by Dan Thomas
“I should go to work,” Max said, backing away. “Dino poop doesn’t pick itself up.”
“No, it doesn’t.” The Ravager followed him up the ramp and to the door to the outside.
“I’ll give the wrench back to Bullet57.” Max held up the wrench.
“I’ll do that.” The Ravager extended his hand and his tone said it wasn’t a request.
“Sure.” Max handed it over. The Ravager maintained eye contact as he took hold of the tool. Max nodded and turned away, walking up the ramp.
He couldn’t hear the footsteps of the Ravager following him, but as he reached the door, he caught something at the edge of his hearing. As he placed a hand on the door, he glanced backward.
The Ravager sauntered farther into the base, swinging the wrench in his hand as he hummed a tune that Max didn’t recognize.
Wanting to see if he took a door, Max decided against it, not wanting to test his luck anymore, and shoved the entrance open.
Max kept an eye out for Bullet as he walked up the ramp, but there was no sign of him, so he headed back to the stables, grabbing a spare wheelbarrow left outside.
“Bullet57 got you in trouble?” The voice came out of one of the smaller dino pens and made Max jump so hard he knocked over the shovel, sending it clattering to the ground. “Sorry.”
“Were you hiding in there?” Max accused as he picked up the shovel and set it against the wall.
“Not exactly hiding. I thought I’d come over and say hello. And try to convince you that we’re not all as bad as Bullet.” The player stepped out of the pen and crossed the barn. “Bullet likes to have fun with any noobs.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it fun,” Max grumbled. “He could have gotten me kicked out of the Crew.”
“That’s his fun. He likes hazing all the new guys. At first, I figured it was some kind of Crew initiation. You know the kind of thing. See if you’re Ravager material. But I’ve never seen anyone else involved in any of it. I think Bullet57 is a bully and enjoys making trouble. It also thins the numbers out. And the Ravagers don’t seem to mind enough to kick him out.”
“Well, someone should have some fun with him.” Max looked around sullenly. He sure would like Holic to get his hands on Bullet when they come and attack the Ravager base. He was certain that Chopsticks could think of some fun things to do to the guy. On second thought, maybe they should just let the little dinos loose on him.
“Shh, keep your voice down in case he hears.” The player stepped into the light and thrust out his hand. “ShadowHog.”
“What kind of name is ShadowHog?” Max asked.
“I’m sorry, Murf, is it too interesting for you?” ShadowHog shot back.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.” Max ran his hand through his hair. “I need to clean out these pens.”
“I’ll give you a hand and then maybe you want to come and help me in the forge.” ShadowHog grabbed hold of the shovel with a proud gesture. “I help make weapons.”
“You do?” Max sounded suitably impressed, although by ShadowHog’s shaggy attire and skinny frame, he didn’t appear to be of a high enough level to make more than the crudest of weapons. “I’d like to help. I wanted to get a better look around the base,” Max admitted to ShadowHog. “You know, since it’s so impressive.”
“It’s very impressive,” ShadowHog gushed as he followed Max along the rows of dinos, stopping at the Ozraptor.
Max pushed the barrow, which got steadily heavier as ShadowHog cleaned up after the dinos. “I’d heard about the base from a friend who was here for a while. That’s why I decided I’d like to join the Ravagers.”
“Yeah, I heard about the Crew from the Hub. That’s where I got this.” Max pulled out his laser gun.
“Wow, that is so cool!” ShadowHog was a full-on fanboy. “Can I hold it?”
Max shrugged and offered up the empty gun. “Sure.”
ShadowHog looked in awe as he turned the dead piece of circuitry over in his hands. “I’ve never had a chance to get close to anything from the other worlds. Only the core group are allowed near the shipments.”
Max frowned. “What—?”
“Anyway, we should be getting on, there’s a lot we need to get done.” ShadowHog handed Max his gun back and grabbed a shovel instead. “This stinks.”
“The job or the shit?” Max asked.
ShadowHog wrinkled his nose. “Both.”
