Karin nodded.
Just then Stigi decided to see what was so interesting. He stuck out his
neck, thrust his head fully around the corner and snorted in curiosity.
With a wild yell the guards charged forward.
“Shit,” Gilligan said, fumbling for his shoulder holster. Before Karin
could draw her bow, he stepped around the corner, dropped to a semi-crouch
and fired two-handed.
Eight shots rang out in the confined space and all six of the guards were
down.
Karin’s eyes widened at the sight.
“Well done,” she said. “Now, shall we use the door they were guarding?”
At that moment the door flew open and a solid mass of the manlike monsters
charged out waving swords, spears and other less identifiable, more nasty,
weapons.
Instinctively Gilligan dropped into his shooters’ stance, but Karin
grabbed his arm and pulled him down.
With a whoosh and a roar Stigi let go with a blast of flame.
The effect on the packed mass was instant and appalling. The things
shriveled, screamed, burst into flame, and died in the ranks.
Again the whoosh and another lance of dragon fire struck the remaining
attackers. Black smoke boiled off charred flesh and the stink was
appalling. Here and there came a series of explosions as ammunition in
guards’ bandoleers ignited.
And then there were no more attackers. Gilligan looked at the blackened
mass in front of him and was almost sick. He’d seen people burned to death
in air crashes before, but not on this scale. Karin had gone deathly pale
under the layer of reddish dust.
“Let’s get inside,” he said. Carefully they picked their way through the
grisly remains, trying to touch as little as possible.
“My God,” Gilligan breathed, “will you look at this place?”
The room was enormous. The ceiling was at least a hundred feet above them
and it stretched out proportionally in all directions. In the center of
the brightly lit area were half a dozen huge robots in various stages of
construction with smaller robots swarming over them like worker ants. As
they watched a traveling crane maneuvered a torso section over the legs
and hips of one of the robots.
“It’s a factory,” he said, awed.
None of the robots paid the least heed to their unexpected visitors. They
kept right on working.
Gilligan motioned and led Karin and Stigi along the wall and around the
assembly area.
“There’s got to be another way out of here. No way those robots could get
through the door we just came through.”
They were halfway around the room when another giant robot stepped out of
the shadows behind them.
Karin screamed, Stigi whirled, inhaled and spouted a gout of flame. The
robot stepped forward inexorably and raised its laser arm.
Craig had designed the robot with a magic power source, a magically
reinforced body and magic sensors and control links. But the design was
essentially technological. He hadn’t considered what might happen if his
creation stepped in front of a giant flame thrower.
The robot’s first bolt went wild into the ceiling, knocking hot rock down
on the three and burning a red afterimage in Mick’s vision. Then the chips
in the control circuits overheated and failed. The robot pinwheeled its
arms wildly and its glittering torso twisted from right to left and back
again. Then the seals in the hydraulic cylinders in its legs and hips
failed from the heat and contact with the boiling hydraulic fluid. The
thing lost hydraulic power in a gush of robotic incontinence, tottered and
fell face-first into a puddle of smoking hydraulic fluid. The floor shook,
but the robot workers paid no attention.
Stigi stalked forward and sniffed disdainfully at his kill. Then he
stepped daintily around the puddle-or as daintily as you can when you’re
eighty feet long and in a confined space-and continued on his way.
The main door out of the assembly area was on the same scale as the rest
of the factory. Fortunately it was also open.
“Now, where do we go from here?”
“Up I would think,” Karin said. “Their commanders would want to be as high
as possible to see as much as they could.”
Gilligan didn’t bother to point out to her that it didn’t work that way