OMEGA, SECTOR 5 (THE IRON COAST)
PRIMARY RECON FORCE (PRF) PERIMETER
10:15 Local Time
The automated construction of the Foundry continued with a relentless, rhythmic industrial hum. It was the sound of human defiance—drills whining, hydraulic pistons hissing, and the heavy clank of the Boston Dynamics loader-bots stacking titanium plates on the black basalt shelf.
Lieutenant Commander "Viper" Sterling ignored the noise. He was a statue, prone on the high ridge, his optical camouflage cloak rendering him a shimmering blur against the volcanic rock. His breathing was shallow, regulated, syncing with the slow, heavy crash of the violet ocean against the cliffs below.
"Control," Sterling whispered, his voice barely vibrating his throat mic. "I have a visual anomaly. Sector North-North-East. Distance one-five-zero meters. Elevation forty meters above sea level."
"Copy, Viper," GDI Control responded, the voice clear despite the interplanetary lag. "Sensors are clean. Thermal is flat. What are you seeing?"
"I am seeing," Sterling adjusted the focus on his spotting scope, the lenses whirring softly, "a man. Or a humanoid. He just... appeared. No approach vector. He simply stepped out of the sea mist."
Through the scope, the figure was a study in ancient, elemental menace. It stood atop a jagged spire of black rock that jutted out from the churning water. It was humanoid, but tall—perhaps seven feet. Its skin was the color of a bruised plum, pale and veined with bioluminescent blue lines. It wore robes made not of cloth, but of woven kelp, shark leather, and iridescent scales that shimmered wetly in the dim light.
It had a beard of white, tangled foam, and eyes that were solid, milky white orbs. In its hand, it held a staff—a long, twisted piece of driftwood, capped with a glowing, jagged piece of raw aquamarine crystal.
"It looks like Poseidon," Sterling muttered. "If Poseidon had been dead for a week."
"Hostile intent?" Control asked.
"He is watching the Foundry," Sterling said. "He isn't moving. But the air pressure... my barometer is dropping. Fast. The wind is picking up."
"Standby, Viper. We are re-tasking Sat-Con 4 for a focused sweep."
A moment later, the voice from Earth came back, tighter this time. "Viper, we are reading a massive mana-spike. Not kinetic like the Dragon. This is... hydrological. Atmospheric. It's off the charts. Recommend you pull the PRF back to the hardened structure."
Sterling signaled his team. The six SBS commandos rose from their concealed positions, weapons snapping to the high-ready. They were armed with C8 carbines, reliable and accurate, but Sterling had a sinking feeling they were about to be insufficient.
"Back to the Foundry," Sterling ordered. "Movement to contact. Keep eyes on the wizard."
On the spire, the Mage moved.
He didn't scream or gesture wildly. He simply lifted the driftwood staff. He pointed the glowing crystal directly at the violet ocean.
The water didn't just churn. It boiled.
THE SCRAMJET SOLUTION
GDI LAUNCH COMMAND, CANAVERAL
10:20 GST
General Krovos of the Russian Space Forces stood at the center of the launch control room. He was a man who believed in speed and heavy munitions.
"The Foundry is a strategic asset," Krovos barked at the flight dynamics officer. "If we lose the footprint, we lose the ocean. What is the readiness state of the 'Salyut-7'?"
"Sir," the officer replied, "the Salyut is a prototype. It is the first Accelerated SSTV. It uses experimental scramjet boosters for atmospheric exit. It is fast, but the G-forces are... significant."
"The payload?" Krovos asked.
"One platoon of Spetsnaz Naval Infantry. Specifically the 313th Anti-Sabotage Forces. They are racked and ready."
Krovos nodded. "Launch it. Burn the engines red if you must. They need support yesterday."
LOW EARTH ORBIT
The Salyut-7 detached from the refueling station. It didn't look like the bulky American Atlas. It looked like a dagger. Thin, aerodynamic, and strapped to four massive booster rockets.
"Initiating burn," the pilot announced.
