It had been unsettlingly easy to integrate the Dragon’s Nerves with Zero’s drive train. Their glistening-yellow, almost golden-looking tissue didn’t react until Strake fired up the engine. But the moment he did, they greedily began drinking up all its output. Hours later, the bundle of nerves had split apart and enveloped the drive train, like a parasite desperately latching onto a new host.
There was no doubt in Strake’s mind that the reason was the “special fuel cell additive” he had been sent in addition to the nerves. Dark marbles seething with miasma, yet also with unprecedented power. Supposedly, they were created as a side product of refining dragon’s blood; this so-called Black Nine could be simply dropped into the Thundercharger to inject its power. Just a single one had been enough to spur the dragon’s nerves into motion.
Zero hadn’t just gotten faster and more responsive. Its disposition had changed. The bloodlust, previously unfettered and savage, now felt… Tempered. Like the machine’s spirit had somehow been elevated, given the faint gleam of reason. He couldn’t run the engine always using Black Nine, of course; it caused thrice as much strain as Thundercharger. Nonetheless, he carried all the black beads he’d been given.
In the end, he didn’t care for the why or how of it. That was for the garage, for later.
Right now, all that mattered was the battle.
A message came in from Joseph, the Mercenary. A priority target in the area. Joseph intended to fire a bullet that would produce golden light at the target. The golden ray streaking through the sky made it easy enough to track him down, and thereafter to corner him. Sure, he had to smash through several houses since the alleyways were too narrow, but he didn’t mind.
Slaying the red-robed disciple came easily, given that he was in shock from having lost his arm; simply grabbing him was enough. The pilebunker did the rest.
However, Strake received another message from Joseph. A sizable enemy force closing in from the sides, trying to encircle Zelsys’ position. That just wouldn’t do, that wouldn’t do at all. Just like he had done in the War in countering Inquisitorial deep strikes, Strake now used these same instincts to counter another enemy tactic of the same nature.
Strake opened the emergency hatch and pulled out one of the cables, now covered in yellow nerve-webbing, its plug glistening with alien nervous fluid. Into his side it went, burning and thrumming, Zero’s cables and machinery becoming truly like part of Strake’s own body. An unconscious laugh cackled out of him. It wasn’t exactly safe, but he wasn’t too worried. The Blue Moon War had turned his liver into a mass of scar tissue already; his new homunculus replacement could take this much abuse, and it had a dedicated plug interface.
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“Being a Tactical Supremacy Asset has its perks, after all…” he thought as he went through preliminary checks.
A fulgur capsule went into the Thundercharger and an alchemic iron pill went into his own mouth, followed by a cigarette and a swig of something special. Half Witch’s Brew, half an improved version of Victory Wash; for unknown reasons, mixing a vitae elixir with Victory Wash directly would’ve normally caused an explosion. This liquid merely had a habit of producing bubbles that created small detonations inside the flask when they popped.
The smell of burning hair failed to overpower his cigarette, and like a crimson comet, Zero went sprinting down the city streets, running through buildings as if they weren’t even there. One-hundred klicks per hour. One-fifty. Two-hundred. The reactor purred. Not a single solitary sign of heat issues. This was magical.
Not Black, Blue, nor Red Robes could harm him, and their beasts became paste beneath Zero’s iron feet. Only one gave him a fight worth talking about; a huge construct of aura formed by three Red Robes and three Blue Robes. It was almost like being back in the war, pounding away at Ubul’s titanic form, only much less satisfying since this was aura rather than living stone.
Bit by bit, he tore it apart.
Pilebunker by pilebunker, high-velocity shell by high-velocity shell, which screamed deeper into the city long after penetrating the target. He didn’t have any canister shot. He had simply forgotten to bring his macroshotgun at all.
It didn’t matter.
Of the six, three were mangled corpses, and one was a fine paste splattered across Zero’s frontal armor plate, slowly withering away as the machine digested the man’s remains. Horrifying metallic screeching kept emanating from it as its deformed plates forced themselves back into shape.
The fifth was in Zero’s grasp, impaled by a pilebunker through the spine, his arms broken.
The sixth… He was unharmed.
Unharmed, but cornered.
“WERE YOU TRYING TO ATTACK THE NEWMAN ELDER FROM BEHIND, OR WERE YOU PERHAPS RATS TRYING TO ESCAPE THE CITY? DOESN’T MATTER. DIE AND BECOME FUEL. SCUM.”
“Who are you to speak to us with such disdain, golem? Was your maker truly so arrogant as to waste time teaching you to pass judgment on humans?!” the Red Robe retorted, but fear filled his voice and his eyes darted back and forth in search of an escape route.
The slit in the front of the crimson demon opened. The disciple’s eyes went wide. Demonic eyes stared back at him from behind the thick barrier in the slit, shining orange and obscured by swirling smoke. Not a mere golem. This was a fire demon entombed in a coffin of screaming iron. The red golem’s pilot spoke, his voice still blasting out with the unnatural, machine-like distortion: “IN ALL THE WORLD, THERE ARE FIVE REASONS TO MAKE WAR. THREE OF THEM CAN BE RIGHTEOUS. YOURS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE THREE. YOURS IS A REASON OF GREED AND ARROGANCE. YOU. ARE. SCUM.”
With just one shot from the Type-Z, before he could give his response, the Disciple of the Order of Six Truths became a corpse. With a single stomp, he became an organic repair slurry. Baruch Hickeller, a Core Disciple. True age, 76. Physical age, 31. A man who had consumed albedo extracted from dozens of tortured and sacrificed mortals, who had been thought of as a combat formation genius of the new generation.
Now, a fine paste.