Day broke, and the gap in the wall still stood open.
Zhao Tieshuan's crew had spent half the night buttressing it—rolling logs under door planks, planks weighted with cauldrons, the collapsed slope tamped into a ramp. When the east went gray, Chen Jin came up over the logs to the top of the gap and looked out. Two hundred paces away, the Grey Jaws stood where it had stood all night.
All night in one place—worse than if it had moved. Nobody on the parapet dared blink first. Everyone knew it was waiting. Waiting for what, nobody could say.
"I'm going out," Chen Jin said. "To collect."
Zhou Zhengting looked up from the register. "Alone?"
"Alone."
"The wall ran by your word last night. It runs by your word today." Zhou Zhengting set his enamel mug on the parapet, gave the old uniform one glance, and said nothing more. "Back by noon."
"Back by noon." Chen Jin agreed, and knew as it left his mouth that he'd overdrawn—you don't promise numbers on a battlefield. Zhou Zhengting was already down in the register again. He let it stand.
He stepped back behind the parapet, and the corner of his vision queued them up:
[Redeemed: thermal lance, engineering pattern −150]
[Redeemed: Tier-2 Genetic Booster −400]
[Redeemed: Standard Power Armor, fragment replica −800]
[Embers: 130]
The booster went in at the neck, a line of cold running to the small of his back. When he looked up, the ash drifting over the parapet had slowed half a beat, and a rooster-crow somewhere in the city drew out long. The lance was heavier than it looked—thick-barreled, a ring of heat sinks at the muzzle, old score-marks on the grip; no telling what the last hands had cut through with it.
The armor was deep gray, scarred too, patched and ground flat, and it went on without a clatter, hydraulics seating along his spine. He tried two steps behind the parapet: every footfall smoothed out flat, and the shoulder wound that had pulled all morning went light. One step, and the ground shivered.
Xiao Mao's head came over the ladder, eyes popping. "That armor—there's servos in it. Big brother, lend it to me to strip. Just strip—"
"No."
"One touch, then?"
"After."
Lei Changgeng held the high parapet with his rifle and tossed the water skin across. "Back in one piece. Don't make me collect a tag."
"Spare the tags."
Wen Heng had come up to see the wounded and met him at the top. She said nothing at all—pushed a roll of bandage into his chest pocket, and only then saw the armor. Her brow moved. She didn't ask. Going, her heel knocked a chip of brick loose; she steadied on the parapet, and went.
Zhao Tieshuan stood by the gap and swung the door plank aside. "When it's done, come back. There's porridge in the pot."
"Lend me the door."
He dropped through the gap the collapse had left. Behind him, dozens of eyes watching, nobody speaking.
The stench came up in layers and his stomach rolled with it; he swallowed the morning's rice down and walked the paved dead. Forty steps out, the sand-rasp died on all sides—not retreating. Yielding. The swarm banked itself into slopes on either hand, tier on tier, motionless, and a lane opened between them, and the lane ended at the Grey Jaws. Every bug along the lane had turned its head away, jaws shut tight. The whole way across, not one looked at him.
It had counted their rifles too. It wanted to see what this gun was worth in bugs.
Close up, the size of it landed. The two jaws could have closed over a full ore cart. Old shaft-heads, knife shards, and half a gun barrel sat bedded in the ring seams—a thing that had fought long wars, scarred thicker than the wall's mortar lines. Standing, it topped the parapet. All that weight, and the ground never said a word.
At one hundred paces it didn't move. At fifty, the jaws crossed.
The tail came from the right. The Tier-2 world slowed past reason—the wind of it raised a ridge along the ground, and the ridge was still mid-flight when he was already clear. The spike hit where he'd stood and blew bug-carcass a man-height into the air.
Chen Jin raised the lance. The blue flame left with no sound; heat arrived first. Fifty paces, flame sweeping low, and it opened the joint seam of the left forelimb—melted plating running down, the whole front of the thing dropping a grade, one knee driving into the bug pile.
Somebody on the wall let out a shout.
The Grey Jaws stood back up, and its rings re-seated one after another, fresh layer over old. Its head went back and a whistle came out—three short, one long. The swarm closed from three sides; the first wave broke on the muzzle, one blue sweep cutting a burning furrow, the second wave climbing the first.
