by Marcus Sloss
The podium adjusted to my height as I approached. Willow slipped next to me on my right side, where a gunnery station popped up for her. Nancy manned the side turret to my left, or the tank’s port side while Seteria stepped hesitantly into the turret alcove on my right, the tank’s starboard side. The interface before me appeared as a series of holographic screens that adjusted to our heights. At least there was no Goldie to contend with. I dialed into our Gnet and populated a map of the area. I saw Marble Heights not far from where we were parked. I selected that location on the screen and received a routing prompt. I confirmed my route selection and chose the autopilot option.
I turned to my other guests as the side hatch closed. The tank slid into motion with a slight jerk. The Faeries and Mounamine grabbed for the few oh-shit handles and grab-bars in the crew compartment.
“Normally,” I noted, “you will not be leaving the Strongholds unless it is golden gate market period or the situation is unique. Even so,” I frowned, “we will need to get you some protection—probably in the form of basic armor. That issue will need to be addressed at some point down the line,” I said, gesturing to their exposed forms. At least Sammie was wearing heavy padded leather clothing. Inside that bulky covering, she might be sexy as hell, but when there was even a chance of hostilities, a bikini was not and never would be armor—even if most video games before the apocalypse claimed it was. We would have to get them all some proper gear, eventually. “Human history is full of stories of ordinary people rising to the occasion and becoming extraordinary.”
Sammie raised her hand. “We are not great fighters,” the mouse-girl blushed, “but we go to great lengths to protect our young. Queen Perci briefed us as a group that we were allowed to … um … be impregnated,” Sammie said, looking pointedly at my hips. I guessed that was an improvement from her always staring at the ground. “Well,” pink tinged her cheeks again, “except for your personal servants. My point is, I like your idea to give us the chance to protect our young—even if they are not mine, personally. I may not be a great fighter or extremely courageous, but I will buy time for others if it saves our little ones.”
I gently laid a gentle hand on Sammie's shoulder, expecting her to flinch. She nestled into my touch instead. Aw, I rubbed behind her ear, touched by her emotional response.
“That, my little Sammie, is the very definition of courageous. We will get things settled for this season, do a whole lot of looting and do another max buy, next rotation. For the community,” I said and Nancy stepped forward from her turret position to scratch her other ear. Sammie tilted off my fingers and swapped to Nancy’s affection.
“When he says ‘for the community’, he means everyone,” Willow said lovingly.
Nancy scoffed and input, “Shit, he is a Viking King, I tell him to crush his foes and enslave their women and he gets all soft and poetic on me. I guess that’s why he has us to lay down the law. Right Seteria?”
“I am being spoken to, so I can speak. I find this process fascinating. I expected to be a sex toy before I killed myself from the torment. If what I am hearing is true, we will get a home as grand as Mai `Shin, and with time, not shun the portals but embrace them. That is something I would eagerly wish to see built,” Seteria said, folding her arms under her gravity-defying breasts.
“I am a biologist, actually. Not to pry into personal matters, but do you Faeries use ‘the stones’ as birth control?” Nancy asked.
“The virum does not rev up our sex drive like it used to. We kept losing infants as we ran out of space. Infants and the murder rate both spiked, so dominant females would have more young. Virum changed the way we reproduced. Our Matriarch dictated when we would ovulate to keep our species alive. The most dominant females had priority, and the rest of us could only bear young when there was enough space,” Nilvia said in a soft tone. Her assertive nature was gone. I would wager that the second they moved into the trees, they would start scrapping and jockeying for position again. “We will probably start going into desire soon.”
“You will, most definitely,” Longoria grunted, her hands on her hips. “I have raised over a hundred generations, myself. Most of them moved on to new homes with new masters to build new strongholds or joined other communities. When our previous master ran out of zinc, we were isolated and became sick. The dozen of us with children lost them, unfortunately. Hence why our contracts now specify a daily amount of zinc in them and why they were sold so cheaply for an all-female unit. Our previous masters felt terrible. I am already licking my lips, wanting a belly full of young again. The virum,” she smiled wistfully, “when fully empowered to reproduce, has a powerful sway on your libido.”
“Um… King Eric. If there is birth control available,” Sammie hesitantly began, “I recommend the option; being—”
“We can try, I can make no promises,” I said, hopefully killing that line of thought.
Nancy turned on her bedside manner and launched into a lecture on the whole process and ordeal of implanting stones.
I turned my attention back to the tank, where we were going, and how we were getting there. We had hovered out of the southernmost gate; an area that was rapidly filling with new construction. A left onto the county road, and I soon had us traveling over sixty miles-per-hour. Damn, these generators had a lot of power.
“Hold on tight, please, I’m not sure if this model has dampeners or how effective they are. I’d like to conduct some maneuvers,” I said and the reply was a unanimous complaint that there weren’t enough oh-shit handles and grab-bars to hold on to. “Well, I guess if you get hurt, you will heal.” I turned to Willow, “We may have to toss them out, if it gets bad.”
Glancing over my back I muttered to Nancy, “We need to put a couch or three in here with appropriate restraints or something.”
