She cracked a smile. “Well, with modern treatments, I can live for another hundred or two hundred years. What’s just two of them trying to broaden my horizons?”
“Then I welcome you to the Pandora’s Box team.” Dave held out his hand to Ela-Dorn. She shook it as Koi moved once again, using her dad’s face in order to right herself.
“Hey, this was supposed to be a serious moment, missy,” Dave said to Koi as he moved her hand away and moved her into a different position.
“So, what now?” Ela-Dorn asked.
“First, we’re going to need more people to help, and then, we see if we can’t write our own future.” Dave smiled.
***
“We need dwarven master smiths now more than ever, but you and Dave want to hire away as many as possible in order to help with some mysterious project that you can’t tell us?” Sola asked as the Council of Anvil and Fire was all in attendance.
“Correct,” Kol said.
“We need something more than that. I trust you and Dave, but he’s not even here and this is a large request,” Jesal said.
“I will be honest. Most of the things that Dave wants to work on are not something that will assist us here and now. Most of these projects are aimed to be of use in a year or two. I have never lied to this council nor will I ever. However, there are things of importance that are hard to explain. To know more, each and every one of you must make an oath on smithing,” Kol said.
“You don’t trust us?” Rola asked.
“I trust you, but this—” Kol shook his head before he looked directly at Rola. “This is larger than anything we have ever worked on or done before.”
“I’ll swear,” Quino said.
“I will too,” Endur said. “However, no matter what, we must keep a number of dwarven master smiths working within the dwarven mountains or at least helping out in the smithies and keeping everything running. If we all disappear, then it will create instability.”
The other dwarves all agreed and swore on their smithing that they wouldn’t say anything about what they would see to anyone else.
“Very well. Meet me in Terra,” Kol said.
He exited the Mirror of Communication, finding himself in the conference room of the Terra smithy. The other dwarves also left the Council of Anvil and Fire conference, all of them looking to Kol.
“Follow me,” Kol said. They went to a teleport pad. It didn’t take much time before the other members of the Council of Anvil and Fire teleported to Terra and joined them.
People talked to one another but the atmosphere was tense. As everyone was gathered, Kol indicated for the controller of the teleport pad to connect to the power station.
He guided them through the teleport pad, and then through the power station. The dwarves were a bit shocked when they walked into Pandora’s Box through its secret entrance. When they were inside the workshop, their eyes went wide as they looked upon various machines and items that surpassed what they had been working on.
Kol saw that a number of them just wanted to grab onto these items and never let them go. They contained themselves, their voices excited as they followed Kol through a wall and into the portal room. Just as Dave had shown Ela-Dorn not more than a few hours before.
As they all reached the portal room, the dwarves let out various noises.
“You got portals working?” Endur asked.
Dave stepped out of one of the Portals carrying Koi and walked over to the group.
“Yes, indeed we do have working portals,” Kol said. “I was going to take them to the ark shipyard.”
“Good idea. It’s been some time since I was there myself. I need to check it out and the moonbase before I get this one off to bed,” Dave said. “Also, while we can make portals work, we can shut them down.”
There were angered and frustrated noises from the dwarves. Endur held up his hand and the dwarves quieted.
“Dave doesn’t usually do these things on a whim, so before we start jumping to conclusions, it might be best if we asked him why he hasn’t shut down the portals that different races are currently exiting through in order to attack us.” Endur couldn’t keep a bit of heat out of his voice. A number of people from Emerilia had died because of these open portals.
“As you all know, there is a power that usually keeps the balance within Emerilia, a person by the name of the Grey God, or Bob as he is going by now. You all know that he gets his orders from someone else. These people are called the Jukal, who nearly wiped out our ancestors and only created Emerilia and us so that we could fight off the species that they didn’t want to—the creatures that are currently coming through the portals. Now the Jukal made this place and they monitor us. If I was to shut down the portals, then it might take some time for the Jukal to figure out just what the hell is going on and then when they did, they’d start raining down hell from the sky and kill us all off,” Dave said.
The Dwarven Council of Anvil and Fire had learned about the Jukal a long time ago from Bob; however, they were powerless to do anything. They kept their meetings in the Mirrors of Communication to make sure that they didn’t hear of their plans and did their best to stay under the radar.
The dwarven master smiths paled at all of this.
“What we’ve been working on—well, it would be better to show you.” Dave looked upward. “Jeeves, carts please.”
Carts came out of one portal, creating a line in front of the dwarves.
The dwarves climbed onto the carts; as soon as they were all on, the carts started to move. They passed through a portal and entered a hallway where there were carts moving up and down in two lines, splitting off through doorways on the right and left side of the corridor.
“This base is mostly a shipyard called the ark,” Dave said. As they moved, the doorways on either side were so close together and their speed so great that they could see into the massive areas on either side.
