The Tin Soldiers (Final Dawn, Book 5)

by T W M Ashford

  Rogan stood alone at the NavMap table, studying a hologram of Monzeich. She nodded at them as they entered.

  “Nice suit, Klik. You look like a prettier version of Jack.”

  “Nope.” Klik stomped past her and sagged heavily onto one of the swivel chairs. “Don’t like that at all.”

  Rogan and Jack shared a brief, impish smile.

  “Take your seat,” she said, pointing at the captain’s chair. “We should be breaking through the clouds… now.”

  Your seat. Jack laughed dryly inside his head. He hadn’t been the captain for almost a year. It wasn’t his seat any more than it was Tuner’s, or Rogan’s, or Klik’s.

  Still, it would have felt weird to sit anywhere else.

  The clouds of Monzeich were black rather than white, yet they carried no rain. Their dark colour came from the smoke and smog belching up from the surface. It was only when the Adeona breached the cloud cover that Jack got his first view of the planet itself.

  It sure wasn’t about to win any beauty pageants.

  This was a dark world – an angry world. Five rocks out from its system’s sun – and these planets really were rocks, and little else – it was scarcely blessed with sunlight even in places where its lower atmosphere wasn’t so badly polluted. Yet Jack needed to apply no filters to the ship’s cockpit windows to see where they were going.

  Huge claws of black rock tore out from Monzeich’s surface, illuminated almost exclusively by the bubbling lakes and rivers of magma that continually reshaped the fiendish landscape. Jack had once read about Kintsugi, a Japanese art which involves gluing pieces of broken pottery back together with liquid gold. Viewing Monzeich from above, that’s exactly what he was reminded of – a world that somebody had cracked apart and then tried to stick back together again.

  Only this planet looked far from perfect to begin with.

  “Is that it?” asked Tuner, pointing out the window. “Is that the production facility down there?”

  As far as Jack could tell, Cyclone Manufacturing could have been any one of the dozens of industrial factories dotted across the violent landscape. Nestled amongst the rocks, they were more easily pinpointed by the toxic smoke rising from their chimneys than by the charred walls of the plants themselves. But Kansas had given Rogan precise coordinates.

  “That’s the one,” Rogan said absent-mindedly while running scans of the surrounding airspace. “Everything looks good, Adi. Take us down.”

  The Adeona gave the worst of the factory’s smog plumes a wide berth. It was only as they descended further that Jack realised how massive each production plant actually was – this one’s monolithic walls and bulbous domes stretched for kilometres in each direction.

  “Do all of the factories here produce automata?” Jack asked.

  “Not all,” Rogan replied. “Some just mine and process ore, others make steel and plastic. There are a few shipyards out here, too.”

  “Most assembly gets done off-world, though,” Tuner added. “Corporations find it hard to convince workers to come and live on a world like this.”

  “Which is one of the reasons why so many automata get built,” said Rogan. “Sometimes it’s between us and a prisoner workforce. It’s much easier to convince people when they don’t have any choice.”

  Jack nervously glanced down at the facility outside.

  “Erm… Cyclone Manufacturing doesn’t employ a prison workforce, does it?”

  “Not that I’m aware. Though there’s only supposed to be a skeleton crew, of course. Given that the factory’s operational, who knows who’s down there now.”

  “Yeah. Great.” The bottom fell out of Jack’s stomach. “Some quick inspection this is gonna turn out to be.”

  They drew close. Hundreds of thousands of basalt columns formed jagged hills around the facility. It would have taken a giant to climb any of them. Waves of lava crashed against their black shores. Towards the rear of the factory, past its three titanic production domes, Jack spotted vast, elevated shipping hangars. But this was supposed to be an “official” visit, which meant knocking respectfully on the door of the visitors’ entrance. A long, narrow footbridge with no barriers to either side stretched out from the front of the factory like a spit, precariously balanced fifty or so metres above the tide of fast-flowing magma below. A trio of round, empty landing pads waited for them at its end.

  Nobody else did.

