Emerilia Series Box Set 4

by Michael Chatfield

  Pandora’s Box, the ark shipyard and the moonbase were all producing some materials. However, most of the items they needed were now coming from the Nal system.

  “If only we had more time.” Malsour sighed. They were balancing which projects to fund with resources over how useful they would be. A large portion was going to the mining and refining, as the more it built up, the faster they would be able to grow the other projects. However, building it was easier said than done, as the resources were being used to improve the mining and refining abilities.

  Malsour let out a frustrated sigh as he started to walk out of the apartment buildings. As he passed a room, he heard giggling inside and the sounds of children playing. Malsour was about to continue past when a small hand grabbed his pant leg.

  “Hello there, Desmond. Looks like you’ve escaped again.” Malsour smiled and looked at—technically—his uncle, who waved his small hand around, still clenched on Malsour’s pant leg. Malsour laughed at the little one’s antics, picking him up and disconnecting him from his pants.

  Desmond made annoyed noises, grabbing at Malsour’s face before pausing and staring at him with wide eyes.

  Malsour walked back into the room where the children were playing with one another, or off with various toys. The smaller babies were being looked after by nearby minders who also kept a watchful eye on the young in the room.

  All of them had their bloodlines sealed so that they would remain in human form. Only when they reached the age of fifteen would this restriction be removed unless they were within the Densaou Ring of Fire. There they could freely use their Dragon form.

  “That’s where you got off to!” One of the minders who had been looking around saw Malsour coming in with Desmond.

  “Who’s a naughty boy.” The minder shook her head at Desmond but with no real anger in her voice. She looked to Malsour. “I heard that something happened over at the asteroid belt?”

  “Over in the asteroid belt? Yora, you make it sound as if it’s a house down the street.” Malsour shook his head.

  “Well, the portal isn’t too far away,” Yora rebutted.

  “There was an issue but it was solved,” Malsour said, starting to realize that since he’d been back, he hadn’t told anyone what had happened. Seeing the battleship disappear and reappear might have made them all a bit nervous. He could see the relief in the minder’s eyes as he smiled awkwardly, quickly handing off Desmond.

  “Sorry—just need to write up a message.” Malsour tapped on his interface a message to let everyone know who had showed up near the asteroid and that they would have visitors tomorrow.

  “So, what was it?” Yora asked, not willing to let it go. Malsour knew that she was the type to love gossip.

  “Well, we’re having some visitors come over. They were coming here to put down stealth remotes so that they could watch what was happening in the system. We picked them up, found out that Dave knows them and they’re coming over to the asteroid base tomorrow,” Malsour said, focusing on the message he was still writing up.

  “What!?” Yora yelled, her face pale as everyone in the nursery looked to her and Malsour.

  “Look—it’s okay. We know them. They’re people who hid away from the Jukal. I’m putting it all out in this message. There’s nothing to worry about—they’ll probably be coming for a stroll tomorrow.” Malsour finished off the message and gave Yora a reassuring smile.

  “Uncle Malsour, you might be a brilliant man, but you can’t scare me like that!” Yora complained.

  “Everything will be okay, Yora.” Malsour hugged her from the side. He could see Yora was having a lot of trouble with the stress that she’d been under.

  She wasn’t all that old, just thirty or so, and the threat of the fighting on Emerilia and the sudden surprise here made her feel listless. Malsour hugged her tightly and some of Yora’s emotions settled down.

  “I have to get back to work. I leave these rascals in your care,” Malsour said. A few of the older kids in the group frowned at Malsour’s words; one blew raspberries at him.

  “Rickard! Put that tongue away!” one of the minders admonished. Rickard frowned and gave Malsour the stink eye.

  Malsour laughed inside, smiling as he left the room. Feeling a little more at ease, he went to his workshop.

  ***

  The training staff were all together in the air. The first week of drops had gone better than they hoped. There had been a number of injuries and people hurt; however, even the most serious injuries had been healed up and everyone was okay.

  By the end of the first week, they had gotten better and better at the drops and coordinating between the ground forces and those in the sky and the support from within the citadels, taking what they had built up within the Mirror of Communication training and polishing it.

  They still didn’t drop in their full gear but the different mounted creatures were getting used to the air launch system as well as the drop platforms.

  Their coordination with the drop packs and platforms had also increased. Shard had created a mini-game where those with the packs would have to reach circles in the air; once they crossed through them, another circle would appear, leading a path down to the ground. If they were dodging around, trying to get away from enemy fire, then the circles would also move to give them a flight path down to the same position as before.

  In addition to the training staff, Florence was there, currently addressing them all.

  “We’ve delivered enough drop packs and platforms to equip two more citadels. Production has picked up and we hope to have another two sets of platforms and drop pads ready within a week. The week after, we should be able to supply three, which is our current limit of production,” Florence said to them.

