The compound gate at Lakar opened the same way it always did, with reluctance and noise. The guards waved us through after a glance that lingered too long on me and not long enough on Hoffman's papers. The war had taught them that documents mattered little.
The truck rolled into the yard, tyres crunching gravel, and stopped near a cluster of other vehicles with fresh dents and old blood stains. Someone had tried to wash them. Someone had failed.
Sommers killed the engine and sat for a moment with both hands on the wheel. His shoulders looked smaller than they had at Gralia. Baz climbed out first and stretched like his bones were trying to resign. Salton hopped down and immediately scanned the perimeter as if expecting the neutral world to take offence and shoot him for it. Cho and Bai moved with the same quiet economy as always. They did not look like men returning from a mission; they looked like men who had never left.
Hoffman hopped down from the passenger seat and adjusted his uniform as if he had merely taken a long drive. His face carried the same calm expression when he killed.
He turned as I unfolded myself from the back. The motion drew stares from nearby soldiers, because it always did. There was no dignified way to stand up when your knees were pressed into your chest, and the canvas tarp had been your ceiling. I rose anyway, SPI plates catching the yard light in dull angles, and the yard went slightly quieter.
Hoffman looked me over with the faintest shift in expression, the closest thing to approval he ever allowed himself.
"You did good work," he said.
It landed oddly. Praise from Hoffman sounded like a status update. Baz glanced at him as if waiting for the punchline, then decided there was none. Sommers kept his eyes forward. Cho looked away. Bai did not react at all.
I nodded once. "The missions complete."
"The missions complete," Hoffman agreed. "And you didn't make it harder than it needed to be."
That was the closest thing to a medal I expected from him.
We moved toward the main building for debrief, boots on concrete, the smell of disinfectant creeping in as the doors opened. The corridor swallowed us and replaced outdoor air with fluorescent light and stale bureaucracy. A clerk at a desk looked up, saw Hoffman, saw me, and immediately decided his paperwork could wait for later. He did not say anything. He did not need to. Fear was an efficient tool to garner attention.
Hoffman started talking before we reached the briefing rooms, voice low enough that the squad could still hear him if they wanted.
"Control confirmed air strikes hit the approach," he said. "Sarfuth held the line. The UIR column took damage it did not expect. That buys us time."
Time. Always time. War treated time as currency, and nobody ever admitted what it cost.
He turned his head slightly and glanced at me. "The fence line," he added, as if discussing a minor maintenance issue. "Good call. You kept the alarm from becoming a problem."
"The radio stayed quiet," I said.
"Yes," Hoffman replied. "That was the point."
Baz's jaw tightened. He did not say anything. The mission had already taught him what deniable meant, and he had not enjoyed learning.
We rounded a corner and nearly walked into a new set of eyes.
Adam Fenix stood in the hallway outside a closed office door, leaning on a cane like he refused to admit he needed it. His uniform sat perfectly, because Adam did not allow disorder near him if he could prevent it. The leg wound had not disappeared; it had simply been filed under inconvenience. His face looked thinner than it had at Ragani. His eyes looked sharper.
A guard stood nearby, pretending he was there for any reason other than to witness the meeting.
Hoffman stopped. He did not salute. Adam did not demand one. They were the same breed of officer, different flavours of certainty.
"Captain," Adam said.
"Major," Hoffman replied.
The title landed with meaning. Hoffman had been promoted or at least temporarily elevated. It fit him in the way a new weapon fits an eager hand. He held himself as if he had always owned the rank, and perhaps he had. The war tended to reward men who could do ugly tasks without blinking.
Adam's gaze flicked past Hoffman and landed on me. He took in the armour again, the height, the shape that did not match any standard file. His expression tightened slightly, not fear, not disgust. Familiar calculation.
"Hoffman," Adam said, eyes still on me, "your attached asset is becoming a pattern."
Hoffman's mouth twitched once. "Varmund has a talent for being where the mission needs weight."
Adam's eyes finally shifted back to Hoffman. "I assume you did not lose him in neutral territory."
Hoffman's tone stayed even. "No, sir."
"Good," Adam said. "Neutral territory complaints are already stacked on my desk. Another one would be tedious."
That was Adam's version of humour. It had sharp edges and no patience.
Hoffman stepped closer to Adam, lowering his voice. The hallway still carried sound, and the guard still listened, but both men spoke as if secrecy was a habit they could not stop.
"You got what you wanted," Hoffman said. "Radar went down. Air got through."
Adam nodded once. "The ambush bought Sarfuth breathing room. Choi is furious. Baxter is pretending he never heard of you. The usual."
Hoffman accepted that as weather.
Adam's cane tapped once against the floor as he shifted his weight. He looked past Hoffman again, directly at me.
"Varmund," he said.
I had not heard him say my name in days. It sounded strange coming from him, less like a label and more like a file tab.
"Yes," I said.
"Walk with me," Adam said.
It was not a request. It was not a threat. It was an order dressed as conversation, the kind that gave you the illusion of choice and then measured what you did with it.
Hoffman looked between us. He did not object. Hoffman rarely objected when someone else accepted responsibility for a problem.
I nodded. "All right."
Adam turned and started walking down the corridor. I followed. The distance between us stayed deliberate. Close enough to speak. Far enough that the guards would not interpret the moment as me looming.
We passed a doorway where a medic argued with a quartermaster about supplies. We passed a bulletin board filled with casualty lists and requisition forms. We passed a window that looked out over the yard, where soldiers moved like ants around damaged vehicles, all of them convinced the next piece of work would be the one that mattered.
Adam led me into an empty office with a map board and two chairs. The chairs were too small for me. Adam sat anyway, wincing once as his leg settled. He watched my posture as I remained standing.
