100: Chapter 101 Twenty-nine people, four grenades, and a wall

The floor collapsed.

It didn't crack slowly.

The entire concrete floor was pierced from below, exploding with a boom as fragments and rebar flew in all directions.

A twisted piece of rebar plunged into the nearby sheet-metal wall, its end still vibrating with a hum.

Dust.

Dust that covered the sky and the earth.

TW-078 was pushed back two steps by the air blast, his boots scraping two white marks onto the floor.

He squinted through the dust toward the center of the warehouse.

A hole.

It was about four meters in diameter, with jagged edges and broken rebar curling outward.

Inside the hole was darkness.

Then, a crimson metal leg emerged from the darkness.

The hydraulic lines at the joints were covered in concrete dust, but they still extended and retracted powerfully.

At the end of the leg was a flat metal footpad; the edges of the pad were heavily worn, and the metal surface had been ground into a layer of silver-white scratches by the concrete.

A second leg.

A third.

The walking vehicle crawled up from the hole.

Every detail of it was clearly visible in the hazy daylight.

A four-meter-tall body, six hydraulic-driven legs, and crimson armor plates covered in scratches and dents.

The thermal weapon on its back turret was aimed straight into the warehouse, its heat sinks glowing a dull red.

The six legs alternated to adjust its posture, the metal footpads making a crunching sound as they stepped on the shattered concrete.

Concrete dust rustled down from the gaps in the armor.

Then, the turret rotated.

Toward TW-078's direction.

"Back wall!" TW-078 roared. "Everyone to the back wall!"

Without waiting for anyone to react, he turned and ran.

Behind him, the thermal weapon fired.

That orange-red beam swept past from behind, hitting the sheet-metal wall on the left side of the warehouse.

The sheet metal was instantly melted through by the thermal energy, and a hole two meters in diameter appeared in the wall, its edges still dripping with molten metal and making a sizzling sound.

A pungent smell of metallic vapor filled the air.

TW-078 didn't let himself think about what would have happened if that shot had hit a person.

He ran to the back wall. The concrete wall was about thirty centimeters thick.

Under normal circumstances, four bolt grenades wouldn't blow through it.

But the walking vehicle had been digging underground all night.

Its excavation had not only destroyed the floor in the center of the warehouse but had also shaken the entire warehouse's foundation.

Cracks had already appeared at the bottom of the back wall, cracks wide enough to stick a finger into.

The connection between the wall and the foundation had already loosened.

He took four grenades from his waist.

He crouched down and stuffed the four grenades into the largest crack at the base of the back wall.

Two on the left, two on the right, about a meter apart.

"Everyone get down!"

He pulled the pins on the four grenades.

He threw himself to the ground, clutching his head with both hands.

Three seconds.

Explosion.

The four grenades detonated simultaneously.

The concrete at the base of the back wall shattered in the blast, and the wall lost its bottom support. The upper part tilted outward under the force of gravity, and the thirty-centimeter-thick concrete wall crashed onto the ground outside the warehouse, kicking up a cloud of dust.

A breach.

It was about three meters wide and two meters high.

Outside the breach lay the port ruins.

Collapsed buildings, rusted shipping containers, overturned cranes—cover was everywhere.

"Go!" TW-078 stood up and charged toward the breach.

Twenty-eight people followed him.

The walking vehicle reacted quickly.

Just as TW-078 rushed out of the breach, the sound of the thermal weapon firing came from behind him.

The beam shot out from the breach and hit a rusted container outside, burning a hole through its iron wall that emitted white smoke.

But the walking vehicle did not chase them out.

The breach was too small; at three meters wide and two meters high, the walking vehicle's body—three meters wide and four meters high—couldn't squeeze through.

It needed time to widen the breach or take a detour.

This was the time TW-078 needed.

"Scatter! Get into the ruins! Don't bunch up!" he shouted while running. "Groups of three, find your own cover!"

The twenty-nine people split into nearly ten groups and ducked into the port ruins in different directions.

TW-078 led TW-290 and the veteran, TW-115, into a narrow alleyway formed by two rows of collapsed warehouses.

The alley was piled with broken bricks and rusted sheet metal, and the ground was pitted. Their power armor boots made a crunching sound as they stepped on it.

After running for about fifty meters, they turned a corner and stopped.

TW-078 leaned behind a broken wall and looked back the way they had come.

Intense gunfire came from the direction of the warehouse.

The Sun Warriors had caught up.

They didn't pursue from the warehouse's main entrance; instead, they charged out from the side doors on both sides of the warehouse and chased along the back wall.

The gunfire was getting closer.

Then, another sound was mixed in with the gunfire.

Screams.

TW-078's hand tightened around his Bolter. There were five bolt shells left in the magazine.

