Iron Empire

Twenty-Nine: Calm

Report: Quinn
The Ural Mountains.
Russia.
Mount Yamantau research facility.
Designation: "Frostpoint"

Seventy-two hours after Fisk's second address to Jackson Quinn.

A battle was coming.

The snow fell lightly on my face, chilling my forehead and nose as it completed its slow fall to Earth. However, at this height, it didn't have far to go. Mount Yamantau stood a whopping one thousand, six hundred and forty meters above sea level, jutting high above the rest of the Ural mountain range.

Mount Yamantau, as well as most of the Ural range, had belonged to Axion and the Americans since the very earliest days of the Iron War, captured as the U.S.A made its first push into enemy territory.

In its former life, the base had been a Russian sensory outpost, built atop the flattened peak of the mountain. This impressive feat of terraforming had been achieved for a purpose—Yamantau's man-made plateau hosted a kilometre-wide ring of twenty satellite observation towers, with the main base at their center.

Axion, ever resourceful, had taken control of the outpost and retrofitted it into a factory to churn out new mechs in the middle of enemy territory. The kilometre-wide field atop the mountain made an excellent testing ground for mechs, and the abandoned communications equipment had proven useful for espionage.

Nowadays, the mass production lines of Yamantau had been shut down. Instead, the base was used to build and test prototype Axion mechs. The base itself had even been given a moniker—Frostpoint.

I trudged through the snow as it fell around me, soaking my combat boots. In one hand I held the blueprints Draco so desperately wanted. My other hand held a radio, ready to call in the cavalry at any sign of trickery. I was equipped with a standard parka, a vest and a helmet, not that they would do any good against a mech.

No wonder Director Fisk had wanted us to meet him here. The facility at Yamantau was massive and opposing, much like the mountain itself. A latticework of mech-sized bridges and platforms surrounded the tall, angular shape of Frostpoint. Much like an oil rig in the ocean, the main base was held aloft above the sea of snow on four massive concrete stilts, accessed only by the network of bridges and ramps beneath it. Over half a kilometre away I could see the pointed outline of the base's numerous satellite towers, each unit jutting into the sky like a needle pointed at heaven.

Just beyond them, the drop off the side of the mountain was steep and unforgiving.

The terraforming of Mount Yamantau hadn't been perfect—although the ground was perfectly level in many places, time had taken its toll on the snowy plateau. Just behind me, part of the field had sagged downward, creating a section that was ten meters lower than the rest of the mountaintop. I was sure that in a few years it would give way to the elements, but it held in place for now, creating a steep, rocky embankment and a moderate drop.

The air was thin. My breath fogged the space in front of me as I looked up toward the latticework of metal that surrounded me. The massive, mech sized bridges were meant to be a testing ground for new and terrifying innovations that Axion could introduce into the Iron War. I was standing in the heart of the Axion war effort with nothing but a radio, a blueprint and a coin.

A storm was coming.

The blueprint itself was a mystery. Burned and weathered from years of disuse, even analysts aboard the Firmament had been unable to determine what Project Terminus was. My father's last recorded words gave us few clues to go by and the blueprint itself was utterly illegible, so it was a mystery as to why Axion wanted the plans back so badly.

However, if Axion wanted them, what were the odds that they had, in fact, completed Project Terminus in the decade since the Iron War had begun? If so, what was Terminus? What did it do?