  “I can’t see any welcoming party,” said Tuner, peering over the dashboard.

  “It doesn’t mean anything’s wrong,” said Rogan. “They didn’t know we were coming.”

  “And even if they did,” said Klik, “it wouldn’t mean they’d be happy about it.”

  The Adeona touched down on the landing pad and shut off her engine. The platform was sturdy, at least. Considering the original architects had succeeded in building a factory on top of a shifting molten crust, Jack supposed he had no reason to suspect it wouldn’t be… but he couldn’t ignore Cyclone Manufacturing’s reputation for cutting costs, either.

  “Shall we?” asked Rogan, gesturing to the stairs leading down to the cargo bay. “The sooner we find out what’s going on here, the sooner we can leave this awful factory behind us.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twice,” said Jack, jumping up from his captain’s seat. “Let’s get this over with and then find a new outpost to settle near. How does someplace tropical sound?”

  “Ooo, I like that,” said Klik, eagerly hopping off her own chair as he passed. “Just as long as there aren’t any mosquitos, though. I hate bugs.”

  Jack twisted his helmet into position as he entered the cargo bay. When the Adeona’s loading ramp opened, temperatures close to a thousand degrees would rush in to greet them. Rogan and Tuner were built to withstand extremes of heat and cold. He and Klik, on the other hand, needed to control their own climates through their suits.

  While Rogan helped Klik get her own helmet locked on tight, Jack studied the cluttered hall as if seeing it for the first time in years. It had been a while since he last disembarked the ship onto a new world, and he privately hoped that after a break some of the original marvel and excitement might return. But what had once been unimaginable no longer felt any more groundbreaking than stepping off a train at a station. How easily the human mind can adjust to a new sense of normal, he thought to himself disappointedly.

  Tuner’s old shell stared back at him soullessly from one of the dark and dusty corners, its lights off and its plasma cannon hanging lifelessly by its side. Jack broke its gaze, shivering, and wondered when the little guy planned to get rid of it. Without Tuner’s data core installed, the inert mech gave him the creeps.

  “There,” said Rogan, giving Klik’s helmet a couple of taps with her metal finger. “You’re all set. Open up, Adi.”

  The loading ramp grumbled open. The blast of hot air would have likely sent Jack stumbling backwards with his skin blistering, but all he felt was a soft puff of cool breeze from the filters inside his helmet.

  He heard Klik laugh in surprise beside him. Look who suddenly appreciated her spacesuit now…

  “Are you okay to wait for us here, Adi?” asked Jack, hanging back while the others alighted. “We shouldn’t be long.”

  “Oh, I’m more than happy to stay behind,” the Adeona cheerfully replied. “You won’t catch me inside a chop-shop like that.”

  Jack smiled and patted one of her girders.

  “All right. See you in a bit.”

  He followed the others down the ramp; no sooner had Jack stepped onto the landing pad than it closed back up behind him. The Adeona liked the heat inside her little better than anyone else, it seemed. Rogan was already halfway across the footbridge and he had to hurry to catch up. Not that he wasn’t grateful for her haste. Three seconds on-world and he already wanted to leave.

  Klik spun around in circles as she walked along the bridge, marvelling at the rapids of lava rushing past them. She got dangerously close to the edge before Ja
ck grabbed her and pointed her straight ahead.

  “Keep an eye on where you’re going,” he said, taking a deep breath. “If you slip, you’re dead.”

  “Keep an eye on yourself, old man,” Klik replied, shrugging him off. “There’s plenty of room. Don’t be such a bore.”

  Jack sighed and let her carry on. She was probably right. Perhaps he was becoming too big a grumpy old bastard for his own good.

  The entrance to Cyclone Manufacturing was even more intimidating up close. Not much of the facility could be seen from the bridge – the domes of its production plants and the slender cranes of its rear hanger were now hidden from view by the surrounding basalt columns, not to mention the facility’s towering facade, which rose in a cascading pyramid of three dozen blocky chimneys. Jack was reminded of a soot-black version of Barcelona’s La Sagrada Família, a grand cathedral whose construction began in 1882 and still hadn’t been completed by the time humanity left Earth for the stars.

