“It would cost you billions.” Harmon finished for the general. “On the other hand, you have more billions than you would need.”
Ramon spoke next. “You could raise some of the money to recoup the cost by renting or selling building space. To the colonists, I mean. Or more merchants like Harmon.”
Andrea added, “That’s hundreds if not thousands of buildings that would need clearing. It would be a great place to level up our people. Even let some of our allies send folks to level up too.” Her guys that had been running noobs through dungeons all gave thumbs-ups to that.
Meg stepped forward from where she’d been lingering in the back. “What about the people? I mean, there were something like twelve million people here. More if you go out into Jersey and Connecticut. Some of them have to be living in this territory already, right?”
Allistor nodded. “I’ve only read just a little bit of the info so far. But it seems that just like with my other properties, I can assign, or sell, rights to land or buildings, whatever. Anyone who’s already within the territory I claim can challenge me for the right to it. I figure if they’re good people, I’ll either make them citizens, or sell them the building cheap, maybe even give it to them. If they’re not good people, well then I’ll give them the option to leave. If they refuse, we’ll move them.”
“One way or the other.” Sam nodded, patting Allistor’s shoulder.
Michael put in his two cents. “Allistor, this is some of the most valuable real estate in the country. Maybe the world. I say claim as much of it as you can, as quick as you can. More ships are landing every second. You might make more from selling or leasing buildings here than you just made from claiming the depository. Just the penthouses in some of these buildings were selling for tens of millions of dollars before everything went to shit.”
Amanda agreed. “And not just here. We should be making an effort to claim more prime land wherever we can. Maybe split into smaller groups and have us claim areas like in DC, or Paris, or London, on your behalf. I assume there’s some way for you to authorize that.”
Allistor felt overwhelmed. He physically took a step back and a deep breath. “I don’t know, Amanda. I mean, it sounds feasible. But I already have all the parks, and potentially a big hunk of New York City. I’m not sure we need more.”
“It’s not about us needing it. It’s a prevent defense. It’s about stopping the aliens from taking it.” She paused and looked up at the merchant. “No offense, Harmon.”
“None taken, Lady Amanda. I completely agree. As locals, you are in the unique position of being able to claim land without purchasing the rights.”
“If we don’t want it or need it, you can donate it to other humans. Let them run it for you rent free, or whatever.” Amanda finished. Allistor looked around at his friends’ faces, and most of them looked as if they agreed, and there were murmurs of assent.
Nancy spoke quietly, and the others quieted. “I mean, you have that cool spaceship that could take us around the world. But still, it would mean a lot of work, and maybe a lot of risk. You said you could claim this area as your Capital City. But you can only do that once, right? So anything else we take would have to be cleared building by building?”
Prime answered as Allistor tried to pull up the tab again to read. “That is correct. As you can see, my battle droids can quickly clear buildings. We could clear entire blocks of urban locations like this in a day.”
Lars had been looking thoughtful, but Prime’s words caused him to speak up. “We could send a crew of ten or so humans with a few hundred of Prime’s battle droids to each location. The ship could carry several crews, drop us off and move on. In a week you could own a huge amount of real estate.”
“Assuming the aliens don’t beat us to it.” Allistor finished. He closed his eyes and leaned back against one of the vehicles, thinking. The seconds ticked by, as he tried to weigh the pros and cons. The biggest negative for him was risking his people out in the world without him. He couldn’t go with more than one group at a time.
“I don’t want to seem like some kind of evil emperor wannabe.” he eventually said. “But if we give away most of it to worthy humans, I could live with that. Speaking of which, I’d expect each of you to accept a property as vassals. You’d be responsible for the day to day operation, kind of like how Lars runs his Stronghold, and Andrea runs the Citadel. Either run them yourselves, or designate someone to do it for you. And they’d all be connected via teleports. Any objections?”
Chloe raised her hand. “Does that mean I get my own Stronghold too?”
They all chuckled as Allistor beamed at the girl. He squatted down and held out his arms, and she walked over to hug him. “When you get older, little one, absolutely. You can even have your own herd of murder chickens and mutant killer bunnies.”
“Yesss!” She pumped a fist in the air, then kissed his cheek. Allistor’s heart, still heavy with the loss of Campbell, lightened a bit as he hugged the enthusiastic little girl. “Deal!”
“Murder chickens?” Harmon asked.
“I’ll show you later.” Allistor replied. “For right now, let’s get this place claimed as our Capital City. Then we’ve got some human prisoners to check out back at the park. General, how much time would you need to upgrade your current troops, and purchase enough additional battle droids to double your current force?” As they spoke, the orcanin and droids began to emerge from the building behind him and take up positions in the street.
Prime paused for a moment, calculating. “Upgrades will take approximately four hours from the time we get access to the market kiosk. Unless Master Harmon has those items with him here?”
Harmon shook his head. “It’ll have to be the kiosk today. Once I can get this place properly stocked… well, I’ll make sure to have sufficient product on hand to meet your needs, Allistor.”