“Here we assemble missiles that are shipped off to different bases. These missiles fit into two categories: one a surface-to-space and the other a space-based missile. The first is made so that we can take out the different systems that are around Emerilia so they can’t destroy us right away. The second are for our own ships.”
They passed the factory and Kol smiled as he saw the expressions on the dwarven master smiths’ faces as they reached the real beasts that lay hidden within the ark shipyard.
When Kol had come here previously, there were just four ships being built and they were being formed from metals and other precious resources. Now there were eighteen different berths, nine on each side of the corridor.
“Originally, we wanted to make battleships, to fight the Jukal in space and secure our skies so they couldn’t wipe us out. Building these ships, we ran into a number of difficulties. At first, we were spending a lot of resources on creating the armored hulls. With the advances with soul gem constructs, we can cut down on these materials usage. But then we were still left with these heavier hulls. So now they’re all going to be turned into arks, ships that can hold the people of Emerilia and protect them from nearly anything,” Kol said. “As well as supply our frontline forces and act as a support base for operations.”
They passed what looked like massive cylinders. There was little grace to them as they had engines on both ends of the cylinders. Massive corridors extended from the main corridor with entrances all along the ark.
“When the time comes, we’ll evacuate people on these arks to other bases that we have secured,” Dave said as the carts changed directions and moved toward one of the completed arks that floated in midair.
“These gravity runes—I've seen nothing like them before,” Helick said.
“When making the ships in gravity, we had to use a lot more materials. We didn’t have all that much, so we created these runes in the soul gem construct that makes up all of the shipyard in order to make these slips have zero gravity. The ark’s engines and inertia runes work so that it won’t move an inch u
nless it’s commanded to do so,” Dave said as the carts turned and they advanced through the slip.
“How are the carts flying?” another asked.
“Well, we needed to test out the flight drives someway and it makes it much faster to move materials around with.” Dave shrugged as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
A massive door was open, as large as a dwarven mountain’s main gate.
Inside, the ark looked more like a warehouse than a ship.
“These arks were made for one purpose: to move people from Emerilia to the safety of other areas. However, they’re going to be turned into haulers.” Kol looked to Dave.
“What we need is to test them somehow,” Dave said as they flew to the ark’s command center, a boxy-looking structure that extended through the open and bare decks of the ark.
The carts stopped outside the command center. Dave and Kol guided everyone through it. They displayed the various flight drives and the magical coding that ran them, as well as the structure of the ark and different technologies they’d incorporated and even the missile systems that had been added on just in case of emergencies as well as the Mana barrier and shield.
The dwarves were filled with questions that Dave and Kol worked to answer.
Dave let out a sigh of relief as he kissed the side of Koi’s head; she was getting sleepy now. Dave had been nervous about bringing more people in on his projects; that possibility of something leaking was high. Though, right now, he couldn’t with a clear consciousness hold all of this to himself; he needed other people to help him. The Council of Anvil and Fire and the Aleph College—two down and one to go. I hope Bob can convince the two of them.
***
As Dave and Kol showed the dwarves around, Bob was looking at the Lady of Fire and Lord of Water, as well as Oson’Mal.
“So, this is what my son-in-law has been up to,” Mal said with a note of approval. They were within the ice planet base.
“And what we need people’s help with.” Bob led them through the ice planet city. “Air, you can come out now.”
“Ugh, how did you know?” The Lady of Air appeared off to the side; her minder Venfik also appeared beside her.
“You breathe too loud,” Bob said before his tone turned serious. “Also, do you think I would let you enter a place like this without me knowing about it?”
“No, but I wanted to see. Fire and Icebergs over there didn’t notice anything,” Air said with a note of satisfaction.
“Why did Steve have to be so similar to you?” Bob questioned the heavens, holding his face with his hand before getting back on track. “All right, children, listen up! As I was saying, we’ve got this and other bases all across Emerilia and this system. What we need is people to help us run all of this and more. Right now, there’s Malsour, Dave, sometimes Steve, Jeeves, and me working on everything. We’ve been able to do a lot, but now we have the resources and power so that we can expand!”
“So you want people who are good at coding, with weapons and thinking outside the box? I think I know a few people like that,” Fire said.
“I know that my people have been harassed near constantly—there will be a number of them from the mer people’s college who’d be interested in joining,” Water added.
“Eh, gimme a list—we’ll find them.” Air waved her hand as if this were no big deal.
“No kidnapping,” Bob said with a look toward Air.
“Hey, they don’t know what they want to do until they’re in our care,” Air said innocently.
Venfik moved a bit away from Air as they walked.
“Where you more or less forced the choice on them or dropped them from the sky repeatedly so that their brains were so addled that they would imitate a chicken for the rest of their lives!” Bob’s voice rose as he talked.
“That was one time and it wasn’t a big deal.” Air shrugged.
“It was the emperor of an Ashal empire!” Bob said.
“Well, he wasn’t playing nice with others. He did afterward, when his son took over everything.” Air put her hands on her hips.
