[Mountain Outer Earthworks — Day 96, 0431]
The south vent opened at 0431 and the outer earthworks fell at 0447.
Sixteen minutes. Monty's signal on the camp radio was the timestamp — the activation of the gas cycling — and the earthworks fell on the exact 16-minute mark because Cage had built his outer defense for human attackers, not for the specific compound from the eastern marsh that Monty had noted in his agriculture journal on Day 23 and labeled with a diagram and a question mark.
The question mark had been answered.
Ethan heard the breach on the field radio — Bellamy's voice, flat and operational: "Outer earthworks down. South approach clear. First wave in formation." Then silence, which was the radio silence protocol for the assault phase, where unnecessary transmissions cost more than they gave.
He was at the treeline two hundred meters from the earthworks with the Sky second-wave formation and three years of knowing this moment was coming from another life, and the other life had not told him how the pine-resin and chemical smoke smelled mixed together, which was wrong in the specific way that burning things were wrong when they had not been built to burn.
---
The first wave took the south perimeter in four minutes.
Sixty Sky combatants in two columns, Bellamy at the lead, the formation Ethan had drilled since Day 12 on the camp perimeter in a context that had been about the wall and was now being applied to something else entirely. Bellamy ran the formation with the field awareness of someone who had been inside the Mountain for 26 days and knew which sightlines the outer defenders used and where the rotation paused.
Indra brought the secondary ridge column in at 0442 — twelve minutes ahead of the plan.
She had told no one she was going to do this. She had simply read the outer-defense rotation, seen the compression window Bellamy's formation had opened, and moved. Twelve minutes early. The Trikru secondary column came down the ridge like a calculation completing itself, and the outer perimeter's northern flank folded in four minutes because it had not expected the secondary to be there.
The result was the outer earthworks down twelve minutes ahead of schedule and the inner wall now the assault's entire problem.
Ethan moved with the second wave.
From the sky-line he could see the Mountain's outer approach — the cleared ground, the composite plating, the specific architecture of a facility that had been designed to keep people inside rather than out. Sixty Sky combatants were now inside the cleared ground. Thirty-four Trikru dead in the initial approach and the secondary-column push. Fourteen more Mountain defenders down.
At 0503, the field radio crackled.
"Second-wave, this is Bellamy." The flat operational voice was the same. "Lev's down. Joss is down."
Ethan heard both names.
Joss had been on radio-station watch when the culling-prevention contact had gone through — the second shift, Day 14, the night Raven had said that's him before the signal resolved. He had been seventeen years old and so nervous about the transmission that his hands had shaken on the console and Ethan had not told him to steady them because Joss had steadied them himself without being told.
Lev had been east gate on Day 28 when Anya's delegation arrived for the alliance expansion. He had held the gate with the specific professionalism of someone who had been told this was important and had decided to be equal to the importance without requiring an explanation of why.
Both of them were now in the CPE's pending queue.
[Voice: Joss. EXP Penalty: −100. Queued.] [Voice: Lev. EXP Penalty: −100. Queued.]
"Numbers were close enough," Bellamy said. "Don't lie about them later."
The transmission closed.
Ethan looked at the outer earthworks — the breach his formation had walked through, the perimeter that forty-three days of planning and three years of meta-knowledge had designed to fall at this specific moment. The design had worked. The design had not been wrong. Joss and Lev had died inside a plan that was working.
He had known there would be a number like this. He had run the calculation. The calculation had not been wrong.
He pressed the radio button.
"Second wave, advance on Bellamy's formation. Hold inner-wall distance until radio confirmation." He released the button. "Copy confirmation."
Twelve voices on the Sky frequency, the short confirmations of people who had trained to give the short confirmation.
He walked into the breach.
At the inner perimeter, Indra rode past on the formation reset. She made a rotational gesture — both hands this time, not the single-hand motion she had made at the bridge on Day 85. Three circles with both hands, the motion tighter and more controlled than a single hand's version.
Lincoln, three paces to Ethan's left, went very still.
Ethan did not know what he was seeing. Lincoln did not translate it.
The inner-wall assault timer was running.
He pulled up the next-wave protocol on the bark-paper field brief and started the thirty-six-hour clock.
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