The storm wasn't weather, it was a meat grinder made of wind and red lightning that chewed up the desert floor and spit it out as glass shrapnel.
Rin stood on the bridge of the crawler, watching the monitors flicker as they drove straight into the kill zone. The walking castle—Project Zero—was colossal, a fortress of black stone and void geometry stomping through the cyclone on legs that looked like inverted skyscrapers.
"Atmospheric pressure is dropping," Varg shouted over the roar of the engines, his mechanical spider-legs locked into the floor grating. "Turbulence is going to rip the deck plating off if we don't stabilize the local gravity."
"Nyx is on it," Rin said, gripping the tactical table. "How close do we need to get?"
"To jump?" Varg laughed, a harsh, grinding sound. "We need to be under it. We need to drive between its legs."
"That's suicide," a voice said from the doorway.
