101: Chapter 102 He came alone

The lighthouse was the tallest building in Manila Fortress's harbor.

It used to be. Now, only half remained; the upper portion had been sheared off during a past bombardment, leaving a base about five meters high with concrete walls riddled with craters and cracks.

The door was long gone, and inside was a spiral staircase leading to a roofless platform.

TW-078 had retreated here with the last of his men.

The lighthouse stood at the very end of the pier.

Behind it lay the sea. The gray surface stretched to the horizon, waves lapping against the reefs below the pier with a monotonous splashing sound.

There was no way out.

Leaning against the lighthouse wall, he counted the people around him.

Twenty-one.

There had been twenty-four when they broke out of the warehouse. Three were lost during the relocation: two were incinerated by the walking vehicle's thermal weapon behind a shipping container, and one was shot in the head by a Sun Warrior sniper while climbing over a pile of broken bricks.

Twenty-one people.

He didn't even want to count the ammunition anymore.

Some had one or two rounds left in their guns; others' guns were already empty.

Those with empty guns held their Bolters upside down, ready to use them as clubs.

TW-188 had rejoined the squad half an hour ago.

He had crawled back from another direction in the ruins. His power armor was riddled with holes, including three bullet holes in the breastplate, and his left knee joint was damaged, leaving him with a limp.

A new wound had appeared next to the old scar on his face, a gash running from his brow to his chin where the blood had already dried into a black line.

Leaning against the lighthouse entrance, he threw his broken Bolter to the ground and picked up one with two rounds left from a fallen comrade.

"What's the situation outside?" TW-078 asked.

"Bad," TW-188 said. "That big guy torched a huge area on the east side of the harbor. Their reinforcements have arrived too—at least thirty more men—and they're tightening the perimeter."

Thirty reinforcements. Adding those to the original forty and subtracting combat losses, the Sun Warriors now had roughly fifty to sixty men.

Fifty to sixty men plus one walking vehicle.

Against twenty-one Thunder Warriors who were out of ammunition.

TW-078 glanced outside the lighthouse.

The walking vehicle was parked on the main road about two hundred meters from the lighthouse. Its turret was pointed directly at them but hadn't fired yet.

It was waiting.

Waiting for the Sun Warrior infantry to complete the encirclement so they could strike together.

TW-290 crouched in a corner of the lighthouse. His Bolter was empty, and he held a piece of rebar scavenged from the ruins, one end ground to a point.

His hands were shaking, but he didn't drop the rebar.

TW-112 leaned against the spiral staircase's handrail.

A recruit only a week out of the factory, his magazine had gone empty during the warehouse breakout, leaving him with nothing but a notched combat knife.

He was repeatedly rubbing the non-slip texture on the knife handle with his thumb, stroke after stroke, exactly as he had in the warehouse last night.

TW-078 looked at them, then looked away.

"TW-188."

"Present."

"Do you think the signal got out?"

TW-188 was silent for a moment.

"It got out."

"You're sure?"

"I'm not. But I choose to believe it did."

TW-078 didn't speak.

He also chose to believe. Though belief couldn't block thermal weapons.

Another twenty minutes passed.

The Sun Warriors completed their encirclement.

Looking out from the lighthouse window, TW-078 could see deep red figures moving through the ruins, closing in from three directions. They weren't in a hurry, knowing their prey couldn't escape.

The walking vehicle's turret began to charge. The heat sinks turned from dark gray to dark red, growing brighter and brighter.

TW-078 raised his Bolter. The last two rounds were in the magazine.

"Get ready."

The twenty-one men stood up. Those with guns raised them; those without gripped their rebar, broken bricks, or fists.

TW-112 switched his combat knife from a forward grip to a reverse grip, blade facing out, and his thumb finally stopped rubbing the handle.

No one spoke.

No one ran.

TW-078's finger rested on the trigger.

His breathing was steady, and his heartbeat was calm.

He was thinking about one thing.

When he left the factory, the gene bank records stated his life expectancy was twelve years.

Thunder Warriors' genes were unstable; they would begin to collapse after twelve years.

