"Broomhead."
"I'm here."
"Nana?"
"?"
"Help me read what this friendly netizen just sent—these fleet command lines—what do they mean?"
"F1, sweep SJ–L2, mark J112, lock 244, fire authorized, clear the sector, WARP-500 jump…"
"Oh, are you running a starfleet tactics sim? That viewer sounds like they've served—the phrasing is pretty authentic."
"So what does it mean, exactly?"
"It's telling First Fleet to scan the Sun–Jupiter Lagrange point L2; set Jovian moon 112 as the aiming center; adjust firing solutions; lock target set 244; salvo to annihilation; then perform a tactical maneuver—WARP-500 jump to the next beacon…
"Wow, that fleet's advanced. Full-ship WARP-500? Takamagahara's fastest hulls top out at WARP-15. Whose ships are those?"
"TSC's. Probably last-generation battle line… By the way, this 'lock 244': does it mean 244 hulls downed?"
"Not necessarily 'starships' only. In-theatre military and civilian vessels, satellites, stations, colonial barges, engineering SMS—anything broadcasting on the network can be a target, depending on mission value."
"…Give me a back-of-the-envelope: how many deaths does one sweep like that cause?"
"That's hard. Depends on type of war, authorization level, and ship class."
"?"
"In most corporate wars, nobody starts by hitting stargates, stations, colonies, spaceports, or logistics docks—public assets cost fines if damaged. There are exceptions—if a station contains high-value targets.
"Usually you swat the other side's transports—freighters, miners. That directly bleeds them, and mercs get paid by tonnage sunk. Industrial ships are automated, maybe with a few clone crew—easy kills.
"Warships are different. If you're authorizing weapons, you have crew aboard. Some high-automation corps use QVN-linked clones so a single admiral can run a full fleet like an RTS.
"Takamagahara is less advanced. In my old cruiser, a minimal crew cell was ~50. In war you run three shifts, can embark an army synth battalion with ammo; add C2 and med support, and a cruiser can carry nearly a thousand souls.
"Yes, there are med pods and lifeboats, and pilots follow rescue conventions—but post-kill statistics show average survival 5–10%.
"If things escalate from corporate skirmish to Correction Protocol—total war—you don't spare any of that. You prioritize killing orbital factories and fleet ports, cutting war potential, and stations, colonial ships, even satellite cities can be first-strike targets. Then casualties are counted in millions.
"Targeting and gunnery are optimized by AI fire-control. To keep from being counter-tracked, the flag must shoot on the move. You don't micromanage—just roll beacons, assign targets, authorize fire."
"So this is interstellar war…"
"Mm. There's an old Starfleet line: once the fleet jumps, there's no turning back."
No turning back…
"Oh—Broomhead, I put together an underground band. We're playing at Sakura Apartments next week. You coming?"
"Yeah, totally."
Li Pan cut the link, checked the seals on his SBS, fully kitted in the skimmer, and rotated one cyber-eye ninety degrees to side-eye the chattering Spider-18.
"F1, sweep SJ–L4, mark A588, lock 177, fire authorized, clear sector, WARP-500 jump Pluto…"
"F2, sweep SM–L2, mark M01, lock 114, fire authorized, clear sector, WARP-500 jump Valuna…"
"F1, sweep SJ–L5, mark A10149, lock 48, fire authorized, clear sector, WARP-500 jump Creator…"
Right. When the company says 'bankrupt them,' they mean bankrupt them. You think they crossed half the cosmos to play nice?
0113012 just kept droning through the menu. By Li Pan's mental math, they'd popped four digits worth of ships already.
Per Nana, at least until 08:00 tomorrow, targets would remain transports. 0791 is Takamagahara's home nest. Inside the inner belt it's all ore veins, orbital fabs, yards—tens of thousands of industrial freighters shuttling on autopilot to feed the local economy and exports to dozens of worlds.
That's not just Tokugawa—all of Takamagahara's industrial fleets are getting drenched. And since Night Corp has traded here for years, their losses won't be small either.
There'd been zero warning. The "Monster Company," usually mute as a stone, suddenly went rabid. Calls poured in; Li Pan blocked them. Aliens, Earthers, sky-people—all chose to sit tight, keep their fleets in port, and avoid being dragged in.
At this rate, by 08:00 tomorrow, not many freighters under Takamagahara's flag would be left. Heaven knows why that logistics minister is so practiced—smashing the other side without a flicker of return fire. Retired pirate king, maybe?
