by Jeff Sproul
Riley wished he could do the same. It would've been easier to withdraw the three troopers if he could direct them with thoughts alone. Maybe there was some sort of command interface that allowed him to do it.
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
His head jerked up as he saw a series of explosions buffet the roof of the building across from him. Dark smoke rose up from the impacts, but he had no way of knowing if the roof of the building had collapsed or not.
From his current vantage, he also couldn't determine where the earlier explosions had occurred. "Maybe they have mortars? I'd think that some sort of missile would've been stronger," he said as he rushed down the street with his troops, heading straight for the command center.
"Look around, let me know if you see any enemies," said Riley as he remained more focused on where they were heading. He could feel the crate jostling against his back. His hands clutched the straps, purely for support.
It felt longer than it was, but soon enough, he reached one of the side doors to the command facility. Or at least, what he hoped was the command facility. He pressed a button on the door panel and it whooshed aside. He darted in first, so he could spot threats. That way, he could direct his troops in the direction of the threat. At least, that was the intent.
Chapter 3: Command
Just like the previous building, this one was pitch black as well. Nothing was powered. The one nicety was that the structure was less messy than the previous one. The building was laid out with a nice, smooth hallway. The walls were all chrome sheet metal, but it wasn't littered with all sorts of useless stuff.
Riley moved down the hall with the five troopers and eventually came to a nice two-segment door. He pressed a button on the interface beside the door and the two segments slid slowly to the side. The doors operated on some kind of hydraulics, which might explain why they didn't need power. Or, the game was simply coded to allow doors to work while nothing else did. He had no idea for sure.
The door gave way to a large central room. It was laid out with a few tables, some terminals, cabinets and desks. There were monitors on the desks and the whole feel of the place just screamed 'operation center.' Riley noticed that there was a single chair in the center of the room with desks all around it with monitors and terminals. If he was being honest, it looked a lot like the bridge of a spaceship. At least, the kinds he'd seen in movies before.
He went right over and placed his crate next to one of the side terminals. He unpacked it and grabbed a baz rod. He socketed it into the terminal, which immediately lit up in response. He checked the readout.
-
Command Center: Online
Power: Manual Power
-
"Alright, let's see…" he murmured to himself. He then looked up to the five troopers, who were standing alert and ready, but mostly unable to see. "Right…the lights."
He returned his attention to the terminal and tapped through different commands. It took him a few navigational routes and some trial and error to get to where he wanted. This was definitely something he wasn't used to, but bit by bit, he was figuring it out.
"Alright, we need to get some of the epper rods into…" He looked around the room and spotted a sort of console and interface, much like the panel back in the floor at the printer facility. "Over there." He then got out of the chair and pulled some things from the crate until he got to the green crystalline rods. They were a bit more expensive than baz rods, and they had the power output to actually fuel a facility. He only had four. He pulled all of them out and made his way to the terminal at the far side of the room.
The console had numerous slots. It also had ten inputs for fuel rods, like the ones currently in his hands. One by one, he slotted them in. There were still six slots available, but he only had the four rods. Chrono and Aaron hadn’t been able to fully speculate on the power requirements, since each base was so entirely different in what it was capable of.
The console lit up and showed that it had enough power to last for 4 hours.
Of course, there was no power generation going on currently.
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
Riley felt the room shake. Did the main building just get hit, or was it still one of the side ones? He shook his head. He had to stay focused. He had nothing to deal with whatever might be attacking the base right now. He had to get it running.
Now that the base had power via the epper rods, he headed back to the desk.
He tapped at more commands as his eyes flitted across the monitor and terminal. With the press of a few buttons, the lights flickered on in the room.
"That's a bit better, commander," said Trooper Three.
"You're welcome," Riley murmured as he continued to navigate the interface. "Alright, the base has power, there's an excavator…let's see. We'll call this building one, the building we were in was building…two? Then going clockwise, three, four, five. Kinda like you guys," Riley said, mostly for his own mild amusement. "Let's…initialize some things."
He wanted to turn on all the command, surveillance and defense functions. Which apparently he had to go over to the central chair for. He activated the chair and immediately saw a myriad of lights pop up near the chair at the center of the room. Numerous holographic displays appeared and Riley realized that he…was in the wrong chair now.
He got up and rushed over to the command chair. He sat down and looked at the various holographic screens before him. "Alright, so…we have some cameras."
Riley reached out and gestured and dragged to move the screens around. He oriented the eight cameras around his chair, based on their actual positioning around the base. The chair turned and swiveled smoothly, allowing him to shift around at will. "Good, good."
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
"Ok, not good," Riley grumbled as he spotted another three explosions while they also rocked the compound. These had hit the north-west building. But he also realized that there was smoke rising from the four surrounding buildings. Each of them had taken hits.
