The Ol’ Five Seven’s drome felt smaller with people in it.

  Not crowded. Not yet. Just occupied in a way it hadn’t been before. The space had been built for machines first and men second, and now the balance was shifting. Boots echoed differently when there were more of them. Voices carried, then cut off when their owners realized who else was listening.

  Otwin stood on the concrete apron in front of the fort, hands clasped behind his back, watching Jordy bring them in.

  They came through the side access in loose order, not marching, not slouching either. Jordy walked at the front like this was the most natural thing in the world, one hand lifted occasionally to gesture someone left or right, spacing them without ever saying it out loud.

  Otwin clocked the sharpshooters first.

  Six of them. You could always tell. They didn’t look around much. Didn’t stare at the fort. Didn’t gawk at the size of it. Their eyes moved instead, tracking angles, measuring distance, checking sightlines instinctively. Rifles were slung clean and cared for, not decorated. No two were dressed exactly alike, but there was a sameness to how they carried themselves. Still. Patient. Already deciding where they would stand if things went bad.

  Doke noticed them too.

  Otwin saw it in the way Doke shifted his weight near the edge of the group, head turning just enough to take them in. There was no greeting. No nod. Just recognition. The sharpshooters noticed him back. One of them adjusted his sling without thinking about it. Another tilted his head a fraction, in acknowledgement.

  Good.

  Behind them came the security vets.

  Ten of them, broad-shouldered and solid, men who had spent years being paid to not move when others tried to make them. They wore practical gear, layered clothing meant to take abuse, boots scuffed and broken in. A few of them glanced openly at the exoskeleton frames laid out along the wall, stripped down and waiting. Otwin saw interest there, but not hunger. They understood equipment. They understood responsibility.

  Those frames were not toys.

  And then there were the stormtroopers.

  Four of them were easy to spot once you knew what to look for. The posture gave them away first. Straight backs without stiffness. Heads level. A way of standing that suggested they were always aware of where their weapon would be if they needed it, even when they weren’t carrying one.

  They didn’t have armor yet. That mattered.

  Otwin felt their eyes on him as Jordy brought the group to a stop.

  Jordy turned and nodded once. “This is everyone.”

  Otwin stepped forward.

  Up close, the differences sharpened. Scars old and new. A missing finger on one of the security guards. A stormtrooper with a healed burn crawling up the side of his neck and disappearing under his collar. A sharpshooter whose left eye didn’t quite track the same as the right, compensated for by how carefully he positioned himself.

  Otwin let the silence stretch.

  He wasn’t doing it to intimidate them. He was doing it to see who broke it.

  No one did.

  “Alright,” Otwin said finally. His voice carried without effort. “Jordy brought you here because he thinks you’re worth having. That buys you time. It doesn’t buy you trust.”

  A few of them shifted. Not much. Enough to show they were listening.

  “You’re not here to impress me,” Otwin continued. “You’re not here to prove anything. If you’re looking for a cause, you’re in the wrong place.”

  He gestured toward the fort behind him.

  “You’re here because we have work. Dangerous work. The kind that doesn’t get simpler the longer you do it.”

  He turned his head slightly, eyes settling on the security vets.

  “Those frames,” he said, “are not costumes. If you’re wearing one, you’re responsible for everyone standing near you. You break something because you were careless, you answer for it.”

  A few nods.

  He shifted his attention to the sharpshooters.

  “You’ll answer to Doke,” Otwin said. “If you don’t like how he does things, you won’t be here long.”

  Doke did not react. That was the point.

  Finally, Otwin looked at the stormtroopers.

  “You four,” he said, “know exactly what this kind of work looks like. You also know what happens when it goes wrong.”

  One of them met his gaze steadily.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Otwin did not correct the title.

  “You don’t have armor yet,” Otwin said. “That’s not an oversight. It’s a delay. We’re fixing it.”

  He turned his head and looked at Jordy.

  “Let Grump know we’re going to need more stormtrooper armor,” Otwin said. “Full kits. No rush jobs. I don’t want them stepping into a fight half-protected.”

  Jordy nodded immediately. “I’ll pass it on.”

  Otwin turned back to the group.

  Stolen story; please report.

  “For now,” he said, “you’ll get quarters, food, and time to learn where you’re standing. You’ll learn who you answer to. You’ll learn what we do and what we don’t.”

  He paused.

  “And you’ll understand this,” he added. “If you’re here, you pull your weight. If you can’t, you leave before you get someone else killed.”

  No one argued.

  Otwin stepped back, signaling the end of it. Jordy immediately moved, peeling off to start directing people where to go. The group broke apart in an orderly way, small conversations starting quietly, professionals taking stock of a new environment.

  Otwin watched them disperse.

  This wasn’t just a crew anymore.

  It was something more.

  And whether he liked it or not, it was his to command.

  ***

  Otwin had expected friction. He had expected one or two men to puff their chests, to test boundaries, to decide the new commander needed to be measured. That was how most groups worked. That was how men worked when they were scared and didn’t want to admit it.

  It didn’t happen.

  Maybe it was Jordy’s filtering. Maybe it was the fact that everyone in that drome had heard what Otwin had done to the mercenaries in exoskeletons. Maybe it was the simple reality of standing under the shadow of a Steam Fort and realizing nobody here was pretending this was safe.

  Whatever the reason, the new people acclimated the way veterans did.

  Quietly.

  They watched. They listened. They learned the rhythm.

  The Ol’ Five Seven was still mid refit, panels open, systems exposed, crews moving across its hull like ants across a carcass that was being rebuilt into something sharper. The fort master and his men kept working with a steady pace that didn’t waver just because more boots were on the floor. The artificers checked runes and power routing. The engineers adjusted fittings and argued in low voices about tolerances.

