Alien Gears

Chapter 13: Foundry

FOUNDRY

It was a gigantic chamber, rising hundreds of feet into clouds of choking smog. The room was surrounded with huge suction pumps, pulling tainted air up to the top of the great room to release it from exhausts. Massive fans whirred, blasting the machines and furnaces with cooled air, to stop them from liquefying to slag themselves. Large hammers were raised and slammed down, pancaking globules of molten metal into flat sheets. This was the heart of the machine, what was running while the beast was still dormant and turning the fledgling groups of alien mechs into an innumerable invasion force. This was what had to be stopped.

Although I realized that time was short, I also understood that I really had to go ahead and do my best to jam up the production line for the alien ground troops that began here. If I failed along with our attack, we would have another several thousand bots operational within the four and a half hours or so before, and they might be unleashed on us along with the rest. Being totally overrun by super-soldiers was not something I planned on happening to us so I had to try and work out how the room functioned.

Ground rubble was brought into the room from belts fed by grinders like the one I had just left about fifteen minutes ago. Great metal vats hung from ceiling mounts and caught the scrap as it fell. These vats after being filled were run along the mounting lines and were slowly brought to the main smeltery in the center of the room. They were rerun out through the other side of the smelter block, after reaching white hot temperatures and dumped into chutes which ran into more machinery, which slammed and cut the molten mass into molded bars, sheets and ingots. These were in turn sent back out to the factories to make up the pieces for new drones and soldiers. The entirety of the COLOSSUS was a self-contained factory of war.

After looking in more detail at the layout of the room, I finally discovered where the whole room was being run from. Thin gantries ran above the center of the room and over the main smelter was a spherical core, coated in reflective glass. Nearly invisible with the vision blurring clouds of smoke, smog and super-heated air, it must be where the foundry was being operated from. I had to somehow make it up there and see what I could do to bring the whole thing to a total halt.

Getting up there was going to present a serious problem though. The gantries appeared to be the only way into the core and the only ladder appeared to be on the other side of the smelter block, making it unreachable from where I was. Crossing the center of the room was going to be impossible. The super-heated thermals rising up from the middle would scorch the skin off my body, leaving out thinking about what effect going through the furnace itself would do. I would exit on the other side of the room as ash if I was to do anything as stupid as that. I would have to find a way of making it up onto one of the gantries from this side.

A few minutes later, I thought to myself, 'I have one'. This idea was one of the maddest I had thought up so far.

To the right of me, just below, were several of the machines that released the rubble into the waiting cauldrons and vats before they were sent along in the direction of the furnace. As these machines were below me, I could drop onto the back of the machines, move closer to one of the emptier pots and make a running grab for the chain that suspended them above the blackened floor far below. If I could pull myself up the chain fast enough, I could grab hold of the gantry where the chains slowly slid past and from there, make my way as stealthily into the central core as I could

Unfortunately, the plan was going to be rather dangerous, just as any of my previous ones had been. The machine could flip when I climbed on top of it, sending me hurtling to the ground. The chain could be greasy, or boiling hot, or just difficult to catch and I could also end up plummeting. I could mistime my dismount onto the gantry and end up being slowly drawn into the furnace, or throwing myself clear and plummeting in yet another way. I had to risk this though. For the good of everyone outside, this thing required stopping.

I climbed over the railing of the small platform on which I stood and slowly lowered myself onto the back of the machine right below. It didn't move. So far so good. From here I had to walk back towards the gigantic wall of the chamber to get to the furthest back of the huge vats, the one that hadn't yet been filled and had several minutes before it was sent on its way into the scorching furnace. I had to jump the foot wide gaps between each of the machines, hoping to not fall between or even misjudge the gap and fall over forwards and down between any of the machines into the orange haze. I made it to the end of the line, the closest to the dark stained wall.

I stood at the edge of the machine waiting for the next of the great vats to emerge from the cavernous opening. A blackened edge emerged from the darkness into the light, followed by the vast cylindrical body of the vat. It would be several minutes before it would be filled so I backed up from the edge and prepared to jump. I ran forward and leaped...

I caught hold of the chain as it slowly swung back and forth like a barely swinging pendulum. The metal rings were slick to my gloved palms but I needed to begin my ascent quickly so I struggled to climb. A minute later and the pot had moved forward into the loading position. I had to hurry; the vat would soon be filled to the top and it would begin its journey towards the center. If I wasn't high enough at that time I would miss the chance to get off onto the gantry and be dragged to the smeltery into which I would eventually be dumped inside.

I rapidly scrambled up the thin length, arm over arm and legs together. The vat below me was nearly full. The motors above on the sections of the mounting began to whine and the chain began to move sideways. Wheels on the bars above began to roll and the chain started to follow the path. I had to get off now. Hanging from the side of the chain, I pulled out the rope and as I came level with the gantry rails, I threw the hook over. The hook caught on the railing and I swung free from the chain. The hook locked and I was able to drag myself up onto the gantry platforms.

I stopped, bent over and panting from the difficult climb, then I looked around observing the surrounding area. A few other similar gantries to the one I was on connected to the center in a radial pattern. They all went from the vast glass sphere ahead of me to several large doors in a ring around the chamber. At the moment they were all closed and probably locked. There was only one path left for me now. I retrieved the hook and rope and headed towards the core.