The dawn broke over Mega-City 07 not with sunlight, but with a sullen, bruised-violet haze that stained the eastern smog.
At the northern terminus of the Ironfang District rose the huge North outer edge Wall. A two-hundred-foot cliff edge of black dark rock stonework and heavy iron rods that stretched unbroken toward both horizons. Heavy moving railgun turrets jutted from concrete castle walls along the castle walls, their motorized barrels swiveling with self-running high-pressure groans. Below the castle walls, the Ironfang North Gate hung like the jaw of an underground titan. A four-foot-thick drop-gate of cold-rolled steel and rivet plates, caked in yellow frost and grease.
The staging courtyard before the gate was packed with thirty graduating cadets, their friend beasts, and attending academy handlers.
The air smelled of biting sulfur wind, diesel exhaust from transport crawlers, and the sharp spark ozone of weapon charging docks.
On the western side of the courtyard stood the noble scions. They had arrived in three climate-controlled tracked personnel carriers bearing the frost-coil insignia of House Vance and the golden raptor of House Valerius. Their cadets wore custom-tailored high-speed silk combat suits lined with man-made warming filaments, their belts hung with gold-grade nutrient concentrates, aether-shield pendants, and high-hum vibro-blades.
At their center stood Cadet Champion Julian Vance.
Julian’s white-gold hair was slicked back, his pale face set in rigid, haughty lines. But he didn’t stand with his former easy arrogance. Beside him towered Glacies the Pureblood Frost Drake. The four-ton draconic reptile puffed clouds of pale vapor into the freezing dawn, its icy scales glinting with dull blue luster. Across the drake’s right hind knee, however, bolted an external orthopedic brace of forged brass and high-pressure damping rods. A clockwork reinforcement bridging the knee joint that Grimm had shattered in the arena.
Julian’s cold gray eyes locked onto Arthur the moment Arthur entered the gate courtyard. There was no mockery in the scion’s gaze now. Only the lethal, obsessive venom of an apex hunting beast that had tasted humiliation.
Arthur didn’t return the glare. He walked with a steady, relaxed stride toward the armorer’s anvil bench near the eastern wall. There, the commoner cadets huddled in frayed surplus greatcoats.
“Out of the way, you half-starved runts!” a booming, gravel-throated roar shook the flat stone slabs.
Master Olgierd Szabo strode through the gate crowd, shouldering two academy court guards aside as if they were sackcloth dummies. The master blacksmith of the Iron Ghetto was a mountain of a man, his barrel chest covered by a thick leather apron charred black from thirty years of forge embers. In his massive calloused fist, he swung an eight-pound meteorite cross-peen hammer like a walking stick, trailing the scent of burnt coke and cool oil.
“Szabo,” Arthur greeted him, halting beside a stack of iron ammo crates.
“Don’t ‘Szabo’ me, boy,” the blacksmith grunted. He dropped a heavy burlap bundle onto the wooden bench with a metal thud. “You had to go and sign Gregory’s suicide warrant. An poor stray-hound against the outer edge Wastes! Corporate bastards think they can starve a commoner out of the city!”
Szabo untied the coarse hemp rope, peeling back the oily canvas.
Inside lay a heavy collar of hammered dark meteorite alloy, lined with flexible braided dark rock-fiber springs and micro-high-pressure dampeners. It was an astonishing piece of tactile building. Dense, matte-gray, devoid of the cheap polished chrome favored by noble armorers.
“Meteorite core alloy,” Szabo rumbled, tapping the metal with a blunt fingernail. “Tension-layered with dark rock leaf springs. When a rift beast slams its claws into his throat, this collar absorbs up to forty-five kilojoules of moving squeezing. Instead of snapping his neck bones, the pressure-sparking channels channel forty percent of that force directly into his lower jaw hinges. The harder they hit him, the harder his teeth bite back.”
Arthur ran his bare fingers along the inner padding. The dark rock weave was supple, oiled with wool-grease to prevent chafing against the dog’s thick neck ruff. “Clean tolerances, Master Szabo. The articulation points match his neck atlas perfectly.”
“Course it matches,” Szabo snorted. “I don’t forge scrap. Call the mutt over.”
Grimm stepped forward, his single intact ear cocked forward with suspicion. He sniffed the cold meteorite plate, snorted once at the pungent smell of cool oil, and stood still as Arthur fastened the double-locking brass buckles around his throat.
Once the pins engaged with a heavy click, Grimm lowered his head and shook himself wildly. His loose jowls flapped with a loud, wet flutter, his paws scratching experimentally at the new weight. Finding the collar unmoving, the jet-black hound gave Arthur a deeply offended, reproachful glare from the corners of his amber eyes.
Arthur reached down and scratched the sweet spot beneath Grimm’s chin where the collar met his jaw. “It keeps your throat in one piece, Grimm. Stop pouting.”
Grimm gave a low, disgruntled chuff. But his stance straightened, his broad chest filling out the dark alloy plate with imposing hungry mass.
“Arthur!” Toby Mallow rushed over from the supply line, breathless and red-faced. He carried a heavy canvas rucksack with both hands.
Toby’s woolen scarf was wrapped three times around his throat, his taped glasses fogged with sweat. He shoved the rucksack into Arthur’s arms, panting heavily.
