The southern Imperial border ran across flat, broken ground where huge Steam Forts churned the soil into mush.

  The ground there was level enough to favor machines, but it was never smooth. Shattered stone lay half buried beneath dust and scrub, old impact scars left by decades of testing, skirmishing, and quiet border wars nobody officially remembered. Tracks ground against rock. Metal complained constantly. Any commander who thought flat terrain meant safety learned better within the first hour.

  The Bartizan Towers advanced in formation, two massive D-shaped fortresses on broad tracked skirts, their armored flanks angled forward like the faces of squat castle keeps turned sideways. Each tower carried its weight with a kind of restrained patience, power stones burning steady and deep within their cores. They did not rush. They did not wander. They moved like trained soldiers, because that was what they were.

  Imperial doctrine did not prize spectacle. It prized control.

  The lead Bartizan adjusted course by a few degrees, its commander reading terrain data and stone density from scrolling tactical projections. The lighter rifled cannon mounted forward tracked smoothly as it swung to cover open ground. A faint shimmer passed across the hull as the light magical reflex shield cycled, testing itself against nothing at all.

  Privateers had been active here for weeks. No flags, staying off rails unless necessary. Raids on villages and small towns, attacks on survey teams, harassment meant to test response times and provoke mistakes. The Empire had answered in its usual way.

  Quietly. Precisely.

  Contact came without ceremony.

  Two Turret Forts crested a shallow rise ahead, octagonal hulls squatting low and broad, their heavy smoothbore cannons already slewing into position. They were Hegemony standard issue. Cheap by Imperial standards, but still terrifying machines. Each carried a single twenty-pounder gun in its turret, designed to throw mass rather than be precisely accurate; brute force meant to batter targets into submission through sheer violence.

  The distance favored the Bartizans.

  The Imperial commander did not order fire immediately. He watched. Calculated wind. Accounted for rock scatter. Let the turret towers finish their slow traverse, let them commit.

  Then he gave the order.

  The Bartizan fired once.

  The ten-pounder rifled cannon cracked like a thunderclap compressed into a single instant. The shell did not arc. It cut. A bullet-shaped projectile screaming forward with disciplined fury, punching into the turret tower’s frontal armor at a shallow angle. The reflex shield flared as the return shot from the turret tower struck moments later, the heavier ball slamming into the shimmering field and shattering harmlessly into fragments of slag and spent magic.

  The rifled shell did not shatter.

  It punched through.

  Armor peeled back like a wound forced open by a surgeon who did not care if the patient screamed. Internal bulkheads ruptured. The shell detonated inside the turret tower’s core compartment, tearing through structural bracing and sending shrapnel and pressure through systems never designed to absorb that kind of penetration.

  The turret tower did not explode.

  It died more quietly than that.

  Power dropped. The massive octagonal machine sagged to one side, tracks grinding uselessly as systems failed in sequence. Smoke poured from vent seams. Crew compartments went dark.

  The second turret tower fired twice in panic, heavy rounds slamming into rock and shield alike, neither shot landing true. Its commander was already trying to pull back, realizing too late that this was not a raid response but an execution.

  The second Bartizan moved.

  Imperial Commanders did not need to shout orders. Their Forts moved without the need of orders because they were trained and drilled relentlessly, because they knew the plan far ahead of time, and were trained to react with forward momentum. Tracks bit into stone and dust as the Bartizan surged forward, angling to keep its shielded face toward the enemy. Its rifle fired again, shell striking with methodical cruelty. One round clipped the turret tower’s cannon housing, warping the barrel and ripping the traverse mechanism apart. Another punched into the tread assembly, shredding linkages and throwing the massive fort into a grinding halt.

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  The turret tower kept firing until it could not.

  Within minutes, one Hegemony fort lay dead, the other crippled and bleeding smoke.

  That was when the STVs arrived.

  Small tracked vehicles burst from behind rocky outcroppings and shallow depressions, low ATV-scale machines on stubby tracks, engines whining as they accelerated toward the fighting giants. Hegemony colors marked many of them, crude paint and hurried insignia slapped over old hulls. There were more than Imperial intelligence had expected. A lot more.

