by Marcus Sloss
“Come, Ralph, you get to have a Crixxi drive your gray butt to the Xgate,” Everly chuckled, her voice fading as they walked off.
I left the guard to do guard things and went back to the tower tube for AC1’s command deck. A quick lifting force later, and I was greeted by three guards who backed away to give me some space. Willow sat in my recliner like a queen, her back straight and large, supple breasts perked forward. She smiled at my return, as did Longoria and Sammie. Douglas was focused on his drone feed, relaxing in his bean bag.
“Excellent victory, King Eric,” Longoria said, while Willow pulled a canteen out to toast me in agreement. “What of the prisoners?”
“Trying to exchange them for servants, but Ralph made me wonder who is in charge on the other side of that portal. Who knows what we will get, if anything? That boar creature was desperate for food. He literally asked for the dead bodies. While gross, it is something I can understand and have an ounce of compassion for. Starving is the worst,” I grumbled. “I made a deal with the dynamic duo.” Willow’s eyebrows rose at this. “Hopefully, they will come up with an ingenious plan for our future. It sure sounded like they were up to something good.”
I walked over to Willow for a quick smooch and she smirked at my failed attempt to honk her boob. Damn acrium were cock blockers. I resolved to get her later.
The back wall called to me with its flicking images and mass of information to absorb. My eyes drifted over the grayed-out pictures of the dead. A moment of silence with bowed head was the most I could do for them. Their bodies were already on the way to the graveyard outside Mansion. Good men, women, and Crixxi; every one of them. My hand glided over the faces of the dead, ingraining their loss into my memory.
Further down the rear of the command chamber, a hundred different drone camera views filled the wall. My eyes caught sight of a scout returning from planting the recon sensor on Snarltooth’s ice ball of a planet. Poor Mills shivered endlessly; a good fire would cure that. A moment after Mills sped off for Mansion, Snarltooth returned our equipment with the frozen sled deck coated in bloody ice.
My eyes shifted to monitor Xgate 201’s four screens. A dozen tree beings scoured a set of homes. Anything metal and not bolted down was gleefully stolen. I should probably send someone down there to stop them. I might need that metal later. They were a minor nuisance at most. Maybe…
I called Jevon, who answered promptly with: “This is five, go.”
“There are little tree guys in northern Denver. I want AH2 to fly over that way and let them know in no uncertain terms that is our property; further transgressions will be met with hostility. No point in gunning them down … yet. Get me a better recon of the other planets visible through that portal this season. I see two are water, one is a thick jungle, and the other appears to be not too far from what Texas looks like.”
“Okay, I have Nilvia enroute now and will report soon. I see the prisoner was picked up by a tracked truck of sorts,” Jevon said and I searched for the video of Xgate 232’s eastern side.
Ralph had been hogtied and dumped onto a flatbed trailer. The tracks peeled off, kicking loose dirt as it accelerated off the screen. Hmm… I wondered if I would ever see him again.
A population in the millions. Now that would be nigh impossible to defeat. Even a million .308 rounds into a divine ape would hurt, a lot. Hopefully, they had something I wanted. If not, I was going to be giving a lot more meat to Snarltooth.
CHAPTER 15
“How dare you? You’re nuts!” Perci said with a furious shout. “We haven’t built more than the outer wall and a moat of our castle. This is supposed to be my home. We have fought for this land, bled for it, and busted our asses to get to this point.”
Perci was a petite ball of fury, her puffy cheeks a deep crimson. Her fist hit the table in the Aspen conference room with an echoing bang. Perci grunted in displeasure while inhaling deeply.
We’d ended up here after a full day of quiet around both Xgates 201 and 232. The army remained deployed in the field, tense and prepared. Our forces had shifted to a reduced posture when the Sluggeros informed me they were ready to brief us on how they recommended Bastion Community should proceed.
I had expected that this was going to be a rough meeting. Sally and Willis did not sleep last night. They’d been huddled in here, planning furiously, without letting anyone join them. If indications for Mansion and Aspen had been favorable, improving Bastion would have not taken this much preparation.
