The concrete floor of Transit Hub Beta had turned into a sprawling frontline triage bay. Where forty minutes earlier self-running freight tugs had hauled cargo palettes of imported Siberian wheat and Pan-African healing herbs, dozens of injured customs guards, foreign wagon drivers, and shuddering transport beasts now lay wrapped in crinkling sheets of silver heat emergency foil. everyone could feel the sharp tang of carbolic disinfectant, the rotten-egg hiss of portable chemical foggers. The low, collective groan of wounded animals fighting through the lingering after-effects of chimeric spore exposure.
Titus stood in the center of the bay, an unmoving four-legged razor-sharp island. His sixteen-ton dark rock back shell served as the sterile field table, its flat, linked dorsal armor scales lit up by four magnetic halogen work-lamps clamped securely to his outer edge armor rim. The ancient tortoise remained rock-steady, his heavy breathing a low, rhythmic hum that rang through the concrete, acting as a living sound sedative that calmed the panicked animals lying around his massive feet. Every few minutes, Titus extended his leathery neck to accept a handful of coarse stone salt from a passing combat medic, his heavy eyelids blinking with slow, imperturbable patience.
“Next patient!” Arthur barked, stripping off a pair of torn nitrile gloves stained with dark fluid-draining fluid and tossing them into a biohazard waste drum.
