OOCS
Chapter 44: Making the Ride / Road Hazards
After thankfully only one set back, in which some sleepy invisible lizards got collected, the train ride could actually start. No one got left behind by choice, as no one wanted to give up the only dick and their drug of choice for thousands of kilometers in any direction. They also had no mining equipment or other means of making an exit out of the bunker and get back to food and water.
The trip itself was going as fast as it could, a not so fast pace. Karl had no clue how to automate his crafting or mining cheat abilities and thus had to tediously do the next part of the track manually over and over. At the same time doing too much track to fast, drained the region of its axiom and made everyone sag and grunt, as the harem girls seem to need that stuff passively to at least live normal.
So, he had a speed limit of rail crafting. Then Vaskra had the fine idea to do a test of the breaks, to see how bad they would slither when trying to get to a stop. The result was that they would slide for a few hundred meters, as iron wheels on smooth stone was a rather slick slide. So that also kept them to stay on the slow side to avoid bad crashes.
Karl-Heinz, in his boredom, tried to craft a front bumper, which had been forgotten together with the back and every in between bumper. But Sarsa vetoed that move with. You can try to tinker away when we make a break, but we do need to but some distance between us and the old bunker. You never know when the next officer or what not gets ideas that could impact us.
So, Karl-Heinz was entertained with some small games on the side in his seat at the front, whilst Tris and other wandering bored women kept look out and reminded him to extend the tracks.
As time passed by and the train moved forward as a slightly more than running speed, running speed of one of the short stacks that is, Laka and Tris claim to have that as power walking speed, Karl-Heinz was in that nebulous mind zone of occupied enough to not spiral into overthinking and depression, active enough to not fall asleep and yet not engaged enough to fully mentally booked that he could still think about other stuff.
Of course, his not dark tainted thoughts then went to other ideas he could make and a short moment and some small lumps of metal from supply later, was holding an all-metal Rubik s cube, whit the different sides shining in different colors of the base metal they are made off. The thing was solid and heavy enough to be easy able to brain someone with it.
Mixing the thing up he gave it to a passing by wife of his with the instructions off. Here a logic puzzle, twist and turn the rows against each other to try and make the sides be all one color again. These are easy to make so if others want to try you can go and ask for more.
Yes, my love, but why did you think up something this complex now? Came the curious response.
Karl shrugged, then answered. Where I come from, they were popular and they are easy to make for me, just now remembered them.
Before that conversation could go any further, Karl-Heinz got reminded to extend the tracks again. This time a sharp hissing noise, that didn’t come from his contraptions, followed his extension. This in turn got followed shortly after by Vaskra yelling something to the one on the controls of the train and the breaks got hit full force.
Lucky them as the next thing was a loud bang and a very strong gust of wind with some debris got blown their way.
So extra lucky them for being in a bunker that was not a closed space and thus not turning them all deaf, from sitting in a ringing church bell, whilst still protecting them from most of the projectiles flung their way.
Being a veteran in the tactics of Nope, Karl embraced that and erected a thick wall in between the train and whatever had just hissed and then pressure exploded into their train tunnel.
Trying to catch his breath and only starting to choke for his efforts, Karl-Heinz then is forced to craft ventilation shafts straight to the surface. Which gets some small amounts of the gas mix they are in moving, but not enough to make much of a difference. They still were sitting in the gas and at least he himself had big issues to breathe.
Not wanting to be at fault for killing them all, he panics and crafts more ventilation shafts.
Over and over puncturing the rock walls and surface above them. Trying different angles and diameters of the holes.
Losing track of what he had already crafted and where, some of them collapse in on each other.
Still being in a half-controlled panic, he next tries to move the gas away by creating big empty pockets in the stone further back in the tunnel in the sides.
Which does manage to create enough of a displacement of mass that gas gets sucked in and that gas comes thru the still working ventilation shafts.
Yet Karl-Heinz doesn’t notice that he managed to avert the immediate crisis. So, he creates a gas displacement room below them, connected with a mesh hole structure in the floor of the tracks tunnel. Which by misfortune connects again to the pocket of gas, which caused the earlier explosion.
This time it creates a strong gush of air. Blowing thru the grid and out the ventilation shafts. Leaving the Harem luckily not to worse for wear breathing wise for now.
Before Karl s panic can get the situation any worse, Sarsa coils around him and pulls him out of his seat and further back on the train, which has started moving backwards. This act of restriction and displacement gets him to calm down again enough to take back mental control.
His Adrenalin is flowing free in his body and his heart rate is up high enough that he can hear his own pulse. Time slows for him again to a crawl. But unlike last time, surprised by a battle, this time it was a technical crisis, something he knew well enough to be able to somewhat fix.