He did not speak immediately. That silence was not hesitation. It was him setting the terms.
"Ragani pushed me off the line," he said finally. "The leg made the argument for me. Even if it did not, the casualties did."
I had already known that part. He said it anyway because he wanted me to hear it from him, not from rumour.
"I am moving to the Defence Research Agency," Adam continued. "Hammer development. The work nobody cheers for until it saves them."
Deterrence again. The word did not appear, but the underlying reason for 'hammer' filled the room.
He looked up at me. "Before that happens, I have one more operation in front of me. A UIR operations centre. Logistics, comms, coordination. The kind of node that keeps raids like Gralia from being luck."
I waited.
Adam's eyes stayed on my face. "If we destroy it cleanly, the command will give me leave. Official leave. Clean break. The kind that lets me disappear into research without anyone calling it cowardice."
He paused, then added the other half, the one that mattered to me.
"And you," he said, "would be formally inducted. Rank. Record. A uniform that matches your affiliation claim. You would stop being an anomaly on a transport manifest."
That offer carried weight because it sounded like structure. It also carried danger because the structure came with control.
I stared at him for a long moment. Adam did not flinch. He held my gaze like he held battlefield lines, waiting for the other side to reveal itself.
"What is the catch?" I asked.
Adam's mouth tightened. "The catch is that it is real. The target is defended. The mission is not deniable in the same way. If you go in, you will be seen. If you succeed, you will be known. If you fail, you will be dead or captured. If you are captured, I doubt the UIR will ask polite questions."
Fair. Direct. Almost generous.
I could feel the system in the back of my skull, quiet and patient. It did not offer advice about politics. It did not care about rank. It cared about essence, about survival, about the next fight.
Adam watched me think.
"You will have Hoffman's kind of support," he said. "Not his temperament. He will not lead this. This is mine."
That landed like an admission. Adam did not normally announce ownership unless he wanted it recognised.
I took a slow breath. The air in the office smelled of paper and old disinfectant.
"I want to do something else," I said.
Adam blinked once. It was a small reaction, but it existed. "Something else," he repeated.
"Yes."
For the first time, Adam's expression softened into something like curiosity, edged with caution. "What do you plan to do?"
The answer had been circling in my mind for days, ever since I realised the COG's idea of using me involved either a cell or a battlefield. Neither option gave me time to build leverage. Neither option gave me control over the one resource this world wanted the most.
I spoke carefully, because the sentence sounded insane even inside my own head.
"I want to buy an emulsion zone," I said. "A contaminated area nobody wants. Then I want to build a company."
Adam stared.
The silence stretched long enough to be uncomfortable, which meant it lasted long enough to be honest.
Then Adam laughed.
It was not loud. It was not cruel. It was the laugh of a man whose mind had been filled with war math and suddenly got handed a different equation. He shook his head slightly, cane hand tightening.
"A company," he said.
"Yes."
"And what," Adam asked, voice dry now, "would this company sell?"
I did not list the real answers. I did not say armour catalogues, research trees, weapons from other worlds that only I could access. I did not say essence. I did not say system. That was not a conversation you had in an empty office with a man moving to the DRA.
Instead, I gave him something he could understand.
"Solutions," I said. "Mining. Containment. Construction. Things that let people touch dangerous ground without dying. War creates waste. I want to turn some of it into infrastructure."
Adam's smile faded into calculation again. He leaned back slightly, leg twinging, eyes narrowing as he tested the idea against reality.
"You want a foundation," he said.
"I want options," I replied. "The COG uses weapons until they break. I do not want to be a weapon that gets broken."
Adam watched me for another long moment.
"I can tell you this," he said. "Nobody will sell you an emulsion site while the war is still consuming the map. Nobody will sign that deed without political cover. Nobody will let you build anything near contaminated ground unless they believe you can control it."
"I can control it," I said, and kept my tone neutral, because confidence invited scrutiny.
Adam's mouth twitched again, almost a smile. "Maybe you can. Maybe you cannot. Either way, you will need influence."
I waited.
Adam tapped his cane against the floor once, a small sound that punctuated his thought.
"Influence comes from results," he said. "You want to buy a zone and build a company. Fine. That is almost reasonable, which is the most suspicious part. But it becomes possible only if you stop being a rumour and start being a name on paper."
He paused. "The operations centre mission," he said, "creates that paper. It gives me my leave. It gives you your rank. It gives both of us leverage. After that, you can chase your strange little business plan."
The phrasing carried amusement, but the core was serious.
"So you are saying yes," I said.
Adam exhaled, and the sound carried fatigue and something like reluctant respect. "I am saying it is maybe possible," he replied. "If the mission succeeds."
He stood with a controlled wince, cane taking some of his weight. He looked smaller than me in every physical sense. In the room, he still felt like the heavier object.
"You can walk away after," Adam said. "I will not stop you. I may argue. I will not stop you. But I need you for this."
That honesty cost him something. Adam did not like needing variables he could not fully define.
I nodded once. "All right," I said. "We do the mission. Then we talk about my company."
Adam's eyes held mine. "We talk about it," he agreed. "And if you ever say the words emulsion zone acquisition in front of a politician, do not act surprised when they faint."
That was the closest thing to a warning and a joke at the same time that he could manage.
He opened the office door and stepped back into the corridor. The war noise returned immediately. Boots. Radios. Shouted names. Paper moving from one desk to another like it mattered more than gold.
Adam started walking toward the briefing rooms again. I followed, armour quiet, thoughts loud.
The mission would give me paper. The paper would give me space. Space would give me time.
Time, on Sera, was always the real currency.