The clanking grew louder, a mechanical death march echoing in the sterile corridor. Kaelen and his Jwala warriors flattened themselves against the walls around the captive bay's entrance, their obsidian-tipped spears held ready. They were weapons designed for silent, open-range combat, about to be tested in a brutal, close-quarters chokepoint.
"They're coming!" one of the Jwala warriors hissed.
Through the doorway, Kalpit saw them. A dozen internal sentinel drones, insectoid machines that walked on four sharp, spider-like legs, their torsos mounting twin pulse cannons. They were faster and more agile than the bulky Enforcers, designed for navigating the tight confines of a facility. They rounded the corner, their red optics locking onto the open door of the captive bay.
"Seal the door!" Kaelen yelled to Anasuya.
"I can't!" she shot back, not taking her eyes off the holographic panel. "It's on a system bypass! I have to finish the release sequence!"
The front drone opened fire.
VEEP! VEEP!
Kaelen and his warriors met the charge. One Jwala shoved a heavy supply crate into the doorway, creating partial cover. Another hurled his spear. The obsidian tip, impossibly sharp, struck a drone's leg joint. It didn't just pierce it; the crystal seemed to absorb and destabilize the energy flowing through the machine. The drone's leg sparked and seized, causing the automaton to stumble.
They were effective, but they were hopelessly outgunned. The sheer volume of fire from the sentinels began to chew through their makeshift barricade, superheating the metal, sending sprays of molten shrapnel into the room. One Jwala cried out, a pulse shot grazing his shoulder, the wound instantly cauterizing with a sick sizzle.
Kalpit knew they couldn't hold. Not like this. He looked at the rows upon rows of stasis pods, at the intricate network of pipes and conduits that fed them. An idea, born of Parashurama's lessons in focused destruction, bloomed in his mind. He wasn't in an empty corridor. He was in a room full of potential weapons.
"Kaelen!" he yelled over the din of battle. "Fall back! Form a line in front of the control panel! Protect Anasuya!"
Kaelen, trusting his commander, gave a sharp cry. The Jwala warriors disengaged from the doorway, pulling their wounded comrade with them, and formed a disciplined half-circle in front of Anasuya, their spears a wall of glittering obsidian.
The drones, their path now clear, surged into the room. They fanned out, their programming dictating a clean, efficient sweep of the chamber.
It was exactly what Kalpit wanted.
He was no longer standing with the others. He was on the other side of the room, one hand pressed against the primary conduit for the bio-stasis sedative gas. It was a thick, heavily insulated pipe.
"Hey!" Kalpit yelled, his voice cutting through the noise.
The dozen red optics of the sentinel drones swiveled, locking onto him. They identified him as the primary target—the anomaly, the Avatar.
"Wrong room," he said, a grim smile on his face.
He didn't try to punch the pipe. He didn't try to rip it open. He used his Manipura, channeling a single, sharp, harmonic pulse into the pipe's internal valve mechanism, just as he had done with Grak's hydraulic arm. He persuaded it to fail catastrophically.
CHUNK-HSSSSSSSSSS!
With a percussive pop, the primary valve ruptured. A thick, white, vaporous gas began to pour into the room under immense pressure. It was a potent neuro-sedative, designed to keep a thousand humans in a deep, dreamless sleep. It was harmless to breathe, but it played havoc with advanced electronics.
The sentinel drones' optics flickered. Their movements became sluggish, their targeting systems glitching as the gas interfered with their delicate sensors.
[WARNING: ATMOSPHERIC CONTAMINANT DETECTED. SENSORY ACUITY COMPROMISED.]
But Kalpit wasn't finished. Across the room, running parallel to the sedative pipe, was another conduit. This one carried super-cooled liquid nitrogen, used to keep the pod systems from overheating.
He placed his other hand on that pipe and sent a second, identical pulse into its main valve.
CRACK-HIIISSSSSSSSS!
The second valve ruptured. A wave of intensely cold, cryogenic vapor billowed out, meeting the thick, white sedative gas. The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. The cryogenic liquid flash-froze the sedative, turning the gas into a swirling, blinding blizzard of psychoactive snow.
The room was plunged into an instant whiteout. Visibility dropped to zero. The sentinel drones, their sensors already failing, were now completely blind. They began to fire randomly into the swirling snow, their organized sweep descending into chaos.
"Now!" Kalpit bellowed.
The Jwala warriors didn't need a second command. To them, the blizzard was not an obstacle. Their tribe had lived in the blinding sandstorms of the wastes for generations. They were used to fighting with their senses, not just their eyes. They could feel the thrum of the drones' power cores, could hear the subtle clank of their movements beneath the hiss of the gas.
They became ghosts in the snow.
One Jwala slid silently beside a confused, spinning drone and drove his obsidian spear through its primary processor. Another vaulted over a stasis pod and brought his spear down on a drone's exposed power pack.
Kalpit moved through the blizzard, a golden glow from his core cutting through the white. He was no longer hiding. He was the eye of the storm. A drone, its optics flickering, finally managed to lock onto his Prana signature. It fired.
Kalpit flowed around the shot, the techniques of Parashurama now as natural as breathing. He slid in close, his palm striking the drone's torso. Not with a transforming pulse, but with a simple, brutal concussive blast of raw Manipura fire.
FWOOMP-CRUNCH!
The drone's chassis crumpled like paper, its internal systems shattered. He was learning to be versatile, to be a scalpel one moment and a sledgehammer the next.
Within a minute, the battle was over. The last of the twelve sentinel drones lay in a broken, sparking heap on the floor, vanquished not by overwhelming force, but by a clever, chaotic strategy that had turned the environment itself into a weapon.
As the swirling, sedative snow began to settle, Anasuya let out a triumphant cry.
"It's done! The release sequence is complete!"
A new sound joined the hiss of the ruptured pipes. A gentle, collective sigh. The hum of a thousand dreams ending.
Throughout the massive chamber, the transparent lids of the bio-stasis pods began to hiss and retract. One by one, the captives began to stir. Their eyes fluttered open, blinking in the dim, chaotic light of their rude awakening, their faces shifting from blissful peace to utter, terrified confusion.
They were awake. They were free. But they were deep in the heart of a fortress at war, disoriented, weak, and with no idea what was happening.
Just then, the massive blast door to the captive bay began to groan, shudder, and then retract. The facility's Prefect, flanked by two hulking, heavily-armed Enforcers in crimson-marked elite armor, stood in the doorway. He stared at the scene of carnage—the downed drones, the freed captives, the wasteland warriors, and Kalpit at the center of it all.
The Prefect's face, a mask of cold fury, twisted into a venomous sneer.
"So, the glitch has a few party tricks," he said, raising the advanced plasma pistol in his hand. "Let's see how you handle a system administrator with absolute privileges."