  “So, two more—that brings us to three. Then we have thirteen remaining citadels. However, the eight in Gudalo are still under development. They will take anywhere from three more weeks to a month to get ready, while the citadels around Goblin Mountain will take two more weeks to be ready to fly.” Suzy was managing the citadels’ progress; with her organization abilities, she had been able to streamline the citadel upgrade process.

  “We mustn’t forget that the citadels around Goblin Mountain will also undergo a change, except for Citadel Three in about a week’s time,” Anna said.

  Deia nodded, listening to all they had to say and incorporating it into her own plans.

  “Good. I want Citadels Five and Seven to receive the drop packs and the platforms. I want them to move into holding patterns around Citadel Six and Eight respectively. With them up in the air, we will be able to have faster rotations of people doing drops and can extend the training time so that we can add in training fights.

  “I want us to ramp things up. We might be only having eight of these crews going into battle in two weeks so I want the best ones to be going. So everything, from now until then, I want you to evaluate them on, while keeping that in mind. We need to have the best crews ready. If they need more time, they can get it while the other citadels are being completed.” Deia looked to the training staff.

  Seeing their understanding in their eyes, she continued on.

  “I have also received word from the Dragons. They will be supporting the citadel offensive. Each of the citadels will have a flying complement of five Dragons. They will be coming this week to work with the flying forces we have already. Each citadel group is to figure out how they wish to incorporate the Dragons into their battle plans.”

  The people who made up the fighting forces within the citadels were all veterans. Although jumping from a flying citadel was new for them, being able to fire down on their enemy with their spells and cannons was different. They had taken the basics the training staff had given them and were quickly adapting it with their own tactics and thoughts, teaching the training staff a number of things that they hadn’t thought of.

  “When the citadels undergo their upgrade to stage three defenses, we will have Citadel One hold position i
n the air while Citadel Five will land in a new position. The rest will land in the craters that they came from. We need to find out if the changes will happen while we’re in the air or in different locations or if just in their original positions,” Deia said.

  Some people made notes on their interfaces while the rest continued to listen.

  “Are there any other issues or problems?” Deia asked the training staff and the overseers of the flying citadels.

  No one made to raise their hand or indicate that they had anything to say.

  “Okay, then let’s move on to today’s training rota. Florence, can you get those platforms and drop packs out to where they need to be? We’ll rotate people through as needed. For today, we’ll be doing drops in full gear. We’ll gauge each group on how good they are. From there, we will either have them drop in gear a few more times or have them move on to training battles. First, we’ll allow live fire from the ranged forces on the citadel as well as the aerial forces. Once everyone and all the creatures are used to that, we can move to assaulting and defending the citadels. One force will protect the citadel on the ground, while the other will attack them. From there, we let them figure out tactics and see what works and what doesn’t.”

  Deia was just going over what they all knew, hitting the major points to make sure that they hadn’t forgotten.

  “Questions, issues?” Deia looked at them all. Again, there was no one with anything to say.

  “Good—let’s go drop some people out of a citadel.” Deia rose. The rest of the room moved about as they exited the Mirror of Communication, appearing wherever they had connected to the briefing room.

  ***

  Dave woke with a start. He had a faint headache that came with Mana fatigue. He pulled out a Mana potion, quickly consuming it. His headache fell away.

  “Seems that my teleportation skills have increased.” Dave let out a short laugh. His eye twitched as he remembered the last time he’d made a breakthrough in theories and collapsed from the excessive stat points. He took a deep breath and looked at the notifications on the side of his screen. His finger stabbed forward, and the notification panel dropped down.

  Quest Completed: Master of Space and Time Level 19

  Come up with new possible theory (7/7)

  Rewards: Unlock Level 20 quest

  +15 to Willpower

  +15 to Intelligence

  +15 to Endurance

  +15 to Agility

  1,900,000 Experience (6,600,000 Experience accumulated)

  Class: Master of Space and Time

  Status:

  Level 19

  Effects:

  Greater understanding of Space and Time.

  +285 to Willpower

  +285 to Intelligence

  +285 to Endurance

  +285 to Agility

  Quest: Master of Space and Time Level 20

  Come up with new possible theory (7/8)

  Rewards: Unlock Level 21 quest

  Increase to stats

  Active Skill: Teleportation

  Level: Master Level 3

  Effect: Able to create a device to teleport across distances.

  He went to check his new character sheet as he felt once again that awe-inspiring power of increasing one’s stats. It was a constant feeling that he chased, not only for the physical feeling but the mental goals he had set himself as a gamer.

  Character Sheet

  Name:

  David Grahslagg

  Gender:

  Male

  Level:

  255

  Class:

  Dwarven Master Smith, Friend of the Grey God, Bleeder, Librarian, Aleph Engineer, Weapons Master, Champion Slayer, Skill Creator, Mine Manager, Master of Space and Time, Master of Gravitational Anomalies

  Race:

  Human/Dwarf

  Alignment:

  Neutral Good

  Unspent points: 30

  Health:

  51,600

  Regen:

  25.12 /s

  Mana:

  16,430

  Regen:

  60.70 /s

  Stamina:

  5,670

  Regen:

  52.65 /s

  Vitality:

  516

  Endurance:

  1,256

  Intelligence:

  1,643

  Willpower:

  1,214

  Strength:

  567

  Agility:

  1,053

  He had worked with using portals and other devices to teleport with before. He had also used his own abilities to teleport before. Though he hadn’t used a combination of his magic with magical coding before.