He had been out of the factory for two months.

Eleven years and ten months left.

He felt it was a bit of a waste.

Not a waste that he was going to die, but a waste that those eleven years and ten months would never be used.

The walking vehicle's thermal weapon finished charging.

The heat sinks turned a blinding orange-red.

The turret was aimed at the lighthouse.

TW-078 took a deep breath.

Then he heard a sound.

It wasn't the sound of a thermal weapon firing.

It was footsteps.

The footsteps of one person.

Coming from the direction of the main road, very fast.

TW-078 turned to look at the main road.

A figure.

Charging at full speed from the highway along the main road, the power armor's servo motors emitting a sharp whine, each boot step slamming a shallow crater into the asphalt.

The gray power armor had no paint or markings.

But TW-078 recognized that suit.

He recognized that running gait.

C-19.

The reinforcement convoy was still on the highway, their engine noise faintly audible.

C-19 hadn't waited for the convoy; he had hopped off early for the last dozen kilometers and sprinted the rest of the way at full speed.

The walking vehicle spotted him too.

The turret swiveled away from the lighthouse, aiming at the figure approaching at full speed.

The thermal weapon fired.

An orange-red beam shot toward C-19.

C-19 didn't slow down.

He took a step to the left a second before the beam fired, having already observed the turret's rotation angle as it charged.

The beam swept past less than half a meter from his right shoulder, hitting the road behind him. The asphalt melted and boiled under the heat, sending up thick black smoke.

He continued charging through the smoke.

The walking vehicle's turret began to recharge.

The heat sinks changed from orange-red back to dark red; cooling took time.

TW-078 had noticed this interval back in the Underground Workshop: about seven to eight seconds between shots.

C-19 clearly knew it too.

Seven seconds.

He covered the last hundred meters in seven seconds.

The walking vehicle's six legs began to move, trying to back away and open the distance.

But the coordination of six legs wasn't flexible enough, especially when needing to retreat quickly.

C-19 was already in front of it.

The four-meter-tall chassis blocked half the sky, its six metal legs moving frantically on the ground, each step making the earth tremble.

Oil in the hydraulic lines hissed sharply under high pressure, and the turret rotated overhead, the residual heat from the sinks distorting the air.

C-19 didn't attack the chassis.

The deep red armor plates were too thick; Bolters couldn't penetrate them, and melee weapons couldn't cut through.

He attacked the leg.

The right front leg.

The one closest to him.

The joint had hydraulic lines connecting the upper and lower sections, with a thin metal guard over the lines.

In his hand was a Chainsword.

A standard Thunder Warrior melee weapon, with a 1.2-meter blade, its teeth emitting a piercing buzz as they spun at high speed.

He swung the sword at the right front leg's joint guard.

The teeth bit into the metal.

Sparks flew.

The guard was torn open, exposing the hydraulic lines inside—two arm-thick rubber hoses flowing with high-pressure hydraulic oil.

The walking vehicle's reaction was to lift its leg. The right front leg jerked up, trying to shake C-19 off, its metal footpad lifting from the ground and slamming down toward C-19 amidst debris and dust.

He took a step back.

The footpad slammed into the spot where he had just stood, crushing a half-meter deep hole into the asphalt.

The moment the leg landed, the crack in the joint guard was exposed.

C-19 charged again.

This time he didn't slash.

He thrust the Chainsword into the crack, aiming the tip at the hydraulic lines and pushing hard.

The teeth sliced into the rubber hoses.

High-pressure hydraulic oil sprayed out.

The scalding oil sprayed onto C-19's power armor and splashed his left arm, the armor's surface coating bubbling and peeling under the high-temperature fluid.

A searing pain came from his left arm as the oil seeped through the damaged coating and burned the skin beneath.

He didn't let go.

The Chainsword continued to cut.

The hydraulic lines were completely severed, oil gushing from the break and forming a black puddle on the ground.

The right front leg lost hydraulic power.

It went limp.

The joint buckled and collapsed, no longer able to support the walking vehicle's weight.

The four-meter-tall metal chassis tilted forward and to the right, the remaining five legs frantically adjusting their stance to maintain balance.

