Hunter begged the vast skies for some kind of break. A chance to catch up, to make progress, to make even the tiniest dent in the galaxy-mass of weight that felt was piling up on his shoulders.
Before the Cloud artisans caught up, he had to single-handedly upgrade outpost defenses and weaponry, and revamp the colony’s etheric infrastructure with synergies, while allowing for future innovation and upgrades.
He needed to do all of this somehow within the next few days, or he’d be setting everyone behind. It was an impossible task, and he did his best not to let his mind linger on that.
The good news was that the Ambition was nearby. It would arrive at the outpost soon., and the influx of manpower would help. The Guard contingent being reinforced was a solid multiplier to their ability to defend themselves. Because friendly fire wasn’t a risk, the Ambition could provide aerial support. This would be crucial if the beastwave or June’s mentioned threat overwhelmed them. Best-case scenario, they would have a few weeks before the worst of the trouble arrived. By then, their sky would be full of Oberon's ships, with a full fleet’s worth of armaments to unleash on whatever had the misfortune of challenging them.
He found comfort in the thought, spurring him to work as quickly and efficiently as possible.
“Hunter, we need to talk,” Trey’s voice sounded through his personal radio. Hunter cursed the dread he felt. If he couldn’t stay as optimistic as possible, then he’d turn into a twitching pile of nerves in a corner somewhere.
“Can it wait?” Hunter asked.
“Top priority, I’m afraid.”
Hunter sighed, dropping his pen on the table in the yet-to-be-expanded artisan workshop. He leaned over the desk for a second and reminded himself that everyone was under similar pressure. It wouldn’t help to let himself indulge in the sense of frustration and pending exhaustion at the moment.
He’d have to deal with it all later. If he had time.
“Where?” he asked, regretting that some of his annoyance was leaking into his voice.
“Command centre,” came the curt reply. He thought he could hear loud voices in the background. Apparently, people weren’t happy.
Despite his affirmations to remain positive, dropping the radio on the table was the least dramatic he could be about the situation.
He threw on a thin coat and huffed his way along the dusty gridded walkways of the outpost. He did his best to hide the gritted teeth as he smiled to people he passed by.
Trey should know how busy he was. Couldn’t this meeting wait? The utter lack of respect, the lack of space, the lack of understanding, was grating on him. He needed to speak up for himself more. He needed to speak his mind.
He nodded to himself. That’s what he’d do. He’d speak up for himself and tell Trey that he was doing enough. They would all have to carry their own weight.
He entered the command building without giving the Guards in front of it anything more than a cursory acknowledgement. He stomped his way up the stairs to the outpost’s nerve centre.
“I—” Hunter started, but Trey beat him to the punch.
“It’s coming, Hunter. The threat. It’s coming now.”
Hunter paused. He looked around the room. Everyone was here. All the captain’s — the Guard Captains, Captain Gregor, Commander Striker, a host of lieutenants, administrative personal.
They were all frowning, thinking, conversing, or debating about their next move.
“Huh,” Hunter said, surprised to feel some relief. That and dread, and more frustration at the universe’s indifference to their struggles.
At least his workload has just been cut in half. All thoughts about future expansion gave way to immediate survival.
“How do we know?” he asked. The question seemed to have taken its sweet time in occurring to him.
“Clarke,” Trey said, clearning his throat and turning away to look out the window.
What had he missed?
Guard Captain Bell cleared his throat, continuing where Trey left off.
“Clarke had a link to the mind behind the beast waves. Apparently, the threat, which he called the guardian avatar, is the parasite’s nuclear option. It could sense Clarke revealing its weaknesses to us, and his last words were that it knows, and it can’t tolerate its prey knowing how to hurt it. He told us it’s coming now.”
“Mind? Wait. Hold on.” Hunter said, “They’re being controlled by a single mind? And the parasite is, what, like a receiver antenna?”
“We’re now almost completely positive that this mind is using etherium as its strings, and a fungal parasite as a hook. We found traces of the parasite in Clarke’s corpse. Once the host is dead, the parasite dissipates within minutes. We almost didn’t catch it, apparently, but we had a specialize look at the photos that were taken.”
Hunter had to sit down.
“That’s good, right? We have a solid lead on how to fight this thing,” he said.
“Well, not really,” Trey said. “All samples died within seconds of removal from the main mass within Clarke’s body. We have no way of studying the creature further. We have good reason to believe that the enemy itself is some sort of fungus. It infected Trey with enough of itself to use his body as something of a mobile weapons research platform. It tried to control us as it does other creatures in the beast waves, but our physiology is proving resistant. It can only trigger and amplify our basic instincts.”
