The Automated Sentry Turret was a brutal, beautiful piece of machinery. It was installed on the most intact section of the main bastion wall, twenty meters above and to the left of the postern gate. Its housing was a blocky, angular shell of heavy alloy, with a single, thick barrel that now swept back and forth in a slow, predatory arc. A single, glowing blue optic served as its eye, linked to the Bastion's nascent sensor net. It hummed with a low, charging energy, the sound of a wasp preparing to sting.
Isaac stood on the parapet beside it, the wind—a real, cold wind he hadn't felt before—tugging at his clothes. The activation of the turret, the drawing of significant power from the Nexus, seemed to have stirred the atmosphere. Or perhaps it was the Convergence, answering his provocation.
S-001, the Scout, was a silent statue beside him, its enhanced optics scanning the Blasted Plain. The data streamed to Isaac's interface and to the turret's targeting logic. There, to the east, the red mass of the Convergence was no longer just pulsing. It was flowing. Tendrils of movement extended from it, not the random patrols of before, but purposeful, converging streams. They were gathering. A counter-attack was not just probable; it was imminent.
"They're coming," Isaac said, his voice flat. He keyed the command channel. "All units, Condition One. Garrison teams, fall back from the Nexus. Full perimeter defense at the Bastion. Fireteam Alpha to the western battlements. Fireteam Bravo to the gatehouse. I want that postern gate barred, braced, and rigged with the last of the demolition charges."
Acknowledgments chimed in his ear. The Bastion, so often silent, now echoed with the purposeful clatter of boots on stone, the clang of metal bars being dropped, the hiss of weapons being checked.
He had eleven combat units, one turret, a mortar, a grenadier, a scout, and a sniper rifle. Against what the sensors suggested was a coordinated force of at least thirty individual contacts, including multiple Tier-2 signatures.
They could not hold the plain. They could not even hold the slope. Their only chance was the wall, the gate, and the killing ground they had painstakingly created below it.
He looked at the turret's control interface, a simple mental link. It had three settings: Sentinel (autonomous fire on designated hostiles), Burst (controlled manual firing), and Overwatch (linked to commander's targeting). He set it to Sentinel, with an engagement radius of two hundred meters, prioritizing larger mass and higher energy signatures.
The first wave appeared on the horizon an hour later. Not a rushing horde, but a methodical, spread-out advance. Stalkers skittered ahead, their forms low to the ground. Behind them came shambling Effigies, their seismic pulses no longer probing but marching in unison, a slow, ground-shaking drumbeat. Flanking them were Corrupted Amalgams, their forms glistening with fresh, oily growths. And in the center, looming above the rest, were two new creatures. They walked on four thick, trunk-like legs, their bodies massive barrels of chitin and rock, with broad, flat heads from which clusters of glowing green crystal spines bristled. Gloom Behemoths (Tier-2+). Siege engines.
The giant wasn't just roaring. It was marching.
"Steady," Isaac murmured into the channel, though his units didn't need the reassurance. "Let them come into the kill zone. Mortar team, you have fire mission 'Stonebreaker.' Target the Behemoths at eight hundred meters. Delay and disorient."
"Acknowledged. Solving for target."
On the western battlement, M-002 and G-001 manned the Thumper mortar. G-001 loaded a high-explosive shell, calibrated for maximum concussive force against hardened targets.
THUMP-WHOOSH.
The shell sailed over the wall, a dark comma against the green sky. It descended toward the lead Behemoth.
It struck the ground five meters in front of it. The explosion was massive, a geyser of black earth and shrapnel. The Behemoth staggered, shaking its massive head, several of its crystal spines cracking. It was annoyed, not hurt. But it slowed.
The second Behemoth and the rest of the force continued their advance, now at six hundred meters.
"All ranged units, pick your targets. Scout, mark priority Effigies. Grenadier, fire for effect on Amalgam clusters when they reach four hundred meters. Turret, stand by."
The Gloom force reached the base of the scree slope, four hundred meters out. The terrain would slow the larger creatures, channeling them.
"Grenadier, fire."
G-001, from its position beside the mortar, aimed its launcher at a cluster of three Amalgams herding a group of swarmlings. It fired a standard fragmentation grenade in a high, lazy arc.
The grenade landed amidst them and detonated. One Amalgam's leg was blown off. Swarmlings were shredded. The advance stuttered.
