The sound of high-pressure repulsor turbines cut through the low thrum of the trench generators.
An armored Caelum-Exemplar transport, gleaming with polished white lacquer and embossed with the gold-trimmed gryphon crest of Ironfang Vanguard Academy, hovered over the edge of the dark rock fissure. Its stabilizing thrusters blew aside clouds of wet soot. Then, a squad of academy security guards in polished composite riot plate deployed down the ramp. Behind them strode two men whose spotless attire was an open insult to the mud, blood. Then it spent brass littering Sector 9.
Dean Horatio Pendelton walked with the hurried, self-important waddle of a man accustomed to plush carpeted office halls. Clutched tightly in his gloved right hand was his solid-gold Academy Seal Stamp, its integrated biometric scanner blinking with a rhythmic green light. Beside him walked Gideon Thorne, Senior Vice President of Bio-Asset Management at ApexBio. Thorne wore a charcoal-gray tailored coat made of void-silk. His silver-rimmed eye implants cast cold blue crosshairs across the steaming carcass of the Hard-shelled Bone-Scorpion Empress.
Captain Tanya Richter, leaning against the sandbagged low roof wall with an unlit filter cigarette between her teeth, spat into the drainage ditch.
“Look at that,” Richter drawled, her voice raspy with frontline cynicism. “The dead monster isn’t even cold, and the vultures are already wearing three-piece suits.”
