— Saturday, February 18, AD 2130 —

Brilliant golden lights shone overhead as orbital bombardment rounds slammed into the shield protecting EA’s base. Thunder rolled through the skies from the explosions and missile fire of aerial fightercraft, accompanied by gunfire from EA’s robots and ground-based defenses as they focused on fighting off the SERRCom ground forces that sought to encircle the base. Amongst the chaos and cacophony of ongoing combat, two figures were able to slip surreptitiously down a shadowy alleyway between two large buildings.

Moving quickly but quietly, Major Hackett led Researcher MacTavish through the shadows of EA’s base, searching for valuable machinery or intel. Over an hour had passed since the two had split up from Saito and Travis, leaving Mark and Kate behind to fight EA’s mech. In that hour, Hackett had managed to lead herself and MacTavish across a couple kilometers of EA’s base without being detected, aided by the fact that EA’s defenses were occupied with fighting off the rest of the SERRCom forces.

Upon reaching the end of the alleyway, Hackett cautiously peeked out into the adjacent corridor — only to quickly withdraw her head as a short train shot past. Within a couple seconds, the train was gone, allowing Hackett to look down at the set of four railway tracks running down a wide, recessed corridor. The alleyway Hackett and MacTavish were currently standing in was actually several meters above the rails, and led to a small elevated walkway that ran parallel to the rails.

“I-it’s a… f-freight corridor…” MacTavish whispered.

Hackett glanced back at the Researcher, and then quickly looked around in search of any nearby listeners. Upon finding nothing, the Major backed up to approach MacTavish and leaned down to whisper into her ear, “why do you think that?”

“W-well… th-there’s four rails,” MacTavish responded. “Y-you, um… o-only need that for, uh, high volume… w-which means freight. …I-I think. P-probably.”

“Hmm…” Hackett turned to look back at the rail corridor. The train that had just passed hadn’t looked like a freight train to her — but then again, it didn’t seem likely that EA would be shuffling freight around while his base was under siege. Cautiously, the Major peeked out into the corridor again; upon looking left and right, she quickly determined that the rails seemed to run for kilometers in both directions, with the occasional junction for trains to split off from or enter the main line. If this is for freight, then that’s a LOT of freight… Hackett mused. The size of this base does indicate that it’s some kind of production facility, so it all lines up. Which means that if we follow these tracks, then we should find the actual production lines—

Hackett’s thoughts were cut off as she caught sight of a train in the distance, coming from the direction that the prior train had been traveling towards. The incoming train seemed to be pulling more cars, however, and more importantly, it was traveling down the set of rails right beside and under the walkway that the alley connected to. Seeing an opportunity, Hackett gestured for MacTavish to follow and then quietly crept onto the elevated walkway, without fully approaching the guardrail. The Researcher followed cluelessly, until a low rumble all around heralded the incoming train’s approach — at which point MacTavish’s eyes grew wide.

“Y-you—!”

“We’ll cover more ground this way,” Hackett declared, cutting off MacTavish’s uneasy protest. “Just follow my lead, and you’ll be fine.”

“Um… r-right…” MacTavish warily replied.

“Now, be ready. This train doesn’t look long, and it’s moving fast. So, on my mark…”

Scarcely a second passed after Hackett’s pause before the train engine shot by, followed by the couple dozen train cars behind it. As soon as the engine had passed, Hackett signaled to MacTavish — and then sprung to her feet, leaping over the walkway’s guardrail to land on the passing train below. The Researcher uneasily but quickly followed, landing with an unceremonious roll a couple cars behind Hackett. Upon seeing MacTavish land, Hackett quickly moved to support her, moving in a slight crouch so as to keep her center of gravity low, and thus reduce the likelihood of being thrown from the top of the fast-moving train. Before long, Hackett had reached MacTavish and helped the Researcher to her feet, at which point the two women turned to look toward the front of the train, just as it began to slow down.

In the distance, but rapidly approaching, appeared to be a massive facility of some sort — almost certainly a factory, by Hackett’s guess. Within the facility, sporadic lights could be seen on the rails ahead of the train, but the contents of the facility otherwise remained a mystery. With that in mind, Hackett laid down on the top of the train car to reduce her profile as much as possible, and gestured for MacTavish to do the same. Tentatively, the Researcher dropped to her chest, as well… just in time for a metal beam to sweep overhead, provoking a startled yelp out of MacTavish. Hackett glanced back at her, at which point MacTavish quickly clasped her hands over her mouth; the Major then turned to look back to the front of the train, right as it finally entered the large facility.

