I watched thousands of scenes happen all around at once, pushing my awareness to new heights. The first line of defense had collapsed under the sheer weight of numbers thrown at them, the seemingly endless horde of Centaur advancing ever onwards. The second line of defense, however, was no simple temporary barrier. The external wall bristled with weaponry, hundreds upon every vertical section. These were far more robust than the automated defenses used farther out. Gauss cannons and chemical throwers were the standard, however Raijin-based weaponry made a showing as well. Overhead, the crack of super accelerated shots rang out from pin-point accuracy snipers.

The artillery sounded from throughout the city as well as from atop the walls. Long range ordnance peaked out atop nearly every structure in New Damond, more still waiting silently on every corner, forming a deadly gauntlet for anything that made it into the city proper.

That possibility, I realized as I watched the horde, was not as great as I’d feared.

For all their numbers, the wall was a hundred meters high. It was made with the most advanced materials we could get our hands on, a super concrete flush with lattice-bound carbon. The stuff was insanely resilient to damage, and it extended deep beneath the earth.

The horde approached closer, and without aplomb the Gauss weaponry snapped to their targets eagerly. Light and the crackle of lightning joined with the storm of metal that sought out biotic flesh, a hundred bright flashes of electricity discharged their hellish payload of energy into anything in the way. Patches of biotic exploded outright, those closest to the landing sights ionized aggressively. Even those beyond the initial zones, however, were treated with a moderate dose. Some died, but with the resilience that the creatures possessed not all shared that fate. Twitching bodies struggled to move, overtaken by the rest of the horde even as the rain of thundering munitions continued. The waves of artillery fire never stopped, arcing and devastating swathes of the horde as it moved.

From as many viewpoints as I had, I could see the hordes advancement slow to a crawl, but undeniably they would eventually reach us. However, it would take them an hour or more to even reach the wall. More of the defenses would be used then, and with the influx of matter energy, ammunition wasn’t a problem. Already the Legion teams I had in use had stacked up crates upon crates of ammo in huge depots, appropriating the use of nearby buildings. Other secure ammo-dumps across the city were prepared to ferry additional munitions at a moments notice.

Even so, the wall devoured ammo. Hundreds of millions of bullets literally shattering the advancing biotics by sheer weight. No small part of me was immensely pleased to see this defensive arrangement working quite so well. The Obelisk took in huge quantities of energy and made any battle of attrition a battle in our favor, so long as we could keep them from breaching the walls.

Then, I noticed new shapes join in the fight.

I frowned, seeing the large, grey beings that vaguely reminded me of Axiom Breaker from the siege in Argedwall. They were larger, however, more akin to the body of a jumbo jet than a train car. They lumbered forward, slowly at first before building momentum, sounding out a deep, throaty bellow as they did so. Yet, when they crossed the invisible line that marked the absolute accuracy of my artillery, I felt the gazes of hundreds of artillery pieces imperiously watching them.

“You poor bastards.” I shook my head bemusedly as shells rained down on them, piercing through their remarkably sturdy frames. Silver blood and fragments of their heavily armored shells spiraled through the air. Some immediately perished, and more staggered forward with damage too severe to survive. Most surprising, though, were the handful that suffered that damage and kept going…

At least, until the second wave caught them less than two seconds later.

“Looking good, so far.” I heard Daniel say from atop the wall.

“It is, though I’m curious as to how it managed to make these new ones. We slew Axiom, after all.” I glared at the siege creatures as their numbers continued to swell. Soon, there would be enough of them that the artillery would have to ignore the targets further away.

I briefly turned my attention to Daniel’s mech. Dauntless was a monstrous mech, one of hundreds perched atop the wall. His was special in many ways, though, given that his Class Dreadnaught had allowed him to push the sheer destructive ability of his machine to mind numbing heights. Beside him, a floating feminine power armor surveyed the territory. Several broad wings emerged from her back, a golden luster lacing dagger, sword, and spear length feathers. Pulses of energy rippled over them, and I knew better than most how much destruction Fran’s new machine was capable of. The two of them, though, did not stand out as much as once they had.

The Iron Chariots team flanked them, each member using a mech. Their team wasn’t special in that regard anymore; it was a fairly popular template that other teams had adopted. Still, Iron Chariots had been built from the ground up with team-based mech tactics, and their cheer ability to chain together firepower without stopping made them a nightmare in chokepoints and open fields alike.

“Hey, Reaper,” I heard Jeremy Strauss call out, leader of Last Call, “Anything else on that mystery signature over the ocean?”

“Negative,” I answered, “Whatever it was, it’s harder to find than we thought. Still no sign of it.”

“That’s not concerning at all,” Domino spoke, now the leader of his own group, consisting of all those that we’d taken under our wing, with a few new faces. He very much didn’t appreciate the possibility of an aerial attack, though none of the teams did. Very few biotics had taken to the skies, but it did happen on occasion.

“We’ll make do,” I heard another familiar voice that I hadn’t in a long time. Cassandra Vera had long proven her capability to lead her team and become one of the top ten. Everyone was here, save a few that were needed elsewhere. Gilramore reported attacks, but nothing of the scale that we saw here.

I doubted many of the cities were dealing with an attack quite like this, though.

With a thought I dragged my attention back to the horde, seeing that they steadily advanced, but even the addition of the siege beasts did not accelerate their approach dramatically. Every davance allowed more of our weapons to target them, more accurately too.

