The Steel Gorge was a scar on the face of the world.
It was a narrow canyon formed when two massive orbital cargo-lifters had crashed into each other about fifty years ago. Their skeletons formed walls of twisted metal three hundred feet high, creating a jagged, claustrophobic tunnel half a mile long. And the floor was a river of mud and sharp debris.
And It was also the only path for heavy tanks to reach our base.
"Hurry!" Glitch shouted, his voice cracking. As he ran like crazy down the gorge, carrying a sack of freshly printed EMP mines. "They're thirty minutes out!"
"Be careful with those," Sarah warned, setting a up tripwire across the path. "If one goes off, you'll fry every circuit in your body."
I stood on a high ledge watching the entrance, and scanning the horizon with my rifle's scope. The rain had stopped, but the fog was thick. Through the mist, I could see the distant, rhythmic flashing of the Iron Legion's strobe lights.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The ground vibrated. The tanks were heavy—Siege Breakers. They didn't have treads; they hovered on anti-gravity cushions, but the displacement of air was enough to shake the junk piles.
"ARES, status," I whispered into my comms.
"Fabrication complete," the AI replied from the Titan, which was miles behind us. "Mines deployed. Drone swarm holding in reserve. And I have also marked the structural weak points of the canyon walls on your HUD."
"Good."
I looked down at Maya. She was positioned in a sniper nest made of crushed cars on the opposite wall. She looked terrified, but she had the Enforcer rifle resting on a bipod, aiming down the throat of the gorge.
"Remember what we planned," I told her over the private channel. "Wait for the lead tank. Do not fire until they set off the trap."
"I know," she whispered back. "Just... don't let them get too close."
"They won't."
The vibration grew louder. The hum of anti-grav engines filled the air, sounding like a swarm of giant hornets.
Then, the first tank came right through the fog.
It was a beast. It was a Matte black armor, a turret the size of a bus, with two plasma cannons. It scanned the canyon with red laser.
Behind it, was the infantry marching. The Iron Legion. Soldiers in full power armor, carrying heavy bolters. And they all moved in perfect unison, faceless and silent.
One tank. Two tanks. Three.
Until they filed into the gorge.
"Hold..." I muttered, watching the lead tank pass over the first hidden mine.
"Hold..."
The entire column entered the trap. They were confident and Arrogant. They were expecting to find scared refugees, But they expected wrongly.
The lead tank reached the center of the gorge.
"NOW!" I screamed.
Glitch slammed his hand on the detonator.
BOOM-ZZZRT.
The first EMP mine exploded directly under the lead tank.
It didn't destroy the armor. It killed the engine. The anti-gravity field failed instantly. The massive tank, weighing a hundred tons, dropped five feet and slammed into the mud. The impact cracked its chassis.
CRASH.
The column stopped.
"it An Ambush!" a commander shouted over the external speakers. "Defensive formation now!"
"Too late," I growled.
"Sarah, blow the walls!"
Sarah triggered the secondary charges we had planted high up on the canyon walls, it was the explosives we scavenged from the gunships.
BOOM. BOOM.
Massive slabs of rusted metal and concrete fell off the canyon walls. They rained down on the end of the line, crushing the last two tanks and trapping the infantry inside the gorge.
They were boxed in.
"Open fire!" I yelled.
Maya fired first. Her shot was perfect. It hit an infantry soldier in the visor, shattering his helmet.
Then, chaos erupted.
I jumped from my ledge, sliding down a slope of debris. My armor absorbed the impact as I landed on top of a crushed bus.
"ARES, release the drones now!"
From the sky, a swarm of Hunter-Killer drones—small, fast, and armed with micro-lasers—descended like a cloud of angry locusts. They swarmed the infantry, distracting, and blinding them.
The soldiers panicked. They fired wildly into the air, Their bolts were hitting the canyon walls.
"Focus fire on the center tank!" I ordered.
I raised my hand.
Skill: Energy Siphon.
I didn't target a tank. I targeted the air.
The gorge was filled with the static discharge of their plasma weapons and shields. The air was thick with energy.
Then i inhaled it.
My veins glowed blinding blue. I became a lightning rod.
XP GAINED: 10... 10... 10...
"Overcharge!"
