Vigil In Preparations

The maintenance gate was still priming when he reached the base of the walls. Looking up, he traced the path he'd have to take to reach the top. Stairway, lift, catwalk, second lift, adjoining stairway, three sets of ladders, third lift, fourth lift, another ladder to scale, and a final lift. His eyes trailed left to one of the lifts larger than all the others.

Every spare meter to the edges remained stocked when going up and on the return trip, so much so that he wondered if he'd fall off the edge if he attempted to squeeze himself onto the exterior. If he did, he doubted the fall would kill him, but it would hurt. And it wouldn't do any good to return to medical so soon with the Aud closing in.

His imagination made the journey out to be worse than it was. With as much speed as the lifts of the ceilingscrapers themselves, he found himself on the final junction cresting over the edge of the walls too soon.

If there had been a sun, the sight would've aroused enjoyment within him, but the drab darkness of the Gaiss Hollow beyond greeted him instead. He stepped off the lift and heard it fall back down, hidden motors clicking in a staccato rhythm. With wide, casual strides, he crossed the width of the wall itself.

Every two dozen meters, he had to change his path to maneuver around the large, imperious hatches that littered the top of the wall like a minefield. Though out of sight, he knew each hatch covered an emplacement, upsized several times beyond Titan-grade weaponry. And that was noteworthy already, given the effectiveness of the emplacements every Titan sported.

Though, unlike a typical Titan's emplacement composition, the allotted mounts were more even. There were as many netting and cylinder emplacements as there were sonics and electrics since the walls were stationary. Their role was to act as one large palisade, to defend and repel. Unlike the Titans, which could take most of what the Aud could strike at them with, the walls' very foundations should withstand the worst punishments the Aud could muster.

His thoughts trailed back to the comparison with a minefield…mines. They sounded like an incredible suppressive aid when he came across them in his reading of the archive's older data. Whether they would possess enough merit to remain in humanity's use would find settlement today. Ni-6 had told him In-3 had pushed for his ray to set aside some of its military production capabilities to produce a set number of them as a test batch.

He leaned down on one knee once he reached the other edge and glanced over it. He had natural eyesight better than most, and yet he struggled to make out anything away from the rare mote of light piercing the veil of cavernous black. The luminosity produced by the mosses growing below wasn't enough to compare to a single candle, and all they did was paint the bottom of the Hollow an eerie dull purple that clashed with the blackness.

Some of the notable motes of light were in transit, moving along distant paths. From here, he was under the optical illusion that they were hardly making progress. Those must be the mine-laying crews of engineers and techs sent outside the walls. He returned to the side of the wall facing the city to grab from one of the opened storage containers deposited from the main lift a monocular.

Zooming in, he found they were quick and efficient with their work. A pair of engineers operated digging equipment to drill holes the size of their feet meters apart from each other in a grid.

Another pair trailed behind them, slotting squashed chrome cylinders with a blinking blue light emanating on the top. The last pair of engineers worked apart, their equipment small enough to be hand-held. They patched the holes back up, smoothed the irregularities over, and packed down the rocks broken up during the procedure.

They weren't alone out there. Behind the initial six were two rovers with treads, following them. Since they were open-roofed, he could see that the passenger seats held techs, busy on their screens mounted to the dashboards. The monocular wasn't precise enough to give him a clear view of what the tech was doing, but he already had a decent idea.

First, they were resetting the arming mechanisms of the mines, so they didn't have premature detonations when the rovers passed over them, further flattening the disturbed ground. But they were also applying custom trigger-activation times, or manual trigger programs.

Once the Aud arrived, and assuming the Last Light withstood their first wave of attacks, there wouldn't be an opportunity to leave the safety of the walls a second time to prime the terrain in their favor. So all the mines produced in the test batch--which wasn't an insignificant number--were laid into the ground now, and not to have them all detonate in the first wave.

They were deep enough that passing hordes shouldn't disturb them and cause a premature detonation, so the only way for them to go off while too far away from each other to cause chain explosions would be if the techs controlling their programs activated their arming mechanisms.

His monocular-covered eye moved on from that crew to study the others. Similar procedures were occurring all around the city's exterior, as close to the walls as thirty meters, and as far away as three kilometers. Once complete, the minefield would encompass every meter of space around the Last Light, adding yet another layer of security. And even then, who knew if it would be enough?

While there were those erecting defensive infrastructure, there were also those breaking down what was already present beyond the walls. He skimmed over some, pausing at one crew of engineers swarming over a part of the railskipper network built beyond the walls while a coterie of light WAVs stood guard over their activity.

Despite time still favoring them, they worked in a frenzied state with concentrated faces, like they were afraid they would still be toiling away from the walls' safety when the first Aud entered into view.

They tore up the bars linking the network with ruthless efficiency under the direction of supervising officers, stripped away the foundations from the ground, and maneuvered the railskipper cars into the air with the aid of anti-grav generators. He almost made the mistake of believing they suffered offense by the completed existence of the railskipper network, though in reality very little matched his imagination.

Like every decent serviceman, the men and women there now were doing their jobs to the best of their ability in as short of a time frame as they could squeeze out of their equipment.

It was common practice to maintain such a productive mindset, after all. He felt a nostalgic warmth flicker in his chest, remembering the times when he was a simple serviceman like them.

A deep, reverberating groan below his feet startled him out of his people-watching. His breath puttered off as he recognized it for what it announced: the maintenance gate was opening. A rumbling vibrated its way up his legs. He leaned over the edge, looking down.

Like a maw extending its jaws from the face of the wall, the previous smooth, flat surface faced interruption. Two slabs of scutumsteel parted, mirroring the doors of the Chamber of Meet, albeit so much grander in scale he was unsure if ten of the latter stacked on top of each other would be enough to measure even with the former. His HUD chirped, informing him he'd need another two for that.

He hadn't felt much of the Chamber of Meet's doors since the anti-grav modules built into them lifted much of the burden of weight on their axles, reducing friction to the point where if he didn't make a point of watching their opening, he would be hard-pressed to recognize the faint noises in his ears as those of opening doors then.

Such a technological marvel wasn't possible here. Disregarding anti-grav modules, even the most upscaled generators weren't enough to lift the sides of the maintenance gate open on their own power.

That was why he not only heard the maintenance gate extend its prodigious doors apart but felt it too. Though there were many systems and mechanisms hidden and working away, or waiting for use, inside the walls, the single system consuming the most internal space was the gates' operating systems.

Gears the size of Titans worked in conjunction with their smaller counterparts and other components to provide enough mechanical force to strain open and shut.

In the far distance, massive figures left stationary posts in the periphery of his vision and began their approach, each covering no fewer than fifty meters per stride or gait. He straightened up to observe them with his naked eyes as they drew closer.

He hadn't studied them much during his initial perusing since he no longer found anything noteworthy or interesting about them, aside from their size. The first one had a humanoid figure and towered above the others as they formed a line to enter the city once the maintenance gate finished its slow expansion.

It was lean and squat in the limbs, though more scutumsteel layers coated its torso, pronged head, and the pendulums capping and swinging from its fists, inflating their typical size. The Dervish of Palm cut an imposing figure against the little flickering light that made its way over the edge of the walls.

A second later, three spotlights reoriented themselves to shine down on the line of Titans, banishing some of its ominous presence. It had the most refined and sophisticated physical appearance as well. Once the maintenance gate was around halfway open, it strode on through, tilting its torso to the side so its shoulders avoided contact and scraping.