All of a sudden, however, something happened that the Factory Core could not have anticipated. It detected fire entering the barracks. Hurriedly sending one of the last remaining mechanical geckoes to scurry high up to gain a vantage point on the city wall to check what was happening, the Factory Core scrambled to process this new, unexpected information.
What it saw through the gecko’s eyes caused it no small measure of consternation; it learned that, somehow, wraiths had gotten into the blacksmith’s forge next to the City Watch barracks, and were pouring streams of magical fire into the side of the barracks … and they were aiming at the barrels of gunpowder.
Without hesitation, the Factory Core commanded the gecko to attack the wraiths. They had to be stopped; if their fire found the barrels and lit one up, it would set off a chain reaction and detonate every single keg in there—and blow the whole barracks sky high, completely destroying the defense system.
The gecko jumped off the wall and charged at the blacksmith’s forge. But then, out of the front door of the forge stepped Grakk’n.
The mechanical creature paused for a moment, not having expected to encounter this foe. However, it quickly realized how crucial every second was and that the commander was probably trying to buy time. So it charged at Grakk’n, ducking under his blade at the last minute and whipping its spiked tail at his legs. The huge demon was surprisingly agile for his bulk, and he sprang over the whipping club and brought his blade down in a whistling arc, aiming to sever the gecko’s head from its body.
It too was swift and nimble, though, and it rolled quickly forward, evading the attempted attack and raking its claws across Grakk’n’s ribs as it came out of the roll. The strike would have been deadly had Grakk’n not been wearing dragon-bone armor. The gecko’s claws glanced harmlessly off the breastplate, and Grakk’n whipped his blade around in a backhand swing that caught the gecko on the top of its head.
The powerful blow crushed the beast’s metal skull, effectively killing it. And as its vision faded out, the last sight it transmitted to the Factory Core was a gigantic explosion, as the wraiths’ fire streams finally made contact with a barrel, which—as predicted—set off a huge chain reaction, resulting in a gargantuan blast that blew the whole barracks up, and sent bricks and bits of shattered cannons flying out in all directions.
Grakk’n was hurled through the air from the force of the explosion, and was thrown all the way down the street, crashing into a small guard hut, which he completely flattened. Thanks to his armor he wasn’t killed, but he had the wind knocked out of him, and ended up completely stunned and dazed.
After a few minutes, when he started to get his senses back, he staggered to his feet, still groggy and disoriented, and saw that the massive clouds of billowing dust and smoke were clearing. And through this clearing of smoke, he caught a sight that filled him with vicious triumph: the barracks had been totally wiped off the face of the earth. Nothing remained of the super-weapon but a smoldering crater in the ground!
“I have destroyed the dwarven weapon!” he roared to his troops outside the city. “Charge! Now we turn the rest of this city into a blackened ruin! Charge, all of you, charge!”
CHAPTER 23
Without the withering barrage of fire to hold it back any longer, the demon army was free to storm the city gates. The Factory Core had been prepared for this eventuality, of course—just not so soon, having assumed that the barracks would have kept its rate of fire up until the gunpowder had run out.
It was thus time for phase two of the Factory Core’s defense plan. The Core had known that when the demon warriors broke through the city’s outer wall and began to swarm the city, a different set of tactics would be needed for the close-quarters fighting that would ensue in Karak-Drang’s narrow streets and cramped, small buildings. So it had prepared a number of weapons that were ideally suited to this purpose.
The first of these—that would serve as the shock troops of what would be a savage counter-attack against the invaders—were a unit that would strike terror into the hearts of all but the bravest fighters: giant spiders.
Like geckoes, actual living spiders had served as an inspiration for the Factory Core when it had come to designing and building its arsenal. Like geckoes, spiders were nimble and could climb many surfaces, and could move quickly and with great agility. The fact that they had eight legs was an important point noted by the Factory Core.
Also, the fact that spiders possessed fangs that could inject venom into their prey had been taken into account when the Core had to decide which defensive and offensive tools to equip these fast-moving melee troops with. The Core had studied demon blood and physiology from the corpses of the adversaries it had captured and killed, and had noted that their blood was very acidic. Thus, injecting a strongly alkaline substance into the demons’ bodies was a surefire way to kill them quickly.
The dwarves were quite fastidious when it came to cleanliness—well, dwarven women were, at least—so there were a few soap factories in Karak-Drang, and these factories owned large quantities of lye. The Factory Core used this lye to create a potently alkaline solution which its spiders could inject—via razor sharp, silver coated fangs which easily pierced demon hide—into their opponents’ bodies, which would kill them in seconds.
These were not the only weapons the spiders could rely on, though; like the mechanical geckoes, they too had projectile devices mounted on their backs. While it was crossbows for the former, the latter had gunpowder-based instruments: muskets modified to fit on their rear, along with quick-reloading mechanisms and stores of silver-coated musket balls and gunpowder. The explosive was stored deep inside the spiders’ abdomens, shielded from heat sources, so that the demons could not try to ignite it and thus blow them up from the inside.