“I’m hoping I get immune to the smell. Or that they eventually move me somewhere else.” Max shot ShadowHog a sidelong glance, unsure whether to trust his new friend. For all Max knew, this was step two in Bullet57’s attempt to get him kicked out of the Ravagers. One wrong word and ShadowHog might report him to a higher-ranking member and he’d be out of here. “You know, I’d like to learn all the different jobs.”
“Yeah, they tend to put you on something easy first. Something to keep you out of trouble and out of their way. If you work hard then they eventually start taking you out and teaching you to hunt and tame dinos. That’s my favorite part.” ShadowHog stopped next to a stall containing the Deinonychus raptors and leaned on the shovel. “I’m hoping to get really good at taming and start my own Crew.”
“You don’t plan on being part of the Ravagers’ Crew permanently?” Max asked in surprise.
“Oh,” ShadowHog tried to hide his guilty expression by focusing on scooping up more crap off the floor. “It’s not that I don’t want to.” He looked around the dino barn and dropped his voice low. “It’s just that there are only a handful of main Crew members.”
Max stared at ShadowHog, trying to figure out what he meant. “So, they’re picky about who they keep on.”
ShadowHog shrugged. “I don’t know. They keep saying that they want to take on more people, but for as long as I’ve been here, none of the recruits have been bumped up.”
Max nodded. “How long have you been here?”
“A couple of months. I’ve been going out hunting with Rednex. He’s good. He’s taught me a lot about collecting Amica plants and taming dinos. But I know he’s holding a lot back. If they were looking for recruits to become one of them, wouldn’t they teach us everything?” ShadowHog was smart, but he was maybe not smart enough. These were not the kind of observations you shared with a guy who just walked out of the jungle. Not unless you were trying to warn him off.
“The guys here worked hard to learn what they know,” Max pointed out. “Maybe they want you to figure some of the stuff out on your own. Show a bit of initiative.”
Max and his Crew had spent months when they first started the game, figuring out the small stuff. It was part of the fun and yet here was a guy like ShadowHog expecting it to be handed to him on a plate.
“Maybe.” ShadowHog shoveled the last of the crap into the barrow and patted it down. “There, we can take it over to the compost pile and after we’ve emptied, I’ll show you where I work.”
ShadowHog took one last lingering look at the dinos in the barn and pushed the barrow out into the large open area. Max walked by his side, if the guy wanted to haul dino shit then who was he to stop him?
After all, Max was not here to clean up the Ravagers’ shit. He was here to find out what weapons they had and what better way to do that than help ShadowHog forge them?
Chapter Forty-Two
“Does that smell ever go away?” Max sniffed his clothes, keeping up his newbie pretense as they dumped the now empty barrow and headed over to the stone brick forge building.
“It lingers,” ShadowHog wrinkled his nose as he lifted his arm and smelled his sleeve. “But don’t worry, you’ll soon smell of smoke and hot metal.”
“Manly.” Max followed ShadowHog into the dimly lit room, getting his first look at the forge, and was reluctantly impressed. The work area was large, even with the big anvil, forge, wide workbench and what looked to be a smelter, there was easily enough room for three or four people to comfortably work in the space. The air supply wasn’t some antique
clay construction, but an actual set of leather bellows on a chain.
It certainly blew the Coprolite Crew’s forge out of the water.
Max scanned back over the room again as ShadowHog headed to the forge. It was the little details that would help them win the war with the Ravagers. Small things that wouldn’t look out of place to a newbie, but to a more experienced player would be glaringly obvious. Disappointingly, there was nothing in here that was worth taking note of, no obvious exploits or way to sabotage operations.
He needed to keep looking. There had to be something.
While ShadowHog grabbed a leather apron, Max circled the spacious room. Along the wall opposite the door was the well-worn, yet sturdy, workbench. The wood showed wounds from where it had experienced rough work, but other than that, it was in good condition, the surface mostly clear except for a few tools and perhaps an unfinished project.
