The clapping echoed through the cavernous refinery, sharp and metal against the hiss of venting steam.
Arthur remained motionless at the top of the overhead frame stairs, his left hand resting lightly on the handle of his heavy dark metal stiletto. Beside his boots, Grimm dropped his muzzle low, the fur along his spine standing rigid in a bristling black crest. A deep, sub-heard growl shook through the hound’s ribs, shaking the iron grating beneath their feet.
From the yellow sulfur fog churning across the refinery entrance, five figures stepped into the amber light of the blast fire.
At the front walked Senior Instructor Gregory Vance.
His heavy black wool trench coat was unbuttoned, revealing dark tactical armor beneath. His slicked-back hair shone with man-made lavender pomade. But his thin lips were curled in a cold, sneering grimace. Flanking him were four operatives clad in unmarked matte-black plate armor. Their faces hidden behind was heavy high-speed balaclavas. They carried heavy air-powered harpoon launchers, lead-weighted carbon crushing weight nets, and short heavy dark metal flails designed for close-quarters beast culling.
“Uncle Gregory!” Julian called out from the iron bench, straining against his nylon wrist restraints. Relief broke across the young noble’s tear-stained face. “You’re here! He broke Glacies’s leg! He restrained me! Arrest him! Execute him for treason against House Vance!”
Gregory didn’t even look up at the bench. His eyes remained locked on Arthur, cold and poisonous.
“Shut your sniveling mouth, Julian,” Gregory said, his voice flat with utter disgust. “You were given twenty thousand credits of black-market cybernetics. You were given military-grade adrenal stimulants. You were given an isolated refinery with zero radio coverage and an F-rank orphan whose beast had half its marrow missing. And yet here you sit, bound with plastic ties, weeping on an upkeep bench while your pedigree drake chokes in a melted rock waste pile.”
Julian recoiled as if struck across the face. “Uncle... I tried... The mongrel was too fast...”
“You’re an embarrassment to the bloodline,” Gregory spat, taking two paces forward. “Your father should have drowned you in the baptismal basin.”
Gregory stopped at the base of the overhead frame stairs, looking up at Arthur.
“I must admit, nephew,” Gregory said, his voice smooth and conversational. “You have exceeded my expectations. When my tax clerks dragged that dying cur out of the kennel drainage ditch, I calculated a ninety-nine percent probability of septic failure within twelve hours. To rebuild its tarsals and force a high-thickness marrow turning to stone in an unheated boiler room demonstrates remarkable talent. Your father had that same stubborn, irritating care.”
“My father died holding the outer trench while your branch embezzled guard post rations,” Arthur said quietly.
“Your father died poor,” Gregory countered without pause. “Honor is a narrative invented to keep commoners docile in the trenches. What matters in New Baiko is property, charters, and clean ledgers. When Julian whined about his humiliation, I saw an opportunity. Julian’s vanity provided the perfect pretext to lure you into a sector with zero civilian witnesses and zero electronic surveillance.”
Gregory gestured to the four black-clad shadow killers. The operatives fanned out in a disciplined semi-circle, their boots making no sound on the grit as they raised their air-powered harpoon nets.
“Julian assumed this was a duel of honor,” Gregory said, a dry chuckle escaping his throat. “He genuinely believed we would let him walk back into the academy as a conquering hero. But a surviving Julian means surviving questions about black-market prosthetics and illegal combat stimulants. The academy board would launch a hearing. The Central Garrison would inspect our logistics logs.”
On the bench, Julian’s eyes went wide with sudden, sickening realization. “Uncle... What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that tragedies on the frontier are messy affairs,” Gregory replied, not bothering to glance back. “A rogue rift beast ambushes the graduation patrol. Cadet Julian Vance and Cadet Arthur Vance fight valiantly, but both are overwhelmed and killed. The Frost Drake is butchered beyond recognition. The bodies are burned up by sulfur vents. When the relief squad arrives tomorrow morning, Senior Instructor Gregory Vance recovers the fallen cadets’ dog tags and secures the Tier-3 Sanctuary Charter for the clan estate. A tragic loss for the family, but an office victory.”
From his tactical belt, Gregory unclipped a thirty-inch carbon-silver-steel shock-baton.
He flicked his thumb across the starting toggle.
BZZZZZT!
Brilliant azure star-fire flared along the ribbed heavy dark metal tines of the weapon. Ten thousand volts of high-hum electricity hissed through the damp air. It cast uneven blue shadows across the rusted iron columns. The sharp, metal stench of spark-charged ozone instantly overwhelmed the smell of machine grease.
A crimson threat alert flickered across Arthur’s monocle magnifying glass:
“Take the hound with the nets,” Gregory commanded the shadow killers. “Break its spine. I’ll handle my nephew personally.”
Two shadow killers raised their air-powered launchers, aiming the wide-bore carbon net canisters directly at Grimm. The other two moved toward the stairs with raised heavy dark metal flails, their movements fluid and lethal—veterans of the undercity culling squads.
Gregory leaped up the metal steps with terrifying speed, his shock-baton whistling through the air in an overhead arc aimed straight at Arthur’s collarbone.
Arthur didn’t panic.
His surgeon’s brain detached from fear, breaking the incoming attack into speed, leverage, and spark discharge vectors. He drew both ten-inch heavy dark metal stilettos from his forearm sheaths. He dropped his balance point to block. Beside him, Grimm bristled, preparing to throw his exhausted body into the path of the crackling star-fire to protect Arthur’s flank.
The azure lightning was less than two feet from Arthur’s face.
BOOM!
A thunderous explosion tore through the eastern outside wall of the refinery.