I cleared my throat while Perci still huffed, unable to get her attention, I cleared it again. She softened a bit, when our eyes met. I ran a hand down her cheek to remove a single tear of frustration as it escaped.
“Let me have everyone’s attention,” I ordered, shifting my gaze across the personnel seated at the table.
Our core leadership was all here here—minus Jevon, Torrez, Eddy, and Slister. They were deployed by the Xgates; waiting for any sign of Ralph or another invading army.
Inside the room were Perci, Willow, Nancy, and Everly at my end of the table. The Sluggeros stood at the other end, with Longoria, Sammie, Gary, Braxton, Clive, Razzar, Daphne, Setaria, Nilvia, Harvard, Norm, Ulanda, Bonnet, Sarah, Felix, and Maria. The room paused at Perci’s tirade.
“Good,” I noted, “neither of you will use insults to get your points across. I don’t care if you feel, suspect, or know we are less intelligent. The point remains that we’re all in this together. Name-calling will get us nowhere,” I said giving both Willis and Sally stern looks. The two slugs gave zero notice they cared at their berating. I planted my knuckles on the table before staring down Perci. “I love you, my queen. Have some decorum. If you need some air, go get some. If not, sit with your back straight and wait until the end of the briefing to vent.”
Perci clenched her jaw, biting back her retort. A slight bob of her head was all I needed for confirmation. A gesture from me ceded the floor to Sally. I returned to my chair.
“As I was saying. Aspen needs to be abandoned. There is no way to defend this location from aerial assault. At all. The moment you get a three in the morning breach that secures a foothold, this little city is done. Can it be secured eventually? Possible. So many resources would be diverted to do so that it is a lost cause,” Sally said. Willis slurped to a back wall to continue with the presentation.
“Aspen has aerial entry points from every section of these mountains. You seem to think your little walls will keep the enemy out, they will not. Just because you have not faced an advanced foe yet, does not mean that you will not, one day. This is why Lilith recommended us. She left us a message saying your branch of humanity is important.” Willis pointed to a holographic three-dimensional rendering of Aspen, “Let me show you something about these areas.” The table shifted the angle of view to highlight the vulnerable points he had indicated. The map generated with proper colors, terrain, and everything. This table would have cost a fortune before the fall. The siblings had upgraded it in an hour. “The highlighted paths are avenues of approach that a gravity tank can use to maneuver with a simple lift to get past the cliff. Which means you would need guarded tower points in all these locations.” More than a dozen fortifications appeared on the map. “That goes for the winter, also, and we’re talking thousand-foot walls everywhere you require an entry point.”
I held up a hand to ask the obvious question. “Aspen is hard to defend, which means you found weaknesses. I get it—there are a lot of them. Won’t this be shored up easily with turrets and towers? Isn’t a thousand-foot-tall wall a bit excessive?”
Sally blew a raspberry in frustration. Willis started to say some wiseass comment, but both Sally and I warned him not to.
“Eric, Aspen is a lost cause. We scanned Denver—great job looting by the way, very few worthwhile objects left behind. With what is left to scavenge in Denver, you would barely start to build up sufficient defenses in this area. It is, in face, much worse than leaving an enemy easy avenues of attack. Let me give you
an example.”
I nodded for her to continue.
“The Gribin, a dagger-wielding, puffy-faced cat people that are only a few feet tall, well, the data sticks we plunked inside their planet gave us lot of knowledge. We now know much more than their basic atmospherics, we learned where their home is. The Gribin are nestled a full day away from the Xgates in a cavern system loaded with defenses and traps to protect a city of millions.”
I perked up at this statement; my inner Viking grinned evilly.
“I see that hunger in your eyes, Eric. Your mind is calculating flight times and ways to trigger their traps. Stop.”
I frowned but paid closer attention to what Sally had to say.
“How far is Aspen from Xgate 232?” she asked.
Willow leaned forward, indicating she had the floor. “Four minutes by Goliath on the ground, seven at a slow pace by air, three fast.”