I turned the TG99 towards the retention pond off to our right. I applied a vertical jump and the effect was immediate, with minimal inertial impact to the crew. Sammie swayed on her feet and the two young Faerie ladies’ amazing busts jiggled in their bikinis. How the technology defied the laws of physics remained a great mystery to me, but at least that explained why there were no seats in this vehicle. We were fifty feet over the ground when our height stabilized. We scooted over the pond, with ease. I checked our generator power bar and noted that we were dropping at a manageable rate. I dropped our cruise elevation to a height of twenty feet and our power consumption nearly stabilized. I returned us to the road and at ten feet over the ground, found we were good to hover forever.
I jotted a quit note on the command net.
‘5 nitrogen generators, TG99 - 0-10’ AGL ∞’ Cap
That experiment a success, I pushed the accelerator to its upward limit. Damn, one-hundred-and-twenty miles-per-hour in a tank was freaking amazeballs. I wondered what this baby could do with six or seven generators. I smirked at my thought. Of course, going faster than a governed sports car was not enough for me; Men always wanted their toys to do more.
We sped by Marble Heights. I stopped all forward acceleration, spun the tank on a dime, and then reapplied max acceleration. This time, however, we did feel a jerking motion that the dampers struggled to counter. The group behind me stumbled, but stayed upright. We had just decelerated from a hundred to zero, rotated ninety degrees, and then rocketed back up to a hundred in less than five seconds. That was a metric shit-ton of inertia to combat.
I repeated the process with less strain on the dampeners to glide us peacefully into Marble Heights.
“Slowing … and charge reaching maximum.” I grinned at Willow, Nancy and Seteria. “Gunners, fire full power from left to right into the selected target,” I said, indicating from my commander’s reticle the home Perci had bought for us the day before the world as we knew it had ended.
“Firing,” Nancy said, and the entire tank shot sideways as the port facing turret ejected a beach ball sized orb of teal. The power bars dipped significantly.
The projectile ballooned in size to
the point it grew too big and chewed into the ground. The round still devastated the home; it exploded into an awesome shower of wood and insulation. I frowned, expecting a more efficient shot from the side turrets. I picked us up another ten feet while the generators recharged our power cores. When it registered full once more, I drove us forward.
“Target selected,” I called out, indicating another home down the street. “Fire a single fifty percent shot with the main gun to the left side of the target, followed by a fifty percent shot from the right turret to the right side of the indicated target.”
My gunners nodded. No better time than the present to train them on a proper series of firing commands. “Ladies,” I barked, “when I give you a target and specify my firing orders, I expect you to respond with ‘Up!’ indicating to me that you heard my command, understand what is being asked of you, and are prepared to fire when my order to ‘engage’ is given.”
“Up!” shouted Willow, followed a second later by Seteria’s much less enthusiastic “Up.”
“Engage,” I commanded.
I input a drift toward the target at the same angle as the turret.
A massive glowing sphere of power belched forth from the main gun with a loud ‘crack’ and a sizzling display of illumination. The round grew to the size of a car before it ripped apart the left side of the home. Seteria’s second round was already in the air, when I spun us in the direction of the Xgate. The rear cameras showed complete and utter destruction of the target.
“I think I am in love,” I muttered.
“Yeah, this thing makes a girl weak in the knees,” Willow agreed, with a long whistle.
Stepping back from the controls, I said, “You have command, Willow. Take us to Perci, via the shortest route.”
“Aye, Cap,” she nodded, “I have command.”
I looked at the rest of my crew and smiled. “Thank you, ladies. That was amazing.”
I left Willow’s side to mingle and learn more about our newest community members. I knew deep down, making them feel an integral part of Bastion and showing them that I cared would pay huge dividends. I had to admit, I was excited to be getting some monster-sized trees. The Crixxi towers were an awful eyesore.
CHAPTER 10
AC1 flew over our tank, zipping by for the Xgate. When the sensors gave the alert, I scurried up the back hatch. The cover opened automatically, sensing my intent. The flat bottom of the mega air box blocked out the night’s bright moonlight as it soared over our tank. It was perfect for what I wanted to do with it; I just needed one filled with generators and a ton of exterior guns to create a mobile flying fortress. Too bad it couldn’t go through portals with such protruding external mounts. It only just fit through the portal, now, and that was with the tower having to be detached and re-attached.
I was so riding that home, after playing around with a TP63 first, obviously. If this TG99 did one-twenty, I was excited about what the little ones could do. When my eyes drifted from the silhouette of AC1 to the Xgate’s golden shimmer, pride swelled inside me.
In front of me I could see thousands of Mounamine and Pandarin, all ready for a new home. A home that they must be frightened and nervous about. Seeing the masses of downtrodden species huddled together like that moved me. Here were the universe's races that had been unable to adapt to the cruel vicissitudes the damn portals brought with them. They only wanted safety and security; and to get it, they had to meekly submit to another species to defend them. I could only wonder, as I looked over the mountains up at the night sky, on how many planets were beings like these forced to live in horrid conditions. I had to remind myself that we had to solve the problems we could, before even considering those we could not.
