Emerilia Series Box Set 4

by Michael Chatfield

  “Exactly. Not a discussion I thought I would have in my life, but there it is.” Bob shrugged.

  “All we can do is our best by them,” Dave said.

  They were silent for a bit. Facing an uncertain future, they wondered what would happen.

  “It’s about time that we went and greeted Captain Xue,” Malsour said, breaking the thoughtful silence.

  “See you later, Bob. And let us know how it goes with Air,” Dave said.

  “Will do,” Bob said.

  Dave teleported Malsour and himself across Ice City and to where the portal to the asteroid base was located. The runes in the building around the portal wouldn’t allow anyone to teleport within them and cut off all power emissions from the portal.

  Dave and Malsour stepped through, passing Aleph fighting automatons that manned the building around the portal, resting in charging racks, ready to be called upon at a moment’s notice.

  “I’ve got to remember to go check in on the automaton development team,” Dave said.

  “We can do that with Captain Xue. I don’t think that it would be a secret that we need to hide from him and Sato’s people,” Malsour said.

  “We’ve got to find out a better name for all of them than just calling them Sato’s people,” Dave said.

  “Well, maybe we can ask them?”

  “Always a possibility but how much will they tell us?” Dave captured some atmosphere within his Mana shield and passed through the portal.

  “They have been hiding for centuries—giving out where they live and that kind of information will be hard,” Malsour said as they appeared in the asteroid base. A number of people were waiting for them, most of them from the Dracul family. Who wouldn’t feel safer with a bunch of Dragons backing them up?

  “Hopefully this meeting can act as a bridge between our groups, opening up the communication from just sharing information to working together.” Dave looked to the waiting guards. “Hello, boys and girls. Ready to go meet some humans?”

  “We are human most of the time,” Gelimah said in a grouchy tone. He’d been working to develop magical coding that would reduce the power needed to create a gravitational field.

  “I know, but these are like direct descendants from Earth. We’re all like vat babies. Go vat!” Dave smiled.

  Gelimah shared a look with Malsour.

  “Don’t ask me—he’s always like this. I think Steve’s been having an effect on him,” Malsour said.

  “I-I’m not going to even grace that comment with a response. Steve’s...” Dave looked around, as if trying to find the right words to describe Steve. “Well, he’s Steve, all right!”

  “Very descriptive.” The corners of Malsour’s mouth rose in an amused smirk.

  “Come on, let’s go meet the humans. Also, we figured out any way to retain more atmosphere yet? Having to use our shields nearly constantly is a pain.” Dave moved away from the portal and toward the shipyard.

  “I don’t think that we do—the shields work for now,” Malsour said.

  “I could rig up some orbs for everyone. That way, they’d have defensive capabilities and they would adapt to the gravity, atmosphere, and temperature of the various planets and places that we go,” Dave said. “Using just Mana shields to capture the heat and then relying on coded clothes to retain heat seems like an easy way for someone to forget one spell and get injured.”

  “Your orbs could do that?” Malsour asked. Dave was always pretty secretive with what the hidden orbs around him could do.

  “Yes, though the ones that I’m using are rather complicated and need me to manage them. However, for someone else, I would need to take out most of that command function and make them automatic.” Dave pondered on this for a while.

  “It would be a good project to work on. We’ve got people who have to come in from the outer reaches of the ice planet and the asteroid base every few hours or so because their Mana pool can’t keep up with the draw,” Sola, who had been put in charge of the mining projects for the asteroid base and the ice planet, said.

  “We can’t have that. It’s a safety concern. I’ll get working on it once we’re done with this meeting,” Dave said. “We might also be able to pass it on to the Terra Alliance. If we altered the wavelengths of the shield or Mana barrier, working with the Band-Aid it might be able to block out the Jukal’s kill signal. Would raise our chances of stopping people from being hit by it. The onos and their transmission Magical Circuits are good at covering a large area but the possibility of the signal making it past without expending a truly massive amount of power is too high.”