  “Heavens above.” Jack stared up in awe. “Somebody took playing God a little too literally.”

  “There are no gods here,” Rogan muttered, shaking her head. “Just idiots throwing switches.”

  They reached the rocky outcrop at the end of the footbridge. A set of thick stone doors stood closed beneath a black, skeletal archway that resembled the two clavicles of a wishbone. Beside it, and separate from the main facility building, was a much more modest guardhouse.

  Rogan marched up to the window facing out towards the landing pads and knocked loudly on the reinforced glass. The lights were off and nobody answered. Jack pressed his helmet against the window and activated its night-vision, but all he could make out inside were a bunch of alien computer terminals and what he assumed were a pair of empty (and extremely uncomfortable-looking) chairs.

  Tuner found a door around the other side of the guardhouse and tugged on its handle. Locked tight. Then he tried hacking it open. No luck there, either. The guardhouse wasn’t just unoccupied – it didn’t even have any power.

  “I guess nobody’s home,” said Klik. “Maybe your friends made a mistake.”

  “Then how come there are fumes blowing out of the chimneys?” said Tuner, pointing up at the fiery sky. “Somebody’s producing something, all right.”

  “Well, there we go then.” Jack jabbed his thumb back in the direction of the Adeona. “The factory is operational, just as Kansas feared. Let’s go tell him the bad news.”

  “Not so fast,” said Rogan. “Maybe the guard’s taking a bathroom break.”

  “Or maybe,” he replied, “the factory has been taken over by a militia and opening that door will get us shot. Has anyone thought of that?”

  Nobody answered. For the second time since the day began, everybody awkwardly looked down at their feet.

  “Jack.” Rogan crossed her arms. “Who spent three months flying around the galaxy in search of clues as to Earth’s whereabouts?”

  He sighed.

  “You guys did.”

  “And who risked death to steal from the Mansa Empire and stop your friend from igniting a black hole?”

  “Well, Everett wasn’t exactly a friend…”

  “And who just spent a year on a damp sponge of a planet all so you could mope about and avoid any sense of responsibility?”

  “Okay! Okay. I get the picture. I’ve dragged you along on enough suicidal adventures. Now it’s your turn to get me killed.”

  Tuner patted him on the back.

  “We’ll try to bring you back in one piece, I promise.”

  “Uh huh. Just make sure it’s a good piece, all right?”

  He begrudgingly crossed the rest of the rocky plateau towards Cyclone Manufacturing’s main doors. They were shrouded in shadow beneath the giant, skeletal archway – little of the magma stream’s glow reached the base of the structure, and the factory’s exterior floodlights were just as dead as those inside the guardhouse. Jack’s bad feeling was fast becoming a terrible one.

  Rogan knocked on one of the doors to be polite, though they all knew they’d get no answer. Besides, it was made of stone. The sound wouldn’t carry. And it wasn’t as if unexpected visitors were supposed to just wander up and announce themselves. That’s what the missing guards were for.

  When nobody came, she gave the doors a hard push. Despite each being a good six metres in height, they rumbled open surprisingly easily. Even darker shadows waited for them inside.

  “After you,” she said, stepping aside for Tuner and Klik to go first.

  Jack glanced back at the Adeona and wished he’d brought their guns. He considered turning back to get them, but everyone else was already pushing ahead.

  Never mind. He did have a tendency to overthink things.

  After all, how dangerous could a factory be?

  4

  Cyclone Manufacturing

  The welcome lobby was so dark, Jack couldn’t even see the inside of his own helmet, and he certainly wouldn’t have been able to make out anything else in the hall without the aid of its optoelectronic image enhancement features. Everything adopted a ghostly green tinge.

  “Just as deserted as the guardhouse,” said Rogan. “If Cyclone Manufacturing was behind this, you’d think they’d have a few more employees stationed about.”

