horizons." He didn't offer a hand. "This site is secured."
"Is it?" Izumi looked around at the chaos, at the gunships. The debris field. Then back at Keane. "Secured by who? You?"
"Orion Horizons has agreements—"
"Cool." Izumi's smile didn't waver. "I don't work for you."
The balance of power was shifting visibly, second by second, as Hyeon Logistics filled the desert.
"We were in transit from eastern Russia," Izumi said to Luca, ignoring the creepy lizard man. "Regional contracts dried up after the military moved in." She shrugged. "We were already loaded up when Matteo called. Said you might need backup."
She didn't elaborate on why she'd burned a small fortune in orbital fuel for Luca's little brother. Luca didn't ask. Some things were obvious.
Keane said nothing. His face had gone completely blank, which was somehow worse than the veiled threats. The man could probably watch a building burn down with that same expression.
"So." Izumi rocked back on her heels, that grin returning. "Now what?"
New signatures flooded Luca's visor. Military transponder codes, dozens of them, and suddenly the sky was full of jets and the horizon was full of dust clouds from approaching vehicles. Apache helicopters swept in from the south, their rotors pulling even more dust into the air.
---
The helicopters came first, sweeping in from the south. Apache gunships with scorch marks on their hulls, door gunners still tracking the desert floor out of habit. They'd been fighting creatures all night.
Behind them, a convoy stretched across the southern horizon. Tanks, armored carriers, and command vehicles kicked up dust trails that merged into a brown haze. The UER forces that had been containing the Class 31 overflow, now routing north to reinforce the portal site where all the corporate drama was happening.
From the north came another convoy, smaller, marked with Ironwood Expeditions colors.
Their vehicles were fewer than Orion's. The adventurers who emerged looked exhausted, their armor scorched and dented from a long night of fighting. They'd been protecting Tucson from the creature streams while Orion positioned itself at the source.
One of the Blackhawks touched down near the Ironwood convoy, rotors still spinning. The officer who stepped out was older, maybe fifty, her face weathered. She had stars on her collar. Combat ribbons that Luca couldn't identify. A presence that made everyone unconsciously straighten, even Keane.
A woman in Ironwood colors approached her, exchanging words he couldn't hear over the noise. She shot a look at the Orion perimeter that could have melted steel.
Major General Delgado, according to her nameplate.
She surveyed the scene with the expression of someone who had just spent twelve hours fighting monsters and was now looking at something possibly worse.
"Who the hell are you people?"
Everyone started talking at once.
"Orion Horizons got operational jurisdiction—"
"This is an active crime scene—"
"Quiet." Delgado's voice cut through the noise like a blade. "All of you."
The desert went quiet.
The General walked forward, her boots crunching on sand, her eyes moving from Keane to Izumi to Luca with the patient assessment of someone who had broken better men than any of them.
"I have lost eighteen soldiers today," she said quietly. "Eighteen men and women who woke up this morning, put on their uniforms, and died fighting creatures that should not exist, in defense of civilians who will never know their names." She let that sit for a moment. "So when I ask who the hell you are, I expect clear answers. Not corporate posturing."
Keane straightened. "General. Samuel Keane, Orion Horizons." He produced a tablet, tapped the screen. "We have a contract with the UER to reinforce Ironwood Expeditions during overflow events."
Delgado studied the document. Her expression didn't change, but she didn't dismiss it either. That contract was real. Luca had been hoping he was full of shit.
Her eyes moved to Izumi. Then to Luca.
Izumi produced credentials before Delgado could ask. IFC diplomatic passports, the same ones Luca had gotten in DC. The documentation had that same Owl seal.
"Izumi Tomiko. Ward of House Stevens." Her voice was pleasant but carried weight. "As is Captain Rossi. As are all Hyeon Logistics personnel present."
Delgado's eyebrows rose. "Ward of what?"
Behind them, Keane made a choking sound.
"House Stevens, General." Izumi's smile didn't waver. "One of Earth's Noble Houses. We don't answer to the UER."
Beside him, Emily shot Luca a look. Did you know she was going to say that?
Luca gave her the smallest shake of his head. It hadn't even occurred to him that it was an option.
Delgado studied the documents. The seal and the signatures. Her expression shifted from confusion to something harder to read. "I've never heard of House Stevens."
"Most people haven't."
Luca stepped forward. "Captain Luca Rossi. Triumph Initiative." He nodded toward the debris field near the portal, the one Keane's cleanup crews had been so eager to reach. "Someone caused this overflow on purpose. The remains of the device are buried over there." He held up the fragment. "I have evidence. Serial numbers. It's yours if you want it."
Delgado's eyes moved to the fragment. Then to Keane, who was watching with that unblinking stare. Then back to Luca.
"Hold onto that for now." Her voice was flat. "I need to make some calls before anyone touches anything."
She looked around at all of them. "Stay here. All of you."
She turned and walked back toward her helicopter. Her aides scrambled to keep up. Someone was about to have a very interesting phone call.
Keane watched her go. Then his unblinking eyes moved to Izumi. To the seal on those documents she still held.
"House Stevens." He said it slowly, testing the words. "Never heard of it."
"You've heard of the IFC," Luca said.
Something flickered in Keane's expression. Uncertainty. He did not like not knowing things.
The Orion personnel parted around him as he turned and walked back toward his own vehicle without another word.
Behind him, Luca could see Delgado in her helicopter, phone pressed to her ear, gesturing sharply at whoever was on the other end. Across the way, Keane sat in his own vehicle, equally absorbed in a call of his own.
Something shifted in the frozen portal. A pulse of light, then another. The thing was waking up.
Luca tensed.
Around the portal, the crystalline spikes crumbled to dust. The toxic fog retreated into the threshold and the scorched ground lightened as the reset took hold.
Soon, the light began to stabilize. The portal's surface rippled as its slow rhythmic pulsing started.
The portal shimmered and then contracted.
Figures emerged.
Alessio first, his armor scorched and his weapon smoking. Behind him, his team moved under their own power, tired and battered but alive.
Luca was on his feet before he realized he'd moved.
His brother saw him and raised a hand, casual and cocky, like he'd just beaten a raid boss.
"Portal is unstable." Alessio's voice carried from where he was. "Should be back to normal within the hour."
A blur of midnight fur bounded out behind him. Pixel appeared, singed in places, blood on her muzzle that definitely wasn't hers. A sleek black helmet covered her head, fitted perfectly to her feline skull.