Kanza stared at the faint, glowing sigils on the young sentry’s neck, the interlocking marks of the Koldaran desert scouts, Oakh’s old unit. Not merely stolen tech, but actively hunted. The frost of old syndicate cellars prickled along Kanza's nape. The Vayan reach was longer, more insidious than ever imagined. They weren't just after Kanza; they were after Oakh’s past, after the very fabric of the life Kanza had found. This mainframe had to fall tonight. All of it. The network, the names, the tracking – everything that threatened the Hollow-Rock Inn. If they wanted a war, Kanza would bring it to their doorstep. Or, more accurately, tear down their ceiling.
Before Kanza could even decide whether to knock the young guard out or attempt to get information, the captive's features contorted in a soundless snarl. A high-frequency pulse tore through the chamber acoustics. The conscript convulsed, then crumpled against the floorplates, leaving Kanza gripping a useless piece of armor.
“Traps,” Dalko rasped, spinning from the console, mouth drawn tight. “That rat-faced informant must’ve seen us. Mainframe’s locking down.”
Above them, the air vents began to hiss. A sickly green vapor, thick and acrid, poured into the server room, smelling faintly of ozone and something metallic, like stale blood. Neural-gas.
“The doors!” Kanza yelled, whirling.
They were already sealing, thick alloy plates sliding into place with a hydraulic hiss, the heavy thud echoing the finality of a tomb. The processor vault was turning into a gas chamber.
“Damn it!” Dalko coughed, fumbling at his belt. He unhooked a small, battered filter-mask, no bigger than a fist. Without a word, he shoved it into Kanza’s hand. “Only got one. Get to the console. Override it. The kill-code is `Koldaran-Echo-Omega-7`.”
Kanza stared at the single filter unit, then at Dalko’s face, already streaked with sweat, his eyelids reddening from the haze. “Dalko, no. You need this more.”
“I’m already half-gassed from the journey, it won’t make a difference for long!” Dalko’s voice was strained, thick with the gas. “But you – you’re their target. You can finish this. Just type it in. I’ll make sure nothing gets to you.”
His words were punctuated by a metallic clang from the reinforced door. A small service hatch burst inward, torn off its hinges, and through the opening, another armored trooper appeared, followed by two more, their plasma prods already hissing with blue charge. Their gear, identical to the fallen recruit's, bore the same frontier insignia. They were fast, moving with an almost preternatural coordination.
Kanza clamped the rubber seal over their mouth and nose, cool filtered intake hitting dry lungs. The green gas was already swirling past Kanza’s knees, stinging eyes and lungs even through the filters.
“Go!” Dalko choked, stumbling back toward a bank of mainframe towers, grabbing a heavy heatsink slab and hefting it like a bludgeon. “I’ll buy you time!”
Kanza didn’t waste another second. To argue was to die. Kanza lunged for the fallen soldier, wrenching a crackling shock-baton from slack fingers. The weapon hummed to life, a low, dangerous thrum. With a desperate surge of adrenaline, Kanza met the first charging sentry.
The shock-baton arced, slamming into the trooper’s chestplate. Copper sparks burst across the alloy, and the scout recoiled, failing capacitors shrieking against the roar of the ventilation. Kanza pivoted low, sweeping the second soldier's boots out from under him and dumping him hard against a rack of storage drives. The third lunged from Kanza’s blind spot, baton humming close. Kanza dipped under the stroke, static scorch singing hair at the ear, then drove the shock-baton upward in a short, vicious hook. The faceplate cracked apart, snapping the soldier back onto the floorplates.
“Echo-Omega-7!” Dalko coughed, driving the heatsink corner into the collar of an advancing rifleman, who staggered but stayed upright. The neural-gas was visibly thicker around Dalko, his movements growing sluggish.
Kanza drove forward, the intake valve whistling with every sharp breath to keep the green fumes out. The stolen Ranger alloy deflected blunt impacts, but the shock rod shorted relays directly through suit seams. Kanza aimed for joints, for exposed conduits, for the specific points where the armor failed. Every strike was a precise, calculated act of brutality, honed in the blood-soaked training halls of Oura.
More syndicate reinforcements spilled through the hatch frame. Dalko dropped to one knee, coughing violently, swinging the metal slab in short arcs to cover Kanza’s dash toward the master interface.
“Kill-code!” Kanza yelled through the rubber mask.
Kanza’s fingers, trembling slightly from the exertion and the creeping effects of the gas, flew across the illuminated keys. The letters clicked under blunt thumb strikes: `Koldaran`. `Echo`. `Omega`. `7`. The display flashed red, inverted green, and a circuit breaker snapped overhead with a dry pop.
Raw voltage surged through the network. Data feeds collapsed into grey static. The Vayan tracking network, that insidious web of biometric pulses and hidden signals, began to unravel. On the CRT, a low-res topographical scan of the wastes flickered, red locator beacons tracking across the glass. Then, one by one, they winked out of existence. Hollow-Rock Inn, a bright beacon in Kanza’s memory, was gone from the grid. Oakh’s ghost of a past, his very name, scrubbed clean.
Air emptied from Kanza's lungs in a hard, sudden drop. It was done. The Inn was safe. Oakh was safe.
Kanza turned, the baton whining softly on low charge, and saw Dalko pitch sideways, fingers still locked around the metal chunk. His eyes were wide, vacant, staring at the green vapor swirling around his face.
“Dalko!” Kanza stripped off the mask, tossed it down, and lunged across the floor. The gas hit Kanza full force, a burning fire in the lungs, a sudden dizziness.
Before Kanza reached him, a concussion blast detonated at the entrance. The sealed outer hatch blasted free of its frame, slamming flat against the floor in a cloud of burnt cordite and dust.
Through the swirling dust and debris, a figure stepped, tall and imposing, flanked by a dozen heavy-gunners whose weapons were already raised. Kanza froze, hand inches from Dalko's shoulder.
It was Kanza’s father, the Syndicate Boss, his eyes cold and assessing.