The main engines ignited. The ship didn't accelerate; it vanished. It tore through the transfer orbit, cutting the standard travel time by half. Inside the troop bay, twenty Russian Spetsnaz soldiers were pressed into their gel-couches, their faces pulled taut by 6Gs of thrust.
They were not carrying AK-12s. They were carrying weapons designed for a specific nightmare.
The APS (Avtomat Podvodny Spetsialny). The Underwater Special Assault Rifle.
It fired a 5.66mm steel dart—a nail, essentially—4 inches long. It was designed to tear through water without tumbling, to punch through wet suits and thick hide. On land, the smoothbore barrel made it inaccurate past 50 meters, but at close range, the kinetic energy of the heavy steel bolt was devastating.
"Prepare for combat drop," the Russian squad leader, Captain Volkov (a cousin of the tank commander), grunted over the roar of the engines. "Check your darts. We are going fishing."
THE DROWNED LEGION
THE IRON COAST
"CONTACT!" Sterling roared. "WATER FRONT!"
The ocean erupted.
It wasn't a wave. It was a migration.
From the boiling, violet surf, they rose. Hundreds of them.
They were grotesque. Humanoid in shape, but bloated with gases of decomposition. Their skin was translucent, revealing dark, stagnant veins underneath. Barnacles and jagged mussels were encrusted into their shoulders and skulls, acting as natural armor. Their eyes glowed with the same milky witch-light as the Mage on the cliff.
They carried weapons scavenged from the sea floor—rusted cutlasses, jagged spears made of whalebone, and pieces of the wrecked futuristic ship Sterling had seen earlier, wielded like clubs.
"Open fire!" Sterling commanded. "Controlled bursts! Aim for the heads!"
The six SBS commandos formed a firing line at the edge of the basalt shelf. Their C8 carbines barked in unison.
CRACK-CRACK-CRACK.
The 5.56mm rounds hit the advancing horde.
Effectiveness was... mixed.
A round struck a creature in the chest. It passed straight through the bloated, jelly-like flesh with a wet thwip, exiting the back without slowing the monster down. There were no vital organs to destroy. No hydrostatic shock.
"Body shots are ineffective!" Sergeant Miller yelled, reloading. "They're sponges! Headshots only!"
Sterling dropped one with a precise double-tap to the cranium. The creature's head burst like a rotten melon, spraying black ichor. It fell.
But there were too many. They were swarming up the basalt shelf, clawing their way over the sharp rocks with a mindless, relentless drive.
"They're climbing the Foundry struts!" Miller shouted.
Two of the Drowned Ones were hauling themselves up the support legs of the automated factory. If they got into the machinery, they could tear the hydraulics apart.
"Switch to grenades!" Sterling ordered. "Frag out!"
Three M67 grenades sailed through the air, landing in the thick of the horde on the beach.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM.
The explosions were effective. The shrapnel shredded the soft flesh, tearing limbs loose. A dozen creatures went down in a spray of gore.
But the Mage on the cliff simply raised his staff again.
The water swirled. More creatures rose.
And behind them... something bigger.
A massive, crab-like construct, made of shipwreck timber and bone, animated by blue magic, hauled itself out of the surf. It was the size of a tank.
"We need heavy support!" Sterling yelled into the comms. "Where is that backup?!"
THE ORBITAL DART
THE SKY ABOVE SECTOR 5
The sky tore open.
The Salyut-7 didn't glide in. It came in hot, its heat shields screaming as it decelerated from hypersonic speeds directly over the coastline.
It didn't land. The terrain was too rough, the enemy too close.
"Drop, drop, drop!"
The rear ramp opened while the ship was still moving at 100 knots, fifty feet above the water.
The twenty Spetsnaz soldiers jumped. They didn't use parachutes. They used GDI-Grav-Chutes—short-burst retro-rockets strapped to their backs.
HISS-THUD. HISS-THUD.
They landed hard.
But they didn't land on the basalt shelf with the PRF. The wind shear threw their drop trajectory off.
They landed in the surf.
They landed right in the middle of the rising horde.