  Imperial STVs met them head-on.

  The clash happened close, brutally close. There was no room for maneuver, no elegant arcs of fire. STVs raced and skidded across broken stone, single riders firing handheld guns and energy rifles one-handed while steering with the other, bodies low and tight to the machines as they leaned into turns. Bolts and rounds stitched the ground as vehicles surged past one another at speed, impacts ringing through hulls. Machines died first, tracks shredded, and engines flaring as riders were thrown, crushed, or burned with their vehicles. Their objective was clear.

  The Hegemony wanted treads.

  Charges were deployed from moving STVs ahead of the Bartizans, dropped at speed and armed remotely as vehicles darted through fire. Explosions tore at stone and track assemblies alike, throwing debris and wreckage into the air.

  Imperial STVs moved to intercept, gunning down approaching riders before they could deploy charges, machines slewing hard to cut off angles while staying fast and mobile. They took losses, but fewer. Always fewer.

  The first Bartizan took a hit to its forward tread.

  The blast tore metal loose, damaging but not disabling the tread and assembly, and throwing the massive machine into a lurch. The commander compensated instantly, rerouting power, shifting weight, keeping the tower moving, slower now but still lethal. Damage control crews were already sealing compartments and shoring internal braces.

  The Empire did not panic when things broke. It fixed them.

  Then the horizon changed.

  Three more turret towers emerged, advancing hard from the north. Fresh machines. Full crews. Guns already elevated. The Hegemony had been waiting.

  The balance of the fight shifted in a single breath.

  The Bartizan commanders saw it immediately. Their advantage had been speed and precision, the ability to dictate range and angle. Now they were outnumbered. Five turret towers against two Bartizans, even with one turret disabled, meant overlapping fire arcs and saturation.

  The first heavy round struck the damaged Bartizan’s shield and shattered it.

  The second hit armor.

  Stone and steel screamed as the impact slammed into the sloped face, denting but not penetrating. Another shot followed, then another, the heavier balls battering the reflex shield until its shimmer flickered and failed.

  The second Bartizan moved to cover, interposing itself between the crippled tower and the advancing turret forts. Its rifle fired again and again, precision shots hammering weak points, punching into joints, snapping armor seams. One turret tower took a shell through its side plating, systems flaring before stabilizing. Another lost a section of tread but kept moving.

  The Hegemony could afford that.

  Their STVs pressed harder, flooding the field with machines. Casualties mounted as vehicles burned, and crews were lost inside them. Imperial STVs disengaged and repositioned in good order, never breaking formation, each withdrawal measured and covered by fire.

  Charges detonated near the second Bartizan’s tracks. One blast lifted the massive machine’s rear edge, slamming it back down hard enough to crack internal supports. Warning runes flared across the commander’s display. The tower slowed.

  The fight ground on.

  Cannon fire echoed across the plain, shockwaves flattening scrub and tossing debris. Smoke hung thick and low, obscuring movement and making targeting harder. The Bartizans fired through it anyway, trusting training and data over sight alone.

  Eventually, the order came.

  Withdrawal.

  Not retreat. Not rout. Withdrawal.

  The Bartizans laid down a curtain of fire, shells striking in disciplined patterns that forced turret towers to pause or risk exposing weak flanks. Imperial STVs disengaged in sequence, covering one another as they pulled back, damaged vehicles towing wrecked hulls when possible and abandoning the rest under fire.

  The damaged Bartizan moved last, its engines straining as it reversed under fire, shield flickering intermittently as remaining reserves were burned to buy seconds.

  A turret tower fired a final shot that struck true, smashing into the Bartizan’s side armor and cracking through to secondary compartments. Fire flared briefly before suppression systems choked it out.

  The Bartizan did not stop.

  It withdrew.

  When the fighting ended, the plain was littered with wreckage. One turret tower lay dead, another crippled. The Empire had taken damage, losses, and wounds. The Hegemony held the field, but at a cost that would take time to replace.

  Command tallies would later mark the engagement as inconclusive.

  The officers who read those reports would know better.

  The Empire had answered the raids.

  And the border, now fully awake, waited for what came next.