“I got them! Three tins of packed bone-marrow pemmican, twenty water purification tabs, two rolls of sterile linen, and twelve zinc-oxide burn patches!” Toby gasped, his hands trembling as he checked off items in his brass-bound ledger. “The merchant tried to charge me twenty-two credits for the iodine. But I threatened to report his scales to the town market control valve! Arthur... Please. Look at the noble cadets. They have three tracked crawlers with heavy machine guns! How are you supposed to hunt a Grade-Bronze core with just a dart rifle?”
Arthur didn’t answer with words. He reached into his waxed canvas duster and lifted his weapon onto the wooden table.
It was the Vance Cryo-Pneumatic Transfixer Mk I.
The weapon was a masterwork of field-stripped smooth speed. Crafted from a tiny break-action artillery brass casing fitted with a high-pressure cold air gas metal tube beneath the blued-steel barrel, it featured an external analog pressure dial and a crisp clockwork breech-lock. Alongside the rifle lay a leather bandolier holding twelve heavy razor-sharp hollow tube darts—six filled with neuro-paralytic aconitine, and six loaded with liquid-cold air cryo-cooling solution.
Arthur broke the breech with a sharp flick of his wrist. The steel hinge snapped open with a heard shick-clack. He inspected the black rubber chamber seal, confirmed the gas pool sat at three hundred bar. Then he clicked the barrel closed.
His optic magnifying glass snapped into posture across his left eye. He cast a faint amber grid across his vision:
“A machine gun makes noise, Toby,” Arthur said quietly, sliding the bandolier across his chest. “In the outer edge Wastes, noise brings three hundred rift crawlers to your map points within six minutes. My darts are silent, sterile, and lethal.”
“Just... Don’t die,” Toby muttered, blinking back panic as he clutched his ledger against his ribs. “If you die out there, who’s going to audit our pharmacy receipts? Barnaby and I can’t run a clinic by ourselves!”
Arthur placed a hand on Toby’s shoulder. “Keep the clinic doors barred until I return. Don’t sell the grain reserves, and don’t accept any compromise from House Vance.”
A high-pitched siren klaxon suddenly wailed from the top of the two-hundred-foot dark rock wall.
The courtyard fell dead silent.
Up on the central watching overhead frame eighty feet above the gate, Senior Instructor Gregory Vance stepped up to the brass microphone rail. His iron-gray officer uniform was buttoned to the chin, his stance rigid, his voice amplified across the staging area through heavy-duty horns:
“Attention, graduating cadets of Ironfang Vanguard Academy!” Gregory’s voice boomed down with cold martial power. “Beyond this threshold lies outer edge Waste Zone 1. You’re entering an active hostile theater under Federation Martial Law. The rules of great realm end at the trench line.”
The cadets stood at attention. Julian Vance rested his gloved hand on his dueling cryo-spatha. His gaze burned across the flat stone slabs toward Arthur.
“Your objective is seventy-two hours of autonomous survival,” Gregory barked. “Every cadet seeking officer sign-off must harvest and present a checked Grade-Bronze rift core taken from a wild alpha sample. Failure to present a core, secret retreat, or dead-letter of cadet colors results in immediate court-martial and permanent forfeiture of all clan charters.”
Gregory raised his right arm, signaling the gate crew.
“Raise the northern drop-gate!”
Deep within the stone towers, huge steam winches engaged with an earth-shaking thrum. Balance weights weighing fifty tons groaned against massive steel chains.
With a bone-shaking shriek of grinding metal, the four-foot-thick iron drop-gate began to lift from the bedrock. Clouds of frozen water drops and rust dust showered down across the threshold. The gate rose inch by inch. It exposed the open maw of the wasteland.
A ferocious blast of sub-zero wind roared through the opening.
The wind smelled of irradiated dark rock dust, scorched sulfur vents, and the ancient, metal stink of wild beast blood.
Beyond the gate lay outer edge Waste Zone 1.
It was an endless, lonely expanse of cracked black dark rock ridges, jagged fiery ravines, and rolling drifts of gray radioactive ash that swept across dead, stone-hard timber. Miles away through the swirling ash storm, jagged glowing fissures leaked pale purple aether vapor into the freezing sky. In the far distance, beneath the gloom of the shattered horizon, the mournful, multi-throated howling of a feral rift-hound pack echoed across the stone canyon.
The commoner cadets flinched, clutching their weapons tighter against the freezing draft.
Arthur adjusted the strap of his Cryo-Pneumatic Transfixer across his shoulder. He checked his twin heavy dark metal stilettos resting snug in their forearm sheaths. He pulled his dark waxed duster tight against the howling ash wind.
Beside him, Grimm stepped toward the gate. The hound didn’t tremble. The dense fur along his spine bristled against the cold, his amber eyes burning with bright, untamed focus. The heavy meteorite collar gleamed against his black ruff as his nostrils swelled. He drew in the rich, violent scents of the wild wastes.
Grimm looked up at Arthur, letting out a short, eager chuff that cut clean through the howling wind.
“Let’s go hunting, Grimm,” Arthur murmured.
Arthur Vance stepped over the threshold of the Ironfang North Gate and marched out into the frozen ash of Zone 1.