The physical retaliation from the Northern Capital did not wait for the morning trading floor to open. It arrived at exactly dawn as a sharp, high-frequency hum vibrating through the copper grounding rods of the southern delta's primary server vault. One by one, the mechanical indicator dials on the wall began to spin backward into the red zone, indicating a sudden, catastrophic surge of dead current being forced down the main lines from the northern switching towers.
The Northern Princess had finally abandoned the legal pretexts. She wasn't filing a variance or launching a market short-squeeze; she was using the border stations to physically overload our routing infrastructure.
Elara stood in the lower vault gallery, the collar of her heavy charcoal wool coat turned up against the freezing, ozone-scented air. Below her, the massive iron-and-copper calculating engines were hissing loudly as their cooling water pumps struggled to counter the thermal load.
