“Done,” Nina snapped, sealing the pact before the ballroom floor could recover its nerve. Her retinas flicked across Lugal’s slack jaw and landed on Shala Tiamat’s flat, rehearsed smile. Let them choke on the optics.
Two cycles later, the Kish-Ward stronghold smelled of stale bile, fried ozone, and burnt copper. Nina stood over a patient on a cracked plasteel table, the air thick with the buzzing whine of an overtaxed thermal torch. “You said he was a simple ‘gravel-burn’ case, Kuri,” she barked at the squat, grey-skinned medic hovering nearby, his single optic lens whirring nervously. “Not a full-blown cyber-gangrene. His arm is fused to the bone-mounts. I need more juice in this cutter, or we’ll be chiseling him off the deck for days.”
The boy on the slab had a rusted data-jack protruding from his temple and a badge pinning his name as Jorah. His left arm, a cheap chrome prosthetic, glowed an angry, pulsing red, the corrupted circuits trying to merge with his organic shoulder. It was a common sight in the Kish-Ward, where scavenged cyberware often turned against its host.
“Syndicate raid!” A voice screamed from the outer perimeter, followed by the sickening thud of kinetic impactors against the bunker's armored walls. Automatic turret fire erupted, a percussive symphony of destruction that shook the entire structure.
“For Zarathustra’s sake,” Nina muttered, flicking her wrist. A tiny, nearly invisible smoke-tube extended from her forearm, igniting with a soft hiss. She took a long drag, the acrid smoke filling her lungs, a temporary calm against the rising tide of chaos. “Kuri, prep a full dose of Nar-Glycine. Jorah, this is going to hurt like a mother. Try not to thrash too much. I’m already trying to keep your other arm from getting vaporized.”
“Nina! Incoming!” Kuri yelled, pointing a trembling finger. A high-energy laser beam lanced through a weak point in the external shielding, vaporizing a section of the plasteel window and embedding itself in the far wall with a shriek of tortured metal. Shards of reinforced glass exploded inwards, spraying across the triage bay. Nina slammed down over Jorah, taking the blast on her plated shoulder. The outer durasteel weave glowed cherry where a fragment gouged a smoking ditch through the metal.
“Idiots,” she snarled, pushing herself up. “They’re trying to breach the surgical bay. They want our medics, or our supplies, or both.” She gripped the thermal torch again, coaxing a sputter from its dying ignition coil. “Kuri, get the emergency cautery kit ready. I’m going in dry. And tell Engineer Ghazi to re-route all auxiliary power to the perimeter shields, now!”
Nina set the torch directly against Jorah’s shoulder socket, right where diseased chrome chewed into healthy flesh. The air crackled. The smell of burning flesh and ozone filled the small bay. Jorah screamed, a raw, primal sound that was quickly swallowed by the cacophony of the battle outside. Nina ignored it, her focus absolute. Precision was everything. One slip would sever the subclavian feed or detonate the failing power cell in his chest. A sniper round pinged off a pillar mere centimeters from her head, sending a spray of concrete dust. She didn’t flinch, her targeting firmware tracing the angle, gyros compensating for the shock wave.
“The Enmebar dogs are hitting District Gamma with heavy ordinance!” a comms voice shrieked over the internal speakers. “Requesting immediate combat surgeon deployment! We have multiple internal hemorrhages!”
“They’ll wait,” Nina gritted out, the thermal torch carving a scorched line around Jorah’s shoulder. The corrupted limb separated with a final, gruesome crunch of bone and protesting cybernetics. She dropped the limb into a biohazard bin, already reaching for the cautery kit. “Get Jorah stabilized and transferred to recovery. Kuri, you’re on triage for the Gamma breaches. I’ll take point on the main breach.”
Before she could even turn, a new sound ripped through the battlefield. Not the rhythmic thud of kinetic rounds, nor the shrill shriek of lasers. This was a deep, guttural roar, followed by the tearing of metal and a thunderous boom that vibrated through her very bones. Then, a voice, amplified to ear-splitting levels, boomed across the entire transit grid.