Chen Jin gave ground. Carcasses stacked behind him, higher and higher, until the stack was a wall and the way home was shut. The lance barrel burned through his gloves; he wrapped his left hand over the right. Fifty paces off, the Grey Jaws stood clicking its jaws open-shut, waiting for the lance to burn out, waiting for him to burn out standing. It had a whole night's patience and a trench full of dead. It didn't know this gun ate no rounds. It ate itself.
Then its whistle changed key. The waves re-formed, closing layer under layer—he burned through one, and under it was another. Rifle cover from the wall couldn't follow him in, and the round reserve couldn't spend itself that way.
And then the Grey Jaws turned. Not at him—at the gap. Four legs rolled over the paved dead, two hundred paces of road gone in thirty strides. The wall roared; the gong started up cracked.
Chen Jin climbed out of the bug pile, cut the straight line, and put a lance-burst into the right hind joint. Half its body sank, and it wrenched its head back around. It knew the gun now. No more probing.
It dropped low and began to circle him. Its rings ground out a thin sand-sound—left, right, steps even and light. Chen Jin turned with it, muzzle tracking the neck seam. Both sides were running their strength down. The first one to show an opening died.
Lei Changgeng emptied the last ranks of reloads from the high parapet and cleared him ten paces of ground. When the shooting stopped, Chen Jin was already up the bug pile, at its neck.
The jaws came down on his shoulder. Hydraulics thudded once, collarbone numb with it, shell-grind filling his ear, iron reek in his nose. The plate dimpled and did not give. He counted his own heartbeat, waiting for the teeth to ease half a breath—and on that half breath he rode the bite up against its neck, ran the barrel into the ring seam, and drove with everything the hydraulics had.
The blue flame lit inside its skull, and the sand-rasp of the whole swarm stopped at once.
Bugs on all sides went down flat together, a black spread of them, clearing the gun that still smoked and the thing it had burned through. The Grey Jaws' jaws hung crossed, unable to close, unable to bite. It pitched forward, rings shaking loose one by one, and hit the ground, and half the paved lane went down with it. The thud ran through the earth and up the wall, dust sifting off the parapet edge.
The corner of his vision blinked:
[Kill confirmed: general-class, Grey Jaws. +500 Embers.]
[Embers: 630]
A third line, the cold machine voice, one word at a time:
[Account settled, Your Majesty.]
He cut behind the skull with his knife. The burned knot of flesh there was ten times the size of the one in the jar. He carved out what was worth keeping and dropped it into the empty liquor jar he'd carried out, wax over the mouth. A matched pair for the one in the city.
Nobody owned the swarm now. It scattered ragged, forgot its own paved road, and drew off toward the orbital port in a black sheet, no formation left in it.
After the Grey Jaws went down, the gap stayed silent first. Two breaths later the shouting knotted together—gongs and voices, breaking the whole night's quiet at a stroke.
He walked back. Heads over the gap, and Zhao Tieshuan's voice the loudest: "Porridge is still hot!"
Zhou Zhengting stood holding the old jar of alcohol. The flesh inside lay still, quiet in the liquor.
"What it answered to is gone," Chen Jin said.
Wen Heng had come up the gap at some point. She crouched at the dented shoulder plate and rapped it with a knuckle. "Plate cracked?"
"Dented."
"You?"
"Not leaking."
She drew the bandage roll out of his chest pocket, weighed it in her hand, pushed it back. "Keep it." The porridge reached him then, bowl chipped at the rim, still scalding.
The bowl was at his lips when the long howl rose out of the dark.
Deeper than the Grey Jaws' whistle, deeper by far, running flat along the ground, and the wall bricks hummed with it. The whole port's grid tripped—torches died in rows along the parapet, and out in the city the lights went down patch by patch. The echo took a long time dying, heavier going than coming.
Lei Changgeng's voice on the parapet was strung tight: "Same taste as that night."
The system put up two lines:
[WARNING: King-class signal detected.]
[Ranging: failed.]
Chen Jin slung the lance across his back and took up the bowl. In his chest pocket, the freshly sealed jar knocked, one thump at a time, toward the thing that stood in the dark.
All the port was black now. Only over by the granary's east side, the dark-red coal on the EMBER Barracks lintel still burned, with every other light gone.