The twin beam headlights of High Inquisitor Keith Mercer’s command crawler burned through the swirling yellow smog of the canal, pinning Arthur Vance and his companions in blinding white halogens.
The vehicle was an amphibious behemoth. Eighty metric tons of sloped composite armor riding on four segmented, multi-wheel caterpillar tracks that churned the rotten-egg mud into boiling black froth. Mounted on its heavy roof turret was a three-axis sound broadcast array. It was flanked by dual tiny mortar tubes that raised with a sharp high-pressure whine.
From the loudspeakers, Mercer’s voice rolled across the flooded canal, amplified to an ear-splitting hundred and ten decibels:
“Cadet Arthur Vance. By decree of the Federal High Council and the Board of Inquest, your provisional frontier scout charter is revoked. You’re chosen an active living vector under Federal Quarantine Code Nine. Surrender the unlisted mutant beasts, dismantle your rogue triage work-yard, and submit to immediate holding.”
Mercer paused, his tone dropping into smooth, high-born amusement.
“Or perhaps you believe this ragtag rabble of swamp squatters can protect you? I assure you, boy, my howitzers don’t check birth registries before firing phosphorus rounds. You have sixty seconds to disarm.”
Arthur stood motionless in the knee-deep water fifty yards ahead of Titus’s dark rock wall. The Cryo-Pneumatic Transfixer was held across his chest, the break-action breech closed tight over six Anti-Chimera Disruptor sabots.
