Darana sighed deeply as she checked the time again. It was quite late and she felt bad she wasn’t at home right now with the little one but the neighbors had insisted they had things under control and that she should take the night off. Running back home down wouldn’t do anything other than cause problems.
Bouncing back and forth on her feet, Darana fervently wished Glysia would hurry up and come out so she could forget about the last few days. That entire trip to the base had made her uncomfortable, the faint smell of blood lurking dangerously in the back of her mind. The trip had been supposed to be quick and simple, checking to make sure nothing was left on and causing problems. Everything had technically been fine but that faint smell had left her concerned. Maybe should get one of the trackers to-
“You’re thinking too hard for girls' night!”
Darana leapt 4 ft in the air in surprise and began whirling around to face her aggressor. Quickly schooling her face before she landed, she landed with surprising grace to face her friend that had snuck up on her,
“Took you long enough. I was beginning to think I might have to go drinking alone.”
“You think you can just breeze past that little jump if you talk fast enough?”
“That was certainly the hope, yes. Shall we get going?”
Glysia grinned widely and Darana grinned back at her long time friend. Her drinking companion for the night was tall, taller than most of their already tall race. Her fine black fur shone against the late evening sun and a faint grin always seemed to be touching her face. Darana mused that her friend would have been quite popular if she’d been more of a socialite.
Feeling the weight from the intense gaze from her friend, Glysia would shift from one long leg to the other, checking herself over with a critical eye, “You’re giving me odd looks, did I forget to do something?”
Brushing away the troublesome thoughts, Darana grinned, “Don’t worry about it… for now. I’ve plans for the future you could not even begin to fathom”
“For now she says. You could just add some villainous laughter on the end for good measure, you know?” Glysia whined as she rolled her eyes. Slapping her friend’s shoulder, Glysia chuckled a bit grinned back, “I don’t know how I even got tangled up with you. Anyways, drinks?”
“Let’s go!”
__________________________________
Engineer’s Log Day 13
Nothing quite like waking up in the morning in a lawn chair, covered head to toe in dew surrounded by empty beer cans like a ritual sacrifice to the sun. May my sacrifice give them plenty of rain and good crop growth. I feel the need to say that I did not in fact drink that many. I may be many things but I am not an alcoholic. We may get there eventually though depending how stressful things get.
After I woke up and took a nice shower, I put everything up and got started on the turrets. Last night was nice though I’m not thinking I’ll be repeating it. I’m a bit more of an indoor cat than an outdoors one so sleeping under the stars is only going to be an occasional treat. On to business, my walls are properly covered now so I’ll have a bit of room to breathe but I can’t afford to be slacking. No defense is absolute and I’m sure my dogged friends will be able to crack up my shell if they really want. I need to have a counter force to discourage any level of shenanigans happening to me. I’m going to be doing this with the threat of automated turrets in a move I like to call Cold War diplomacy. Mess with me and nobody wins!
Unlike the Cold War though, I have zero interest in expanding my territory. I might have some food problems in a few year so I’ll need to figure that out but for the time being, I have the supplies of nearly 150+ people and that will last me several months. Thank goodness for being prepared ehh?
Today’s my first day working on these turrets but I can already tell these things are going to be an absolute pain in my rear. These things are fully mechanical which is nice to avoid whatever trickery may be thrown my way but it also means that each is a lot more labor intensive to get into working order. This isn’t even taking into account the fact that I’m going to need to redo the code on my walls.
Currently, I have it set up so we can fire our railguns through ‘em by flickering it off for just a moment. These won’t have nearly as high of a bullet velocity and they’ll be throwing multiple a second which will complicate the code needed to say the very least. I’m kind of hopeful in regard to the code since in theory I’ll just need to tweak a few numbers but things are never that simple. Nothing much I can do except check I suppose and to check I’ll need to finish this…
Man.
Engineer’s Log Day 14
I’m going to beat the maker of this device with his own turrets I swear. Who prints things that need to go inside separately? Why is it like this just like this?
AAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH!
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Engineer’s Log Day 15
After a few slip ups yesterday that I don’t feel the need to rehash, I’ve been making good progress today. The parts are coming together nicely and I definitely didn’t have to disassemble everything I’d already worked on. Even if I did, there is no concrete evidence and it cannot be proven that anything along those lines had ever happened. There are no issues in the human base and you can trust me. I am a truly trustworthy and honest person.
So I’ve finished 3 out of the 6 turrets I have planned. The unaccounted for delays mean I’ll probably not finish them fully by tomorrow like I’d hoped but it should be fine. I’m thinking I might set up the ones I do have finished now just to get something up there. There’ll be a few spots that won’t be covered but better to have some show of force right? There also isn’t any reason I can’t put them up immediately after building them now that I have some level of protection. I mean obviously they could just do whatever they did and blow my shields apart again but…
Actually, I think I need to hurry up on these.
