Titans were considered humanity's greatest assets; they were invented by a madwoman and maintained by engineers. Dozens upon dozens once existed, each as wide and varied in purpose and design as humanity. Some could march, crawl, fly, burrow, or slither. It was even rumored that one fortress had moved around via teleportation.
Some were meant to be scouts, utilizing sonar and scanning to stay out of an Aud's detection range. Some were flankers, coming out of the walls to harass, then vanish. A number served as stalwart defenders of key locations. Some were extraction vehicles, others WAV transports, and others still moving medical centers. They all served humanity well during the times they were operated.
No matter their differences, all Titans had two factors in common: they were designed to perform a function normal technology couldn't accomplish alone and were--excusing the pun--titanic.
Each was packed with millions of chips, processors, and connective segments. Each was stacked under hundreds of tons of scutumsteel plating and uplifted by the most powerful anti-grav modules ever developed. Each was outfitted with the best of humanity's arsenal: AWSs, sonics, electrics, trappers, launchers, etc. The rule of thumb was that if something could increase a Titan's survivability, it was added to the pile.
Due to their size, complexity, and the sheer number of functions and roles that needed to be handled onboard, an entire fort's worth of personnel were required to keep every meter of their charges running, top to bottom. Paradoxically, this turned Titans into small, ever-mobile cities with individualistic charms and customs. Who could ever live in such conditions?
It was easier than it sounded. Titans were never just vehicles of war. They were also production and logistics centers. They had food growth capabilities, and lodgings for those off-duty. Their stores contained just as many bulk goods as they did battery cores.
Some would assume that these war machines, these Titans, could turn the tide. If humanity couldn't beat the Aud through individual might, why not through sheer size? At times, quantity was a quality of its own.
Humanity quickly learned that direct confrontation wasn't the forte of anything human or human-made, even their products of war expressly geared for this purpose. They were once treated as disposable assets, gigantic soldiers that could be tossed at the Aud continuously until they broke. Oh well, there were still plenty of others to take their places and posts.
The results of such a frivolous war philosophy were profound: only eight Titans remained presently, the veteran war machines of a three-century conflict.
The Ancheros and Ephemeral Palisade patrolled the bare, flat lands of the north. Fort Callipso had once stood guard in their place, and now they stood watch in place of it. To the south lay the Anthill and the Dervish of Palm, where a singular, grand mountain poked out from the Gaiss Hollow's bottom. It was as if it had developed a welt, and petrification claimed it before nature took its course. They were the replacements for Fort Clyvis.
The situations in the east and west were different. Since the Bastion Outposts in those directions had survived far longer than their cardinal cousins, the Titans could choose their movement patterns with greater freedom.
The east's cracked and scarred terrain was perfect for the agile Jackal. It roamed the outskirts of Fort Rhea, hopping between crevices in the expansive stretch and hiking up and down the jagged cliff faces that stood in its path.
The Last Light, humanity's last great city, was guarded by a Titan. The Halo Beast marched around the perimeter of the walls day after day, never tiring in its nigh-eternal task.
Unlike the others, however, the Nyx Breaker's existence wasn't common knowledge. Where normally the people protected by the Last Light's grand walls would've held day-long celebrations in jubilation after a new Titan, those organized events of the Third Ray would have to wait. Because the ninth and first constructed Titan in a century already had its first mission.
When communications failed with Fort Io, the First Ray initiated one of its many procedures, planned and perfected through generations of theoretical warfare. Of course, always an organization to hit several stones with a single throw, they appointed the Nyx Breaker as the head of the emergency investigatory operation. A test run, it was dubbed. Right into the middle of a potential warzone
Only the Eighth Ray was crazier than the First; that didn't mean much.
The moment the Ninth Titan crossed the threshold into the western territories, their communication with the superiors at home went similarly dark. The crews didn't panic, and the sitesman never had a thought of turning back. They had a mission, and would accordingly see it through.
They observed Fort Io from afar, determining with disappointment yet another Bastion Outpost had been emptied of humanity and filled with blood, corpses, and scrap. But their scouting venture wasn't entirely fruitless.
They began discovering drones, the kind often deployed for scouting ventures. Some moved past. Others, stationary with their command links cut off. All were extracted from the Gaiss Hollow and brought inside.
That was how the sitesman and highest voice of authority of the Nyx Breaker found himself studying footage that was…sickening. Ze-4 was something of an old soldier. He had been embroiled in countless struggles with the Aud over his long years of life. He was one of the ancients, as the "elders" of the First Ray were sometimes called.
He had been a fresh-faced pilot when Fort Clyvis had fallen fifty years prior. Worse, it had been his first deployment. The sights he'd beared witness to were the backbone of who he was, how he carried himself today. More than anyone else in the room, he should've been capable of maintaining his composure.
Yet he was the first to break his eyes from the flashing images of blood and teeth before he lost hold over his stomach. He addressed the engineer still rummaging through the drone's recordings on a different screen. "Have you finished copying down the data to our chips?"
"Yes." She looked up. She was far younger than him, enough for him to be her grandfather. Her face was paler than his own should've been, and he wondered how one so young managed to snag a position here. Ironic. The most dangerous stations were often the most coveted.
Humans were such misguided beings at times.
He dismissed that line of thought. Skillful ability couldn't be faked. If she was here, she had passed whatever criteria set out for her. "Then release the drones after topping up their cores."
"Sir?"
