“Shit, I didn’t think that they had mind reading in Emerilia,” Josh said, trying to look thoughtful.
Luke snorted at Josh’s antics. “See you in the morning.”
Josh waved his good-bye and sat down on one of the food crates that they had brought with them. He accessed his interface and opened a channel to Dave. “Hey, how is it going?”
“We’re bringing one of the B class power stations online. It should be enough to get most of the systems we need to survive online. I think that we will be able to get the other power stations in the section of the city online as well. That damned tilt is a pain in the ass—some of the coal is just falling off the conveyor belt,” Dave muttered darkly.
“You said that this thing spins. How long until we can get that and start turning on systems in other parts? I really want to see these guardians in action.”
“I think it would be best if everyone was out of the city when we did that. It’s not uncommon that a few things will get free when starting or stopping the city’s rotation. It will probably take a day or two to get the city enough power stored up to start spinning.”
“Okay, I’ll plan to have everyone out on missions for then. Speaking of missions, I have a few for you and your party.” Josh manipulated his interface and opened a channel to Deia as well.
“So, for your mission tomorrow, it looks like we’ve got an experimental facility and a remote power station. I don’t know why they’re not in a city—makes me think of things that go boom. I’d like to have you all there, warning others to not touch a damned thing. I don’t want to blow up a damned facility by accident.” Josh sighed. He trusted and respected his fellow guildmates, but sometimes they didn’t do the smartest things.
“Okay, we’ve got it,” Deia said.
“Good. Once you have those power stations, get back here and get some sleep. Lucy will have rooms and all of that sorted out for you.”
“Steve, don’t touch that!” Dave yelled, cutting the channel.
“I’ll leave you to deal with that,” Josh said.
“Thanks,” Deia said dryly as she ended the voice chat.
Josh looked over the new information that had come with the quest now that they had taken control of the city.
Quest: Aleph Homecoming
You have returned control of an unknown Aleph City to the Aleph.
The more work you put into the city, the more resources and aid you can call upon in your quest to clear out the Aleph installations.
Return power to the city.
Start the City’s rotation cycle.
Activate automatons to repair the city.
Other locations have been made available to you. Based on the power you have returned to the city and your group’s skill level, you can travel to the following locations:
Aleph Power Station x3 (Increased power generation)
Aleph Portal Factory x2 (Ability to fix portals in different locations)
Aleph Greenhouses x5 (Access to Herbs and Food)
Aleph Mining Facilities x4 (Repairs continue at faster rate)
Aleph Automatons Workshop x2 (More automatons to assist you. Ability to improve automatons)
Aleph College x1 (Knowledge on the Aleph areas you will be entering and different systems to repair)
Aleph Housing complex x13 (Increases in all areas)
Aleph Forges x5 (Access to weapons, upgrades, and automatons to buy for your own use)
Rewards:???
“What you looking at?” Lucy drifted by on her floating carpet.
“Just, all of these different locations that we can go to. Makes me think that this is some kind of mini game, like those games where you collect resources and then you can have more troops, upgrade those troops and so on until you defeat your enemy,” Josh said.
“When you put it that way, it does look like that. So, what do you want to focus on first?”
“Power station, automaton workshop, and housing complex.” Josh looked to Lucy for her opinion.
She tapped her chin in thought. “I agree. We need more power and faster if we want to be able to get this city rotating. Once it’s spinning, then we can start up different systems here that will aid us. We don’t want to be doing all the repairing ourselves. With the possibility to improve the automatons’ abilities, it will mean that we spend less time on fixing things and will have more people capable of clearing different areas. The housing complexes give us boosts in all categories. I think after we’ve got one of each under control, we look to the mining facilities, forges, and colleges.”
“Why?” Josh asked, curious as to her reasoning.
“The mining facilities so that the Aleph do not run out of supplies. It would not be good if we get all of these power stations running only to find that there are no resources to feed them. We will also need materials to fix different areas, create more automatons and fuel the forges. We’re going to need the forges sooner or later because of the fighting. Our weapons and armor aren’t going to fix themselves. This is not going to be a short fight. The colleges could give us more information on the Aleph, allowing us to know how to fix their different installations or maybe helping us to become stronger as we fight.”
“All good ideas. I’ll have the scout guardians and my own scouts move out to check them tomorrow afternoon,” Josh said.
“Have you checked out the market system?” Lucy asked.
“What?” Josh asked.
“Go to one of the magical terminals and use it. You may be surprised,” Lucy said cryptically. “I’ve come to report on the looting. I’m going to get my people to go through the leftover bodies tomorrow and we’ll hold a sell-off with everyone. Depending on the Aleph’s prices and what the Exdars say they can get for different goods, we can move most of it in two days’ time. We’re running low on certain supplies. I’ve been talking to the Exdars; we can get most of the supplies down here for cheaper, though items like foodstuffs we can’t get from the Aleph. We’re going to need to figure out a way to meet up with the Exdars to get supplies in and out of here.”
