Within twenty minutes of Dean Pendelton’s arrest, the stale total numbness that had gripped Gate Seven was fully dismantled.
Arthur Vance stood atop the main low roof wall of the central gatehouse, his trench coat snapping against the freezing wind that howled off the badlands. Through the twin lenses of his Zeiss type-list magnifying glass, the lonely northern horizon was a boiling sea of gray dust, chemical smog, and flickering purple lightning.
Ten miles out, three huge living forms—the surviving Class-I Siege Giant statues—were advancing in a staggered wedge formation. Behind them, obscured by the churning clouds of toxic smog, the jagged gothic dark shape of Apostle Malakor’s mobile castle, the Chimeric Cathedral, crept forward like a crawling mountain of hardened rib bones and iron plating.
“They’re moving at fourteen miles per hour,” Arthur observed calmly. He tapped the receiver of his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine. “The outer apron will be in direct artillery range within eighteen minutes.”
Beside him, Valerie Koslov was directing the placement of heavy magnetic railguns along the second-tier low roof walls. Her uniform was soaked in high-pressure oil and grime. But her eyes held a steady, ferocious focus.
“The backup commoner units have completed their pullback,” Valerie reported. She wiped her brow with the back of her leather combat glove. “Every engineer from the forward trenches is inside the curtain wall. We’ve salvaged eighty crates of high-explosive ferro-deep ring shells and twelve thousand rounds of heavy armor-piercing moving rounds from Pendelton’s abandoned supply depot.”
