Part 3 – Malfunction
Proceeding through the rest of the now thoroughly destroyed warehouse yielded no further clues. The structure had been nearly gutted even before AT-7 had made their entrance, and the subsequent firefight had reduced any remaining partitions, unidentified machinery, and a small set of partitioned office spaces at the far end of the structure to rubble.
Still, it never hurt to be thorough, and without more than a hand signal, the mechs and their operators spread out, inspecting likely locations closely for hidden doors, or other methods their opponents could have used to enter the warehouse without being seen from the outside. Unsurprisingly, Pistol was the one who found the concealed shaft first.
"LT, I've got something!"
"Go ahead, Pistol."
"There's a series of arcane glyphs surrounding a square portion of the floor in the west corner. Translator algorithm can't make much sense of it, but it seems like you're supposed to power one side to raise it, and the opposing side to lower it."
"Makes sense. Gotta keep it simple for the thralls, right?" Bass stated flatly, disgust audible in his tone.
"Is that what we're calling them now? Thralls?"
"Make sense, Red," Sgt. Rawlins confirmed. "If that wight was any indication, some of the "hired help" wasn't exactly hired…"
"Or got cold feet, once their boss' real goals were revealed." Pistol finished.
"Yeah, but what exactly are the boss' goals? So far, all we have is an arcane energy buildup possibly indicating a portal event, mass reanimation of human corpses, and kidnappings for experimentation of human women. That's not much more than the mission briefing gave us."
"Whatever it is, it's clear that the monster or monsters at the center of this have designs on either this region, the local population, or both. And their demonstrated lack of morals in regards to achieving those goals indicates nothing good." The LT stated firmly.
The team hadn't been idle during their discussion. As they talked, the mech-suited humans had been very carefully laying out a set of breaching charges, intending to simply blast the top off of the shaft the opposing forces had used for entry.
After laying out the explosives in an effective pattern, they retreated to a safe distance, and Bass remotely triggered the charges. With a rippling BOOM, the ground around the arcane lift erupted, the explosives violence directed downward and inwards. Once the freshening night breeze that filtered through the destroyed walls had blown away enough concrete dust to see clearly, all that remained of the glyph covered square was a gaping hole, the revealed shaft disappearing into darkness.
The last of the sunset faded as the team approached the now revealed shaft, transitioning to full darkness. (Naturally, the mechs and their operators didn't really notice, as they wouldn't use lights under most conditions, but there's an exception for everything.) As Bass shined a light down into the revealed shaft, it revealed the finely pulverized remains of the lift platform, and a surprisingly well built stone floor.
"Drop's about twenty feet, LT, maybe a little more. Scanner's not picking anything up, and the shaft is more than large enough to accommodate us."
"Then we'd better get in there quickly. They know we're here, and if we can move faster than they can anticipate, we'll keep our momentum up, and hopefully keep them on the back foot."
With that, the LT suited action to words, and vaulted down the shaft, using his fall arrestor system to slow Gertrude down until they touched down in a flare of dust and expended propellant. Quickly sweeping the passage in front of him, he transmitted an "all clear" back up. In quick succession, the other members of AT-7 followed suit.
"They made short work of the initial defenses."
"Not outside our anticipation, but surprising, nonetheless."
"What will you do?"
"The work has not changed. We will make a place for ourselves. The ones who were abandoned."
"Were we? Or were we simply left to our own devices once we insisted we could figure things out for ourselves?"
"… Regardless, this world has no place for us, and we must make one. I trust I still have your cooperation?"
"You do… For now…"
"You speak as though you have a choice."
The tunnel AT-7 had discovered was wide enough for the mechs to walk two abreast if they chose, but naturally they'd stuck to the walls, spread out so an attack against any one mech would leave the rest unscathed. Sensor sweeps revealed no hidden traps beneath the cobblestone floor, and the walls were a compressed earth that strongly resembled concrete. Rather than a dank passage, the air was surprisingly dry, and the walls had evenly spaced fittings, each occupied by a glowing crystal.
After nearly a half-mile of walking, the passageway ended at a concrete foundation, into which a large two-leaved door was installed. The material appeared to be wood planks, but of a dark, unidentified variety.
