A guard went down in a bright pool of blood. At the gate, the rest of the line buckled in quick succession.
Maelstrom came prepared. Their first strike hit hard enough to rip open Ascension Technology's industrial park perimeter. Bikes skidded. Vans fishtailed. Doors flew wide. Chrome flashed as gangers dropped to the asphalt and rushed the breach with guns up.
Outer security snapped to it fast. Arasaka supplied gear and training, and it showed. Teams redeployed, turrets woke, and suppressive fire stitched the entry lanes. For a minute, the push held.
Numbers and nerve carried the other way. Maelstrom did not stop coming. Their kit was uneven and their aim sloppy, but most of them ran with pain editors and heavy augments. Kill one, and another sprinted through the smoke to fill the hole. The fight turned into a grind that the guards could not win clean.
"Any more support in the pipe?"
"Negative. It is not only this gate. Other entries are hot. The whole base is engaged."
The guard swore, checked a fresh mag, and leaned back in. A scream cut him short. His teammate traced an arc through the air and hit the concrete at his boots like a thrown bag of tools.
Not far away, something tall and brutal stood out against the floodlights. Full body chrome. Heavy frame. A sledgehammer in its hands that did not look like it belonged to any construction site. The giant flexed, servos whining, then launched on boosted legs. The hammer came down the instant it landed. The wounded guard on the deck did not get up again.
"Their elite," someone hissed over comms. Inside any gang, some hitters sit several rungs above the rest. In Maelstrom, the ones who can tolerate the worst installs rise fastest. These carried subdermal plating, actuator bundles, shock absorbers, and a taste for closing distance. Every swing forced the line back another step.
Security answered with disciplined fire. The hammer carrier shrugged part of it with under-skin armor, then swept sideways and sent another guard tumbling. With more elites joining the lane and the rank and file piling in behind them, the checkpoint gave way.
Gunfire rolled across the park. Cameras went blind one by one. Warning strobes turned the smoke into a red room. The fight did not last long. When the noise bled down, Maelstrom held the ground.
Bodies choked the approaches. Burn marks curled paint from housings. A security camera lay face down with its cable pulled like a tendon. Royce stood in the ruined gateway and laughed, the sound raw and pleased.
"So this is Ascension Technology. So this is Arasaka security—only this. You come to Northside and think you can stand against Maelstrom. Brick was afraid of these people. Tell me that is not a joke."
Laughter answered him from the bikes and the broken wall. He cut it with a short gesture.
"Move. Tear the park apart. Do it before Arasaka sends more."
He did not linger to admire the damage. No one could say how fast reinforcements would land.
They pushed deeper. The gunfire faded. Without the constant noise of the perimeter fight, the interior sounded wrong. Too quiet. No boots. No shouted orders. The guard teams who should have filled these corridors were gone.
They reached a factory building and finally heard life. Machine life. Conveyors murmured. Servo arms clicked through motions. Outside, boxy worker drones lifted crates and carried them in neat lines as if nothing had happened.
Royce stared, baffled. "What is this. The yard looks like a slaughterhouse, and they are still in production."
"Boss. I heard their plants run full robot," a ganger said. "Everything in the program."
Royce nodded once. "Fine. Ignore them. Search for the communications server. Second team. Place charges across the site."
The robots marched and did not react. No flinch. No alert. No change in pace. They looked like wooden men carved to carry and stack. Maelstrom treated them like background and kept moving.
One loader passed close to a pallet. A ganger stepped in, squinted at the chassis, and snorted. "These are the units Ascension showed off. They are using them for real production."
He lifted his pistol and put a round into the casing. The shot cracked loud in the quiet yard. The loader did not even wobble. It kept walking.
"What is this. A production robot that eats bullets."
He took three more shots, fast. The drone's route and tempo stayed perfect. The paint around the impact points scuffed and then cooled to a dull sheen.
Shouting started up. A few more gangers emptied short bursts at other robots to the same effect. If anything, the drones seemed more focused once the shooting began, as if a flag in their runtime toggled from normal to hardened.
Frustration climbed. Radios crackled as teams split to search the building and wire charges. Royce looked over the quiet factory floor and the tire tracks behind them and grinned to himself.
"Find the server," he said again, voice flat. "Then light the park."