Beyond the nursery of Sector Zero lay the underground threshold of Vault Four: The Heavy Containment Pen.
The steel vault doors were eight inches thick, heavy with slanted bracing beams and pitted with deep claw marks that testified to the desperate strength of the beasts imprisoned within. Arthur Vance and his escort of Vanguard rangers approached the access port. Then, the stone floor beneath their boots shook with violent, rhythmic impacts that sent dust showering from the granite ceiling.
Inside, ten mature, titan-class war beasts were thrashing against their mooring pylons in a state of blind, claustrophobic panic.
The squad stepped through the backup airlock into a cave three hundred yards wide, hollowed out from the dark, dark rock root of the mountain. Suspended in heavy load-bearing steel cages and shackled to concrete anchor blocks by four-inch forged iron chains were the Order’s main heavy assault assets. Three twelve-ton Obsidian Bone-Tusk Mammoths, five eight-ton Armored Trench Behemoths, and two apex Spliced Chimera Wyverns with eighty-foot wingspans lashed to iron roosting frames.
The stench of sweat, fight-or-flight rush, scorched fur, and ozone was choking.
The lead mammoth—a huge bull standing sixteen feet tall at the shoulder—slammed its massive head against the iron holding gate. Its native ivory tusks had been amputated at the gumline, replaced by twin high-pressure shearing blades powered by high-pressure oil lines that hissed wildly with each wild jerk of its skull. High-voltage shock collars clamped around the beasts’ necks were flashing with uneven blue sparks, discharging painful…
