Chapter 103 up
Chapter 103 up
The gravity within the Cerebrum had finally stabilized into a crushing, heavy weight, but the atmospheric integrity of the Ark was in its death throes. Every few seconds, a resonant thrum shook the floor—the sound of the geothermal cooling pipes buckling under the weight of the encroaching magma. White, superheated steam hissed from the wall joints, creating a labyrinth of blinding fog that smelled of sulfur and scorched copper.
Vania crouched behind the primary data-spire, her chest heaving. Her left arm was numb, held tight against her ribs, and her blood—dark and rich—slicked the hilt of her machete. Ten feet away, the Exo-Colossus stalked through the mist.
Drako’s armor was a ruined monument of industrial violence. His hydraulic claw scraped against the metal floor with a sound that set Vania’s teeth on edge—a rhythmic skree-clack that echoed the heartbeat of a dying machine.
"I can smell the copper in your veins, Sovereign!" Drako’s voice was a mangled roar, projected through a cracked external speaker. "You are bleeding out in a tomb of your father's making. Come out and die with the dignity of a Thorne!"
Vania didn't move. She couldn't. Her tactical sensors were fried, and her internal HUD was a swarm of red error codes. She was blind in the steam.
Suddenly, a rhythmic vibration tapped against the iron pipe she was leaning on.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
Her eyes widened. It was the Thorne-Cipher—a tactile code Leonard had taught her when they were children, hidden away in the vents of the Gutter-Reach. Leonard was alive. He was at the auxiliary control station, thirty feet above her in the rafters.
She pressed her ear to the pipe. The vibrations came again, sharper this time.
“Vector 3. Low. Joint-Seal. Now.”
Vania’s muscles coiled. She didn't need to see Drako; she knew where he was by the vibration of his heavy footsteps on the deck plating. Leonard was acting as her eyes, using the Ark’s internal structural sensors to track the Praetor’s thermal signature through the fog.
Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap.
“Incoming. Right. Brace.”
Vania dived to her left just as Drako’s massive hydraulic claw obliterated the data-spire she had been hiding behind. The impact sent a shower of glass and sparks into the air.
"Coward!" Drako roared, spinning the Colossus around.
Vania didn't retreat this time. She grabbed a secondary steam-pipe and hammered it twice with the hilt of her blade—a signal of confirmation.
Up in the rafters, Leonard Thorne lay prone on a narrow maintenance catwalk. His silver eyes were humming with a frantic, silver light, his blackened arm plugged directly into the structural diagnostic port of the chamber. He wasn't looking at the room; he was seeing it as a wireframe map of stress points and acoustic echoes.
"One more step, Drako," Leonard whispered, his fingers tapping a new sequence onto the iron railing.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap.
“Target: Left Knee. Hydraulic Feed. Five seconds.”
Vania counted. One. Two. Three.
She erupted from the steam. She didn't go for Drako’s chest; she dived low, sliding through the oily water on the floor. As she passed the Colossus’s left leg, she drove her machete into the soft, unarmored rubber seal of the primary hydraulic line.
PSHHHT!
A jet of high-pressure black oil sprayed across her face. The Colossus’s left leg buckled instantly, the internal pressure dropping to zero. Drako let out a scream of mechanical frustration as the ten-ton zirah tilted dangerously to the side.
"You... little... brat!" Drako swung his chain-cannon, but the loss of stability made his aim erratic.
The heavy slugs chewed through the ceiling rafters. Leonard felt the catwalk beneath him shudder as a shell tore through the support strut. He gripped the railing, his teeth gritted against the pain of the feedback from the diagnostic port. He tapped the pipe again, faster this time.
Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap.
“The Core. Overload. Strike the vent.”
Vania looked up. High above Drako’s head, a massive steam-valve—the primary vent for the geothermal core—was vibrating under the pressure. If she could burst it, the superheated vapor would cook Drako inside his armor.
"Leonard, I need a distraction!" Vania shouted, her voice lost in the roar of the machinery.
Leonard understood. He didn't use the pipe this time. He used the Ark’s internal vox-system. He rerouted the entire power reserve of the Cerebrum into the holographic projectors.
Suddenly, the chamber was filled with ghosts.
Dozens of holographic images of Vania appeared in the steam—shimmering, flickering phantoms that dived and dived again. Drako spun around, his chain-cannon firing blindly at the illusions.
"Which one are you?!" Drako screamed, his cybernetic eye spinning in a frenzy of targeting errors. "Which one is real?!"
The real Vania was already climbing. She had scaled the cooling rack of the primary generator, her fingers bleeding as she clawed at the hot metal. She reached the manual release lever for the steam-vent.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
“Now.”
Vania threw her entire weight onto the lever.
The sound was like the world splitting in half. A pillar of white-hot, high-pressure steam erupted from the vent, directed downward with the force of a jet engine. It hit the Exo-Colossus directly on its primary heat-sink.
The screams that came from Drako’s external speakers were no longer human. They were the sounds of a man being boiled alive in a metal coffin. The tungsten plating of the armor turned a dull, cherry red as the heat-sync failed. The internal electronics began to pop and sizzle, and a thick, black smoke poured from the Colossus’s visor.
The machine stumbled, its servos melting together. It fell forward with a sound that shook the very foundations of the volcano.
CRASH.
The Praetor was down.
Vania dropped from the cooling rack, landing heavily in the shallow water. She walked toward the fallen giant, her machete held low. The steam was clearing now, the pressure in the chamber dropping as the generator died its final death.
She reached the Colossus and stood over the shattered visor. Inside, she saw Drako. His face was a ruin of burns and melted plastic, his single cybernetic eye flickering with a dying, red light. He looked up at her, his breath a wet, rattling sound.
"You... you are... his... masterpiece..." Drako whispered, his voice barely audible over the hiss of the cooling metal.
"I'm not a masterpiece," Vania said, her voice cold and final. "I'm a survivor."
She didn't use her blade. She reached into the Colossus’s neck-joint and pulled out the primary power-core—the heart of the machine. The red light in Drako’s eye went out instantly. The Praetor of the Iron Seed was dead.
Leonard descended from the rafters, his movements slow and pained. He reached Vania’s side, his silver eyes dimming as he unplugged his arm from the port. He looked at the fallen Colossus, then at his sister.
"Is it over?" Leonard asked, his voice trembling.
Vania looked at the core in her hand, then threw it into the dark, rising water of the caldera.
"The Praetor is dead, Leonard," she said. "But the Ark is still falling."
The floor beneath them groaned again, louder this time. A massive crack opened in the center of the chamber, revealing the glowing, orange magma below. The "Fajar Terakhir"—the final dawn—was beginning, and the volcano was ready to claim its due.
"The escape pod," Leonard said, pointing toward the far wall. "If the power-grid is dead, we have to launch it manually."
"Then let's get moving, Architect," Vania said, offering him her shoulder. "We’ve had enough of this tomb."