"Someone's been caught," TW-290 said, his voice trembling.

TW-078 didn't speak.

He was listening.

The screaming lasted for a few seconds and then stopped.

The gunfire continued, but the direction had changed; it wasn't toward them, but toward another direction.

Someone was drawing fire.

It was TW-188.

TW-078 recognized that firing rhythm: two short bursts, a pause, then two more.

TW-188 was using his remaining ammunition to draw the Sun Warriors' attention and buy time for the other groups.

"Go," TW-078 said. "While they're distracted, retreat deeper into the port."

They continued to run.

The port ruins were larger than TW-078 had imagined.

Collapsed buildings, rusted containers, abandoned ships, and broken docks stacked together to form a massive, chaotic maze.

The alleyways were winding, dead ends were everywhere, and some places required climbing over two-meter-high piles of broken bricks to pass.

To the Thunder Warriors, this terrain was nothing.

The strength of power armor was enough to scale most obstacles.

But for the walking vehicle, this was a nightmare.

Its six legs couldn't operate in the narrow alleys, its metal footpads would slip on the broken bricks, and its four-meter-tall body couldn't walk upright in the low ruins.

TW-078 had chosen this direction for the retreat precisely to gamble on this fact.

After moving through the ruins for about twenty minutes, they finally stopped next to a grounded freighter.

The freighter leaned against the dock, its hull rusted and its deck overgrown with weeds.

But the steel plates of the hull were thick enough to block Bolter fire.

TW-078 climbed onto the freighter's deck and lay behind the gunwale, using binoculars to observe their rear.

Gunfire was everywhere in the ruins.

Sporadic and intermittent.

His men were exchanging fire with the Sun Warriors' pursuers.

He counted the friendly light points he could see.

On his helmet's tactical display, the twenty-nine light points had become twenty-four.

Five were grey.

Five men were gone.

TW-078 stared at those five grey light points for two seconds.

Then he lowered the binoculars.

"TW-290."

"Here," TW-290's voice came from inside the cabin.

He was hiding behind a rusted iron cabinet, his Bolter pointed toward the cabin door.

"How many rounds do you have left?"

"Three."

"Save them."

TW-290 didn't answer.

TW-115 crawled over from the other end of the deck.

He had been out of the factory for nearly two months, which made him a veteran among the Thunder Warriors.

There was a deep scratch on the left arm of his power armor, made by flying rebar during the breakout.

"There's movement behind us," he said. "It's not the pursuers. It's that big guy."

TW-078 raised his binoculars again.

In the distance, toward the warehouse, the silhouette of the walking vehicle had already appeared on the port's main road.

It hadn't come out from the breach in the back wall; it came from the warehouse's main entrance. It was moving along the main road toward the ruins.

The main road was wide enough. It could travel at full speed on the main road.

But once it entered the alleys of the ruins, it would have to slow down.

"It can't get in," TW-115 said. "The alleys are too narrow."

"It doesn't need to get in," TW-078 said.

TW-115 glanced at him.

"It only needs to stand on the main road and use its thermal weapon to burn the ruins down piece by piece. Burn them until there's no cover left."

TW-115's fingers tightened on the Bolter's handguard.

TW-078 lowered the binoculars.

In the distance, the walking vehicle stopped at the junction of the main road and the ruins. Its turret rotated slowly, scanning.

Then, it fired.

An orange-red beam shot into the ruins.

A building that had already half-collapsed was hit by the beam. Concrete and bricks melted and crumbled under the thermal energy, kicking up a large cloud of dust and steam.

The smell of scorched lime drifted over from three hundred meters away.

It was clearing the area.

Burning them down building by building.

Heading toward their direction.

Lying behind the gunwale, TW-078 watched that orange-red beam shoot into the ruins again and again, each time swallowing a piece of cover.

He calculated the distance.

The walking vehicle was about three hundred meters from their position. At its clearing speed, it would take about an hour.

Maybe less.

He closed his eyes.

Where were the reinforcements?

He didn't know.

He didn't even know if the signal had been received. He only knew that he had pressed the transmit button and heard a segment of intermittent reply.

That reply could have been the base's response, or it could have just been noise generated by electromagnetic interference.

He opened his eyes.

In the distance, another orange-red beam shot into the ruins. Another piece of cover vanished.

Further away, the sound of engines came from the highway on the outskirts of the port.

It wasn't just one vehicle.

It was many.

TW-078 raised his binoculars and looked toward the sound of the engines.

On the highway, a convoy was driving toward Manila Fortress. Military trucks. Their bodies were painted with crimson markings.

Sun Warriors reinforcements.

TW-078 slowly lowered the binoculars.

His hands didn't shake.

But he flipped the safety off his Bolter.