A shaped charge didn’t negotiate with living mass.
On the dark rock terrace overlooking the locked still giant beast, Giles Croft lowered his sight transit. Then he stepped to the edge of the low roof wall. His pocket watch rested open on the brass railing, its clockwork balance wheel ticking with steady indifference.
Down in the ravine, the Abyssal Patriarch thrashed against the unmoving twenty-foot plug of water-setting concrete.
Its massive sixty-foot scythe-claws remained pinned against the upright canyon cliffs by the blunt, unbending blades of Steam-Crawlers Number One and Two. Driven by twelve hundred horsepower of compound reduction gearing, the two iron tractors held the titan’s appendages in an iron-hard clockwork vise.
The beast’s massive head was forced backward, tilted thirty-five degrees toward the dark cave ceiling.
Its gaping gullet hung open. It bubbled with leftover hydrofluosilicic acid that hissed and fumed in white choking clouds against the wet rock.
Beside Giles, Captain Kenneth Drake stood behind the main heavy launcher carriage. His right eye was pressed firmly against the rubber optic cup. Five extra heavy six-inch launcher carriages were set along the terrace stone retaining wall, each manned by a team of four dwarven combat tunnel diggers from Clan Karak-Thurn.
