The platform of Berth 3 was not a trading post. It was an industrialized hellscape.
The armored Scrap-Train loomed against the dock like a monolithic mountain of riveted steel and hissing steam, its lower chassis venting thick white plumes that mixed with the black coal-smoke choking the air. Overhead, crude carbide floodlights mounted on rusted gantries cast harsh, dancing white glares through the haze, their beams cutting across the platform in sharp geometric angles that left the spaces between them in absolute darkness. The concrete was littered with discarded scrap-wheels, shattered loading pallets, and the rusted husks of cargo containers that had been stripped down to their frames decades ago. The air was thick with the smell of hot grease, burning coke, and the faint, acrid tang of ozone from overworked electrical systems straining against their limits.
The Warlord’s Iron-Claw enforcers were not scavengers. They were not the emaciated, desperate dregs Ash had dismantled in the derelict carriage. These were elite heavy infantry, their bodies encased in hulking, thick-plated Grave-Armor variants that made the logging rigs at Gryte’s gate look like children’s toys. External back-mounted steam boilers chugged rhythmically on their shoulder blades, venting excess pressure through brass exhaust ports that whistled with every step. They carried massive dual-barrel pneumatic slag-rifles, their receivers wrapped in copper cooling coils, their muzzles wide enough to fire fist-sized chunks of molten scrap. Their thick metal boots shook the concrete as they patrolled the offloading zone, their helmeted heads sweeping the platform with the slow, mechanical precision of men who had been trained to kill anything that moved and had been doing it for a very long time.
Ash crouched behind a mountain of discarded scrap-wheels at the platform’s edge. The Runic Punishment Rivet-Gun was in his organic hand, its weight balanced and steady. He checked the twin pressure dials on the weapon’s side. Both needles were locked firmly in the high-velocity kill-zone, the pristine fluorocarbon fluid cycling through his left arm’s conduits maintaining a flawless, zero-fluctuation chamber pressure. The runes etched into the brass regulator pulsed gently, their amber glow warming his palm with an aggressive, ready hum. No lag. No valve delay. No friction. The weapon was primed.
The Blight-Tongue Core merged Gryte’s stolen schematics with active thermal tracking, and the structural wireframe that unspooled across Ash’s vision was crisp and certain. It bypassed the thick front plating of the Iron-Claw armor entirely, highlighting the critical weak point in bright, pulsing amber: the Overpressurized Main Steam Return Pipe that ran exposed across the rear of each guard’s right shoulder. A single high-velocity puncture at that junction would breach the primary pressure loop, causing the entire back-mounted boiler system to suffer a catastrophic internal inversion. The armor would not protect them. The armor would become their coffin.
Across the tracks, the stranger’s silhouette was barely visible in the shadows of a rusted cargo crane. Their grey eyes caught the green glow of Ash’s optical sensors through the coal-smoke, and they gave a single, grim nod. The execution was cleared.
Ash raised the modified weapon. The Shadow-Rig’s frictionless joints shifted without a sound, and the Runic Punishment Rivet-Gun came up in a smooth, fluid motion that had no rattle, no clank, no mechanical giveaway. He sighted the lead guard—a hulking enforcer standing at the edge of the offloading zone, his slag-rifle cradled in his arms, his helmeted head turning slowly as he scanned the platform. The exposed steam pipe on his right shoulder glowed amber in the wireframe overlay. Range: forty yards. Wind: negligible. Target velocity: stationary.
Ash squeezed the trigger.
The response was instantaneous. No lag. No sluggish valve delay. The Runic Core’s doubled chamber pressure dumped its load in a single, muffled THUMP that was completely swallowed by the ambient clanking and hissing of the idling train. An eight-inch tool-steel rivet, its tip etched with the amber residue of the regulator’s pressure runes, screamed across the forty-yard gap with clinical, terrifying velocity. It did not tumble. It did not deflect. It punched straight through the unshielded brass coupling of the lead guard’s main steam pipe with the cold, surgical precision of a round that had been aimed by a machine.
The boiler ruptured.
The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The moment the pressurized line was breached, the entire back-mounted steam system suffered a violent internal pressure inversion. A geyser of scalding, superheated white steam erupted directly inside the guard’s thick-plated helmet, the temperature flash-boiling the air in his lungs before his nervous system could register the pain. He did not scream. He did not twitch. His heavy slag-rifle clattered to the concrete, and his hulking frame dropped like a chopped tree, the armor still hissing as the boiler’s remaining pressure vented through the shattered coupling.
