The Energy Crisis
Forty-seven hours. That was the window before the re-evaluation board stripped Rian Vale’s frame for parts.
He stood at the edge of the lower salvage lot, the air thick with the ozone tang of grinding metal and the desperate sweat of low-rank cadets. His credit balance was a flat zero. His frame’s left thoracic brace was a stress-fractured mess, and the prototype module in his core was currently starving for high-output fuel.
“You look like you’re waiting for a funeral,” Milo Renn said, leaning against a stack of rusted actuator limbs. He didn’t look at Rian; he was busy watching the overhead board. “Lottery of Scraps just opened. Prize core’s experimental grade. Not the usual scrap-bin trash.”
“I’m in.”
“That’s the spirit that gets you killed,” Milo muttered, but he was already handing Rian a salvage chip.
The Lottery was a Veyra Proving Ground staple: a timed, high-stakes scramble through a debris-choked arena. Winners earned purchase rights to the prize cage; losers paid the entry fee and walked away with nothing. Rian didn’t have the luxury of losing. He moved toward the intake kiosk, his stride measured, eyes scanning the lot not for the obvious prizes, but for the irregularities in the stack patterns.
He spotted it near the rear wall: a heap of mangled cargo shells and bent conduits. The heat bloom under the tarp was too consistent for standard scrap. Someone had mislabeled a high-density core bin, or perhaps, someone had dumped it there to be claimed by a specific hand.
When the lane gate slammed open, the scramble turned into a riot. Drones dropped fresh debris, creating a chaotic obstacle course. Rian didn’t run with the pack. He moved with the flow of the wreckage, using his frame’s heightened awareness to predict the path of falling beams and surging cadets. He reached the rear bin, raked through the copper dust, and felt the weight of the experimental core. It was dense, cold, and illegal to route through a public game.
“Claim thief!” a broker barked.
A theft flag flared red on Rian’s wrist slate. He didn’t stop. He vaulted over a coolant spill, his movements precise, and hit the exit strip just as the security grid began to lock down.
Back in Maintenance Bay 4, the frame looked like a corpse on a slab. Rian didn’t hesitate. He cracked the core housing and seated the cell. The neural-sync load hit him like a physical blow, a sharp, white-hot spike of data that made his teeth ache. The module roared to life, and for a second, the entire hangar sharpened—every scratch on the floor, every tremor in the frame’s failing brace.
Then the bay door hissed open.
Three of Jessa Corin’s subordinates stepped in, their sponsor-backed gear gleaming. The lead enforcer held out a forged maintenance order. “Board audit. Stand clear.”
Rian didn’t argue. He shoved the core’s output directly into the frame’s chassis, bypassing the safety limiters. A localized EMP pulse tore through the bay. The enforcers’ comms died, their lights flickered, and Rian was already moving. He didn’t fight them; he dismantled them, using the frame’s sudden surge of power to drive a tool cart into their path and force his way out.
He reached Captain Kade’s office with forty-six hours and forty-nine minutes on his internal timer. She didn’t look up from the public logs, where his ID was now blinking with a liability marker.
“You’re a walking catastrophe, Vale,” she said, finally meeting his eyes.
“I’m a pilot who needs to survive the next bracket.”
She tapped a display, showing him the arena mesh routing map. The surge pattern from his frame wasn’t just a power spike; it was a resonance with the arena’s own control spine. The module was stealing efficiency from the ground itself.
“You have twenty-four hours,” Kade said, her voice cold. “Prove this isn’t a death trap, or I stop shielding you from Voss.”
Back in the hangar, Rian locked the core into place. As the sync stabilized, the maintenance wall interface shifted. The standard diagnostics vanished, replaced by a stripped, severe command architecture.
AUTHORIZED INPUT DETECTED. ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL LINK: ACTIVE.
The arena wasn’t just a stage. It was a tool. And for the first time, Rian realized the ladder wasn't just something he had to climb—it was something he could command.