CHAPTER 3
THE WARBOT FACTORY
Planet Quartu - One of the Blarg's temporary homeworlds
Factory Complex, Drek Industries HQ
Time: 7:47 p.m.
To all Blarg, there is no planet like their homeworld. Orxon was irreplaceable. That was until its atmosphere, environment, and natural resources were completely polluted. And on top of that, overpopulation made the planet's habitation insufficient, leaving insufficient housing for every Blarg. Everyone would conclude that a planet this completely poisonous might no longer be preservable, let alone livable. If there are ways to save and return Orxon to its former glory, then it'd probably take long years to accomplish full planetary revival through any scientific method possible. But it could also be very difficult and wasteful of everything the Blarg can manage with.
Fortunately for the Blarg, to spare them what they perceive as unendurable labor, the species' top brilliant minds have located and determined which planets in the entire Solana Galaxy are suitable for momentary settlement until the New Orxon Project issued by Chairman Drek is deemed by himself prosperous. By the time it is completed, the new planet will be open for all Blarg to inhabit, molded with a rough but fairly spherical form three times the original Orxon's immensity and an abundance of home living space. So, until then, the Blarg will have to make do with what they have and need and sit tight for a short-term period in their settlements on unoccupied planets, including Quartu.
Quartu is a desolate but very mountainous world with so little greenery on every jagged, rocky corner and covered by greenish gray clouds of dark smog puffing from various factories scattered on it, mostly obscuring the planet by its atmosphere. All those factories on the mountains overlooking the bottomless and foggy chasms below are owned by none other than Drek Industries, a prominent corporation and one of the biggest companies in the Solana Galaxy. In terms of success, it is second only to its competitor, the Gadgetron Corporation, which is highly influential and widespread across the galaxy for being its largest supplier of gadgets, weapons, and many of its services and entertainment products.
Orxon was formerly the planetary company headquarters of Drek Industries because of its more environmentally degraded condition that resulted from the company's poor decisions, which began with its founder and previous owner before Drek succeeded him. While Drek, his predecessor, and their leadership over the company are to blame, many of the Blarg that make up the entirety of its workforce are also a part of it; they followed suit, no questions asked.
Encircled by many Quartuan peaks, two rows of three massive industrial factories the size of city buildings on platforms connected by long-span bridges to a larger, wider, and much longer rectangular platform. Each of their eight smokestacks let out heavy clouds of smog into the air as the factories operated their works within. Another sign of Drek Industries making a world less than habitable.
In front of those factories and on the massive platform, a Blarg Army military base is stationed there along with a control tower and two airstrips, one on each side for Blargian starships to land on and take off from, and a five-story worth comprised of fifty hangars housing two Blarg saucers in each one, counting one hundred Blarg saucers total. At the front of the base's command center, a thirty-five-foot flagpole stands erected and is flying a large, flowing flag designed with an icon that symbolizes the Blarg Army, or perhaps the Blarg Confederacy in its majority. The flag's field is colored deep dark red, its fly end and hoist end sides are shaded black, its hexagon-shaped canton in the middle center is outlined in bright gold, and the symbol inside it echoes a triangular orange-red arrowhead with two smaller triangles set like a pair of eyes on it and a ring behind it.
Units of Blarg troopers paraded around the base in a march formation through drill commands. Every single one of them is clad in gray and black body armor with red trimmings, wearing a cone-shaped head cap with the same symbol on the flag colored in red at the top front part of its crown, black metallic combat boots, leather tactical gloves, and carrying his laser blaster held with its stock upward and muzzle downward on an angle. Platoons of large green battle tanks with long three-big-wheeled treads and double-barreled cannons on top of their chassis are parked and lined up, awaiting transport ships to carry them to another planet for deployment into war.