Hunter didn’t know what to say. It sounded ridiculous. He wanted for this whole thing to be a bad dream.
Short of that, he’d take what he could. What else could he do?
“I’ll take going berserk over being a mindless puppet,” he muttered.
“Scout’s have reported signs of a beastwave approaching. Only a few hours remain before we’ll be seeing the first beasts reach the extreme range of our weapons. We need to prepare everything we can in the meantime. We expect the parasite’s guardian avatar to appear shortly afterwards. It’s going to be throwing the whole kitchen sink at us, and we need to be prepared.”
“We’ve discussed it,” Guard Captain Niklaus said. “we need you to prioritize defence over offense. We’ll have enough firepower on the Ambition to handle the beastwave. But we should still prepare for a direct assault on the colony once the guardian appears.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“It’ll take time to get the system set up, let alone fabrication—”
“Start small. We have two critical vulnerabilities along the wall, and that’s the eastern and western entrances. That’s where we’ll focus the Aegis system’s deployment. We’ll expand the system to the rest of the wall as more components are finished,” Guard Captain Niklaus said.
Hunter nodded. The Guard Captain had made the job seem workable to his neurosis-ridden mind. He could see why Trey kept these guys around.
“We also need the Ambition to remain in the skies. It will be our first answer to both the beastwaves and the guardian. If that fails, we’ll have it land and activate its shield to protect as many of the colonists as we can,” Guard Captain Bell said.
“Should we be moving people to the Cloud? The shield is going to be a thousand times stronger than the Ambition’s, right?” Hunter asked.
“We’re completing repairs to the Cloud. Once it’s able to lift off, we’ll be using the shield here, expanding it as much as we can without compromising too much of its integrity. When it does land, we’ll need you to expand the amount of connections it can take. Do you think you can do it?”
A very childish sort of tantrum threatened to surface, but Hunter could hold it back.
He knew nothing concrete about the shield, but if the Asutnahem built it, he’d assume that it could channel more etherium than anything a Sanctuary artisan had manufactured. He would just need to whip up a wire with increased channel capacity and more branching connections. From there, it should be plug-and-play.
“Yeah, I think I can do that,” he said.
“Good. In the meantime, we need to ensure that there we have something to defend. We know that the coming beast wave will be intense. We believe Class-1’s and 2’s will be appearing.”
“You’re right, without having the shield’s here, the Class-1s will walk right through with us,” Hunter said.
If he didn’t already feel like he was staring down the barrel of a mountain-sized gun held by an angry god, he would feel humbled by the image of a thousand of June’s rallying against an under-defended outpost.
“Alright,” he said, “I’ll get started on an Aegis system. It won’t be fancy, and I’ve got no way to guarantee consistent quality around the entire border—”
“—we only need you to do what you can, Hunter. Nothing more,” Trey said, his voice airy and tired.
Hunter nodded.
“Alright,” he said, “then I should get to work.”
“Thank you, Hunter. You’ll have as much help as we can spare.”
A thought occurred to him before he turned to leave.
“Has anyone informed Aruon? Sabletown should know what we know, right?”
“We sent a message to the cloud to let Aruon know. June will have returned to pick him up by now.”
“We’re hoping that they’re powerful enough to deal with this thing before it reaches us,” Hunter said.
“Let’s stay focused on what we can do. I won’t take anymore of your time, Hunter. Good luck, and thank you for all of your hard work so far,” Trey said to him.
The man sounded so tired, to Hunter’s ears. He wanted to give him a hug, to tell him that despite the stakes, he believed Trey would somehow pull all of them through, somehow. But the affection would influence the man’s image, wouldn’t it?
Instead, he just nodded and left. He radioed for a few artisans to meet him at the workshop. Jesse and Gill were the only other artisans who had a passing familiarity with synergies. At lesat Joey seemed to have caught an interest in the possibilities that synergies offered by the end of the demonstration, although Hunter hadn’t much time to discuss it with any of them.
But he needed people who he knew were competent and would do what they were told. Joey was an unknown in that regard, having been in charge of a flagship’s artisan department. But the man would hold a lot of sway over the perceptions of other artisans across the fleet. He needed to get him up to speed and believing in the work, and he needed to do that now.
The artisans arrived. Hunter then had to interrupt their schedule for 15 minutes to relay urgent news of an impending attack, their current knowledge, and their needed focus. All of his plans for basic synergies went out the window. He emphasized their job was to memorize the Aegis network syntax and deploy it flawlessly, and then teach others how to do the same thing.
