The hover-tank’s repulsorlifts whined, fighting the immense pressure from outside. The ground beneath them didn’t just shake; it *bucked*, like a dying leviathan trying to throw off its parasites. Heavy thuds slammed against the gilded hull, each impact vibrating through Nina’s newly severed spine, a phantom burn that set her molars grinding. Shala peered at a monitor, her face illuminated by the green glow of a thermal scan. “Alright, that’s not just a pack. That’s… a migration. What did you *do*, Nina?” Nina spat, the taste of ozone and metal in her mouth. “I bled. Turns out my blood is catnip for overgrown rats with too many teeth.” She gripped the edges of the hard-shell stretcher, the slick, cold plastic a poor substitute for feeling her own legs. “Marduk, status report. What are we looking at?” “Too many,” Marduk grunted, his voice a low rumble from the front console where he was already cycling through ordnance options. “Their bioluminescence is scrambling our sensors, but I’m seeing at least three hundred. Maybe more. And they’re not just sniffing. They’re *climbing*.” Without motor feedback below the rib cage, she was cargo. Dead, expensive cargo. She closed her eyelids against the console glare, memory dragging her twenty cycles backward into cold preservation gel. *** *Eridu Station, 20 cycles ago.* The glass tube was cold, the nutrient fluid thick and viscous around her. She was barely five cycles old, yet the scientists in their pristine lab coats, their faces obscured by polarized visors, spoke of ‘Project White Moonlight’ and ‘Extermination Protocol 7-Beta’. She wasn’t Kigal-born. She was *made*. Grown in a black-site lab beneath the Kigal Holdings’ ancestral estate, a contingency for an apocalypse she couldn’t comprehend. The Kigal matriarch, a stern woman with eyes like polished obsidian, had held her once, a fleeting touch, before declaring her fit for ‘adoption’. A shield, a weapon, a secret to bury deep within the glitz and glamour of Neo-Akkad’s noble houses. Her entire pampered life had been a gilded cage, designed to hide the ticking bomb within her veins. *** *Kish-Ward Medical Bastion, Present.* Nina snapped her eyelids open. “The hell with this,” she snarled. “Shala, your hover-tank’s power core. What’s it running on?” Shala, already tapping away at a console, didn’t look up. “Modified crypto-tech batteries. Untraceable charge cycles, ludicrous output. Runs this gilded behemoth for weeks.” “Good. Marduk, get me my medical exosuit. The heavy-duty one, with the spinal frame. And all the power cells we have.” Marduk glanced back, a flicker of surprise in his usually impassive gaze. “You’re paralyzed, Kigal. That suit needs full neural integration.” “It’s got hardpoints for external neural bypasses, doesn’t it? Surgical-grade. I designed the damn thing. Shala, I need your batteries. I’m going to jury-rig a direct power feed into the suit’s core and hotwire the motor functions. It won’t be elegant, it won’t be subtle, but it’ll move.” Nina was already sketching out schematics on a holo-pad, her fingers flying across the projected interface. “And I’m plugging my severed spine directly into the suit’s primary frame. It’ll bypass the damage, give me direct motor control. Crude, but effective.” “You’re going to power a combat rig with a stolen tank’s batteries, and control it with a *severed spinal cord*?” Shala asked, a glint of genuine awe in her eyes. “Even for you, Nina, that’s… beautifully insane.” “Insanity keeps me alive, princess. Now move your ass.” As Marduk hauled the reinforced harness from its storage bay, a faint *clank* echoed from the clinic's main entrance. The outer blast doors were still holding, but the internal security protocols… Nina swore. “Someone’s trying to get in. Marduk, suppressive fire! Don’t let them breach the triage.” Suddenly, the internal comms crackled. A familiar, oily voice, laced with desperation. “Nina! My Moonlight! I’m here to save you!” Lugal. Nina’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You idiotic parasite. You’re going to get us all killed.” Before anyone could react, the facility's auxiliary personnel entrance, a much weaker access point, groaned under a massive impact. Lugal, having successfully disabled the lock, flung the door open. He stood there, a ridiculous figure in an expensive, unscratched suit, a ceremonial vibro-blade clutched in his hand. He looked ready to strike a heroic pose. Instead, behind him, a massive, multi-limbed flesh-mech, its optical clusters glowing a malevolent red, lumbered through the opening, drawn by the sudden rush of warm air and fresh blood. Lugal's jaw went slack and his pupils blew wide as the creature’s maw opened, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth. Shala, without a flicker of hesitation, raised her customized chrome-plated heavy pistol. The crack of the shot was deafening in the confined space. Lugal screamed, a high-pitched, pathetic sound, collapsing to the floor as a neat hole blossomed just above his kneecap. The flesh-mech paused, confused by the sudden diversion, its head tilting. “Idiot. You let it in,” Shala said, her voice utterly flat, as she calmly re-holstered her weapon. “And you deserved that for trying to play hero.” Nina ignored Lugal’s pained whimpers. “Marduk! Rig! Now!” The warlord, a rare grin spreading across his face, began fitting Nina into the articulated frame. Cables thicker than her wrist snapped into place. Shala, already having yanked a humming battery array from the hover-tank, spliced it into the rig's power nexus. The servos engaged, a low hum of raw power surging through titanium struts. Nina flinched as the direct spinal bypass spiked, routing around severed thoracic nerves to seize the motors directly. Her fingers twitched, her legs (or rather, the suit’s legs) flexed. She was a walking tank again. A walking, *paralyzed* tank. “Alright, you overgrown slugs. Let’s see how you like a scalpel the size of a shipping container,” Nina snarled, testing the suit’s movements. It was crude, jerky, but effective. She stalked towards the breached entrance, the suit’s heavy footsteps echoing like a death knell. The flesh-mech inside recoiled, sensing the sudden surge of aggressive bio-signatures. Nina raised the suit’s integrated plasma cannon, the barrel glowing with contained energy. She was ready to incinerate the horde, to turn them into slag and ash, to protect her hard-won medical empire. But as she aimed, something shifted. The flesh-mech inside the perimeter froze, its red eyes fixed on her. Outside, the cacophony of roars and snuffling ceased. A strange, eerie silence descended. Then, one by one, the feral creatures began to move. Not towards her, not in a charge. They began to climb. They hooked their multi-jointed limbs into each other, forming a grotesque, living bridge. Layer upon layer of mutant flesh, bone, and corrupted metal began to stack, creating a spiraling ramp that stretched from the besieged Bastion, arcing over the slum-choked skyline, rising impossibly high, leading directly to the floating, pyramidal ziggurat of High Exarch Ziusudra. Their optical clusters, now burning a uniform, blinding silver, glowed with an unsettling reverence, fixated on her, on the suit, on the raw power radiating from her. They weren’t attacking. They were *waiting*. Expecting their White Moonlight to ascend.

Siege of the Bastion