Lyon's Gare des Brotteaux was packed with military entourages and foreign uniforms.
The marble platforms, once crowded with silk-clad travelers and the scent of café au lait, now bristled with olive drab, khaki, and navy-blue tunics from every corner of the Entente. The clatter of train wheels mingled with barked orders and the low thud of trunk boxes being dragged into motorcars.
When Emil Dufort stepped off the armored personnel railcar flanked by two Sanglier prototypes, every head turned.
It wasn't just his uniform—blackened from Fontenoy—or the mechanical monstrosities clanking behind him.
It was his name.
The man who'd built a tank that fought and survived against a German iron beast.
"Welcome to the lion's den," Roland muttered from behind his coat collar.
"I brought lions," Emil replied quietly.
The Gathering of Generals
The Allied Armored Development Conference convened in a converted exhibition hall along the Rhône River. Once a showroom for industrial looms and phonographs, it had been cleared to make way for schematics, scale models, and full-length paper blueprints of vehicles never yet built.
British, Belgian, Serbian, and even Italian representatives were in attendance. The Americans sent only two men—but one of them was Theodore Marsh.
"Ah, the iron magician himself," Marsh said, extending a hand. "Still working miracles from steel and sweat?"
"Miracles don't explode on impact," Emil said, not taking the hand.
Marsh smiled. "Not if they're properly timed."
The Presentations
Each nation presented their armored concepts in turn.
The British unveiled a lumbering rectangular prototype, nicknamed the Landship Centaur, with side-mounted cannons and a top speed slower than an infantryman's jog. The Italian design resembled an oversized armored car with a turret—fast, fragile, and utterly useless in trench terrain.
When Emil's turn came, he spoke little.
He simply pointed to the Sanglier Mk IV, parked outside and still bearing the mud and soot of battle.
"This has already killed a dragon," he said. "Now it's here to train your armies."
The applause was cautious.
The jealousy was not.
Under the Microscope
After the formal sessions, Emil found himself bombarded with questions—not just from engineers, but generals, ministers, and defense financiers.
"How thick is the inner hull?"
"What kind of metallurgy are you using for the bogie brackets?"
"Are the rotating turrets belt-fed?"
"What's the pressure ratio on the primary boiler tank?"
Henriette, who had joined the second day of the conference, leaned close and whispered, "They're not impressed. They're dissecting."
"They're reverse-engineering us already," Emil muttered.
That evening, he discovered one of the Sanglier crew hatches had been left open—and several internal schematics had been removed.
"Security breach," Roland growled. "Want me to seal the compound?"
"No," Emil said. "Let them steal. They won't understand it fast enough."
But the chill in his stomach remained.
The American Offer
The next morning, Emil was invited to a private meeting at the Hôtel de Ville—an unofficial, off-the-record conversation with Captain Marsh and a man in civilian clothing who introduced himself as Silas K. Hawthorne, of the U.S. War Department Procurement Office.
"We want a copy of the Sanglier Mk IV," Hawthorne said, as if ordering a bottle of wine. "Full working unit. Preferably shipped to Baltimore under diplomatic seal."
"No," Emil said.
"You'd be paid," Marsh added smoothly. "In gold. And more importantly—in steel. American steel. Your supply lines have bottlenecks. We can help."
Emil leaned forward. "And in return, I let you build your own? Sell to whoever you like? Use my machine to justify an arms race across oceans?"
Hawthorne didn't blink. "That race already started, Mr. Dufort. The only question is who wins it."
The Decision
That night, Emil met Henriette in the rooftop garden of their secure lodgings. Below, Lyon shimmered under gaslight, and the river flowed like a black ribbon.
"They'll come at us with offers, then pressure," she said. "Then sabotage. Maybe even bullets."
"I know," Emil said.
"Then why not just give them what they want?"
He turned to her.
"Because the Sanglier was never meant to be a commodity. It's a warning. If the future must be filled with tanks, I want mine in the hands of people who still hesitate before pulling the trigger."
Henriette nodded once.
"But just in case," she said, "I moved the real blueprints back to Leclerc Works this morning."
Meanwhile, at Home
Back at Leclerc Works, trouble was brewing.
Bruno—still on crutches—had intercepted two telegrams marked for a "Foreign Trade Liaison" with unclear credentials. Henriette's deputy, a young engineer named Sylvain, reported strange late-night visits to the casting line by men with no uniforms but Ministry clearance.
Then came the anonymous note, tucked beneath a coal bin:
"You have traitors among your welders. Watch the new hires. They speak French, but think in German."
Marianne took over evening security. Armed guards were doubled. All outbound crates were inspected.
Still, something felt off.
The Sanglier Mk V assembly line was delayed. Molds had hairline fractures. A shipment of gears arrived miscast. Henriette narrowed her eyes at the invoice: Rothschild Foundries, Zurich.
Swiss.
"Sabotage by spreadsheet," she whispered. "They're bleeding us quietly."
A Turning Point
Back in Lyon, Emil received a midnight message from Colonel Varin. Brief. Urgent.
"Feuerschreit activity spotted near Strasbourg. Tank tracks and heat signatures. Prepare new intercept plan. Possible escalation."
The German dragon was moving again.
And this time, it might be heading west.
Emil folded the message slowly.
"We return tomorrow," he told Henriette. "This isn't a symposium anymore. It's a countdown."