  “Exactly,” Jack grumbled.

  “Hold on a second,” said Tuner, hurrying over to what looked like a fuse box over on the far wall. “The factory must be on a different circuit to the exterior buildings. I’ll see if I can get some of the systems up and running.”

  Jack supposed that was right – if it weren’t, it would have been impossible for the production lines to be operational again. But as much as his nerves would prefer having the lights on, he wasn’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of broadcasting their intrusion to the entire factory.

  Not that he had much of a chance to voice his concerns. Seconds after Tuner opened the subsystem access panel, everything from the ceiling lights to the front desk to the air filtration vents coughed and whirred into life. Jack was momentarily blinded as his helmet adjusted to his new surroundings.

  “There,” said Tuner, dusting his little metal hands together smugly. “Much better.”

  Jack wasn’t sure if it was much better with the lights on, to be honest. The welcome lobby wasn’t exactly, well, welcoming. The walls were built from the same cold, black, twisted basalt that formed the facility’s exterior, except for where the stone stopped and tangled mess of exposed copper pipes took its place. Loops of cables dangled from the ceiling. It was as if Cyclone Manufacturing had run out of budget halfway through construction, then collectively shrugged and started work anyway.

  The only part of the lobby that didn’t scream “function over form” was the reception desk. Or at least, what Jack assumed was a desk. A similarly uncomfortable chair to that he’d seen in the guardhouse was positioned directly behind a twisted bench of granite with an archaic computer terminal installed at one end. Its wavy design wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Modern Art gallery back on Earth, though Jack suspected it had simply been constructed with a rather unique alien anatomy in mind.

  Rogan stepped cautiously over an open grate in the middle of the floor and stooped down to access the desk’s terminal while Klik looked around for a place to sit. She didn’t find one.

  “This is some seriously outdated tech,” Rogan said, rifling through the factory’s intranet with a disapproving look on her face. “I’m not sure who I pity more – the automata who get made in this place, or the poor souls who have to use this junk to do it.”

  “Really?” Tuner peered over the desk in disbelief. “Bolts alive, you’re right. That thing might as well run on gears.”

  “Got it.” Rogan stood up so quickly Tuner almost tumbled over backwards in surprise. “We need to head to Chamber 3. That’s where we’ll find our rogue production line.”

  Jack wasn’t sure if they needed to go to Chamber 3. It wasn’t what he would describe as a nec
essity in the same vein as breathing, or even ice cream with apple pie. They came to the factory, they identified which part of it was operational, and he was sure Rogan and Tuner had as many suspicions about who was behind its sudden reboot as he did. Did they really need to go further inside and confirm them? Couldn’t they just give Kansas and the Ministry everything they already had?

  But Jack was beginning to get as tired of his incessant complaining as everyone else. It wasn’t like they’d listen to him anyway. He didn’t see much point in saying anything at all, really.

  Klik yawned inside her helmet.

  “I’m bored. Which way?”

  Rogan turned slowly, trying to marry the map stored photographically in her head with the disorderly layout of the welcome lobby. She pointed to one of the rusty doors.

  “That way.”

  The doors weren’t even run on sensors; Tuner had to open them by punching a blinking button embedded in the partition where they locked together. They grunted apart on rollers. There could have been a valid security reason for having them open manually, or their motion sensors might have remained offline following the power cut, but in all likelihood it was just another way of saving the company a few extra credits.

  Jack wondered if Cyclone Manufacturing intended to break the whole facility down for scrap now it had been decommissioned, or if the cost of transferring the material across the galaxy outweighed the profit they’d get back. Or maybe they were gambling on the new automata regulations not lasting all that long.

  A deep, spectral mist rolled in from the corridor beyond and swirled around their ankles. Gone were the impenetrable stone walls with their weird, leathery creases; the hallway was practically just a long, dark gap between rows of pipes. Suddenly the lobby didn’t look so unwelcoming after all.

  Still, no complaining. He needed to be supportive of his friends, even if they were being bloody stupid.