The central security console of Facility Fourteen was an imposing rig of empty pocket tubes, polished brass levers, and a glowing emerald cathode-ray end-post.
Arthur Vance sat before the desk, his brass sight monocle humming softly as he pushed in a slender heavy dark metal data-probe into the end-post’s main logic bus. Beside him, Pip hopped onto the edge of the brass console. His fiery crest cast a warm, flickering light across the green-glowing screen.
Lines of encrypted tracking data cascaded down the monitor.
Arthur rotated the sight dials on his monocle, aligning the aligned filters to bypass Krause’s 64-bit coded locking cipher. Within thirty seconds, the access barriers dissolved, throwing open the work-yard’s deepest working logs, supply ledgers, and tactical communiques.
Arthur’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the top-secret military directive flashing at the top of the directory:
“Corvo,” Arthur said, his voice dropping to a deadly, cold whisper. “Get over here.”
Sergeant Corvo hurried over from the feeding troughs, wiping grease and barley mash from his hands. He leaned over Arthur’s shoulder, squinting at the cathode display. He deciphered the military dispatch and the accompanying ordnance inventories. Then, the blood drained fully from his weathered face.
“Mother of God,” Corvo choked. He gripped the edge of the console until his knuckles turned white. “Operation Purge... Rask isn’t just enforcing an embargo on our food rations. He’s deployed three batteries of heavy two-hundred-and-tiny siege howitzers along the northern ridge. He intends to bombard Dugout Seven with poison gas at…
