Beyond All Expectations (Emerilia Book 8)

by Michael Chatfield

  Jung Lee looked at it all. In less than fifteen minutes, they’d pulled out these artifacts and they had built a facility two hundred meters wide, one hundred long, and growing.

  Steve walked over to where Bob and Dave were; Jekoni followed as the soul gem sheet spread under their feet.

  Steve listed off the things that Bob pulled from his bag of holding.

  “That’s a sensor package. It will allow us to make an image of the whole moon so we know the best place to mine. Also, it will have the ability to allow us to see outside of the moon to map the things surrounding it. That’s an automated mining drill. It’s small now, but those factories will be able to make bigger ones with enough resources, power, and time. That’s a small refinery—got a couple of those. Automated carts and a few repair bots.”

  The different items kept falling out of the bag. Bob placed them along the right-most wall, creating an area filled with equipment and machinery.

  Some things, like the repair bots and automated carts, were activated.

  Steve gestured and they started to move.

  “You’re controlling the automated machines?” Jekoni asked.

  “For now. Once Jeeves’s module is set up, he’ll take over everything. Right now, I’m just going to collect the resources Malsour has identified, and pour them into the small refineries so that we can start putting the factories to work,” Steve said as they reached the fusion reactor, where Dave was working on a console that was connected to the pedestal of the massive machine by lines of glowing soul gems that were inlaid into the floor.

  The soul gem sheet filled in the runes around the fusion plant and continued to spread outward. Its speed was slowing down, but it had still covered a massive area in just a few short minutes.

  As the sheet reached the factories and other stationary machines that Bob had placed down, the soul gem sheet created lines from the machines to the fusion plant in the ground.

  “This should help out a bit.” Dave pressed a command button on the console in front of him.

  A line that connected the Mana well mounted in the wall through the soul gem sheet and into the fusion plant glowed with power as energy was fed into the fusion plant.

  The soul gem sheet’s progress halted. All of the power that was stored in the sheet and coming from the Mana well was now poured into the fusion plant.

  Slowly, runes along the pedestal started to glow with power, finally reaching the sphere. There was a faint whirring noise as the runes on the sphere lit with power even slower than the ones on the pedestal. The power line from the Mana well reached its limit as light spilled out from it.

  Dave was completely focused on the console. Over his shoulder, Steve watched everything that was happening.

  “Hydrogen read is good; gravity is ramping up. Good increase in pressure,” Dave muttered. Steve nodded behind him, his playful attitude gone as they went through the fusion reactor’s start-up.

  The whoump whoump of the fusion reactor sped up, becoming faster and faster as it seemed to become one continuous noise. Slowly, the sphere started to rise from the pedestal. The top of the pedestal where the reactor core had rested was covered in various runes that glowed with Mana.

  The runes over the reactor continued to climb as the noise coming from it reduced. As it did, faint distorting waves seemed to form around the core.

  As the sound died, these distorting waves grew. As the noise disappeared, the waves halted and then started to converge on the reactor once again. They stopped when they were just a few inches from the exterior of the reactor.

  The last runes started to light up faster and faster until they reached the peak of the sphere.

  The light that connected to the Mana well dimmed and then went out.

  Dave and Steve checked over various different readings on their console.

  “Even though that power is contained, it’s stronger than anything I’ve ever come close to seeing. Even more vicious than a ley line,” Jekoni said in a solemn voice.

  “With great power comes great possibilities.” Dave pressed another switch on the console. The runes across the floating core and pedestal underneath flared with brilliant light.

  Jung Lee blinked his eyes a few times to try to get rid of the bright afterimages. As his sight recovered, he noticed the lines within the soul gem sheet branching out from the fusion reaction glowed with power. He looked to the factories and reactors that were spreading out in the space that they had, unfolding themselves and readying their various systems for operation.

  The fusion reactor was now sending power to the soul gem-constructed floor, walls, and roof. Its rate of growth climbed, racing to cover where the army of carvers had been as they filled the ground, and tried to catch up with Malsour, who had expanded the facility until it was two hundred meters wide, forty meters tall, and four hundred meters long.

  The room vibrated with power. It had been less than thirty minutes since they had entered this area when it had been nothing more than rock and stone untouched and unseen for centuries.

  “Looks good. Now, time to get that portal set up,” Dave said. The group followed him as he floated over to near the center of the facility. Malsour finished off the farthest wall as mining drills approached him. They’d take what he’d started and build on it to expand the facility.

  The refineries weren’t that large, but they still were ready to accept the materials Malsour had pulled from the stone where the facility had been and were now in the process of being picked up by the automated carts and repair bots wandering the area.

  Bob was busy working on a console, referencing his interface as he worked.

  Dave pulled components from his bag. Steve took some of the parts. There was a central pillar that was connected by a series of rune-covered metal bands that reached four smaller metal pillars.

  “This is the anchor?” Jung Lee asked.

  “Yeah. Basically, it will act as a focal point for me to connect to when bringing back a portal.” Dave looked over the construct. He checked a few things before the pillars and runes activated. The pillars started to spin faster and faster until the runes on them were just a faint blur of light.

