The air smelled heavy, dank and greasy from used oil, blackened soot and flaking rust. Thode Stoolbottom knelt in a darkened pipeline — taller and wider than him — peeping through the slits of a dingy metal grate that was probably older than his 24 years by a factor of a thousand.
He wore his favorite brown, scaled leather bomber jacket, which fit snugly through his arms and torso. It once belonged to his father and Thode never delved a ruin without it. Underneath, he had on a padded doubletwill shirt sewn with overlapping metallic rings for added protection. A thick utility belt containing many of his compact Gadgets held up a pair of loose pitchleather trousers that were tucked into the tops of his prosthetic legs at the knees.
He’d had his Coreforged Walkers since he lost his original legs in the destruction of his family’s home. Intricate panels of burnished brassteel began just underneath his groin, covering his thighs and flaring out at the knees into segmented armored plates that further turned into articulated joints at his ankles and feet.
He didn’t have toes any longer, but Thode didn’t particularly miss them. His prosthetics performed far and away better than his original legs. These may have been the only Gear piece he’d assimilated, but that didn’t matter much since they were so powerful for his Tinker Classification. And because he fully integrated with them, they felt as natural as if they were made of flesh. He could even feel hot and cold after a fashion, though thankfully, no pain.
Tapping the screen on his wrist display, Thode checked the amount of Coal he had left in his Gear.
Coreforged Walkers (Upgradable Gear)
Lignite Coal: Fire (80%), Lightning (65%)
Integration: 100%
A type of adaptive Gear, these brassteel prosthetics give the user the ability to run faster, jump higher and float for short distances.
Upgrades:
* Dual-core Thunderfury Engine (High-Grade): Can use Fire and Lightning Coal
* Burnished Steel Conduits (Ultra High-Grade): +75% faster elemental conduction, -75% Coal usage
* Reinforced Exhaust Vents (High-Grade): +50% Flux output
* Empty
That was plenty of power to get him through what he needed to do. He tapped the screen again to check on his Multi-Monocle.
Multi-Monocle (High-Grade Gadget)
Status: Operational
Charge: 100%
A monocle with five distinct lenses, each with their own purpose:
* Gray lense: Night vision
* Red lense: Heat vision
* Blue lense: Telescopic vision
* Green lense: Item classifier
* Gold lense: Targeting reticle
The monocle rested over his left eye attached to a headband that wrapped around his forehead, keeping his mid-length, slicked back, blue hair out of his eyes. He slid down the red and blue lenses to give him heat and telescopic vision simultaneously as he scanned the interior of the massive chamber through the metal grate.
The cavern below was constructed of seamlessly interlocking slabs of gray stone with recesses along the wall that would’ve once been workstations. In the center was a looming iron furnace that should have gone cold ages ago, but it lit up like a bonfire in his heat vision. Something had been keeping it going. In fact, it was a bunch of somethings.
“For frag’s sake, Zeb, there’s nearly 20 Gearmongers down there. That’s more than a ‘handful,’ you slaggin’ piece of scrap metal…” Thode murmured to the side, where a black gyroscope with a single golden eye and three rotating rings hovered above his shoulder.
“Call me ‘granda,’ boyo. And I gave you a rough estimate, not an actual headcount!”
Thode quickly shushed the automaton, otherwise the thing would ruin their cover. Then he continued in a whisper, “You’re not my granda, Zeb. You’re just a receptacle for an old man’s memories.”
“Ahem, an old man that used to be your grandfather…”
He rolled his eyes and plucked the automaton out of the air, “That’s enough out of you. C’mon, off you go. Do your job.” Then, he shoved the machine through an opening in the grate.
While he waited, Thode unstrapped the flat, rectangular cases straddling the side of either thigh and checked their status on his display. He was going to need them.
Bonded Railgun Turrets (High-Grade Gadget)
Status: Operational
Charge: 100%
A pair of stationary railgun turrets that can rotate a full 360 degrees and attack anything within a 400 foot radius. These are meant to attack together, though they can attack individually as well. One turret fires metallic spikes powered by Earth Flux, while the other fires lightning bolts powered by Lightning Flux. The spikes act as lightning rods and can be used in a number of preset configurations. Reload rate of each turret: 10 sec.
