Building Zoids in a World of Titans

The transport rattled over broken terrain, and Alex kept the Lanstag at a steady pace behind it, its hooves eating the distance. The plains gave way to scrubland — volcanic rock jutting from dry soil, skeletal trees clawing at a sky that smelled like iron and dust.

Dace's voice crackled over the comms. "Alex. Copy."

"Copy."

"Here's how we run this. We approach the nest from the north ridge. The pack will see us before we see them — they always do. My team forms a perimeter at the ridge line. Tight formation, overlapping fields of fire. We draw the pack to us. That's our job. While they're focused on the Wardens, you take the Lanstag straight through the middle. Find the queen. Kill her. Break the pack's back."

Alex watched the transport ahead, imagining Dace's face — calm, clipped, the voice of a man who'd done this a hundred times. "Simple enough."

"Simple isn't the same as easy. The pack will throw everything at you once they realize what you're doing. Don't stop moving. A stationary Zoid is a dead Zoid."

"Noted."

"And Alex — if the queen goes underground, don't follow her into the tunnels. She'll collapse them on you. Draw her out or let us handle it from above."

"Understood."

The comms went silent. Alex flexed his fingers on the joysticks, feeling the Lanstag respond to the slightest pressure. The machine wanted to run. He could feel it in the core's hum, a vibration that resonated somewhere behind his sternum.

CLANG-clack. CLANG-clack.

The Lanstag's hooves struck a rhythm against the packed earth. Steady. Patient. Waiting.

The transport slowed as the ridge appeared on the horizon — a jagged line of dark rock rising from the scrub like a broken tooth. Dace's voice returned.

"We're approaching the perimeter. Razorjaw signatures on my scanner. Eighteen... no, twenty-three. They know we're here."

Alex's HUD painted the contacts — red dots clustered around a depression in the earth ahead. The nest. He could see it now: a vast, bowl-shaped hollow carved into the ground, ringed with bone and refuse. The Razorjaws moved along its edges like ants around a hill.

"Forming perimeter," Dace said. "Mira, high rock at two o'clock. Torren, center anchor. Kess, east flank. I'm on comms."

The transport stopped. Four figures deployed with practiced speed, each moving to their position without hesitation. Mira scaled a rock outcropping in seconds, her rifle already shouldered. Torren planted himself at the center, shield raised, heavy cannon resting on his shoulder. Kess darted to the east, light and quick, dual sidearms drawn.

Alex brought the Lanstag to a halt at the ridge's edge. Below, the Razorjaws had stopped moving. Every head in the pack had turned toward the ridge. Toward them.

"Well," Alex murmured. "That got their attention."

The pack erupted.

Twenty-three Razorjaws surged up the slope in a wave of grey-brown fur and gnashing teeth, their screeches splitting the air.

"SKREEEEE-SKREEEEE-SKREE!"

"Contact!" Dace's voice was ice. "Mira, take the lead runners. Torren, hold center. Kess, watch your flank — they'll try to circle."

Mira's rifle cracked from the high rock. The first Razorjaw's head snapped back, and it tumbled down the slope. A second shot. A third. Each one precise, each one lethal.

Torren's cannon boomed, the concussive blast catching a Razorjaw mid-leap and sending it spinning into two others. He didn't flinch. Didn't move. Just absorbed the impact and fired again.

Kess danced along the east flank, her sidearms barking in rapid bursts. A Razorjaw lunged at her from behind a rock — she spun, fired twice into its chest, and kept moving without breaking stride.

Alex watched for exactly three seconds. Then he stopped watching.

"Going in," he said.

He pushed the throttle forward. The Lanstag surged down the ridge, its hooves tearing furrows in the earth. The machine built speed with terrifying momentum, the wind screaming past the cockpit.

"HONNN-BRRRR-ZZZZT!"

The Lanstag's charging bellow rolled across the battlefield like thunder. Half the pack turned toward the sound. That was all Alex needed.

He hit the first wave at full speed. The Breaker Horns caught a Razorjaw square in the chest, launching it into two of its packmates. The Rolling Spike Shields spun to life, shredding another that tried to leap at the Lanstag's flank.

"VREEE-EE-EE-EE!"

The sound of the shields was like a mechanical scream. Flesh and bone tore apart against the spinning metal.

Alex wove through the pack, the Lanstag's movements fluid and brutal. A Razorjaw clamped its jaws on the machine's foreleg — he kicked it loose with a sharp pivot, then brought the hoof down on its spine. Another came from the left — the Breaker Horns caught it mid-charge and flung it aside.

Through the chaos, he caught glimpses of Houndstooth. Mira's rifle never stopped. Torren's position held like a mountain. Kess moved like water, flowing around every attack.

