Once the demons had all been picked off the walls, it was time to launch a counter attack. The Factory Core had sent its geckoes out from the sniping spots they had been using on roofs, perched upside down under overhangs, and in other such unlikely places, in an assault. Now the nimble mechanical creatures were swarming up the ramparts, undaunted by any angles, for they could stick to anything and climb any surface with their gecko feet.
The first of them cleared the top of the city wall, and finally the Factory Core, using this unit’s eyes, was able to get a view of the size of the demon army camped outside … and the sight was something to behold indeed.
The flat plains had formerly been used to cultivate crops, with sunlight coming in through shafts that, like the great chimneys, led all the way to the surface of the Smoky Mountains. The demons had blocked up these shafts prior to their assault. They hated sunlight, and thus the plain was now darkened. Also, wraiths especially were very vulnerable to sunlight—more than a few seconds of exposure could kill them.
The lack of light, however, was not the only reason the plain was dark. The crop fields had been completely trampled, and were now covered with what was perhaps the most massive army that had ever been seen in the Below World. Hundreds of thousands of demons warriors were camped outside the city walls, ready to completely overrun the city … and all of dwarven civilization.
If the Factory Core had been a human, elven, dwarven king or general, it would no doubt have been feeling quite terrified right now, looking out over this ocean of enemies that seemed to stretch as far back as the eye could see.
The Factory Core, however, was no dwarf, elf or human; it was all of them, and more. Its mind stared out at the immense horde, and its first thought was this: this will be a challenge, a challenge I am more than capable of overcoming.
The Factory Core also noticed something else, or rather someone it had met before. The huge demon commander, Grakk’n, standing near the city gates below. He was clad, as he had been before, in black dragon bone armor. But this time, it was a full plate suit of it, with only his face visible through the open visor.
The mechanical geckoes’ crossbows would be useless against his armor. No metal but mithril could penetrate it, and the ice magic wouldn’t be effective against him unless it could get to his skin and flesh.
The Factory Core knew that it only had one shot at the moment; if it could take out Grakk’n, it could severely demoralize the rest of the demon troops and maybe even force them to desert.
The mechanical gecko lined up Grakk’n’s face in the sights of its crossbow, stilled, and then fired the weapon.
However, Grakk’n wouldn’t be so easily defeated; he had seen the gecko taking aim the instant before it had loosed its bolt, and he ducked just as it fired. The bolt zipped through the air in the place Grakk’n’s face had occupied just a split-second earlier, and hit the torso of one of the slave driver demons just behind him, instantly turning the body of the creature to ice-cold stone, which shattered into a thousand pieces.
“You missed!” roared Grakk’n defiantly, and then he slammed the visor of his helm shut, encasing his body completely in dragon-bone armor. For the moment, the window in which it had been possible for the geckoes to slay Grakk’n had been closed.
The other mechanical units got up on top of the walls, and from their position up there began pouring a withering fire of crossbow bolts, with ice-enhanced tips, into the massed ranks of the Demon Horde army. Demons were exploding into icy shards left, right and center. Grakk’n looked around him, his helmeted head darting from one side to the other, and he bellowed out a metallic roar of rage and frustration. He bent down and picked up the fire whip that the demon slave driver—who had just been killed by the crossbow bolt intended for him—had dropped.
Grakk’n stormed over to the battering ram and began lashing the fire whip across the backs of the cave trolls, smashing the fiery straps into their grey, elephant-like skin with maddened fury.
“Swing the ram, you scum!” he roared, slashing the whip even faster. “Smash the door down, break it down!”
The cave trolls grunted and bellowed with pain and helpless anger, but they did as Grakk’n commanded, and swung the massive, dragon-headed battering ram into the doors of Karak-Drang.
The doors were made of the stoutest, thickest oak, and were reinforced all over with steel. But from the first time the gigantic battering ram crunched into them, it was clear that they wouldn’t hold for long. The impact of the blow rippled along the walls like a shock wave from an earthquake, and the gates shook and splintered. The sound of the dragon-head ram crashing into them was like the booming of a gigantic drum.
“That’s it!” roared Grakk’n, lashing his whip all around him, laying into the enslaved cave trolls with fury. “Pull it back, get it back into position! Move it, move it you scum!”
The fire whip cracked, slashed and hissed, searing and cutting the skin of the trolls, and forcing them to tug the enormous battering ram back for another strike.
The Factory Core watched, concerned. It was apparent that the door could only withstand maybe two or three more strikes before it would be smashed to smithereens. Shooting the cave trolls with the ice-enhanced arrows wouldn’t be nearly as effective as shooting the demons with them; cave trolls lived near the surface, and mostly in caverns in the highest peaks of the Smoky Mountains, so they were pretty resistant to cold. The magical arrowheads wouldn’t be much more effective than regular steel tips … which would barely pierce their thick hides anyway.
“Break it down! Swing it, break it down!” roared Grakk’n, forcing the trolls to smash the huge battering ram into the door again with his whip. Once more the walls vibrated from the force of the blow, and the doors buckled inwards, almost yielding completely.
