So, spoiler for this - this is not the end I plan for my band of Resistance fighters. I was just tinkering with ideas for them, but I thought you might like to see. It's a short passage, but you can see how they are all bonded, even 329 spins up for the fight. Thoughts most welcome.

 

The sun didn’t rise that morning. Not properly. Just a bruised smear above the horizon, like the sky was ashamed to look us in the eye. We stood in the courtyard — the last open ground before the fallback position — where sand had drifted into the cracks between the stone like it meant to bury us ahead of schedule.

Brutus rumbled behind me, her engine coughing low. One of her sponsons was gone — slagged in the last barrage — but the other still turned when I called for it. She’d die today, and she knew it. But not without giving back everything she had.

The Iron Duke loomed just off to the side, its hull still scorched from the last charge. It had carried the wounded, shielded our retreat, held the line when the rest broke. A relic once — but now? A symbol.

And behind it, half-lost in the bunker shadows, was 329. I could hear the fuel pumps hiss. The engines didn’t purr — they growled, low and resentful. Not like a tool, but like a thing that understood what was coming.

Krystan hadn’t said a word since the night before. He sat inside 329’s belly like a monk in a temple. Still. Focused. If that monster had a soul, it had latched onto his. If Krystan was going to Hell, it would be there, busting down the gates.

Laska stood at my right, eyes on the ridgeline. Her sleeves were rolled, dust crusted into her forearms. Blood too — not hers. She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink. She’d made her peace. And I… I was proud of her in that moment, more than I could ever say. My love.

Czajka had already gone prone near the southern wall. He didn’t look up as I passed — just adjusted the windage on his scope. He always knew the wind better than I did.

Zofia leaned against the Duke, cigarette clamped between her teeth, arms folded tight. She looked like she was waiting for a punch — and daring the bastard to throw it.

And Róźa... Róźa stood alone at the edge, near the ruined gate. No orders. Just instinct. That was all she ever needed.

I turned to face them, boots grinding against the stone. My squad. My family, though I’d never said the word.

They were filthy. Scarred. Exhausted.

They were perfect.

“We don’t hold this ground,” I said, low, calm. “We become it.” No speeches. No shouting. Just the truth.

Laska nodded, her shoulder brushing mine. “We’re already ghosts,” she said.

I smiled. Real, for once. “Then let’s :cuss:ing haunt them.”

And when the first shells came down — distant at first, then closer, hungry — I didn’t flinch. I watched the horizon crack open. I heard the howl of  329 winding up like some ancient god dragging itself into the fight one last time.

And I felt no fear. Only pride. Pride in the machines behind me. Pride in the people beside me. Pride that this — this bloodied, broken corner of the desert — was ours. If the Imperium wanted it back, they’d have to dig us out with their bare hands..