  “It bears looking into. Even with the orbs, I was having them make the spell formation, only putting in information of where I wanted to go. Melding that and my own teleportation abilities might allow me to reach farther and at a greatly reduced cost of Mana,” Dave pondered.

  He let the thought slide to the back of his mind as he stood and went for a shower. He checked his messages, finding one from Malsour detailing when Captain Xue and his protection detail would be meeting them in the asteroid base. Dave was about to step out the door, before he turned around and headed for the shower.

  “If Deia was to hear that I had greeted the only known group of human survivors from the Jukal war in two-day-old clothes, she wouldn’t be very happy with me!” Dave said. “Though I wouldn’t mind if she was here to shower with me.”

  Dave had a wide smile on his face.

  “Been some time since we got free from it all—I should surprise her.” Dave thought on the problem as he showered, got dressed and stepped out of his apartment. He found that he was near the Dracul-run daycare and wandered over.

  It was always open and a number of children even slept there as their parents got wrapped up in work, or in some cases they were in Emerilia or on the asteroid base and didn’t want to bring them there for fear of being hurt.

  Dave walked into the room. The minders around saw Dave and pointed in Koi’s direction. He wandered into a room where the children and babies were sleeping; minders were also in here, watching over the children.

  They all came from different time zones around Emerilia, so some of them were sleeping while others were awake.

  Dave found little Koi sleeping without a care in the world. He stood there for some time, looking at his daughter, a smile on his face.

  Malsour contacted him with a party chat. “Dave, you up yet?” Malsour asked.

  “No, I’m still asleep. What’s up?” Dave shook his head.

  “Bob wants to see us and then we’re to greet the people from Deq’ual. I’ve already sorted out the protection detail on our side and Jeeves has locked up the different areas that hold some of our more powerful tech. Our people will be free to walk around but it’s to make sure they don’t get their hands on too many secrets,” Malsour said.

  “Nice work. I’ll be at Bob’s in five minutes,” Dave said.

  “See you there,” Malsour said.

  Dave focused on his Touch of the Land spell. He saw Bob working in his laboratory, overseeing the creation chamber where players’ bodies were being created every minute. Bob had nearly a dozen helpers who were talking to one another or working on various machines. The science and technology was advanced but they were smart people and quickly coming to understand it.

  Dave looked out over all of the ice planet’s city. There had originally been nearly one hundred people who had been accepted into the program. Now there was nearly five hundred and more people were being recruited every day.

  The wives, husbands, and relatives of those who were working in the asteroid base, moonbase, or the ice planet had all started to look for jobs. Most of them were working with the growing facilities or looking over the running of the city while their other family members worked in various workshops, laboratories, shipyards, and slips.

  Pandora’s Box within Terra’s power statio
n acted as a hub for all of the various locations but all of the materials and projects had been moved from there to the other facilities. Now the facility was a portal hub, with the first teleportation array waiting.

  There was also a command center there, as well as armories of different items that they were building.

  Dave smiled as he looked out over it all. Ice City, as it was coming to be called, wasn’t massive but it was growing at an incredible rate.

  Miners were being created from soul gem constructs outside the city to go farther across the ice planet in order to search out deposits of materials that the Pandora’s Box Initiative needed.

  Everything was starting to come together.

  Dave looked down at Koi, just watching her as she slept.

  Dave’s five minutes ran out in what felt like seconds.

  He smiled and disappeared from the room. Using his Touch of the Land, he found a clear spot and appeared in Bob’s laboratory.

  Malsour was already waiting.

  “Looks like we’re all here. Okay, so when the Sprite showed up, I was going to tell you two that we’re ready to start waking people up. I was actually going through some preliminary tests beforehand,” Bob said. Dave and Malsour’s eyebrows rose in shock. “Now we have to think about how we’re going to do this. I suggest that we bring Air in on this. She might be a bit of a prankster at times but she knows how to deal with people and she might be of help to transition these people from Earth’s simulation into reality.”

  “I don’t see any issue with it.” Dave looked to Malsour.

  “I was worried that the transition might create issues. We are, after all, pulling them out from everything they know,” Malsour said.

  “That’s another thing. We’re going to have people of all ages coming through—some will think they’re eighty; some will think they’re twelve. Air is adaptive enough to deal with that. At least I hope,” Bob said.

  “Well, we’re going to be pulling them into a universe they don’t know. I think it would be best for Air to not only ease them through the transition but inform us on how these people are. Some of them might lash out at us in anger,” Dave said.