"CONTACT IMMEDIATE!" Captain Volkov roared as his boots hit the shallow, violet water.
A Drowned One lunged at him, its barnacle-encrusted claws swiping for his throat.
Volkov didn't flinch. He raised his APS rifle.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
The sound of the underwater rifle was distinct—a heavy, dull percussion, distinct from the sharp crack of the British carbines.
The steel darts, heavy and long, hit the creature at point-blank range. They didn't pass through. Their mass carried them deep, shattering the spine and throwing the creature backward into the waves.
"Form perimeter!" Volkov ordered. "Switch to flechettes! Clear the beach!"
The Russians formed a circle in the waist-deep water. It was a brutal, visceral melee. They were using their rifles like pikes, stabbing the creatures with bayonets and firing the heavy darts into their faces.
One Russian soldier, Private Demidov, was grabbed by three of the creatures. They dragged him down.
"Demidov!"
The water churned red. Demidov surfaced, gasping, his visor cracked, stabbing wildly with his combat knife. He fired his APS underwater—the weapon's intended environment. The darts flew true through the liquid, pinning a creature to the seabed.
"Move to the high ground!" Volkov commanded. "We cannot hold the water!"
The Russians fought their way up the beach, a fighting retreat, firing continuously. The heavy thump-thump of their dart guns created a rhythm of death. They reached the basalt shelf, hauling themselves up, dripping violet slime and sea water.
Five of them were wounded. Demidov was limping, his leg mauled by a crab-claw.
Sterling grabbed Volkov's arm as he crested the ridge. "Glad you could join us, Captain. You're late."
"Traffic was bad," Volkov spat, checking his magazine. "These things... sukas... they do not die easily."
The massive timber-crab-construct was now climbing the shelf. Its wooden pincers snapped a Boston Dynamics robot in half.
"We are wasting ammo on the puppets," Sterling said, looking up at the cliff. "We need to kill the puppeteer."
THE SHIELD OF TIDES
Sterling pointed to the cliff, 150 meters away.
The Old Mage stood there, unmoving, his staff glowing brighter. He was chanting now, the sound carrying over the roar of the battle like a whale song.
"He's summoning something else," Sterling said. "Something bigger. We have to end this now."
Sterling turned to Sergeant Miller. "Miller. The Carl Gustaf. High-Explosive Dual-Purpose. Put a rocket in his teeth."
Miller unslung the M4 recoilless rifle. It was a devastating weapon, an 84mm cannon that could be fired from the shoulder.
He knelt, leveling the sights.
"Backblast area clear!"
"Clear!"
"Target acquired. Range one-five-zero. Firing."
BOOM.
The Gustaf kicked up a cloud of dust. The rocket screamed across the gap, a streak of fire and smoke.
It was a perfect shot. Dead center.
The rocket closed the distance in less than a second.
The Mage didn't dodge. He didn't run.
He simply flicked his wrist.
A wall of water—not from the ocean, but from the air itself—condensed instantly in front of him. It was a localized, high-pressure hydro-shield, swirling with the density of concrete.
CRUMP.
The rocket hit the water shield.
It detonated.
The explosion was spectacular. Steam and spray erupted in a massive cloud.
"Target down?" Volkov asked.
The steam cleared.
The Mage was still standing there.
He was completely dry.
The water shield dissipated, falling as harmless rain around him.
He looked at the PRF team. He looked at the smoking rocket launcher.
And then, slowly, the Old Mage smiled.
It wasn't a smile of malice. It was a smile of amusement.
He looked like a man playing with children.
He raised his staff again.
The ocean behind him began to recede. It was pulling back, exposing hundreds of meters of the black seabed.
"Tsunami," Sterling whispered, his blood running cold. "He's pulling the tide."
"Retreat to the Foundry!" Sterling screamed. "Get inside the structure! Brace for impact! GO! GO! GO!"
The combined British and Russian force scrambled back toward the heavy, anchored modules of the factory as the violet wall of water, fifty feet high and rising, began to curl over the horizon.
The battle for the Iron Coast had just begun, and the ocean itself was the enemy's weapon.