I winced and Perci ran frustrated hands through her hair.
“How many rooftops are secured?” Willis chimed in.
Ulanda leaned forward. A crack at the door revealed Jevon entering with Linda Growlen and General Ryan behind him. They stood against the wall, trying to be ignored.
“We have no rooftops secured, other than a few turret mounts on top of our gate checkpoints,” Ulanda said. She huffed, “They are twenty-year-old machine guns that require a gunner.”
I winced again, knowing what was coming next. I headed it off. “That is more anti-air protection than Mansion has.” I shook my head. “We will lose a lot of families, if we move from these mountains.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions just yet,” Willis said. “I am proud to… ouch! Sister, that hurt,” he squawked as Sally swatted his skin with a long instructor’s pointer.
“I am going to go in for the kill now and present to you the best of both worlds. You have been set up. Abandoning Aspen or Mansion completely, is a bad idea and not our intent. The underway is established. Those do not come up. The structures are sound, and the surrounding mountains are filled with minerals. We propose two castles, just not the kind you had imagined.”
Perci frowned and everyone leaned forward intently.
“We propose interior castles, inside the mountain, here.” Sally indicated a place on the map near the western Aspen gate. “We drill down, create a personal underway and a mining team, in conjunction with a Fairy team of engineers builds our castle. With the excess labor, our plans, and the new machine acquired recently, we can start today. Do not underestimate these machines. In a week, we can house hundreds, and if we double up to focus on only one area, probably thousands living inside this mountain.”
Murmurs, mutters, and grumbles echoed in the conference room. I slapped a palm against the table, hard, cracking the wood. Nancy jumped with a high-pitched squeak from the sudden … possibly excessive, violence. I may have hit the damn table too hard. Eh…
“Same goes for Mansion. We move the focus of our efforts over to where you had stored your goods, in the cave. Down we go, layering our traps and defenses while building our outpost. Make no mistake Aspen and Mansion will not remain large cities. Ever. They will be mining outposts and production sites to facilitate trading and military operations from their respective locations. I would not recommend more than a few thousand souls remain in either of these locations at a time—if they are sacked, you can always start over or at least quickly retreat into the underground defenses, since there are limited personnel,” Willis said, giving the floor back to Sally. The male glided over to a water jug and daintily sipped.
“I know this is a big shock, but it gets worse for some of you. Better for others. Let me start with something you can understand. We sent a data scout out to where the attackers came from. Planet Tropical Lightning …” she grimaced, “human names, I swear, and yes, I understand English,” Sally said, shaking her thick neck as if trying to wipe away the horrible memes of the twenty-first century. “Your Gtower information was the oddest thing I have ever had the displeasure to consume. Planet Tropical Lightning has many military outposts. To get to the big city, you have to travel quite a long way and defeat a host of automated and reinforced defenses. Once at the city, expect overlapping defenses and a swarm of citizens all trained to fight. But that is not all. Koor, the Koovorin capital… wait for it… is fifty times larger below ground than above.”
I let out a long whistle. Then it clicked.
“You want to build a city in the sky? Yes!” I said excitedly.
The faces around the table lit up. A tension that had built in the air suddenly vanished. In its place was hope, almost wonderment. My joy at the prospect of living in the sky was shattered when Sally opened her green lips, paused, and then closed them. The second time she did this, I realized she wasn’t planning on building me a city in the sky.
“If not the sky, then where?” I blurted out and gasps echoed from my companions. I figured out where we were going before the others. I held my desire to groan and slouch in check. “Please continue.”
“What my sister is alluding to, is that we found somewhere indeed fantastic. There are rivers, lakes, and room to expand—so vast, in fact, that we too can have our very own megacity. We can move in this week. By this time tomorrow, with our excess in labor, we can have the beginning of a grand city. Seven days from now, we should have something extravagant that will make Aspen look undeveloped. Those who want to fight can do so by staying at the outposts and those wanting to safely raise their children, may do so without fear,” Willis said.