I channeled the energy into my rifle. The barrel glowed white.
BANG.
I fired a single, supercharged shot at the second tank. The bullet was moving so fast it made a sonic boom sound. It punched through the front armor of the tank, then went through the pilot, and into the reactor core.
KA-BOOM.
The tank exploded from the inside out. The turret flew off, landing ontop the soldiers (infantry).
"They have a Technomancer!" a soldier screamed. "Level 10 threat! Suppression fire!"
Fifty bolters turned toward me. The air was filled with glowing red tracers.
"Shields!"
I activated my Shadow-Weave shield, but it shattered in seconds under the hail of fire. And a round clipped my shoulder, spinning me around.
"Elias!" Sarah yelled, providing covering fire from the side.
"I'm fine!" I gritted my teeth. "Glitch, the EMPs! Hit them again!"
"Recharging!" Glitch yelled from his hole. "I need thirty seconds!"
We didn't have thirty seconds. The infantry was reorganizing. They were forming a shield wall, pushing forward.
Suddenly, a shadow fell over the gorge.
I looked up.
The Command Cruiser.
It had descended from the clouds, hovering directly over the canyon. Its belly bay doors opened.
"Reinforcements dropping!" Maya warned.
But they weren't dropping soldiers.
They were dropping a Walker.
It fell from the sky—a massive, bipedal mech, smaller than our Titan but faster. It was armed with flamethrowers and a chain-gun.
It landed in the middle of the gorge with a shockwave that knocked everyone flat.
BOSS: LEGION CENTURION.
LEVEL: 15.
It raised its flamethrower arm. And a stream of liquid fire washed over the wreckage, turning the battlefield into an inferno.
"Burn them out!" the pilot roared over the loudspeaker.
"We can't fight that!" Sarah coughed, retreating from the heat. "Our weapons can't scratch it!"
I looked at the Centurion. It was wading through the fire, like it was immune to the chaos.
I checked my energy. 50%.
I can't drain it. It's too hot. I can't shoot it. Its armor is too thick.
"ARES!" I screamed into my comms. "Do you have a firing solution?"
"Negative," the AI replied. "Titan is out of range for direct fire. However... I have a kinetic solution."
"What solution?"
"Orbital Bombardment Protocol," ARES said calmly. "I can fire the Railgun into a parabolic arc. It will act as an artillery."
"Do it! Fire on my coordinates!"
"Commander," ARES hesitated. "You are in the blast zone. The kinetic impact will be..."
"DO IT!"
I turned to the team. "Take cover! Deep cover! Now!"
I tackled Sarah and dragged her under the chassis of a wrecked tank. Maya and Glitch scrambled into a sewer pipe.
The Centurion turned toward me. It saw me. It raised its chain-gun.
"Target acquired," the pilot sneered.
Then, the sky split open.
A sound echoed across the Rust Sea.
Miles away, it was the Titan that fired its main gun.
The railgun slug—a solid tungsten rod moving at Mach 7, and it arrived instantly.
It didn't hit the Centurion. It hit the ground directly in front of it.
CRACK-DOOM.
The impact was catastrophic. The ground liquefied. The shockwave threw the fifty-ton Centurion into the air like a toy. The gorge walls collapsed inward. The infantry was buried instantly.
I was deafened. And Blinded by dust.
I lay in the mud, gasping for air. And my ear was ringing also.
Slowly, the dust settled.
The gorge was gone. It was just a crater now.
In the center of the crater, the Centurion lay on its back, its legs shattered, its cockpit crushed. The pilot was silent. The tanks were burning wrecks.
The ambush was over.
I crawled out from under the tank. Sarah was coughing beside me, covered in grey dust.
"Did we... did we get them?" she wheezed.
I looked at the devastation. The Iron Legion vanguard was annihilated.
"We got them," I said, standing up on shaky legs.
But as I looked up at the sky, I saw the Command Cruiser. It was damaged by the debris, smoke pouring from its engines, but it was still flying.
It turned slowly and began to retreat back toward the city.
"It's running away," Glitch said, popping out of his hole.
"No," I said, watching it go. "It's going to report. Malachi knows now. That we didn't just find a base."
I looked back toward the distant silhouette of our Titan, smoke drifting from its railgun barrel.
"We just declared a war."