For the first few tens of meters, the train was surrounded only by stout metal bulkheads on both sides as it continued to slow down. Finally, after reaching a slow pace, the train passed through what appeared to be a set of gates… and emerged within a massive facility. Bright lights and the sounds of mechanical machinery echoed through the air as massive cranes shunted around large crates. Upon looking around, Hackett realized that the train was now on an elevated set of rails that passed over a gigantic flat space, filled almost entirely with pristine combat robots. Each of them stood as still as a statue, as if not yet active, while cranes all around picked up the robots and deposited them into loading bays or tightly packed them into giant crates.

“Th-there’s… so many…!” MacTavish remarked uneasily.

Hackett passed the Researcher a glance, and then looked back to the army of robots below them with a furrowed brow. MacTavish’s observation was far from incorrect; by Hackett’s quick estimation, there must have been hundreds of robots just standing on the floor beneath the train. How the hell does EA have this many robots…? the Major mused, and then looked to the back of the giant room, where a large conveyor belt was bringing even more inactive robots to the floor. This must be a loading bay. The actual production lines are beyond that conveyor belt, I’d guess. It’s time to have a look, and maybe a little sabotage…

Quietly, Hackett climbed to her feet, and gestured for MacTavish to follow. The train was still moving, but several walkways and catwalks filled the air around the tracks; as one approached, Hackett leaped from the back of the train to the catwalk, landing with a loud clang and a flare of her shields. She grimaced at the sound, but still quickly turned around just in time to catch MacTavish and help her onto the walkway as well. Hackett then grasped at her rifle — which was buckled to a chest strap, so as to always remain with her — while surveying the facility, only to find that nothing was reacting to the two women’s presence.

“W-where…?” MacTavish began to ask, only for Hackett to hold a finger to her lips. The Major then gestured toward the conveyor belt at the back of the loading area. Upon seeing where Hackett was pointing, MacTavish gulped uneasily, but offered a quick, curt nod nonetheless.

Now with the Researcher’s approval, Hackett began quietly progressing along the elevated catwalk, all while the continued clangs and whirring of factory machinery filled the air. Slowly, but surely, the two women moved across the massive space, all while Hackett kept a wary eye out for anything that could spot them. However, as far as the Major could tell, there didn’t appear to be any surveillance equipment inside the facility. I suppose EA never expected someone to get inside… either that, or his surveillance is hard to spot. Here’s hoping it’s the former…

A tense couple of minutes passed before Hackett and MacTavish reached the end of the catwalk, against the far wall of the loading bay. Once there, the Major quickly looked around for where to proceed next; on looking back to the conveyor belt, she could now see that there appeared to be a walkway just above and to the side of the belt that led into the space beyond… only, the walkway appeared to be a good dozen meters down. Nevertheless, Hackett quickly got MacTavish’s attention, and then gestured toward the walkway in question.

“…W-what?!” the Researcher responded in quiet disbelief, though the ongoing sounds of mechanical work practically drowned her out. “Th-that’s… s-so far down!!”

“We have our armor,” Hackett replied quietly. “It’ll protect us from the fall.”

“Y-yeah, b-but—!”

“Either we stay here, doing nothing. Or we go down there, and look into the room beyond to see how EA’s making all of these robots. There might be some unique tech, in there. Are you sure you want to let this opportunity pass you up?”

MacTavish squirmed uneasily, her gaze fixed on the lower walkway. Her eyes then drifted to the doorway that the walkway disappeared into… at which point she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and then offered a curt nod.

Hackett nodded back before turning toward the walkway. She quickly surveyed their prospective landing spot to make sure it was clear, and then climbed up onto the flimsy guardrail protecting the catwalk… at which point she flung herself through the air, falling down onto the walkway below. Graciously, she landed with a roll, her shields flaring to protect her from the fall — and then she turned around just in time to catch MacTavish in her arms and let her down gently. Then, as soon as her hands were free, Hackett re-gripped her gun and carefully surveyed their surroundings once more, searching for any signs that they had been detected… yet still, the factory continued on as if nothing was amiss.

