The victory feast was ash. The Bastion's industry, once devoted to forging guns and armor, now turned to a more esoteric purpose. The Deep-Structure Sensor Array project, dubbed "Orrery," required a facility the Bastion didn't have: a Dedicated Research Annex. According to the newly unlocked schematics, it was a sealed, sterile environment with layers of psychic dampening and quantum-stabilized computation cores, designed to analyze extra-dimensional phenomena without being corrupted by them.
It had to be built from scratch, in a newly excavated chamber deep in the mountain's heart, far from the erratic energies of the Nexus links. The cost was apocalyptic: 300 Advanced Salvage, 500 Essence, and 20 units of Zero-Point Energy Crystals—a material he'd never even heard of, noted as "harvestable from stabilized reality fractures."
He had the salvage, barely, after the carrier haul. The Essence would drain his reserves to the danger line. The crystals were a complete mystery.
The Theoretical Paradox Engine was worse. It wasn't a buildable object; it was a persistent simulation that would run on the Orrery's cores, consuming vast processing power and requiring constant, real-time data feed from the sensors. It was a ghost in a machine, meant to birth a phantom.
Isaac stood before the Core, the Sergeant a silent sentinel. The weight of the dead commanders' failure was a mantle on his shoulders. They had fought with legions and starships. He had to fight with an idea.
"First principles," he said, speaking to organize his own thoughts. "The Vector is a program. Its goal: reduce complex systems to uniform base state. Input: non-Vector pattern matter/energy. Process: analysis, adaptation, disintegration/reassembly. Output: Vector-compliant uniformity. It learns, but learning is part of its process. It's not creative. It's reactive."
The Sergeant's eyes glowed as it processed. "Correct. Its adaptations are extrapolations from observed data. It cannot conceive of a tactic for which it has no prior observational reference. The trap at Omicron-22 was a sophisticated application of known parameters: bait, ambush, encirclement. It did not invent a new form of warfare."
"So, we need an input it cannot process. Something that doesn't fit its database. A… a paradox. A logical inconsistency that forces its system to loop, or crash." Isaac paced. "A physical paradox? Something that is and isn't? A temporal loop? We don't have time travel."
"Metaphysical paradoxes are beyond current Bastion science," the Sergeant stated. "A more viable avenue may be a strategic paradox. A pattern of action that simultaneously fulfills and violates its core programming."
Isaac stopped. A pattern of action. Warfare. "What if we give it exactly what it wants? Not fight it. Help it."
"Clarify."
"We stop trying to preserve structures. We start… deconstructing. But in a way we control. We build something with the sole purpose of letting the Vector take it apart, but the act of taking it apart creates something new the Vector must then deal with, which is also designed to be taken apart, ad infinitum. An infinite regression of self-consuming structures. A tactical ouroboros."
The Sergeant was silent for a long moment, its processors whirring audibly. "A self-replicating, self-sacrificing pattern. The Vector's reclamation protocol would engage, successfully disassemble Stage One, which would trigger the assembly of Stage Two from the same components, which would also be designed for reclamation, leading to Stage Three. The Vector would be stuck in an endless cycle of 'cleaning' a mess that perpetually remakes itself. It would achieve local uniform states repeatedly, but the overall system would never reach a final, stable uniformity."
"It would be busy," Isaac said, a grim smile touching his lips. "Forever. A perfect, inescapable task. We wouldn't defeat it. We'd give it a full-time job."
"The concept has merit," the Sergeant conceded. "But the engineering challenges are monumental. It requires materials and assembly/disassembly processes that are perfectly efficient and predictable, and a control logic that survives the Vector's disassembly protocols to initiate the next stage. It also requires a seed—an initial structure to begin the cycle in a key location, likely at a major Vector convergence point."
"The mountain," Isaac said. "Omicron-22. It's the heart of the local infection. The place where the carrier's energy fed it for centuries. We build our first 'Sacrificial Spire' there. Let it tear it down. And from the rubble, a new Spire grows, designed from the rubble of the first. And so on."
He was talking about building a monument to futility. A temple where the god of decay would be worshipped forever, trapped in its own ritual.
"To design such a structure, we require the Orrery's computational power," the Sergeant said. "And to build it, we will need to secure Omicron-22 completely, and harvest its Zero-Point Crystals for the Engine's core logic."
The path was clear, and insane. He had to build a mega-computer to design a philosophical weapon, using materials he could only get from the heart of the enemy's stronghold, to build a trap that wouldn't kill the enemy, but would employ it for eternity.
He looked at the schematics for the Paladin armor, the plasma reactors. They were swords in a war against the ocean. Useless.
He needed to be an engineer of existential puzzles.
"Prioritize the Orrery," Isaac ordered, his voice firm. "Use every resource. Strip non-essential systems if you have to. We are going to dig, and build, and think. The Legionnaires will hold the line. The Catapult will keep the mountain quiet. But our war is no longer out there."
He pointed to his own temple.
"It's in here. And in there." He pointed to the schematic of the nascent Research Annex. "We're not soldiers anymore, Sergeant. We're programmers. And we have a universe-shattering bug to write."