Shaggy and Dave barreled their way past the Lackey’s guarding the side door. Dave gave them both a cheerful smile and a brief explanation. But Shaggy merely rushed down and through the door into the crowded common room again. He fought his instinct to just dump his bags and tell all the boys to have it. Instead, he marched over to Slink’s War Room and kicked in the door.
The slam of the wooden door against the cement wall brought the eyes of several Lackeys. Both inside and outside of the room. But Shaggy ignored them as he set the bags on the floor and looked around for Slink. Dave joined him and placed his own bags on the floor as well. Shaggy caught the eyes of several taller Lackeys and he couldn’t spot Slink through all the bodies.
“Slink? You here?”
The bodies moved aside as the boy’s voice rose above the crowd. “That you Shaggy? Don’t slam my damn door.”
Slink was still stuck at his place of power. Near the front of the war table. His fingers were flying across the terminal’s keyboard as he worked. Shaggy grunted and pushed his way through toward the boy. Dave following behind.
Shaggy figured that they needed to get an armory made as quickly as possible. At the very least, they needed to get the weapons handed out quickly. When he arrived next to the skinny teen, Shaggy leaned over and whispered.
“Can you clear the room? I have something I want to discuss?”
Slink raised an eyebrow and gestured toward the War Table. “Dude, I have work to hand out. What is it and can it wait?”
Shaggy shook his head. “I don’t think so. I got a lot of loot to hand out, and we need to make sure it goes to the most loyal members.”
Slink sighed. “Haaaaaaaa. Loot distribution has been lacking. We have the point buy system and everything. But we need a proper shop or something.”
After rubbing his face. Slink tapped a button on the terminal and a red light flashed in everyone’s eyes. It was accompanied by a three second beep that made everyone in the room groan, annoyed. Shaggy shook the spots from his eyes as the sounds of footsteps filled his ears. Dave cackled happily from over Shaggy’s shoulder.
“Dude! Was that the new warning system? Most awesome.”
“Yeah, but I think I need to dial down the flash of color. The beeps should be enough.”
Shaggy nodded as his vision cleared. “Yeah. Whatever the hell that was, didn’t need to blind my ass.”
“It’s a Legion-wide signaling system. The three-second beep means all Leaders need to come to the War Room. I set it and apparently Lackeys all get the message. Hopefully, Ren and Vlad get the idea as well.”
“Vlad was with me when we collected the stuff. So he probably knows what’s going on. What about Ren?”
Slink gave a half-grimace. “His been stomping his way through most of the Quinica’s old territory. Which has been good for us, but he’s had to return to the Needle Sisters three times so far.”
“It’s only been a few hours!” Shaggy exclaimed.
“Yeah, the dudes been going super hard.”
“Petra informed me he was in the building, so he’ll probably show up soon.”
Shaggy gave a nod and looked down at the War Table. The small 3D model of Under-Town was more fleshed out and Shaggy could see several red dots to the west of their bar. Slink scrolled the table across some buildings and Shaggy could see even more buildings light up. Apparently, their scouts were taking advantage of the lack of Quinica patrols. There was even more data being collated about the various buildings out west.
Shaggy cast an eye over Slink and saw the boy sway slightly on his feet. Shaggy grimaced and gripped the kid by the arm. He sat them both down and Slink almost fell backward. The kid tried to get back up, but Shaggy held him down and growled.
“Relax kid, you look ready to fall over. Where’s a damn chair? You need to sit and take a break.”
Slink shook his head and tried to stand again. This time, Dave slapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Slink groaned and fell backward as he tried to explain.
“We need to keep our Lackey’s busy. If they get stagnant, they’ll start planning something stupid. They need constant oversight.”
“Why does that have to be you? Where are you on crafting a team to help you with this? You can’t be stuck down here all the time.” Shaggy asked.
“Yeah,” Dave added. “Also dude, if the Lackey’s need something to do, have them train. We always got room for some good workouts. Can’t get up to mischief if you're too tired to move. Least that’s what my dad used to say.”
Slink rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t found anyone trustworthy enough to help with the war table. As for working out, the gym we have is always full and there’s a big ass wait list that half our guys don’t want to bother with.”
Ren’s voice rumbled from the door as his enormous frame entered the room. “You have to build trust with them yourself, Slink. As for the Lackey’s we can all find something for them to do besides working out.”
Slink groaned again. “Like what? We don’t want to move toward expanding our borders. That’ll piss everyone off and there are only so many patrols I can arrange in a day. We’re actually pretty covered with patrolling and protecting our interests.”