There were a whole lot of aliens outside the portal. Suddenly, I was glad we were diverting to get the gigantic trees to provide a more natural habitat for many of them. Perci and Everly could simply have had Faeries build more housing and adjust existing homes and hotels in Aspen or Mansion’s longhouses to address their minimal requirements. Instead, we were going to adapt our world to better suit them. Even with close to a hundred of the giant trees being transplanted in and around these mountains, the majority of these poorly dressed workers would have to stay in the increasingly overcrowded hotels Aspen until rooms were ready for them in Mansion.
AC1 lowered itself until the ramps could be let down to the ground. Clumps of our new residents were encouraged to board the hulking ship. They shuffled up the ramps on all sides, quickly clearing the area before the portal. It is amazing how quickly the downtrodden are to grasp at hope. Even though a few shivered in the cool night air, many walked up the ramps with big smiles on their faces. Before them there was a large show of force demonstrating a capability to defend them and no one berated them.
They eagerly grasped at the promise of new homes. They all needed new clothes. They needed a lot, actually. Most carried nothing more than a child or a small pack. I nodded my head in determination; we would provide a better life for them than they had previously known. Bastion was their new home, they were my citizens; to me, their status was irrelevant. I was glad that we had decided to get them what they needed, instead of simply cramming more bodies into buildings.
Willow drove around the loading and working crews to park on the north side. I climbed out of the hatch and, before anyone could bring up a host of problems for me to handle, ran to the nearest TP63 and slapped the armor.
The hatch opened and a Crixxi grumbled from inside, “Hey voice box, I didn’t tell you to open.”
“I probably overrode your commands with my authorization. I am King Eric,” I informed the startled Crixxi, “hop out soldier, I promise to be back soon.”
The voice controller beeped. “Re-assigning control from Darsawn to King Eric.”
Darsawn was sitting in a seat that swiveled around to the rear before pushing him to the exit hatch. The Crixxi frowned, but stepped out of the light tank. I hopped into his seat while he crossed his arms. The seat retracted back into the middle of the tank while the rear hatch closed and then the chair swiveled around to bring me in front of a control station.
There was no Goldie or holographic babe for me to interact with. Instead, before me I found two joysticks and three screens. I could either automate everything with a few taps or I could drive manually with the controllers. Neat. The exterior was such a boxy container, that I was surprised at how the interior balled around me, as if I were seated inside an egg. The interior was a lot smaller than I had expected.
“Tank Manager, what should I call you?” I asked, knowing there was a brain behind the voice.
“I have been designated TP63-479,” the display squawked, “Nine works, if that suits you?”
“Nine works perfectly,” I said, feeling a kink and failing to pop my neck. Maybe the crown was a bad idea. Eh, I would get used to it. “My goal today is to push you to your capabilities. I need to learn what you are capable of.”
“This unit uses an oxygen power generator. While not the worst for this atmosphere, it is sub-optimal. Optimal performance requires—”
“A nitrogen generator,” I finished. “How about you tell me when I hit peak performance?” I asked.
Nine’s voice box almost snickered. “Wilco.”
My hands wrapped around the controllers. I pushed my right hand forward and the turret aimed down. Oh, that made sense—right hand controlled the turret, targeting, and all gunnery controls. My left hand tilted the cyclic forward, and the slight input moved the tank forward. Left hand controls must manage all piloting functions.
“Take us to a clearing Nine,” I ordered.
“Wilco, moving now,” Nine replied.
I searched around for a control that changed the tanks elevation off the ground, a way to go up and down.
“Where is the damn collective?” I groused.
“Collective?” Nine replied, “I am not sure what that is.”
“In a helicopter, the controller that determines t
he aircraft’s direction—its motion forward, rearward, to the left or to the right, is called the cyclic. The controller that determines the aircraft’s elevation—its up and down movement—is called the collective,” I said, miffed when no easy answer presented itself as to how I could get the tank to go up or down.
“King Eric, may I call you Cap?” Nine asked.
“Sure,” I replied not sure why I was getting this question.
“Cap, there are three ways to operate this machine. The first is through voice commands, you simply tell me what you want and yes, I am smart enough to infer command inputs from radio chat. The second is through physical input. In this case, that would include the cyclic for directional motion and firing pedals for up and down motion. Finally, you can do control everything via the touch screen. It may take some time for you to navigate to all the appropriate options and to customize those commands that are most frequently utilized, because the user interface is extremely generic, in order to facilitate control by the vast majority of species. These models, for example, were customized to include adding the seats for humanoid comfort, as well as installing the firing pedals for elevation control.”
“Pedals. Thanks, Nine,” I said with a slight shake of my head. “Clear displays. Open exterior viewing. Illuminate the area.”
“Done,” Nine replied.
The cabin reconfigured itself. The desk folded away. The seat absorbed the flat surface and I was elevated another inch or two. My right armrest integrated the firing controls and my left armrest the cyclic. I felt the pedals adjust to my height so that they rested against the balls of my feet. The exterior views around the tank were projected onto the surface of the interior, so that I appeared to have a clear view of all around me. A glance over my shoulder showed the well-lit area behind me. A peek from the edge of my seat towards my heels showed rocky pebbles mixed with vegetation. With exterior cameras on every surface, I could see in every direction.