"Pick," Hale said. "Run a test, hold a door, or listen."
"Listen," Ash said.
They stood still until the stairwell finished speaking. The thump rolled again—low, deliberate, layered: diesel under hydraulic whine; the rattle of track shoes that had forgotten luxury; a floodlight's hum turning air into glare.
"Loader," Ash said. "Ram head or dozer blade. Not ours."
Admin's jaw tightened. "East Gate."
The sergeant didn't bless the identification. He didn't need to. "Move," he said.
They moved. Hale took point, shoulders loose, hands low and big. Admin unlocked a service door with a key Nightshade would eventually confiscate if given a week. The door opened onto a catwalk that ran behind a perforated steel screen. Cold air threaded through. Beyond the screen, the East Gate revealed itself as a roll-up slab of reinforced steel with a personnel door welded shut beside it. On the far side of the outer yard, a rammer-loader idled: armored cab; hydraulic ram knifed forward from a reinforced carriage; floodlight mounted high like a sun that demanded obedience. Four Nightshade troopers crouched behind improvised shields on the loader's flanks. A fifth tapped a radio against his palm and watched the gate like it owed him money.
The loader's driver goosed the throttle; the ram nudged forward and tapped the gate's face plate—testing, counting, learning resonance.
Admin's hands went to the control post by reflex—and stopped on a dark indicator light. He swore under breath. "Power to bollards is in another circuit. The automatic posts won't raise from here."
"Manuals," Ash said. "Where."
"Right under us," Admin said. "Crank box."
Hale scanned the yard, found angles. "We crank. They push. You shoot."
"Only what we must," Ash said. If Nightshade wanted a war, they could find it without him turning the first page.
They crouch-walked along the catwalk to a square plate bolted into the deck. Admin tore a panel open and revealed twin screw jacks capped with hexes. A folded bar hung on a chain.
Ash grabbed the bar; the metal had the temperature of old arguments. He fitted it to the first square and leaned. The jack caught; the torque climbed into his shoulders.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility override: manual bollard raise (East Gate). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:50/1000.
Nono rolled up, braced itself, and set two little stabilizer feet with theatrical seriousness. Hale slid his hands under the bar behind Ash's, took a share of the weight, and they cranked. Below, posts the size of small tree trunks began to grow from slots in the concrete, silver and stubborn.
The loader nudged again—tested weight. The gate grumbled, but the posts had opinions about posture.
A lantern jaw in a Nightshade coat cupped his hands and shouted, voice flattened by metal: "Gate inspection. Open by order."
Admin didn't lean into the grill; he stayed in the shadow. "Inspection by prior arrangement only. Submit order to Admin."
"Order's at the end of our ram," the Nightshade man said, and lifted two fingers. The floodlight swung, raking the screen. Light stabbed through the perforations and sprayed the catwalk with dotted knives.
Ash squinted and kept cranking. The second jack engaged; the second post rose.
"Third," Admin said. "Back corner. Chain's stiff."
Nono chirped negation. It rolled, nosed a second plate, and banged its square little head into a seized latch like a terrier picking a fight. Hale lifted, kicked the latch free with an economical stamp, and Ash dropped to the third bar.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Facility override: manual bollard raise (aux). Difficulty: mid. +50 Mechanic XP / +100 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:100/1000.
Below, the loader reversed, lined its ram to the seam between door slabs, and came forward with more conviction. The gate boomed. The catwalk trembled through boot soles; dust sifted from ductwork. The posts shuddered, held. The floodlight carved the screen into alternating blindness and shadow.
"Light," Hale said, which meant kill it.
Ash laid the bar down as if setting a child to bed, slid to the screen, and found a clean line through a hole of the right size. The Silver Stag's weight settled against his shoulder more like a tool than an argument; he ran the selector to long-range. The floodlight perched on a welded bracket high on the loader's cab—a square of arrogance with a glass eye.
He breathed out. Pressed.