Before the second guard could process the sudden steam explosion of his comrade, Ash was already cycling the secondary shot. The Runic Punishment Rivet-Gun lived up to its reclassification—the needles on the dual pressure dials did not drop a single millibar, the chamber pressure held perfectly stable by the pristine green fluorocarbon flow in his left arm’s conduits. He pivoted smoothly, his green optical sensors tracking the second target’s head turning toward the blast. The Blight-Tongue Core painted the weak point on the guard’s shoulder. Ash fired.
The second rivet screamed across the platform. It struck the guard’s raised dual-barrel slag-rifle directly at the receiver breech. The sheer kinetic energy did not simply jam the weapon—it sheared the heavy receiver in half, the impact point erupting in a spray of fractured brass gears and boiling oil. The guard was thrown backward, his faceplate splattered with molten slag and hydraulic fluid, his body crashing into a pile of scrap-iron with a hollow, echoing clang.
Ash fired the third shot before the second guard hit the ground.
The rivet caught the final active enforcer mid-shout—his mouth open behind his faceplate, his slag-rifle still half-raised, his body turning toward the source of the threat he would never see. The eight-inch steel projectile drove straight through the vulnerable, unrefined weld-line connecting his breastplate to his collar. It punched clean through the thick steel, through the leather and the skin and the wet resistance of the organs beneath, and impaled his body directly onto the armored flank of the idling Scrap-Train with a wet, massive THUD that shook the carriage wall.
The platform fell silent.
Then the dead guard’s weight pulled on the train’s hull, and the impact point tore open a high-voltage auxiliary cable box mounted on the carriage’s exterior. Sparks exploded from the ruptured housing in a shower of blue-white arcs. Instantly, the crude carbide floodlights of Berth 3 flickered, died, and then blazed back to life in a frantic, spinning crimson glare. The harsh red beams sliced through the oil-smoke in rotating staccato patterns, and a series of tectonic iron sirens began to scream across the station—low, blaring horns that echoed off the rusted gantries and signaled the deployment of the Warlord’s remaining heavy defensive forces.
The pneumatic doors of the middle cargo carriages slammed open with a synchronous hiss. Dozens of fresh Iron-Claw enforcers deployed onto the platform, their heavy metal boots stamping out a defensive line across the concrete. Their dual-barrel slag-rifles came up in a coordinated volley formation, their steam boilers chugging at maximum pressure, their muzzles tracking the platform’s edge where Ash was crouched.
Ash did not retreat. His green optical sensor locked onto the massive pre-Fall locomotive engine idling directly beside him. The Blight-Tongue Core calculated the local circuit routing in a fraction of a second, tracing the systemic short-circuit caused by the ruptured auxiliary box to its source: the Master Pressure Release Assembly mounted under the boiler’s thick iron cowcatcher. The valve was already trembling under the strain of the electrical surge, its pressure gauges redlining as the damaged system tried to vent the excess load.
Ash lunged forward. The Shadow-Rig executed the movement in ghostly, frictionless fluidity, and he jammed the muzzle of the Runic Punishment Rivet-Gun directly against the locomotive’s unshielded release bolt. He emptied the remaining chamber capacity. Three heavy rivets punched into the master valve assembly in a single, continuous cycle—THUMP-THUMP-THUMP—and the valve sheared off completely.
A blinding, roaring wall of superheated, weapon-grade white steam detonated outward from the locomotive’s engine block. The geyser erupted with the force of a bomb, instantly enveloping the entire platform in an opaque, scalding cloud that swallowed the spinning crimson floodlights and the Iron-Claw gunline and the rusted gantries and everything else. The guards’ thermal scanners were instantly choked, their tactical displays whiting out as the intense heat bloom overwhelmed their sensors. The coordinated volley dissolved into blind, panicked shouting.
Before the steam cloud could burn through his own insulating cloak, Ash grabbed the stranger by their grease-stained collar. His 100% torque left arm engaged with a silent surge of power, and he vaulted straight through the open, jagged window of the train’s primary control cabin. They crashed into the heavy, oil-slicked interior in a tangle of cloaks and weapons, the stranger rolling to their feet with the revolver still in their grip.
Ash slammed the massive, unpowered mechanical emergency lever down. The iron lock engaged with a tectonic thud that rang through the cabin’s steel frame. The armored train’s heavy pistons violently engaged, the drive wheels spinning once against the rust-caked rails before finding traction. The entire locomotive lurched forward, its massive iron cowcatcher grinding against the track, and the Scrap-Train tore out of Berth 3 into the deep darkness of the surface wasteland, leaving the roaring chaos and blind gunfire of the Iron-Claw guards behind in the boiling white steam.