The Factory Core knew it had to act and stop the cave trolls now. It couldn’t inflict enough damage to kill or seriously wound them, but it realized that another course of action would be just as effective. While the ice magic crossbow bolts wouldn’t harm the trolls, they would be great against iron, freezing it to the point where it could shatter. And the chains and collars the demons used to restrain the enslaved cave trolls were made of iron, or so it seemed.
As the cave trolls pulled the battering ram back for another swing—the swing that could potentially destroy the gates of the city—the Factory Core directed a number of geckoes to aim their crossbows at the restraints holding the cave trolls captive. With a zip and a twang of strings, the geckoes loosed their magic bolts. The projectiles streaked through the air and sent showers of sparks flying everywhere as the steel tips hit the cave trolls’ iron collars and chains.
While the steel obviously did no damage to the iron, the magic did, freezing the metal to the point where it cracked. As the cave trolls’ bonds fell off them, they suddenly, collectively realized that they were free … and no longer forced to be the demons’ slaves.
While cave trolls were evil creatures themselves, this didn’t mean that they were friendly towards demons. They had been enslaved by those fiends, so they hated them. And now that nothing held them back anymore, they were able to finally take their revenge on the creatures who had made them suffer. And this, they did with immediate effect.
The enraged cave trolls abandoned the battering ram and began rampaging wildly. Each cave troll was almost as large as an elephant, and now that they were loose, they were almost impossible to contain. The first demons they turned on were the slave drivers, whose whips were now useless. The cave trolls charged in, grabbing the slave driver demons and ripping their heads off, or tearing their whole bodies in half as if they were nothing but rag dolls.
Howling with fury, Grakk’n drew his sword and jumped into the midst of the rampaging cave trolls. Being far bigger than a regular demon warrior, he was more than a match for the trolls, especially with his full suit of dragon bone armor to protect him.
Grakk’n cut down one troll, then jump
ed onto its body as it fell, using it to vault himself up into the air. As he came down, he whipped his sword around in a whistling arc and took the head off another cave troll.
His primary objective wasn’t to fight and exterminate cave trolls, though.
Even as the cave trolls rampaged among the demons, and the mechanical geckoes rained down ice-enhanced bolts from the tops of Karak-Drang’s walls, firing hundreds of the deadly projectiles into the massed demon army, Grakk’n charged at the splintered gates of the city. They were almost broken; one more swing of the battering ram would have smashed them to pieces. But since Grakk’n didn’t have one more swing of the battering ram, he did the next best thing: he started attacking the huge doors with his blade.
If the wooden gates hadn’t been so badly damaged, this attack would have been futile. But the gates were now only barely holding together. Grakk’n roared, furiously hacking at the dented parts. And after a minute or two of vicious onslaught, he smashed a hole through them that was large enough for him to get through.
“I have breached the city gates!” he bellowed to his massed warriors. “I have breached the gates! Charge! Now we take the city! Charge!”
CHAPTER 17
The Factory Core watched through the eyes of the mechanical geckoes as Grakk’n tore a hole through the gates of Karak-Drang. It was disappointed, yes, but it had had the foresight to plan for this eventuality. Having realized that the demons, with their vast numbers, were likely to get into the city at some point, the Factory Core had made preparations to deal with this.
As for its own physical location, the Factory Core had moved itself to the palace grounds for the time being. The walled palace, with its strong gates, provided an extra layer of security. Not that the Core was particularly worried about being hurt or destroyed by the demons—it was quite certain that they did not have the ability to do this, at least not with the weaponry they currently possessed—but it was easier to direct the troops it had created without having to simultaneously fend off waves of demon attacks.
Grakk’n stepped through the hole he had smashed through the city gates; the first demon to set foot inside Karak-Drang. He did not charge in recklessly. He knew that there had to be some traps lying in wait for the first wave of attackers who entered the city, and he did not intend to fall victim to any of these tricks. No, he would let his warriors take the brunt of whatever counter-measures the dwarves had set up to defend their city.
He stepped aside, hanging back, as the first waves of his subordinates started to pour through the gap. The warriors, having temporarily had their savage enthusiasm dented by the mechanical geckoes, were now whooping and shrieking with mad bloodlust again, and once inside the city they charged off in groups, howling and screaming, searching for dwarves to annihilate and items to destroy.
As Grakk’n watched his troops going on a rampage, he began to grow more and more suspicious and impatient; why were the dwarves still not responding? The mechanical geckoes on the walls were, of course, continuing to shoot tons of ice-magic crossbow bolts into the ranks of the demons. And now some of these reptiles had scuttled back over the city walls, and were perched on the inside, sniping at the demons who were coming into the city—but why was there no larger counter-attack from the dwarves? Surely these damned units were not the only weapons the dwarves planned to use?
On one of the stockades near Grakk’n, a mechanical gecko fired its last bolt. The projectile—as accurately shot as any of the others it had loosed—buried itself in the back of a whooping demon warrior, cutting his war cries abruptly short and causing his body to explode in a shower of ice shards.
