The Forge-Crawler Perun slowed its charge, the thunder of its massive tracks dropping to a grinding protest. Ahead, through the thickening haze of a gathering dust storm, Waystation K-7 was a broken tooth on the horizon. Smoke, thick and black, coiled into the grey sky from a burning fuel depot, a pillar marking a grave. The distant, frantic pop of rifle fire was a nervous tic in the oppressive quiet of the wastes. The courier’s words had been a spark; this was the fire.
Irina Pavlenko’s voice cut through the command car’s hum, sharp and clean as machined steel.
— Pavel, take your team. Five of you. Flank them from the south, use the maintenance conduits for cover. We provide covering fire from here. Go.
Pavel Orlov, his face grim under a layer of grime, gave a sharp nod. The boy’s swagger had been sandblasted away by the last few days, replaced by a harder, more useful substance. He gathered his small team, their movements economical and sure, the practiced motions of men who trusted their tools and the man next to them. They slipped from the Perun’s shadow and vanished into the rust-colored dust.
Sineus watched them go, then turned his attention to the waystation itself. His eyes saw the chaos of the firefight, the roughly thirty cultists of the Seed of Oblivion moving with a frantic, unnerving purpose. But his other senses, the ones that felt the world’s memory, tasted something else. A sour, discordant note pulsed from the station’s primary defensive turret, a sickness in its structural hum. It was not just a battle for ground. It was a battle for function.
Pavel’s team moved fast, darting between skeletal remains of old cargo containers. They were halfway to the southern perimeter when the turret swiveled toward them. It was a heavy, four-barreled beast, a piece of solid Union 9 craftsmanship. But it fired with a spastic, uncontrolled rhythm. Its shots were not a disciplined pattern of suppression but a wild spray, chewing up the ground ten meters to the left of Pavel’s position, then stitching a line twenty meters to their right. It was not trying to kill them. It was confused.
— Turret’s compromised, — Irina’s voice was tight with frustration over the comms. — Its targeting is shot. Pavel, pull back.
— Can’t, — Pavel’s reply was clipped, punctuated by the whine of a ricochet. — We’re pinned. That thing is just as likely to walk its fire onto us as them.
Sineus raised his optics. He ignored the running figures of the cultists and focused on the turret’s base. There, painted in what looked like a mixture of rust and blood, was a crude glyph, a memory-cutting sigil. It glowed with a faint, unhealthy light, a mnemonic parasite latched onto the machine’s iron hide. It was teaching the gun to forget its purpose.
— It’s not broken, — Sineus said, his voice low and calm in the tense quiet of the command car. — It’s been taught to fail. There’s a sigil on its base.
Irina did not take her eyes from the tactical display.
— Then un-teach it. Pavel has less than a minute before those cultists get a clean angle on him.
Sineus was already moving. He slung his rifle over his shoulder. This was not a problem bullets could solve.
— I’m going for the panel.
The decision was made. The price was the sixty meters of open ground between the Perun and the turret, a killing field raked by the fire of at least a dozen enemy rifles. He took a breath, held it, and ran.
The world dissolved into a blur of motion and noise. Dust kicked up by bullets stung his eyes. The air was filled with the sharp crack of supersonic rounds passing too close, a sound that vibrated in his teeth. He did not run in a straight line but in a weaving, desperate path, his boots finding purchase on the hard-packed, grimy earth. He was a target, a single man against a line of rifles. He ignored the odds. He focused only on the concrete plinth of the turret, a grey island in a storm of steel.
He slammed into the base of the turret, the impact jarring his bones. He slid behind the control panel, the enemy’s fire chewing at the concrete above his head, showering him with chips of stone. He was alive. For now. He pressed his palm flat against the cold steel of the access panel.
The corruption flooded his senses. It was a feeling of greasy, chaotic noise, a thousand wrong instructions screaming at once. The turret’s memory was a fever dream of bent logic and fractured purpose. He felt the pure, clean memory of its core programming—to acquire, to target, to fire—buried under a layer of thick, sticky wrongness from the memory-cutting sigil.
Sineus closed his eyes, shutting out the physical chaos of the battle. He found the alien thread of the sigil’s influence, a thing of jagged edges and cold, hollow intent. He took hold of it with his will. For a moment, it resisted, pushing back with a wave of nausea. He ignored it, focused his own energy, and severed the connection. The effort was a sharp, cold jolt behind his eyes, and the taste of iron filled his mouth. His energy, already low, dipped further.
On the turret’s base, the crude, blood-red sigil flickered and went dark. Its unhealthy light was extinguished.
The turret’s frantic, spastic movements ceased. For a full three seconds, it was still, its barrels pointing dumbly at the sky. A new sound emerged from its housing, not the grinding of confused gears, but the smooth, hydraulic hum of a system rebooting. It was the sound of a machine remembering its own name.
With a decisive thrum, the turret swiveled, its logic restored. Its sensors acquired the largest concentration of enemy heat and motion: the cultist position that had Pavel’s team pinned down.
The barrels erupted with a disciplined, percussive roar. The bursts were no longer wild, but precise, each round finding its mark. The enemy position, a makeshift barricade of scrap metal, was torn apart in a storm of shrapnel and fire. The cultist squad was neutralized. The suppressing fire on Pavel’s team vanished.
From his position, Pavel Orlov watched the turret fall silent. He looked from the smoking ruin of the enemy nest to the lone figure of Sineus, who was now walking calmly back toward the Perun. Pavel lowered his rifle. He raised a hand to his comms unit, his voice rough.
— Position clear. The ghost did his trick.
Sineus climbed back into the command car, the adrenaline leaving him with a faint tremor in his hands. The waystation was not yet secure, but the tide had turned. He pulled the Resonance Compass from his pack. The heavy brass sphere was no longer pointing steadily east. It was pulsing with a rapid, erratic light, a frantic heartbeat of captured energy.
The battle was won. The way was clear. But the compass was no longer pointing to a place. It was reacting to a signal.
The smell of ozone from the turret’s hot barrels drifted on the wind. The grit of the dust storm settled on his tongue, a taste of the endless wastes.