Truth be told, Takamagahara has little left to swing back. Their lone Titan, Kiyosu, is still on Earth; the 0791 local fleet was dissolved and re-org'd long ago. After defeat and decades of disarmament, they haven't built new hulls in twenty years. A WARP-15 relic can't compare to the monsters side-stepping through the KBO. Li Pan now suspected that in the "war of independence," the Safety Committee might've barely exerted itself. Maybe they'd conscripted local 'braves' into a scratch fleet and still crushed them—leaving Takamagahara overconfident, thinking they could go five–five with the meta-corps…
"Boss, we're over Edo District. Beginning descent."
A-Qi's voice snapped him out of it.
Already? He had told them to stop playing house—just face-punch Tokugawa, drag them out, and make them self-disembowel.
He hadn't expected to float in unchallenged over their heads.
Really? We flew into the defense ring clean?
He lit up his cyber-eye. Dynamic radar tagged heavy subsonic patrol drones weaving through the clouds. No lasers or hypersonic interceptors—so 18 must've finished with the local net. Their skimmer was invisible on Tokugawa's scopes.
"Eighteen, did you win already?"
"Mm. The moment we cracked their ICE, Takamagahara's hackers avoided engagement. They segmented Night City's servers, handing us asset control on this side."
Discarded the Tokugawa estate wholesale. Then it's a win.
In this age, war is cybernetics, pure and simple.
Blitz, deep thrusts, island hopping, wolfpacks—noise.
QVN is the only battlefield. The final battlefield.
In deep-space cyber, there's no terrain, no maneuver, no tricks—only ICE vs. ICE, data vs. data.
If you're first to breach their ICE, the fight's decided. Sit down and negotiate.
Once the wall falls and your opponent is fully permeable, what remains is slaughter: scripts walking, puppets infecting, records erased, brain-jacks burned, systems usurped, subnets seized device by device.
Breach the wall; take all; control all. That simple.
This blood-wet struggle in the deep web—this "war"—ended in a finger-snap for Big Serpent–18 and her kind.
No suspense. Between TheM and Takamagahara, the outcome was decided the moment it began.
This time, the Monster Company showed the opponent respect.
Even without yanking the cord, they could still steamroll.
Not that 18 is some impossible prodigy—if she were, she wouldn't have been bagged in the stock market, cough.
And Takamagahara's hackers aren't weak; twenty years ago they forced two Titan fleets to ruin and birthed Big Serpent and Divine Palanquin brain–machine lines.
But hacker strength is more than talent; it needs budget, hardware, licensed code, proprietary scripts, puppetware, black protocols—tech and code stacked with no shortcuts.
Cyberwar is a pure R&D depth contest between meta-corps.
So this time, 18 couldn't lose.
Last time, when Oda got washed, the company already rode roughshod over Takamagahara's net… left backdoors inside and out. Tokugawa's too busy with civil war to fix their ICE, still running Takamagahara stock. To TheM Tech, it's glass. Nothing to brag about…
So yes—Takamagahara's tech power—
If you're mid, at least have some self-awareness? Do it like Heaven—pay up, sign the NDA, and this wouldn't be happening…
Li Pan shook his head and peered down through thinning cloud at the tenshukaku.
Edo District—Edo Castle—was a mechanized fortress. When Tokugawa was re-assigned here, they moved their seat and were charged to govern the Kantō.
From above it looked like a giant mecha tortoise squatting on Night City's southwest. From its back jutted spider-leg support pylons, ribbed like dragon bones, shielding the outer walls. The silhouette read more like a giant isopod; armored housings studded with turrets and mechs—a steel behemoth.
A mobile castle, Tokugawa's generational war citadel and HQ. Their hatamoto retainers are expected to live inside and guard the main keep.
They say Edo Castle began as a boom-time landmark in New Tokyo VIII, originally intended, like Oda's, as a Titan embryo.
Tokugawa's hard power fell short; the project almost stalled. Yet in New Tokyo XIII, it still stands… though likely only until today.
He boosted magnification and swept the defenses.
It was tight. Auto-defense arrays—pulse lasers, missile nests, slug turrets. Patrols of highly augmented cyber samurai.
So augmented—so metallic and militarized—it was hard to tell where body ended and SBS began. Judging by kit, each was at least mil-spec grade-5, Muramasa's best.
And beyond the troops and turrets were the samurai-flavored mechs—giant SMS with ship-cutting tachi, lacquered like festival armor, antlered helmets and fluttering mon crests, strutting like stage actors on patrol.
