Gunfire tears across the open Badlands. Mercenaries rake the Arasaka convoy with heavy machine guns, but the rounds barely scuff armored hulls. Arasaka's escort vehicles stop playing defense. They close in, pin the raiders' cars, draw sidearms, and put rounds through glass and bone. The first wave collapses. The relief does not last.
More raiders wait up ahead. Each wave costs Arasaka time, ammunition, and people. Blue blips on the convoy's tac-map fade one by one. If the pace holds, the convoy will fall by attrition.
Inside the central transport truck, the mission's main asset rides behind a reinforced plate. Two Arasaka soldiers sit facing each other with rifles braced—the impacts outside dull to a continuous thud against high-strength armor. On the wall panel, red dots surge and wink out; the blue ones that mark friendlies thin just as surely.
They should have heard reinforcements by now. The Badlands always draw gunfire. In the past, Arasaka QRF would already be rolling. Tonight, there is nothing. No siren, no rotor, not even an encrypted ping. That silence smells wrong. Either the enemy is too strong, or this mission was bad from the start.
Both soldiers look to the other side of the compartment. A massive frame stands there, a configuration neither has seen in service. The signature Gorilla Arms leave no doubt about the platform's profile.
Cybertron.
Suspended within its frame hangs a limbless, unconscious man. The soldiers do not know the details. They do not have to. This is a new Arasaka research product. It matters enough that losing it should trigger alarms across three departments. Yet no one hurries to save them.
Which means exactly one thing. They are bait.
Knowing that buys them nothing. Pawns do not pick their own squares.
A violent jolt hammers the truck. The convoy brakes hard. A message flashes to the soldiers' optics. They receive one last order.
Start the installation program on the truck's terminal.
Out in the Badlands, the driver dies under mercenary fire. The truck digs a trench of yellow dirt and winds down to a stop inside a curtain of blowing sand. The latest batch of raiders, faces bright with greed and luck, swarm the rear door. The team hacker works the lock.
The ground begins to tremble.
Engines fill the horizon. Armed vehicles with Militech markings flood the mercenaries' field of view. Line after line throws up sheets of dust that blot half the sky. Missile trucks sit among the convoy. Above them, a Militech two seat hover tank holds station.
Basilisk.
"Militech… what size force is that?" the merc leader blurts. He has never seen a lineup like this.
"Boss, do we run?" someone asks. One missile barrage would erase them. They did not come here to die for nothing.
Before the leader can decide, the still truck booms from within. The door bulges outward. Something inside woke up and wants out.
"Retreat!" he snaps. It is the right call and far too late.
The door thunders again and tears free. The compartment behind it washes red. Not alarm light. Blood. The two Arasaka soldiers have been turned into paint.
The Cybertron unit, or rather the test subject inside it, steps into view.
Captain Bafil shows no roar, only a flat face. He feels the terrible strength that rides his body now. In all his years as a soldier, he has never seen an implant frame like this. The power does not make him happy. He knows exactly what he is.
An experiment.
Strength without a future is a dead end. His role is to perform for Arasaka, then get thrown away to rot. Ever since he went down on a battlefield, woke under a "miracle" drug, and "volunteered" for an Arasaka program, he has known how this ends.
Who should he blame for it? Himself, the iron-blooded soldier who fought hard and lost?
Bafil does not think so.
Arasaka should be the one to blame