Of Summary

For ten minutes, not a word came from utterance, not even in whispered form. A mute void reigned supreme in that chamber; while that was true, the opposite found everyone's thoughts.

His were no exception. Faster than his prodigious heartbeat, the Prime Beacon rushed through one mental string to another, with no consideration or pause for anything aside from the matter at hand. What did that mean?

Stop. He blinked, brow crinkling. He was jumping forward too far; he needed to go back to earlier. Sixth Headman said this event might prove the existence of a ceiling for the Gaiss Hollow, something humanity hadn't found itself capable of reaching for three centuries.

If it actually existed. For the Aud to have the capabilities needed to scale the sides of the Hollow and reach this eventual, theoretical ceiling, they needed to meet some prerequisites he drafted.

One was that the Aud needed to be able to lift and manipulate several times their body weight for long durations. No, "long" didn't work. Long gave the impression of something akin to weeks. Try months or years. Who knew how far up the ceiling was?

Another was that once up there, the Aud needed to know where they were going to reach the general vicinity of the ceiling above Fort Io. The Aud had many aspects of the biology of a subterranean organism, like eyes that could see in a black-and-white color spectrum, among other things. However, their eyes shouldn't have been so powerful and far-seeing that they could pierce the inexplicable mist that rested far above the residential scraper's top lodgings. So what was the secret behind their miraculous positioning?

The third and final one was that the Aud needed nigh-inexhaustible stamina to complete the laborious actions Sixth Headman proposed in the first place. Even though there had been no recorded cases of Aud reaching their limits and dropping or dying from exhaustion itself, there had to be a limit to how far those beasts could go, or how much they could move. There had to be, there just had to! If there wasn't, how--!

He was the one to break the silence. "Pa-5, what was the lowest tier Aud you saw in the siege?"

She took a moment to herself. "White, sir."

Damn it all! He wanted his dais repaired so he could smash it down a second time. Nothing else in his vicinity was as destructible, and he wouldn't give his seat the same treatment no matter how strong the urge was.

That white-furs were capable of making the climb and surviving gravity's pull once they let themselves fall meant even the weakest of Aud could make the trip with no risk of casualties even if they fell. He could see them all coming to the same conclusions as him; in every person's mind, the skirmishes to come in the war became shrouded in a dark veil promising nothing but defeat.

He might've been better prepared for this if he'd heard from Pa-5 earlier about her experiences, but the home interest was quick to move upon hearing her awakening. They joined their authority to bar him from interviewing her in a one-on-one setting. They applied a compelled speech principle, barring her from speaking to anyone about it until the meet itself.

Their increasingly drastic actions showed they were becoming desperate; then again, so was he. He couldn't tell with Ch-4 no matter what the rest of her bloc acted like. Her face displayed mild shock, though…right. Eighth Headman had mentioned the eyes before, and right now he was sure, at least in her case, that she lacked true surprise upon hearing the information.

"Pa-5, please continue your account." All heads swiveled to Ch-4 herself, who…wasn't in her seat. Once again, her presence was comfortable, established inside the confines of Eighth Headman's lap…almost a third of the chamber away from where he'd seen her a second ago. The dais blocked a part of her figure, so he couldn't see her with clarity. He had graduated from asking himself a…however many times it'd been already, why Eighth Headman still did nothing.

He observed her close as Pa-5's voice echoed again, only to find nothing catching his suspicion, keen enough as it was in the present. It must have something to do with her Vigor, he decided, and made the realization immediately following that: he didn't know what Ch-4 could do thanks to the Old Man's Blessing, despite how large her fame had grown due to it. Yet another thing to add to his list.

Pa-5 narrated parts of her journey. The garage she escaped to, and the orders she received there from Ul-5. Her escape from the western canyonlands, and the scenes she recorded on her drones. The first few encounters she'd had with Aud, and her fall, confirming Re-5's earlier conjectures. After that, she choked up, and she paused.

When it looked like In-3 would say something originating out of his impatience--though it was impossible to ignore he, like the rest, wore a genuine expression derived from sympathy, Re-5--still standing by her, touched Pa-5's shoulder. The latter carried on, mentioning the time when the worst of her injuries occurred. She concluded the account by admitting everything following this was either inaccessible to her or missing from her memory.

Ch-4's head bobbed up and down. "Thank you for your account, Serviceman Pa-5. You may return to the bench and will undergo questioning later in the meet. Next, please begin your part, Former Acting Sitesman Re-5."

Given the Nyx Breaker was safe and returned to human-secured territory and Ze-4 was in recovery, there was little reason to allow Re-5 to keep her temporary rank any longer. Re-5 ascended to the dais with grace, passing Pa-5 along the way. She waited until the other woman had found her seat before beginning.

"My period under the rank of acting sitesman began after Ze-4 voluntarily incapacitated himself to secure a breach against a blue-fur. There were sentiments that turning back then would've been the wisest choice, but I canceled that option. Though by that point, the Nyx Breaker attained clear visuals and brief records on the state of Io, I deemed the objective of the emergency investigatory survey still unfulfilled."

"Why is that?" said In-3. Out of all the headmen among the home interest, the Prime Beacon supposed he would want most to find something to punish Re-5 over. Her answer arrived with delicacy.

"The Nyx Breaker's crew wasn't to discover what fate befell the fort alone but to determine how, besides that. We had located the origin frequencies marking a trail for us to follow into the greater western tunnel system that we believed could lead us to suicide runners that were still alive. One of them was." She gestured behind herself.

"I understand. Please continue your account."

She recounted the drones the engineers and techs recovered and repurposed. There were mentions of the first skirmishes, the standing defense for an in-depth scan using the echo-room's capabilities, and the later skirmish over securing Pa-5. 

Following that was the Nyx Breaker's intense escape from the tunnels; pulling a risky series of maneuvers, Re-5 allowed the Titan to join with an underground river that took them beneath the Gaiss Hollow. It escaped the current near the southeastern border and made its way back into the Hollow from there.

At the time, its path of return was close to the patrol path of the Dervish of Palm, one of the Titans stationed in the southern mountainland. The rest, she concluded, the Directory knew better than her.

The Fourth Headman nodded. "Thank you for your account; I noticed you never elaborated on the state of the physical aspects of Serviceman Pa-5's constitution. How was she treated by the medical staff on board, if I may ask?"

Re-5 paused. The first inquiry was already aimed at one of the weak points in the militarists' defense. The logical next step for her--!

With a sense of deja vu in the air--which only the two in the whole chamber knew the name for the phenomenon--the doors leading to the outer ring were thrust open, and a serviceman dashed inside. "I apologize for overstepping my station! I report: the Jackal made contact with the First three minutes ago, and will arrive in twelve minutes."

In-3 was on his feet. "What is this?" He flared his nostrils up at the Prime Beacon but returned to the intruder without waiting for a reply. "Is this something you staged?" and then "What are you saying? The Jackal should be guarding Fort Rhea."

The intruder's lip trembled, and high in his perch above the rest of them, the Prime Beacon knew what he'd say; that sense of deja vu twisted into something drowning in cynicism and irony. His face paled. Damn. Damn, damnit, and damn!

"Fort Rhea has fallen!"

(I can't lie, I really like a certain story with different "Titans.")