The interior of The Gale-Warden was a vertical labyrinth of grated walkways, spinning brass cogs, and roaring air ducts. It smelled of ozone and dried blood.
The leader of the Dust-Born—the man with shards of glass embedded in his chest—stepped forward, dragging a heavy pneumatic bolt-gun.
"I am Grit," he rasped, his voice amplified by a crude vocoder strapped to his throat. "Prophet of the Scourge. You come to silence the wind. We come to let it scream."
"The wind is broken," Julian said, his hand hovering over his holster. "The Titan is off-axis. If it crashes, you die too."
"To die in the storm is to become the storm," Grit grinned, his teeth filed to points. "Flesh is temporary. Dust is eternal."
He raised his bolt-gun.
"Feed them to the fans!"
The Wind Tunnel Brawl
The cultists charged. They didn't run; they swung from the overhead pipes and chains like monkeys, using the verticality of the room to their advantage.
THWIP-THWIP.
Bolts of sharpened rebar shot from their pneumatic guns.
"Cover!" Lyra yelled, flipping a heavy metal table over to create a shield. The bolts punched through the metal with terrifying force.
Julian ducked behind a support pillar. He looked at the cultists swinging above.
They're light, he realized. They wear rags so the wind catches them.
He adjusted his Resonance Gauntlet.
Focus: Turbulence.
He didn't aim at the cultists. He aimed at the air intake vent above them.
PULSE.
He sent a chaotic sonic wave into the fan's regulator. The fan stuttered, then reversed spin for a split second.
The smooth airflow turned into a violent vortex.
The cultists swinging on the chains were yanked sideways. Their momentum shattered. Two of them were thrown into the wall. Another lost his grip and fell, screaming as he plummeted toward the grinding gears below.
"Zephyr!" Julian shouted. "Can you jam their guns?"
"The air pressure!" Zephyr understood immediately. He leaped onto a railing, spinning his flute-staff.
He played a high, piercing note. Tweet-eeeeeeee.
The sound resonated with the compression tanks on the cultists' bolt-guns. The air inside the tanks vibrated, heating up rapidly.
POP. HISSS.
Safety valves blew on three of the guns, spraying the cultists with freezing compressed air.
"My hands!" one screamed, dropping his frozen weapon.
Isolde charged, swinging a heavy pipe wrench she'd pulled from her belt. She knocked the frozen cultist out cold. "Don't bring a toy to a wrench fight!"
The Shift
Suddenly, the entire station lurched.
The floor tilted thirty degrees to the left. Metal groaned. Tools slid off the workbenches and fell into the abyss.
"The gyroscope!" Zephyr yelled, grabbing a railing to keep from falling. "It's losing momentum! We're tipping!"
"Grit!" Julian pointed up.
The cult leader hadn't joined the brawl. He was climbing the central ladder toward the Gyroscope Core—the massive spinning rings at the top of the chamber.
He was carrying a satchel of explosives.
"He's going to blow the bearings!" Julian realized. "He wants to crash the Titan!"
"Go!" Lyra laid down covering fire, picking off a cultist trying to block the ladder. "We'll hold the floor! Stop him!"
Julian activated his mag-boots and sprinted up the tilted wall, jumping for the ladder.
The Core Chamber
Julian climbed into the Core Chamber.
It was a spherical room, dominated by three colossal brass rings spinning around a central glowing orb of blue Aether. The noise was deafening—a constant WHOOSH-WHOOSH as the rings sliced the air.
Grit stood on the maintenance gantry overlooking the rings. He was priming a bundle of dynamite sticks.
"You're too late, Ground-Walker!" Grit shouted. "Gravity returns!"
He threw the dynamite toward the central bearing.
Julian didn't have time to shoot it.
He raised his gauntlet.
Focus: Air Cannon.
He fired a blast of compressed air—not at Grit, but at the dynamite in mid-air.
WHOOSH.
The blast knocked the bundle off course. It missed the bearing and exploded harmlessly against the outer wall.
BOOM.
The station shook, but the rings kept spinning.
Grit roared in frustration. He drew a jagged machete made of a helicopter blade and charged Julian.
"I will grind you into paste!"
Julian drew his Sonic Lance.
The fight was a nightmare of balance. The floor was constantly shifting as the Titan wobbled. Julian's mag-boots kept him anchored, but Grit moved with unnatural agility, sliding and leaping with the tilt.