“Maybe someone in Party Zero has an idea. And what do you mean, buying stuff from the Aleph? There is no one here,” Josh said.
“Go and use one of the magical terminals.” She gestured at what looked like a cylinder with runes all over it and a faint light emitting from its top. It rested in a small alcove out of the way.
“Those are terminals? I thought that they were just fancy lighting,” Josh said.
“And they call you the brains of the Stone Raiders.” Lucy drifted away on her carpet.
Josh got to his feet and walked over to the terminal, hoping that Lucy wasn’t playing a joke on him. He scanned the area to make sure no one was hiding to make fun of him with playing with a light.
He stepped within a foot of the terminal. A screen popped up along the alcove’s wall, with a control panel at Josh’s waist. There were three panels: Trading, Automaton activities, and Progress.
Josh clicked on Progress. A large map of the city appeared. Everything was a collection of dark squares other than the tower he stood in and the power station that was coming online. Other buildings around the power station were turning from black to blue.
Josh spread his hands apart in the middle of the image, zooming in as he saw blue items moving in the other power stations that weren’t online. Josh zoomed in further, seeing that they were automatons working to bring the station online. Josh zoomed out and studied the city in detail.
The hologram had icons that showed the different kind of systems across the city, from the mining operations at either end of the city, looking to expand the already large cylinder to power stations, factories, homes, businesses, trams and lifts. The Aleph might be miles underground, but their city wasn’t like any other that Josh had seen in his life on Earth or in Emerilia. It was futuristic, beautiful, and economical, but not cold. There was a beauty to the architecture, to the runes and Magical Circuits.
Josh dismissed th
e hologram and moved to the Automaton activities. There was a list of forces, from scout guardians to behemoths.
The knights, lords, and behemoths were grayed out. When Josh pressed their names, a simple pop-up greeted him.
Units Unavailable
These units require more power to become active.
There was another icon next to the different automatons labeled Build. Josh didn’t need someone to tell him what that little button meant.
There were five scout guardians highlighted in yellow, their status listed as charging; a half-dozen repair bots were listed as performing maintenance on the power station.
Josh clicked on the bar; all of the repair bots were listed in a new menu. Josh clicked on one of the repair bots. The screen showed a map with a box window in the top right, following the repair bot as it worked.
Josh selected another power station that the repair bot wasn’t in. On the top right screen, the repair bot finished its work and started walking for the other power station. Josh canceled the work order, sending it back to work on the power station it was at.
“Damn, it is like those macro tactics games.” Josh escaped the Automaton page and went to the Trading page.
Josh’s eyes almost burst from his sockets as items were listed in different pages. Items of all kinds flashed past his eyes as he scanned the equipment. He was surprised at the prices, going down to the higher-leveled and better equipment. There was less quantity and their price increased, but they were a lot cheaper than the same goods from any settlement other than the Dwarves.
The items weren’t as powerful as the Dwarven weapons that one might be able to buy, but for standard equipment they were more than enough. Josh grabbed a pair of daggers. They appeared on top of the terminal. Josh picked them up and studied them. His analyze showed that they were indeed real and as good as the terminal had said.
He went to the potions and herb area. There were a number of things but they were in limited quantities, driving their price up.
“Damn, this is useful. Now, I know why we had arrows the entire time for the last battle.” Josh talked to himself as he looked through the different categories. The weapons numbered in the hundreds for simple items, but hundreds of thousands for arrows. There were also weapons that Josh had never seen before.
Bolt throwers and grenades were listed. Josh bought one of each. The bolt thrower looked like a regular crossbow but was powered by a pneumatic system that spat out a bolt. The string was reset by a moving mechanism on a piston. Its drop-down magazine made it possible to shoot the weapon as if it were semi-automatic.
It was the closest thing Josh had seen to a gun. On the end, there was a bayonet and blades on the front of the bow, allowing for slashing and stabbing.
Josh smiled to himself and wandered out of the tower, toward where Party Zero, Twenty-three and Five were putting a power station back together.
***
Dave wiped sweat off his face as he got out from under the conveyor belt he had been working on, leaving a sooty black streak across his forehead.
“All right, try it now,” Dave said as they once again kick-started the power system. Dave ran between three different power generators, trying to teach them as much as possible about the runes and the different systems. All too often, this meant getting into the guts of the machines and guiding the others through.
There were enchanters and smiths who had picked up on what Dave was telling them. Still, there were unforeseen issues and Dave had the ability to look through the different machines with his Touch of the Land spell.
Once again, two melee fighters cranked on the manual crusher. Power was fed into the conveyor as it started to move. Deia set fire to the coal as it moved into the extraction chamber. The blocks of coal that were smoldering disintegrated; the runes pulled power from the reaction, burning the fuel in seconds.
Dave watched as the crusher started to have enough power to start moving itself. The melee fighters stepped back as the block of coal was torn apart. An extractor fan pulled any dust in the air into another generator Dave had got working.
