by Marcus Sloss
Everly shook her head to not bother.
“Ah, she left already, didn’t she? Okay, then, up we go. Another nap won’t be the end of the world. How much time is left on our auctions?”
“Five hours or so. I don’t plan on actually staying down here, Eric, I need to be sharp towards the end of the bidding. You need to get Norm out of there, though,” Everly said swatting my ass goodbye as she turned around and headed back out of the portal.
I trotted forward with a wave over my shoulder. Gravity left my feet, I floated through the void, and then adjusted again as gravity reasserted itself inside the orbital.
A few taps on my Gpad sent a video ring to Norm. I lunged into a brisk walk for the distant species market. I saw my video screen digitalize Norm. I had my Gpad’s orb fly in front of my face so I wouldn’t have to keep glancing down at my wrist.
“Oh, hey Eric. Tina and I are over at an automation place Daphne sent us to. The items for sale here are amazing. I am compiling a wish list for the next market rotation,” Norm said excitedly.
Tina poked her head into the camera frame to blurt, “Hey Eric! Sorry I was short earlier. We need to do lunch again. I never get to see Willow anymore, since she is so busy being a soldier. Oh, did you know Derek is a soldier now? The virum has changed him a lot. Me, not so much. I still love animals. I saw you went and bought a whole bunch -”
“Tina, dear, you're rambling,” Norm said from the side of the video.
“I want to go to an animal vendor or three. To window shop for next rotation,” Tina said quickly. “There is so much I want to know. Pretty please!”
“Woah, we’re not in a rush.” I chuckled, “Look, you have been in here for hours. That is going to take a lot more out of you than you realize. My recommendation would be to head back out, crash for a few hours, and then come back in with the intent of building those lists,” I said with an approving smile. “I like your initiative, it will help Bastion grow.” I frowned at them, “I’m serious about the tax the market places on your bodies. I want you two heading for the exit. The moment I close this call, your funds will go away. Before I go, though, I need to know if we can sustain our new numbers without purchasing additional automation for agriculture this market rotation.”
Norm was jostling with Tina. I guess she really wanted to be in the video feed.
“Yes,” they answered in unison, giving each other a cute smile.
I wanted so badly to roll my eyes, but held my reaction in check. Other couples were allowed their moments too. They did look happy.
Norm cleared his throat, probably noticing how my eyes had started to glaze over. He said, “The long answer is that these systems take varying amounts of time to come online. Then there is also the fact that the crops themselves have to mature. For the eleven days between the market cycles, we should be fine.” He scratched at his chin. “Oh, and Eric, you should know that we bought a bunch of agriculture automation already, well, Daphne did, at least enough to provide for the Pandarin and some greens for the rest of us. We will have fresh veggies, regardless. I’ve researched what the recommended crop rotations for the Mounamine and Pandarin are, but asking them what they prefer may be worth making a change. If they hate sprouts, but love carrots, for example, then we should grow carrots.”
I continued to walk towards the contract market at a brisk pace. I listened to him rationally explain things that I would never have considered.
The tall Xgate vendor booths passed by in my peripheral vision without a second glance. I was on a mission and wouldn’t let myself get distracted.
“That is great news then. Mclain will be happy to hear you are setting aside the funds. I do need to ask, though, since I am on my way to the contracts market now—do you need any additional help?” I asked.
“What kind of help?” Tina asked, curiously.
With everyone looking twenty, thanks to the virum, it was hard to remember that some of my people were still nosey college students, with an attitude to match. Not that her question was overly invasive, it simply highlighted her lack of maturity. She was young at heart, too, so I let it slide.
“The kind I can buy,” I said, and they both reacted with their ‘O’ faces. I did chuckle at their reaction.