“Very good.” Prime continued. “As for the reinforcements, seven additional battalions can be purchased and delivered here within an hour. But if I might make a suggestion?” He paused while Allistor nodded. “Purchasing eight thousand would get you two additional alphas like myself, instead of one. An alpha for each five thousand droids.”
“Then let’s do that. It sounds like we’re going to have lots of real estate to defend.”
Allistor stepped back into the building and opened up the Capital City tab. When he selected it and widened the boundaries to the max the system would allow, his stomach felt queasy. This was a huge undertaking, bigger and more important than anything he’d ever even attempted. A voice in the back of his mind kept telling him he wasn’t qualified to take this on. He was a college puke with little real life experience and a mediocre Charisma attribute.
He paused, listening to that voice and arguing with it in his head. He thought about all the impossible challenges he’d already overcome since the world ended. About all the people depending on him. The final deciding factor was all the humans out there who might perish if he didn’t try to help. He had the means, and if he didn’t take the opportunity, his conscience would gnaw at him.
With a sigh, he pressed the button to select the footprint. Then he had to spend the next ten minutes dealing with placement of the walls and defensive batteries, as well as establishing citywide utility infrastructure, shield generator placement, and a dozen other things. For the utilities he ended up cheating by telling it to use the existing infrastructure, with upgrades to current materials. It took him three minutes to figure out how to tell the system to do it, but that was still faster than trying to place individual services throughout the city. He thought he’d need to find himself a city planner, if there were any left, and get their input on refining his choices.
When he eventually went to press the button to complete it, the final step popped up on his interface, and he had a new dilemma.
Please select the name for _______, Capital City of _________Princedom.
So not only did he need to choose the name of his city, but he
had to choose a name for his nation. And do it right now.
He had been thinking over the name of his nation since the flight to New York, and hadn’t really settled on a name. But the reflecting he’d just done on overcoming the obstacles he’d faced that year reminded him of one of his favorite poems. And just like that, he had the name he wanted.
He filled in the blanks, then pressed the confirmation button. A thunderous sound like a sonic boom crashed down upon the city. Fireworks went off, music played, angels sang, and the earth trembled as golden light blinded them all. He stumbled slightly even though he expected the building to be altered.
When the light faded, the window between himself and his people had been restored. Allistor couldn’t see them through the solid wall of notifications that popped up on his interface. After checking that none of them were flashing red, he waved them away for the moment, and stepped around to the nearby door. As he exited, the always annoying system notification went out.
World First: Capital City!
Planetary Prince Allistor has established Invictus City, the Capital City of the Invictus Princedom! May he rule long and wisely!
Walking back out to his people, he shook his head. “That’s gonna cause some trouble.”
*****
Most of his group moved into the new high rise to look around and make the necessary changes, which he authorized Meg, Andrea, and Ramon to do. The kiosk was quickly set up on the ground floor so that Prime could begin upgrading his troops and bringing in the reinforcements. Sam took his conscripted crew up to the roof to deal with the dragon corpse and harvest any other creatures that remained. Andrea purchased and set up another teleport hub, and six more pads to go with it. As soon as Prime was done bringing in his droids, she was going to bring people from the other Strongholds to prepare for raids, set up housing, crafting, et cetera. Harmon and his orcanin retired to his building next door to begin setting up.
Allistor, Helen, Amanda, Ramon, and Fuzzy got in one of the Juggernauts and returned to the park and their ship to meet the human prisoners.
While Helen drove and Amanda rode shotgun, Allistor sat in the back and began to review the scores of notifications that had popped up. Many of them were administrative, links to new tabs on his interface that had to do with establishing and running a city. Eleven of them were regarding properties now within his boundaries that were inhabited by sentient beings. He created a separate file tab and moved those over, then put a bright red marker on it so that he wouldn’t forget to deal with the issue. Then there were notifications to remind him to establish a tax system, legal system, and assign a long list of cabinet positions.
It was quickly becoming clear that he wouldn’t be accompanying any of his raid groups in their bid to claim more prime locations. The sheer amount of setup required for this new city was going to take him days to go through. And that was if he recruited Ramon and some others to help.
Back at the old fort, Allistor stepped out to find a row of humans sitting in the grass not far from the yacht. Most of them were glaring at him. As he walked up and stood to address them, Fuzzy moved next to him and sat down, curiously sniffing in their direction. The looks on the prisoners’ face changed to fear on some, curiosity on others.
“Good afternoon. I’m Allistor. I’m guessing all of you got that little notice about me a little while ago?” He smiled and did his best to be charming, but the prisoners were not warming up to him.
“I uhm… I understand you were detained while attempting to enter this Stronghold?”
Still he got nothing but glares. With a sigh, he continued. “Look, guys. I’m not going to hurt you. Unless you try to hurt me or my people. I just want to talk to you for a bit, and we can figure out how the rest of the day will go for all of us. Alright?”
“You could start by taking off these restraints.” a woman near the front of the small group said as her eyes flashed with anger. “We’ve been sitting like this forever, and I’m about to piss all over your precious Stronghold.”