The guns on the spiders’ backs were quite special items. They consisted of ten muskets, all welded onto a single central frame which spun around. The spiders also featured silver coated blades, like scimitars, on each of their eight legs. These units were a lot larger than the geckoes too. Since they had been designed for close-quarters combat, they were built a lot more powerfully than the geckoes had been. Each spider was larger than a big bull or buffalo, and they were designed like a tarantula, with a voluminous body and thick, powerful legs. Like the geckoes, the spiders were made of brass, bronze and steel, along with some wood.
Unlike the geckoes, though, they were powered by coal fires and steam; the crystals used in geckoes simply weren’t strong enough to power something as huge and as powerful as these spiders. Thus, the spiders had chimney valves on the sides of their heads which belched out spurts of black coal smoke at regular intervals, making them look even more fearsome.
As the demons charged through the streets of Karak-Drang, whooping and tearing down whatever they could get their claws on, while setting fire to buildings and smashing doors and windows, the Factory Core released the first wave of combat spiders.
The Factory Core had positioned a dozen spiders in each of the alleys nearest to the city gates, and now that these roads were swarming with tightly-packed throngs of demons, the massive mechanical spiders were perfectly positioned to wreak havoc among their ranks.
The spiders charged out of the buildings in which they had been hiding and waiting to pounce. They didn’t need to open the doors and risk losing the element of surprise; they were strong enough, with their coal-powered engines and powerful piston-driven legs, to simply smash through the walls. Once out, they started laying into the demons right away, blasting with their rotating, multi-barrel muskets and slashing with their eight limbs.
Soon, severed demon heads and limbs were flying through the air, and the spiders were scattering warm corpses all around them. While the spiders were engaging the infernal warriors in furious hand-to-hand combat, they were also shooting them with their multi-barreled muskets, with each shot of the rotating guns blasting a silver-coated ball through a skull or torso.
Even with the weight of their numbers, and their ferocious fearlessness, the demons could not seem to find a way to defeat those killing machines. Before long, they were retreating in the face of their relentless assault, as the spiders attacked with brutal tirelessness, going for multiple targets at once and clearing the narrow streets of the fiends.
The Factory Core had positioned the spiders in a large, semi-circular area, which basically covered all of the roads in the front part of the city. Now, with spiders pushing relentlessly forward through every avenue and alley in this area, the demons were being driven back toward the city gates. Grakk’n, standing on top of the corpse of the mechanical gecko he had slain, watched with rising anger as his troops were forced back, pushed out of the streets they had just been rampaging through.
He noticed how much damage the enormous mechanical spiders were causing, and he knew that at this time, at least, his troops were too weary, and had taken too much abuse, to fight these new enemies effectively. They needed to retreat and regroup, rest and gain their strength back, and then launch another furious assault on the city when their energy had returned.
Reluctantly, he waved his sword above his head. “Retreat!” he roared. “Retreat and regroup outside the city walls! All of you, retreat!”
The Factory Core, watching through the eyes of its spiders, observed as the screaming horde of demons pulled back from the streets, driven relentlessly out. Its strategy had worked, and it had retaken the streets of Karak-Drang. That said, it knew the situation was only temporary. Another assault on the city would come soon enough. The demons were far from defeated.
CHAPTER 24
The Factory Core had another job, now that it had been granted a few hours of reprieve, since the demons had withdrawn from the city. The first thing it accomplished was send a few mechanical spiders over to the city gates, and use them to bar the doors in place again, and patch up the hole the battering ram and Grakk’n had hacked in the huge oaken panels. The Core didn’t want the demon army to be able to simply walk effortlessly back into the capital once they had recouped their strength.
The mechanical spiders proved to be quite adept workers. Their eight limbs, dexterity and immense strength, meant that they could work far faster than even the best dwarven laborers.
After the gates had been fixed, the Factory Core analyzed the situation further. Using its eyes on the tops of the city walls—the geckoes that had somehow managed to survive—the Core could see that the demons had succeeded in recapturing and re-enslaving the cave trolls that had earlier been freed. The Core thus knew that the gigantic dragon-head battering ram would be back in action whenever the demon warriors were ready to begin their next assault … and even though the city gates had been mended, there was no doubt that they were now weaker, and would succumb much faster to the blows of the battering ram this time around.
Of course, the Core had further strategies ready for the next incursion, but the more time it was able to buy, the better. The more time it had, the more weapons it could make, and the more effective its defense of Karak-Drang could be. Thus, it needed to buy more time—and the means to do that was right there, just on the inside of the city gates.
When Grakk’n and his wraiths had blown up the City Watch barracks, they had disabled one of the Core’s most potent weapons, that much was true. But they had also unwittingly gifted the Factory Core with some excellent raw materials in the form of a great mass of rubble.
Thus, when the mechanical spiders had finished patching up the hole in the gate, the Factory Core sent them on another construction mission. This time, the huge creatures scurried around the streets and picked up all the debris from the demolished barracks they could find. They brought them to the city gates and piled them up there, until, after an hour or two, a gigantic mound of broken bricks and stones, and iron and wood scraps, stood where the city entrance had been.