…This doesn’t feel right… the Major thought uneasily, her gaze lingering on the ever-moving machinery before eventually turning around to follow the walkway beyond the loading bay.  Getting in here seemed far easier than it should’ve been. Is EA’s security really that lax, or are we walking into a trap…? Well, we’re too far in to back off, now. And in the worst case scenario, our shields should protect us for a while yet…

Cautiously, Hackett began leading MacTavish through the doorway, and into a hallway beyond. Dim lights and sterile emptiness met them in the hallway, accompanied by the echo of their footfalls; and yet, their infiltration remained uninterrupted as they followed the hallway, eventually ascending up a long set of stairs that led to another doorway — this one closed. Hackett reached for the doorknob and attempted to open it, only to find that the door was locked. Quietly, she gestured for MacTavish to back up, and then held her gun up to the lock.

“W-wait!” MacTavish interjected as soon as she realized what Hackett was up to. Quickly, the Researcher scurried up to the door, all while pulling out a set of tools from her pack. Upon seeing MacTavish spring to work, Hackett backed away from the door, watching as MacTavish attached two wires to her watch, with small pads on the other end of the wires. She then began slowly sweeping the pads across the wall near the door’s lock, all while keeping an eye on her watch; after a few seconds of searching, the display on her watch lit up, indicating an electrical current — and thus, circuitry — under the metal of the wall. MacTavish immediately pressed the pads against the door and the wall, activating an adhesive to keep them in place and thus mark the hidden circuitry. The Researcher then unplugged the wires from her watch, pulled out a small tablet, and plugged the wires into the tablet, at which point she activated a program to begin interfacing with the circuits in the wall.

Hackett watched quietly; she had seen MacTavish work before, but the Researcher’s array of gadgets and tinkering knowledge never ceased to amaze and stupefy the Major. Indeed, before long, a click echoed through the hallway… and the door unlocked, allowing MacTavish to slowly open it. As soon as she did, Hackett moved forward again to take point, gesturing for MacTavish to stay behind her. Then, with her rifle ready, the Major finally opened the door and proceeded through… only to stop as soon as she saw the other side.

What met her eyes was a truly massive indoor space, seemingly larger than a dozen sports stadiums on a side. All throughout the massive room were large, elevated pads, spaced at regular intervals, with large tubes running into them from the floor. Out of the ceiling over each pad extended an array of mechanical arms with what appeared to be small laser emitters on the end, shining blue beams of light down onto the pads. As Hackett and MacTavish watched the lights, they saw a glowing bluish orb begin to form, at which point the blue beams appeared to draw lines through the air, creating the vaguely humanoid form of one of EA’s combat robots. On another pad, the blue beams repeatedly swept across a similar humanoid form, creating the 3D outline of a robot; and on yet another pad, the blue beams seemed to be filling in a 3D outline, eventually forming an opaque object… that then dropped to the ground with a loud metallic clang that could only be produced by a solid, fully-formed robot.

“It’s… it’s…!” MacTavish stepped forward, her eyes wide with awe as she watched the newly-formed robot move away from the pad, and the mechanical arms begin the process anew. “It’s… a f-fabricator! A-a matter fabricator!”

“Looks like one of those pads can go from nothing to a fully formed robot in… maybe a few hours. And there are so many pads…” Hackett muttered. “…How the hell…?”

“Th-this, this is amazing!” MacTavish remarked. “U-using energy to fabricate matter f-from seemingly nothing… i-imagine if Earth had that…!”

“If this tech really is as amazing as it looks, then it explains how EA was able to pull an entire army out of his ass,” Hackett said. “But the question remains… how did he get his hands on something like this?”

“H-he, um, he’s an In-Intellitechnic, right…?”

“So is Kate, but she’s never invented something like this,” Hackett refuted. “And even if EA did invent this tech, he still had to get his hands on the materials to make the first one, before he could fabricate copies.”

MacTavish glanced at the Major, and then looked down uneasily. “…I-I guess…”

“Still… while we’re here…” Hackett gestured ahead of them, where the walkway appeared to proceed into some sort of control room. “We might as well learn as much as we can—“

«I’m sorry. I cannot let you do that.»

“What—?!” Hackett immediately brought her gun to bear as a small drone descended from the ceiling.

«Unauthorized presence detected,» came a synthetic-sounding female voice from the drone, identical to the voice that had contacted the SERRCom assault force when they first arrived over the planet. «Submit, or be destroy—»

The voice was cut off as Hackett shot the drone to pieces. Immediately, the lights all throughout the facility turned red, all of the fabricators shut down, and the robots that had recently been fabricated began to spring to life.

“Uh, Major—!” MacTavish yelped, only for Hackett to grab her by the arm and begin running towards the control room.

“There’s no helping it,” the Major shouted as laser fire began to light up the walls and walkway around them. “Get as much info from that room as you can — rip out hard drives and machinery if you have to! Then, we’re blowing this place up and getting the hell out of here!”

