The towering war-frame's primary cannon, a wide barrel glowing with stored plasma, swiveled deliberately. It aimed directly at Darma’s unprotected chest. A low thrum vibrated through the slag, intensifying as the weapon charged. Darma lunged forward, pushing Sutara fully behind the fallen engine. His hand snapped to his wrist, a familiar motion, a silent command for his personal mecha, *The Azure Wraith*, to materialize. But the comm-bracelet was gone, a charred fragment in the dying fire. His gaze flickered toward the scorched scrap. Without armor or weapons, he stood bare before the squadron of steel titans. “No,” Sutara said, calm and level beneath the rising whine. He gripped Darma's shoulder, steering him back into the engine's iron shadow. “Stay here. Protect Cipi.” Before Darma could protest, Sutara stepped out. He moved with an unhurried grace, his eyes scanning the debris-strewn ground. His gaze settled on a length of broken alloy piping, half-buried in the shattered earth. It was thick, heavy, perhaps two arm-lengths long, a remnant of some forgotten starship’s internal structure. He bent, his movements fluid despite the looming threat, and plucked it free. He hefted it, testing its balance, then spun it once, a whistling arc of dull metal in the flickering light of the plasma blasts. The machines paused, their towering silhouettes dark against the burning sky, pilots hesitating at the sight of a lone figure carrying rusted scrap. Raxus’s command rig, *The Ebon Dread*, broadcast a scoff over open comms, a rasping bark across the flats. “Foolish dreg. Clinging to trash against my legion.” Sutara ignored him. He closed his eyes for a bare instant, drawing in the acrid air, filtering the stench of ozone and scorched earth. Deep within him, the dormant wellspring of his ancient sect’s cultivation stirred. Not a trickle, not a stream, but a tidal wave, summoned with an urgency he had never needed before. Qi surged through his marrow, sinew tightening and hardening into iron. His skin, already resilient, took on a subtle sheen, a barely perceptible shimmer. His vision sharpened, tracking power conduits along the joints where neuro-sync nodes flickered with nervous luminescence. He opened his eyes with cold, measured focus. He advanced at a steady, balanced walk toward the nearest assault platform, a chassis plated in heavy ceramite. Darma watched as Sutara’s posture shifted, his silhouette blurring across the heat haze. Then, Sutara planted his feet, wide and solid, and brought the metal pipe up, not to strike, but to brace. His entire body became a conduit. He released a breath, channeling an internal burst of pressure. His palm, unshielded, slammed into the scavenged pipe. The pipe didn't bend or break. Instead, it hummed, a low, resonant thrum that deepened into a violent vibration. A visible shockwave erupted from Sutara’s position, not a blast of wind, but a shimmering, distortion in the very fabric of the air, an invisible force rippling outward. It struck the lead mecha first. The neuro-sync node on its shoulder casing flared violet for a split second, then *fractured*. Fissures split the lattice before it imploded with a sharp crack, scattering bright grit. The war-machine staggered, limbs locking as its firing relays choked. It crashed forward, throwing up a cloud of dust and metallic shriek. Two other mechas, positioned slightly behind, were caught in the expanding wave. Their core nodes suffered the same fate, rupturing into inert gravel. They went dark, hulking frames dropping into the grit with a clash of buckling armor. Three assault platforms collapsed lifeless into the silt, felled by a solitary man with a pipe. The comms channel went dead. Darma stared, his mouth slightly agape, Cipi chittering softly from his hiding spot within Darma’s coat. The remaining rigs froze in their tracks. Raxus broke the stillness from his cockpit, his voice snapping with raw panic. “Crush him! Crush the dreg underfoot!” *The Ebon Dread* took a heavy forward stride, its reinforced iron foot rising to stomp downward. Plating and bedrock groaned beneath the impact. Sutara, still radiating a faint, almost ethereal glow, met its advance with unwavering eyes. Sutara stepped directly beneath the descending tread, dwarfed by the armored sole. Darma extended his mind toward the field, projecting an instinctive barrier. He hurled his mental resonance outward, driving the full force of his willpower into Sutara. He didn't know what he was doing, only that he needed to *shield* him, to *boost* him, to *anything* to keep him safe. The moment Darma's mental wave merged with Sutara’s circulating qi, an unexpected harmonic flared between them. It was not a clash, but a perfect, incandescent fusion. Sutara’s subtle glow intensified, becoming a brilliant, blinding aura that pulsed with emerald and gold. Sutara's boots left the earth, vaulted upward by the sudden fusion of internal pressure and kinetic lift. He vaulted straight toward the canopy of *The Ebon Dread*. Darma watched as Sutara's bare palms struck the cockpit viewport. The plating shrieked, tearing open like tin under concentrated force. Sutara ripped open the cockpit, exposing Raxus within, a corpulent figure strapped into a pilot's harness, his face a mask of panicked horror. Without hesitation, Sutara plunged his hand inside, seized Raxus by the throat, and with a single, brutal tug, wrenched the flailing Councilor from his seat. Raxus dangled, gasping for air, his limbs thrashing uselessly against Sutara’s unyielding grip. The tactical frequencies descended into panicked screams. Sutara dropped lightly onto the lip of the ridge over the scrap-fields, dragging the Councilor with him. He held the gasping Councilor over the precipice, the abyss of rusted metal and broken dreams stretching endlessly below. His voice, clear and amplified, cut through the open network comms, reaching every surviving pilot, every listening station across the sector, every ear in the Mandala Citadel. “The genetic caste is abolished, or my next strike hits the capital.”

The Beggar's Palm