D. MacHale - The Soldiers of Halla

“I guess they don’t expect anybody dropping in from up here,” I remarked.

Inside the building another small ladder led down to a metal catwalk. I climbed down first, then helped Elli. The catwalk ran along the wall, high above the factory floor. From inside we could look down to see the entire fleet of choppers. Or whatever it is you call a bunch of helicopters. They were all new. They were all armed. They were all ready for their deadly mission.

“Look,” Mark said. “They’re making even more.”

He pointed to the far side of the space, where we saw several more helicopters in various stages of construction.

“Yikes. How many do they think they need?” Mark asked.

“Seventy thousand people is a lot of people” was my sober answer.

I scanned the vast factory floor, trying to take it all in. It was then that something struck me.

“This might get worse,” I announced.

Mark said, “Worse than a few dozen attack helicopters armed with rockets?”

“I mean, this isn’t the whole factory.” I pointed to the right, which was the direction the building had stretched out before us when we were on the roof. “What we’re seeing here isn’t even half the factory. Look at the far wall. No way that’s the end of the building. There’s more beyond that. A lot more.”

“Could there be even more helicopters?” Elli asked.

I saw that the catwalk continued on along the wall, high above the factory floor.

“Let’s find out,” I said, and moved quickly along the metal walkway.

I took one of the guns off my shoulder and held it against my hip, ready to shoot. I kept glancing to the factory floor to see if any workers or dados might be down there to sound an alarm. The place seemed deserted. I figured it might have been a day off. Did dados take a day off? Or maybe it was too early for the first shift to begin. After all, the sun had barely come up. We passed row after row of the attack helicopters. I was already planning some way to sabotage them. Maybe the rockets on board could be fired and that would create a chain reaction. Or something. We had to figure out some way of grounding this fleet of killing machines.

We made the long walk to the far wall, and to a door that would lead us to whatever was beyond. I grabbed the door handle and turned. It was unlocked. I turned back to the others.

“You think we can do some damage down there?” I asked Mark.

Mark shrugged. “I don’t see why not. There’s plenty of live ammo around. Of course, if we start making noise, they’ll know we’re here.”

“You think?” I chuckled.

I opened the door, stepped into the next factory space…

And all thoughts of helicopters left my head.

I dropped the rifle. That’s how stunned I was. My arms went limp. The weapon clattered onto the metal walkway. I left it there, taking a few dazed steps forward, as if getting closer might make the image before me clearer, and prove it wasn’t what it seemed to be. I hoped it was an optical illusion. Or a trick. Or anything other than what it looked to be.

There was a question I’d often wondered about but never bothered to try and answer. Since leaving home, I had to learn about and understand so many impossible things that some of them I just had to let go. It’s how I felt about unique technology on all the territories. I never really wondered or cared about how they created power on Ibara. Or how the air globes of Cloral were created. Or what advanced technology would allow something like Lifelight to exist, or the amber crystals on Eelong that carried radio signals. These were all aspects of the territories that were interesting, but didn’t need to be analyzed unless it could help us on our mission.

The same held true for what we saw on that factory floor. This is what Antonio and his team had discovered. This is what he meant when he said the Ravinians had been preparing to attack.

It had nothing to do with helicopters.

The factory did indeed go on. This second section had to be three times the size of the area that held the choppers. The lame choppers. The choppers that now seemed like toys compared to what faced us on that factory floor. I now had the answer to a question I’d never asked.

I now knew where the dados were made.

We stood above a sea of thousands of dado warriors. Shoulder to shoulder. Heel to toe. Row upon row upon perfect row. They were dressed in various uniforms. Some wore the green military-like uniforms with gold helmets from Quillan. Another whole section had on the deep red suits that showed them to be Ravinian guards. One huge section held dados that didn’t have uniforms, but instead were dressed in normal clothing that would easily allow them to blend in with the people of Second Earth.

There was more. I saw dados dressed as Batu warriors and Bedoowan knights. Some wore the rags that made them look like Flighters from Ibara. Maybe the most jarring of all was the section of klees. They actually made dado cats.

As with the helicopters, one whole section of floor was an assembly line that held hundreds of dados that were yet to be completed. There were more to come. Many more. I saw multiple rows of legs and arms and hands-all waiting to be used to create more robotic warriors.

The dados all had the same, blank expression. Many were still made in Mark’s image, but others branched out with different looks. The dados were looking more human than ever. But they weren’t. They were machines. They were Saint Dane’s army.

“This is what Antonio found,” I said with a dry mouth. “This is how they’re going to attack.”

Mark looked just as stunned as I felt. “There could be seventy thousand exiles, or seven hundred thousand. It won’t matter. They can’t stand up to this army.”

I went into brain lock. I didn’t know what to do. About the dados. About Halla. About the exiles. I didn’t even know what to do in the next second. I was frozen.

Wump!

A dull but powerful sound tore through the dead quiet. An instant later, a dado that had been creeping toward us along the catwalk fell off and plummeted to the factory floor. It looked like a mannequin because it was already dead. It hit, bounced, and crumbled like a doll. Mark and I both looked back in surprise to see Elli standing behind us with the gun I had dropped. She had it braced against her hip, her finger on the trigger.

She had dropped the dado with a single shot.

“Pick up your guns,” she commanded with confidence. “They know we’re here.”

I don’t know what was more stunning: finding the vast army of dados, knowing that we had been discovered and were in for a fight, or seeing Elli with a rifle on her hip after having blown away a dado.

I think it was Elli.

“Move!” she barked.

Mark and I both jumped to the side of the narrow walkway as Elli unloaded again. She shot from the hip, literally. She held the weapon at waist level, the butt against her hip. The rifle let out another dull wump as it discharged. For a fleeting instant I thought I sensed the charged particle as it shot past us. Maybe I’m crazy, but I could swear the hair went up on the back of my neck, as if I had been brushed by static electricity. A second later another dado was blown off its feet. It landed square on its back on the metal walkway. Dead. Done. Lights out. Whatever.

Farther ahead on the catwalk, more dados in red Ravinian outfits appeared and sprinted toward us.

“Back to the roof,” I commanded.

We turned to run back the way we had come. Elli led the way, her rifle out and ready to fire again. Who knew? We got as far as the doorway that led back into the helicopter section of the factory when Elli pulled up.

“They must have seen us on the roof,” she gasped.