“Well that’s not good,” Klik muttered.
“Do you reckon they welded it shut?” asked Jack. He hoped this was the case for two reasons. First, it meant there was no way inside. And second, he actually knew a thing or two about welding from his time spent down in the Pits.
“No,” said Tuner, jumping backwards as a shower of blue sparks spat out of the interface, “I reckon the scanner’s busted. There’s no way I’m hacking it open from this side.”
“Do you reckon you can fit through there?” asked Rogan. She pointed to a vent above the door. Pipes ran through it from the top of their corridor into the hall beyond.
“I can give it a go,” said Tuner, shrugging. “Give me a boost.”
Rogan picked him up with ease. Tuner scrambled into the hole until all that poked out were his two little paddle-feet.
“Erm, I can’t see the next hallway from here,” he called down. “The vent goes somewhere, though. Want me to keep going?”
“Is it safe?” asked Rogan. “Don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with. We can find another way in.”
As if. Jack wasn’t entirely convinced they could even find their way back to the ship.
“I’m going to see where the vent leads,” Tuner hesitantly replied. “If I can drop down, I’ll try to open the door from the other side.”
“Okay.” Rogan anxiously tapped her thigh as Tuner’s feet disappeared into the hole behind him. “Be careful.”
“Bolts, it is tight in here.” The echoes of Tuner’s voice grew steadily quieter as he crawled further away. “Can you imagine me doing this with an arm the size of a jet turbine…”
Eventually even the clanging of his hands against the copper pipes was inaudible. Jack, Rogan and Klik waited for his return in nervous silence.
Two minutes passed, which soon turned to three.
“Do you think he’s all right?” Rogan paced back and forth along the corridor with her arms crossed. “He should be back by now. Something must have happened to him.”
“We don’t know that,” said Jack. “I’m sure Tuner’s fine. Who knows how long that vent goes on for, or in which room he came out.”
Three minutes became four, and then five.
“Okay,” said Klik. “Even I’m starting to get worried now.”
With a sudden grunt, the reinforced security doors unlocked. As they slowly rumbled apart, Jack spotted Tuner waving at them from the other side.
“Come on, guys.” Tuner wandered back the way he came. “You’re gonna want to see this.”
Too impatient to wait until the door was fully open, the three of them hurried through the growing gap.
“Jesus,” said Jack, shuddering. “It’s like an even more macabre version of Detri’s mausoleum.”
They were standing in what Rogan’s map called “the Bridge” – a halfway point between the production lines in Chamber 3 and the warehouses and shipping hangars beyond. Inside the massive hall were all manner of conveyor belts and rail systems, all of them chugging along as if nothing were out of the ordinary. No engineers stood beside the machinery; everything was automated.
And boy, were there a lot of automata.
They came into the hall hanging from rails running overhead. Yet to be activated, they looked empty and dead, like corpses hung from slaughterhouse hooks. Bronze, seven feet tall and with plates of armour running the length of their bodies, Jack sure didn’t fancy going three rounds with any of them once they came online. They looked like steampunk Roman centurions.
He jumped as the reinforced security door suddenly grunted shut behind them.
“Don’t worry,” said Tuner. “I’m sure I can get it open again on our way back.”
The security panel beside it fizzled and died. A thin plume of smoke whispered out from amongst its wires.
“Probably.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Rogan. “It won’t be the only way in or out of this place. We haven’t even got to the proper chamber yet. Speaking of which…”
She pointed at the large set of swing-doors separating the Bridge from its neighbour, Chamber 3. The tunnel through which all the unactivated automata were shipped out one by one lay directly above them.
“Silo said he last saw his co-workers in there. We’d better keep our guard up. If the pirates are still here too, that’s where they’ll likely be.”
“Are those guns?” said Klik, pointing down at one of the chunky conveyor belts snaking across the floor of the hall. “Ooo, I’m getting me a gun!”
