LOCATION: OLDUVAI GORGE, CRASH SITE.
ENEMY: THE ARCH-PRIEST OF THE IRON DISCIPLES.
MISSION: RECOVER THE SOVEREIGN CORE BOMB.
The red dust of Olduvai Gorge clung to the sweat and blood on my face.
I stood in front of the crumpled, silver-nano hull of the Dragonfly Scout, my heavy wrench gripped tight in my right hand. Behind me, Nayla was helping a dazed K-Ray to his feet.
In front of us stood an army of nightmares.
The Iron Disciples had surrounded the crash site. They were a grotesque fusion of rotting human flesh and rusted Foundry cybernetics. But the zealots kept their distance, forming a wide circle of jagged metal and glowing green optics. They were leaving the kill to their leader.
The Arch-Priest was a walking tank. He stood nearly eight feet tall, his legs replaced by heavy, digitigrade hydraulic pistons. But his right arm was the true terror. It was fused with a massive Gravity Hammer—a block of glowing purple Foundry tech that hummed with a frequency that made my molars ache.
He looked down at the Sovereign Core Bomb lying in the dirt, the silver liquid inside its glass casing swirling furiously.
"The Foreman sought order," the Arch-Priest ground out, his voice a horrifying mix of a human rasp and a synthesized bass drop. "He gave us the metal to survive the flesh. But you... you bring a virus. You wish to poison the Cradle."
"I wish to unplug it," I spat, wiping blood from my brow. "Your 'Cradle' is an alien terraforming engine. It's eating the tectonic plates."
"It is Ascension!" the Arch-Priest roared.
He raised the Gravity Hammer. The purple glow intensified, and the very air around the weapon began to warp. Dust, loose rocks, and pieces of scrap metal from our crashed ship lifted off the ground, drawn into the localized gravity well hovering around the hammer's head.
If he struck the bomb, the gravity wave would crush the glass casing. The silver nanites would detonate here in the dirt, completely useless, leaving the Tower of Light untouched.
"Nayla! The hammer!" I yelled, sprinting forward.
Nayla didn't need to be told twice. Her hands flared with brilliant, iridescent light. She drew back the string of her solid-state silver bow and fired a bolt of pure viral code directly at the Arch-Priest's chest.
But the Arch-Priest didn't even try to dodge.
He swung the Gravity Hammer in a wide, horizontal arc. The purple distortion field caught Nayla's silver arrow mid-flight. The sheer gravitational force bent the light itself, pulling the energy arrow off course and slamming it harmlessly into the red dirt.
"Energy has mass," the Arch-Priest mocked, turning his glowing red optical sensors toward Nayla. "And gravity commands all mass."
THE KINETIC OVERLOAD
"Tyler, I can't hit him!" Nayla shouted, her silver veins pulsing rapidly as she nocked another arrow. "The hammer's field is too strong! It deflects everything!"
"Keep him busy!" I ordered.
Analyze. Adapt. Dismantle.
I looked at the Arch-Priest's weapon. A gravity manipulator requires an astronomical amount of power. Power generates heat. To keep the hammer from melting his own arm off, he had to have a massive cooling system.
I spotted it. A rusted, bulky exhaust vent strapped to his back, churning out thick clouds of white steam.
"I am the Anvil of the Foreman!" the Arch-Priest bellowed, stepping over the bomb and raising the hammer toward me.
He slammed it into the ground.
THOOOOOM.
A shockwave of inverted gravity ripped through the earth. A trench of red dirt and sandstone erupted upward, rushing toward me like a subterranean torpedo.
I dove to the side, rolling across the rough ground as the gravity wave tore past me, flipping a two-ton shipping container into the air like a cardboard box.
I scrambled to my feet, my ribs screaming in protest. I was ten feet away from him now. I didn't have a gun. I just had my wrench and the debris field of our crashed ship.
I grabbed a fistful of shattered glass-mesh and sheared metal from the ground.
"Hey, fanatic!" I yelled.
The Arch-Priest turned his heavy, hydraulic body toward me.
I didn't throw the scrap at his face. I threw it directly into the purple gravity well of his hammer.
The localized field instantly sucked the debris in. The metal and glass began to orbit the hammer's head at a blinding speed.
"Your trash cannot harm me," the Arch-Priest laughed, preparing to swing again.
"It's not trash," I smirked. "It's friction."
The gravity field was designed to crush, but I had just introduced jagged, abrasive material into a high-speed orbit around a delicate Foundry instrument. The scrap metal scraped violently against the hammer's casing, sparking fiercely.
The purple light flickered. The exhaust vent on his back whined, belching out a thick cloud of black smoke instead of white steam.
[WARNING: KINETIC OVERLOAD]
[COOLING SYSTEM COMPROMISED]
"Nayla! His back!" I screamed.
Nayla sprinted to the side, her silver bow drawn. With the hammer's gravity field stuttering, she had a clear shot at his exhaust vent.
THWIP.
The silver arrow struck the rusted vent dead-center. The viral code surged into his cooling system, locking the rotary fans and fusing the metal.
The Arch-Priest shrieked. The hammer glowed violently, the heat backing up into his cybernetic arm. The metal of his shoulder began to melt, dripping glowing orange slag onto the dirt.
But he wasn't dead. He dropped the hammer to his side, his optical sensors burning with absolute fury.
"I will crush you with my bare hands!" he roared, lunging at me.
