The weapons district of Ashen Prime wasn't designed for tourists.
The air here carried a hum of latent energy, as if the walls themselves vibrated from the echo of live-fire tests and plasma discharges. Bright holo-ads flooded every walkway, hovering in stacked layers of colored light, advertising everything from state-of-the-art railguns to auto-targeting smart rounds.
Ethan stepped off the express tram into organized chaos. The streets were clean, yes. This was still Federation territory, but everything else screamed barely restrained power. Vendor stalls jutted out like teeth from the sides of sleek alloy avenues. Towering buildings bore shimmering logos of weapons manufacturers.
Security scanners floated overhead, tracking civilian IDs, ensuring no live weapons were drawn. But that was where the regulation ended. Beyond the checkpoints, it was open season for your credit line and your caution.
Corporate chain vendors occupied the main thoroughfares, brands like SoverTech Armaments and Brion Dynamics. Their storefronts were polished and bright, staffed by smiling salesbots and consultants in pristine uniforms. Holo-screens offered clean-cut demonstrations: simulated mercs disabling targets with precision-tuned stun carbines, field agents deflecting plasma rounds with high-energy adaptive shields.
Safe, reliable. Expensive.
And about as personal as buying insurance.
Ethan bypassed those.
He turned down a narrower side avenue where the atmosphere changed. Less corporate, more real.
Here were the veteran-run shops, their signs less flashy but far more compelling to someone who understood the value of gear that worked when conditions turned hellish.
An old vendor named Kresh hawked modified exosuits from a storefront half-eaten by old scorch marks. Further down, Raya's Armory specialized in magnetic field stabilizers and non-lethal crowd control systems that could drop a squad without firing a shot. The interiors were cluttered, the staff gruff, but the equipment had the kind of dents, scratches, and fieldnotes that told you it had seen real blood and real battlefields.
A small crowd gathered near a live demo pit where two vendors were hosting a friendly competition. Adaptive impact armor versus phase-linked taser drones. One mercenary suited up while the other set loose a cloud of glittering, mosquito-sized machines, trying to overwhelm the armor's kinetic dampeners before the impact plates could react.
It was, in short, mercenary Disneyland.
Ethan moved at a casual pace, drifting through the bustling avenues between the shops, occasionally stopping to inspect new offerings spread across polished counters and hovering display platforms.
A slim lightweight body armor caught his eye first.
It was woven from responsive fiber tech, a new variant that didn't just harden when struck. It predicted impact vectors through micro-tension sensors and pre-tensed its weaves milliseconds ahead of contact. The exterior had a dull matte finish, adaptable to both urban lighting and wilderness glare.
It would fit smoothly beneath a jacket or a reinforced travel coat, giving protection without the bulk or rigid movement of heavier ballistic plate vests. Ideal for urban operations, ship corridors, and stealth insertions where agility mattered just as much as survival.
He flagged the model mentally, noting the vendor's modest crest. An independent armorsmith guild, not some faceless megacorp.
At another booth, Ethan's hand brushed over a display featuring compact stun darts housed in slim reinforced casings.
They were designed to be fired from custom wrist-mounted launchers or adapted sidearms.
The darts were coated in a paralytic compound refined for multi-species physiology, effective against humanoids, reptilians, and even some higher-density silicon-based species.
Small enough to pass unnoticed by standard security scans. Silent. Potent.
Perfect for disabling without leaving a visible mess.
Beside them, lined up in neat rows, were crowd-control gel cartridges: cylindrical capsules that, when deployed, burst into an expanding foam, hardening instantly on contact with air, trapping anything it touched.
Messy, but incredibly effective in riot suppression or during chaotic station skirmishes where lethal force would draw too much attention.
Further down, a vendor showcased upgrade modules for sidearms and armor, spread like gemstones over a backlit table:
Pulse Regulators that could tighten plasma scatter patterns on handguns, effectively turning a sidearm into a precision sharpshooter's weapon at short range.
Magnetized Armor Plates, designed for modular tactical suits, allowing wearers to swap between energy-resistant, kinetic-resistant, or even stealth-enhanced plates mid-mission.
Adaptive HUD Implants, neural-linked to helmets, which provided not just targeting overlays but predictive threat indicators, analyzing environmental shifts, electromagnetic interference, and biological markers to spot ambushes before they fully formed.
At a separate stall specializing in "specialized mission loadouts," Ethan saw even stranger offerings:
Microdrone Dispensers, wrist-mounted, capable of releasing a half-dozen sensor drones that could map small urban sectors within minutes.