Engineer’s Log Day 16
Four turrets are set up and the fifth is nearly done.
Engineer’s Log Day 17
Ok so I’ve finished my turrets and in an unexpected and unforeseen twist of fate, my code did have issues. I managed to get figured out but the process of debugging still took me the entire back half of the day. Who woulda thunk it? Still, all 6 are set up and good to go now. Spent a bit of time setting up a few extra precautions so that my turrets don’t just go shooting indiscriminately because you can’t really unshoot things you know? I set up a few audible warnings so that folks don’t just get their heads taken off out of nowhere and I’ve a manual override that I can trigger a few different ways just in case.
Changing topics but I’m kind of beginning to feel a bit concerned. I don’t know if I’m being paranoid or not but I really feel like there should have been some level of response from the xythalaxns by this point. I know I’m looking a gift horse in the mouth but they orchestrated a proper attack and then just stopped? It kind of made sense that I wasn’t under assault before if I was flying under the radar. The confusing bit is that I have started acting more directly but at this point, I’ve been outside and on top of the walls multiple times and even activated shield generators over the whole place. I’m leaving my lights on at night and it’s not like we don’t have valuable resources. They should have noticed I’m here at the very least but my cameras haven’t caught anything since the other day. All this begs the question, where are the xythalaxns?
I just don't know what to make of it.
Engineer’s Log Day 18
Today, I’ve decided to get started on some of the heavy weapons for my defense. I’d talked a bit about them in the past but these would be for if vehicles are something else came skating up to the base looking for a fight. From the looks of the blueprints, I’m not overly worried about assembling as these should be far easier than either of my other two projects.
They’re basically a thin rectangle in the middle with two boxes hanging off the side holding 2 missiles each. For the most part, these will be manual both in regards to reloading and aiming. Reloading shouldn’t be that big an issue since if I need to fire off more than 2 at a target, I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Not that I expect trouble that big, I’m mostly building these for me if we’re being honest. Concerning manually firing these, I’ve decided to take a bit of extra time to add a Doom overlay to the screen. It doesn’t technically do anything but it certainly will make the rockets feel like they hit harder.
Engineer’s Log Day 19.1
Finished up both of the launchers today and am planning to set ‘em up tomorrow. I ended up finishing a bit later since I’d decided to play my own homebrew version of Russian Roulette with the 3D printer earlier this morning. How it works is as follows.
First, you set up a file randomizer in your 3D printer file folder. Click it a few times until you feel satisfied with the randomness. I do it 3 times minimum to make sure its really properly shuffled but technically speaking you can get away with 1 time if you’re a killjoy like that. Step Two, you send it to the printer and you get what you get. That's it, that's all there is to it. Super simple to play and very interesting.
So far I’ve gotten a faux wood kayak paddle, an actually pretty decent rubber ball, and something that’s sorta shaped like a manhole cover but the top is a bit rounded. I checked the file for that one and the tags aren’t helpful in the slightest. The only tags were foot, vibration, and HARP in all caps. I’ve checked the file and I still can’t figure out what this thing is supposed to be. There are clearly some parts that look like they’re supposed to be connected but I can’t make heads or tails of it. Maybe it's like an amplifier for harps? Wait, are electric harps even a thing?
Engineer’s Log Day 19.2
My curiosity got to me and I checked for other stuff with the HARP tag. There are a surprising number outdoing the Washing Machine count by a bit. Most of these tags have some manner of body part also included but a few are just really dangerous looking or simply have the Module tag. I’m genuinely baffled by what exactly this thing is supposed to be.
Engineer’s Log Day 19.3
Well, I’ve finally identified what this is supposed to be. These are parts for the HARP aka the Heavy Armor Reactive Platform aka a small mecha style weapon. I’ve been looking at the various pieces to build the sucker.
I remember learning about the HARP a while back when I was still in college because obviously any engineer worth their salt has a mecha phase at some point. These bad boys are specialty vehicles specifically designed to maneuver treacherous terrain that traditional vehicles would struggle in. They also can better take advantage of shield tech than traditional tank. HARP units tend to clock in at around like 20ish feet tall which is a bit puny in comparison to the classic idea of a mech but that’s the cost of these sorts of things The main downsides are obviously they can’t move nearly as fast as tanks and have a few more points of failure. Pros and cons across the board. I know there are some generals that prefer HARPs to tanks but it’s really a use what you need for the situation sort of deal.
I’m really questioning how Steve got his hands on these since generally speaking these blueprints are not available to the public. Hmmm… I mean… I’m gonna have a lot of free time and it's not like I’ll be able to get my hands on this again…
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.