“Uh, r-right!” MacTavish replied, scurrying ahead to begin inspecting the contents of the control room as Hackett took cover behind the door and began exchanging fire with the defenses of EA’s production facility.

---

*

“Well… sure sounds like the Major and MacTavish have gotten into trouble…”

“That it does…” Colonel Saito muttered as he cautiously led Captain Travis through a dark corridor, sweeping his gun to and fro in search of anything of value. The Colonel had just received a report from Hackett over the comms about what she and MacTavish had found in EA’s factory; now, Saito and Travis were left to continue on their own, themselves still undetected.

Travis followed Saito steadily, though passed the Colonel an uneasy look. “So, uh… are we gonna go help them?”

“EA’s beam jammers have been destroyed,” Saito replied. “Hackett knows this. When she and MacTavish are done rifling through that control room they found, they just need to contact the Genesis to beam them away.”

“Right…”

“In the meantime, we have investigating of our own to do. This base is massive; I’m certain there’s more here than the factory that Hackett found.”

“Can’t argue with that…” Travis responded as the two men reached the end of the dark hallway. To their left and right stretched another hallway, with stairs descending several stories on both sides, ending in closed doors.

Saito aimed his gun-mounted flashlight down both sets of stairs, inspecting the doors at the bottom. All he could see, however, was that both doors were identically labeled with one word, in bold yellow-and-black lettering: “CAUTION.”

“…Ominous,” Travis remarked — and then balked when Saito began moving down the right-side stairs. “Are we really going in?!”

“It’s our job to investigate,” Saito replied. “Now get down here.”

“Well, sure…” Travis muttered as he began following the Colonel to the bottom of the stairs. “But it feels like we’ve already descended into the depths of the earth, before reaching these stairs. That ‘caution’ sign sure as hell isn’t meant for intruders — it’s a warning for EA, himself. That means that even he’s wary of what’s inside.”

“Which is all the more reason to figure out exactly what he’s storing, here,” Saito said as he approached the door at the bottom of the stairs. He reached out to test the handle, only to find that the door was locked. Quietly, he glanced back at Travis and offered a curt nod; a second later, Travis nodded back in acknowledgment, and then raised his gun to be ready to shoot. As he did, Saito turned back to the door, raised his own rifle… and then shot out the lock.

The sound of a single bullet wrecking a metal lock echoed through the dark halls, but following it was raw silence. Tentatively, Saito reached out to push the door open, and this time, it yielded. With Travis at his back, Saito finally stepped through and began sweeping his gun across the new space, using its flashlight to take in their new surroundings. On all sides appeared to be lab equipment, with a couple of computers in the corner — while a few meters farther ahead were lines of long shelves, as if some kind of inventory room. Darkness bathed the entire room, leaving only Saito and Travis’s flashlights to light their way… and also revealing the soft, telltale glow of active energy shielding across all of the shelves.

Upon spotting this, the two men exchanged a glance. They then turned back to the shelves, cautiously stepping forward to inspect what they stored. The sound of Saito and Travis’s heavy footfalls echoed through the room, the only sounds amidst the darkness around them. Step by step, they neared the shelves, and finally were able to get a viewing angle on the nearest one, finding what appeared to be large cages. Within those cages were a variety of small- and medium-sized animals, ranging from rodents, to birds, to beasts the size of wolves. Notably, all of the animals appeared to be completely frozen in place, subjected to some manner of stasis mechanism… but more notable than that, were the distinct silver rashes crossing the bodies of every beast in every cage.

“…Holy shit,” Travis muttered. “…Looks like that AI of EA’s was telling the truth!”

Saito released an annoyed sigh. “I feared that might be the case…”

“But still…” Travis frowned as he swept the beam from his gun’s flashlight across the rest of the cages around him, finding even more infected animals, all of them frozen in place. “…What the hell is EA trying to study, here? Hasn’t the rest of the galaxy already studied the infection a ton? What’s left for EA to figure out…?”

“Who’s to say. We certainly aren’t qualified to,” Saito remarked as he moved to activate his comms. “But this calls for a quick call. Captain Krick of the Genesis, this is Colonel Saito. Do you hear me?”

A moment of silence passed. Then, «This is Krick. The hell do you need?»

“To report important news,” Saito responded, while staring warily at the frozen beasts around him. “…We’ve verified that AI’s claims. The metallic infection — the Nanocreatures — are here.”