Many medium-sized yellow helicopters, with open cockpits, rocket cannons attached to the sides, and machine guns mounted below where Blarg pilots sit, flew around the base and factories on patrol. And a few larger, muscular, and bulkier Blarg soldiers trained mechanical canines with big heads and razor-sharp metal jaws called robomutts. Some terrified troopers volunteered to be their attack targets, resulting in injuries from getting viciously mauled and receiving painful bites; they soon regretted being a part of the training.
The sky-reaching, isosceles-shaped triangular tower that stands so proudly albeit ominously high above the six factories and the military base, and reaches the smoke-clouded skies, so happens to be where Drek Industries is primarily headquartered and runs its military weapon and vehicle manufacturing operations. Boasting the enormous structure of a dark and doomy obelisk with glowing red lighting on its four corners, and a massive hexagonal Blarg sign with the company's name beneath it, Drek Tower was built as a monument to the eponymous Chairman Drek's corporate power and authoritative ruling over his people. Drek's office on the tower's top floor faces the mountainous land masses through a wide panoramic window opaqued in a screen of red outside.
Inside the Chairman's office in Drek Tower...
Suppose there's an office that is not pretentiously spacious and doesn't feed the ego of a power-mad, authoritarian industry magnate. Well, in that case, Drek has one that is certainly the opposite of the sort.
The office matches the short Blarg tyrant's professional workroom design as much as it embodies the diabolical reaches of his corporate leadership and boundless villainy nearing anything in the galaxy that's waiting to be in his grasp. It is in essence decorated in the style of an evil lair, complete with a modern black desk, leather chair, a large shelf with holo-books on the right side of the room, a row of eight holo-projectors on the left, and a long deep red carpet that extends from the door into Drek's office to two cases of four stairsteps going up to two chairs set in front of the desk. In the middle of the stairs is a raised half-circular portion of the floor where Drek works at his desk, but it doesn't seem to have any purpose other than being part of the office's interior layout.
The seated Drek scrolled through his holo-computer screen on his desk to review the progress of his new Blarg home planet project when someone entered his office's door. His pale-toned face lit up affably as he recognized his visitor, who was dressed in a dark gray military uniform with a black trench coat worn over it and a head cap with six gold stars enclosing the red Blarg insignia. Those six stars suggest that this is a military officer of the highest rank in the Blarg Army.
"Ah, General Thurx," greeted Drek. "I'm pleased you could make the time to come observe the army's newest line of soldiers."
The approaching Kylan Thurx, Head General of the Blarg Army, is like many other commanders with imposingly hefty bodies of pure muscle. The differences between him and his subordinate lieutenants are his darker orangish skin tone and the silvery gray prosthetic right arm that replaced the original organic arm he lost in one of his prior gruesome battles. A steel eyepatch is bolted over his left eye, which suffered a severe injury from an explosion that left it completely blind and scarred as much as the left side of his face. Only his sun-gold right eye remains unharmed. Those grisly inflictions from his previous clashes on the battlefield made him more intimidating and condescending amongst his minions, who in turn feared him the most when he gives orders and demands no excuses, only results from them in every battle they have no choice but to endure at his disposal.
"I would never miss it in a hundred years for this galaxy, Alonzo," the general replied in his deep husky voice. "Every time I see the army grow stronger and plenty advanced thanks to your company's technological know-how, the Blarg could never be more dominating over those Solonian weaklings with their insufficient worlds... and spectacularly surprising unpreparedness for our arrival."
Drek like-mindedly chuckled at his stone-faced, hawkish friend's cold utterance. "Hmhmhmhm. Yes, very surprising of those fools, indeed. Much like our new world's 'greatly valued' spokesperson." After motioning his two stubby fingers on both hands in quotations, Drek pointed at Thurx's robotic arm. "How is the prosthesis faring for you, Kylan?"
"It took me a lot of motor control therapy to get used to this thing. Had a few little hiccups with it, but I finally got it moving normally and working perfectly like my old arm." Thurx mentally directed his metallic arm to rise in front of himself and moved all of its three fingers as their cylindrical hinge joints whirred softly from the flexing motions.