“Careful!” hissed Jack, reaching out for Klik’s arm as she rushed past him. He missed. “Oh, what the hell. I want one too. Wait up…”
They hurried down a set of rickety metal steps towards the factory floor – all except Rogan, who followed somewhat more cautiously and disapprovingly behind. The conveyor belt in question ran almost parallel to the rail above it, transporting freshly assembled firearms in tandem with their future owners. Klik reached across and grabbed one of the guns off the belt at random.
“They don’t look that great,” she said, pulling a face. “Why is it so… blocky?”
“That’s the LX-14 line for you,” said Tuner, taking the gun off her and reconfiguring it for general use. “Cheap as they come. More money gets spent on reinforcing their chassis than enhancing their data cores. Dumb as they come, these automata. Barely sentient. Their guns aren’t much sharper, either.”
Jack was handed a reconfigured weapon of his own. Even he could tell how poorly produced it was. The metal was cheap and tarnished, every angle was set to ninety degrees, and it was frightfully unwieldy. He reckoned he could have produced something almost identical – albeit much more colourful – using a child’s set of building blocks.
Oh well. So what if it wasn’t some hyper-advanced carbine rifle capable of firing both precision lasers and corrosive-impact plasma rounds? If what Jack pointed it at either died or ran away in the opposite direction, that was enough for him.
Just so long as it fired, of course. Its weird little trigger looked like it might snap off if he actually tried pulling it.
“Okay,” he said, looking for a safety catch. There wasn’t one, obviously. “Where to now?
“I guess we’d best check Chamber 3,” said Rogan, watching the LX-14s shuffle lifelessly along the rails. “We’d better switch to radio comms from here on out. And speak quietly, Jack and Klik. We don’t want any of the uninvited guests to hear us.”
“Got it,” Jack whispered. He hoped Klik understood. They hadn’t had much chance to test her helmet prior to leaving the ship.
“There are stairs leading to the upper gallery over there,” said Tuner. “Might be safer than walking in through the main doors.”
“Good spot. And remember,” Rogan added, nodding rather pointedly at Jack, “don’t shoot anybody unless they start shooting at us first. This is a recon and rescue mission, got it?”
“Exactly,” said Jack, his palms growing sweaty inside his gloves. “We take a look, see what we’re dealing with, and then get out with any Ghuk survivors we can take without giving ourselves away. If that number is zero, so be it.”
Klik let out an exaggerated sigh.
“Fine. Let’s get on with it, then.”
They clambered over the sluggish conveyor belt, tiptoed as quietly up the rusty steps as they could, and slipped through the doors into Chamber 3.
6
The Archimandrite
The production chamber was loud. Really loud. Jack didn’t reckon it would matter even if he did shout to Klik and the others rather than whisper over comms. It wasn’t as if anyone more than six inches away from his mouth could hear him over all the machinery.
The chamber itself was domed, and the resulting acoustics hardly helped improve the noise levels. A few hundred metres in diameter, almost every inch of the factory floor was filled with a contraption doing something, as evidenced by the sheer number of pistons pumping and valves flapping and smoke belching ou
t of exhausts. It was like standing inside a Victorian clock. Jack had no clue what any stage of the production line actually did, but he couldn’t imagine cheapskates like Cyclone Manufacturing including anything even the slightest bit redundant. Rattly, rudimentary, maybe even in dire need of replacement… but not redundant.
The upper gallery was a long stretch of metal catwalk suspended above the factory floor by silver cables fastened to giant industrial brackets in the ceiling. Jack could feel the walkway shift and groan under his feet. He couldn’t hear it over the din of production though, and hopefully that meant nobody down below could hear it either.
Klik leant over the barrier running along the side of the walkway and peered down at the forest of machinery. It was hard for any of them to pick anything specific out amongst all the interlocking pipes and devices, and the thick fumes building up around the ventilation fans only made visibility worse.
“There,” said Klik, her whisper hissing through the headset in Jack’s helmet like a burst pipe. She pointed excitedly at a spot between a pair of large, copper cylinders below.
