Alex's eyes go to the seam in the rock face before anything else, the drill work, the brace points, force of habit from a life of building things that have to hold. The debris dam plugs the outlet, twenty meters of shattered rock and compacted silt holding back a lake that shouldn't exist. Millcross's crew drilled the charge wells along the weak seam Ziya identified, the Lanstag's hydraulic arms bracing against bedrock while Rhian's Arosaurer stands sentinel on the far flank.
Alex lowers the Liger Zero's canopy, and the HUD paints thermal overlays across the basin floor. The Colossus's heat signature should be unmistakable: a B-rank terraformer running hot from constant drilling. Instead the basin shows only the residual warmth of mineral-rich water and the faint cooling traces of its abandoned feeding pits. Gone. It shouldn't be gone.
Alex leaves the Liger Zero's cockpit at Ziya's call and descends to the Iron Mule's cab, where she's waiting.
"What's wrong?"
Ziya's hand hovers over the sensor display.
"We have a slight problem. The Colossus isn't in position. It moved upstream sometime in the last six hours. The seismic sensors picked up its passage, but the pattern was wrong, too deliberate for foraging. If we blow the dam now, the water hits empty ground. The liquefaction won't catch it."
Rhian leans over the console.
"Where is it now?"
Ziya taps the readout.
"It's holding at the basin's head, near the old river channel. It's almost like it's waiting."
The three of them stand in the cab, the basin's false lake stretching silent below. Alex lays out the problem: the Colossus has repositioned, and blowing the dam now would waste the liquefaction on empty ground. They need the creature in the basin when the water hits.
He taps the edge of the console, running the numbers the way he always does before he says them out loud, and proposes baiting it himself. The Liger Zero's speed and his own combat experience make him the only real option. Rhian's Arosaurer is fast, but she doesn't have the instincts to survive a B-rank's attention. In a chase, the Lanstag's mass works against it. And Ziya's piloting is still untested under fire.
Rhian plants herself in front of the console, arms crossed.
"That's suicide. You're not bait."
Ziya's fingers find the goggles pushed up on her forehead and adjust them, though they don't need it.
"Agreed. The Colossus's earth manipulation could bury the Liger before you clear the blast radius."
Alex doesn't argue. He's already run the calculations. The Liger Zero's ion boosters give it a 335 km/h ceiling. The Colossus's seismic attacks have range but need setup time, and he's seen the tell for it in the basin already. A hit-and-run pattern, striking the creature's sensor arrays and pulling back before it can localize him, will draw pursuit without ever committing to a straight fight.
His hand finds the pendant at his collar for half a second before he lets it go.
"I built the machine. I know its limits. I know mine."
Rhian's shoulders go rigid. Ziya's fingers press hard into the bulkhead. Neither argues. They've learned the shape of his stubbornness by now, and the alternative is watching him go alone.
"Trust me."
Two words. The only ones he has that matter.
He climbs into the Liger Zero's cockpit, and the canopy seals with a hydraulic hiss. The HUD blooms gold, the core's purr vibrating up through the seat.
"Ready?"
"RROOOO-AAARRR-GHRRR!"
The roar shakes dust loose from the cab's roof, raw and hungry. It's the Liger's own voice, and there's nothing in it but eagerness for the hunt.
The ion boosters ignite with a sound like tearing atmosphere, and they surge forward. The ridge line blurs beneath them, the basin's false lake spreading wide and silent ahead.
Alex eases off the throttle, just enough to feel the machine answer him.
"Easy. We're not hunting. We're baiting. You draw it. You don't commit."
"RROOO-ROOO...?"
"Trust me. You know the plan."
The Liger's optics flicker, burning gold-orange, and the core's purr drops to a lower register. It doesn't slow, but the wild edge leaves its posture. Good. Listening. The machine settles into the rhythm Alex drilled into it: controlled aggression, measured strikes.
The Colossus comes into view at the basin's head, a mountain of mineralized hide and crystalline deposits rooted in the old river channel. Its drill-cluster head hangs motionless, molten metal cooling at the tips. The creature hasn't moved to feed. Amber eyes fix on the ridge where the Liger Zero crests the rise, and it turns to meet them.