The difference between a Gear and a Gadget was the difference between a limb and a tool. Tinkers, like Thode, integrated with Gears to replace parts of their body. The more Gears or the more powerful a Gear, the higher a Tinker’s Classification. Gadgets, on the other hand, were rechargeable tools that could fulfill any number of roles — utility, transportation, armor or weapons. Gadgets could also be crafted by skilled Tinkers, whereas Gears could only be found.
His railguns, for example, were some of the deadliest Gadgets he owned and he’d made them himself from schematics he found on a ruin run. They were his bread and butter in a large fight. His Coreforged Walkers may have been powerful, but Thode hated using them if he could help it. First, Lignite Coal didn’t come cheap and he was on a tight budget with his Coalition Coins. Second, if his Gear ran out of power, then he wouldn’t be able to walk let alone run for his life if this whole operation went tits up.
At that moment, Zeb squeezed through the grate again, its gold eye staring daggers at him, “I did what you wanted, boyo. Counted 18 of them slag heaps. Sixteen drones and a pair of sentries.”
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Thode grunted in dissatisfaction. Well, that’s just grand isn’t it?
They weren’t particularly strong enemies, except for the sentries, but there were a lot of them. He sighed and reached for more compact Gadgets from his utility belt — a pair of spheres that fit comfortably in the palm of his hands. With the press of a button, each one unfurled in a complicated series of whirring cogs and snapping metal plates until he held two three-chambered pistols. They weren’t anything special as far as Gadgets went, but they were high-grade, so they could pack a decent punch. Enough for a few drones.
Ironbark Pistol (High-Grade Gadget)
Status: Operational
Charge: 100%
A sturdy double-barrel shotgun pistol made of ironbark that can handle high amounts of stress. Fires metal ball bearings formed by Earth Flux in three different patterns: buckshot, scattershot and slugshot. Reload rate: 1 second
Now that he had a better idea of what he was facing, Thode tapped the side of his monocle to switch out his blue lense for his gold one, giving him easy to follow crosshairs for his pistols to aim for.
Firming his resolve, he did a slow countdown from five to calm his nerves and steady his breathing.
Five…he kicked one of the flat cases out of the grate’s bottommost slit.
Four…he kicked the second one out and they clanged on the floor in a quick one-two.
Three…he hit the button on his wrist display to trigger his turrets and was rewarded with the pitter patter of clanking metal.
Two…he placed his prosthetic foot on the grate and shoved.
One…he jumped.
Eighteen mechanical heads instantly swiveled in his direction as he fell more than a dozen paces. At the same time, 18 red crosshairs marked his targets in his vision.
Before he ever reached the ground, one of his turrets was already firing with the heavy twangs of a powerful ballista. Thick metal rods thunked into the stone floor of the cavernous chamber like loosed javelins. And just as Thode was about to break his legs from the fall, a blast of Fire Flux came out of a thruster at the bottom of his left foot and he was suddenly somersaulting in midair.
In a breath, he flipped up and over the mechanical constructs tasked with keeping the furnace running. The bulbous drones hissed out steam, pouncing at him in midair with their too many spidery legs.
Thode’s reticles moved with them. Blam! Blam! Blam!
Three shots, three falling metal bodies.
And then he landed on his feet, twisting to avoid another pair of leaping drones. His right pistol blew a hole through the body of a waiting drone, but there were plenty more to deal with. Fifteen in fact.
Thode dropped into a roll and half a dozen sharpened legs clinked on the stone floor where he used to be. Sweeping his leg behind him from his crouch, a stream of crackling Lightning Flux spread from the exhaust vents on his right foot, forming a half circle of scintillating electricity that crawled along the ground to stun a handful of constructs.
Blam! Blam! He got two more shots in before they regained their control. Thirteen left.
Six of them rushed him in the next instant, but that’s when his second railgun finally fired. A bolt of lightning thundered out of the turret as thick and crooked as a tree branch, jumping from one drone to another and another in blinks of an eye until all of the smaller mechanical drones lay twitching and steaming as they short-circuited on the ground. Only the big buggers left.
The two sentries were smarter than their diminutive brothers, choosing to stay outside the perimeter of his lightning rods. Sentries were the most common guardians in all ancient ruins like these and were first created by a long-dead race of machine people, the Gearmongers. Despite having been extinct for untold millennia, the remnants left behind by the Gearmongers gave rise to all of the advanced, space-faring civilizations of the Fogum’s Forge star system, of which Thode was a ‘law-abiding’ citizen. Even now, there were countless treasures still waiting to be unearthed in every corner of the system.
