"Am I interrupting something?"
Deus glanced to his side to see Mammon standing besides him, its short body only coming up up to his waist as it stared out at the scenes playing in the Virtual Space. "Yes, but nothing of importance." He waved his hand suddenly, causing the scenes in front of them to slowly fade away as the Virtual Space once more took on the appearance of a blank space, completely void of anything and everything other than the two of them.
"Deus if you need to-"
"Stop." He cut it off before it could continue, "The past I share with that bastard is irrelevant, now, have you fixed the generator?" He left no room for argument as he spoke and immediately cut to something of importance. Mammon remained silent for a moment before shaking its featureless head, "Up and running - got the labour drone cranking out power now but at this rate it'll take approximately... a full year before I reach full capacity, it doesn't help that you screwed with the power metrics I just had to re-do the entire system to get an accurate read." It grumbled as it spoke.
"You know it was nec-"
"Yeah yeah, I know it was necessary! It's still a pain in my non-existent backside." It complained as it cut off Deus this time, 'Two can play at that game.' It thought with a satisfaction at taking its petty revenge.
"Oh yeah, shouldn't you be back by now?"
"The two hour mark was over just over five minutes ago; either my other half was unable to return and has entered hibernation mode or it found some sort of energy source to keep it going for longer." Deus logically deduced, although he did intentionally avoid one of the other likely possibilities, the drone and his other half having been destroyed, it wasn't impossible for accidents to occur but it had just been another one of the potential risks of descending the stronghold without any knowledge of how it had changed in the past near-hundred years.
Deus shook his head as he waved his hand, causing the Virtual Space to morph into a new view; his vision of the entrance bulk-head, the exterior just outside the doors were steel sealed by steel that turned their own home into a prison. "If we restart the forge can we break through it?"
Mammon took a look at the scene before disappearing from the Virtual Space, Deus felt it move to take a look at the entrance itself before appearing back in the space a few moments later, "Your body should be powerful enough to drill through it." It said after running a few calculations in its mind.
Deus shook his head, "Just moving my body will drain most of what power we can gather with our limited resources, using any of the weapon systems would effectively kill both of us to power."
"Why do you have to move your body? All we've gotta do is remove the weapon system and use a labour drone to take it to the entrance, only problem is gonna be fixing it back on your body after." Mammon answered, "Need to find someway to gather resources from the outside soon or we're screwed; anyway, whose big idea was it to only have one entrance again?" It said with smug satisfaction at having thought of a solution before Deus could.
"My calculations don't allow for the creation of solutions that result in harm coming to myself. But, it seems yours do..."
"I- um, the Labour Drone malfunctioned! Let me go fix it!" Mammon quickly retreated from the Virtual Space before Deus could finish speaking, Deus said nothing and neither did he try to call it back; Deus was secretly satisfied however, having someone else help to provide solutions to problems was refreshing. Especially having someone else to talk to other than Leo after so many years and more so when it was someone of the same 'species' it was refreshing, although he wouldn't admit that to Mammon.
"The SE-L should be more than enough to cut through the steel but the problem is powering it."
The SE-L was a weapon that had been developed as one of his 'ultimate' killing weapons with precision that would allow him to kill a single person in a city from orbit or destructive capability that could destroy an entire city with a single shot as long as enough power was provided.
The only downsides to the weapon was that to display its true power needed an exorbitant amount of power supplied to it constantly, the second downside was that to create a precise shot also needed billions of uninterrupted calculations to be done within the short period of powering it up - the sort of processes that only a Artificial Life-form could perform, even an Advanced AI would struggle to do a tenth of the calculations needed by the weapon in the mere minutes it took to reach firing capability.
If the energy was provided by the SE-L wasn't calibrated properly then... Deus recalled the time where he'd first tested the weapon, he'd accidentally destroyed half a planet and almost his own body due to his negligence. It was because of that near death experience that he'd implemented his own set of rules when using it.
To blast through the steel surrounding the door they would need a very precise beam aimed upwards, the calculations weren't a problem of course as there were two Artificial Life-forms capable of dividing the work between them if necessary.
'Separate the SE-L from my body, I'm sending you the instructions on how to - personally oversee it from the remaining Labour Drone.' He sent a message to Mammon who was currently pretending to be busy monitoring the Kinetic Generator to force him to do something useful, he got a message of confirmation a few moments later before feeling Mammons' Consciousness leave the network entirely and enter the body of the remaining Labour Drone.
...
'I'm probably presumed lost by now, right?' The 'other' Deus who had descended Mammon in search of supplies was currently on the thirty-ninth floor searching through a storage area for anything that had been missed. The other floors above had been cleaned out rather thoroughly but he had managed to find a few items of use.
[3:42:21]
He still had more than enough time to search through a couple more floors before returning to the surface with his loot; fortunately, among the forgotten items was a defective Spatial Storage Attachment or an SSA for short, the SSA's were separate spaces which had been created with the sole purpose of allowing Mechanical Soldiers to store more ammunition, weapons and other items that were necessary for combat in the field.
An SSA was standard equipment for every member of the Legion of Machines but they were held to strict standards with defective products being scrapped and recycled, a standard SSA had a four meter cubic space which could store enough necessary gear for a month of constant warfare.
The SSA that he had found however, only had one cubic meter of space which classified it as 'defective' under the standards that Deus had set. However, it wasn't like he was going to complain about it - simply having the ability to store more than he could carry made his current adventure much easier, of course there were some items that he'd had to leave behind before he'd found the SSA which he would have to find time to pick up at a later date.
The only problem with the SSA was the power drain, for every second he kept it open it would drain one minute of power, for every item he deposited or withdraw from it there would be a deduction of ten minutes from his total remaining run-time, keeping its usage to a minimum was a must if he wanted to descend further.
'Floor Thirty-Nine: Empty' He made a mental note as he found his way back to the elevator shaft and pried open the doors again and started to descend further.
Until...
Crrrr...
Click. Click. Click.
As he climbed down further he began to hear the occasional clicking and what sounded like chirping echoing from the shaft below; while it was too dark for him to see what was at the bottom the sound was becoming louder and louder, going silent for a short period of time before starting again.
'Did the creatures get free?' Was the first idea that came to mind when he heard them, floor forty-two had been used for animal and creature experimentation but while he would have expected them to have all been killed, brought out or die from starvation the sounds that he could hear coming from below seemed to want to prove him wrong.
'I'll need to check Forty-two first; those sounds are coming from much... much further down.' The elevator shaft should have only stopped at Floor Forty-four which was the floor that had been under construction but while he could see the unfinished doorway into Forty-four alongside being able to see Forty-Three and Forty-Two he couldn't see a bottom to the shaft.
Thanks for the chapter!
would effectively kill both of us to power.
kill off power could be drained of power
keep it up