"Glad to hear that, General," Drek nodded. "I knew Dr. Dominic Mozak's neuroscientific prowess would make these artificial replacements revolutionary beyond anything else those simpletons from Gadgetron could ever create."
The mentioning of Dr. Dominic Mozak's name made Thurx grimace slightly in a vexed way. He seemed to not have a liking for that one certain scientist for any reason. "I just don't understand why you recommended that brain-hoarding psychopath performing this kind of surgery on me. Do you know how annoying he gets when he makes those twisted jokes about brainpower being in someone's hands or the way he sniffs brains before doing his job?"
"Now, Kylan," Drek spoke as he got off his chair, landed on the floor on both feet and walked around to the front of his desk. It was not taller than him, but only enough for the haired top of his head to be shown, blocking the rest of him from view until he came into the stone-faced Blarg general's sight again. "Dr. Mozak may be a bit screw-loose and quite hysterical at times, but his research on neurotechnology and direct brain-computer interfacing gave our military a magnificent breakthrough with all of its arsenal. He's one of my company's top geniuses because of it. You should at least have some pride in his work on your upgrade. Otherwise, you wouldn't be my army's next Head General I've handpicked you to be for that victory over those Buginoids you and your squadron drove out of Umbris."
The Chairman's words rang true to the cyborg, who looked back down at his metal three-fingered appendage. He may not like a crazy doctor like Mozak, but to an extent, getting a replacement for his old arm gave him the benefit of continuing his military duties and rising to the rank of Head General. Had there not been a possible way for Blarg scientists to create cybernetic prostheses and perform surgical procedures on their patients to attach them, Thurx would have been declared unable to effectively serve. Mozak deserved credit at the very least.
"You made a vividly good point, Chairman. Now, back to the matter at hand. About the additions to our army."
Drek's thick eyebrows rose in response to the subject of Thurx's arm being reverted to the discussion about new soldiers. "Ah, yes. As the proposal for the latest in armed forces said, the Blarg Army will now have the support of heavily reinforced warbots, primed and armed to combat the Solana Galaxy's top and foremost frontline of defense for its state of multi-worldly peace: the Solana Galactic Protection League. That means we will stand a great chance on the offense in battle when we lower the opposing forces in numbers and soon remove them from the equation. It'll make constructing New Orxon much easier to finish, potentially within two weeks of no interference."
"'Warbots,' Alonzo?" Thurx inquired, openly intrigued.
"Yes. I take it this interests you, then?"
"It does, sir. My only concern is if they will be a match for the Galactic Ranger Corps. They're the S.G.P.L.'s most elite vanguard for a good reason."
"Oh, the warbots will surely be capable of eliminating them, Kylan," Drek answered positively. "I have the utmost confidence in Dr. Nicholas Mozak's skill in creating the most efficient fighters for our forces."
"Nicholas Mozak?" Thurx became perplexed. Another Dr. Mozak?
"Dominic Mozak's brother," Drek clarified. "Another top genius in Drek Industries with three doctorates in physics, robotics, and planetary engineering. And he's as perfectly sane as you'd like any scientist to be."
The statement urged Thurx's eyebrow to lift skeptically. "Are all other Mozaks not crazy?" he asked.
"No, just Dominic," Drek replied. "Nicholas happens to be the chief scientist of my company's military research and advanced technologies division. And he's the one who's been overseeing the warbots' production and New Orxon's development with all those pieces the Harvesters took from other planets. Did I mention it was he who had the advanced energy shielding system and anti-spacecraft defenses applied to your command starship, the BS Colossus?"
"I don't think I ever had any recollection of him being responsible for those upgrades on my ship, but now I'm hoping to thank him for them." Thurx's lips crept into a short smile and his good right eye sparked with wicked eagerness to put the Colossus's improvements to the test, as soon as he finished attending his business with Chairman Drek and witnessing the Blarg warbots' assembly.