The bulb burst with a sound like a moth's bad day. The loader's face vanished into instant dusk. Men swore; one flinched and hit his shield with his own elbow.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: floodlight (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +150 Mechanic XP / +200 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:250/1000.
"Hydraulics next," Hale said softly. He pointed without pointing at the line he meant: the ram's right-side pressure hose, braided, kissing the carrier's edge for a thumb's width before disappearing into armor.
Ash exhaled a measurement. The loader rocked; the hose flexed; the hole through the screen gave him a thread of angle. He let the hinge of his shoulder remember the ramp math from the yard.
Press.
The shot snapped the braid. Hydraulic fluid jetted, atomized, and wrote a brief comet in floodlight ghost before gravity claimed it. The ram lurched, seized a half-inch off its mark, and started bleeding itself into indecision.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: hydraulic line (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:450/1000.
"Crank," Ash said, already moving. He seized the bar; Hale took the other end. They ground the last bollard up until its top kissed the gate face from the inside and wedged. The loader nosed forward like an animal trying denial; the gate boomed and refused.
The lantern-jaw outside shouted again, this time with less sermon and more oath. "Interference with inspection is a violation. Open the gate or be cited."
Admin leaned closer to Ash without stepping into the light. "He'll escalate. He wants a video of us looking weak."
"Then we don't look," Ash said.
He pointed at the crossbar brackets welded to the inner frame—two empty saddles six feet off the deck that had once held a beam no one had bothered to put back after a decade of quiet. "Bar."
"Storage bay," Admin said. "Left."
Hale went, long and fast, through a door that had decided to be useful. He returned with a length of angle iron and a loop of chain. Together they slid the iron into the saddles. Ash centered it and drove two pins by hand to keep it from walking.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Emergency brace: inner crossbar set. Difficulty: simple (higher-tier item). +10 Mechanic XP / +15 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:460/1000.
The loader's driver tried the ram and got a wheeze; hydraulic fluid dripped and puddled, drew dark lines under strobe flashes from the troopers' panicked headlamps. Someone on the far side of the yard cursed the universe for physics.
"Radio," lantern jaw ordered. "Second unit."
Admin's radio made a small unhappy noise in his pocket, as if phones could flinch. He checked it; it stayed dumb. He kept it that way.
"Chain it," Hale said.
Ash looped the chain through the crossbar and a welded ear on the frame, tensioned it with a salvaged turnbuckle, and made it sing like a new string. Nono produced a split pin from somewhere inside its square body like a magician; Ash fixed the buckle so it couldn't unwind under vibration.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Emergency brace: chain tension & lock. Difficulty: simple. +5 Mechanic XP / +10 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:475/1000.
Outside, Nightshade voices organized into doctrine. Men in armor always get louder when it's dark. A second floodlight clicked on from a tripod; the yard lit in a wash you could taste as heat on your face.
Lantern jaw cupped his hands again. "Last call," he shouted. "Open for inspection. We have authority."
"Admin requires tribunal for breach of seals," Admin called back, the way a man says a prayer because he owes the words to someone even if no one is listening.
"The tribunal is out for repair," lantern jaw said, and laughed at himself because the joke kept him warm.
Hale leaned against the screen, eye to a hole. "Second machine rolling," he murmured. "Looks like a proper ram. Taller, thicker carrier."
Ash's right arm tugged at him. He ignored it. The Silver Stag's barrel kissed a fresh hole; the selector sat at long and waited for the right small thing to offer him purchase. The second unit came into view like a bad promise fulfilled—beefier ram head, better armor around the lines, floodlight far back under a cage. Someone had learned from someone else's night.
"Not the light," Hale said. "They caged it."
"Pivot pin," Ash said. The ram's articulated head rode a pair of exposed pivot bolts right at the business end—harder steel, smaller target, but if you locked the head off-angle before pressure built—
He controlled the inhale, cut his breath into thirds, and rode the last part down to stillness. Press.