It fell.

It wasn't a sudden crash. It was a slow, irreversible tilt as the metal chassis toppled to the right, five legs carving deep gouges into the ground while the hydraulic system hissed in desperation.

Then it slammed into the ground.

The entire harbor shook.

C-19 stood beside it.

Five legs were still moving, and the turret was rotating to aim at him, but the fallen posture restricted the turret's turning angle.

He leaped onto the chassis.

His power armor boots made heavy thuds against the deep red armor plates.

He walked to the turret. There were gaps between the heat sinks, through which the core components of the thermal weapon were visible—a glowing tubular structure with an extremely high surface temperature that distorted the surrounding air.

He reversed his Chainsword, tip pointing down.

He gripped the hilt with both hands and raised it above his head.

Then he plunged the sword down.

The Chainsword pierced through the gap in the heat sinks, its teeth shredding the internal lines and components.

Sparks, debris, and superheated gas erupted from the gap, and the walking vehicle's body convulsed violently.

Then it went still.

The six legs lay limp on the ground. The turret stopped rotating.

The glow of the heat sinks slowly faded, turning from orange-red to dark red, and finally to gray.

It was dead.

C-19 stood atop the wreckage of the walking vehicle and pulled out his Chainsword.

The power armor on his left arm was unrecognizable; the coating had peeled away, and the metal surface was scorched with black marks from the hydraulic oil.

But the hand holding the sword was steady.

He looked up toward the lighthouse.

TW-078 stood at the lighthouse window, watching it all.

From the moment C-19 appeared on the main road until the walking vehicle fell, the entire process had taken less than two minutes.

Two minutes.

They had held out for nearly twelve hours.

And C-19 had ended it in two minutes.

All twenty-one people in the lighthouse were watching.

Some leaned out of windows, some stood at the door, and some had climbed onto the lighthouse platform.

No one spoke.

Then, the rebar in TW-290's hand fell to the ground.

The sound of iron hitting concrete echoed in the quiet lighthouse for a long time.

TW-112 leaned against the stair railing, and his hand holding the combat knife in a reverse grip slowly relaxed.

The knife slipped from his fingers, its tip piercing into a crack between the broken bricks at his feet, the hilt still wobbling slightly.

TW-078 felt those two sounds were more accurate than any words.

On the distant highway, the engine noise grew louder.

They weren't the trucks with deep red markings.

They were gray military trucks. Eight of them. The truck beds were filled with Thunder Warriors in gray power armor.

A voice came through the communicator; the signal jamming had vanished at some point.

"Tracking Squad, this is the reinforcement unit. Please report your position and status."

TW-078 pressed the comm button.

He opened his mouth but found his throat too dry to speak.

He swallowed hard.

"Pier lighthouse," he said. "Twenty-one. Alive."

The communicator was silent for a second.

"Copy that. We're coming."

The Sun Warriors' collapse was faster than TW-078 had expected.

A hundred fully-armed Thunder Warriors jumped from the trucks and charged into the harbor in three columns.

With the walking vehicle destroyed, the Sun Warriors had lost their greatest fire support advantage.

Facing three times their number of Thunder Warriors, the remaining fifty-plus deep-red armored soldiers saw their defensive line shredded within minutes.

TW-078 led the men out of the lighthouse.

They had no ammunition, but they had fists, rebar, and the strength augmented by their power armor.

TW-112 charged at the very front, clutching that notched combat knife; the recruit who had left the factory only a week ago was now running faster than all the veterans.

The battle became a one-sided slaughter.

But TW-078 noticed one thing.

That woman was gone.

The woman in the exquisite deep red armor with the special sigil on her pauldron and two missing fingers on her left hand.

He searched the battlefield.

Nothing.

She had fled.

The moment the reinforcements arrived, she had retreated with a portion of her troops.

TW-078 stood in the harbor ruins, watching as the Sun Warrior remnants were subdued one by one.

The battle was over.

He looked down at his Bolter.

The magazine indicator showed two rounds left.

He hadn't fired a single shot from start to finish.