Miller’s corpse wall, it turned out, wasn’t indestructible.
Under sustained bombardment, a breach about a meter wide finally opened.
I snapped my aim to the hole and poured rounds into it. I could hear bullets striking metal.
Two seconds. That was all the time I got before the enemy returned fire.
I kept shooting as I backed up.
Several Gauss grenades were tossed through the opening. One landed almost at my feet. I dove into the liquid-nitrogen pump room beside the corridor.
The hallway filled with blast-flare and smoke. Thankfully, the breach was still far from the bridge hatch; the island bridge itself wasn’t hit.
My left leg had already taken light damage earlier. Now it sparked hard. Diagnostics flashed: the flight engine embedded in that leg had been destroyed.
Movement remained possible—for now.
I dropped the rifle, ran a quick patch routine, drew the 2D Blade, and pressed myself against the pump-room wall, ready for close-quarters.
I waited.
No one came through.
Then the hatch opened—only it wasn’t the enemy.
Miller walked in first, followed by two more Millers.
“What happen? Miller hear sound,” it said as it approached.
“Get in here!” I hissed. “Enemies. Your wall was breached.”
Miller didn’t even slow. It walked straight toward the corpse wall.
“This not wall.”
It gestured for me to follow.
It was strange. Miller strolled right up to the breach and didn’t draw a single shot. I followed, wary, and returned to the corpse wall with them.
What I saw made my processors hitch.
The wall had… healed.
At the spot where the hole had been, a Flamecaller was embedded in the mass—only the head and part of the torso protruding. One arm still extended forward, gripping a big-bore pistol.
The pose looked like someone caught mid-crawl.
Like its power had been cut the instant it tried to pass through, freezing it into the wall as just another piece of “material.”
Had the wall terminated it?
“This wall… have Miller part,” Miller said, grinning, as if pleased with itself. “Any messenger cross wall, lose energy. Wall get strong. More come, wall more thick. Ga-ga-ga-ga!”
I understood Miller less with every minute.
“Don’t worry,” it said. “They can’t pass.”
It casually plucked the big-bore pistol from the Flamecaller’s stiff hand and tossed it to me. “Iron man still not trust, Miller let them two guard here.”
On the internal scan, the corridor and compartments beyond the wall still held hundreds of enemy units.
But once the corpse wall had healed, the bombardment stopped. The corridor behind it went quiet again.
Was Phantom Forge… giving up?
“The ship will impact in twenty minutes. Initiate emergency measures…”
Miller and I returned to the bridge.
From below came a steady clang—clang—clang. The giant, hammering.
The first floor had been almost completely cleared. The giant had thrown every loose object it could find down the elevator shaft. Now it was using the hammer to bend the shaft’s steel walls into crude “lids,” gradually folding them over the opening.
Two Millers stood guard at the first-floor hatch. According to them, the first-floor corridor had been blocked the same way.
“Material not enough,” Miller complained. “If enough, shaft also can seal with wall.”
“It’s still impressive,” I said.
Then I noticed what had been bothering me.
Phantom Forge’s attacks had stopped. The bridge no longer shook. Outside, the swarm of fighters that had been filling the sky was simply… gone.
“Dorian,” I asked, “how many turrets do we’ve left?”
“Zero,” Dorian-2 said. “All destroyed.”
“Then why did Phantom Forge stop?”
“I don’t know.” Dorian-2 pointed to the radar. “The fighters vanished too. It’s like they came just to take out the towers.”
It shifted to the internal scan. “And these red dots—every enemy inside is packed in the aft sections. They’re not moving.”
In the last stretch, I’d expected a final, brutal push.
Instead, we had silence.
What was Phantom Forge planning?
Miller stared at the radar for a moment, then turned to me.
“Iron man.”
“What?”
“Miller go now.”
“It’s a good window,” I said. “Good luck.”
“False god maybe give up ship. Iron man and Miller leave together?”
“No. Thank you.”
“Iron man really not run?”
“I need to be sure,” I said. “And… I can’t fly anymore. Even if I wanted to run, I couldn’t.”
Miller stepped close, its red eyes searching my face for a long time.
“What if Miller can cut false god thought?” it asked, voice lowered on purpose.
That idea hit me like a shove.
Information shielding wasn’t rare. Both Julian and Phantom Forge had built those systems.
But they were usually passive defenses—huge, slow towers with small coverage. I had never heard of a weapon that could jam a large, fast-moving target in motion.
Miller could do that?
“Maybe,” it insisted.
“Miller change plan. Maybe fail. But if success, can save iron man and half man.”
“All right,” I said, though I didn’t truly believe it. “But I can’t fly.”
“Half man watch false god mind. If mind disappear, leave now. Miller send one Rofu follow. Iron man just jump—Rofu arm catch iron man.”
“All right.”
“And five lizardmen,” it added. “Iron man can command them.”
“All right.”
“Then goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” I said. “And… thank you.”
Miller nodded and headed for the hatch. As it passed the captain’s chair, it patted Dorian-2’s shoulder twice—a farewell gesture, almost gentle.
Near the top of the bridge hatch, a round manual access door could be flipped open. A ladder led up to the roof escape pod.
The pod had been blown away in the first attack.
So when Miller climbed up and opened the roof hatch, the wind poured in like a living thing.
At the same moment, the radar blinked.
A yellow dot appeared impossibly close ahead, streaked over the top of the island bridge, and vanished behind the Hope.
In that split second, I saw it again: the semi-transparent disc-shaped flyer.
This one was smaller—maybe thirty meters across—more like an umbrella-insect dragging jointed limbs beneath it.
In those few seconds, the Rofu had taken Miller away.