Another engineer spared him the explanation. "Direct communication with the One-Light Directory isn't available, but we can't just continue with the mission. So we hope the drones can make it the rest of the way home without being intercepted by Aud. Correct, sir?" He looked to Ze-4 for approval.
He begrudgingly nodded. What was it with youths these days and their competitions? At least it'd been the correct deduction. "Although we as a species are quickly becoming numb to all but the largest shocks, this is still a historic event. With the fall of Fort Io, we'll need to seal off the Greater Western Tunnel System ourselves, or hope the drones reach the Last Light in time for them to take care of the matter."
He moved to another screen, where no recordings played. Instead, a map of the western side of the Hollow was covered in several dots. The dots rearranged themselves while he came near.
"That's all they could spare, you think?" Ze-4 studied the diagram.
"I don't know what the sitesman heading Fort Io was thinking. Wouldn't a mass exodus of all surviving personnel be better than boxing themselves into the city?" The engineer was locked into a dismal frown, mirroring everyone else. "But I suspect there could have been additional waves. It's just that we've only received eight unique origin frequencies, and not one greater. Maybe the subsequent runners didn't have time to deploy their drones?"
"It's not important. Can you determine which of the runners are dead?"
"That's not the difficult part. You see these signatures, sir?" Two of the dots were pointed out. They looked duller in color compared to a couple of the others. "They were the last broadcasted locations where the origin frequencies connected the operators and the drones. However, they're still in effective signal detection range for the drones, so I can only assume they were killed. That's why most of the drones we've found weren't moving anywhere. They were operating on a manual input basis, so once the commands stopped coming in, they were dead weight. Only one or two operators had enough mind to spare to grant the reigning automated intelligence programs full control over the drones."
"Fine. Which signals do we ignore? We don't have the time to skirt around the fort to check each in person."
"Agreed, sir. We should focus on these three." He pointed at a cluster of dots far to the left. So far left they were nearly off the diagram of the Gaiss Hollow. Ze-4 stared uncomfortably at the 2D representation of the gaping cave maw lying in wait at the edge. "There's another reason the drones running on manual command inputs could've stopped receiving direction, and it's what I think we should bank on. The effective range of a drone is impressive, but once the operator is beyond the length at which the origin frequency can keep the drone connected to the control apparatus, it's like a string is cut."
Ze-4 smiled in understanding. "So you think those origin frequencies come from past transmissions, but not the final transmission for those operators?"
"Exactly! There's a chance they had to move on without calling their drones back. Or maybe one or two of them even had the same idea you did, sir. They just forgot to grant the automated intelligences complete access."
"Good work. Share your theory with the others and get on finding new locations or a trail we can follow." He patted the engineer on the back and left the analytics compartment. As the doors closed, the sudden uproar was cut off. He smiled again. He had never met a collective of engineers who weren't ecstatic about their work.
All Titans were given a certain shape and image to ascribe to during construction. Their specialty. While he certainly had several questions for the teams responsible for building the Nyx Breaker from the ground up, he ultimately decided the newborn Titan had its own charms. And even if it didn't, what was he going to do?
The Nyx Breaker was modeled after the body of a centipede. He had never heard of such an organism until a few months ago when he was shown anatomic diagrams. Watching all those legs wriggle along the ground…
He shivered. The body continually shifted this way and that, the hundreds of meters of scutumsteel framing and plating hiding within a long line of compartments, each with their own function. The mouth of the Titan was occupied by a WAV garage and boarding checkpoint. It was a risky strategy, but if an Aud ever fought its way aboard--absurd situations were better accounted for than not--there would be dozens of pilots ready to meet it in heavy WAVs.
Behind that was a line of storage compartments, dormitories, and generator stores. Then came the two most important rooms in the entire Titan. The echo room, and the command compartment.
Lovingly nicknamed by the engineers during their first trial runs, the echo room fulfilled one of the Nyx Breaker's unique functions. All of the now nine Titans had a role that each fulfilled to their utmost. Where the Anthill was a mobile WAV garage, and the Jackal played with the Auds' sensory stimuli, the Nyx Breaker was a scout and a sneaky machine.
It thumped the ground, utilizing geological shocks to determine what lay kilometers ahead. Upon the return of these seismic disruptions, the thousands of legs absorbed them and passed them to the main body. From there, they were converted into signals, sent to the echo room, and interpreted as diagrams and maps. Already, they had dodged some Aud by testing the feature.
He passed by it, and next was the command compartment. His abode. His entrance didn't go unnoticed, but no one stopped for a salute. He approved silently. They were in enemy territory now; there was no time for silly distractions and pointless shows of respect.
Several platforms were raised in the center of the compartment, each holding dozens of techs and engineers running back and forth and operating the consoles and screens. There were so many functions to control such a behemoth of technology, after all.
He dodged by an engineer half-blinded by the stack of chips in their arms and began the climb. Stairs would've needlessly taken up too much space, so the different elevations were accessible by ladder. He came to the apex and began the next climb. The next, and the next. Each platform held fewer and fewer personnel.
Finally, he came to the top. An aide was already waiting, the sitesman's command console warmed up and ready to transmit commands.
"Have the analysts found a likely path to start on yet? We should get moving before we're noticed."
The aide nodded, looking down at their screen. "They've done their best, but for now all we have is a vague direction west. The surviving origin signals lead straight to the edge of the Gaiss Hollow."
"So we're moving along the border? Which way?"
The aide smiled thinly. "That's not it, sir. When they said west, they meant all the way. We need to go into the tunnels."
Ze-4 gave a hard look, then sighed and approached his station. Of course they were.