MAXIMUM POWER ROUTED TO AUTOFORGE. WEAPONS OFFLINE.
The warning blared in angry red across his HUD as Tex chewed on his comfort bolt, tucked into the corner of his mouth like a cigarette.
He was built for extended operations with minimal resupply—a so-called "Chaos Agent," as Bandstand had once dubbed him.
His mission doctrine was simple:
Enter the AO.
Fuck shit up.
Refuse to elaborate.
Leave.
And if step four wasn’t an option, that’s where the autoforge came in.
It wasn’t part of his original design spec. The added weight made him even slower, even less maneuverable than he already was.
But it let him keep fighting long after the others had extracted—long after.
As long as he had reactor fuel, he could wreak havoc for months.
Back in the day, Bandstand had been his... handler, more or less.
Kept him on a leash. Ran point. Tried to “manage” him.
Tex had doubts about his leadership—at first.
But after a few ops, they figured each other out. Learned how to move together.
Honestly? Bandstand would’ve made a better coder than a combat lead.
But someone had to wrangle “Babysitter-1.”
That’s what Bandstand called himself.
Tex felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth as he watched the counter on the forge tick down.
A few minutes left.
Which meant the one thing he hated most:
Time to think.
Time to be alone with his own memory banks.
With that old ache mounting in his shoulders—
like a weight he wasn’t coded to carry.
He shook his head.
Cleared his thoughts.
Flushed a few branching processes just to get focused again.
Right. Shellmonger.
A Gourneyboy hybrid unit.
Built in the ‘40s. Still breathing. Still failing upward.
He’d started in the Bloc, shuffled through years of promotions, and eventually jumped ship to go merc.
Now he was running ground operations for the Black Suns—chest full of medals that didn’t mean shit.
Tex snorted.
Poor aim slaving. Slower than dirt. Thin armor.The perfect rear-line package for some pencil-pushing desk jockey.
Sure, the bastard was four times his size.
But that just made Tex the smaller target.
Still, that outdated arsenal could split him in half.
And not in the fun way.
“Guess I get to see if that brain’s kept up over the last century,” Tex muttered, standing up and stretching. “Maybe he finally learned how to fucking shoot.”
He dusted himself off as the countdown hit zero.
AUTOFORGING COMPLETE. HAVE FUN!
“You know it,” he rumbled, striding back into the heat haze.
It took about five minutes of climbing and positioning to get where he wanted.
He opened comms. “Come on out, Shellmonger. If you wanna negotiate, I’m open to it. Feels like a crime to beat up a museum piece.”
Shells slammed into the steel two feet beside him.
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No shrapnel hit.
He’s using AP, the cocky fuck!
Tex leaned over and looked down at the towering mech below.
The main turret was already tracking him, and secondary guns craned from Shellmonger’s shoulders like angry insect limbs.
“AP? Really?” Tex snorted. “Have I ever told you how fucking goofy you look?”
Shellmonger’s engines revved. “I tire of you, Junkyard Dog,” came the gravelly reply, breech locks clunking shut with intent.
Tex smirked. “You kidding? If I’m a junkyard dog, you’re the whole damn junkyard.”
He dove behind a forge as the incoming shells slammed into it, kicking sparks and scoring deep scars across the metal. The floor between them hissed with shrapnel.
Tex hissed back. “Ohhh, not fooling around anymore, big guy?” He caught him on the reload—sent a burst across Shellmonger’s front.
Rounds struck home, puncturing the outer chest plate—but Shellmonger stayed up.
The big bastard reached for a thick sheet of steel, dragging it into position beneath his barrels.
“Take your best shot, Dog!” he roared, hauling twin Maxims from his back mounts.
Massive shells hammered Tex’s cover.
Each round chipped away at the forge.
Sparks and steel rained as machine gun fire outlined him.
Then—Tex felt a sharp gust of wind under his skirt.
Okay. Time to move.
He hit his boosters—short pulse only—just enough to clear the gap between catwalks.
The heat warning screamed in his head as he crossed the floor, skidding to a crawl behind another forge, plating glowing red-hot under him.
A stray round clipped the ceiling above—
A control panel dropped with a crash, landing just inches away.
Crucible control.
Perfect.
He scanned upward—there it was:
A full crucible, slung along the gantry like a hanging pendulum, between the vats and the forge zones.
Shellmonger was repositioning. Slowly. Predictably. Trying to get flank.
Tex waited.
Shellmonger stepped into view.
All three barrels stared down at him.
The massive tankmorph grinned in certain victory. “Any last words, dog?”
Tex smirked.“You ground pounders are like pigs…” He flicked the released. “You can’t look up.”
The crucible tipped.
A torrent of molten iron poured down.
Shellmonger’s scream cut through the entire forgeworks—a digital-mechanical howl, twisted with organic pain.
His armor didn’t resist long.
The molten metal punched through his upper turret.
Liquefied iron bathed the cockpit.
Inside, what was left of his organic brain boiled alive.
One final lurch—
Then nothing.
Secondary turrets dropped limp. The mind they were slaved to had ceased to function.
“You really enjoyed describing that whole head-melty thing, didn’t you?” Tex said flatly.
“How about you shut the fuck up and let me tell the story, you massive man whore?” said the narrator.
Tex shrugged. “Fair enough.”
He scanned the wreck, smoke still curling from the split-open chassis.
Radar clear.
No new contacts.
For now.
He took a moment to breathe. To sort out the mess of feelings that clanged around in his head like loose brass in a chamber.
Shellmonger might’ve been an idiot—slow, clumsy, stuck in outdated tactics—but he’d had a good heart.
Loyalty meant everything to him.
Loyal to Helga. Loyal to the Black Suns. Loyal right to the end.
Tex understood why he was greeted with shells. Those were his orders.
And he was sure Shellmonger had known exactly who was coming.
That it was him.
And still—he didn’t run.
Didn’t hide.
He held his ground.
This death… it wasn’t what he deserved.
He deserved a final salute, a flag folded on a burned-out chassis. Something.
Tex stood there for a long second, that thought rattling in his systems like a misfired round.
At least… that’s how he'd feel.
If loyalty to anyone else still meant a damn thing to him anymore.
Now.... enough thinking.
time to do.
He’d always wanted a recoilless rifle.
And he was in a forge.
Tex brought up his onboard design suite with a flick of his wrist—
Right as he turned and blew apart one of Shellmonger's slave turrets.
The AI inside let out a mechanical shriek before its casing erupted in sparks.
"Sorry, dude. You're getting downsized."
Time to do what he did best:
Dumpster diving.
Torch in hand, he scavenged a side passage for acetylene.
The tanks were dusty, but pressurized.
Good enough.
He hauled the ruined gun chassis onto a workbench.
The metal rang out with a thunderous clang as he dropped it.
Then, with all the care of a street surgeon, he got to work.
First, he cut the barrel down to three feet—stubby, brutal, and mean.
Then, he modified the shells—removing the rear caps, exposing powder, adding flared venting to keep the backblast from snapping his spine in half.
He slapped on a basic trigger relay and mounted the new cannon to a fresh shoulder bracket.
Crude. Heavy. Beautiful.
An hour later, he stood over the result:
A 45mm homemade recoilless rifle
—complete with a four-round rack welded to his hip.
As for the fifth round?
Well…
You already know where that one’s going.
He paused, adjusting the fifth round—
gave it a slow once-over.
“Eh… I’ve had bigger.”
Then he glanced up.
“HEY. Privacy, please!”
...Okay. Sorry.