“Oh, I like her.” Amanda grinned. She looked at the droid guards. “Please unlock their restraints.” As five droids moved to comply, she said, “There are bathrooms inside the fort. And food, too. Please follow me.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked toward the old brick fort. One by one the humans got up and looked at each other, none of them moving to follow until the woman who’d spoken took the first step. The others fell in behind her and entered the building.
Ten minutes later everyone had been escorted to the restroom facilities, then into the dining area of the fort. Allistor pulled canid jerky from his inventory and shared it around, while Amanda passed out bottles of water.
When everyone was seated and eating, he said, “Okay, let’s start again. I’m Allistor. Planetary Prince and all that.” He introduced the others who were gathered around, including Kira and Gene who had come out of the yacht to join them.
“Now, would one of you like to tell me your name?”
The same woman took a drink to wash down some jerky before answering. “I’m Juanita. Leader of this bunch. You can talk to me.”
“Great! Nice to meet you, Juanita. Now, my first question would be, why were you trying to get past my walls?”
“This is where the food is.” Her eyes narrowed as she stared into his. “There are a few fruit trees in here, and we can usually shoot a squirrel or bird or two.”
“Okay, I can understand that. I take it then that you’ve been living here in the park, or nearby?”
Juanita looked as if she didn’t want to answer for several seconds, then let out a long breath. “I suppose you’d find out eventually, anyway. Yes, we’ve been living nearby. In an Outpost a few blocks up the street. We hid when we saw your ship come down. Figured you were aliens. Then we saw the orcs and the robots…”
“Orcanin.” Allistor cut her off, regretting it instantly. But since the deed was done, he finished his thought. “They consider the term orc an insult. Their race are called orcanin, and they get touchy about it.”
“Fine, we saw the orcanin and the droids, and we were getting ready to bail. Then we saw you humans riding in those vehicles, so we talked it over and decided to come investigate. And for the record, we didn’t try to scale the walls or anything. The gate was open. We walked in, and got attacked.” The others were nodding their heads.
“I’m sorry if my droids frightened any of you. They had orders to defend this place. Are any of you hurt?”
“We got a few scrapes, but we know how to heal.” Juanita looked at one of her people, a man Allistor noted as probably being their healer.
“I’m sorry for that. My troops all have strict instructions to capture rather than kill any humans.” He stopped as he was about to apologize again.
“An Outpost implies that you’re attached to a Stronghold.”
“Yep. Guy named Jesse built it at the old castle in Central Park a couple weeks after the apocalypse. He has Strongholds across the city. He’s not gonna be happy that you just stole some of them.”
“I have no plans to steal anything. I claimed the lower half of Manhattan, true. But I intend it to be a place where humans can live and thrive. If you have a way to communicate with Jesse, I’d like to meet with him. And again, I intend none of you any harm.”
“I radioed him when we got captured. Your guards didn’t take our weapons or radios or anything. He said he’d send a crew to rescue us. They should be here any minute.”
“Please radio him again, so that I can speak to him directly. I don’t want your people to get hurt trying to rescue you. After we’ve talked, you’re all free to go.” Allistor gave her his friendliest smile, and her severe look faded some.
She pulled out a walkie-talkie, turned the volume down low, and pressed the talk button. A short conversation with someone on the other end, and she put it back down in her lap. “He says he’ll come here. I told him he wouldn’t be hurt. Should take about forty-five
minutes.”
“If he’s at the castle in the park, he’s already inside my city walls. But we don’t really have a proper place to host him here. I’ll take you guys to our new Stronghold when we’re done here. Tell him to meet us at Broadway and Liberty. He’ll be able to see the modified high rise. We’ll serve dinner.”
Juanita spoke into the radio again, then nodded once.
“Alright. We have some time before we need to head out, so tell me about Jesse.”
“What about him?”
“Well, you seem to have spent a good bit of time here at an Outpost. Does he swap you guys out a lot? Support you? Or have you been left to fend for yourselves?”
The glare returned to Juanita’s face. “Jesse saved a lot of lives when the shit hit the fan. He takes good care of us.”
Allistor held up his empty hands. “Easy, I’m just asking. I’ve run into some great Stronghold leaders, and some real asshats. Some have become friends and allies, others didn’t survive.” He stopped talking to let that sink in. “I’d much rather be friends, but if Jesse is the kind of guy who leaves his people hanging, or uses them to make himself richer or more comfortable, then I’d like to know that going in.”
Juanita’s scowl didn’t fade at all. “He’s one of the good ones.”
“Great. I hope you’re right. Now, are there any items, other than weapons, you guys would like to retrieve from your Outpost before we go? How far away is it? I can give a few of you a ride…”
Juanita looked around at her people. “We’re good. Unless you’re saying we can never go back there.”
“No, no. Not at all. As long as you don’t get hostile toward us, we’ll have no problems. You’ll be able to retrieve your stuff anytime. I don’t think you’ll want to continue living there, though. We can offer better accommodations, I’m guessing. If you guys and Jesse decide to become citizens, you’ll likely get much, much better accommodations. Anybody still hungry? I have more jerky.”
Shadow Sun Rebellion Page 7
