The Adamantite Alloy was the final, tantalizing piece of the puzzle. It was also the most impossible to acquire. The Carrier wreck at Omicron-22 was a fortress guarded by titans. To take even a sliver, he would need a tool of equal scale.
The Legionnaire Ironclad was that tool. Its skeleton in the Vehicle Bay was a promise cast in steel, but its completion was a mountain of need. Isaac had 102 Advanced Salvage. He needed 150. The Bulkhauler was feeding the Anvil Foundry a steady stream of ore, slowly producing Vehicle-Grade Plate, but he was only at 28/50 slabs.
He needed another windfall. But the Gloom was learning. The Reclaimer Beast now patrolled the ruins with a pack of Shredderlings, its simple intelligence augmented by a swarm of sharp, fast scouts. The Cuckoo trick was dead.
He needed a new source of Advanced Salvage, one the enemy wasn't guarding. His eyes went back to his own Bastion. Not the rubble, but the sealed sections. The schematic showed vast, collapsed wings marked "Armory – Main," "Research Annex – Beta," "Primary Hangar." They were buried under millions of tons of rock from the mountain's partial collapse during the fall. But they were inside his walls. Their contents, if intact, would be pure, pre-Fall Bastion tech—the motherlode.
Digging them out with the Bulkhauler would take months. He didn't have months. But he didn't need to dig out the whole wing. He just needed to pierce it. Like a surgeon performing a biopsy.
"Sergeant," he said, an idea forming with cold, surgical clarity. "The Javelin Coilgun. Its penetrator round is designed for hardened targets. What if we used it not as artillery, but as a mining charge? Fired at point-blank range into a pre-weakened section of the internal collapse?"
The Sergeant processed. "The kinetic energy would be catastrophic in a confined space. High risk of cascading collapse. However, if targeted at a structurally reinforced junction—a load-bearing arch or a sealed vault door—the round could penetrate, creating a small access tunnel. Probability of success: 38%. Probability of catastrophic failure sealing the site permanently: 45%."
It was a coin toss. With terrible odds. But the prize was not just salvage; it was potentially intact weapons, equipment, or schematics that could leapfrog his entire tech tree.
He chose a target: the Armory – Main access corridor. According to schematics, it was sealed by a series of three Atmospheric Blast Doors, each meters thick, but behind them were storage halls for infantry-scale heavy weapons.
He had the Javelin. He had one precious tungsten penetrator round left. He would have to build another if this failed, setting him back days.
He prepared the site. Militia, directed by the Sergeant, spent hours using plasma cutters and demolition charges to clear rubble and expose the outer layer of the first blast door—a slab of dull grey alloy scarred by heat but seemingly intact. They built a reinforced firing bunker around the Javelin, anchoring it directly to the bedrock floor of the corridor, its barrel aimed at the door's central locking mechanism from twenty meters away.
It was the opposite of its intended use. This was a siege cannon turned into a lockpick.
Isaac stood in the Core Chamber, watching through a camera feed. The Sergeant was at the firing console in the bunker. The corridor was cleared of all personnel.
"On your mark, Sergeant."
"Firing solution locked. Magnetic coils charging. Stand by."
The whine built, higher and more strained than it ever had in open air, echoing terribly in the stone tunnel.
THUMP-WHUMP-CRAAAAANG!
The sound was not a shot; it was a confined detonation. The camera feed shook violently. Dust and debris filled the air. Alarms blared as seismic sensors registered a local shockwave.
When the dust settled, the image resolved.
The Javelin was wrecked, its barrel split, its capacitors blown. But the blast door… had a hole. A perfect, smooth, dinner-plate-sized hole, glowing cherry-red at the edges, punched clean through the first door and visibly into the darkness of the second.
Structural Integrity: Armory Blast Door 1 – Breached.
It had worked. Barely.
Isaac suited up in a basic hazard suit—the first he'd fabricated—and went down with a team. The heat in the corridor was stifling. They approached the door. Through the hole, they could see the second door, also dented but not pierced. The round was embedded in it. But more importantly, in the small, hollow space between the doors, lay scattered debris from the impact: fragments of the door's internal locking mechanism. And among the fragments, glinting in their work-lights, were crystalline control chips, bundle of superconducting wire, and several barrel segments of an unknown alloy.
Salvage. Not in bulk, but in quality. They carefully fished the items out with magnetic grabbers.
Advanced Salvage Acquired: +22 Units.
New Schematic Fragment Recovered: "Lascutter" – Infantry Support Weapon.
It wasn't the armory, but it was a keyhole view. And the schematic fragment was a breakthrough—a short-range, high-intensity energy weapon that could replace the Militia's carbines for assault and breaching.
He now had 124 Advanced Salvage. The Plate count was at 41/50. He was so close.
The Bulkhauler, working day and night, brought in the last loads of ore. The Anvil hammered out the final nine slabs of Vehicle-Grade Plate with a series of earth-shaking CLANGS.
He had it. All of it.
"Vehicle Bay," Isaac said, his voice echoing in the vast chamber. "Commence final assembly of the MBT-1 'Legionnaire.' Allocate all designated resources."
It was a feast of consumption. Advanced Salvage vanished from the ledger. Essence flooded into the Bay's forges. The slabs of Plate were heated, molded, and welded to the chassis. The massive treads, each link as big as a man, were assembled. The turret—a low, sloped menace—was fitted with the long, sleek barrel of the 120mm coilgun.
The process took a full day. Isaac didn't sleep. He watched, a silent midwife to the birth of his war-machine.
Finally, the lights in the Bay brightened. The cranes retracted. The last welds cooled.
In the center of the Bay, it stood.
The Legionnaire was a masterpiece of brutalist design. It was all angles and slabs of armor, painted in a non-reflective, charcoal-grey. Its main gun was a promise of obliteration. A smaller, coaxial repeater flanked it. Sensor blisters and communication arrays dotted its hull. It sat on its wide treads with a low, predatory stance.
Unit: MBT-1 'Legionnaire' – V-002. Status: ONLINE.
A ramp descended from its belly. Isaac climbed inside, the Sergeant following. The interior was cramped, lit by soft blue glow-panels. Two seats: commander/gunner, and driver. The System interface here was an extension of the Core, a warship's bridge in a tank's hull.
Isaac slid into the commander's seat. The controls molded to him. A panoramic, holographic battlefield display activated, fed by the tank's own powerful sensors and linked to the Bastion net. He could see the heat signatures of his Militia on the walls, the cooling signature of the Nexus, the distant, angry red boil of Omicron-22.
He placed his hands on the fire control. "Sergeant. Take the driver's seat. Let's take her for a walk."
The Sergeant interfaced directly, its cognition merging with the tank's machine-spirit. The Legionnaire's engines powered up with a deep, electric hum that vibrated through the hull.
The massive vehicle gate of the Bastion ground open, wider than it had ever needed to be.
The Legionnaire rolled forward. Its treads crunched the vitrified earth of the outer yard, flattening the rubble of the old gate with indifferent ease. It passed the sentry turret, which now looked like a toy.
It reached the open plain and stopped. Isaac swiveled the turret, the mechanism whisper-quiet. The targeting reticule danced over the distant, jagged silhouette of the Gloom ruins.
He had built the anvil. He had forged the hammer.
Now, it was time to see what they could break.