Deep in the flickering darkness the lights stabilized. The colossal forerunner structure, silent for untold millennia, suddenly came to life with a low hum.
The forges heated as their lights came on. Within moments the optimum heat was reached and they engaged.
Several lines of machines the size of starships spewed a rivers of molten alloy into the air. This liquefied metal arced up and then cascaded into hollow towers that pulsed with bioluminescent strands. Molds were cast, cooled, tempered and instantly cracked open. From the bottom pieces of fabricated plates, armor and other bits of equipment were rolled out on glowing treadmills of light.
Parts were then carried into assembly machines, thousands of little arms cooperating to cut the plates apart and reconfigure them into a plethora of machines that were then levitated onto the rows upon rows of shelves and cubbyholes lining the planet’s inner walls.
The forge had sparked to life and the space was filled with the roar of construction and fabrication.
But in one corner of the seemingly infinite space of complicated fabrication and activity was a little hovel of quietness. Far away from the thrum of machines and the screech of cutting metal was a small pile of disused equipment and debris. It had collapsed, as if at one point a long time ago served as a little fort.
Among the debris a small broken sphere of forerunner alloy began to twitch. The pile shifted and one of the girders forming the peak of the pile slid away.
A single amber eye flickered slowly to life, and the monitor gently awoke from hibernation…