“What about on Levy’s side? Doesn’t she need some Lackeys over there?”
“Yeah, I got a steady stream of grunts that want to help over there. Most of them are interested in getting some proper housing. So they are rushing topside to buy things.”
Shaggy grinned. “Well, see, that’s how we motivate people and keep our guys busy. We don’t need to expand our borders. But we need to get this base up to standard. We need more rooms. Like that shop you mentioned, and an armory and a shooting range.”
Slink gave Shaggy a confused look. “Why a shooting range? We have more melee weapons than ranged ones. At least for now.”
Shaggy held up a finger and moved to get up. But a black bag hit him in the face and he fell back onto his ass. Vlad's smug voice spoke from the doorway as Shaggy felt his nose reset itself.
“Not anymore, kiddo. We got a shit ton of weapons and accessories. Courtesy of the UGB.”
Shaggy pushed the bag off himself and glared at the vampire. “I thought you were outside with the adoring masses.”
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
“Yeah, well, most of them lost interest when the giant wolf disappeared. But the others are now happy patrons of our fine establishment. With some even commenting on moving to our territory. Apparently, most people thought that there was nothing but wild gangs and robots out this way.”
“Well, bully for you.” Shaggy grumbled as he opened the bag.
Inside were several black armor sets and some small arms. Shaggy showed them off to the room. Slink and Dave looked amazed. But Ren was grimacing. Although Shaggy thought that could have been from all the wounds on the big guy’s gray skin. Ren picked up a piece of chest armor and looked it over.
“This is some decent stuff. But the problem is it has got the UGB brand all over it.”
Shaggy grimaced as well. He had noticed the three letters ingrained on all the armor and equipment of the UGB. It didn’t present a problem, but not one Shaggy was too worried about. So they’d masquerade as the UGB for a bit. Didn’t sound too bad to him, honestly.
Ren sighed. “You don’t get it, do you? We can’t hit the streets repping someone else’s gang. The Big Four will come down on us and the UGB will know who took their shit. This stuff is great, but we can’t use any of it.”
“What about the chair dude? Can he do anything with it?”
“Roald? Maybe. But do we really trust him with our equipment? After the shit he pulled, he’s liable to take it and run.” Slink argued.
“I don’t think so. The little shit tried to play multiple sides against the middle and got pinched hard. He’s lucky we took him in before he was grabbed by someone else. All we gotta do is keep him close.”
Shaggy tapped Slink’s knee, nodding. “That shop you were talking about. We can build it down here. Along with a shooting range and anything else we need.”
Slink stood and rubbed his face. “With what resources? We need some building materials.”
“Levy’s got wood over on our side of the portal.” Shaggy said.
“And we can cannibalize some of the house in Quinica turf. Most of them aren’t even being used. I think most people started leaving the second the space-vamps showed up.”
Slink moved toward the War table terminal and sighed again. But Dave gripped the boy’s shoulders and spun him away. Ren stopped Slink from falling on his face and righted him. Dave smiled at them all.
“Nuh-uh, little dude. You go make friends. We will handle the paperwork stuff. All we gotta do is get the Lackey’s moving, right?”
Ren let go of Slink and nodded. “I’ll help gather materials. Most of the Quinica are on the run. At least they run when they see me, anyway.”
“I’ll dig out some rooms. Most of the stuff around here is dirt, right? So I’ll grab a few lackeys and inspire them.” Shaggy smiled.
Vlad placed an arm over Slink’s shoulder and shook the boy. “And I’ll teach our young man here how to be personable.”
Slink sputtered, but stopped when he saw all of their faces. He gestured weakly at the War Table, saying.
“You can order some stuff from Levy’s side of the portal through the terminal down here. She’ll probably request more men to help. But we can spare it. It’s the quickest way to get furniture, too. Just make sure you input all the reports as they come in. They deteriorate quickly and the information becomes useless after a while.”
“Oh shit!” Vlad said, pulling a stack of papers from his cloak. “I should get these inputted, then.”
He moved next to Dave and started putting in the reports from the UGB black site. It was quick work scanning all of Vlad’s scribblings about the UGB. Once he was done, the War Table quickly zoomed out and revealed red dots and pulsing blue lines all on the other side of the arena. Shaggy guessed that the blue lines were shipment routes for UGB equipment and the red dots were the patrols.
Slink stared down at the table in wonder as it continued to populate with more information.
“Where did y’all get all of this? It might become useless in the coming days, but it is a lot of information.”
