Engineer’s Log Day 171.1

The math on my side is done and now I find myself at an impasse where I need wait for the xythans to actually wrap up their calculations and make their bombs. Most of the math should be done but they need some time to get some proper explosives created and tested. I think this is nonsense but thats probably because I want to blow stuff up now!

In the interest of curbing my excessive desire to shoot and explode things, I’ve decided a compromise must be struck and it shall be at Darana’s expense. Today, I shall be fabricating the tools of complete and utter destruction. Known through many a summer and feared for many more. Water guns! In a twist, instead of using the usual fabrication plans from Steve, today I get to use the ones that I smuggled for personal use. Ended up fabricating a few to test and then a few for for fun purposes to a grand total of 6 in varying colors. I gotta say I am quite pleased with how they came out. I fully intend to arm Bayfur with one before we gang up on Darana but first I have a few preparations. First, I need a good spot to load them and an excuse to have Darana ready for some water. Hardly considerate to hose someone down with if they aren’t at least a little bit prepared for some wet.

The plan I’m currently running with is as follows. Step one: Set up the pool. Base inventory tells me that we have an adult-sized mini pool for “Mental Health and Physical Therapy Purposes” which I’m pretty sure is just military code for “We got it so we could enjoy it” but I’m not gonna question that. I’ll have to find it first but I know that it’s there. From that point, I just need to drag it out and fill it all the way up. Step two is going to be the tricky one. I need to get the guns to the pool and Bayfur ready without her noticing. I’m going to have to move quickly and quietly. Stage Three is easy. Hose the woman down and run, easy as!

First, I gotta actually find the pool though.

Engineer’s Log Day 171.2

A slight miscalculation was made. Well… I say slight but it was closer to a pool sized miscalculation. The plan went off almost entirely without a hitch. Found the pool without any issues. It was just sitting in the back collecting dust. Not even that hard to find, I could have just stumbled onto it by chance honestly. Step two even went better than expected. I snuck the guns out into the pool without issue, got Bayfur in on it, and even got him shooting properly. This brings us to step 3, the ambush. It went mostly well. I let Darana know about the pool and scuttled out quickly, Darana came out in some swim clothes, a clothy wrapping sort of thing looped around her torso a few times to make it look like a one-piece swimming suit. Looks nice but that’s beside the point. The point is she did get soaked. Success right? Success until you remember she is approximately many times faster than me in terms of reaction and burst speed. That is to say, I got quickly grabbed and just as quickly dunked into the pool. I know I say turnabout is fair play but this ambush wasn’t supposed to have turnabout!

It was fun though and we spent the rest of the afternoon shooting each other with the water guns, running around the outside of the base, and enjoying the swimming pool itself. It wasn’t big enough for me or Darana to swim in so we kinda just sat in the water but Bayfur was able to enjoy it to the full extent. I feel like I could make a doggy paddling joke here but that would be unoriginal and that’s not how I roll!

Engineer’s Log Day 172

I forgot my favorite part of swimming outside. THE MOTHERFUCKIN SUNBURNS WOOOOOOOHHH!

Fortunately, it isn’t as bad as it could be as I’m not a complete idiot. I put some sunscreen on a bit before heading out but in my enjoyment of yesterday, I very much failed to actually reapply to any part of me. So now I get to sit inside the base extra crispy with aloe vera on my back. It doesn’t help that Darana keeps coming through to check up on me. I appreciate the thought but she refuses to believe it’s not all that bad. Just because I grunt and wheeze in pain whenever I walk around doesn’t mean I’m actually in pain. She has been fussing over me ever since I winced from being tapped. I’m mostly fine, just a touch sensitive is all. Fortunately, I didn’t have anything planned anyways so at this point I can probably take credit for this whole chilling out today idea. No need to sneak out.

Ha!

As if she wouldn’t wrangle my ass out of the HARP if I did try and slip out.

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Engineer’s Log Day 174.1

Sarlunt finally got back to me about creating some shielded fallback points. He mostly wants a few small ones scattered through the forest with a few big ones in the town. The forest being lightly protected should help any potential retreats and actually curb wildfires that’d potentially break out which I can appreciate. Concerning the town, he feels it can be used as a potential point of defense before they have to retreat again. Now all of this makes sense to me and should be perfectly within my capabilities. Since I’ve a bit of spare time. I’ll get started on some of that now. On a partially related note, I’ve been also been asked to do more diplomatic stuff and actually come and talk to some of the folks in the xythan town.

