Hard Fork

Among the creaking hulls of great towering machines of death, in the pockmarked killing fields, the blood arenas of old; the young and unblooded sit with veteran elders, to paint, and sing and laugh. The shogunate has fallen, but not without a parting blow, a lingering death; a thousand dead man's switches fluttering into play like butterflies into the summer night. Logic bombs, sleeper cells and honey pots.   The Zolotoy Soyuz and Lycos Combine step carefully over the carcass of the Shogunate willing the tripwires to disarm themselves, meanwhile scuttling forms disappear out from under it, Red Kaigun, the Committee and Kitsune, born of the death throes, now free from oversight. All that is left, the Resplendent Accord, a hollow name for a hollow shell.   Reeling from these wounds the Zolotoy's Machine Saints cling desperately to their control, turning to human catspaws with extralegal control to deal with increasing internal struggles.   And at the edge of the system, hung like a martyr between two black holes, the Church of the Second Scream stirs. How much longer can the Academy stay the spread of the cult's Ideologues.