The design schematics for the Javelin Coilgun glowed in the air of the Manufactorum, a complex lattice of magnetic coils, capacitor stacks, and heat-sink baffles. It was a beast of a weapon, a shoulder-fired piece of artillery. The Sergeant had done its work, but the design came with brutal realities.
Weapon System: 'Javelin' Heavy Coilgun.
· Cost to Fabricate: 22 Advanced Salvage, 18 Essence.
· Ammunition Cost per Shot: 2 Advanced Salvage, 1 Essence (for stabilized, finned tungsten penetrator).
· Effective Range: 1,200 meters (with spotter guidance).
· Rate of Fire: 1 shot per 90 seconds (cooling cycle required).
· Crew: 2 (Gunner, Loader/Spotter).
It was a resource hog. A single shot cost as much as a Militia. But its purpose wasn't to kill infantry; it was to shatter fortifications and bisect behemoths from a distance his mortars couldn't reach.
Isaac stared at the cost. He had 2 Advanced Salvage left. He was Essence-positive from the Nexus trickle and the Drudge's death, but the advanced materials were his absolute bottleneck. The graveyard cache was exhausted. The lower levels were a collapsed tomb. The salvage drone brought only volatile crystals and mundane stone.
He needed a new source, and the only one left on his map was the Convergence itself. The enemy spire was being built from something. Gloom-crystallized biomass, corrupted alloys, harvested earth. If he could seize even a fraction of that material post-detonation, it might be convertible. It was the ultimate high-risk, high-reward play: use the enemy's own fortress as his quarry.
But first, he needed the gun. To build the gun, he needed materials. The only materials left were in the broken things around him.
"Sergeant, conduct a full spectral analysis of the Bastion's damaged systems. The ruined Thumper mortar, the damaged sentry turret, the fused gate wreckage. Catalog every gram of high-grade conductive alloy, focusing crystal, and stable composite. We're scavenging our own scrap pile."
It was the act of a starving man picking through his own trash. The analysis took an hour. The results were bleak but not zero. The Thumper's shattered elevation gears yielded two units of precision alloy. The turret's ruined targeting array, once stripped of its corrupted optics, gave up three small but pristine focusing lenses. The twisted wreckage of the gate portcullis, when analyzed not as 'salvage' but as specific materials, contained veins of a rare, super-dense ore called Lodestone Iron, essential for magnetic containment. They recovered four units by having Militia use plasma cutters from the Manufactorum to carefully excise specific sections.
It was painstaking, degrading work. But the tally climbed: 7… 11… 14 Advanced Salvage.
He was still 8 short. The Sergeant's sensors lingered on the final, largest source: the Collapsed Geothermal Tap. The rubble was infused with the Drudge's crystallized remains and the unique, hyper-conductive minerals formed by the catalytic explosion. It was also the most dangerous environment in the Bastion, potentially unstable, and still radiating disruptive energies.
"We send the Armadillo," Isaac decided. "SD-003. It's built for unstable terrain and has basic excavation tools. It can go where we can't."
They directed the heavily-built drone down the damaged maintenance corridor. It picked its way through the still-warm rubble of the tap chamber, its seismic dampeners absorbing minor shifts. Its manipulators, designed for salvage, carefully extracted chunks of strange, blue-black crystalline slag and strands of metallic, wire-like fossilized energy conduit.
Salvage Acquired: Thermal-Fused Conduit (x4). Catalytic Crystal Lattice (x3).
It wasn't much by volume, but the System's analysis showed an extremely high material density. When added to the tally, the numbers finally, agonizingly, clicked over.
Advanced Salvage: 23.
Enough. Just.
"Manufactorum. Cease all other production. Fabricate the Javelin Coilgun. Priority Absolute."
The entire industrial capacity of the Bastion redirected. The whine of saws and the glow of forges filled the chamber for hours. Isaac watched, a silent overseer, as the weapon took shape. It was long, almost as tall as a Militia, with a thick, vented barrel and a massive capacitor pack that formed its stock. It had a bipod at the front and a complex digital scope linked to a separate spotter's rangefinder unit.
