The Logistics Monopoly

Chapter 7: The Suicide Spread

Chapter 7: The Suicide Spread

"Jhons!" Sierra’s voice cut through the ozone-thick air of the command deck like a razor blade, her fingers digging bruisingly into his tactical vest. "Look at the perimeter! The artillery just stopped!"

Jhons ripped his eyes away from the blinding white system window screaming INTERGALACTIC CLEARANCE HOUSE and glanced down at his secondary holographic display. The red lines representing his automated mortar batteries were dead, replaced by a cold, corporate status update: ASSET SEIZED BY ADMINISTRATIVE MANDATE.

"They didn't just stop," Jhons said, his throat tight as he watched the Commander-class beast shake off the rubble of the explosion and begin its unstoppable march toward the inner gates. "They were repossessed."

"Repossessed?" Sierra leveled her smoking sniper rifle at the charging behemoth, her blue eyes flashing with lethal disbelief. "By who? The bank at the end of the universe?"

"Something like that," Jhons muttered, frantically typing commands into his terminal to bypass the lockout. "The system we've been using isn't a native survival tool. It's an acquisition terminal for a cosmic liquidation guild."

"I don't care if it's managed by intergalactic real estate agents," Sierra snapped, squeezing the trigger as a high-caliber round ricocheted harmlessly off the monster's regenerating chitin. "If we don't stop that walking mountain right now, our net worth is going to be zero, and we'll be dead!"

"Then we execute the Suicide Spread," Jhons declared, his voice dropping into a dangerous, calculated calm.

Sierra paused, lowering the rifle a fraction of an inch to stare at him. "The what?"

"The Suicide Spread," Jhons repeated, pulling up a volatile financial grid filled with pulsing red numbers. "I shorted the security bonds of every rival outpost in a three-hundred-mile radius to finance our heavy ordnance. Now that the system has repossessed our artillery, those short positions are paying out in raw liquid capital. I’m rerouting every single credit into our remaining manual explosives."

"You bet our entire operating capital on a margin call during a monster attack?" Sierra’s voice rose an octave, a mix of sheer horror and grudging admiration hitting her features. "You are completely insane."

"It's called high-frequency market manipulation, Sierra. If we die, the debt defaults. If we win, we own the liquidity of half of Europe." Jhons slammed his palm onto the master override, uploading the funds directly to the demolition charges wired beneath the outer courtyard. "Now, fall back to the secondary barricade and give me ten seconds!"

"If your math is wrong, I'm haunting you!" Sierra whirled around, leaping off the catwalk in a fluid, acrobatic descent that landed her squarely beside the remaining corporate security guards holding the breach. "Fall back! Second line of defense, now! Fire at will!"

A wall of lead and plasma erupted from the courtyard as Sierra’s mercenaries opened up, spraying the advancing swarm of lesser beasts to buy Jhons the precious seconds he desperately needed. The Commander-class beast roared, a deafening shockwave that flattened three reinforced concrete pillars and sent human bodies flying like ragdolls.

"Jhons!" Sierra screamed over the deafening cacophony of screeching metal and roaring monsters, firing her sidearm point-blank into the maw of a leaping hound-beast. "Time's up!"

"Executing now!" Jhons screamed back, pressing the final, glowing red confirmation on his terminal.

The ground didn't just shake—it detonated.

The Suicide Spread wasn't just a financial term anymore; it was a literal wall of synchronized high-explosives buried beneath the industrial sector, funded by leveraged debt and detonated at absolute market saturation. A blinding wall of white-hot fire erupted in a crescent formation, swallowing the front lines of the monster horde whole. The shockwave ripped through the air, lifting the towering Commander-class beast off its massive legs and dragging it backward into the inferno of the mined sector.

For three agonizing seconds, the world went completely silent, choked by a thick cloud of ash, smoke, and burning sulfur.

Jhons leaned heavily against the shattered console, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he stared down at the smoking crater below. His system interface flickered back to life, the blinding white administrative window vanishing and leaving behind a cold, blinking notification: MARGIN CALL SUCCESSFUL. LIQUIDITY RESTORED.

"Did... did we get it?" Sierra’s voice came from the foot of the stairs, her silhouette emerging from the smoke as she dragged herself up to the platform, soot-stained and bleeding from a shallow gash on her cheek.

Jhons didn't answer immediately. He watched as the glowing red eyes of the Commander-class beast flickered once, twice, and then shattered into harmless ash within the crater. The swarm of lesser creatures dissolved into nothingness, starving for the command link that no longer existed.

"We got it," Jhons whispered, a breathless, exhausted laugh escaping his lips. "The market correction is complete."

Sierra dropped her rifle with a loud clatter against the metal floor, closed the distance between them in two long strides, and grabbed the lapels of his tactical vest. For a second, Jhons thought she was going to punch him for his reckless financial gamble. Instead, she hauled him down and pressed her lips hard against his, a fierce, desperate, adrenaline-fueled kiss that tasted of gunpowder and victory.

Jhons froze in surprise for a fraction of a second before wrapping his arms around her waist, pulling her flush against him as the tension of the brutal siege finally drained from his frame.

When Sierra finally pulled back, her eyes were bright, fierce, and entirely unyielding. "Don't you ever," she panted, her forehead resting against his, "bet our lives on a margin call again."

"No promises," Jhons murmured with a faint smirk, his thumb gently wiping a streak of soot from her cheek. "The returns were phenomenal."

Before Sierra could deliver a sharp retort, the system interface across Jhons' vision flared violently again. But this time, it wasn't a market update or a battle report. The entire screen turned a deep, warning crimson, and a single, unalterable text box expanded to fill his entire field of view, accompanied by a deafening alarm chime.

CRITICAL ALERT: HOSTILE TAKEOVER INITIATED BY PARENT CORPORATION.

Jhons' smirk vanished. He pulled away from Sierra, his eyes darting across the rapidly generating lines of code.

"What is it now?" Sierra asked, instantly picking up on the sudden shift in his demeanor, her hand dropping back to the hilt of her combat knife. "Did another monster survive?"

"No," Jhons said, his voice dropping to a hollow whisper as he read the final, chilling line of the administrative override. "The local branch terminal is being shut down. The parent company just bypassed our local node... and they’re initiating a direct planetary liquidation."

Sierra stared at him, the color draining from her face as the sky above Berlin suddenly fractured, glowing with an unnatural, blinding violet light that dwarfed the earlier dimensional rifts.

"Jhons," Sierra said slowly, her voice trembling slightly as the air pressure in the room plummeted. "What do you mean... a planetary liquidation?"