  “Let me know if you need any help with the coding. I don’t have any projects currently on my hands,” Malsour said.

  “Sounds like a good idea to me.” Dave smiled at Malsour. The two of them worked well together.

  “Sensors have picked up a shuttle departing from the Sprite,” Gelimah said.

  “Well, let’s go say hi.” Dave smiled. They disappeared from where they had been walking, Dave once again using his teleportation abilities.

  ***

  Captain Xue sat in the shuttle’s main bay. Ten people were within the bay, eight of them crew members who had advanced weapons training. All of them were armored up. Their armor covered their entire bodies, leaving only a black face shield. They were all carrying standard rifles and side arms.

  Underneath the armored exteriors, there were multiple coded panels that augmented the people underneath.

  If Dave was to look at them, he would think that there were a lot of similarities with his original Abscondita armor.

  All of their weapons had faint runes on them that had been machined into them.

  Captain Xue wore armor as well but his face plate was clear, unlike the others.

  The two pilots were talking to each other and to the Sprite as they flew from the ship toward a massive asteroid. Even with scanners going at full blast, they hadn’t been able to detect anything within this monstrous rock.

  They proceeded to the marker that was set down for them.

  “All right, remember we’re here to learn and meet with these people, no overt combative actions. Only on my command or unless we come under fire are you to react. We are here as representatives of the Deq’ual systems. Make sure that your Mirrors of Communication are active at all times and report anything suspicious.” Captain Xue repeated the same instructions he had given them before boarding the shuttle.

  The repetition calmed them down.

  “Five minutes till we reach the way point,” one of the pilots reported.

  “Check your weapons and your safeties,” the chief in charge of the security detail said.

  Everyone pulled back the charging handles, chambering a round, and placed their weapons on safe, pointing them at the shuttle’s floor.

  Captain Xue connected his visor; the shuttle’s sensors allowed him to see in front of the shuttle. Just as they were about to reach the way point, a section of the asteroid depressed inward a few meters, rolling apart in sections to reveal a tunnel with running lights leading into the asteroid.

  “Captain?” the pilots asked.

  “Proceed inward.” Xue sounded calm even as inside he felt his nerves rolling about.

  The shuttle stopped decreasing its speed and instead increased, passing into the tunnel.

  The asteroid’s walls closed behind them. They were covered in runic lines that started glowing as soon as all the sections of the hatch were once again in place.

  Xue was looking at the walls that were made out of what looked like a smooth glass-like material.

  “What are the walls made of?” Xue asked.

  “The composition looks to be soul gem,” the secondary pilot said.

  We’ve been experimenting with making the inside of large areas with soul gem constructs, but even those areas are not even a hundredth of the size of this. If this asteroid is all made out from soul gem on the inside? How much power must that take? Xue knew that soul gem
constructs needed a ton of power in order to keep growing and running. The coding that was placed on them was highly complex. To cover this entire asteroid was a massive achievement.

  Armored doors opened ahead of them and closed behind them as they passed through. Finally, an armored door opened and they found themselves coming out of the side of a massive open area.

  Xue’s eyes went wide as he looked around. They were inside a massive shipyard.

  There were slips for new ships along one of the walls, floor, and roof. It was clear that the shipyard was still under construction by the fact that mining drills were still cutting away sections of the wall to create more room for slips on the floor and roof, as well as carve out more slips on the wall. To either side of the shuttle, the asteroid stretched outward, excavators and mining drills at work to expand the interior of the shipyard.

  “We have been given a way point to a landing position,” the secondary pilot said.

  “Take us in slowly,” Xue said, still looking around the massive shipyard. It was already three times the size of the third shipyard in the Deq’ual system. He looked at the slips where superstructures were being formed even as soul gem constructs were growing over them. He looked at three destroyers that looked almost completed from the outside as well as the massive battleship that calmly looked over all, its hull complete. But shuttles and various automatons crawled all over it, entering and exiting through hangars and access points to work on the interior. Another battleship was being created behind it.

