The destruction of their lead machine halted the enemy advance for thirty heartbeats. But thirty heartbeats was all the clockwork commanders of the Outer Sects could afford.
From the burning iron hull of the first crawler, black stone smoke billowed outward in thick, choking billows, coating the white green jade jambs in greasy soot. Behind that oily screen, the second and third crawlers engaged their backup boilers. The shriek of high-pressure steam venting through dual superchargers rose to an ear-splitting howl as their multi-jointed bronze legs dug into the shattered stone floor of Entry hall 380.
They didn’t advance in file; they split into a timed together pincer formation.
The second crawler veered to the left. Its forward overhead frame lowered twin high-pressure delivery nozzles four inches wide, charged with six hundred gallons of boiling hydrofluoric void-acid. The third crawler, the heaviest of the trio, locked its four front legs into a low, forward-slanting battering ram of solid cast iron three feet thick, aiming to smash directly into the eastern door post of the gate and shatter the white jade pivot.
At the same time, the ten thousand queen locusts rallied above the smoke. Driven by the shrill, high-pitched scream of a sound broadcast horn mounted upon the flagship’s main mast, the swarm formed a swirling, vortex funnel fifty paces high, preparing to dive into the chokepoint the moment the acid breached the opening.
