The Bastion stood not as a fortress, but as an emptied shell. Its halls echoed with the absence of its army. On the walls, a skeleton crew of Militia stood watch beside silent, cold sentry turrets. The Manufactorum was still. The only sound was the deep, anxious hum of the Core and the whisper of the air scrubbers.
All that power, all that industry, was now concentrated ten kilometers away, at the base of the bleeding mountain.
Forward Operating Base Omega was a knife-point pressed against Omicron-22's throat. It was not a fortification; it was a launchpad. Two Legionnaires (V-002, V-003) formed the anvil, their guns aimed at the mountain's lower slopes. The Catapult (V-004 'Thunderhead') was dug in behind them, its long barrel elevated for plunging fire. Arrayed before the armor were the infantry: two squads of Grenadiers in their gleaming, untested Paladin armor, and three fireteams of Lascutter-armed Militia. The Pioneer units, E-001 and the newly built E-002, waited with their precious cargo: Ouroboros Prime, disassembled into three sections on heavy anti-grav sleds.
Isaac was not with them. He was in the Orrery, his consciousness split between the sterile silence of the Annex and the chaotic, multi-feed tactical display of the impending battle. The Sergeant's primary consciousness was with the field force, housed in the command Legionnaire, but a vital subroutine remained linked to Isaac, processing the Orrery's real-time analysis of the Gloom's energy flows.
"All units, final check," Isaac's voice was calm in the helmet comms of every soldier. "Remember the sequence. Phase One: The Anvil strikes. Legionnaires and Catapult, you are the thunder. Hit every identified secondary energy node on the lower slopes. Draw their focus down and out. Phase Two: The Quarry moves. Infantry and Pioneers, you are the spear. Advance up Gully Seven, covered by the smoke and chaos. Get Ouroboros Prime to the epicenter coordinates. Phase Three: The Lock. Pioneers assemble and activate the Spire. Then we all get the hell out of there. The moment the Spire activates, the Vector's response will be… unpredictable."
A chorus of "Acknowledged, Commander," echoed back, flat and sure.
"Execute Phase One."
The world erupted.
The Catapult fired first, its WHOOMF the opening note of the symphony. A shell arced high and disappeared into the mountain's flesh. A secondary energy node—a pulsing cyst of violet crystal—vanished in a fireball.
The Legionnaires opened up, their main guns roaring, their coaxial repeaters adding a tearing staccato. They walked their fire along the pre-mapped targets, blasting apart Spiker Nests, crumbling defensive ridges, and vaporizing packs of Shredderlings that boiled out of crevices.
The mountain woke up. It didn't roar; it shivered. The ground trembled. From caves and fissures high up the slopes, the remaining Colossi emerged, not with a charge, but with a terrible, coordinated purpose. They moved to interpose themselves between the bombardment and the deeper, vital channels of corruption. They were absorbing the punishment, sacrificing themselves to protect the core.
"Phase Two, go! Go now!"
Under cover of the titanic distraction, the infantry and Pioneers moved. The Paladin-armored Grenadiers led, their heavy frames navigating the treacherous gully with surprising agility. Lascutter beams lanced out, slicing through barb-weeds and ambushing Phase-Stalkers. They were a silver-blue arrow shooting up into the mountain's shadow.
The Orrery's display showed it perfectly. The Gloom's energy, a violent red tide, was surging downward, toward the hammering Legionnaires. The path to the epicenter, a pulsing knot of black and violet at the mountain's heart, was momentarily thinned.
The spear reached the coordinates—a flat, vitrified circle of rock at the base of a sheer cliff, directly below the main corruption vent. The air here was thick and greasy, tasting of ozone and rot. The ground vibrated with a subsonic hum.
"Pioneers! Deploy! You have four minutes!"
E-001 and E-002 went to work. Their tools whirred and sparked. The three sections of Ouroboros Prime were lifted from their sleds. The Adamantite framework locked together with heavy clunks. The Zero-Point crystal matrices were slotted into place, each connection making the air ping with harmonic resonance. The Spire grew before them, a jagged, beautiful monument of captured physics.
Above, the battle reached a crescendo. One Legionnaire, V-003, took a direct hit from a Colossus's energy blast on its frontal armor. Plating buckled. It fell back, smoke pouring from its vents, but its gun kept firing. The Catapult switched to airburst fragmentation, raining shrapnel on the Colossi trying to descend into the gully.
"Spire assembly complete," E-001 reported. "Initiating resonant activation."
The Pioneer placed a final, central crystal. The Spire shimmered. Not with light, but with a visible distortion, as if the space around it was thickening. A low, fundamental hum emanated from it, a sound that vibrated in the bones, not the ears.
On the Orrery's display, the golden schematic of the Ouroboros loop superimposed itself over the epicenter's red knot. The simulation began to run in real-time.
And the Vector… noticed.
The downward surge of energy stopped. The Colossi froze mid-action. The entire chaotic battle seemed to hitch for a single, breathless second.
Then, every Gloom entity on the mountain turned its attention inward, upward, toward the Spire. It was an alien, unified focus of pure, undiluted purpose. The Spire was a wrongness. An anomaly. It had to be cleansed.
"Phase Three! All units, disengage! Fall back to rally point Zulu! Now!"
They ran. The infantry broke contact, sprinting back down the gully. The damaged Legionnaire limped backward, covering the retreat. The Catapult fired its last smoke shells, blanketing the area.
On the plateau, Ouroboros Prime stood alone.
The first tendril of raw, concentrated Gloom energy, like a whip of liquid shadow, lashed out from the mountain's heart and struck the Spire.
The Adamantite framework didn't break. It sang. The Zero-Point crystals flared, absorbing the entropic energy, twisting it. The Spire dissolved, but not into rubble. It dissolved into a cloud of shimmering, coherent energy—the first stage of the Ouroboros loop.
And as the Vector's protocols processed that energy, seeking to reduce it to base uniformity, the unstable physics of the epicenter, tuned by the Spire's resonance, took over. The shimmering cloud collapsed. And from it, Ouroboros Prime re-solidified, perfect and whole.
The Vector struck again. The Spire dissolved, sang, and reformed.
Again.
Again.
On the Orrery's display, the golden loop was a blinding, stable circle. The red knot of the epicenter was now threaded with gold, the two patterns locked in an endless, recursive dance.
Isaac watched, his heart hammering against his ribs. The Legionnaires and infantry were clear, falling back across the plain. The Gloom ignored them utterly. Every ounce of its being, every Colossus, every wisp of energy, was focused on the impossible structure on the plateau, trying to solve a puzzle that unsolved itself with every solution.
The Sergeant's voice came through, calm amidst the storm of data. "Omega Gambit successful. The Ouroboros loop is established and stable. Vector attention is 99.7% focused on the recursive anomaly. Local defensive and adaptive functions have ceased."
Isaac leaned back in the Orrery's chair, the sterile silence of the chamber a stark contrast to the metaphysical tempest he had just unleashed on the mountain. He hadn't won. There was no victory.
He had done something else. He had given the uncaring god of decay an eternal, fascinating toy. A snake forever eating its own tail.
He had bought time. Not just a day, or a year. Perhaps an age.
The programmer's code was running. And it was stuck in the most beautiful, terrible infinite loop imaginable.