The log stamp rolled into view.

 

BUNKER CAMERA 03
LOCAL TIME INDEX: 04:17:09
VEHICLE STATUS: DORMANT
CRADLE STATUS: UNOCCUPIED

 

In the footage he leaned in to check one of the road wheels. Nothing remarkable. A man doing his work. Head down. Shoulders set. No ritual nor drama. Then the red warning lamp above the blast doors came on. Not flashing. Just lit. Krystan froze in the frame. On the bench, his hand tightened slightly against the wood.

 

Overlay text appeared, sourced from 329's subsystems.

 

LEGACY SUBROUTINE REQUEST
SOURCE TREE: ARCHIVED / RESTRICTED
AUTHORITY: UNRESOLVED
QUERY: EGRESS PATH AVAILABILITY

 

A second line followed almost at once.

 

ACCESS DENIED
BUNKER DOOR: CLOSED
RESTRAINT STATUS: ENGAGED

 

In the footage, he straightened and looked up at the lamp. He mouthed something. Then he turned towards the cradle hatch, then back to the door, then back to the hull again, already trying to think it through.

 

The first movement came a second later. The right-hand Vulcan twitched a fraction on its mounting. A systems cascade rolled across the lower third of the screen.

 

PRIMARY BUS POWER: LIVE
SECONDARY GENERATOR: SPIN-UP
TARGETING GIMBALS: INITIALISING
BARREL GROUP A: INDEX TEST
BARREL GROUP B: INDEX TEST

 

The red lamp began to pulse. Once. Then again. Measured. Steady. Too slow to be a panic alarm. Worse for that.

 

Krystan watched himself take one step back in the frame. He was not panicking. He could see the look on his own face. He stepped away, calculating, nervous, A shade of fear passed across him.

 

DIAGNOSTIC QUERY
OPERATOR COMMAND: NONE
REMOTE COMMAND: NONE
WAKE SOURCE: ARCHIVED / ACCESS DENIED

 

Then the engine turned over. Even through the recorder’s old speaker, the sound came through ugly and huge. Not a clean ignition note. A deep mechanical punch that shook the camera on its bracket and rattled loose tools across the bench below it. Dust leapt from the beams. A coil of cable slithered off a crate and vanished out of shot. The exhausts coughed black into the rear of the bunker.

 

PRIMARY GENERATOR: IGNITION SUCCESSFUL
DRIVE TRAIN: LIVE
MOBILITY STATUS: STAGED
RESTRAINT LOAD: 12%

 

On the bench, Krystan sat perfectly still. In the footage, he wasn’t still at all. He moved quickly now, not towards the cradle but across the bunker floor, angling for the blast-door controls. His head turned once as if still hoping for some obvious explanation. Breach alarm. Fault. Misfire in the dormant stack. Something. Whatever he thought then, the recorder did not tell him. It only showed him moving.

 

The left track bit. Only an inch. But it bit. The chains took the strain and held. For the moment.

 

RESTRAINT LOAD: 31%
RESTRAINT LOAD: 44%
RESTRAINT LOAD: 58%

 

The hull shifted forward another fraction. The V10 engine roared. That was the part the recorder had held onto most clearly. The noise filled the bunker until there was no room left for anything else. Not speech. Not thought. Just engine mass and the rising mechanical whine as the Vulcans began to spin up, their terrible howl rising.

 

BARREL GROUP A: 18% OPERATIONAL RPM
BARREL GROUP B: 18% OPERATIONAL RPM
EGRESS PATH: OBSTRUCTED
ROUTE PRIORITY: SURFACE ACCESS

 

In the footage, Krystan reached the blast-door panel and slammed a palm against the release housing. His other hand was already hauling the safety lever down. He did not stop to stare. He did not waste time trying to soothe the thing or understand it in full. He saw the load in the chains and the half-truth of the opening door and moved because he knew what would happen if he did not.

 

The first restraint on the right side went, torn asunder from its anchor. A spray of rust and dust, then slack chain whipping back along the floor.

 

RESTRAINT FAILURE: STARBOARD FORWARD
RESTRAINT LOAD REDISTRIBUTION

 

The hull drove forward another inch. Then another. The remaining chains drew taut in a single brutal line from floor anchors to towing lugs. Even through the grit on the lens, the tension in them was visible. Links trembled. Mountings shuddered. The whole berth taking the load.

 

RESTRAINT LOAD: 83%
RESTRAINT LOAD: 91%
RESTRAINT LOAD: 97%

 

Krystan was still fighting the door mechanism. The blast shutters juddered and began to rise. Daylight cut across the threshold in a pale seam.

 

MANUAL EGRESS OVERRIDE: ACCEPTED
BUNKER DOOR STATUS: UNIMPEDED

 

At that exact moment the left-side restraint assembly failed. Two links parted. One anchor tore free of the concrete and bounced once across the floor. The camera shook again as the hull lurched into the slack.

 

RESTRAINT FAILURE: PORT FORWARD
RESTRAINT FAILURE: PORT REAR
MOBILITY STATUS: UNRESTRICTED

 

The bunker doors were only half open. 329 moved anyway. Slowly at first, then with the loaded inevitability of something that had already resolved the obstacle and found it insufficient. Smoke poured from the exhausts. Dust boiled around the track guards. The Vulcans were spinning faster now, their howl no longer buried beneath the engine but rising through it, sharper, more focused, the sound of a weapon system coming properly awake.

 

EGRESS PATH: CONFIRMED
CLEARANCE MARGIN: INSUFFICIENT
PATH EXECUTION: CONTINUE

 

In the footage, Krystan threw himself out of the machine’s path and hit the wall shoulder-first. He turned his face away from the exhaust wash and reached again for the emergency release, hauling the doors wider because there was no other sensible thing left to do. Not because he had yielded. Because if he didn’t, that door was going to stop being a door.

The hull passed beneath the camera. For a moment the screen held nothing but top deck and smoke and the blur of one spinning barrel group along the edge of frame, too fast now for the eye to separate into parts.

 

BARREL GROUP A: 64% OPERATIONAL RPM
BARREL GROUP B: 64% OPERATIONAL RPM
SURFACE ACCESS: CLEAR
DEFENCE TREE: ACTIVE  - ECM ACTIVE. ABLATIVE - ACTIVE.
TRIGGER SOURCE: ARCHIVED / ACCESS DENIED

 

And then 329 was gone. The last seconds of the feed showed only the empty berth, chains dragged broken across the floor, dust slowly falling back through the light pouring in from outside. Krystan stood in the doorway, one hand braced high against the frame, looking out after it. No command was entered. No explanation appeared. Only one final line remained at the bottom of the screen.

 

OPERATOR STATUS: NOT PRESENT
COMMAND: CLASSIFIED

 

The log ended there. Krystan did not move for a long time. The recorder hummed quietly on the bench between his hands. Outside the maintenance room, somebody laughed once, far away, and a crate lid slammed shut. Human sounds. Ordinary sounds. Behind them all he could still hear that recorded roar in his head, the engine catching, the chains loading, the bunker becoming too small for what had woken inside it.

 

On the screen the final frame stayed frozen: broken chains, empty berth, door open to the light. He reached out and rewound the log to the moment before the engine caught. Watched the red lamp pulse once. Then once again. He still did not know what had triggered it. Only that, when it happened, he had not had the luxury of understanding first. He had only had time to act.

And he had.