The group looked at one another with tired smiles. They were covered in grime and soot, but they’d finally got the damned thing working.
“Just four more generators to go in this station!” Dave said to their groans. “We’re three-quarters done! Faster we finish those generators, the faster we can get back for some beer, food, and sleep!” Dave said.
This seemed to tide them over. It wasn’t as if Dave was slacking off either. He was right in the middle of it.
“So, it was just a few rollers got messed up?” Felicia, the smith who Dave had been helping out, asked.
“Yeah. These things might look hella complicated, but sometimes it’s just gunk buildup. Good to check that all the parts are moving before going on to say that it’s a rune screw-up. Had that with generator three. Thing wasn’t working because the extractor fan wasn’t on, making the whole thing just continue on without starting the systems that were working.
“The fan was just seized up. Smacked it a few times and it started up. The fail-safes on the generator stopped going haywire and the thing started working. Would not like to see what might happen if that extractor wasn’t on and we had gone through a few loads of coal.” Dave shuddered.
Sure, he could come back from death, but dying fucking sucked. Having coal dust particles ignite into a bomb was not a pleasant way to go, in Dave’s mind.
“Dave! I didn’t think that you would get the entire power station online in a single night!” Josh strode in, looking around at his dirtied Stone Raiders who were working the generators, bringing them to life.
“We aim to please and I was looking forward to a hot shower. Need more power for that.” Dave waved the rest of the group on.
“You tried any of the terminals yet?”
“Nope. Why?” Dave yawned.
“Because they’re a store—a damned interactive map and you can give the automatons orders!” Josh accessed his interface. “Check this out!”
Josh pulled out what looked like a crossbow with a barrel on the front of it and a box behind the string when it was at rest all the way to the latch at the rear. A box magazine was set off at forty-five degrees to the right side of the contraption.
“It’s called a bolt thrower. Works on the string and pneumatic system. It fires a bolt; the pressure from the bolt leaving re-cocks the string, like with a firearm; the box mag drops a bolt in and then you can fire again!” Josh said with clear excitement.
It was a match of modern and Emerilia’s own technology, cumbersome but functional.
“Well, we’re going to have to see how much damage it puts out. I know that most archers can put out a hell of a lot more damage than a normal rifle. I’d say that most of our people’s arrows are hitting with the force of fifty cal rifles,” Dave said.
“How is that possible?” Josh asked, shocked.
“The materials used in the bows are stronger than anything back on Earth—same with the string. We’re stronger and faster than anyone back on Earth; we get damage bonuses. That isn’t even adding in the fact that we can enchant arrows and bows so that they do more damage to a target.”
“Okay, when you say that, it makes sense. Though I’m not looking to replace the archers’ weapons with these. I’m thinking about the mages, the supply people, and the melee fighters.
“This has iron sights on it and is as easy to use as pulling the trigger. Sure, it doesn’t hit as hard as an archer, but with massed firepower, we can injure a lot more people before they ever reach us,” Josh said.
“I didn’t really think of that.” Dave scratched his head.
“So, what is this that you were saying about a rifle?”
“Oh, I made a rifle with runes—used a ton of power and was a pain in the ass. The metal couldn’t take all of the runes on its surface and was melting with the energy going through it. Ended up blowing up in my hands, though with what I learned from S
teve, I might be able to make something pretty powerful.”
“What do you mean?” Josh asked as Dave lapsed into thoughtful silence.
“Steve told me that he was not just made up of the materials that we use for weapons and such. He has things like titanium and other alloys and synthetic compounds making him up. The Aleph were messing with the materials we know on Earth. I don’t know what their properties might be, but it might be that I can make something that can help us out on the battlefield, maybe something that can hit hard enough to give some higher-level target pause.”
“If we could get that kind of equipment into the Stone Raiders’ hands, I know a few military types who might be able to give us some drills that would really increase our fighting abilities. We’ve been playing with some medieval fighting styles, but if we can add in things like siege weaponry and giving people ranged firepower, we could smash through a few raid’s leaderboards.” Josh smiled.
“Well, I’ll have a talk with Shard and see if he would be willing to do some trades for different metals. Then, I can get it off to the Dwarven master smiths to see what they say.” Dave looked to Josh.
“How are you going to get it to the Dwarven master smiths?”
“Teleport pad, of course,” Dave said, as if it were obvious.
“Well, we need to get supplies down here, but we were wondering how we would go about that,” Josh said. “Also, who is Shard?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Shard is the Aleph AI that manages all of this. He is the one that gave us a quest. He is the one that controls the cities, gives most of the automatons orders and works the teleport pads. He can connect the teleport pads here to any teleport pad made from the Aleph’s plans. They build them, so we can connect to any of the teleport pads, or rudimentary drop pads, or portals,” Dave said.
“They can connect to portals? What are rudimentary drop pads?”
For The Guild (Emerilia Book 2) Page 32