To facilitate the accomplishment of their shared goal, he had giant posters printed out with a blown-up view of every network module. He also had a title describing the role of each network, kind of like comments talking about the logic of computer code.
“I don’t know how you can be so sure about what’s going on in these networks, Hunter,” Joey said as he started memorizing the chart. Hunter had requisitioned a single plate for the three of them to work on. He’d simplified the process as much as possible, and he just had to trust that they could understand it.
Before Hunter could answer, there was a knock at the workshop door and a few men came in.
“We’re told you need help with putting some stuff together.”
Hunter nodded.
“We just started. Find a space for yourselves. I’ve got the list of assembly instructions somewhere around here,” Hutner said, scanning the workshop. He eyed a large brown folder underneath a cup that still had about an inch of coffee left in it. He’d forgotten to finish it earlier, and made up for lost time by shooting the remaining coffee down his throat and handing the folder to the men.
“There aren’t going to be many small components at the scale we’re working at. Securing the system to the walls will be the most difficult part of the installation. However, the bolt spacing on the outpost perimeter hasn’t changed in six years. It shouldn’t be an issue.”
“And if we have questions, ask anyone?” one of the other men asked.
“No,” Hunter said, “these guys are learning on the job. Just ask me.”
They eyed him skeptically. Everyone here knew who Joey Geraldine was. Hunter might have been an heir, but he couldn’t blame them for thinking he wasn’t qualified. There was a time when it would have rubbed him the wrong way, but that felt like a lifetime ago.
While the labourers familiarized themselves with their task, Hunter checked on the progress of the artisans.
Their progress surprised him. He figured they wouldn’t be too far behind his arbitrary self-appointed deadline of 24 hours for the entire system to be installed.
Joey seemed to have etched the syntax with the glyphs he was the most familiar with. Jesse and Gill were both somewhat familiar with the synergistic glyphs after having worked on it previously. Joey seemed frustrated, but focused. Hunter didn’t want to bother him.
Hunter stepped outside the workshop for a second. The Ambition had appeared, holding station high in the sky. It was a welcome sight. Shuttles, like fleas, hovered around the Ambition, waiting for its crew to process events and reassess unloading procedures, since they couldn’t stay grounded for long.
He contacted Cloud’s quartermaster, reminding him of the promised industrial-grade channel-etching machine for the workshop expansion. The machine was to be brought over from the Cloud and Hunter was willing to bet that the man had forgotten, as he was the middle-man for every department that still had resources aboard the downed flagship.
“Fin,” Hunter said once the quartermaster answered his call.
“Mr. Koar, I know you need the machine from the fabrication guys, but I just got an order from the agriculture guys and it’s pretty urgent—”
“—Fin, if I don’t get that machine, agriculture is going to be the last of our concerns. There is a beastwave on its way right now. In fact, I need the entire complement of fabrication machines that were promised for the workshop’s expansion right now. I promise you I’ll take full responsibility for any complaints you receive. To seal the deal, I’ll even make this a direct order.”
“Yes, sir,” Fin said curtly, which to Hunter felt like it was less personal and more coming from having been relentlessly harassed for the past few days.
Tough luck. He’d buy the man a meal or something to make up for it.
He hung up and thought through his ever-increasing list of priorities.
“Mr. Koar!” came the voice of Joey, sounding aggravated. “This part here doesn’t make any sense, how do I know it’s won’t blow up on me if the Stability glyph is so far from the—”
Hunter held up a hand and walked over to a stack of drawers against the wall. He pulled out a series of plates which acted as individual constructs illustrating the function of each network. In the ideal world, he would have used these plates to introduce his artisans to the various syntactical and synergistic novelties which comprised the Aegis system.
But now that his timetable had rapidly accelerated, they would have to serve as the most efficient method to shut Joey Geraldine up and get him back to work.
“Tell me what you notice about these plates, Joey.”
Joey scanned them and rolled his eyes.
“I see that they’re replications of the various networks for the Aegis system, but they—”
“Joey, activate them in sequence. Please.”
“Mr. Koar, I respect your authority as an heir to the corporation, but I must insist that you speak to me with the respect due to my station.”
Hunter took a deep breath.
“Mr. Geraldine. Please activate the constructs so that I may show to you that the entire system is safe.”
Joey nodded and activated the plates with the drawstones Hunter had taped onto them.
“Very well,” the man said after having finished. Hunter received the plates back. With a focused effort to remain calm, he carefully returned them to the drawer. It took an effort of will not to slam the drawer closed.
It was going to be a very long 24 hours.