"This is fine, this is fine," he muttered. He looked to his five troopers, who were standing by, at the ready. He then returned his attention to the surveillance cameras. He needed to find the attacker. How was he supposed to do that? Maybe…a ping? Perhaps a base ping was stronger than his rover's.
He tapped at the list of base functions and found that the base did in fact have a scanning function that was operational. He quickly initiated it.
An image appeared in front of him. But it wasn't flat like the screens, it was a three dimensional representation of the base. The central building, the four outer ones, and then the wall itself. The majority of the base was lit with blue outlines, but certain portions were flickering pink. These portions were all located on the roofs of the buildings, which meant that they must've been the areas that took damage.
The 3D image was slowly expanding. There was a small yellow cube right where he was pretty sure that he'd left the rover. So at least the base could see through his stealth. That was…good, he supposed.
He was getting gray particles that represented the local terrain, which was mostly flat, but there were some hills nearby to the north. On that hill, little red blips started to light up.
At first, there were only five. Then there were three more spots that each had a pile of five lights. Then, a small square appeared behind those groups, also red. Then, two more groups of five blips. And then another three groups of five, and finally, a group of five in the rear.
All totaled, there were fifty red blips and a single square.
Riley then brought his hands up and enlarged the 3D model on the base. It showed lifesign indicators for inside the base as well. There was a pile of five yellow lights, very close to a single, brighter yellow light, right inside the command center. He looked up and over to the five troopers he'd made, then back to the 3D rendering. "I'm the bright yellow dot, they're the five other ones. The rover is yellow…and…there's fifty red pings and a single red box. So I guess they have fifty troops? An
d…some vehicle of some sort?"
"I don't like those odds, they've got us outnumbered ten to one," said Trooper Five.
Riley found himself staring at the 3D model of everything. The enemy troops weren't moving. He then looked up to one of the cameras. "System, zoom a camera on those hostiles."
The northern camera shifted and zoomed in on the hill.
Riley's brows lifted. "Oh, wow, I wasn't actually expecting it to work off audio cues. I think I could get used to this. If I don't die." He shook his head with a sigh. "System, do you…talk to me?"
"Yes, commander," came a digitized woman's voice.
"Perfect. Um…let's see, what do we have here?"
Riley looked at the camera feed that had been zoomed in on the hill. There were a number of troops all in some sort of loose formation, protecting a single small vehicle. It looked to be larger than the rover he'd arrived on. It was definitely some kind of mortar. It had four spider-like legs, protruding from a central base that was held aloft. There was a tube or cannon of some sort mounted on top.
"The hostiles number fifty, plus one long-range armament," the system told him.
"I shouldn't have wasted my time counting," Riley said with a grin. "System, what sort of defenses does this facility have?"
"Currently, the facility is equipped with three long-ranged mortars. One rail-gun system. Nine surveillance cameras, with nine backups at each location. One surveillance hover-drone is in the drone bay."
Riley nodded slowly. "Alright, and do we have any troops or NPC defenses in storage or anything?"
"No, commander. Unless you wish to count the five currently assigned to your personal command."
Riley quirked his lips to the side. "Alright, let's take out their mortar with the rail gun."
"The rail gun is currently not powered and it is currently inoperable due to damages sustained.”
Riley's brows fell as he sunk into his chair. "Alright…what's the status of the mortars?"
"Currently operable. Power is sufficient, but there are no rounds available in storage that can be used as munitions for them."
"Well, at least the cameras are working," Riley grumbled. "What's the condition of that drone?"
"Operable. Currently, it is charging and will reach one-hundred percent charge in sixty-three seconds."
"Well, that's something. Hmm…Can we make more rounds for the mortars?"
"No schematics are available to craft the required rounds," the system told him in that crisp voice.
"Crap." Riley brought his hands to his head. "I removed the old schematics. System, was the schematic for those rounds on the last loaded schematic data-drive?"
"Yes."
"Great, do we have the resources to craft them?"
"No."
"Crap. Ok. Do we have an operational excavator?"
"Yes."
"Can we start excavating resources to make those rounds? Like, are the materials in this area?"
"Yes."
"Then start excavation."
"Excavation will begin in thirty seconds, once the excavator facility powers up."
"How long will it take to get the resources we need, for…I don't know, ten mortar rounds?"
"The excavator will acquire one load every twenty minutes. Within that load, the chance of getting all of the required materials is roughly eleven percent."
Riley's eyes widened. "Wait, what?" he gasped. "How many excavations is it roughly going to take in order to make those rounds? How long is that likely to take?"
"There is a high probability that the required resources will be acquired within retrieval of ten excavation loads. The time that will take is two-hundred minutes."
"I'm going to die here," Riley murmured, as he stared at the threats on the hill. "So…um…crap. I have five troopers, myself, and an aerial drone. Fantastic. System, can you determine if any of the hostiles out there looks like a paragon or hellion?"