In the center of the room was a thick tree stump crowned with a large anvil that was nailed down in place. Nearby was a wooden stand with a stout vice built into it. Past that was the forge itself. The embers glowed a ruddy orange from where they had been sitting for some time. The basin of the forge had been built up with stone brick and mortar with a metal roof over the top that was piped up to the chimney on the roof.
Next to the forge was a kiln-like construction that Max recognized as a smelter. It was a permanent fixture as well, whereas Max’s Crew built clay kilns that were destroyed in the process. It was a much cheaper solution.
The top was built directly into the same chimney as the forge, with a metal cover where Max guessed any fuel or ore would be poured in. At the bottom was a tap that looked as though it would open a small hole into the base of the forge. Beneath that was an iron construction that would hold molds for molten metal to be poured into. A huge chain operated bellows sitting next to that, alongside a crate full of black charcoal.
To the left of the forge was an alcove. The walls were lined with shelves and racks filled with tools and materials, some processed, some raw.
“Wow, this is cool.” Max turned a full three-sixty, looking for anything that stood out to him. If the forge contained anything special, be it tools or materials, he’d need to pass the information back to the Crew when he spoke with them later. “Very impressive.”
“State of the art.” ShadowHog ran his hand over the anvil. Or maybe it was more of a caress. The guy was a bit weird. But Max decided to stick with him since he’d been here long enough to gain knowledge that would take Max weeks to gather alone.
And he liked to talk. Yeah, ShadowHog might just shave a few weeks off the timeframe Max’s crew had set themselves to prepare for their attack.
Max couldn’t see anything that needed special attention, the tools were just general work tools at a glance, and the only materials he could see were crates of copper and iron in various stages of refinement. Some of the crates were filled with chunks of ore, some of which had been crushed down to pieces the size of pebbles washed up on a beach. None of the contents of the room gave Max a clue as to what weapons ShadowHog was working on.
Only a couple of pots with closed lids piqued his curiosity, but there certainly didn’t seem to be anything off with the forge. He expected most of the pots to be filled with reagents for potions, probably health, stamina, and some buffs, and the rest probably contained some gunpowder and flux for metalwork. It was a little odd to store the different things together like that, but if the forge was secure, Max could see why the Ravagers would opt to have valuable crafting ingredients in one, annoyingly fireproof place.
“So, what are we making?” Max switched his attention back to ShadowHog.
“Iron ingots.” ShadowHog held one up as an example.
“Iron ingots.” Max ground his teeth together. So, this is what his new friend meant by helping make weapons. ShadowHog didn’t actually craft them, he just refined the raw materials.
“Yeah, I have to smelt the iron and make them into these bars. When I’ve finished my quota, I take them to the storehouse and stack them in there.” ShadowHog nodded toward the bellows. “Get pumping.”
Max reached up with both hands and grabbed hold of the chain attached to the bellows and pulled it down. As his weight on the chain compressed the wooden sides together, air rushed into the smelter, the leather of the bellows creaking as they stretched, taking air back in.
He sighed as he pulled the chain down again. Max had hoped that the embers being left could be a fire hazard if he tampered with the furnace equipment, but it seemed like the building had been well designed to make sure that wasn’t an issue—there didn’t appear to be anything that would ignite easily in any meaningful amount, and nothing that would be crippling to any degree.
The storehouse could be targeted, but it had been built far enough away that fire from the forge would be unlikely to spread to the storehouse without being put out by the Crew.
Before long, the area in front of the smeltery was bathed in a bright glow from the open hatch where ShadowHog watched the progress of the flames.
“Keep going,” ShadowHog called as Max eased off on the bellows. “The fire needs to be a lot hotter than this.”
“I’m hot, that’s for sure.” Max wiped the sweat from his forehead on his upper arm as he continued to pump the bellows. Gradually, he hit a steady rhythm, the heat from the fire grew in intensity and ShadowHog began to work.
“Good, that’s really good.” ShadowHog grabbed the shovel leaning against the coal crate, dug it into the charcoal, and shoveled a couple of loads into the top of the forge. “Keep that going, I’m going to get the ore now.”
