“Father. It’s… it’s his mark.” Inaya’s vocal synthesizer wavered. Caustic sulfur drifted off the slag ponds, stinging nostrils and rusting exposed copper. Zaydun leaned in, optical sensors focusing on the holographic docket. Sector Magistrate Jaxus. The glyph glowed beneath requisitions for ‘Orbital Disaster Mitigation Devices’ and ‘Cosmic Metal Forging Prototypes.’ The ledger ran back seven cycles. [Observation: Elite complicity confirmed. Suggestion: Leverage for profit.] “Well, well,” Zaydun drawled, brass joints clicking as he smiled. “Your patriarch isn't just a highborn parasite. He bankrolls orbital cataclysms.” It tasted sweet—proof that the high-caste grandees who sneered at a Class F scrip-reader were rotten beneath their silk. “Changes the calculus, Inaya.” He hauled an unconscious raider out from a ditch of lead dross. The zealot’s headpiece, a patchwork alloy dome, gave off faint telemetry pulses. “Working transceiver,” Zaydun said, peeling off the casing with two fingers. “Patch this into the wideband network. Blast the receipts everywhere.” Inaya glared at the glowing approval crest, then across the munitions line. “Transmit to the entire perimeter grid? The populace won't buy it without clearance keys.” “They will when they see *us*,” Zaydun declared, already stripping wires from the cultist’s helmet. His fingers, now gleaming pistons, worked with surprising delicacy. “Let the peasants doubt; the ledger has encrypted audit stamps. Wire it to the Skypillar's relay grid. Route straight through the Apex Spire nodes.” “The high district?” Inaya's brow twitched with bitter amusement. “The grand tribunal is likely in an emergency session right now, toasting your demise and debating who gets salvage rights over your scrap.” “Precisely.” Zaydun’s grin widened. “Let’s crash their party. Literally.” *** The Spire’s rotunda hummed with quiet comfort. Master Tarak sat at the obsidian table, smiling with serene, paternal sorrow. Flanking him, Magistrate Jaxus, Directorate Head Vyra, and Guildmaster Rix touched crystal flutes of lumina-wine. Overhead, a holocron rotated, plotting the coordinates of Zaydun’s alleged destruction down in the sump. “A tragedy, of course,” Tarak sighed, his voice raspy with feigned grief. “To lose such… potential. But the Heretic has been dealt with. His unique physique, unfortunately, proved too unstable for his own good.” Jaxus swallowed his vintage, heavy samite sleeves rustling against polished stone. “A messy outcome, but it demonstrates why unregulated cybernetic grafting remains outlawed. Scavenger squads are descending into the lower tier now. The boy's chassis will supply raw material for our exotic composites.” Greed sharpened the edge of his thin mouth. “And the perimeter garrisons?” Vyra asked, nails clicking on the table. “These incursions grow costly.” “Necessary pruning,” Tarak murmured, hands folded inside grey linen sleeves. “Pressure tests weed out brittle stock. The metropolis will adapt.” Sub-floor hydraulics began to groan. A seismic shudder rippled through the reinforced durasteel flagstones, rising into a screech of torn girders. Jaxus set his glass down, grabbing his personal transponder. “Who cleared maintenance in this sector?” The meter-thick blast doors blew off their pneumatic tracks, shearing into the hall in a hail of obsidian fragments and severed optic fibers. Shockwaves overturned the drink service, spilling lumina-wine across the slate. Through the dust stepped Zaydun. He bore no resemblance to the rusted scrap-golem they had logged; his chassis gleamed like mirror-polished celestial plate, ripples of blue and silver flowing across his torso plates. He whistled an off-key street ballad, dragging a trussed operative whose mangled helmet sported an oversized transmission horn. [Threat Level: Imminent. Recommendation: Extort maximum compensation.] “Evening, luminaries,” Zaydun called out, vocal grill echoing like a drop-forge against the walls. “Hate to crash the wake.” Before the guards could level their carbines, Inaya’s voice cut through every receiver, wall panel, and datapad in the rotunda. The jury-rigged transceiver blared wideband. On the primary overhead projector, the Slag-Pit procurement logs overwrote the casualty map. Jaxus's encrypted authentication cipher hovered ten feet wide in pulsing red. “—citizens of Jal-Dhar,” Inaya's feed rang across the district tiers. “Your ruling bloc breeds the abominations outside the walls. Magistrate Jaxus authorized the appropriations for the falling meteors and the engineered breaches. Every district crater was bought and paid for.” Vyra scrambled backward, knocking her chair flat. Rix ducked beneath the heavy slate table. Jaxus rose, facial tendons standing out like cords. “Vermin,” he snarled toward the projector, then swung his glare to Zaydun. “Unregistered parasite!” Jaxus tore a hilt from his belt. A solid beam of crimson plasma—the Phantasm Edge—hissed into existence, air scorching around the arc. He lunged across the shattered stone, thrusting the thermal tip straight at Zaydun’s throat. Zaydun didn't sidestep. His mandible split on twin servos, inner jaw expanding with a metallic snap. The plasma beam struck his molar plates, shrieking as high-density starmetal absorbed the heat. Zaydun crunched down. The focused beam cracked like hard sugar, red thermal sparks showering across his chest. He spat a melted prism emitter onto Jaxus’s velvet boots. [Assimilation: Phantasm Edge energy signatures acquired. New ability unlocked: ‘Chromatic Rend.’] “Easy, Jaxus,” Zaydun said, flicking ash from his chin. “Is that proper etiquette for your former son-in-law prospect? Think of my distress. My damaged pride. The unprovoked battery.” He tapped an alloy index finger against his cheekbone, ringing like a brass bell. “For emotional damages, and to pause this lovely transmission before the outer rings see the rest of your procurement notes, I want one billion scrip. Unmarked bearer bonds, transferred now. Otherwise Inaya leaves the channel wide open.” Jaxus trembled, staring from his broken hilt to the live feed blinking across the ceiling. Tarak laughed. The dry chuckle carried no grandfatherly warmth; it was a rhythmic grind like iron gears in sand. He rose, paying no mind to the panicking aristocrats, pupils fixed entirely on Zaydun's starmetal skin. The archivist’s wrinkled flesh began to liquefy, sloughing off in grey rivulets. His robes collapsed into powder, leaving a vortex of quicksilver filaments swirling in human contour. When he spoke, ten thousand mechanical whispers resonated through the floor. “One billion scrip?” Tarak’s harmonic frequency set the broken crystal flutes rattling. “Squandering such a glorious vessel on pocket change.” The quicksilver storm flared. Tendrils of microscopic metal whipped across the slate, wrapping around Jaxus, Vyra, and Rix. Shouts cut off as nanites burrowed into velvet and muscle, transmuting organic marrow into dense synthetic sinew. Within seconds, the three aristocrats dissolved into the churning swarm, feeding a colossal chassis that rose toward the vaulted rafters—a towering mechanical idol woven from hijacked flesh and Tarak's guiding intellect.

Crashing the Board Meeting