“Get down before somebody sees you,” said Rogan, pulling her back behind the barrier. There was no partition to take cover behind as such, but at least they were a bit better obscured from anyone looking straight up at them. Jack squatted down on his haunches and slowly peered out over the edge.
One of the missing Ghuk engineers was hiding in the gap between the cylinders – quite an impressive feat for somebody of his size and shape. He hadn’t yet noticed the crew of the Adeona stalking their way along the narrow gallery above his head. He was also, Jack couldn’t help observing with some concern, quite alone.
Well, almost.
Somebody was marching down the factory’s central aisle towards him.
The figure in question was approximately seven feet tall and built like an anaemic scarecrow, and he was no less terrifying outside of a cornfield. He wore nothing over his gaunt, pale chest except for various necklaces sporting dull, iron jewellery and bleached incisors. His gangly, tattooed arms extended long past his waistline and ended with gnarly, clawed fingers with knuckles like tree knots. A tattered, black ceremonial skirt billowed around his lower half, and his chalky white head resembled the skull of a jackal.
Jack swallowed hard. He guessed they’d found their pirates.
“My, my, my,” the pirate leader crowed in a dry and raspy voice. “Do I detect the presence of a non-believer?”
He stalked past the Ghuk’s hiding place, sweeping his elongated canine head from side to side with his hands clasped academically behind his back. He had a slight hunch when he walked.
“Come out, come out. Do not be shy, friend. Do not fear being unworthy. The fire does not judge – it cleanses the weeds and willows alike.”
“I think this guy might be a few sockets short of a toolkit,” Tuner whispered. Rogan quickly shushed him.
The Ghuk remained hidden amongst the machinery, not moving so much as a hair. The pirate leader sighed and shook his head.
“Have it your way,” he declared, clicking his fingers.
Two more figures emerged from the shadows behind the Ghuk engineer. They wore tattered black robes fashioned from a similar material to their leader’s skirt. Their faces were shrouded by hoods. They grabbed the Ghuk by his mantis-like arms and dragged him protesting out into the central aisle.
Klik tightened her grip on her gun. Jack leant across and rested his hand on hers. No matter what was about to transpire down on the factory floor, the last thing their group needed was somebody getting an itchy trigger finger. They were now one stupid decision away from the exact situation Jack had spent the last twelve months actively trying to avoid. One more stupid decision, that is.
The Ghuk was thrown onto his knees in front of the pirate leader – an ironically uncomfortable position for somebody with a body like a praying mantis. He didn’t try to get up, but his two assailants pulled snub-nosed pistols out from the folds of their cloaks just in case.
“There you are,” said the leader, bowing so that his grinning face was level with the Ghuk’s own. “Cast into the light, our sins are revealed. And I see your sins, friend. I see them well. I assume it was you who brought the other factory subsystems online, yes?”
Jack swallowed hard. That had been Tuner, not the engineer. If the Ghuk denied it, Jack reckoned their way back out of the factory was about to get a whole lot more difficult than their way in.
Luckily, the pirate leader didn’t give him the chance to answer.
“Perhaps, then, you can answer the questions which your brothers and sisters could not,” he continued, standing up straight again. “Perhaps their misfortune will be your salvation. We shall see.”
He stepped to one side of the aisle and used one of his gangly clawed hands to drag a yet-to-be-activated LX-14, fresh from the production line, over to the engineer. It must have weighed close to half a tonne, yet it trailed behind the pirate like a little girl’s dolly.
He let it crash to the floor.
“These robots are stupid, which is good. We didn’t come here for their conversation skills. But we don’t want stupid, my friend. We want submissive, docile weapons – we want drones. I hope, for the sake of your impure soul, you can make it so.”
The Ghuk turned its terrified head from the jackal-faced leader to his two followers, opening and closing its insectoid mouth in dumbstruck panic.