No doubt, the household guard.
In the corners of his qi-sense, he caught ninja afterimage—black-swallows kicking spines to overclock, roof-hopping and wall-flitting, exfiltrating in all directions. With comms severed, they were likely running for help.
On sheer fortress posture, Edo matched—or exceeded—the Sky City.
And 0791's engineers being able to build this meant Takamagahara's tech wasn't nothing. Muramasa arms and augments are quality; the local engineering and applied physics were high. In New Tokyo VIII, the so-called Committee likely wasn't much beyond this.
But, as everyone knows, after Takamagahara failed forward and chose stability, tech stagnated.
As Ōkubo said, a warrior caste order settled; class lines hardened. Generation after generation, each in their assigned place, everybody patching the clockwork behemoth—never crossing the line.
It's stable, yes. But it caps the civilizational ceiling.
With no ascent from the bottom and no drive at the top, to avoid infighting they all huddled in a well, imagining a sliver of sky, numbing themselves with ultra-dreams of petty empire.
Step outside, and you'd see Edo Castle—Night City—is just an extension of those endless garbage mountain ranges out there. Higher, bigger—but still just a mountain of trash.
Trash, yes.
Bugs that get bigger, harder, faster are still bugs.
Swords honed to perfection, armor polished to diamond—are still sword and armor.
In interstellar war, they're useless junk.
A world stacked from obsolete tech ends as aggregated trash—a giant garbage heap.
Bugs living in the heap, cut off too long, get culled.
Forget first tier; they can't even keep pace.
Frontier tech moves hard and fast. It's kill-or-be-killed. You must sprint, never stop. Miss one generation, and you miss all.
Look at Mercury: this isn't "human vs. ape" anymore. The gap is beyond human vs. lobster. At least humans and lobsters share one nervous system. Humans and Mercury—besides outline, what's even similar?
Mercury's "just" a concept demo, but with TSC's tech, how long to mass-produce? And TSC isn't even a cybernetics specialist!
Now imagine peers like Terra, VK, Dawn—what are they building right now? How far along?
And you're daydreaming about overtaking on a curve for some respect? Wake up. They're already at WARP-500, sprinting through space.
Enough drifting. He checked altitude—jumpable—and did the standard call-out:
"Eighteen, you're sure? I'm not going to eat a focus volley the instant I drop, right?"
"Relax, boss. I've got local permissions. I also borrowed the Security Bureau's Sky-Net. I can call four thousand low-orbit spy sats over Night City.
"TSC also lent me a full electronic-warfare fleet. I could live-track signature chips, pull everyone with Tokugawa genes onto a private subnet, and e-kill them all at once."
0113012 cut in:
"Tactic viable. Recommend folding the EW fleet into F4; jump to Copernicus on the Moon; seed orbital mines; suppress QVN hub—"
"Whoa—stop, stop!" Li Pan barked. "If you go that fast, they won't even know how they died—no educational value! Keep it simple—just make them blind."
"Okay," said 18.
Instantly, the city's samurai, ninja, and mechs screamed—blades flashed, guns blazed; tat-tat-tat, boom-boom-boom—full alert, chaos everywhere.
Li Pan had one foot off the skimmer and jerked it back, cold air hissing through his teeth.
"What—what did you do now?"
"Made them blind. Erased visual signals."
Li Pan's temples throbbed.
"Not again. It was a metaphor, okay? Metaphor! I meant blind to us, not literally blind!"
"Okay," 18 said.
The howls and gunshots cut off. Samurai collapsed like dominoes—strewn everywhere.
"Ghh—Eighteen! I said don't go that fast! You just one-shotted the whole garrison! Are you kill-stealing me?"
Eighteen sounded put-upon.
"Not me, boss. The hatamoto guards don't have citizen chips; they're on Takamagahara corporate chips, slaved to Tokugawa central. Their control permissions are all in the master program, with embedded self-wipe puppets. One switch: persona reset, memory scrub, weapons safed—all pre-scripted."
Great. Came here expecting a raid—now it's a guided tour…
"…Tch. Where's Tokugawa proper?"
"In the tenshukaku. The Tokugawa household all carry independent grade-6 chips with private ICE and paid security suites. Can't hack in.
"The castle is their rear keep, with an offline ICE—no external ports. Needs Spider-link. Spider's compute is limited—will take time."
Good. At least he'd still get an entrance.
Li Pan kicked off before anyone could steal the last mob, and dropped from the skimmer.
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
🔗 patreon.com/DrManhattanEN