Mission 1.5 ended with a fleet arriving. Mission 2 opened with a road, a bell, and a job so small the brief could barely fill a page: walk six haulers fourteen klicks down Renn's Cut and keep them whole. Bandits work this route. Nobody said anything else worked it.
One line in the brief was dropped like it was nothing. Hauler four is Choir-sealed. No manifest. The See asks only that it arrives. Five Colossi came out of a Manta's open bay into the dust to make sure it did, and three hours later the casket was over the ridge and gone, the escort was scattered across half a kilometer of tailings, and the woman they had spent the night shooting at was asking them, politely, to stop.
The night's first natural 20 hits nothing
The Manta swept the road out of the dawn and five Colossi dropped into the column's dust. Monolyth opened the mission with a natural 20 on the Quarry Breaker and hit nothing at all — Corsair Sov was seven hexes out and the hammer reaches six. It set the tone honestly. For most of the first round this was a fight about distance, and nobody had any.
Sov herself opened on Magus twice and missed twice, her standby lights still amber. She was not trying very hard. Her Dusthauler was: it put a cargo hook into hauler four, absorbed clean off the armor, and used the hit to slam the casket flat — eight raw, prone, immobilized, before a single Cantor had closed the gap. The theft did not need to beat anyone. It only needed a tow line.
“You've made your call.”
Orca found the answer to a fight nobody could reach: Command. Shadow took the free move, got a lane, and put Sightline into Sov for five. Then, next activation, for eight.
That second one crossed a line the party could not see. Sov's amber standby lights snapped red. Four hit points came back. Warning Shot and the Corsair Rifle went live. Her voice flattened out to something with no negotiation left in it: “You've made your call.”
The table read it as a boss phase. It was a threshold. Sov had been running an escort-grade bluff up to that point, and the mission had quietly been holding a door open the whole time. Eight points of damage shut it.
Five ground teams and a torpedo
The ridge answered. Five ground teams opened up at once from cover the escort had walked straight past — a Talon Rocket into Monolyth's rear arc for five with splash onto Magus, carbines from the flanks, a mortar off the high ground, and from Ground Team E something the board had not shown anyone before: a Stinger missile, guided, impact next round. A weapon that lands on a delay changes what a turn is worth. The party spent the rest of the night with a clock in the air.
Monolyth planted the Immovable Challenge and became the only thing on the field anyone was allowed to shoot comfortably. Shadow, out of good angles, did the least glamorous and most useful thing available and simply Watched the Dusthauler: fourteen hit points, two armor, no statuses. First hard read of the night, and the first Obsidian Resonance in the band.
The Indomitable answers
Then Monolyth called orbit.
The Indomitable — the battle-whale the wing had escorted home through the interdiction — was still overhead, and it owed them. Monolyth marked the ground and the Aegis landed at the top of the round: a dome of singing stone dropped over the position, overshield layered on top of granite armor.
It worked exactly once, and it worked completely. A Lamplight Beam came in for seven energy and was fully absorbed. Carbines came in behind it and were fully absorbed. For one round, the thing the ridge was shooting at simply did not take damage. One orbital call left this scene.
The round everything went wrong at once
Round five arrived carrying four separate pieces of bad news in the same breath.
Monolyth burned for one and dropped to four hit points. The Stinger that had been in the air for two rounds finally found Orca, put five through, and took Orca into Structure — the first structure damage of the mission. One ground team went down and the survivors immediately fell back four into the ridge, because they are paid, not zealous, and the board said so out loud.
And the Dusthauler finished its third tow. The casket went over the ridge exit and off the field. Not destroyed, not contested, not lost to a bad roll. Towed, six hexes at a time, three times, while five Colossi were busy with the people paid to keep them busy.
Magus went after it alone — Sway into full speed, Tidal Lash into the Dusthauler's flank for three. Orca emptied the tank behind the chase, spending an entire Full action on a single Command to hand Shadow a free full action. Third Lapis band. Everything on the table.
She asks them to stop
And there, with the casket already gone and her own hull carrying most of a night's worth of Sightline, Sov opened a channel to the whole field.
“That's close enough, Stoneknights. Step away from hauler four. The rest rides free.”
The timing is the whole thing. She said it after taking real damage, and she said it while she was already winning — the casket was over the ridge, the tow was done, she could have simply left. Instead she stopped to make an offer, and the offer was not for her cargo. It was for the other five haulers. She has never once shot at them.
Nobody has answered her yet.
The laborers do not move
The session ran out with the field still live. Shadow put ten energy through Ground Team C and went hunting the missile crew. Psyche picked up the Command that Orca had taught the table to respect and passed it on. Monolyth stood fourteen hexes from a foreman named Henk with a hammer that reaches six.
And the board said one more thing, quietly, with nobody's initiative attached to it:
Nobody ordered the laborers to stand that far from hauler four. They do anyway.
The Cut is still there. The casket is over the ridge. Sov is still on the channel with her hand up. Whatever is inside hauler four, the people who loaded it already know enough to keep their distance from it — and the See only ever asked that it arrive.
Where it stands
Mid-round five, unresolved. Hauler four is off the board. Monolyth is at four hit points, Orca is into Structure, one ground team is down and the rest have pulled back into the ridge. Corsair Sov is holding an open channel and one orbital call is still unspent. Mission 2 continues.