Alex keys the external speakers.
"Hey. Over here."
The Liger Zero throws back its head.
"RROOOO-AAARRR-GHRRR!"
The roar rolls across the basin, a challenge that vibrates in Alex's chest. The Colossus doesn't flinch. Its massive head swings slowly, the grinding maw opening and closing once. Then the ground heaves.
A seismic wave rips toward them. Setup, not the strike yet, there's still a half-second. Alex jerks the controls left, and the Liger's thrusters fire a correction burst that sends them skidding sideways. The wave passes beneath them, harmless.
"That was too slow. Do it again."
The Colossus's drill arms retract. Its forelimbs slam down, and the basin floor splits open. Rock spires punch up in a staggered line, each one timed to catch a dodging target.
Predictable. Telegraphed. Built to herd, not to kill.
Alex drives the Liger through the gaps, the machine's reflexes outpacing the terraformer's slow logic.
"SHWUUU FOOOMM!"
The ion boosters roar, and the Liger Zero closes the distance in three heartbeats, Strike Laser Claws extended. Golden energy crackles along the blades as they rake across the Colossus's flank.
Sparks shower. The mineralized hide holds. Shallow grooves score the surface, nothing more.
The Colossus doesn't bleed. It doesn't roar. A ponderous rotation brings its massive shoulder around like a falling cliff face.
It's coming, and there's no clean way out of this one. Alex fires the boosters again, and the Liger launches skyward, but the Colossus anticipates it. A second seismic pulse catches the machine mid-air and disrupts its trajectory. The Liger Zero slams down, its left hind leg buckling. Warning lights flare across the HUD.
"Damn it."
The Colossus advances, each step a localized earthquake. Its drill-cluster whirs to life, molten metal dripping from the tips. Mass is all it needs. It plants its weight and lets the ground do the rest.
"RROOO...?"
"Stay with me. We're leading it. Not fighting it."
Alex forces the damaged leg into motion, and the Liger Zero limps into a retreat that looks ragged but holds a precise bearing. The Colossus follows, its amber eyes locked on the retreating predator. It lumbers after them, seismic pulses cratering the ground where the Liger had been seconds before.
"Ziya. Rhian. You copy?"
"Loud and clear. Lanstag's in position. Charges armed."
"Rhian?"
"Here. Arosaurer's ready."
"Good. Draw it to the dam. Ten seconds once I give the word."
The Liger Zero's damaged leg sparks. Alex nurses the machine through a zigzag pattern, each turn calculated to keep the Colossus centered on the pursuit. Rock walls rise in his path, and sinkholes open beneath his feet, the ground itself turning against him. Every one of these has a flaw somewhere. Find it. The Weakness Scan overlay flags the structural gaps in each barrier before the Colossus can close them off.
"Now. Ziya, blow it!"
The detonation doesn't sound like an explosion. It sounds like the world tearing open.
The debris dam vanishes in a white flash, twenty meters of engineered collapse consumed in a single heartbeat. The basin's pent-up water doesn't trickle: it erupts, a wall of mineral-choked slurry surging downstream with the force of a broken world.
The Colossus turns its head toward the sound. Its amber eyes widen, the first expression Alex has seen on the creature that isn't cold calculation.
The water hits it like a hammer.
The terraformer's massive legs, built for bedrock and compacted earth, find only liquefied silt. Its crystalline deposits lose contact with solid ground, the very thing that had powered its seismic attacks. The drill-cluster whirs uselessly against the flood.
"RROOOO-AAARRR..."
The Liger Zero's roar carries triumph and something darker underneath it. The Colossus thrashes, its mountain-weight body sinking into the slurry it had created. Mud and water swallow its forelimbs, then its shoulders, then the grinding maw that had reshaped a river.
Its amber eyes find Alex's position on the ridge.
The water rises past its eyes.
The last thing Alex sees is the drill-cluster, still spinning, throwing mud in a final futile arc before the basin claims it entirely.
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