“Is my little moonlight ready for her first date? Uncle’s here to clean up the trash!”
Nina felt a cynical smile tug at her lips. Marduk. Right on time. She pushed through the double-reinforced doors, entering the main combat corridor. Through the reinforced viewport, she saw it: Marduk Urash’s personal war-mech, a bipedal artillery rig named the Ashur-Executor, shaking pavement stones loose in the ruined plaza. Its massive twin-barreled cannons, normally reserved for urban pacification, were rotating with predatory grace. Each step it took sent shockwaves through the very ground.
He wasn’t aiming at the Bastion’s walls. He was aiming at the syndicate raiders. And he wasn’t holding back. The first volley of high-explosive shells detonated amidst a cluster of armored gang-members, turning them into a cloud of pink mist and shattered ceramite. The second pulverized a heavy assault vehicle into a flaming wreck. Marduk laughed, a booming sound that reverberated even through the mech’s thick plating, as the Ashur-Executor continued its methodical, terrifying work, blowing the Enmebar-aligned raiders to pieces, one by one.
Meanwhile, miles away in the gilded, silent heights of the Enmebar Ziggurat, Shala Tiamat’s slender fingers danced across a holographic interface. Her face, usually so serene, held a predatory glint. The data streamed in a torrent, untraceable proxies bouncing through forgotten backdoors of the regional mesh. Lugal Enmebar’s personal crypto-vault, a legendary stash he’d amassed through decades of black market deals and 'tribute' payments, was bleeding out. A full 80% of its contents, converted into untraceable, non-fungible data-slates, was being siphoned away, diverted through a labyrinthine network of shell corporations and ghost accounts into a destination only Shala knew. She smiled, a cold, calculating curve of her lips. Lugal thought he could keep his ‘cherished white moonlight’ and his ‘dutiful genetic stand-in.’ He was about to learn that some women didn’t share. They took.
Back at the Kish-Ward, Nina watched the last of the Enmebar raiders scatter, their heavy vehicles turned to smoking slag. Marduk’s mech gave a final, triumphant roar, then, with surprising delicacy, nudged a flaming chunk of rubble away from the clinic’s primary barricade. “Not bad for a first date, eh, sweetheart?” Marduk’s voice crackled over the comms, a playful menace underlaying the words. “Dinner’s on me. Just try not to bleed on the menu.”
“Hard to promise when your idea of a date involves collateral damage on a city-wide scale,” Nina shot back, lighting another smoke-tube. “But I appreciate the… enthusiasm. Kish-Ward owes you.”
“You owe me a dance, Kigal. And maybe a joint checking account.” Marduk’s laugh boomed, then the comms cut out as his mech began its lumbering exit, leaving behind a trail of smoke and dismembered syndicate thugs. The remaining medics and augmented orderlies began the grim work of securing the perimeter and treating the few injured.
Nina turned, a grim satisfaction settling over her. The sound of distant sirens began to wail, signaling the arrival of the corporate peacekeepers, who would arrive just in time to meticulously document the carnage and fine the clinic for ‘unauthorized urban combat.’ She flicked her smoke-tube into a nearby biohazard disposal unit. Life in the slums was never clean, never quiet. It was a constant fight, a relentless grind against encroaching death and decay. The irradiated wastes outside the city walls were a constant, tangible threat, too. Even now, the faint, acrid smell of ozone and irradiated biomass drifted in through the newly repaired vents.
The reinforced triage wall buckled inward under a dull, hydraulic impact. A fissure, thick as a man’s arm, spiderwebbed across the durasteel. Dust and concrete shards exploded inward. Nina’s ocular feed spiked amber as proximity warnings screamed over her optical ribbon. A massive, misshapen limb, all glistening chitin and exposed muscle fiber, tore through the breach. Then another. A feral flesh-mech mutant, a towering abomination forged from irradiated bioweapons and scavenged cybernetics, pulled itself through the shattered wall. Its three glowing, compound eyes fixed on Nina. It snarled, a wet, guttural sound, its razor-sharp claws scraping against the metal floor, but instead of attacking, it eerily bowed.