Entire swaths of the land were covered in the bodies of dead and decaying biotics, rapidly decomposing into the acrid smoke that any Legionnaire was quite familiar with. Never did the firing stop, though, and after several minutes of this, I couldn’t help but to pull my attention to other things.

My Reaver squadrons were mostly held in reserve. They would begin strafing runs within fifteen minutes at this rate to break up the horde somewhat, but I also contemplated having them reinforce Yamak’s scouting mission even more. The pilots and their artificial sentience co-pilots kept apprised of the situation outside of the walls as much as they could. Satisfied that they were ready to intervene, I pulled my attention once more into cyberspace.

This time I had to push a little to get to my new destination, my awareness slid through the most advanced cyber security I’d run across. Within the labs I found Yaga and Dr. Ross, as well as nearly all of our research staff. The supercomputers all around the room continued to calculate through the sheer mass of data they’d already composed from their scaled-up prototype. A huge sphere five meters in diameter sat in the middle of the room, the steady thrum of some kind of vibration moving through it as it spun.

What drew my attention the most, however, was the fact that I could see mild distortions in the air coming from the device, not unlike a mirage effect. It was perplexing on several levels, not the least of which being how safe it was to be working on such close proximity.

I pushed that aside for now; we didn’t have the time to worry about every possibility right now. And it seemed that Yaga and Dr. Ross shared my sentiments, given that they were working alongside the rest of the scientists here. However, I did notice that there appeared to be some kind of loose shielding near the workstations of the scientists. Whether or not these odd grey-colored slabs of what looked to be stone were capable of helping, I didn’t know.

With a pulse of my will, I connected to the communicators for my head scientists.

“What’s your progress?” I asked without delay, reading through their official reports even as I spoke with them.

If they were surprised at my sudden message, they didn’t show it. Dr. Ross said, “So far, we’ve made some progress. We think we’ve narrowed down some potential signals, but…”

Yaga finished the statement, “we may have an issue with our initial delivery system.”

I frowned at that, not seeing any statement of such in their reports. “What do you mean by that?”

“From what we’ve seen so far, we have no reason to believe that it won’t work through the Obelisk system, but we also don’t think that the Obelisks alone will be enough to boost the signal.” Dr. Ross gestured to plans he was working on, “We’ve already begun construction of the cage and adapters for a new location. The only thing we need to know is where the best array is in the city?”

I blinked at that, only needing a few moments to consider that. The space port was an obvious first choice, but there was another location that would work and was even more heavily defended in the city. Given the sheer amount of hardware that lay unused along with its more peculiar defense systems, Reaper HQ might be a good alternate site.

“Build it at the spaceport and headquarters,” I decided after a moment more deliberation, “All construction resources are yours to use, but do it as quickly as you can.”

They nodded, fully aware that we were on a definite timeline.

I bid them farewell and drew my attention back to the walls, now under direct attack by biotic forces, albeit only just. Spikes of jet black material slammed into the outer metal plating, fired in far more accurate bursts than what the Centaur were once capable of. Individual creatures ran forward, tails poised over their heads as the manticore-like spike tail quivered. Lancing spikes hit several locations, a lucky one hitting a flame turret dead on. A gout of flame erupted from the face, blasting a thirty meter area in front of it in flames before the A.I. cut the fuel source and withdrew the turret.

A few moments later, a new turret emerged from the wall socket, pivoting and burning nearby targets with vigor.

Still, this scene repeated itself dozens of times, mostly with the lowest-most turrets, the flamethrowers still sitting more than twenty meters off the ground. Directly at the base of the walls another device churned to action, literal grinders emerging from their steel shelters.

The first Centaur to reach them discovered that these grinders were also more than capable of emerging from the wall by ten meters, greedily swallowing one of the creatures before a fine paste splattered out across the terrain farther out, vents projecting their own fallen out across other biotics.

Electrical fields lit up the moment enough conductive fluids had spread out over the front waves, the old but reliable Raijin Fields demonstrating their continued effectiveness with a sudden and staggering blast back.

The wave lost ground, but they quickly began retaking it, relentlessly driving forward as the Centaur began to attack the new targets, learning the timings and letting off a stream of pressurized acid, a bundle of spikes, or even using their own bodies to buy time for the rest of the wave.

It wasn’t a heroic battle, nor what I could call a display of skill. The only option here was a battle of attrition, one that the biotics with their seeming endless numbers might have an advantage.

If this was the old world anyways.

Already damaged parts of the wall were being built, plates constructed and moved on the inner layer of the entire construct bulking out not unlike a layer of skin. The damaged turrets were repaired automatically, torrents of Matter Energy streaming to the defense to manufacture the basic resources as small foundries scattered throughout the entire defense network created some of the more expensive to produce goods as needed. The stockpiles were barely moving now, most of the defense being fed by our Obelisk's supplies.

Ironically, if the Centaur were any less M.E. heavy, this kind of attrition might eventually go against us. However, they were worth a small fortune, given all of the upgrades and power The King had fed them. New Damond was built with massive sieges in mind as a possibility, as with smaller but more elite enemies.

Even if the biotics wanted to regroup, the floodgates were open. I wasn’t certain how much power The King held over the horde, but the sheer momentum that carried them into our waiting arms made the ground look alive with them all.

And it was during this, when I felt that perhaps we’d be secure against the waves coming to us, that I felt the first of our anti-air defenses come alive.