  “Be back in a minute.” Dave disappeared.

  “Teleportation magic?” Jekoni said, his voice a shocked whisper.

  “Yeah, he figured it out awhile ago, but he can’t use it anywhere where the Jukal have eyes. If he was to do so, then they’d catch on and we’d have to advance all of our plans,” Steve said.

  “All of your plans?” Jung Lee asked.

  “Well, you didn’t think that just making a moonbase was our only plan?” Steve smiled.

  Jung Lee looked around as he sensed something changing.

  The soul gem sheets in the areas that weren’t occupied started to grow. They formed multiple capsules stacked closely together while entire sections expanded with rune-covered soul gem sheets inside.

  Jung Lee recognized these from the items within Bob’s workshop.

  However, there had only been one capsule in that room. Here, there were thousands being created, as well as machinery meant to move the capsules.

  The progress was slow because of its complicated nature. Even though it was slow, with the power of the fusion reactor and Mana well, they were growing at a rate visible to the eye.

  Malsour returned from his work. The mining drills were already looking to expand the facility.

  “The mining drills will open up more areas, while the soul gem construct will fill the inside, making it impossible for the Jukal to detect this place as well as compacting the pillars, ceiling, and floors so that the whole thing is structurally sound,” Steve said.

  “Is Bob pulling out plants?” Jung Lee saw Bob working in an area that was growing a series of floors on top of one another, with a series of bins on each floor under what looked like strip lighting.

  “I was wondering how they were going to get the materials to make the bodies.” Steve sounded impressed.


  “They’re going to use these plants to make bodies?” Jekoni asked.

  “Why? Looking to possess one, ghost?” Steve asked.

  “Why did I ask?” Jekoni muttered.

  There was a flash of light where the anchor was located. If one was able to see the origin of this light, they would have seen a complicated spell formation in the middle of the anchor point.

  Everyone stepped back under the blinding light.

  “Seems that his teleportation ability has become more refined,” Steve said.

  Jung Lee was surprised at Steve’s words. Seems that in the last couple of weeks, I have been met with nothing but surprises. Jung Lee smiled as the light faded away.

  The anchor was gone, but in its place there was a massive portal, the kind that linked Emerilia to a number of different realms with different creatures.

  Jung Lee looked at it, remembering the portal that he had guarded for centuries.

  This one had four identical clamps at the northwest, northeast, southeast, and southwest points. They were thick with magical coded runes.

  Another massive clamp also rested at the top of the portal. Each of them was connected by a band of soul gems that ran between them. At the bottom clamps, they connected to the soul gem sheet.

  A thick power line grew through the soul gem sheet, connecting the reactor to the portal.

  As soon as it connected, the portal flared to life. A grinding noise came from the portal.

  Jung Lee stepped backward. Unlike the fusion reactor, the Mana that powered the portal wasn’t contained; it was wild and powerful.

  The runes on the overlaying clamps activated, lighting up.

  He sensed the different Magical Circuits were rotated into place and then moved within the massive circular housing of the portal.

  Hundreds of pieces moved at the same time before finally the first locked into position. It was a ripple effect as, piece by piece, the Magical Circuit that was the portal locked in the different circuits.

  The last one came online and the power surged once again.

  Jekoni stepped backward as Steve laughed wildly.

  Runes along the portal’s ring lit up from the outer band, reaching inward. When they reached the inner band, they were no longer looking through the facility. Instead, they were looking at Dave, who stood in a warehouse-looking facility with all manner of materials behind him.

  He walked through the portal. “Like the show?” He smiled.

  Jung Lee and Jekoni didn’t know what to say. These magical artifacts were well in excess of anything that they had ever seen in their lifetimes. These four people had combined these artifacts and their knowledge to make a facility that they could never have dreamed of making in their previous lives, even at the peak of their careers and positions.

  “Bob, once you’re done with the greenhouse, I want to connect this place to the Datskun. Then I want to set the miners and bots to making our exit before returning to work on the different facilities here. How long do you think until we can start growing bodies?” Dave asked.

  “I’m going to need to do a number of test runs to make sure everything works. I’ll have Jeeves set up soon.” Bob poured items out of his bag of holding into the different growing bays of the greenhouse he had created in a few of the fifty-meter-by-fifty-meter squares that rested between the spaced-out supports.

  If one was to look closely, they would see that a Mana shield covered the greenhouse and that it was slightly hazy inside as Bob had released canisters of stored air within the enclosed area.

  “I can get started on the exit right now. Going to need the components sooner or later, but we can leave that to the bots here. I’d feel more safe if I do the mining. Don’t want the Jukal seeing us, especially with it needing to be so close to the moon’s surface,” Malsour said.

  “Okay, sounds good. I’m going to go to Pandora’s box, shut down the teleportation array and set up a portal there to connect to moonbase, shipyard one, and Datskun.”

