The sound that echoed along the northern castle walls of Ironfang Mega-City was a metal groan that had not been heard since the year the world broke.
For one hundred and forty-two years, the twelve Titan Blast Gates of the outer edge had remained locked in emergency lockdown. Cast from ten-foot-thick armor plate and heavy with cold-rolled heavy dark metal heavy beams, the gates had stood as the total boundary between human survival and the untamed horrors of the wasteland. Behind the walls lay concrete apartments, rationing queues, and man-made air ducts. Beyond them lay the Ash Barrens, classified in every military manual as Zone-Four Lethal Wilderness.
Now, high above Gate Seven, the master air-powered release valves hissed.
Plumes of white steam vented into the morning air as high-pressure cylinders three stories tall engaged their bronze pistons. Massive counterbalance chains, each link weighing half a ton, rattled through overhead pulley housings, shedding flakes of red rust that fluttered down like autumn leaves.
Slowly, inexorably, the five-hundred-ton lower blast gate lifted.
The steel lip of the door ground upward out of its recessed foundation channel. It scraped against concrete guides with a deep, echoing rumble that shook through the boots of thirty thousand citizens gathered at the outer edge concourse.
