It is negative twenty-three degrees outside and there is metal in the water. Cyanogen chloride continues to be produced at scale; it seeps out of factories and wisps away into the air. It mixes with the substratosphere. Petrochemical discharge in the fabrication, manufacturing, and distribution of: model T-8980 biplanes; VERA-FEL service rifles; type B hand grenades, both impact- and fuse-detonated; Groener handheld and truck-mounted flamers; VERA-FEL ceramic plate carriers, helmets, and gauntlets; it bubbles beneath the ground and bursts free in giant fountains. Industrial over-use of magnets has covered people in a thin dusting of dark metal filings. The sky has been blackened, the sun is hidden. Night is eternal.
A woman stands in a room covered in mirrors. Before her is a tall obsidian table, and behind it - a man. The walls reflect the scene to infinity. An endless field of men women and tables. There is much to hide with these two, but this room shows all. These two humans are non-emotional; there are three objects in this room. The man talks and six years of breath discipline disintegrates, something inside the woman hurtles toward self annihilation, and the panel behind the man slides open, and he is gone.
At 03:00 hours, four hundred armoured trucks drive down the main arterial from Guttenburg to Kertitz, a journey of one hundred and sixty kilometers. Their eighty centimetre wheels pound the road with reinforced tires, throwing metal filings into the air like dust, leaving a wake of black smoke snaking across the hills, a trail four kilometers long. At 04:32 hours, the convoy is joined by thirty truck-mounted artillery cannons, bored to fire one hundred and forty-four millimeter shells, and an additional carriage of fifteen towed anti-air guns. The air above the rendezvous point ten kilometers outside of Kertitz is already polluted with ninety-eight T-4 Kurcz-style helicopters, their rubber insulated outer plating thickly dusted with black filings. Along the road to Kertitz the convoy passes the town of Papenjir, where the accumulation of magnetic detritus has piled in the streets. A boy watches through a razor thin opening in his shutters, as a group of dogs outside run toward the incoming vehicles.
On the coast of Kertitz, an eight kilometer stretch of cliffside road is restricted to military and private contractors. One hundred and thirty-seven armoured trucks fitted with long-barreled artillery cannons line the road and are aimed toward the water. They are zeroed for six hundred meters. T-4’s buzz the coastline. Flying eyes searching.
At 06:58 hours the convoy from Guttenburg arrives at the rendezvous. It takes two hours to stage their defence.
She arrives on a T-2 Passenger Model helo. Flies over the Kertitz city center. Two meter thick titanium hydraulic barriers cut off all roads leading to Kertitz. Everyone remaining in the city are either combatants or dead. Two people are waiting for her on the landing pad on top of the Lero tower.
Status report. Convoy arrived in full force. Guns are all manned, runners carrying shells. Two T-4s failed to make it off base. Investigation ongoing, initial prognosis: sabotage.
The sun rose five hours ago, yet the sky remains a dull grey. The light choked by magnetic debris. The world is thrust into a cinereous limbo. Ocean winds blow through the forward operating base on top of a nearby hill, the litter of tents and control panels assembled rapidly by dawn. Deep breaths.
It is negative twenty-three degrees outside and there is something in the water.
“God, please,” she says.
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