The shot struck the pivot's collar; sparks spat; the head twitched and stuck ten degrees off axis, presenting more face to the gate and less force to the seam.
[SYSTEM PROMPT]Field disabling shot: ram pivot collar (long-range). Difficulty: mid. +200 Mechanic XP / +300 Basic Mechanical Repair XP.
Mechanic lv4:675/1000.
"How long does that buy us?" Admin asked.
"Long enough to make a phone call that doesn't exist," Ash said. He set the Stag down on the catwalk, muzzle safe, and put both hands back on the bar. "Crank the last quarter. Sink those posts into the slab."
Nono beeped as if to say so obvious. Hale smiled with half his mouth and they cranked.
Lantern jaw stopped shouting and started counting. "Sixty," he said through cupped hands. "Fifty-nine. Fifty-eight."
"Of course he counts," Hale said.
Admin's mouth flattened. "Do not return fire unless they breach. We keep it in the book."
"Books burn," Hale said. He kept cranking.
"Fifty-two," lantern jaw called.
Ash locked the last bollard, set the bar aside, and checked the chain with two fingers that made music out of tension. He looked at the screen; the yard looked back with too many eyes.
Lantern jaw tried a new approach. "Mechanic. Vale. We know you're there. You want rations, parts, meds— you want a life— you sign the paper and open the door."
Hale's laugh didn't travel far. "He's selling a leash."
"Forty-three," lantern jaw called.
Ash picked up the Stag again and let the panel sit in the corner of his sight.
[SYSTEM PROMPT] Gate status: inner braced / bollards raised. External variable: second rammer present. Risk: elevated. Recommendation: Maintain defensive hold; avoid lethal force unless breach occurs.
He kept his cheek on the stock and his voice low. "Admin—log the bollard and brace status. If they break this, we show tribunal the numbers when the world grows one again."
Admin's thumb moved over the radio, not to transmit but to record—an old habit. "Logged," he said. The word carried a small relief you could store like heat in stone.
"Thirty-six," lantern jaw said.
The second rammer edged forward with its head stuck crooked and its floodlight caged. The first sat sullen, bleeding hydraulic fluid that spread like a shadow trying to be a lake.
"Thirty."
Hale measured the yard with half-lidded eyes. "If they try the personnel door welds, I take the man with the torch. You take the second hose when it exposes."
"Twenty-eight."
Nono pinged and displayed a tiny rectangle on its screen: a crude drawing of the crossbar, the chain, a little heart next to the turnbuckle like a child's joke. Ash patted its casing once. "It holds."
"Twenty-four."
A Nightshade drone rose from behind the loader—smaller than the one they'd killed, light caged, lens bright. It bobbed, sampling angles.
"Twenty-one."
Ash slid the Stag's muzzle to meet it, then stopped. The drone's camera saw what you told it. He lowered a hair and faced the gate instead.
"Twenty."
Lantern jaw's voice sharpened. "Final— Open the gate, or we escalate control."
"Define escalate," Hale murmured.
The second rammer's driver revved; the machine twitched; the crooked head thunked the gate like a drunk testing friendship.
"Fifteen."
Ash's right hand trembled. He squeezed the fore-end until tremor turned into pressure he could use.
"Ten."
Admin's pupils were bigger than the light demanded. He didn't step back. "No one fires first," he said to himself more than anyone.
"Nine… eight… seven…"
Hale rolled his neck. "On breach," he said, "we make it loud."
"Six… five…"
Ash felt the posts in the soles of his boots, felt the crossbar through the frame, felt the chain's new song in the air. The loader's floodlights painted the perforated screen in bright coins that didn't reach their eyes.
"Four…"
The rammer's driver found courage somewhere cheap.
"Three…"
Ash moved the Stag an inch left to find the second unit's new hydraulic elbow—more protected than the first, not protected enough.
"Two…"
He inched the trigger back until it was a promise.
"One."