Before I could raise my wrench, the wall of the gorge behind the Arch-Priest exploded outward.
THE SOVEREIGN'S RETURN
A massive chunk of sandstone and rusted iron blew into the canyon, crushing half a dozen Iron Disciples.
From the dust of the breached command bunker stepped a nightmare for the zealots.
Juma emerged, his silver-nano body completely unmarked, his mirror eyes devoid of mercy. Behind him, Colonel Volkov stepped through the breach, his pulse-rifle smoking.
"The command bunker's localized defenses are neutralized," Juma announced in his chilling, flat monotone.
"Juma! The bomb!" I yelled, pointing to the silver sphere in the dirt.
The Arch-Priest spun around, his molten arm hanging uselessly, but his remaining hydraulic limbs tensing. He looked at Juma—the Silver Sovereign.
"The False Silver," the Arch-Priest spat. "You are a corruption of the machine."
Juma did not reply with words. He closed the distance in a blur of hyper-dense motion.
The Arch-Priest swung a massive, hydraulic backhand, attempting to swat Juma away. Juma didn't dodge. He raised his silver forearm, catching the blow.
CLANG.
The sound of solid steel hitting hyper-dense nano-alloy echoed through the gorge. Juma didn't budge a single millimeter. The Arch-Priest's hydraulic piston hissed and snapped under the sheer, immovable resistance of Juma's mass.
"Your mass is artificially enhanced by crude hydraulics," Juma stated clinically, staring into the Arch-Priest's glowing red eyes. "Mine is intrinsic."
Juma drove a silver fist directly into the Arch-Priest's chest plating. The impact shattered the rusted iron armor, driving deep into the zealot's cybernetic core. Juma ripped his hand back, tearing a fistful of sparking wires and leaking battery cells from the giant's chest.
The Arch-Priest collapsed, his optical sensors flickering and dying.
"Target eliminated," Juma said, wiping a smear of black oil from his silver knuckles.
"Grab the core!" Volkov yelled, laying down suppressing fire as the rest of the Iron Disciples, realizing their leader was dead, began to swarm the crash site in a frenzy.
K-Ray dove into the dirt, scooping up the Sovereign Core Bomb. "I got it, Tyler!"
"The iris is open!" Volkov pointed toward the center of the gorge.
About two hundred meters away, the massive titanium shutter covering the base of the Tower of Braided Light was locked open. The blinding white energy of the terraforming node pulsed like a beacon, waiting for the payload.
"We have to run!" I grabbed Nayla's hand. "Juma, Volkov, clear a path!"
THE DEADLY SPRINT
We ran.
The red dust of Olduvai Gorge kicked up beneath our boots. Around us, the canyon erupted into absolute chaos. The Iron Disciples poured from the rusted shipping containers, firing plasma rifles and kinetic shard-launchers.
Juma took the point. The Silver Sovereign didn't use weapons. He used his body. He sprinted ahead of us, absorbing plasma bolts that harmlessly dissipated across his mirrored skin. When a heavily armored cyborg stepped in his path, Juma simply shoulder-checked the zealot, sending the enemy flying twenty feet through the air.
"Keep moving!" Volkov roared, firing controlled bursts to keep the snipers on the ridge pinned down.
Nayla ran beside me, firing silver energy arrows into the clusters of Disciples, overwriting their cybernetics and turning them into dead weight.
One hundred meters.
The heat from the exposed Tower of Braided Light washed over us. It wasn't the burning, incinerating heat of the Ash Bloom. It was a sterile, tingling energy. The air smelled of ozone and pure oxygen.
"Tyler, look at the shutter!" K-Ray screamed, clutching the bomb to his chest as he ran.
I looked up.
The massive titanium iris at the base of the tower was moving. The thick, rusted metal plates were slowly groaning, beginning to slide shut.
"The command bunker's automated systems are rebooting!" Juma analyzed. "The iris will close in exactly twenty-two seconds!"
Fifty meters.
"We're not going to make it!" Volkov yelled, stumbling as a plasma bolt grazed his thigh armor.
"Yes we are!" I grabbed the bomb from K-Ray's hands. It was incredibly heavy, the liquid silver sloshing violently inside its glass casing. "K-Ray, stay behind Juma!"
I sprinted ahead, pushing my lungs to the absolute limit. Every step sent a jolt of agony through my bruised ribs, but I ignored it. I looked at the closing iris. The gap was narrowing. Ten feet wide. Eight feet wide.
Twenty meters.
"Tyler, it's closing too fast!" Nayla cried out.
She was right. I couldn't reach the edge of the pit in time to drop it straight down. The angle was wrong. If I threw it now, it would bounce off the titanium plates and detonate outside the node.
Analyze. Adapt. Dismantle.
I didn't slow down. I ran straight toward the rusted guardrail surrounding the open pit.
I wasn't going to throw the bomb.
I was going to dunk it.
"Tyler, no!" Nayla screamed, realizing what I was about to do.
The gap was only four feet wide now.
I hit the edge of the pit. I didn't stop. I planted my boot on the rusted guardrail and launched myself into the air, soaring out over the blinding white abyss of the terraforming node.
I held the Sovereign Core Bomb tightly against my chest.
As gravity took hold and I began to fall into the blinding light, I looked back at the edge of the pit. I saw Nayla, her silver-laced face contorted in a scream, reaching out for me.
Then, the heavy titanium plates of the iris slammed shut above me with a deafening CLANG, plunging me into absolute, blinding white.