"All hostiles have similar appearances, which is common for printed troops. The hostiles have paragon-centric aesthetics, as does the mortar. I don't see anything that would resemble a hellion in the area."
"Alright, alright." Riley chewed at his lower lip. "What sort of weapons are they using?"
"Visually, I can determine that they are using rifles."
Riley looked back over to his five troopers. Trooper Four held up his pistol and slowly shook it in the air.
Riley's head drooped. "I'm so dead." He slowly shook his head back and forth, then looked up to the surveillance screen again. "The hostiles aren't getting any closer. Are they doing anything?"
"They've been assaulting the facility with mortar fire in bursts of three explosives. Damages have been incurred."
"What have they been hitting, exactly? Anything important?" Riley asked.
"Solar arrays have been severely damaged on all four buildings. Solar generation capacity is at six percent."
"Solar arrays?" Riley asked. "Wait, on current reserves, how long will the base remain functional?"
"With currently loaded power sources and the solar array at six percent, power reserves will be depleted in roughly three hours, fifty-two minutes."
"Alright, maybe…Chrono can send help, somehow. System, can you retrieve my contact list from the rover and call Chrono?"
"Yes. One moment."
Suddenly, a wave of audio static came flowing into the room. It wasn't loud, but Riley figured it had something to do with the system calling Chrono.
"What's with the static? Are you contacting him?" Riley asked.
There were a few seconds of silence before the system spoke again. "Interference is preventing a signal from reaching your designated contact."
"What's the interference? What's the source? What's causing it?" Riley asked.
"The interfering source is outside of scan range, as I cannot detect anything nearby that could be the cause. Until the interference alleviates, no contact can be made."
"So I'm still on my own for the most part," Riley murmured to himself, as he kept a close eye on the 3D rendering of the facility. "Now that I have the base under my control, I can't even signal Chrono or the others. The hell am I supposed to do?"
BOOM BOOM BOOM.
The west-side camera went dark as the building shook again.
"West camera has been damaged. Switching to backup," said the system.
"Are the enemies moving at all?" Riley asked.
"I haven't detected any movement from the enemy forces."
The west-side video feed came back. Riley glanced over and saw that there was a bit of smoke occasionally billowing into view in front of the camera. Were the enemies entirely NPC-driven? Was there no player in control of them? If that was the case, did he have the capability to defeat them? He chewed on his lower lip as he thought about his options.
"Is it likely that there are other threats out there, beyond this representation you've given me?" Riley asked the system. "Like, is this edge here the farthest you can scan?"
"Anything beyond the representation shown is outside of my scan range. If you wish to improve scan capabilities, the scanner in the command center will need to be upgraded."
"And we don't have the resources for that, do we?" Riley asked.
"That is correct."
Riley looked over to his crate of supplies. He had rods to fuel the various terminals. He had crystals to power a teleporter and railgun, but the railgun wasn't operational. "Do we have a teleporter?" he asked.
"This facility does not have a teleporter."
"And we have no resources to build or upgrade," Riley murmured to himself. "Can you send the aerial drone out, to widen the scanning range? If it flies around in a circle or something?"
"Yes, would you like me to do that? You will be able to control it via the rendered map."
"Yes, do that. Can I control my troopers via this interface as well?" Riley asked.
"Are you referring to the five in the room that are under your personal control?"<
br />
"Yes, them."
"A printed construct can only be under the command of a single source. Either a player or a command module. Not both. If you wish to transfer them to the command module, you may do so. But I must warn you that if the facility loses power and they are out of your audio range, they will go into standby mode and remain where they are until vocal contact is established by the player, or by the range of an operational command module."
"Hmm. Hmm," Riley murmured. "I take it that the range on the pistols my troopers have is too short to accurately hit those enemies, if my troopers were up on the wall?"
"There is no direct access route to get to the top of the wall for troopers without special equipment. The optimal accuracy and range of your troopers with their equipped firearms is likely to be half the range of the fifty troops out on the hill."
"I should've taken Brenda's power before I left. I would've had the range required with her crossbow. Or maybe even Carla. Her lotuses would've…well, slowly gotten there. Hmm." Riley was staring down at the floor. He then found himself looking at his new boots, remembering what they could do. Well, they did have one other benefit that the ring of expert climbing wouldn't have granted him. Maybe he should put that to the test?
He leaned up in his chair and oriented the 3D rendering to get a good view of things. He could see a faint white outline of where the scan radius of the facility ended. But now, a green blip was floating out around the facility. It moved up into the sky, bit by bit. Its scan radius was far smaller than the base, but the aerial drone zoomed away and started to circle the outskirts of the facility's scan range, filling in more blank areas with 3D-rendered detail on the layout he was looking at.
"This is going to take too long," Riley sighed.
