> I don’t think that’s something we’ve ever tracked, but something is strange. Instruments read only a dozen life-forms remaining at their headquarters, and another dozen in the rest of the system. I don’t like this…

>

> -Intercepted transmission from Voices for Non-Citizens

I squinted in the direction of the Pylon. My Panoramic Vision augment was designed to provide a more complete field of vision, not to enhance my ability to see smaller details or over a greater distance. Even so, I’d noticed some minor improvements as I'd "leveled up." It was subtle enough that hadn't initially sure if my actual vision had improved, or if I was just better at understanding what I was seeing. After checking in with Ariel, I'd found out the answer was "a little of both." The upshot was that I could tell that Gavin was right. Something was moving over there.

At first, it was hidden, its presence was made obvious by only shifting and falling rubble. Our entire neighborhood was in ruins, but the area around the Pylon was particularly bad, since a new Threat appeared there every three hours. Some were the newer hives that spawned the burrowing attackers we were calling “ground-swimmers.” Those displaced earth as they appeared, pushing earth and rock up into a cavelike entrance to the hive… but, over time, these “cave entrances” tended to collapse as new hives destabilized the area, so they were less of an issue. Unfortunately, about half the Threats that appeared were the original ones, the treezillas. They weren’t the skyline-darkening monstrosities that had knocked Vince’s airship out of the sky, but they were still massive, over three stories tall with trunks as wide as a pair of double-doors. We got about four new treezilla corpses every day. They were made of useful materials, sure, tougher than almost anything humanity could produce at the same weight. But… there was too much of it. Even with our crafters working full-time to process treezilla remains into armor and shelters, they weren’t using a third of what appeared in our area, and more appeared every three hours like clockwork. Some effort had been made to keep the immediate area around the Pylon clear for combat, but there was no way to move that much material far. The clutter got worse every day.

A massive branch rolled down a pile, revealing a line of glistening orange. More rubble fell as the orange shape lifted itself higher, knocking aside tons of material heedlessly.

“How big is that?” Flip snapped.

“Judging by the curve at the top? Analyze says it’s a minimum of 37.4 feet wide.” More material fell as the Threat heaved itself higher. “No, wait! At least 43.6 feet.”

Marie was sitting up in the tower with us with her eyes closed, activating Clairvoyance. “The markings we made on the ground to help estimate size got disrupted as it emerged, but the Analyst on the scene confirms Meghan’s numbers. I’m hearing it’s about 45 feet wide, 30 feet tall, and 80 feet long.”

“What the actual fuck,” Flip said. “That’s huge! Why hasn’t the ground commander ordered the attack yet?”

“He has!” Marie said. “I heard him! Full authorization for Specialties, too!”

“We threw all that at it and it hasn’t turned to focus on them? It’s just ignoring the attacks?!”

I pulled a pair of binoculars off the side of my backpack, effortlessly focusing them as I lifted them to my primary eyes.

What I saw resembled a dark orange pillbug the size of a house. A massive bullet slammed into it - probably Benjamin’s work - leaving a section of the carapace shattered. Lasers blasted into the injured shell, bright enough that I shut my eyes for a moment. When I opened them, I had to refocus the binoculars, as the Threat had continued to move closer, ignoring the small crater in its side. The injury bore signs of further assault: scorch marks and moisture that might be evidence of a gaseous attack or ice that had frozen and remelted. The attacks had halted and I saw melee fighters dash in, making superhuman leaps to sink blades into the gap our allies had created in the monster’s armor.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“Come on,” I cheered quietly as the behemoth continued its ponderous advance toward Fort Autumn. “You can do it. You’re getting deeper. You-”

A huge chunk of the monster fell off, large enough for everyone to see from this distance, even those without binoculars or enhanced vision.

“We’re getting it!” Gavin cheered.

“Nice!” Flip said, her voice fierce.

Marie spoke before I could. “I wouldn’t be so sure. A big section fell off, but what was left behind doesn’t seem injured. The chunk that fell off was big, but the monster’s so huge… the Analyst on the scene thinks it lost, um, maybe half a percent of its mass? And we used eight of our best Specialties to make it happen.”

“Oh fuck,” Byron said. “Those are bad numbers. Especially if another one of those comes back in three hours.”

“It gets worse than that,” I said, splitting my attention to listen in to an urgent message from my linked Overmind. “Ariel thinks it’s modular. If it’s consuming mass, there are probably one or two cores inside that will make it grow, but even if there are, it probably doesn’t need those to survive. Any part we injure, it can just jettison and keep going. Maybe a little smaller, but not slower or more vulnerable.”

“At least it’s not too fast,” Vince said. “Does it have any weapons?”

Marie shook her head. “Not any major ones, at least that we’ve seen. It’s got a bunch of little mouths and its legs end in claws, but its biggest offense seems to be its size.”

“It might not need weapons,” I said grimly. “At this rate, it’s going to reach the Tower and Quarry with more than 75% of its mass. Helen and her team build strong, but I don’t think anyone can build to stand up to that.”

Alexandra had come with us to observe the Threat’s appearance. She’d been quiet until now, not trying to interfere with the military decisions, but my words made her stiffen. “We have to evacuate, then.”

“Probably,” I said reluctantly. “But… maybe we don’t have to for this first one?”

The look Alexandra shot me was torn in between hope and anger. She had half-turned toward the ladder, ready to dash off and start evacuating.

I grabbed her shoulders, stopping her. “You just showed me the gunpowder storeroom yesterday, Alexandra! Fort Autumn has over 200 Minor Matter Replicators, and we’ve been asking people to fill any spare space they can with bags of loose gunpowder for over a month now. Gunpowder may not be that powerful of an explosive, but we’ve got over 2,000 pounds of it. I’m not sure if it’ll be enough, but we have to at least try.”

“You want to use all of that here?”

“What else have we been stockpiling it for?”

Alexandra hesitated, then nodded. “What else? Surely. You’re right. But... we still need to start evacuating. Fort Autumn has nearly five thousand residents, and that many people do not move quickly. We’ll never get them all out before this Threat arrives, but if we can stop this one, we can have the Quarry clear by the next.”

I squinted at the lumbering orange mountain. “If it doesn’t speed up, we’ve got 583 seconds before it reaches Fort Autumn’s outer wall. Uh, eight minutes, more or less. Bombing it after it’s above the Quarry seems pretty risky.”

Flip cursed. “You’re right! Damn it all!” She punched out one of the Force Shields in the rear of the Tower and flew out, zooming through the Quarry’s main entrance at top speed. It surprised me, but I guess she would have had to slow down to get through the narrow tunnels around the Tower’s ladders.

Alexandra hesitated. “You’ll oversee things here, Meghan?”

I turned her toward the ladder and gave her shoulders a gentle shove. “Go. Start getting people ready to leave. We’ll do everything we can.”