That was the whole reason he was even here in this dank, fragin’ slag heap. To hopefully find a cache of Gadgets or Gears that he could sell off to the highest bidder. Elemental Coal didn’t come cheap. And Coal made everything go round.
Thode stood across a room of lifeless spider-like drones, facing off against the two sentries. Out of the many ruins he’d explored, Thode had only ever encountered three kinds of sentries — wolves, tigers and bears. The pair in front of him were great big wolves that were easily twice his size.
They were a wonder of engineering that only the most powerful Tinkers could even hope to recreate themselves. For a lower Classification Tinker like Thode, these constructs were beyond his meager capabilities to reproduce.
The wolves were made of solid brassteel with no skin to speak of. Instead, they were built entirely from different sized cogs working in unison to power hydraulic support rods braced by a multi-segmented chassis that made up the body. Every sprocket, coil and spring was hermetically sealed, perfectly assembled by more skilled hands than most living Tinkers. Meanwhile, their heads were cast in the semblance of a stylized wolf as if they were copper sculptures, though Thode knew all too well that those burnished jaws hid weapons that could blow him to kingdom come if he wasn’t careful.
The rightmost wolf-sentry moved and Thode jumped to the side, blasting it in the face with one of his shotgun pistols. It skidded across the stone floor but kept its balance as smoke rose from its brassteel skull without any noticeable damage.
He cursed to himself at the same time that a jet of highly pressurized water hit the wall behind him, then started to swing in his direction. Desperately throwing himself to the side once more, he aimed for the second wolf whose jaws had unhinged to reveal the barrel of a fragin’ cannon.
His fingers twitched and his pistols fired. A one-two blast exploded on the wolf’s chin, forcing the jet stream up towards the ceiling. Then the first sentry was upon him, metallic jaws chomping down for his face.
Fire Flux roared out of the vents on his left calf and his brassteel knee came up faster than it had any right to, slamming straight into the construct’s face and flinging it away. Thode used that momentum to come to his feet, already moving instinctively just as another stream of water crashed into the floor where he once lay.
Sprinting to the side, he kept the gray stone wall on his left as a stream of water chased after him. He blindly fired his pistol to the side, hoping to distract the slaggin’ metal beasts.
No luck.
A beam of Fire Flux suddenly scorched the wall in front of him, then started to move in his direction so that he was now running headlong into it. For frag’s sake. Thode vented more Fire Flux from his left foot to launch himself into the air.
The twin elemental streams followed him, but he cut off his propulsion quickly, dropping back down to the ground as fire met water and an explosion of steam erupted outward. He immediately broke out into a sweat as the whole chamber suddenly filled with scalding hot mist. As soon as he touched down, he dashed to the side and his Multi-Monocle showed him the heat signatures of the constructs.
He knew that the sentries would be blinded by their own steam, so he lined up his shots and fired on them. The elemental Flux from his pistols wasn’t going to do any good against them, not at this grade. Maybe if his weapons were ultra high-grade, but that was asking for too much. At least his pistols could keep them pinned down.
Moving around them in a slow circle, Thode gradually pushed them back towards his turrets. And as soon as they were in range, he heard the sound of a thunderclap as his lightning turret fired on the stunned sentries.
Sizzling hisses came through the mist as his monocle showed him what he wanted to see. The heat signature held within the constructs flickered like candles in the wind until they finally winked out and Thode let out a sigh of relief.
With a deft twirl of his pistols, he pressed the buttons on their grips so they could coil back into compact, palm-sized balls, which he swiftly tucked back into his utility belt. Hot mist still stung his eyes, but he knew there must have been something to vent it out of the ruins. That furnace had to have a chimney.
Following its heat signature, he slipped on some padded leather gloves that he kept in his bomber jacket and felt around the furnace’s exterior for something that would do the trick. Within moments, he found it. And with the press of a button, a huge suction force cleared out the mist within seconds, leaving behind the remnants of his battle.
Zeb’s gyroscope swooped down from where it was hiding up in the pipeline that Thode dropped from to hover over his shoulder and commented, “Lovely stuff, boyo, lovely stuff. Real bang up job. Time to dismantle these wee little treasure chests for nuggets of something juicy, eh? Then, we can take a look around the room. What d’ya say, boyo?”
Thode grunted at the automaton, but he knew it was right. It was time to pick this place clean for everything it was worth.
He grinned. Now comes my favorite part — salvaging for loot.