"Well, you get to thank him by the time we meet with him in the factory," the Chairman concurred while he readjusted his green shirt's left sleeve cuff. "We'll just have to wait until he's given my assistant confirmation of wanting us to see him."
Just when Drek finished speaking, an elevator bell dinged from his office's right-side wall. The transport tube's door opened to reveal Drek's personal assistant, a small flying service bot with a singular eye in the form of a yellow-lensed purple visor, a green small-finned head, a tiny mouth, a cone-shaped body fashioned with a black-and-purple butler suit design, and big green hands holding a rectangular holographic tablet and touch pen.
"Perfect timing, Zed," Drek addressed the hovering robot named Zed. "Is Dr. Nicholas Mozak ready for me and General Thurx to observe the troops?"
"Yes, Chairman Drek," Zed nodded. "He's waiting for you two right by the teleporter in the plant."
"Splendid!" Drek brightened as he clapped his hands together. "Come, General! Our army's upcoming killing machines await."
Reaching into his jacket pocket, Drek pulled out a small remote controller and pointed it at the half-circular floor piece. The floor opened when he pressed the blue button, and a large, gray, round pad with a glowing white center ascended. It's a teleporter, a device designed to take its users to their particular destinations across long distances in an instant via remotely linked teleporters. With no hurry, Drek stepped onto the center of the pad, followed by Thurx and Zed.
Glowing brighter beneath the trio, the teleporter asked in a computerized female voice, "Destination, Chairman Drek?"
"Plant Z332, please," he politely commanded.
"You got it. Destination: Plant Z332 – confirmed." Three claws in the teleporter's outer ring extended and rose in the air, then pointed down at the trio and engulfed them in a field of light energy. And in a flash, they dematerialized and were beamed out of the office.
Plant Z332, Drek Industries Warbot Factory
Time: 7:54 p.m.
The moment they rematerialized at the center of the teleporter in the warbot factory's teleportation room, Chairman Drek, his assistant Zed, and General Thurx reached their destination. Standing between two control panels operated by Blarg technicians is Dr. Nicholas Mozak, the scientist in charge of the facility's mass warbot production. He is a tall, slim, pale yellow-eyed Blarg physicist in a gray and blue uniform, with a long white lab coat, long boots, and a pair of gold-trimmed, blue-lensed glasses, and in his hands is a holo-tablet similar to the one Zed has, but for scientific research purposes.
"Greetings, Chairman Drek," Mozak addressed calmly and cordially, then acknowledged General Thurx with a salute while the latter did the same. "And General Thurx, welcome."
"Thank you, Dr. Mozak," Drek nodded in return. "I trust hundreds of the new soldiers are already preparing for their first assignment."
"Yes, sir. They are currently waiting for a few warships scheduled to deploy them in the specified area of the planet you chose to have a portion extracted from it."
Mozak's report brought a satisfactory smile to Drek's vile visage. "Very good. Now, my general and I would love to see the further production of the army's warbots and get some insight on their specifications and capabilities, if you please."
"Of course, sir. Right this way." Dr. Mozak turned to the door out of the teleportation room, leading Drek, Thurx, and Zed to the assembly lines.
Five minutes later, the group entered an enormous room with all the assembly lines run by machines. Ahead of them on the other side of the room from where they entered, past a circular platform in the middle of it with an intersecting catwalk, the supercomputer with a large, wide, and curved screen is established on the solid clear-floored, half-hexagonal-shaped central platform, operational for manufacturing robots for the Blarg Army. As the two Blarg and the floating service bot follow Mozak on the walkway leading to the central platform, beneath it is a robot-producing chamber that constructed and released its creations onto a conveyor belt. These automatons surely have to be the warbots Drek authorized for his military.
Constructed with a menacing design that deems them built to destroy, warbots are humanoid, cycloptic combat robots with yellow-centered glowing red eyes, metallic squared jawlines, short fins on their heads, and powerful upper torsos and broad shoulders covered in silvery steel-gray armor. Their forearms and legs are also armored, except for their upper arms. And each warbot has a trapezoid-shaped air vent in the chest area of its torso.