A cluster of five Razorjaws broke from the pack and surged toward Torren's position. Too many. Too fast.

"Torren, five on your six!" Dace barked.

"I see them!"

Mira's rifle cracked twice in rapid succession. Two Razorjaws dropped. The remaining three closed the gap. Torren's cannon fired, catching one, but the other two slammed into his shield. He staggered. The line buckled.

"Mira!" Dace's voice cut through the noise.

Mira was already moving. She abandoned her high position, slid down the rock face, and landed in a crouch ten meters from Torren. Her rifle came up. Three shots. Three kills. Each one placed with surgical precision between skull and spine.

Torren regained his footing, his shield arm trembling but holding. "Thanks, Mira."

"Don't mention it. Literally. I'm going to pretend I didn't just abandon my overwatch position."

Alex felt something he hadn't expected. Respect. Not for their firepower — the Lanstag outclassed them in raw destruction. But for the way they moved together, the way Dace's voice never rose above a calm directive, the way Mira could drop three moving targets in under two seconds, the way Torren simply refused to fall.

This was what six years of survival looked like. Not a machine. Not a blueprint. Just people who trusted each other enough to stand in front of monsters and not break.

He filed that thought away and drove deeper into the pack.

The Razorjaws were thinning now, their coordination shattered by the dual assault. Alex pushed the Lanstag toward the center of the nest, toward the dark opening he could see at the bottom of the depression. The queen's tunnel.

Then the ground shook.

Not a tremor. A convulsion. The earth split open ten meters ahead of him, a jagged crack racing toward the tunnel entrance. Rocks tumbled. Dust billowed. And from the fissure, a sound rose — deep, resonant, wrong.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

Seismic pulses. The queen was below, and she was angry.

The crack widened into a chasm, and the tunnel entrance collapsed inward, opening into a vast underground cavity. Alex could see it through the dust — a cavern that stretched beyond the reach of the Lanstag's optics, its walls glistening with moisture and something else. Bioluminescence. Pulsing. Alive.

The queen was down there.

Alex didn't hesitate. He drove the Lanstag into the breach.

The machine descended through the collapsed earth, its hooves finding purchase on broken stone. The sounds of the surface battle faded — Dace's commands, Mira's rifle, the Razorjaws' screeches — all of it swallowed by the earth.

The Lanstag's optics adjusted, cutting through the gloom with amber light. The cavern opened around him, vast and cathedral-like. The walls were lined with bones — hundreds of them, thousands, fused together into a grotesque architecture. And at the center, on a throne of femurs and skulls, she sat.

The Queen Razorjaw.

Harsk's sketch had not done her justice. She was massive — three times the size of her packmates, her body a nightmare of excess. Six limbs, each ending in claws that could gut a transport vehicle. Her jaws were layered, rows upon rows of teeth designed for one purpose: to tear. Bioluminescent veins pulsed beneath her hide, casting the cavern in sickly green light.

She turned her head toward the Lanstag. Her eyes — too many eyes — fixed on the machine with an intelligence that made Alex's skin crawl.

She opened her jaws.

"SKREEEEEEEEEEE—"

The sound was a physical force. The Lanstag's audio sensors peaked. The cavern walls vibrated. Dust rained from the ceiling.

Alex gripped the joysticks. His heart hammered. His hands were steady.

The queen rose from her throne, her many limbs unfolding like a nightmare blooming. She was not just big. She was wrong. Something about the way she moved, the way the bioluminescence pulsed in patterns that almost looked like language.

So this is what a queen looks like up close.

The Lanstag's core hummed louder, responding to his adrenaline, his focus, his absolute refusal to back down.

"HONNN-BRRRR-ZZZZT!"

The Lanstag roared back at her, the sound echoing through the cavern, shaking loose stones from the ceiling. The queen's many eyes narrowed. Her limbs tensed.

Alex charged.

The Lanstag surged forward, hooves striking bone and stone, Breaker Horns leveled. The queen lunged to meet him, her claws raking the air where the Zoid had been a half-second before. Alex pivoted, the Lanstag's agility carrying him past her guard, and drove the Thruster Lance into her flank.

The impact was enormous. The queen staggered — but she didn't fall. Her hide absorbed the blow, the bioluminescent veins flaring bright as they distributed the force. She twisted with impossible speed, her tail — thick as a tree trunk, studded with bone spurs — whipping around and catching the Lanstag's shoulder.

Metal screamed. The cockpit shuddered. Alex's HUD flashed warnings.

The queen pressed her advantage, closing the distance, her jaws snapping at the Lanstag's neck joint. Alex fired the autocannons point-blank into her face. The shots staggered her, but her hide was too thick, too dense. The rounds punched shallow craters but didn't penetrate.

She was learning. Adapting. Just like the Liger had.

This is going to be a fight.