Max looked over his shoulder to watch as ShadowHog headed into the alcove, where he grabbed one of the larger pots from the shelf, took off the lid, and looked inside. Setting the first pot down on a closed barrel, he reached up for a much smaller vessel. After forcing the lid off, he reached inside and transferred a handful of the white powder, which must have been flux, into the first pot before grabbing a metal rod off the shelf and using it to mix the contents of the pot.
With a satisfied grunt, he headed back toward Max, opened up the hatch on the top of the smeltery, and poured in the red-brown powder.
“So, this is the first stage of making weapons?” Max asked, trying to strike up a conversation.
“Yes, we turn it into the ingots first, though. They’re easier to store and ready to use. I smelt all kinds of metal here but mostly iron and copper. Unless someone brings in anything rarer. But that doesn’t happen every day. So, most days I just smelt the usual stuff.” ShadowHog shoveled in another load of coal while Max worked the bellows.
Max paused for a second “Every day?”
“What?” ShadowHog asked in return.
“You do this every day?” Max quickly covered his surprised tone. “I mean, it must get a bit boring, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah, pretty much. Why do you think I came over and helped you clean out the dinos? I’d prefer to look after them rather than work the forge. I wish Raollin would swap jobs sometimes, but he keeps to himself, so I try not to bother him.” ShadowHog’s face was slick with sweat and grime already. “But this is my job. We all have our jobs, and we all have to do them. That’s what makes an efficient base, and the Ravagers are very efficient.”
Max eyed ShadowHog up as he opened the hatch and glanced inside the furnace again. “Don’t you ever run out of stuff, though? Surely you get through the ore pretty fast. And what about the powder you mixed in?”
ShadowHog shrugged. “There’s always ore to be processed, Remington usually brings in a load a couple of times a week. And the powder was flux.” He let out a laugh. “Sorry, I forgot you probably don’t know what that is.”
“Yeah, because I’m a noob.” Max kept a steady rhythm on the bellows. “But I want to learn all the things. Like what weapons they make here. What they grow. How they defend such a big base. You know, so I could have a base like this one day, too.”
S
hadowHog grinned. “I know, right. But you really need to start at the beginning, with the small stuff or else it gets confusing or you end up dead because you attempted to do things you weren’t ready for.”
“Sure. Let’s start at the beginning,” Max encouraged. “Although, I’d love to see some of the weapons they have here. You know, so I can see what I could aspire to.”
“Great!” ShadowHog seemed genuinely happy that Max was interested in learning from him and Max experienced a twinge of guilt. He couldn’t allow himself to get sentimental over a player he’d only just met, but he reminded him of the eagerness his friends had when they started, especially Chopsticks.
“What’s first?” Max asked as he pumped the bellows.
“So, in this world at least, you have to use a material called flux to smelt metal, otherwise you can’t get rid of the impurities and it pretty much stays ore. I think they get it from mining or something. They don’t talk a lot about that kind of stuff.”
“Don’t you ever run out?” Max asked. “I thought I read on one of the forums that flux is rare on Primeva, and it’s expensive to bring across from other worlds.”
“Don’t believe everything you read on forums.” He gave a short laugh. “That’s what Rednex told me. And he would know, right?”
“Yeah, he would know,” Max agreed.
“So no, we never seem to run out. The guys here are good at managing the resources. We never run out of anything.” ShadowHog continued to work in silence for a while before he added, “To be fair, I only make a handful of ingots each day, I spend the rest of the day burning wood to make charcoal for the next day.”
Max blinked at him. He didn’t seem to be lying about any of this, but Max just couldn’t believe what he said. Metalwork on Primeva was an incredibly expensive task, with the amount of time it took to mine the ore, the huge amounts of fuel it took to smelt it, not to mention how rare flux normally was. And yet here he was, apparently helping the Ravagers smelt more ore in a week than his crew did in a couple of months.
“If you’re smelting metal every day, what do the Ravagers do with all the metal?” Max laughed as if impressed by the Crew. Which your average newbie would be.