“You’re five hundred years old and you still have a child’s argument,” Bob complained.
“Maybe a child’s argument is better!” Air harrumphed, stomping her foot and pushing out her bottom lip.
“Oh, how I love family reunions,” Fire said.
“Shut it, zippy,” Bob snapped.
Fire and Water looked to each other, grinning.
“I’ll show you this and then you can get out of my hair,” Bob complained.
“But you don’t have hair,” Water said.
“Why in the hell did they tell me to make gods and goddesses? Would have been perfectly fine with just AI, but nooo—had to have real human gods and goddesses,” Bob muttered to himself, doing a good impression of a mad scientist as he opened a door. The facility from the outside looked like nothing more than a warehouse; inside, it was a warehouse but just not what others were thinking.
Even Air went silent as they looked at the rows upon rows of people who rested within the warehouse. There were empty pods that were being transported to the growing labs that were continuously creating bodies for the players locked within the Earth simulation, there was so much to take in.
As they walked through the warehouse, they passed storage containers of organic materials being fed into the bodies or used to create them. There were also refined materials from the expanding refinery district that ran continuously.
“These are the bodies of players within the next two rotas of players.” Bob waved to them.
“This ice planet’s two main objectives are to refine materials that come from the asteroid base and what it mined out of the planet, as well as grow the players who are still trapped within the Earth simulation. In time, we will be waking them up and seeing how they react to being in reality. It will not be easy but it is a step that I believe we must take. We need people who can grow the organic material needed to build their bodies. We need people to enhance our own plans and technology. We need miners and refiners to make sure that this doesn’t all fall apart. We need people to help us make automatons that can do these jobs—we’re still reliant on the Aleph repair bots! We need people who are good with factories to speed up our production and people who can learn our power systems and soul gem constructs to manage and improve them. We’ve got the basic groundwork here but we need people to take what we’ve got and push the boundaries. We can do a lot, but we’re just three people and sometimes two AI constructs.”
“What you’re building here is the resistance—a resistance to the Jukal,” Fire said, her tone solemn.
Desmond, who she was cradling, chose this moment to start crying.
“Exactly,” Bob agreed.
The group looked to one another. They might play around and joke a lot but this was something that affected them all.
“I will field it to the mage’s college and guild as well as the Dragons. I know a number of them might be interested in coming here if they know that not only they, but their family, will be safe from the threats on Emerilia,” Fire said.
“The seas have become a lot rougher, we have a number of portals that we are dealing with, as well as creatures not seen in centuries. A good portion of my people would be willing to move here just to be safe,” Water said.
“I can find the hidden experts and people who might be good for this. I can also work on making sure that the Jukal and the rest of the Pantheon or people of Emerilia don’t figure out any of this,” Air said.
“Thank you.” A weight fell from Bob’s shoulders. “Ela-Dorn is already working to invite many of her peers to help while Dave is talking to the Council of Anvil and Fire. I hope that we can get some more support from there.”
“Well, it looks like we’ve got a lot to do,” Oson’Mal said with a look of excitement in his eyes.
“You’re not thinking of coming here as well?” Fire bounced up and down slightly so as to try to ca
lm Desmond down.
“Well, I’ve been looking after Desmond all this time and been going through the Per’ush libraries. I wanted to test out what I had learned and look to gain a deeper understanding away from prying eyes. But this,” Mal raised his hands to encompass everything around him. “The ideas and things people are coming up with around here. Well, this ice planet and the other bases give me an opportunity to push my boundaries,” Mal said, visibly excited.
.
***
Dave had left Kol and the dwarven master smiths to talk. After seeing everything, they had become interested—eager, even— in learning more about what they were doing. A number of them pointed to different magical coding that they had created and the Pandora’s Box people had hacked together to create the different magical systems.
Kol knew what was going on with Pandora’s Box and all of the bases; however, with managing the smithies of the Grahslagg Corporation, he didn’t have the time to help out with many of the major items.
Dave looked around what was the moonbase. Originally it was to be the base of operations for the Pandora’s Box group. However, with going to the Nal system and establishing a base in the ice planet as well as the asteroid belt, they had picked the ice planet to hold all of the laboratories that would grow the bodies of the players as well as storage facilities. The growing areas had been left here, as well as the fusion reactor, factories, and the miners that were still working to hollow out the moon. Now, the moonbase had gone under some radical changes. The portal exited onto a catwalk on either side, which crossed over between five-hundred- meter long and three-hundred-meter wide sections that lay below all of them and were occupied by missile boat frames in various stages of completion.
They were boxy-looking ships with missile tubes covering most of their surface area, with only minimal small weapons otherwise.
They lay underneath the catwalk with the moonbase’s soul gem constructs creating tube-like extensions from the floor and the catwalks to the missile boats. Runic lines guided power from the now five fusion reactors of the base into the ever-growing missile boats.
Emerilia Series Box Set 4 Page 58
