The quarry basin trembled as the Hard-shelled Bone-Scorpion Empress settled her eighteen-meter bulk onto the shattered floor of the volcano bowl. Her breathing spiracles expelled clouds of rotten-egg vapor with a rhythmic, clockwork hiss, clouding the lower terraces in foul yellow steam. Along her dark rock flanks, clusters of hematite compound eyes swiveled in cold exact timing. It reflected the distant flare of trench floodlights.
Along the rim of the forward defense trench, the conscript artillery crews finally broke through their total numbness.
“Battery four, open fire!” Lieutenant Briggs’s voice cracked over the field public-address speakers, shrill with panic. “All emplacements, target the cephalothorax! Fire!”
Six twin-linked tiny field guns roared in ragged set. Bone-shaking blast waves flattened the stale mud in front of the sandbag stone retaining walls as high-explosive armor-piercing shells screamed across two hundred yards of open air.
The rounds slammed into the Empress’s dorsal plates.
The detonations were blinding, orange fireballs blooming across her black stone back shell. Shrapnel whined off the dark rock cliffs like ricocheting hail. But as the cordite smoke cleared, a collective shudder ran through the frontline infantry.
The shells had done nothing. The dark rock armor, tightly packed under millions of tons of sub-crustal earth-shaking pressure, bore only superficial grey scorch marks. Not a single plate was cracked. Not a single fissure had opened. The bone-shaking energy of the artillery volley had been absorbed and faded away through the titan’s layered stone lattice as if struck by handfuls of river gravel.