"So, what's the plan, LT?" Sarge asked.
"The passage is too narrow to just go in through the wall like we did topside. And if the intertial plot is accurate, we've traveled under the neighborhood far enough to put us right up against the foundations of that old upholstery plant we saw in the satellite photos."
"That's on the water, LT. Gonna have to be real careful if we do breach the door. I wouldn't be shocked if an explosive round in there busts out part of the foundations, and lets the river in," cautioned Bass.
"Let me get a clearer picture of the area, LT." Pistol volunteered, suiting action to words by placing Gwenneth's palms against the right-hand wall, and activating his mech's ground penetrating radar. He then moved to the exposed foundation beside the door, and repeated the process, moving a few feet each time, before building up a picture of the earth that surrounded both the passageway, and the foundation in front of them. "Good news. We're not close enough for groundwater, or the river for active flooding to be a concern. On the other hand, there's a lot less water than you'd expect as well."
"I'm no hydrologist, but that seems suspicious…" their commander mused.
Inside the sergeant's mech, however, things suddenly got a whole lot more interesting, as his HUD suddenly began flashing red at the edges, alarms blared, and several warnings all popped up at once, the most concerning ones being the: ARCANE ENERGY ABOVE SAFE LEVELS, and WARNING: DENDRITIC OVERGROWTH DETECTED. Then the HUD and sub-screens all flashed blue, white text scrolled rapidly up, and everything shut down.
Any further discussion was abruptly put on hold, as Sgt. Rawlins' Gloria stiffened, and its optical indicator lights flickered out. There was a series of powering down noises, and the three-quarter ton machine suddenly resembled a statue rather than a machine of war.
"What the- Sergeant!" The Lieutenant exclaimed.
Inside the now immobile mech, Rawlins sighed in irritation. Of all the times for something like this to happen… With a grunt, he carefully extracted his right arm and hand from their control armatures. Naturally, the mech's designers had included an emergency manual release, and he had just begun the sequence that would fire a set of explosive bolts to open the piloting compartment when there was a *click*, and a small sub-screen in the lower left flickered to life.
With a rising whine, and the sound of ventilation fans kicking in behind him, the sergeant read the words on the tiny screen: ATTENTION: A.T.E.C. ACTIVE - DO YOU WISH TO INITIATE EMERGENCY RESTART? A simple pair of touch buttons sat below: [YES] [NO]
With another irritated grumble, he canceled the escape sequence, extracted his other arm, and pressed the button. The main screens and HUD flickered on, and green text from the system logs began scrolling up. It was a wait even under ideal conditions, as the screens cleared, and the text [A.I.O.S. Rev 9.2] appeared in all displays, before they resumed their previous settings, and he caught the tail end of the LT's radio transmission:
"-ok in there? Sarge, please respond."
"Yeah LT, I'm all right. Gloria here just decided to take a nap at the worst possible moment."
The LT and Pistol had moved their mechs closer to the stricken Gloria to check for damage, and possibly extract the sergeant, while Red in George and Bass in Genny kept watch for any uninvited guests.
"We were just about to pop the chestplate when your status lights flickered back on, although your power light is blue. Never seen that before."
"You remember how the tech division was working on the ATBs?"
"You mean the mana batteries?" Pistol cut in.
"The right term is the Ambient Thaumic Energy Conversion System." Bass put in.
"Well, it seems they installed them during the refit before we loaded the mechs into the transport, and neglected to notify us."
"So, that explains the restart, then… Have the ambient energy levels climbed that far already?"
"Our systems are hardened, but ambient levels above seventy-five percent will begin to induce system instabilities, LT." Pistol confirmed.
"Maybe you can answer this one for me then, Pistol."
"I will if I can, Sarge."
"There was a message about "dendritic overgrowth" right before everything bluescreened and shut off. Mind explaining?"
"Well Sarge, the primary computing units on these exoskeletons use quantum processors with a bio-memetic structure similar to a brain organelle. They have artificial neural fibers that form circuits, and synaptic connections to store instructions. It's why programming them is relatively easy, but they remain flexible enough to operate new weapons and equipment with only minor software installs. Dendritic overgrowth is a failure mode where control starts to break down, and control fidelity degrades… Is motor control getting sluggish?"
