Three weeks after the fall of the Chimeric Cathedral, Sector 4 of Mega-City 07 had transformed from a smoldering graveyard of shattered ferro-concrete into the beating heavy-duty heart of the commoner vanguard.
The forty-meter breach in Gate Seven had been fully rebuilt, fortified with four-foot-thick plates of salvaged pre-Cataclysm silver-steel and heavy by Titus’s fiery dark rock welds. Along the reconstructed outer apron, fifteen thousand commoner refugees were settling into newly built prefabricated housing complexes, powered by the refurbished magnetic turbines of the gatehouse.
High atop the newly christened Bastion Command Center, Major Commander Arthur Vance stood on the open watching deck.
He wore his tailored black Vanguard officer’s coat, the star-iron Sovereign Cross of Valor pinned neatly above his left breast pocket. His left shoulder was fully healed, possessing greater neuromuscular thickness than before thanks to the reciprocal old family aether of his beasts. Resting on his right cheek was his brass-mounted Zeiss type-list magnifying glass, its care optics polished to a mirror finish.
Beside him, Grimm stood like a majestic black glass statue, his jaw muscles corded with thirty-two hundred pounds of crushing force. His diamond-dense bone plates reflected the morning sun.
On Arthur’s right shoulder, Pip sat with his golden crest held high, his Three-Legged Jinwu feathers streaming a calm, steady warmth that kept the cold winter wind at bay.