Grakk’n watched the gecko’s reloading mechanism closely, noting that no more bolts were being fed into the arm.
“Get the steel beast!” he roared, pointing at the gecko. “It cannot shoot any more! Tear it off the wall, and rip it to pieces!”
A couple of demons near the gecko jumped up onto the wall and started scurrying up it, like cockroaches.
“Not so powerful now that you can’t pick us off from a distance, eh?” growled Grakk’n as he watched his warriors racing up the barricades towards the gecko.
Then, however, something happened that took the demon commander by surprise. Instead of trying to flee, the mechanical gecko charged straight at the demons who were coming for it, as if they were flies on the wall and it was feeding time. The gecko moved with surprising speed, and as the closest demon got to it, the gecko lunged forward with its head, opening its steel jaws wide … and then clamping them shut with vicious power over the demon’s skull. The demon’s now-headless body dropped off the wall, and the gecko then spit the creature’s severed head out of its mouth.
As another demon scurried around the rear of the gecko, trying to position himself behind it for a backstab maneuver, the tail—with its silver-coated spikes—lashed out with surprising power, smashing the demon off the wall and sending him flying, with his black blood spurting in jets from the puncture wounds the spikes had inflicted.
“Grr!” roared Grakk’n as he watched the critter slaughtering his warriors. “More troops! Catch the blasted creature, catch it you fools!”
More demons were streaming in through the hole in the gates, but now that Grakk’n was inside the city, he realized that there was no more need for a battering ram; he could simply open the gates from the inside.
A huge cross-beam had been put across the doors to bar them from the inside. Grakk’n, with his mighty strength, was able to lift it up and toss it aside. And then, grunting and groaning with effort, he started to haul open the doors. It would have been easier and quicker if he still had his cave troll slaves to do this, but he was powerful enough to get the job done on his own, even if it did take him a good five minutes.
Once he got the gates fully cleared, demon warriors were able to storm the city en-masse. As Grakk’n pushed the final door fully, and a thick mass of demons started to charge in, the Factory Core knew that this was the moment it had been waiting for.
The moment to deploy one of the deadliest weapons it had built thus far.
And as a mass of demons surged into the city, they were met with something that took them completely off-guard … and decimated their numbers.
CHAPTER 18
The Factory Core felt what it assumed to be a rush of excitement. Finally, the time had come for it to test out another of its new inventions. The Factory Core had, during the skirmishes and battles it had observed in the tunnels, witnessed just how effective the dwarves’ gunpowder-based artillery had been against the demons: their muskets, which fired silver-coated balls, and the cannons especially, with their silver-coated grapeshot.
The weakness of these weapons, however, had been their operators. Dwarves, like humans, elves, or any other biological entity, had limits on how quickly and efficiently they could fire, load and reload such weapons.
The Factory Core had no such flaws. Also, since being given license to cannibalize the city’s structures, the Core had essentially been presented with an almost unlimited selection of machinery—especially in the various workshops scattered throughout Karak-Drang—that it could use and adapt to its needs.
Immediately facing the gates, on the inside of the city, was a four floor building that had formerly been the City Watch barracks. This had proven to be an ideal site for the Factory Core to set up a defense system which it planned to kick into action as soon as the city gates were breached, which had just happened.
When the dwarven army had evacuated the Below World, they had—on Bomfrey’s orders—left behind a great number of their cannons and muskets for the Core to use in its defense of the city. It had requisitioned a few hundred of these muskets, and a good few dozen cannons too, in the City Watch barracks, which had now essentially been converted into a four floor wall of pure firepower.
Each window in the building’s top three floors was packed with muskets, all held together in a cage-like steel frame, with piv
oting and swiveling arms that allowed each musket to be individually aimed at a target instead of simply blasting out shots in random directions. Like the many mechanical geckoes, each of these muskets was controlled by the vast mind of the Factory Core, like the limbs of a giant squid.
They would be triggered in a sequence that the Core had predetermined to be most effective for continuous firing and reloading. Each musket in the window would shoot half a second after the one before it, which meant that by the time the final musket in the cage had been fired, the first one was already reloaded and ready to go again—which meant that a pretty much constant state of firing could be maintained. Together, the hundreds of muskets in the top three floors of the barracks had thus become like a Gatling gun, firing thousands of rounds per minute … except that each one of these rapid-fire shots would be individually aimed at a target.
Then, on the ground floor of the barracks awaited the cannons. Because they were so large, there were only two per window. But again, the Factory Core had set them up in such a way that they were detonated in a sequence that allowed the first cannon to be fully reloaded and ready to blast by the time the last one had unleashed its charge of silver-coated grapeshot.
Because the process of reloading a cannon took a lot longer than that of a musket, the rate of fire for the cannons could not be as rapid as the muskets’. Each cannon discharged five seconds after the one before it. Even so, this provided a tremendously destructive rate of fire.
Grakk’n had just opened the gates when he saw the wooden window shutters of the large barracks, which was a mere thirty yards away, all fly open at once. And he knew that whatever was about to come out of those windows was not going to be friendly.
Factory Core Page 9