  Otwin let them argue. He had learned quickly that some arguments were part of good work.

  The recruits found their places.

  The sharpshooters were the easiest to organize because they were already organized. They didn’t need to be told how to stand or how to keep their mouths shut. They needed their equipment checked, their habits understood, and their lines of responsibility made clear.

  Doke handled it without fuss.

  He took them one by one, not in a formal line, but in a slow series of quiet conversations. He looked at their rifles the way a mechanic looked at an engine. Not admiring, not judging, just reading.

  None of the rifles were standard.

  That would have been suspicious, actually. A sharpshooter who carried a factory weapon without modifications either didn’t know what he was doing or was hiding something. These men had their own preferences. Different stocks shaped to different shoulders. Different optics, some scavenged and rebuilt, some bought through connections Otwin didn’t want to know about. Trigger assemblies polished until they shone. Barrels were weighted or cut, depending on whether the owner wanted stability or speed.

  One rifle had a hand-carved notch along the fore end, a simple tactile mark for a grip point in the dark.

  Doke did not comment on taste.

  He checked functionality. He checked maintenance. He checked that every rifle had a cleaning kit and spare parts that actually fit. He checked sight alignment. He checked whether the men knew their own weapons well enough to strip them blind.

  Then he assigned positions.

  Not permanently, not yet, but enough to start a structure. Overwatch lanes around the drome. Points on the fort where a marksman could cover boarding approaches. Places where a man could lie prone without being trampled by workers or spotted too easily.

  The sharpshooters accepted the placements without complaint.

  They respected Doke because he spoke their language.

  The enforcers took longer.

  Ten security vets sounded like a simple thing until you handed them exoskeleton frames.

  The frames were not armor in the way stormtrooper kit was armor. They were not sleek and integrated. They were industrial muscle. Metal struts, joint supports, power couplings, and a harness that wrapped a man’s body like a mechanical spine. They turned a strong person into a far more dangerous person. They also turned a careless person into a liability.

  Otwin made sure the first fittings happened under supervision.

  Engineers checked lock points and alignment. Artificers verified the power stone interfaces. Men climbed into the frames one at a time and learned how it felt to move with extra weight and extra force.

  Most of them adapted quickly.

  They were veterans, not boys. They understood that strength meant nothing if you couldn’t control it.

  They practiced basic movement first. Walking. Turning. Stopping without overbalancing. Picking up a crate and setting it down without crushing it. Then they moved into partner drills, learning how to operate near other frame wearers without colliding.

  Once that was stable, Otwin had them armed.

  Not rifles.

  Counter boarding weapons.

  Axes and maces.

  The logic was simple. Guns were useful at range, but boarding fights happened close, and close fights happened fast. An axe could hook and drag. A mace could break joints and helmets. A heavy head on a short haft could cave in a man’s ribs through armor.

  In an exoskeleton frame, those weapons became more than tools.

  They became answers.

  Otwin watched one of the enforcers swing a mace into a practice post and send the whole thing shuddering. The man looked down at the dented wood with a quiet, almost surprised satisfaction.

  “Control,” Otwin told him.

  The enforcer nodded and swung again, slower, keeping the head on line.

  Across the drome, Jordy handled the stormtroopers.

  Four of them, newly recruited, disciplined, and not fully useful until they had proper kit.

  It took a few days.

  Grump’s connections worked, but nothing moved instantly, not in Rafborough and not after everything that had happened. Armor had to be sourced. Fit had to be checked. Energy rifles had to be found, purchased, or traded for. Then there were the STVs.

  Small tracked vehicles, basically armored ATVs on stubby tracks, the kind of machine that could skim over broken ground and still carry a man with a rifle and a pack. They had been used effectively against the turret fort. The stormtroopers needed them because stormtroopers without mobility were just well-trained men waiting to be outflanked.

  When the armor finally arrived, it came in crates.

  Otwin watched the lids get pried off.

  The smell of treated metal and storage oil filled the air. The stormtroopers handled the pieces with familiar care, checking seals, checking connectors, checking the fit points where armor met under layer.

  The energy rifles came with their own cases.

  Cleaner than most weapons in this city. Less modified. More standardized.

  When the stormtroopers held them, their posture changed subtly, as if some missing piece had clicked into place.

  By the end of the week, the Ol’ Five Seven’s refit was no longer just a refit.

  It was an upgrade.

  The last and largest piece of that upgrade was mounted at the front.

  The energy cannon.

  The fort already had two light energy cannons in side turrets, small enough to rotate freely and cover broad arcs. Those were useful for harassment, for cutting down soft targets, for burning through light armor. They were not siege weapons.

  The full-sized cannon was.

  It could not be mounted in a turret on a Steam Fort the size of the Ol’ Five Seven. The fort was on the lower end of mid-sized. A turret big enough to rotate that cannon would have eaten too much space and too much structural support. It would have turned the fort into something unstable.

  So it went into a forward-mounted sponson.

  The engineers cut and reinforced the mounting bay, bracing the frame with additional ribs. Artificers inscribed stabilizing runes along the sponson housing, patterns designed to bleed heat and manage recoil load through controlled discharge.

  When the cannon was finally slid into place, the drome went quiet for a moment.

  Men stopped what they were doing just long enough to look.

  The barrel was thick. The housing bulky. The power routing cables ran like veins into the fort’s core. It sat forward and low, giving it a limited firing arc, but within that arc it was absolute.

  Otwin stood on the apron and watched the final bolts get tightened.

  He did not smile.

  He simply felt the weight of it.

  A fort that could take hits.

  A fort that could move.

  A fort that now had a forward throat big enough to bite through other machines.

  The Ol’ Five Seven was becoming something else.

  And his people, without making noise about it, were becoming something else with it.