The pile was so high and wide that the entire entrance was essentially blocked off. Now it didn’t matter if the cave trolls smashed through the gates with their massive battering ram, because all they would find on the other side was a gargantuan pile of rubble. It would take the trolls many hours to dig through the ruins and clear a path for the demon warriors to enter the capital. Once the mechanical spiders had gotten all the broken pieces into place, the Factory Core was pleased; it now had the time to work on developing a number of other measures to defend the city.
In fact, the Core had a very specific new project for weapons it wanted to work on. One that was only now possible, seeing as it had killed a good few thousand enemies.
The Core had been conducting research on demon corpses for a while now, and it had discovered a few interesting tidbits. First, while their skin was already hard and difficult to cut through with metals such as iron and steel, it could be hardened even further by exposure to fire—just like dragon bone. When the skin turned jet-black, after being subjected to intense heat, it became as good as impervious to steel, and even silver-edged weapons had a hard time cutting through it.
Second, their acidic blood could be used as fuel. While it wouldn’t burn when in contact with normal fire, when ignited by the intense heat of magnesium fire—an element the dwarves used in a number of their inventions—the black blood would catch fire, and burn long and hot.
The Factory Core realized how valuable and useful this would be as a fuel source. Indeed, it was far more convenient than coal, at the moment at least. The only problem was that the weapons the Core had already made, like the mechanical spiders, ran on coal, and it would be too time consuming to switch them all over to be fuelled by demon blood.
However, the Factory Core had another idea about how to use that blood and the skin of the thousands of invaders it had killed already. Well, their bodies too, really … it would essentially be repurposing their entire corpses, something that would have been forbidden—and completely impossible—had Bomfrey and the others not secretly removed the restrictions on cannibalizing the city and engaging in certain practices that could be considered necromancy by some.
The Factory Core was essentially going to be “reviving” the dead demons whose bodies littered the streets of Karak-Drang in their thousands. But not in the way a necromancer would have done such a thing.
No, the Factory Core’s method of “reviving” or “resurrecting” the slain foes would not involve any sorcery, any summoning of spirits. It was far more scientific than that. The Factory Core had discovered a very large store of minor soul gems in some of Karak-Drang’s older vaults, to which it had been granted access. The soul gems, a few thousand of them, had been confiscated from various people over a very long period. Most had the trapped souls of basic animals like rats or snakes, and were barely powerful enough to be of any real value, but the Factory Core had figured out a way to put these minor soul gems to a very practical use.
The Factory Core had experimented with reanimating the bodies of a few dead demon warriors and using these minor soul gems to give the resurrected corpses minds. They were weak minds of course, but as long as they controlled the body in which they had been placed, the Core was happy. All these minds needed to be able to do was to follow two very simple commands: fight and kill.
The bodies were not actually reanimated in the strict sense of the word, of course. Instead, the Core had hollowed out some of their innards and installed a simple engine in their torsos, which was fuelled by their own blood. Crude pistons, powered by this engine, had been added to their limbs and joints, giving them the ability to move and attack.
So, the “reanimated” demons were in fact more like robots, or crude cyborgs of a sort, built using biological body parts fused with a minor soul gem containing a low animal’s soul, and powered by a combustion engine.
These zombie demons were also fire-hardened, and their formerly red bodies came out pure, gleaming black, as dark as a starless night. Because the dwarves generally cremated their dead, there were a number of crematoriums i
n Karak-Drang. These buildings, with their massive furnaces, proved to be ideal factories for the Core to produce a great number of those zombie demons.
Thus, when the infernal army camped outside the walls of Karak-Drang saw great pillars of smoke rising from various locations within the city, they realized that something was up. Still, they had no idea that it was the bodies of their former comrades that were burning in these fires, or that these corpses would be used as weapons against them when they launched their next assault.
While the Factory Core was busy creating these zombies in the crematoriums, its super-mind was also busy contemplating other strategies. The zombie demons would be perfect for distracting the incoming troops, and they would be hard to kill with their fire-hardened skin, but they were not particularly agile, especially when compared to the mechanical spiders and geckoes. Also, their coordination was not good enough to use missile weapons, so they couldn’t be armed with muskets or crossbows, and they thus had to be melee troops, and engage the living demons in hand-to-hand combat.
While this was not ideal, it suited the Factory Core’s strategies just fine. The Core had already reclaimed a number of spent crossbow bolts and silver-coated musket balls from the bodies of the dead, so it was restocking the geckoes’ and spiders’ ammunition supplies; they would be valuable snipers, positioning themselves on the highest walls in the city and picking off targets, while the zombies blocked off the streets with a wall of fighting bodies.
Even though the demon army had suffered heavy losses during its first assault, there were still masses of warriors camped outside the gates. And, what was more, Grakk’n had now figured just how effectively the Factory Core could protect the city. So he had sent urgent messengers back to the Infernal Realm, to ask the Dark One himself for reinforcements … reinforcements far more powerful than the average grunt. While the demon warriors had been brutally efficient against dwarven warriors, Grakk’n realized that they were not as competent when it came to fighting against the Factory Core’s creations. So he wanted to even things out a little with some potent allies of his own.
Factory Core Page 12