  Dave looked to Jung Lee and Jekoni. “If you need more air, just release your shield here, step through the shield, and grab some from the other side. We’re going to need to fill up this place. I have to move automated carts to the seeder, then capture air there, and move it to the moonbase. We’ve never connected the facilities together properly. Having them all accessible is going to really speed things up!” Dave smiled as Jekoni and Jung Lee could only look at each other.

  “All of this is a bit…insane,” Jekoni said.

  “Ah, just a bunch of ideas that came together.” Dave smiled.

  Just came together? I doubt anyone would have the resources, drive, or balls to do something on this scale! All right under the noses of a race that has an entire planet filled with one of the races that they conquered, for entertainment!

  BAE Chapter 3: A Melding of Ideas

  Dave wiped his eye, a faint tiredness still pulling at them. He found Deia next to him, his knee experiencing a number of kicks from her large belly.

  “Seems that someone is antsy this morning.” Dave gently put his hand on Deia’s stomach. The latter was asleep, only faintly moving with the kicks as she tightened her grip on her pillow while her legs tightened on Dave’s.

  He smiled, looking at her cute face as she tried to get a few more minutes of rest.

  A buzzing noise came from within his head. It was his interface’s alarm. He opened it up, finding a reminder about a meeting he had with Commander Sato and his developmental engineer Edwards. They were the leading military officers of the only group of humans outside of Emerilia that Dave knew about.

  Seeing as he wasn’t going to make it out of bed without a crowbar and waking up Deia, he pulled out a small Mirror of Communication from his bag of holding next to his bed.

  After his work on the moonbase, the place was nearly self-sufficient. The portal network was set up and Bob was working in the moonbase on creating bodies for the players who were stored in the north and south poles until the current players needed to be replaced.

  He felt a deep relief now that the moonbase was set up. Even now, it was currently growing with mining drills and soul gem constructs expanding outward. Automated carts were shifting in materials from shipyard one, and mining drills had been sent to the Ashal outpost to begin mining within the week.

  Things were coming together slowly.

  Dave touched the small Mirror of Communication. It connected to the large one that he had gained so long ago when he’d found that hidden cabin in the woods.

  The room he was in disappeared as he accessed the conference room. This one was a modern-looking place, much like the kind of place Dave had seen every day when he had been Austin Zane, the CEO of the Rock Breakers Corporation.

  Sato and Edwards were waiting for him. Both of them looked to be in high spirits.

  “Hey you two, what’s up?” Dave asked.

  He’d been wrapped up in so many projects that he hadn’t had much time to spend with the two. Instead, he had been funneling them all of his information on different magically coded systems that he had come up with.

  Shard, the rune-coded AI of the Aleph, had also been keeping them updated on the situation on Emerilia.

  “We think that, for a change, we might have a solution to one of your problems,” Edwards said with an excited look on his face. He looked as if he wanted to jump up from his seat and run around the room.

  “Okay.” Dave leaned forward, curious.

  “We’ve noticed that you’ve got a few problems with inertia and gravity management. Right now you know how to control gravity yourself, but can’t find a system to manage it for you. We’ve got plans for a gravity sensor that would allow a stable gravity field within an accelerating gravity field. It would constantly be feeding information back to your systems so that the two fields would cancel out each other. Then, we’ve also got a more general inertia system that you could adapt or use. Might be useful to have as a backup, redundancies and all.” Edwards opened his i
nterface and sent files over.

  Looking at the files, Dave realized that he was not just looking at systems. These were coded from runes. Adapting them from technology to runes was time-intensive, either requiring multiple different magical coders or an AI to translate everything over. With this, Dave could save weeks of time.

  With his high Intelligence, he was able to look over the different items and figure out how they would work by the runes and their diagrams.

  Tense silence spread through the conference room as Dave continued to look at the plans.

  Finally, he sat back, a great weight lifted from his shoulders as he smiled. “Thanks. I was looking to tackle that system in the near future. It was going to be a pain in the ass to sort out. With this, we can leap ahead and start working on the drive systems and other subsystems. This will accelerate my plans quite a bit.”

  “What is your plan, Dave?” Sato asked, even as Edwards and Dave had large smiles on their faces. Their joy dimmed somewhat with Sato’s cold voice.

  Sato was a good man and one Dave had come to trust and value. However, he could feel that Sato in this moment was not his friend, but rather someone who was looking to protect himself and understand the motivations of a possible ally.

  The weight of this simple question was not something to be brushed off.

  “My plan.” Dave let out a breath through his pursed lips. “Right now, we don’t have a plan but a number of contingencies. We’re building habitats and ships, a way for people to survive the Jukal kill switches and plans to wipe us and Emerilia out. For that, we need to survive against the creatures that are unleashed from whatever prison they’ve been held within.

  “If we can do that, then we can start seeing about which plan of action we can take against the Jukal. Or, there is always the possibility that for us and the POEs to survive, we might need to use or do something that would bring the Jukal’s attention down on us. As much as I wish we had a plan, we can only ready the parts that we might need,” Dave said solemnly.