Grit swung the machete. Julian blocked with his lead-lined gauntlet. Sparks flew.
"You fight for a dead empire!" Grit spat, swinging again.
"I fight for the quiet!" Julian retorted.
He caught the machete blade with his left hand. The gauntlet hummed.
Contact.
Julian sent a pulse of Heat through the blade.
The metal turned red hot in a second.
"Argh!" Grit dropped the weapon, his hand blistered.
Julian didn't let up. He stepped forward and placed his palm on Grit's chest, right over the embedded glass shards.
"You like Resonance?" Julian whispered. "Let's see if you shatter."
PING.
He fired a focused frequency into the glass.
The shards embedded in Grit's skin vibrated violently. Then, they exploded outward.
Grit screamed as his own "armor" turned against him. The force of the blast threw him backward.
He flew off the gantry.
There was no rail. Grit fell toward the spinning rings.
CRUNCH.
The outermost ring caught him. There was a red mist, and then he was gone, pulverized by the machinery he worshiped.
The Alignment
Julian stood alone on the gantry, breathing hard. The station was still tilting. The rings were wobbling dangerously.
"Julian!" Zephyr's voice crackled. "The wobble is increasing! We're at 40 degrees tilt! We're going to flip!"
Julian looked at the control console. It was smashed. Grit had destroyed the manual interface.
"The controls are dead!" Julian yelled.
"Then use the Hand!" Zephyr shouted. "You are a Conductor! Conduct!"
Julian looked at the massive spinning rings. They were moving at hundreds of miles per hour.
Conduct the motion.
He stepped to the edge of the gantry. He held out both hands—his flesh hand and his crystal hand.
He closed his eyes. He felt the rhythm of the machine.
Wobble... Grind... Wobble... Grind.
It was out of time. The bass ring was dragging. The treble ring was too fast.
Julian twisted the Black-Iron ring. He opened his mind to the Titan.
SLOW.
He pushed a field of Resistance against the fast ring. The air thickened. The ring slowed down. Whirrrrr...
PUSH.
He used his Resonance Gauntlet to hit the slow ring with pulses of kinetic energy. Thump. Thump. Thump. Speeding it up.
It took everything he had. The sweat poured down his face. His nose bled. His crystal arm burned with blue fire, the corruption crawling up to his shoulder.
Sync... Sync...
The grinding noise stopped. The wobble vanished.
The three rings fell into a perfect, silent harmony.
Hummmmmmmmm.
The station slowly righted itself. The floor became level.
SYSTEM: STABILIZED. ALTITUDE: HOLDING.
Julian collapsed on the gantry.
The Aftermath
Minutes later, the team joined him in the core.
"You did it," Zephyr said, looking at the spinning rings with awe. "The song is pure again."
Lyra knelt beside Julian. He was pale, shaking.
"Your arm," she whispered.
Julian looked at his left arm. The blue geometric veins had reached his neck. The skin was cold to the touch.
"I'm okay," Julian lied. "Just tired."
Skid's voice came over the speaker, clear now that the interference was gone.
"Boss, you might want to look at the main screen. With the storm cleared... the long-range sensors are picking up a signal."
Julian pulled himself up to the console screen.
The map of the region appeared. The red storm clouds were dissipating.
And there, hovering at the edge of the canyon, was a massive fleet.
Not submarines. Airships.
Zepellins made of black iron, escorted by swarms of fighter planes.
"The Imperial Sky-Fleet," Isolde gasped. "They were waiting for the storm to break."
"They used us," Julian realized. "They couldn't enter the storm to capture the Titan. So they waited for me to fix it."
"They're hailing us," Skid said.
The main screen flickered. The face of General Elias Thorne appeared.
He looked older, tired, but his eyes were sharp. He was standing on the bridge of a massive dreadnought.
"Excellent work, Mr. Vane," Elias said smoothly. "You have saved us a great deal of engineering effort. Please, step away from the controls. My boarding parties are on their way."
Julian stared at the screen.
"Come and get it," Julian whispered.
He cut the feed.
"We can't fight a fleet," Lyra said, checking her ammo. "We're trapped."
"Not yet," Zephyr stepped forward. He pointed to the intake vent below. "The fan is clear now. It pushes air out the top."
"So?"
"So," Zephyr grinned behind his skull mask. "The Titan is a cannon. And we are the bullets."