"Let me check."
Stepping back, the other members of AT-7 gave the sergeant and Gloria room to maneuver.
The now reactivated mech moved first one arm, then the other, flexed at the waist to the full range of motion, and balanced on one foot, while bending the opposite knee and ankle, before switching sides. Flexing the digits, unfolding and retracting the shield, deploying and stowing the main gun, and tilting the head unit completed the test.
"No, everything's at a hundred percent. Actually, that's odd, since movement efficiency and synchronization rarely top ninety-five, but I'm not complaining."
"Looks like you owe the maintenance crew a beer when we get back, huh sarge?" Bass commented. "They got your exo all the way to a hundred percent!"
"Enough chatter. LT, I'm mobile, and we have a mission to complete."
"True enough, Sergeant. Although, are you certain it is safe? Is this going to be a risk?"
"No sir, I believe the suit will be fine. The power unit's functioning, and everything else seems to have booted back up normally."
"All right, the rest of you, and myself will switch over to the ATEC System as well. Re-designate battery power as reserve if things get dicey."
"If I understand how these units work, LT, they function as a mechanical equivalent to a monster's energy conversion organ, absorbing it from the surrounding environment, and converting it to electricity in this case, rather than bio-energy the way theirs do."
"In that case, we'd do well to avoid ending up in their world, since they'd absorb whatever fuels monsters there… which could be bad." Red commented from her position as sentry.
"It does beg the question though: What kind of monsters would the mechs turn into?"
"That's the kind of question only you, or the research guys would ask, Pistol," she retorted.
As they approached the door, and Bass began wiring it up with breaching charges, the Sergeant couldn't shake the feeling they were being watched. Or if not watched, there was a presence nearby. Almost like it was looking over his shoulder. Chalking it up to residual system instabilities, plus the now softly whirring ATEC unit, he pushed on, and stacked up with the others.
This time, the squad's demolitions expert had gone for the softer approach, using charges just powerful enough to shatter the door, but hopefully not loud enough to alert anyone or anything in the structure beyond. "All right, get ready," he said quietly. "Three… two… one." The charges detonated without fanfare, and the door crumbled. As the dust drifted down, the LT stuck an optical probe out beyond his side of the foundation, and swept it across the opening.
"All clear, let's move."
The five mechs then quietly advanced into the basement of the abandoned factory, checking for pitfalls or tripwires, and found none.
"Any sign of a way upstairs?"
"Nothing big enough to fit our exos, sir." Pistol reported.
"There is a hydraulic lift in the east corner, but it's in the raised position." Red responded from where she and Bass had headed off to.
"Tough to get a good scanner read, LT," Pistol continued. "The ambient levels are at almost eighty percent, but I'm picking up signatures above us. Nothing more than 4's and 5's though."
Suddenly, there was a loud *CLUNK*, and the lift began to descend. The mechs retreated into the darkness, taking cover behind the footings of the massive columns that supported the factory floor above their heads.
As the lift descended, the occupants became clear.
"Got five hostiles: Two minotaurs, two armored… somethings, could be dullahans, and a… what the hell is that?"
The fifth monster looked like a female cadaver, covered in what resembled organic strips of metal, with her left hand covered and merged with a long sword. The sword had a single orange jewel on the outer side of its basket hilt, although it looked like the hilt had merged with the woman's hand
The bovine monsters and the suits of armor sported one feature in common with the zombies the team had faced before: Their glowing purple eyes. The cadaver's eyes glowed purple as well, but it was a brighter glow that completely obscured her eye's details. Strangely, the sword's gem also had a soft purple glow.
"Looks like they're networked together, or the two pairs are "thralls" of the fifth." Sarge reported.
They advanced to the edge the lift, and stood unnaturally still in the dim space cast by the light filtering down from the floor above.
The cadaver with the sword's movements were almost like a marionettes, a creepy combination of abrupt, yet fluid.
Then in unison, all five creatures looked directly at Lieutenant Nash's Gertrude.
"Humans!" the cadaver called in a hoarse voice. "You have done well to make it this far, but your intrusion ends here."
With that simple declaration, the purple lights in all five monsters eyes flared, and they rushed to attack.