The Perun ground to a halt, its massive steel frame groaning in protest. Through the command car’s forward viewport, Irina Pavlenko saw Trestle 7. It was a magnificent skeleton of old-world iron, a kilometer-long spine of purpose spanning a chasm of shadows and rust. It was also a vision of hell. The bridge shuddered under explosions, its dark form lit by the muzzle flashes of raider machine guns and the sickly, internal glow of Mnemonic Vultures. The air crackled with their presence, a sound like tearing fabric that set her teeth on edge. At least 40 enemies, maybe more. Ten of the shimmering abominations were clustered around the central pylons, pecking at the bridge’s very idea of itself.
— They’re trying to dissolve it, — she said, her voice flat and hard over the internal comm. The trestle was their only path to the coast. Losing it meant the end of the line. Fragmentation. Defeat.
Her hands flew across the command console, her pragmatism a weapon in itself. There was no time for debate. There was only the work.
— All crews, listen up! — Her voice cut through the rising panic. — Engineering teams, you’re on physical reinforcement. Get those emergency welders and girders to the western supports, now! Use the crawler for cover but keep that bridge standing!
She toggled a channel. — Anchor room, give me everything you have. Route it through me. We’re going to stabilize the bridge’s memory from here.
Another channel opened. — Sineus. Find their shepherd. The Vultures are being directed. Cut the head off the snake.
A quiet acknowledgement was his only reply. On a secondary monitor, Irina saw him, a still point in the chaos of the command car. He was already closing his eyes, his hands resting on the humming casing of the Resonance Compass. He was not a soldier. He was a tool, and she was learning how to wield him.
The Perun’s side hatches hissed open and Union 9 crews poured out into the storm of lead and ozone. They were not soldiers, either. They were builders, mechanics, men and women whose hands knew the language of steel. They charged into the open, dragging heavy support girders and power cables for the welders, their faces grim with determination. Sparks of brilliant orange erupted against the grey sky as they began to weld emergency supports onto the trestle’s trembling legs, a desperate act of creation in the face of absolute erasure.
— Pavel, report! — Irina barked into the comm.
— Holding the eastern junction! — Pavel Orlov’s voice was tight with strain, punctuated by the heavy thump-thump-thump of his squad’s heavy machine gun. — They keep charging! Fanatics, all of them!
Through the main viewport, she could see it. A wave of Seed of Oblivion cultists, clad in rags and rusted armor, charged Pavel’s position at the mouth of the bridge. They were cut down in droves, but more kept coming, their only purpose to overwhelm the defenders through sheer numbers. Pavel and his small team were a rock in a tide of suicidal rage, but the rock was beginning to wear down.
Irina’s eyes flicked to the monitor showing Sineus. He was motionless, his breathing slow and even. He was scanning the battlefield, but not with his eyes. He was reading the flow of intent, the currents of command that were invisible to her. She watched his head turn slightly, tracking something on the far side of the chasm, nestled in a sniper’s perch of ruined concrete.
— I have him, — Sineus’s voice was a low murmur in her ear, devoid of emotion. — The memory-cutter. He’s directing them.
Irina’s gaze followed his. She saw a figure, barely distinguishable from the rubble, holding a device that glinted with a faint, ugly light. Every time the figure gestured, the Vultures pulsed in unison, their corrosive presence intensifying. He was conducting them like an orchestra of decay.
— Take him out, — Irina ordered, her knuckles white on the console.
Sineus did not move. A thin line of blood trickled from his nose, a stark red against his pale, dust-streaked skin. The air in the command car grew colder. Irina felt a pressure in her skull, a silent scream at the edge of hearing. He was not firing a weapon. He was reaching across a kilometer of open air and waging a war in another man’s mind. The price was paid in his own life force, a resource she could not measure or repair.
On the far side of the chasm, the memory-cutter suddenly stiffened. He lowered the signaling device, his head tilting as if listening for a sound that was no longer there. He looked down at his hands, then at the battle raging below him, his expression one of utter, childlike confusion. He had forgotten his purpose. He no longer knew why he was there.
The effect on the Mnemonic Vultures was instantaneous. Their unified, sickly glow fractured. Without a singular will to guide them, their connection to the battle dissolved. They became what they truly were: fragments of nothing, drifting aimlessly on the wind. One by one, they faded, the corrosive pressure on the bridge’s memory vanishing with them.
Pavel saw it first. — The Vultures are gone! — he yelled over the comm, his voice a mix of disbelief and savage triumph. He didn’t need to understand. He only needed to act. — All units, charge! Push them back!
It was the moment the battle turned. With the metaphysical assault gone, the Union 9 crews let out a collective roar. Pavel’s team surged forward from their position, their fire no longer just holding a line but taking ground. The confused raiders, their fanatics’ zeal broken by the sudden desertion of their ethereal allies, faltered. They looked to their leader for orders that would never come.
The retreat became a rout. The Union 9 crews, fighting with the fury of builders defending their creation, pushed the last of the cultists off the trestle and back into the dust from which they had crawled.
Irina watched from the Perun’s command car, her breath held tight in her chest. She ran a structural diagnostic. The trestle’s integrity was at 42%, but it was stable. The physical reinforcements were holding. The memory was secure. On the main screen, Pavel’s team was securing the eastern junction, their weary forms silhouetted against the grey sky. He looked toward the Perun and gave a sharp, affirmative nod.
The strategy had worked. Her engineering and his mysticism, welded together under fire, had held the line. The alliance was not just a desperate hope. It was a functioning weapon. Unity, forged in the heat of battle, had held back the tide of fragmentation.
She leaned back in her command chair, the tension draining from her, leaving a profound exhaustion in its place. On a main support girder of the trestle, she could see it, scarred by shrapnel but still visible: the old maker’s mark of a three-spoked gear. It had endured. They had endured.
The air in the car was still, thick with the smell of victory and spent energy. The low hum of the Perun’s reactor was a steady, reassuring heartbeat.
But her eyes went to the map. The trestle was saved, but beyond it, the rails ended at the coast, and past that lay the shimmering, impassable wall of the Vitreous Reach.
