Alien Gears

Chapter 14: Core

The door ahead of me was wide open. Inside, through pristine white corridors was a different world, with clean air and filtration. Noises echoed from the rooms above. I was definitely not alone in here. The doors heading downwards were securely deadlocked, nobody or nothing was going to get through them without passing through a scanner capsule on the right. This was probably where all the technology and computer systems allowing the furnace to function were actually stored. They were securely out of reach below me but I had a feeling that whatever was controlling them was working from upstairs. Taking it slowly, I started to ascend the stairs, readying to face whatever was above if it was needed.

I peeked out from below the railings into the wide round room, keeping low to avoid detection. There were three bots in here, but nothing like I'd ever encountered before. These bots were smaller than the others; humanoids about five feet tall. They were completely naked in comparison, their tiny exoskeletons were fragile compared to their larger siblings' solid coating of metal plate. Sitting hunched over the consoles in the room, they must have been the technicians of the alien robot faction.

I was honestly surprised that I hadn't encountered any in my earlier expedition into the literal brain of the COLOSSUS about four hours earlier. Anyway, these guys looked much weaker than their larger counterparts and I wondered whether it was a possibility to take over the room by force. After a moment of thought I decided to make the first move.

I stealthily ran from behind a bank of monitoring systems and approached the rear of one of the technician droids. Pulling out the hook in one hand and the pick in the other I got right up behind its back then I swung both climbing implements from behind me and brought them both to rest in the front of the droid's face in an overhead swing. The three droids went berserk. The one I had carved the optical sensors out of bucked wildly and began to stagger around the room but the other bots drew firearms. Neon electrically-lit bolts pulsated from their wrist-mounted sprayers and hurtled towards me, most hitting the front of the droid that I was hiding behind. It bent double after several chest shots and then I came up with an idea of fighting back.

I grasped the droid's left arm, managing to grab hold of its own gun, still connected to the spasming limb of the robot, and I pulled on its wrist bar. Spurting back its own laser blast, the droid was now firing back at the others. Pulses of neon light deflected back and forth around the room. Another droid fell, snapping in half, gun hand separating and rolling to point up at the ceiling, still shooting and bringing down a light fixture, shattered glass flying everywhere. The shooting intensified, until the weapon of the remaining droid seemingly lost power. I dumped the robot that I had been holding up to the ground and tackled the remaining one headfirst into a console. Its head buzzed and I slammed it again and again until it stopped moving.

I got up off the floor and looked around. Aside from the holes in the ceiling and in the large window showing the outside, there was little damage to the contents of the room. After making sure that none of the robots were going to rise again, and ripping the optical sensor units off the ones that still had them in case somehow they managed to rise anyway, I proceeded to examine some of the larger and easier to understand consoles.

I found the button to open the outer doors in case I needed a quick escape and by working out which way the liquid vats were traveling, I worked out the way that I needed to go to continue, as well as two others in case that door failed to open. I had found what appeared to be the central control console quite easily. Colored meters as well as easy to manipulate sliders and dials made it obvious that it controlled the temperature and revolution speed of the furnace and the smaller smelteries that had presence on the foundry floor. Unfortunately they seemed to need a special key slot to rotate. I went back to examine the bodies of the fallen robots. I had an idea that they might be able to provide me with the means to cause havoc.

I returned to the console with a full set of fingers of one of the robots. I had pried them free from the clasped hand with the sharper edge of the axe after I realized that they all appeared to be slightly different keys. I pocketed them; there was a chance that they might turn out to be useful in getting past some obstacles if I ended up getting stuck somewhere.

After trying three of the keys I found the right one and straight away turned the middle dial fully clockwise. A huge spike in the level of the meter indicated that this indeed had done something big and I started my escape plan. If that wasn't enough, I turned several more dials around and slid several sliders to the top of their range. I left the console and paced back to the door release button. I frantically hammered it until it went right down and I ran back to the downward stairs. Unfortunately it became obvious that I might have made a deadly mistake when all screens turned red and klaxons began to blare. I sprinted across the length of the area and out through the open door onto the walkway.