As it built, S-001 returned. The Scout slipped back into the Bastion, its cloak dissipating. It uploaded its final data packet directly to Isaac and the Sergeant. High-resolution scans of the enemy spire, now clearly a Bio-Artillery Spire. The critical weak point was identified: a spiraling, root-like cluster of glowing energy conduits at its base, where raw Gloom-energy was siphoned from the ground and funneled upward. Destroy that nexus, and the entire structure would likely suffer a catastrophic power feedback.
The Javelin finished. It slid from the production bay with a solid, final thunk. G-001, the Grenadier, hefted it. The unit's enhanced strength frame was necessary just to carry it. M-002, with its veteran precision and new Command Subroutine adjacency from the Sergeant, was designated as the spotter.
They had one shot's worth of ammunition pre-fabricated. A single, foot-long tungsten dart with stabilizer fins.
The plan was simple, and therefore fragile. Under cover of darkness (a relative term under the hazy sky), S-001 would lead a two-unit team—G-001 with the Javelin and M-002 as spotter—to a pre-scouted firing position a kilometer from the Bastion, a jagged rock formation that gave line-of-sight to the Spire's base. They would set up, fire the single round, and immediately displace, retreating along a pre-mined and trapped escape route. The goal wasn't to destroy the Spire completely, but to cripple it, cause a massive energy discharge, and hopefully trigger a chain reaction.
Isaac would watch from the wall with the Longstrike, providing overwatch and dealing with any immediate pursuers.
They moved out as the green moons dipped toward the horizon, casting long, distorted shadows. The journey was tense. Every skitter of pebble, every sigh of the wind, felt like a Shroud-Stalker breathing down their necks. But S-001's path was good. They reached the rock formation, designated Firebase Spearpoint.
G-001 assembled the Javelin with practiced, silent efficiency. M-002 lay prone beside it, the spotter scope linked to the gun's firing computer. Data streamed back to Isaac's interface: range, windage, atmospheric density, the target's faint energy shimmer.
Target Lock: Bio-Artillery Spire - Power Nexus.
Range: 1,150 meters.
Solution: Green.
Isaac held his breath. "Fire."
G-001 squeezed the trigger.
There was no explosive blast. The sound was a deep, gut-punch THUMP-WHUMP of capacitors discharging and air being violently displaced. A streak of ionized air, brief and bright, connected Firebase Spearpoint to the distant Spire for a microsecond.
The tungsten dart traveled too fast to see. The impact was not an explosion, but a violent insertion. The dart struck the center of the glowing energy nexus and vanished inside it.
For one heartbeat, two, nothing. The Spire stood, silent.
Then, the spiraling conduits at its base glowed incandescent white. The light raced upward through the structure like a fever burning through veins. The Spire shuddered. A high-pitched, tearing screech emanated from it, the sound of reality stressed.
Then it detonated.
Not in a fireball, but in a shockwave of corrupted energy. A visible ring of violet-black force erupted outward, shearing through nearby Spiker Nests and tossing Amalgams like toys. The top half of the Spire leaned, groaned, and then collapsed in on itself in a cascade of shattered crystal and liquefied biomass.
Critical Hit: Gloom Bio-Artillery Spire Destroyed. Major Structural Damage to Convergence Core.
Enemy Morale Equivalent: Severely Disrupted.
The effect on the Convergence was instantaneous chaos. The ordered patterns dissolved into panicked movement. The central, pulsing heart of the red mass on the map flickered, dimmed.
At Firebase Spearpoint, G-001 was already breaking down the Javelin. M-002 collected the spent capacitor pack. They moved, S-001 leading the way back.
Isaac watched them go, then scanned the plain with the Longstrike's scope. He saw no organized pursuit, only confusion. He saw something else, too. Amidst the wreckage of the Spire, glittering in the aftermath of the energy discharge, were chunks of semi-stable, crystalline material. Gloom-Forged Alloy. The Sergeant's prediction was right. The enemy's fortress had become his quarry.
He had fired the first shot in the next phase of the war. Not with a roar, but with a single, perfect, resonant thump. The Javelin had spoken. And the giant was reeling.