by Marcus Sloss
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 like 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. 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.
‘We are finally making progress. AC1 is headed back to base for unloading. The rest of these trailers are being hooked up. I expect to RTB with all gear, including Mclain’s vats, within the hour. After that, AC1 will return to the portals for personnel pickup. DD out.’ - Jevon
Well, that was fantastic news. I was not sure whether or not AC1 could fit ten thousand souls on board, but we could always adjust. Especially when AH1 and AH2 could make the trip in seven minutes and carry hundreds.
I passed the Pandarin and called Everly.
“Can you get an updated status on new arrivals for sale?” I asked, seeking clarity.
“No, else you would just send one person to the market, have them tap on all the boxes and then sit in a recliner in you storage are. Send me the update.” Everly paused, as I sent her the new details. “There is a new listing” she noted, “but it's overpriced. Buy it now only, hmm. I will save the list, that way I can pop my head in at the last minute to see if the price has dropped down to something more reasonable.”
“Ha! Everly, there will be ten more things demanding our time, money, and attention before the golden gates transition. Hold on,” I muttered, “the fairies should be near the Mounamine.”
“Yes, Eric, but Crixxi can do Mounamine work. Apparently, we cannot do the work of fairies so…”
“Thank you, Everly,” I tried to tone down my sarcasm, “call you soon with both updates.”
She loved to tease me.
I was certainly glad she was happy. I can say one thing with pride, we had not had a single suicide since the virum. Sure, a few people had fled. Even the disgusting Denver folks we’d rescued from under the school had turned things around quickly, upon their arrival at Stronghold Mansion. Bastion was on the right track.
Suicides tore my soul apart in Saudi. There were those lingering what-if scenarios that I never got over. Even today, I found myself thinking back on Heminez or Smith and what I could have done to-
“Ah,” I said to myself, arriving at the Mounamine. I applied the data update to my translator and moved on. The walk from here to the fairies was thankfully short. They were short and fabulous. Sweet heavens above, I wanted to lie in bed with a pile of these vixens on top of me; unless they sucked out my soul … or my blood. My cock? A-Okay. The other stuff? Hard pass.
I opened the interface in question while giving the species their human name—fairies.
The hologram behind the interface rotated between sexes and then went into a developmental stage. According to the information sheet, they grew wings at puberty. No boobs, no wings. Boobs? Wham! Wings. Same with balls, but you know, I was more than partial to tits, especially a nice set of DDs, so I locked the species image on the female.
Food requirements noted that simply that they were omnivores, with no further information on their diets given. Talents listed included flying ... umm, duh! … architecture, mathematics, teaching, general chores and on and on; the length of the list told me fairies were smart.
Compatibilities included virum, lexium, evorium, meaxon, and something called ovesian.
I swiped the page to read their background and reason for being isolated in the Xgate system.
Fairies were territorial. They tended to find a cove, clump, bunch, or whole forest to call their own and then carefully build their home into an environment that perfectly suited them. Any outsider was considered a threat and dealt with as such. They thrived in a hierarchy of aggression that asserted class dominance. Their mighty Orith Empire had colonized a dozen systems before they were added to the Xgate containment. Now, they were prevalent on more than thirty worlds, though mostly as a subspecies. Their inability to maintain a constant state of warfare shifted their species to living in hiding or in seeking protection in exchange for servitude. Over the eons, the species had adapted into two variations; both variation were included under the one image, though, because there had been no genetically deviations. The difference between the two variations was really based on their initial level of freedom, those born into servitude, and those born free. Each listing stated it would include either an S - service reliable or F - free-spirited tag up front, to help buyers differentiate between the variations.
My Gpad rang with a video request from Everly. “Hey,” I answered.
“So, we have never seen a species like these faeries before. There are rumored to be millions of Xgates with species variations numbering into the hundreds of thousands. It seems there are plenty of downsides, though,” Everly noted, and I switched the interface over to a long listing of downsides to follow along. “The biggest negatives are: 1) that they do not fight well as a cohesive unit, as their infighting typically leads to the collapse of normal battle formations; 2) they become agitated quickly and are insanely stubborn until dominated; And, 3) which is the saddest, I’m afraid, they are suicidal if not given enough freedoms.” She snorted, “You have to be the boss, but still grant them their freedom. Yikes. The list of potential issues is much longer, but if we keep them happy, most of those go away. The biggest drawback to even a happy group, is that they are useless in a fight unless they build traps.”
