Steam hissed from overhead rafters, thick with the stench of low-grade coal and sulfur. Tashya wiped grease from her cheek with the back of a canvas work-glove, keeping her pneumatic nail-gun leveled at the gloom.
A mechanical groan vibrated the floorplates. Two massive, riveted iron legs stomped into the halo of the gantry spotlights. The contraption stood twelve feet tall—a bulbous, armored chassis cobbled together from mining tractor treads, locomotive boiler plates, and hydraulic pistons dripping black oil. In the center of its torso, locked behind a crude mesh grate, pulsed a brilliant crimson cylinder: the missing half of the military thermal-core.
Uncle Brask grinned behind the reinforced glass of the rig's upper cockpit. Beside the cockpit, seated on a suspended iron catwalk, four men in heavy wool overcoats and fox-fur collars watched from behind the rail. Capital brokers, their leader's signet rings catching the amber lamps as he tapped a folder.
"Look at it, Tashya!" Brask bellowed through the mech's external PA horn, the sound crackling with static. "Fifty thousand credits for the frame alone! With the core, this walking siege platform breaks the border garrisons wide open. You came to beg for scraps, but you're just fuel for the treadmills!"
Tashya tilted her head. She lowered the nail-gun slightly, letting her shoulders slump into an posture of pure exhaustion.
"Uncle," she called out, her voice flat, carrying clearly through the echoing hangar. "Did you hire a blind goat to weld that exhaust manifold? Or did you just close your eyes and pray to the Bureau of Standards?"
Brask caught his breath over the speaker horn. "What?"
"The intake elbow," she drawled, tapping her temple. "You routed a high-pressure brass line right next to an uninsulated galvanic radiator. If you fire that pneumatic claw, the back-pressure will shear the mount pins within three seconds. Not to mention your weight distribution—forty percent of your mass sits above the hip bearing. It’s not a war machine; it’s an oversized tea kettle waiting to commit suicide."
On the catwalk, the lead broker tilted his chin down toward the contract in his lap. "Brask. Is this unit uncertified?"
"She’s lying! She’s a sickly girl who couldn’t lift a shovel!" Brask shrieked through the horn. He yanked a control lever. "Watch her turn to paste!"
The mechanical beast lurched forward, its right arm whining as hydraulic fluid surged into the crushing claw. It took one thundering stride, iron feet gouging deep divots into the packed dirt floor.
Tashya didn't flinch. She raised the pneumatic gun, sighted the junction behind the left knee assembly where a stripped copper bolt held the balance gyros, and pulled the trigger.
*CLANG.*
The three-inch hardened spike punched cleanly through the copper bolt.
A metallic shriek cut through the warehouse air. The knee joint buckled instantly under the chassis’s lopsided weight. The piston sheared out of its cylinder mount, vomiting scalded oil across the front plates. With a deafening crash, the twelve-foot iron monster pitched sideways, smashing shoulder-first into a stack of empty fuel drums. The glass cockpit shattered. Brask tumbled out onto the oily gravel, tangled in severed cables and howling as steam scorched his coat.
The capital buyers stood up, repulsed.
"Garbage," the lead broker spat, tearing the parchment contract in half and dropping the pieces onto Brask's thrashing form. "We were promised military-grade hardware, not scrap metal held together with spit. Find another buyer for your suicide traps, Brask."
"No! Wait! The power core works! Look at the glow!" Brask scrambled on hands and knees through the filth, his face purple with rage and shame. He looked around wildly at the perimeter of the factory, where dozens of soot-stained laborers stood clutching wrenches and pry bars. "You dogs! Kill her! Shoot her and drag the core to the truck!"
Not a single worker moved.
A grizzled boilermaker stepped out of the ranks, tossing a rusted monkey wrench onto the ground at Brask's feet. "You haven't paid rations in three weeks, old man. And the girl built a stove that heated three blocks of town while your factories starved us."
Another laborer spat on the dirt. Within seconds, the workers turned their backs on the wailing industrialist, marching toward the emergency exits and leaving the factory wide open.
Tashya stepped past the blubbering heap of her uncle, walking straight toward the smoking wreckage. The half-core continued to thrum inside the chassis compartment, but the crude jury-rigged generator hooked to its rear harness had begun to whine in an unnatural, shrill register. The casing glowed cherry-red.
*Meltdown threshold in ninety seconds,* her mind calculated automatically.
She grabbed a crowbar from a tool cart, jamming it into the retention bracket to pry the crimson cylinder loose. The latch refused to budge; the heat had fused the locking pins to the sleeve.
"Tashya!"
A heavy boot struck the concrete apron behind her. She turned. Gavril stood there, leaning heavily against the doorframe, a field rifle slung across his back. His right thigh was bound in tight linen soaked in fresh red, his face pale from shock, but his grip on his combat blade was rock-steady.
"You should be in bed," she shouted over the mounting shriek of the reactor. "I left clear instructions regarding bed rest!"
"I don't take orders from civilians," Gavril grunted, limping across the expanse with stubborn speed. He reached the ruined frame and threw his shoulder against the bent girders, running a hand near the burning seam. "The safety clamp is welded shut. The emergency bypass lever sits inside the secondary containment vault."
He pointed toward a narrow, glass-reinforced hatch beneath the glowing generator. Inside that tiny compartment, the heat had already begun to warp the iron plates. Thick, iridescent vapor poured from the seams—lethal thermal radiation, concentrated enough to cook human lungs in moments.
"The bypass lever must be held down continuously from the inside to break the magnetic lock," Gavril said, his voice dropping low, quiet beneath the roaring alarms. He reached for the hatch handle.
Tashya grabbed his wrist. Her skin burned against the heat of his sleeve. "Gavril, don't. The exposure will liquefy your insides before you can crawl back out."
"Then take the children and run," he said, his hand closing firmly over hers, his thumb tracing the calluses on her fingers. "You need that core to live. Niko and Luda need you. I've finished my war."
"Shut up," she snapped, her sarcastic shield cracking down the middle, raw panic bleeding into her tone. "I didn't fix this whole miserable cabin just to be a widow twice over!"
"One of us has to stay inside that box to pop the cylinder," Gavril replied, his fingers tightening on the steel latch, preparing to tear it open. "And it isn't going to be you."