  The rest of the slips were filled with the same miners that sensors had picked up on the asteroid, as well as the massive excavators that could hollow out asteroids.

  How are they thinking of getting these massive ships out? How did they do it before with the battleship? Xue looked at the battleship and then the rest of the base. There was only one access point in and out of the asteroid base right now and Xue had entered through it. Shuttles now moved past them, leaving the asteroid to go and pick up cargoes from the various miners and excavators around the asteroid belt.

  So, the question remained, how did the battleship leave?

  Xue’s eyes fell on a slip that was growing something completely made from soul gem constructs. He was linked back to the Deq’ual system and was able to talk to them. He opened up a channel to them through his Mirror of Communication. “Does anyone know what this is?”

  “It—it looks like a portal.”

  Xue was shocked as Edwards’s voice passed into his ear. He never thought that Edwards would be there.

  “Isn’t it a bit large?” Sato asked.

  “It isn’t if you mean to put ships through it!” Edwards said excitedly.

  “Still, it isn’t operational and I don’t see any way that the battleship would have been able to get out of this shipyard,” Xue said.

  “Well, they must have a way to jump in-system then,” Edwards said simply.

  Even with the things that Xue had seen, he wasn’t able to stop his eyes from going wide at the revelation. To have the ability to teleport in-system was something that had only been theorized. One would need extremely powerful sensors as well as a jump drive that was calibrated to the highest degree so that there was no chance of it being off course.

  “Seems that Dave has been busy,” Sato said. Xue could hear the amusement in Sato’s voice.

  “It looks like he’s come to understand the Jukal portals to the point of knowing how to build them himself. He’s probably the only person outside of the Jukal Empire,” Edwards said.

  “Those ships are heavier than ours and look at the rate at which they’re being completed. With those soul gem constructs, the power usage must be astronomical—however, they’re completing one as fast as it would take us to build a stealth craft,” Adams added.

  Xue was silent, taking this all in as the shuttle made its way across the shipyard.

  Here and there, the sensors on the craft picked up people who were working on different items. Most of them wore magically coded clothes and shoes but they didn’t wear atmospheric suits at all.

  “Are these readings right on the atmosphere outside?” Xue asked.

  “Yes sir—little atmosphere, low gravity,” the secondary pilot reported.

  “And they’re out there working in pants and shirts,” Adams said, sounding shocked.

  “Seems that Dave is well ahead of us,” Edwards said.

  Xue looked at the different people around: dwarves, elves, Beast Kin, demons, orcs, gnomes, and all manner of races that he had only read about in fantasy books. It was all a bit too surreal.

  The shuttle slowly came in to land. There was no one to greet them as the shuttle passed through the hangar bay doors, into an area filled with containers and shuttles. There were automated carts collecting storage crates from the massive containers and whisking them off across the asteroid base.

  One second, there was no one near the shuttle; the next, there was a party of six standing at the rear of the shuttle.

  “Individual jumping? How is that even possible?” Edwards said incredulously.

  “Ready to lower ramp,” the primary pilot said.

  “Everyone ready!” the chief reported.

  “Lower ramp,” Captain Xue said.

  The ramp at the rear of the shuttle came down, revealing the soul gem-covered hangar and the six people waiting for them. Four were humans; one was a dwarf and the other looked to be a taller dwarf.

  Xue recognized Malsour and Dave. Dave wore casual pants and a t-shirt; Malsour wore a black cloak and leather vest with comfortable black pants.

  The other humans also wore cloaks with various colored interiors.

  The dwarf studied everyone as they filed out of the shuttle, crossing her arms as she watched. She wore a tool belt and her beefy body filled out her smithing clothes that were burnt and stained in places.

  They were talking among one another but Xue couldn’t hear anything.

  The protection detail looked around, alert but not overtly hostile.

  Xue left the ship, passing the security detail, and moved toward the group of six.