I’ll admit, I am a touch uncomfortable with the idea of just meandering around in their town overly long, even if I am there on “official business”. We were technically fighting like, what? 4 months ago? A little less? Regardless of that, I’m going to be getting a lot closer than I necessarily feel comfortable with. I suppose I should get used to it given the current plan of shoving me and all the noncombatants into the new base but still.

Just…Ugh.

I suppose I’ll have to get over this soon or later but that thought doesn’t make me feel any better.

Engineer’s Log Day 174.2

I talked a bit to Darana about my discomfort and she ended up offering to tag along with me to act as a barrier of sorts towards any ill-intentioned folks. It’s funny, I wouldn’t have initially thought that would be that big of a deal to me but after thinking a bit on it I think it actually makes a world of difference. At the very least, I’ll still have a friendly face around and at best I’ll have someone who can help me socialize a bit more. Believe it or not, I was never a super popular kid growing up but I did have a pretty close group of friends. They used to like to joke they hung out with me to repel the bullies like I wasn’t in the exact same boat.

I’m gonna have some wild stuff to say at that reunion…

Still, I suppose what comes around goes around and I’m getting my goes around right now. That sounds weird saying it but I’m sure the intended message comes through. Darana’s concern makes me feel warm and appreciated. It’s nice.

One way or another though, I do need to get some batteries made. Those shields won’t power themselves and right now I have about twenty spots needing some Zeus juice… Actually, that terminology is terrible. Straight up the worst name I’ve ever come up with. I should never say that again.

Engineer’s Log Day 175.1

Today was quite interesting as I’ve finally figured out what was going on all the way back at the beginning of my time here. Turns out that the weather does in fact just hate me. Well, not me in particular, the weather actually hates the stuff I like to build. Turns out I’ve been dealing with Ion storms. How did I find out? My stuff tried to explode again. I heard things beginning to whine and had to throw the emergency switch on the generator to prevent anything undue from happening. All my communication gear is still on the fritz and I don’t appreciate it. I didn’t even figure out what was going on until I dashed over to the xythan base and they weren’t even doing anything. It was literally just the weather. Kinda.

Let me explain starting off with the obvious question. What are ion storms? Well, they’re bullshit that's what they are. To put it simply though, they are a fun little anomaly that sometimes crops up on planets with a higher than average silica content in the atmosphere and funky magnetic poles that like to swap often. When the poles do swap, the atmosphere will hold high levels of ambient energy. This tends to pan out in the form of massive lightning storms most commonly but as a fun little side effect it can also overcharge all my energy based tech. Peachy.

I guess we didn’t see any signs of this when we were planning? I feel like this should have been caught by someone before now. I mean now that I know about this I can actually set up some preventative measures and actually have my tech work normalish but like how didn’t we see this coming? This seems like something that shouldn’t have been able to slip through the gaps like it did.

Engineer’s Log Day 175.2

Spent the rest of the day “storm proofing” my stuff. A lot of it is just adding what I’ve decided to call storm limiters to prevent things from going boom due to being overcharged. This is a particular pain in my rear for the shields since they have a tendency to be a good bit more sensitive to these sorts of things. Small wonder that nothing went up in flames last time this happened. I spent today making a few bargain bin faraday cages to dodge most of the effects.

It's actually hilariously easy to make a super simple cage. All you really need are two metal trash cans, one smaller than the other, and some foam to separate the two of them. Technically speaking, you can also use industrial grade microwaves though I’ve heard those aren’t super great at keeping everything out so I don’t know. The fancier you get the better they tend to function at their intended job of keeping things from getting in or out for my purposes, a few trash can cages should easily do the trick.

I’m probably going to have to scrap the mini shields for the forest that I’ve already made and redesign them to be more resilient but that's fine if a bit frustrating. They’ll definitely be a bit bigger in the redesign but I don’t foresee that being a huge issue. Might be a bit of a tripping hazard but I can bury them to avoid that.