“But… but we can’t,” the Ghuk spluttered. “The data cores for the LX-14 line are pre-programmed off-world. All we do is pair them with the chassis during assembly.” He looked up at the pirate leader pleadingly. “But they’re as dumb as they come, I swear. I’ve never known one to question orders. Not if you’ve got the activation chip.”
The leader nodded sagely.
“Questions are the signposts that tempt us off the righteous path,” he said, his long arms stretched out wide. “Isn’t that right, my acolytes?”
“Yes, Archimandrite,” said the acolytes, stumbling over one another to be the first to agree.
Acolytes? Archimandrite? Jack was beginning to think they weren’t dealing with their usual stock of pirates and raiders.
The Archimandrite lowered his head to face the Ghuk’s own again, his wicked smile fading as the pieces of junk on his necklaces jangled against one another.
“But just because one is trained to listen does not mean that one has lost his ability to speak.”
“I… I don’t understand,” said the Ghuk.
“No,” sighed the Archimandrite. “I can see that you don’t.”
He reached out, took the Ghuk’s petrified head in his two knobbly hands, and snapped his neck with ease. The engineer’s body collapsed in a heap against the cold, metal floor.
Jack gasped. Klik rose from her kneeling position beside him, but once again Jack grabbed her arm and shook his head. If there had been a window to start shooting, they’d missed it. There was nothing they could do for the engineer now.
The Archimandrite stepped over the engineer’s body and plucked a passing LX-14 head from off the production line. He held it up to the light as if inspecting it. Everyone up on the catwalk crouched down further.
“We shall have to hope nobody stops to ask these soulless abominations who they got their orders from,” he said, sneering at its blank bronze face. “Gods willing, everyone will be much too busy for that.”
He crushed the metal head in his fist as if it were an aluminium can, then casually tossed it to the floor with the other scrap.
“Wrap up production,” he said, turning to walk back up the factory aisle. “If you discover any more Ghuk hiding amongst the machinery, kill them.”
“Yes, Archimandrite,” said the two acolytes, bowing their hooded heads as he passed them.
“Oh no you don’t,” said Klik, popping up and aiming her blocky rifle at the pirate leader before Jack could stop her. She let off a shot…
…which missed the Archimandrite by a goo
d couple of feet and left a small, black patch sizzling on the side of an industrial stamp-press.
The Archimandrite spun around with a furious expression of surprise etched onto his chalky jackal face. He pointed a long and quivering finger up at the catwalk.
“Interlopers!” he exclaimed before hurriedly disappearing back into the oily shadows of the factory floor, his black dress billowing out behind him. “Prepare the freighters for departure. We leave at once.”
“Protect the Archimandrite,” one of the acolytes barked at the other. They both aimed their pistols at Jack’s group and started firing. Lead began denting the thin metal beneath Jack’s feet.
“You should have waited for my signal,” he yelled as he pulled Klik back down into cover.
“And you should have let me spend more time actually shooting things in target practice!”
“We need to get off this walkway,” said Rogan, wincing as a shot ricocheted off the barrier beside her.
“No chance of that while those nutcases are shooting at us,” said Tuner, inching towards them. “Thanks, Klik!”
Jack growled deep in his throat, pointed his rifle over the lip of the catwalk and fired a couple of laser bolts down towards the two acolytes. Despite having improved his aim considerably since first entering the galaxy at large, both lasers went wide of their intended targets. The third time he tried firing, the trigger jammed and something whined pitifully inside the rifle’s tacky casing.
“Piece of crap,” he muttered, scrambling backwards again. “Anyone got any bright ideas?”
“Heading back out the doors we came through is the best I’ve got,” said Rogan. “But as Tuner said, we’re not moving anywhere while we’re pinned down like this. Sorry.”
Klik and Tuner took turns popping up to shoot at the acolytes. Neither of them was having much better luck than Jack, though at least their rifles were still operational. In as much as any weapon incapable of hitting its target can be described as operational, that is.
The Tin Soldiers (Final Dawn, Book 5) Page 5