Chapter 8
Ozone and stale sweat hung heavy in Workshop Gamma-7. Enforcer Valerius stood at the center of the bay, his gaze sweeping over the cluttered workbenches like a thermal scanner. He didn't look at Kael; he looked at the seams of the plating, the unauthorized power conduits, and the flickering diagnostic monitors.
"The manifest for this bay lists standard maintenance equipment, Kael," Valerius said, his voice a serrated edge. He pointed a gloved finger at the Ignis frame, currently hidden beneath a heavy, grease-stained tarp. "Yet, my sensors are picking up a localized electromagnetic variance that shouldn't exist in a Tier-9 facility. Explain it."
Kael’s heart hammered against his ribs, but he kept his hands steady on the workbench. The dampening shroud was active, but it was a jury-rigged piece of black-market tech. If Valerius probed the shielding, the entire fabrication would unravel.
"It’s an old cooling unit, Enforcer," Kael said, leaning casually against the back wall to block the view of the primary power coupling. "The regulator is faulty. It causes a minor feedback loop. I’ve been trying to stabilize it before the regional trials, per Academy Regulation 44-B regarding safety compliance for all active frames."
Valerius paused, his eyes narrowing. He pulled a digital pad from his belt, tapping the screen to cross-reference the code. Kael held his breath. The regulation was an obscure relic of the early expansion era, but it was legally binding. Valerius grunted, his frustration palpable, before turning on his heel.
"You have seventy-one hours until the frame is reassigned, Kael. If that variance isn't resolved by then, I won't just seize the frame—I’ll have your credentials revoked for equipment tampering. You are now under permanent surveillance."
As the door hissed shut, Kael didn't exhale. He moved, his hands flying to the Ignis frame. With the Enforcer gone, the clock wasn't just ticking; it was screaming. He needed to integrate the phased-array sub-processor into the thirty-seven junction points. The physical toll was immediate; a searing pressure bloomed behind his eyes as he forced the data flow into alignment. His vision blurred, the workshop dissolving into a haze of white noise.
Too slow. The heat threshold was climbing, the dampening shroud struggling to suppress the massive energy bleed. He couldn't force the sync—the frame wasn't a machine to be commanded, but a pulse to be matched. He closed his eyes, focusing on the erratic beat of his own heart, and poured his kinetic energy into the frame’s core.
With a violent shudder, the Ignis module hummed to life. A massive energy spike rippled outward, briefly blacking out the sector’s power grid. In the sudden, unnatural silence of the dark workshop, the terminal screen flickered to life, the final layer of the encrypted log decrypting.
Kael’s breath hitched. It wasn't a performance spec. It was a failure report from the academy’s own internal stress-testing division. The document detailed the exact point of collapse for the 'Vanguard' class mechs—the very frames used by the academy’s top-ranked students. The flaw was systemic: a resonance vibration in the main drive coupling that, under sustained high-output combat, would cause a cascading power failure in the pilot’s neural link. The academy knew. They were fielding these frames in regional trials, knowingly pushing them to the brink, and masking the instability with software limiters that sacrificed pilot safety for raw, flashy output.
Kael held the detonation code to the academy’s hierarchy. Before he could process the weight of it, the terminal chimed with a high-priority notification. His next opponent in the regional trial had been assigned. The file displayed the profile of Elias Thorne, a direct protégé of the Academy Director. The same faction that had been strangling the proving ground budget and pushing for the immediate decommissioning of experimental units like Ignis.
Kael stared at the screen, his reflection cold and resolute in the blue light. He was no longer just fighting for a rank; he was fighting to expose the academy’s corruption on live feed. He had the weapon; now he just needed the stage.