“Honestly,” he frowned, “yes and no. People were excited to till fields, plant crops, and manage animals at first. When all of a sudden, we had excess food, and then the virum, a lot of people switched to looting. Three hours on the road, interesting homes to sift through … it was hard to compete against. I have been adjusting by adding Crixxi who are moderately good at farming,” Norm said, in a defeated tone. The man was a hunk, with his Fabio hair, yet he appeared awful, with his sad, tired eyes. “The no is because none of my personnel shortages will matter once we have extra workers on hand to help, even on a temporary basis, and especially once we shift agricultural production to the automation. I will probably need to lay off some people at that point.”
“Hmm,” I thought it over, “I will divert Mounamine and some Pandarin to help toil in the fields until we reach a balance point. My goal is to hire some fairies to -”
“Fairies!” Tina butted in excitedly. “Can I see what they look like? Are they tiny like in the movies? Tell me they are big!”
I did roll my eyes this time, but sent them the image, her eagerness winning me over.
“Rowr! I thought the Crixxi were sexy,” Norm blurted, and Tina blushed. “What!? Check out their men.”
“They remind me of elves in fantasy movies, just with wings. Damn! Both sexes are fucking hot. I’ve got to give it to the virum. It makes the best of us even better, and even the ugly ones, pretty,” Tina said with a wide grin and bouncing eyebrow. “I’ll take a dozen, please. What are the fairies for?”
“Building, architecture and design mostly. I thought you were pregnant?” I asked.
“Pfft, as if that means I don’t still love sex, but yes, Derek will be a dad. Hurray for our big family! Just saying,” she nudged Norm in the ribs with an elbow, “we could add a fairy couple, I doubt Slister would mind,” Tina said to Norm.
Norm rolled his eyes and shook his head. “To answer your original question, we have no pressing need for land maintainers. The agricultural automation, however, is a different story. We’ll need help with the equipment from someone who has worked with it before, preferably an instructor of some sort.”
“Well, I know a subspecies perfect for the job. You have to roll them over for sex though,” I grinned, unable to control my laughter as I sent an image of a Sluggero to them.
“Maybe on margarita night. I am all for sexperimentation,” Tina said joining my giggle-fit. Norm just blanched, sticking his tongue out in disgust.
“Alright, you two are a hoot, I need to rebalance the accounts and call Mclain. Cap out,” I said, closing the connection.
I called Everly first.
“Hey handsome,” she replied.
“Everly, I need to sort out the money Norm had left in his funds into purchases for you and then purchases for Mclain. How is your balance sheet looking?” I asked.
“You called the wrong person first, Eric, a rare mistake. I can adjust far easier than Mclain can,” Everly said, with a haughty smirk.
I closed the connection with a grumble and called Mclain.
“Go for Count Mclain,” the man said, instantly reminding me of another list of problems I’d have to deal with.
“Shit, we need to get after those promotions ... You’re getting promoted, by the way. Hurray! To duke, so… Not so hurray, I guess. We need colonel and captain rank equivalents, so dukes and counts. Since our army is growing, we’ll have to adjust,” I rambled. Mclain waited patiently.
“Thanks, I guess.” He smirked, “You had me at ‘you’re getting paid’. That one is fucking huge, Cap. We had been bitching in the ranks non-stop from the endless looting without any of us seeing an individual cut. Well, when you give out tanks like candy and promise a usable paycheck, including
back-pay … suddenly you have a very motivated fighting force,” Mclain said, adjusting his angle to check out my surroundings. “Oh, you’re in the market. Are you coming to me?”
“Nope, on my way to the contracts market to buy some sexy humans with wings. Gary wanted a builder species to help with architecture, construction, and design. Show me what you’ve found so far,” I said.
Mclain frowned before explaining, “Cap, this really is an in-person kind of thing. Difficult to explain, so you will have to trust me, but I can give you a brief peek. Basically, we will be buying a vat, large tub, huge bucket—take your pick on the name of the container—full of a material composed of tiny morphing creatures that acts like a hive mind. They’re non-invasive and quite friendly. Apparently, they will coat your exterior in an armor that tends to work in synergy with the virum. The virum gets to go through the armor to get zinc, but each symbiote sticks to their assigned roles. Virum on the inside. Acrium on the outside.”