While the machines continue their work in the assembly lines, Dr. Mozak explained to Drek and Thurx as they ambled to the supercomputer, "At this moment, Chairman Drek and General Thurx, five hundred sentient warbots have been produced, and soon hundreds more will be, too. With the finest raritanium ore mined from Hoven, Pokitaru, and whichever other world has deposits of the material, their armor is forged to guarantee significant resistance to standard weapons issued by the Solana Galactic Protection League. They are proton-powered, laser-guided, rust-proof, and programmed with the three prime objectives of serving you and the Blarg's cause, eliminating soldiers in the service of the S.G.P.L. on sight, and more importantly, destroying Galactic Rangers."
"Are they completely obedient in their prime objectives?" Thurx asked the scientist when he and the group came to a stop on the circular platform in the middle of the entire room.
"Yes, General. And along with their obedience, they are relentless and remorseless killing machines, lacking in fear and maintaining resolute focus on their mission. The Solana Army will be easy for them to eliminate; I took the liberty of sending spies to gather intel on everything to know about the Galactic Rangers' strengths, weaknesses, and tactics and bring them to me for the warbots' programming."
During which the cyborg Head General gave a wickedly proud smirk, the evil Chairman laughed with heinous glee. "Hahahaa! I love the sound of that! This is going to be perfect! Those pitiful, trigger-happy, so-called elite fools won't know what they're in for when the warbots wipe them from the face of the galaxy." He then bursts into an exultant fit of villainous laughter MUAHAHAHAHAAAA!"
And suddenly, Zed joins in on the evil laugh behind the group, "MUAHAHAHAHAAAA!"
Drek's laughing slowed as confusion replaces the elation on his face. He, Thurx, and Mozak turned their heads around to see Zed still doing the evil laugh in the same style as Drek did, but now a bit more dramatically. Zed guffawed for a few more seconds before simmering down. He looked at the three Blarg staring at him in a combination of Drek's blankly annoyed frown, Thurx's head humorlessly turning sideways with both his organic and artificial arms crossed, and Mozak's eyes rolling impassively (if only they had any pupils).
After a five-second-long pause, Drek broke the silence by only saying, "Really?"
"What, I was just lightening up the mood a bit," Zed said defensively.
"You have a job to do, Zed. And your job is to keep records of meetings whether I need you or not." Furrowing his eyebrows and seething his teeth, Drek condescendingly asserted, "So stick to your task, no more, no less!"
"Y-y-yes, sir!" Zed quivered, quickly getting his pen back to writing on his holo-pad.
The Chairman breathed in, then exhaled to gain his cool before turning around to face Dr. Mozak again. Clearing his throat, he asked the scientist, "How long will it take for... two thousand warbots to be in service?"
Mozak answered, "In one full week, sir. However, if my calculations are correct, it's possible to speed up production here and have the warbots and their armor built every four days. We will just have to persuade the miners in all raritanium mining sectors to stay on top of their labors at that pace if the metal is to be shipped here right on schedule before the earlier deadline."
On that suggestion, Thurx added, "If Chairman Drek approves of this, then I'll inform all of my lieutenants supervising those sectors of this and see to it they double the miners' workloads. Same for the defenses if possible."
The Blarg leader took a moment to consider the proposition. Manufacturing two thousand warbots every half a week would benefit the ongoing process of New Orxon's construction and strengthen the Blarg Army's soldiery in greater numbers, toughened reinforcements, and robot-held firepower. But how will that affect all the raritanium diggers if they have twice their work put on them to get the ore shipped on time?
Actually... why would he care if they exhausted themselves to an end?
If any of the workers are lost, there will always be room left for new ones to fill. Drek could just send robot troops to search for and grab as many fresh able-bodied slaves as they can find on any planet to continue the mining operations. Above and beyond that, Drek always said that achieving great aims with absolute success required sacrifice. And doing so would indicate realizing the goals as seen in the big picture by all means necessary.