Vlad smiled as the last bit of paper was fed into the War Table. “It’s a long story and one I will happily tell you over a drink upstairs.”
Slink grumbled. “I can’t even drink in game, remember? Stingy fucking system.”
“You can have a soda, kid.” Vlad gripped Slink’s shoulder again, and they both marched out of the room.
Shaggy turned to the other two players in the room and sighed. “It’s not that long of a story. The UGB abducted us and tried to interrogate us. It did not go well for them.”
Ren grunted. “You didn’t leave witnesses, did you? We don’t need more shit to handle than we’ve got.”
Shaggy waved off the big Rhino-man as he searched the bags on the floor. “Ease up, Ren. We didn’t leave anyone. How do you think we had time to grab all their shit? We are in the clear.”
Shaggy found the small black case he was looking for and placed it on the table near Dave. “I’m going to dig out this cave. Guard that with your life. I don’t know what it is, but something tells me it’s important. We need a scientist to look at it or something.”
Ren smiled for the first time. “You mean a chemist?”
“Chemists, Scientist, geologist, vaporist. I don’t care. We need someone to figure out what all those chemicals are. My gut says something important, though.”
“I know enough not to distrust your gut.” Ren snorted. “I’ll start knocking down buildings. You got everything handled, Dave.”
“Totally, big dude. This table is actually pretty intuitive. Shags, I’m going to mark the spaces we need cleared and you can start digging. Big dude, all you need to do is put the materials close to the bar and we can use them in the construction of new rooms. It’ll cost us some creds, but it’ll all be worth it when our crew can get a good workout in.”
Shaggy and Ren shared a look before they shrugged at each other. If Dave said he had it, then they would trust him. Or in Shaggy’s case, he sure as hell didn’t want to do it. He reached into a bag and grabbed an energy rifle. Ren gave him a curious look as Dave went back to typing on the console. Shaggy simply turned and walked back out into the common room, holding the gun above his head.
“Listen up! Who wants a go at one of these new weapons!?”
A clamoring echoed through the room as men and women clawed over each other to get toward Shaggy. Shaggy raised a hand as he was almost mobbed. A few hands reached up over his head, but Shaggy quickly smacked them away. Not hard enough to break their arms, but enough to signal that he wasn’t to be fucked with. Of course, Ren showing up behind him probably helped a lot, too. Shaggy lowered the rifle into his arms and grinned at the Lackeys amassed before him. They all looked eager to do whatever he wanted.
“We need a shooting range and a few other rooms built out. If you want to play with our new toys, you got to help out. You don’t want to help, then go sit your ass down and maybe you’ll get a chance later.”
“How about I just take that gun from you and jam it down your throat, shortstack?” someone called.
Shaggy grinned. “You are more than welcome to try. But whoever tries will not like the outcome.”
He waited several beats, but when no one approached. He turned back to the War Room and set the gun inside the room. Closing the door firmly, he spun back to address the crowd again. Ren was already pushing his way to the surface and several people were following the big guy. Shaggy rubbed his hands together, looking around for something to mark where Dave wanted him to dig.
He circled the common room until a light blue glow caught his eye. It was down the hallway where several rooms were and Shaggy hurried to find the source of the light. Footsteps behind him told him that several Lackeys were following. He rushed down the full length of the hallway before a found a section of dirt wall. It was lit up in the shape of a square and pulsing gently. Shaggy turned to see if anyone else could see the light, but all he got were blank looks.
“ARGH!” A shout came from back down the hallway. But Shaggy ignored it.
Someone had probably tried to grab a rifle. Shaggy mentally thanked Dave as he grew his claws out and started digging into the soft dirt. Thankfully, it fell away easy and Shaggy kicked the dirt back toward the grunts. The lackey’s seemed to know what to do as some started helping Shaggy tear into the soft wall. Others started collecting and moving the dirt back down the hallway. Shaggy sighed as he followed the blue outline. It was in the shape of a hallway, and Shaggy figured that Dave was building another set of rooms for them.
He set his brain to thinking about other things as his body tore into the soft dirt over and over. Shaggy was surprised to find that it was extremely soothing as he dug out a new hallway. It felt nice to actually start building something. Most of the work had been done by Lackeys. But here he was happily making a space for their Legion. It was going to be great, and the Lackeys were going to love it. He briefly wondered if he should call some of his pack to help. But they deserved their own break after everything that happened topside. Shaggy shook dirt from his body as he shoveled even more behind him. As he did, a section of the wall flattened out and a metal wall popped into existence. The first of the walls had been put in. Shaggy grinned. They were on their way.