Yet Aerion had no time to examine the unfamiliar sense of "smoothness" within him.
As a warrior of the Iron Hands Legion, his cold logic overrode all irrelevant speculation.
His warriors were still battling the mechanical tide on every side. The echoes of explosions, the screech of tearing metal, the shriek of energy weapons, and the brief, urgent calls over his comrades' channel formed his only reality.
He had to act. He had to find the critical point that could turn this battle of attrition around.
His bionic eye and biological vision swept the chaotic battlefield in unison, rapidly overlaying, analysing, and filtering data streams and optical images.
The scarlet lights of walkers, the massive silhouettes of heavy units, flashes of explosions, the black figures of his comrades...
Amid that torrent of information, his highly active processor caught and highlighted an exceedingly faint anomalous signal, like a sound wave of a peculiar frequency in the deep sea.
Some two hundred metres away, a mechanical construct stood motionless at the edge of a partially enclosed area formed by collapsed giant pipes.
It lacked the oppressive bulk of a “Heavy.” It was even slightly slimmer than a standard “Walker,” its silhouette closer to that of some streamlined observation or command unit.
Matte dark-grey armour covered its body, with no conspicuous weapon ports. Only its head bore densely packed arrays of different-wavelength Sensors, turning at an almost imperceptible rate as they surveyed the entire battlefield.
Amid the boundless, surging mechanical frenzy, its silence was almost uncanny, yet it drew no attention.
But the instant Aerion's "gaze" locked onto it—
Aerion felt something that defied description through ordinary senses, yet struck directly against his mechanical nerves.
Within a hundred metres of that silent construct, every mechanical unit moving, firing, charging, or suffering damage seemed