I motioned for him to continue.
“When the acrium envelope a host; a mineral in their bodies hardens on command. It is far more complex than that, but after seventeen questions I was led down the path and given a demonstration to stop me from asking a million question to figure out how the acrium work this way. After the demonstration, I had only one question: ‘how do we apply it to our army’. Application, however, was not what I expected.” He frowned.
I sidestepped a large beetle looking creature who shuffled along the corridor, weaving from side to side a bit.
“Turns out, you don’t gear up with the acrium. You hop into a vat. The covering is slow, which forces protectors—us—to … breed them and provide additional infrastructure to house them. If they are well fed and happy, the Actium will coat you, making you essentially bulletproof to small arms.”
I liked the sound of that.
“When a being enters the goop,” he continued, “they are given a timer warning before receiving a coating of armor for battle. The Actium are willing to leave their homes for short periods of time to please their protectors, in exchange for creature comforts and the ability to expand as a colony. There are, however, a few downsides.”
When he paused, I was forced to ask the inevitable question. “Such as?”
“They need their goop to survive, thrive, and reproduce. If you take them out to battle and get cut off from home for longer than the timer, they will eventually fall off, dead. The process has another downside. If they are unhappy because the music they like has stopped, their vat loses power, or we fail to provide their necessary elements of BaC and Xeq, then they will simply refuse to work. They shut down and pout for weeks. Those elements are not too expensive, but aren’t exactly cheap, either.” He paused and took a deep breath, “Eric, even with these downsides I think this is our best option. If we establish a healthy colony, we can grow it until the entire community can gear up. Maintenance is minimized, and we get reliable results. These acrium will help us survive.”
“How effective are they?” I asked, “You said small-arms, but up to what caliber? What about plasma bolts?”
He thought for a moment. “I guess your Big Sploosha would still disintegrate them, and you, but the guy behind you would probably be saved,” Mclain said, causing me to jerk my head back in surprise. I was impressed. I would have not thought of something like this even existed. The more I thought about the concept, the more I favored the idea. You strip naked. Hop into the vat, and Boom! You’re encased in acrium armor. Then you gear up with your shielding armor and weapons. Double protection. Yeah, I was on board for sure. Which lead to everybody’s favorite topic today—money.
“How far over your budget do you need to go?” I asked, tapping my chin. “We just freed up some funds that had been dedicated to farming. There is no more coming in, though, we’ve hit our cap.”
“Um… If you gave me all Norm’s neilspar, then I could get enough vats and supplies to last a few months and ensure we can armor up to ten thousand troops,” Mclain said.
I gulped.
“The process would take a long time to equip that many, though, until we get more vats,” he finished.
“Mclain, we only have fifteen hundred fighting troops, and that includes Aspen. Add in the new Crixxi, and we’ll barely have five thousand. Why so many?” I asked in a puzzled tone. While I was all for protecting the non-combatants, we didn’t need to armor them at the moment.
“Well this shifty salesman offered to reduce the price by a quarter if I buy in bulk. And if we get raided, or expect a huge fight, even the citizens should have armor and a weapon to defend themselves with. Nancy bought ten thousand rifles earlier,” Mclain said with a bit of attitude. “This is more important than rifles,” he scoffed, “you know that, Eric.”
“Have you been in here for six hours?” I asked.
“Yes, why?”
“Can the attitude. I get it, you’re cranky Mclain, just remember who you’re talking to. I love you like a brother, but we are talking business here, and your tact is slipping,” I said sternly.
“Aye, Cap … sorry. I’m beat,” he admitted.
“Of course, now I’ll give you all the funds I can from what Norm had. Hopefully it is enough. Go be an asshole to whatever shifty alien you’re negotiating with. Even a five percent discount off what I gave you will let us grow our armies significantly.” I sighed. “I know you will do fine. Cap out.”