“But traps can save a day,” I mused, thinking it over.
“Yes, they can probably craft all sorts of defenses. Just don't expect fairies to fight in large formations. From this report, I gather that they are better at solo activities. They may be suitable as scouts, or reconnaissance, or even trap setters. I know we Crixxi love using pits, slings, and jungle log falls. Reminds me of when we fought Daphne’s tribe once. I lost a cousin to a spike trap,” Everly said evenly. I expected some remorse, but I think she was drawn into the memory. She scratched at her ear absentmindedly. “Do you want domesticated or wild faeries?”
“I haven’t gotten through all the options, yet.” I paused and ensured I had her attention. “I want to be more to you than just a nice body to look at. I care about you. Do you want to talk about your cousin?”
“Ah,” she blushed, “thank you for trying, Eric. You have no idea how much it means to me that you're more than just a brute. I’ll pass, for now. Maybe we can talk about it on a walk or something, somewhere I can give vent to my emotions, when there is less stress,” Everly said tenderly. “It’s not something I want to talk about online.”
“I would enjoy that. Let me go over these options and if there are any promising auctions, I will highlight the ones I am interested in,” I said, opening that list. There were almost a hundred listings. “I never asked how many listings the Mounamine and Pandarin had ... is a hundred a lot?”
“Oh gods no, there were thousands for each of them. But I filtered out most of them. We’re paying more, generally, because Perci wants to set up breeding programs,” Everly said and I caught on.
“Yeah, I got that impression, too. At least until our community is producing our own young,” I mused with a shrug.
“Eric, it does not take a one to one ratio to care for our needs. We are buying a two to one servant ratio. So…”
“I get it” I said. “The math indicates we're going to have young of all kinds running around. I crossed my arms and my video orb backed up to keep me in the frame. “That means our third base just jumped in priority. Hopefully, Perci’s mom sends a data update, soon. We have Xgate 232’s pattern down really well. It would be nice to have as clear of an understanding of all the portals in the area.”
I dove i
nto the buy it now options. I saw an interesting F option, a hundred and seventeen fairies were being sold cheap. I’d paid five or six times more for Onix than this listing would cost. I selected the contract.
* Note - Captured these while raiding. Fifty-two were killed before accepting our terms. The best we got was 5.4332332 years, three meals per 1.4323 day, and 11.22137 work hours. They were really stubborn. Priced to sell. Swapping to auction in seven minutes thirteen seconds.
I sighed. At least the timer translated properly in numbers and a scale I could recognize. I tapped my translator and rounded to the nearest whole number plus one decimal point.
For comparison, I checked out the auction page. Damn, the price differential between F to S was tenfold, if not more. I mean, they were still contract bound, which should mean this big of a difference. There were three other F offers available. All tended towards shorter contracts. The accompanying notes were more of the same, hesitant to surrender, generally non-compliant, with the constant risk of multiple suicides.
When I browsed the S section, with its significant price hike, the notes were far different. Eager to work, quick breeders, accept various foods readily, build their own housing, and pleasant to be around.
I sat before the interface and crossed my legs. This was a big decision. How to play it out? Hmmm.
“Are you going to sleep?” Everly asked, amused at my deliberations.
“Ah, hell, no, I forgot to close the connection.” I grimaced at her overly sweet smile. “Any thoughts on the fairies?”
Everly sat on the storage room floor and tucked her tail in her lap. “Eric, if you buy problem children, they will cause problems. I understand your heart is in the right -”
I purchased two sets of fairies before she could finish the sentence.
“Everly, I am the king, chief, boss, captain, and to a select few, I am their savior. I have to be decisive. I do value your input, but I have made a decision about these two groupings. We’ll buy the first set of F faeries, and release them. We can all celebrate as a community. The second set of S faeries, we contract with but give them an option; it’s a much smaller purchase of eleven female fairies. The note on that order specified a recent tragedy resulted in the sale. We’ll help both. If both groups leave us, so be it; we’ll contract a third set of S faeries at auction, and not offer them a choice.” I got up and stretched. “I need to get moving to the Sluggero display.”