The turret's optic snapped to the wounded Amalgam. A targeting laser, invisible to Isaac but clear to the System, painted its chest.
The turret spoke its first word.
It wasn't a gunshot. It was a sustained, ripping BRRRRRRZT of hyper-accelerated alloy slugs, so fast it blurred into a single, ear-splitting shriek of violence. A stream of tracers, glowing with essence discharge, lanced across the four-hundred-meter gap in less than a second.
The wounded Amalgam didn't explode. It disintegrated. The upper half of its torso vanished in a cloud of pulverized stone and ichor. What remained toppled.
The sound of the turret was a shockwave of its own. The advancing line froze for a crucial second, instinct recoiling from the unfamiliar, industrial violence.
"Again! All units, fire at will!"
Musket fire crackled from the walls, less impressive but adding to the din. Isaac shouldered the Longstrike. Through the scope, he found an Effigy raising its arms for a seismic strike aimed at the base of the wall. He exhaled. Squeezed.
ZOT.
The Effigy's head-seam vanished in a puff of dust.It crumpled.
The turret rotated with mechanical inevitability, its BRRRRZT tearing into a Stalker, cutting it in half, then walking its fire onto a second, which dodged frantically but was caught and shredded.
But the Gloom force was vast. The two Behemoths, now at three hundred meters, lowered their heads. The clusters of green spines on their backs glowed brighter, then launched. Not as individual projectiles, but as a volley of dozens of crystalline javelins, arcing high over the wall.
"INCOMING!" Isaac yelled, ducking behind the parapet.
The spines rained down. They struck stone and metal with sharp cracks, embedding deep. One spine struck the mortar position, punching through the Thumper's elevation gear with a shower of sparks, rendering it inoperable. Another struck a Militia on the western wall in the shoulder, pinning it to the stone. The unit didn't scream, but its systems flashed critical.
The barrage was followed by a renewed, furious advance. The Gloom creatures, emboldened or driven, surged up the slope.
The turret continued its grim work, swiveling, firing, its barrel beginning to glow a dull red. It cut down another Amalgam, a pack of swarmlings, but there were too many. An Effigy got within a hundred meters and stomped. A seismic spike erupted from the ground inside the wall, beneath the turret's mounting. The stonework shuddered. The turret's firing stuttered as its alignment was thrown off.
They were being overwhelmed. The gate would not hold against the Behemoths.
Isaac made a decision. A terrible, necessary one.
"All units, fall back from the outer walls! Retreat to the Inner Keep doors! M-001, M-005—you're on the gate charge. Set it and fall back!"
He was sacrificing the courtyard, the outer fortifications, to funnel the enemy into a final, even more hellish kill zone: the bottleneck of the main gate itself.
As his units pulled back, laying down covering fire, M-001 and M-005 rushed to the postern gate. They slapped the last demolition charge onto the massive internal brace and set the timer.
The first Behemoth reached the gate. It didn't bother with the smaller postern door. It lowered its head and charged the main, fused portcullis with the force of a landslide.
CRUNCH-SCREEEEE—
The ancient metal shrieked, bent inward. Stonework cracked. Dust rained from the arch.
"Blow it!" Isaac screamed from the inner doorway.
M-001 hit the trigger.
The demolition charge, placed against the inner brace and the wall, detonated. The force was directed inward and upward.
The result was not a clean collapse. It was cataclysm. The already-stressed stone arch of the gatehouse gave way. Tons of masonry and the mangled portcullis crashed down in a roaring avalanche, burying the first Behemoth completely and sealing the entrance in a twenty-foot high pile of smoking rubble.
The second Behemoth and the rest of the Gloom force were halted, cut off from their prize by the very wreckage they had created.
Silence fell, broken only by the hiss of settling dust and the distant, frustrated roars from the other side of the rubble pile.
Isaac leaned against the cold stone of the Inner Keep, his ears ringing. The turret was silent, its mount damaged. The mortar was broken. One Militia was destroyed, two more critically damaged. The outer yard was lost, the gate sealed shut—not by design, but by ruin.
But the Bastion stood. The enemy's first, coordinated assault had been broken against its walls, at a cost.
He looked at the rubble-choked gateway. It was no longer an entrance. It was a tomb, and a new, formidable barrier. The giant's roar had been met with the gun's first, shattering word, and the crumbling of stone.
The siege had truly begun. And he had just finished shaping the battlefield.