I signed off. We were going to personal timers on everyone who entered the grand market from now on. I could only imagine the issues we would have if I didn’t. My attitude soured while I walked to the contract market. Why the hell did they not make this key element near a delivery pad?
I glanced down; my Gpad said I had ten minutes more of walking to get there. I decided to gaze at the booths I went past and noticed a recurring theme, right off the bat. There were many more closed booths and others with ‘back soon’ signs displayed than before. When Bastion got to the point where we sold items, I made a note that we would have to rotate our vendors. If that was not an option, I bet some species stayed in their storage areas to regenerate energy.
Each vendor that was still open, however, was unique. A sword seller on my left had a big screen displaying a video. An energy sword crackling with power sliced through a shield, destroying the power plants output; it looked like a lame old sword to me. Interesting, but I was on a mission.
A toolmaker on my right offered all sorts of automatons for sale. Gary should check this long neck fish creature out, but I knew he had scoured Winston’s list already. Seeing the aquatic being swimming through air inside the vendor booth was kind of interesting, though. Then I considered that this virtual reality market may be under water for them. That explained it.
Next booth was a loot collector, with random items from raiding, like a garage sale. A plant, a shiny rock, a rusty knife, a tarnished flag … No thanks.
There was no consistency, rhyme or reason to any of the madness. The sole exception to this chaos being the contract market, which was still a fair ways off.
I saw some weird paintings of dinosaurs fucking, their images hung behind a lizard woman. To my left was a wind power generator that also dug into the soil. The sheer diversity of the items available would leave anyone lost in here for ages, without some sort of guide.
Which is what I came upon next, a guide service. Seven gnomes, well they weren’t dwarves, and not exactly gnomes, but that was a better match than dwarves, sat in a line, offering their assistance with finding exactly what you needed. I bypassed their clamoring to keep studying my surroundings without slowing my pace towards the contracts market.
A ping sent me an alert.
‘Three percent discount off what you sent; he was about to refuse the sale if I kept pressuring him, and before you ask, Cap, yes, I checked out multiple vendors first. This is what I have been doing for hours. We got a decent deal. The seller was grumpy, too, so that tells me we didn’t get ripped off.’ - Mclain
/> I video called Everly, “Alright, we are the last ones with any money left. How are we sitting?”
“Sitting?” Everly asked with a raised brow, “I am standing.” The corner of her mouth tugged upwards until it grew into a grin that told me she was teasing me. “Three percent is a lot of neilspar, considering what funds Norm had to spend. I had enough before this, Daphne merely wanted to add more Crixxi, and Perci let her control the purse to some extent. Apparently, additional Crixxi came up for auction in the market that were not captured aboard a star ship. As did some more Earth humans, which were instantly snatched up. Daphne happened to be walking by, but they were gone moments after they entered the line. Too bad it wasn't an auction. The Crixxi Daphne found are up for auction with the others. Just a late arrival. Everything comes down to the bidding on my end. I have set aside far more than you should need for your builders in a special account.”
I opened the file and saw a larger chunk of neilspar than I expected to have left. I frowned. “This is how much I paid Roarson for the two aircraft and all our animals.”
Everly’s hologram shrugged its little shoulders. “What can I say? Perci gets what Perci wants. Bastion grows today. With extra hands, we can loot more of Denver, raid more locations and better protect what we have. This is a primary purchase, as vital as the gear we bought. Next time, we’ll focus on paying our citizens and improving our quality of life. At least that is the plan.” She snorted, “These blue portals always seem to throw things out of order.”
I scoffed but withheld any witty remarks that threatened to escape my filter. “Alright. Let me focus on this, then, I just arrived at the rows of stations. I have to find Fairies and a Sluggero. Cap out,” I said, closing the connection.
Back to the grind, walking all the way down the interminable line. At least I would be passing the Earth human slot again, between the two species. I promised myself I would snap up any pour souls that were available. As I marched down the line as quickly as I could, an alert hit my Gpad.