  Dave moved forward, saying something, before he frowned. He continued forward more.

  Xue’s armor’s sensors registered that he had passed through a barrier of some kind that had breathable atmosphere and was comfortably warm inside.

  “Sorry about that. Forgot you didn’t have the party chat feature and weren’t in the same atmosphere as me. My name’s Dave. You must be Captain Xue. You got Sato and Edwards listening in?” Dave held out his hand.

  Xue took the hand and shook it. “Thank you for having us. That’s correct and they are listening in,” Xue said with a nervous smile, his actions wooden. He was still in a bit of shock. This was the first time anyone in the Deq’ual system had ever shook someone’s hand who didn’t come from the same system.

  “All right, well, have we got the tour for you!” Dave smiled, letting go of Xue’s hand. “What do you think of our asteroid base?”

  “It’s rather impressive,” Xue said.

  “Pretty cool. Though we’re in the midst of expanding so should be a lot more going on in the near future.” Dave smiled and then looked back to the group that had come closer. “Malsour, what’s the plan for the tour?”

  “Well, they’ve seen the asteroid base, so on to Ice City, have a look around at various ongoing projects—some food and talking. I was thinking the moonbase but their Mirrors of Communication won’t reach that far in signal,” Malsour said.

  “Shame—that’d be pretty cool. Oh well, on to Ice City?” Dave looked to Xue.

  “Please, lead on,” Xue said. Whatever he had been expecting, it had not been that Dave would treat this like just showing people around his house. He was so relaxed and laid-back that Xue was a bit in shock at it.

  Dave did so. His group held off to the side as Xue’s security detail did the same on the other side, looking around for threats and also keeping a close eye on the people who had come
to greet them.

  “Okay, so here we’re building some large projects—warships, portals and the like. We hope to use these in order to attain Emerilia’s freedom. To supply this, we’ve got many miners and excavators working in the surrounding asteroid, as you saw. All of those raw materials pass through here, and currently go to a refinery in Ice City, located on the ice planet that you lot found out about from the spectral analysis I asked for,” Dave said.

  “Once materials are refined, then they’re sent to factories in one of the bases to be turned into useful components that are shipped out to various bases in order to fulfill their needs. We’re using a network of portals to move materials and people from the different bases. Makes it a lot easier to move items and faster. However, it’s a massive power draw,” Dave explained as they walked.

  Captain Xue naturally knew about the portals; they were one of the biggest reasons that humanity had been pushed back and then destroyed. They were seen as the backbone of the Jukal Empire. They allowed fleets to pass over vast areas in an instant, allowing the Jukal Empire to continuously bring fresh forces up and send back their wounded ships and people to bring them up to fighting condition.

  This was how humanity had been destroyed: the Jukal, with their unending waves of reinforced and re-armed fleets and forces.

  Dave was talking about them as if they were as simple as a wooden doorway.

  Xue pushed down his immediate reactions, thinking on the portals that he had seen being built in the shipyard. If they were to be completed, then they, too, would allow the forces under Dave’s command, to move between systems.

  “I see that other than the weapons on the ships that you don’t have any personal items,” Xue asked, perplexed. His people were all wearing armor while Dave and the others were just in simple clothes.

  “Not everything is as it appears,” Dave said. In a moment, he was wearing armor and twin batons; the next, they had changed back into his normal appearance.

  “Also, those guns don’t mean much of a threat to us. With their highest power setting, it would take hundreds of rounds to penetrate any one of our barriers here. Also, the runing on the powered armor—while it is good and allows you to move freely—your power sources and the power retention in them isn’t good enough,” Dave said. “I have the ability to look through nearly anything that isn’t stealth runed—which, by the way, good work with the stealth ships there. They’re not bad. We’ve been constantly working on upgrading our ability to sense stealth ships as well as increase our own stealth. Tell Edwards to start working on improving—I’m not going to give him the answers every time,” Dave said in an admonishing tone.