Whatever we had been expecting as we went through those blast doors, we still got a shock. Deep in the bowels below the command centre we emerged into what had obviously been a natural cavern of tremendous size. The walls were solid limestone rock and the floor of the cavern had been leveled off with crushed rock overlayed with wooden planks. High powered lights hung from the roof of the cavern some forty feet over our heads bathing the whole area in a crisp white light revealing row upon row of workstations equipped with monitors and computer terminals. All around the cavern groups of people were hard at work bent over desk and worktops, peering through large lenses, fiddling with what looked to be electronic components and sections of machines. It was clear that this was some kind of production facility, but we were to learn that it was far more than that.
As we moved further into the cavern Lord Alexander was spotted by an older guy with long flowing grey hair and beard who almost scampered over, a tremendous smile on his face and greeted us all effusively
“You must be the Southerns!” He cried, shaking each of us vigourously by the hand “Welcome, welcome to our workshop, has his Lordship told you aout what we are doing here?”
“No Samuel, I haven’t had a chance to, and I thought that you might like to introduce your work personally”
This opportunity clearly pleased the guy that we now knew as Samuel as his face lit up even more and he almost capered with delight, obviously proud of his work and excited to share it.
“There’s so much to show you all, even you my Lord, we have made some amazing progress while you have been away, but wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Introductions first. My name is Samuel, and I’m his Lordships developer and experimenter. It is my job to try to make the best of the equipment and machines that we have and to develop new and better versions to help keep all of us safe. I’m pretty good at coming up with solutions to the various problems we face even if I do say so myself. Down here we work on building and maintaining all of our defensive mechanical forces, like the drones and the attack robots, but the thing I’m most proud of is over here…..Follow me please”
There was no time to respond or get a word in edgeways, Samuel barely even paused for breath once he got started talking so looking at each other warily we followed this strange figure across the cavern toward a screened off area on the far side. As we approached the screening we could hear hammering and see flashes of light from welding torches reflected off the cavern walls but it wasn’t until we came around behind the screens that we got our biggest shock. There in front of us was the most massive robotic device any of us had ever seen. Standing fully twenty feet tall and covered in heavy metal armour, sporting two rotating cannons and shoulder mounted missile pods was something that made all of our own robotic defenses obsolete.
“Folks, allow me to introduce our pride and joy, only a prototype you understand, but fully operational and ready for its first test…..I give you The Hyperion….four tons of armour and weapons that should be a match for anything we have seen so far. Completely autonomous in defensive mode, and controlled by microwave burst transmission in offensive mode, no cables, no limit to range as long as we can boost our signals sufficiently, and we think we can produce ten of these a week from the material that we currently have. Pretty good huh?” This last was said with a wink, and we had to simply nod in agreement. This was something so far beyond what we thought was technologically possible, yet here it was.
Lord Alexander placed an arm around Samuels shoulder and said “Well done old friend, you have been working hard I see” before turning to us “You have to understand that we are under constant threat here. Not just from the Hatchlings but we are still under constant watch by the Red Maw that you have already dealt with. They are stronger up here, but so are we. We hear reports of advances that they are making and this is our response. And that is before we have to consider that not all of the camps around us support us, or agree with our position. We are constantly under threat from rival camps, and some of them are starting to band together into alliances themselves. It is a long road we have ahead of us and a constant struggle to keep ahead of our rivals and challengers.”
His face was grim as he said this, and all of us newcomers knew that if we were to have any chance of surviving ourselves with our freedom intact we would have to contribute whatever we could in terms of skills and talents to this most worthwhile of causes…..
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