Heavy stonework, red bricks, and jagged sheets of corrugated steel blew inward in an ear-splitting bone-shaking wave. Mortar dust and crushed plaster blasted across the hall, throwing the four shadow killers off balance and showering the overhead frame stairs in heavy debris.
Before the smoke could settle, a six-foot shadow charged through the breach.
“Gregory Vance!” a voice roared—a voice like grinding granite and heavy artillery fire. “Step away from that cadet!”
It was Instructor Valerie Koslov.
The six-foot-tall frontline combat teacher moved like an armored battering ram. She was clad in scuffed, heavy Vanguard trench armor, her scarred jaw set in cold fury. In her calloused hands, she wielded her signed name weapon. A massive, six-foot heavy dark metal-alloy riot lance, its heavy counter-weighted butt-spike humming with moving charge.
Beside her bounded Brutus.
The teacher’s personal war-mastiff was a total juggernaut of canine destruction. Weighing over one hundred and twenty pounds, the beast’s broad chest was wrapped in riveted steel plate armor. Brutus didn’t bark. He launched through the dust cloud like a falling boulder. It slammed his armored shoulder directly into the chest of the lead assassin.
The bone-shaking tackle lifted the eighty-two-pound man fully off his feet. Ribs snapped with a sickening crunch as the assassin crashed into a solid iron support post, his air-powered net launcher clattering uselessly across the flat stone slabs.
The second assassin spun around, drawing a silenced sidearm.
Brutus didn’t give him the chance. The war-mastiff clamped his massive, armor-plated jaws around the man’s gun arm. With an explosive twist of his thick neck, Brutus tore the weapon free, slamming the assassin face-first into the concrete and pinning him beneath seventy pounds of armored foreleg.
Valerie didn’t break her stride.
She closed the distance to the third assassin in two thundering steps. Sweeping her six-foot heavy dark metal riot lance in a low, rising slanted, she drove the blunt steel balance weight into the operative’s solar nerve web. The moving impact punched through his tactical plating. It lifted him three feet backward to crash into an empty coolant trough, gasping helplessly for air.
The fourth assassin threw his hands up. He dropped his heavy dark metal flail onto the stones and fell flat against the wall.
Valerie vaulted onto the base of the overhead frame stairs in a single bound. With a blinding thrust of speed, she brought the gleaming point of her riot lance up, wedging the heavy dark metal blade directly beneath the guard of Gregory’s shock-baton.
With a sharp flick of her forearms, Valerie twisted the lance.
The sheer clockwork leverage ripped the crackling baton from Gregory’s grip. The weapon spun through the air, clattering down into the melted rock waste pit below where its azure star-fire sparked twice and died in the damp sludge.
Gregory stumbled backward against the safety railing, his face drained of all color.
“Koslov?!” Gregory stammered, his polished arrogance shattering into wild confusion. “What... What are you doing here?! Sector 4 is a restricted clan test hall! You have no working power beyond the inner wall!”
“Every cadet deployment route needs dual pass-key with the Chief Tactical Checker, Gregory,” Valerie said. Her voice dropped into a dangerous, gravelly rumble. She stepped up another stair, the hardened point of her riot lance resting a quarter-inch from Gregory’s Adam’s apple. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice your name logged as the sole approver on an orphan’s dispatch tablet? Did you think I wouldn’t track your unmarked transport van leaving the south gate twenty minutes after he left?”
Valerie glared at him with cold contempt. “You rerouted an F-rank cadet into an unmonitored dead zone, smuggled black-market cybernetics to your nephew, and brought four clan executioners to stage a murder. That’s not an academic punishment matter, Gregory. Under the Vanguard Defense Charter, that’s frontline treason during active military mobilization.”
Gregory’s eyes darted wildly toward his downed shadow killers, then toward the gaping hole in the refinery wall where Brutus stood guard, the war-mastiff’s amber eyes glowing with lethal promise.
There was no escape route. The trap had collapsed on its maker.
Gregory slowly raised his trembling hands into the air.
“Koslov... Wait,” Gregory pleaded, his voice cracking. “We can settle this within the clan council. House Vance has deep reserves in the city budget... I can guarantee you a promotion to Senior Building boss...”
“Shut your mouth before I run six feet of heavy dark metal through your throat,” Valerie growled.
She reached down with her left hand, unclipped a set of heavy steel guard post manacles from her harness, and slammed Gregory face-first against the iron overhead frame rail. The handcuffs ratcheted shut around his wrists with heavy, definitive clicks.
Arthur lowered his stilettos, sliding them back into their forearm sheaths with a soft click.
Grimm trotted down the overhead frame stairs, his breathing slowing as the immediate danger passed. He approached the massive armored war-mastiff standing by the ruined wall. Brutus looked down at the smaller jet-black hound, sniffing Grimm’s notched ear with a low, rumbling chuff. Grimm returned the sniff at Brutus’s armored collar, his tail giving a single, cautious wag. Two working hunting beasts, battered by grime and combat, acknowledging mutual survival.
Valerie looked up the narrow high walkway toward Arthur, her hard eyes softening by a fraction of a tiny fraction of an inch.
“You held your ground, Cadet Vance,” Valerie said.
“We had the terrain,” Arthur replied evenly, stepping down the stairs. “And Grimm knows how to dismantle bad building.”
Valerie looked from the crippled Frost Drake in the melted rock waste heap to the weeping Julian on the bench, a grim, satisfied smirk touching the corner of her lips.
“Come on, Arthur,” Valerie said, hauling Gregory to his feet by his collar. “Let’s escort the Iron Guard to the Central Garrison trial. It’s time New Baiko learned who really owns this sector.”