Having taken his time to ponder Dr. Mozak's premise, Drek makes his decision with a nod. "Very well. All mined raritanium shipments to Quartu's warbot factories will now be met consecutively on every fourth day. General Thurx, give the order to your lieutenants. Have every single miner work swiftly and every sector's security increased. If a few workers falter and need to be disposed of and replaced, then have them be so."
"It will be done, Chairman," Thurx affirmatively bowed.
Drek, Thurx, Mozak, and Zed all continued on the supercomputer platform. On their way to it, the warbot manufacturing machine resumes its automatic task of creating the warbots and releasing them onto the conveyor belt, which transferred them, one by one, to a mechanical arm with a robotic eye that grants them their laser-firing blaster pistol after they answer what their three prime objectives are.
"State your three prime objectives," the robot arm instructed.
In a brutish robotic voice, a warbot responded, "One: Serve Chairman Drek and the Blarg. Two: Eliminate troops of the Solana Galactic Protection League on sight. Three: Destroy Galactic Rangers."
"Inspection complete. Weapon issued." The arm provided a blaster to the warbot after it correctly answered its three prime objectives, and the conveyor belt moved again and stopped for another warbot to pass the objectives test and receive its weapon. The process repeats until all the robot soldiers are armed and ready to serve the Blarg and destroy whoever, and whatever, stands in their way.
Just then from outside, a bright flash of lightning boomed in the sky directly above the warbot factory, and a bolt struck down on it, engulfing it in sparks of electricity. The immense electric blast caused power to the factory's entire system to shut down, stopping all machinery and blacking out all the lights inside. Startled and disrupted from their training routine, the Blarg troops witnessed the lightning strike from their military base in shock, awe, and alarm.
"Uh... what just happened?" Zed asked, frozen in confusion. The entire room is all pitch black, but luckily his yellow visor-eye comes in handy for a situation like this. It brightened up like a flashlight, bringing Drek, Thurx, and Mozak back into sight from the darkness.
Mozak nonchalantly sighed. "A power interruption. Easily fixable, I hope." He cleared his throat and clapped his hands together three times, then shouted, "Fixbot!"
A gray bowling ball-sized and eyeball-like robot with a tiny antenna and two thin arms heard the scientist call out for repair and floated around the production room to find the power box. When it did, the fixbot began its maintenance work on restoring power to the factory and hummed a merry tune. It only took seconds for all warbot manufacturing chambers and assembling machinery to function again, and all lights to turn back on.
When a computer screen next to the primary chamber underneath the central supercomputer platform started working again, it flickered between two images of different robot schematics. One schematic is for the warbots, and the other is entirely different and not of Blargian standard warbot design. The fixbot never took notice of this even when it was finished resetting the factory's power system, and the screen had already set itself back to the warbot schematic image and stopped flickering.
True to the non-warbot schematic, the robot between two warbots on the conveyor belt was created very dissimilarly to the robotic soldiers' threatening forms. This one is significantly smaller than them, looked harmless, and is entirely made with chrome. He had a big spherical head with two large, circular, and black-outlined glowing green optics, a short red ball-tipped antenna, and a smoothly curved jaw bolted on both sides, an angular trapezoid-shaped body with a small air vent on his front—much similar to the warbots' air vents—and three tiny circles above it (that look a bit like buttons or something), and short, spindly, and articulated robotic limbs with big three-fingered hands and shoe-like feet.
The little robot awoke, closing and opening his optics. He shook his head sideways a bit before rubbing his hands against his eye covers to clear his vision. Still a bit dazed after his creation, he takes his time to comprehend where he is. And at the sight of his birthplace, everything brings him into a moment of intrigue for the factory at work on the one hand and uncertainty about what it's for on the other.
In a sophisticatedly eloquent and silky-smooth tone, the curious diminutive automaton said his first words, "Where… am I?"