The night before the squad’s departure for the Badlands Survival Trial, Workshop Bay 12 looked like a forward running base preparing for an airborne combat drop into hostile territory. Heavy wooden crates of sealed field rations, high-pressure water purification canisters, and spare air-powered propellant tanks were stacked neatly along the outer edge walls. everyone could feel the honest scents of frontline readiness. Gun solvent, hardened rubber, hot copper wire. The rich herbal steam of a simmering stone tonic Toby had brewed on the fire bowl.
On the central steel workbench, Arthur Vance sat under the harsh glare of two heavy halogen lamps, step by step inspecting the squad’s field trauma loadout. His main razor-sharp roll was laid out on a sterile cloth. Twenty heavy dark metal scalpels, five high-pressure vials of stygian chelating solution, fifty doses of broad-spectrum neuro-steadying fin, and three tuned bone-stitching kits. Beside the medical supplies lay his combat gear: six spare magazines of ice-cold sabot darts for his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine, four high-pulling grappling lines, and a set of heavy handling bracers heavy with stygian iron plates.
Across the room, Toby was tightening the heavy nylon straps of Titus’s new combat harness.
The harness was a building marvel, custom-built from high-speed Kevlar and salvaged stygian iron channel pipes. Mounted along the lateral ridges of the giant tortoise’s shell were two heavy cargo panniers capable of carrying three hundred pounds of ammunition, medical supplies, and spare rations. And hidden within the ventral breastplate, wired directly into Titus’s dark…