Several of the ladies smirked at this last line. They wanted a safe place for their baby cribs. Heck, I did too.
Jevon snuck out of the meeting when our Gpads gave an alert. I didn’t even have a chance to glance at it, before Willis continued.
“A representative from the Koovorin Council is here to inspect the prisoners. They wish to officially declare a truce and cease hostilities. I will pause our presentation, if you need to adjust your schedule to accommodate them,” Willis said to me directly.
“Growlen, Ryan, go be our diplomats. This is your role in our society; keep things cordial until I arrive,” I instructed the two at the side of the room.
They actually hopped at my orders and ran to catch up to Jevon. I cancelled the alert and placed my elbow on the table, tucking my chin into my palm.
“I was explaining that protection while retaining the ability to adventure across the portals is a possibility. We have the capability to hunt for portals by flying around. That was not possible for Bastion before this season, which means a solid stronghold is that much more important than living near a gate. Being able to choose which Xgate is the best to raid, based on a host of criteria opens many new opportunities. We know that no aircraft can fly through the portals, but they can shuffle troops quickly to the Xgate and even hover across. I am rambling a bit, but I am excited for the future. We have been given an opportunity by our contract holder that most of our kind could only dream about. Sally will go over the actual details in a moment, while I set this up,” Willis said and shifted out of the way.
The projector screen flipped to an image of a map of the western half of the old United States. Sally pointed to a slew of flashing red dots which instantly grabbed our attention. There was a pattern here that I had already decoded, but this version made that pattern even more evident. The obvious result was that once populous areas were swarmed by red meandering dots.
Even relatively remote Aspen got an Xgate, so it wasn’t a complete pattern—there were even five red dots in the Arctic. I scooted my chair back and the scraping sound of the Taver crafted pine against the hardwood floor drew everyone’s attention.
I stepped around those seated to approach Sally. “Options?” My voice was inquisitive yet stern.
“Not Colorado. Again, great as outposts, sure. But there are a dozen Xgates in the state alone. New Mexico also holds mountains that we could build in, but again, more Xgates, all close to suitable mountains,” Sally said.
>
I saw her add a little blue blinking light to the north.
“I have combed through your former country’s databases. The US Government had many secret facilities. This Teton Fortress,” she pointed to the blue blinking light, “was a colony ship testing facility. Built to sustain a million beings on a journey to a new home. The Alpha Centauri training grounds, it was called, was completed in the winter of 2031, almost as if they knew this event was coming. It met every criterion the powers to be needed: isolated, safe, and big enough to save a million of the country’s top minds.”
“I am surprised the Teton Fortress was kept a secret,” I said, glancing at the map. Two new green dots appeared on the map. I pointed to the first one. “This is not far from the Teton Fortress.”
“Correct,” Sally nodded, “Mount Moran is in the same mountain range. Based on the data we analyzed, it has exactly what we need—but it is not the only option that fits my parameters. There is also this spot here,” she used the pointer to indicate a blinking green dot to the northwest. “In Canada, northwest of Calgary, there is a second suitable location in a northern section of a place called Banff. There are logistical issues involved with settling in either location. Let me cover the positives first.”
Everyone fidgeted as they studied the map.
“The site under Mount Moran has a river that flows down a waterfall and feeds a lake. The terrain requires minimal adjusting to -”
An “Oh” escaped Perci. She couldn’t hold it in anymore. She shot out of her chair and said, “This has us moving underground. I… grrrr… Why?”
“Limited entry points and limited exposure to any threats. A Divine-ape can hurl a big rock at a floating city, but once fortified, it is next to impossible to collapse a cavern in one fell swoop. Also, I can create a sun, of sorts, with these extra generators to provide lighting and life for plants or trees from most planets. Everything can be tailored to exactly how we want it, with biomes for different sections, and so on. Think also about the fact that there will be no exposure for this community to Xgates. If you do happen to anger a foe, it will take days for them to reach your settlement, at a minimum, unless we leave the space completely undefended. Invaders are always on the clock, unless they settle directly above you,” Sally sighed.