EMP Gel Mines, sleek and thin like coasters, that adhered to surfaces and detonated localized EMP pulses to fry hostile electronics without destroying infrastructure.
Portable Breach Units, collapsible devices no bigger than a thick tablet, which could melt through standard alloy doors in under sixty seconds without triggering magnetic or laser tripwires.
And for the more paranoid traveler, there were personal signal dampeners. Small nodes that could be clipped to a belt or armor vest, disrupting nearby passive scanning fields and making a user's presence harder to detect on non-military sensors.
The sheer variety was staggering.
Compared to the small, pragmatic outfitter stalls and the Guild branch requisition counters in Valeris City, Ashen Prime was another universe entirely.
Here, a mercenary could build themselves into a walking fortress. Or a ghost.
Ethan weighed every tool with the detached analysis that Kynara had forged in him. Flash was dangerous. Bulk was a liability.
Every piece of gear he carried needed to serve multiple functions, and keep him breathing when things went wrong, not just when they went according to plan.
He was inspecting a modular graviton grappling unit, a sleek device that could attach to any reinforced forearm armor, when a voice called out:
"Hey! You're that merc from Kynara, right? Valeris City branch?"
Ethan turned, one eyebrow raised. A stocky vendor leaned over the counter, grinning. His apron was grease-stained, and his left arm gleamed with a mechanical prosthetic.
"You took down that Black Sun group, didn't ya? Word got around after they uploaded that bounty summary to the open archives. You're Ethan Walker, right?"
Ethan offered a polite but firm smile. "Maybe. But I'm not here for attention."
The vendor laughed good-naturedly, raising his hands. "No worries. I have close acquaintances in Kynara, so i keep an eye on things there from time to time. Just thought a hero might want a discount on a few custom rigs. Special package: reputation bonus included."
"Appreciate the offer," Ethan said smoothly, backing away, "but I'm just browsing today."
The vendor winked and went back to polishing a set of high-energy plasma carbines without another word.
Eventually, Ethan made a few deliberate purchases. Nothing flashy, nothing that would scream money to the wrong eyes. Just tools.
First, he picked up the personal signal dampener, a small black disk no bigger than his palm. It would cloak minor electronic signatures and passive data emissions, letting him slip through low-level scans without setting off alarms. Perfect for station travel or discreet work.
Then came a custom survival module. A compact kit that clipped easily onto a belt or thigh harness. Inside were emergency oxygen capsules, rapid-deploy thermal blankets, water filtration tablets, and compressed nutrient bars. Enough to keep him alive and moving for a few days if a mission turned worse than expected.
After that, he returned to the first armorsmith he'd mentally flagged earlier and purchased the slim lightweight body armor.
The weave was responsive fiber tech, capable of anticipating impact vectors and hardening just enough to blunt kinetic trauma without sacrificing flexibility. It would slip neatly under his travel jacket or casual clothes, making it easy to move unnoticed and harder to kill.
Before wrapping up, he also grabbed a few EMP Gel Mines. Thin, adhesive devices designed to fry nearby electronics in a focused burst and two plasma grenades, compact enough to be palmed but heavy with destructive potential.
Nothing he planned to use lightly, but insurance was insurance.
The transactions were quick and efficient.
Each vendor operated through encrypted data-pad exchanges. Ethan simply tapped his pad against theirs, authorizing the transfers.
A green glyph would appear, flashing momentarily on both devices: "Transaction Verified - Transfer Complete."
Secure. Trackable only by sector-standard commercial logs. And anonymous enough for mercs who guarded their movements fiercely.
For bulkier items like the body armor and such, drone delivery was standard procedure.
As soon as the transactions cleared, a confirmation pinged his pad: his purchases would be queued through the station's authorized logistics network and dropped discreetly into the secure cargo hold of the Obsidian Wraith within the next two hours.
Ethan preferred it that way. No wandering the station with obvious purchases. No inviting trouble from pickpockets or eager watchers.
By the time he finished, his wallet was lighter by several tens of thousand galactic credits but his odds of surviving whatever was ahead had just ticked slightly upward.
Just the kind of tools that kept you breathing longer than the guy trying to kill you.
As he exited a side corridor back toward the main tram line, Ethan glanced around the sprawling district one more time.
Ashen Prime's weapons hub was larger, glossier, and far more commercially saturated than anything on Kynara.
But at the end of the day?
Buying gear still came down to one truth: You bought not for the war you were sold, but for the fight you knew you were going to get.