So, before he even was halfway pulled towards Sarsa s torso on the flatbed, he had re-crafted the ventilation tunnel and lower gas chamber to let the gas flow out and up to the top, closing all other shafts on that side to prevent it from getting back down into their tunnel. At the same time, he let the gas flow thru a choke point that opened up again before the intake holes of the air in the tunnel, thus creating a pull that sucks along gas from them and creating an air flow pulling in fresh air from the bunker and the still open-air vents on the port-side of the tunnel.
Then his vision went black and his breathing heavy, as he got coiled into a protective embrace of his first wive.
Still being able to hear things, but effectively being put into time out, Karl struggles a bit as his other demons start to haunt him.
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Did he cause the death of these women?
How many were dead or dying now?
Did he manage to fix his fuck up?
Are they now going to be raided thru the air vents?
No answers got to him as he again slid down into the depth of his depression mindset. Everything again his fault and nothing he did was ever good enough, as everything he made was flawed.
So, he did not notice how he was breathing clean air, whilst sobbing into the strong warm embrace of the Nagasha coils.
The chaos around him was drowned out by the coils as well.
Until the coils opened up around him again. He had no idea if it was seconds or maybe an hour in the coils, but given how much he had already cried, at was likely at least a few minutes that had passed. The only ones he could see, when the weak, reflected of the stone walls, lantern light reached his eyes, were Laka, Tris and the coils but not the torso of Sarsa. They two stood together to block the harem from him and give him as much seclusion as was reasonably possible.
Being spoofed out of his spiraling bad thoughts and somewhat refocused, Karl asked. Is the gas gone? How many died? How can I help? Did the Bernoulli suction work?"
Tris stood in shock and unknowing how to solve the issue she could not fix by breaking things. Laka licked his face in affection, stupefying Karl and giving her an opening to answer and reassure him. "It is not your fault, all are well enough, no one died, you saved us all. I don t know how you did save us in detail, but the air is fresh."
Tris then has a moment of interest sparked, "What is Bernoulli suction?" To which Karl-Heinz looks at her with a blank stare, like he so often does with anyone. This makes Tris uncertain of her question and fills her with the needs to defend her question. "What??? everyone is alive, you are in time out and that Bernd thing sounds useful, maybe even can be turned into a weapon."
This earns the fluffy land shark a slap to the back of her head by Laka. Then gets followed up by a lecture to a seemingly out of sight most likely Sara, judging by the turn of Laka s head and that his vision is still blocked by scales and fur. "So, distraction works, but this was too fast. First you got to finish the reassuring part or the distraction won’t properly work."
True to Laka s assumptions on psychology specific to Karl-Heinz, he was still feeling shit instead of his usual numb. He tried to wipe his face for tears, but a distracted Sarsa still had him restricted enough to not be able to use is arms and he didn’t want to stab his own eyes out by a bad crafting attempt with his prosthesis metal.
Tris recaptured Karl s attention by re-asking her question. "So, what is that Bernd thingy?" Still wanting to know.
"Bernoulli is when you blow thru a narrow hole, then let the force of your blow continue forward thru a bigger hole. But because you went from little space to big room and still got energy pushing in one direction, that then can suck along other things. So, I made the underground gas suck along air from here in the tunnel, I think." He took a few deep breaths to reaffirm his own doubts on that question.
"Could you turn it into a gun?" Came Tris obvious follow-up question.
"Uuuuh yes? But it is easier to make other guns." Karl answered whilst now shifting from panicked shock over to being unsure.
Before Tris could follow up with her next question, a wife called out. "They are looking down the tunnel! We have to get ready; they might come investigating soon"
As a reaction to that, Sarsa s coils untangle and the Nagasha woman s head drops in from above asking. "Hubby, can you please close the tunnels enough that we can continue your break in peace? Or that we can carry on and continue moving our family further north."
Being gently eased down on to the ground, as he didn’t had the presence of mind to start moving as he got untangled, he answers. "Sure, let us move on, we have not even made a few kilometers this far along the track I think."
Laka looked Karl over, even touching his head and other parts of his body with her paw padded hands to feel check if he is good enough again. She then gives a nod to the still present Sarsa.
Sarsa then asks Karl-Heinz. "What about that gas? Do we drive around it? How will we continue on in that direction?"
"Oh, hmmm yeah, get the train driven back a few hundred meters and we can then drive a bit around that hazard. I think the gas leak was starboard side of the tunnel, yes?"
"The explosion happened on the right side I think." Tris confirmed.
"Oh, my bad, so it was port-side."
The Train already was moving backwards and Karl-Heinz had slimmed down the air vent tunnels to be less easily traverse able, when beings bigger than a mouse. He also feared the wrath of what the gas might do and closed that vent of as thick as he could imagine with 5 meters of solid rock displacement crafting.
By the time he was back in his front bunker throne room, his track was slowed down a lot by concerned women checking and double checking their most important asset over for injury's, the train was in a position to change course around the gas hazard.
With the two larger than most body guards by his side, Karl crafted a left turn change in the track, disregarding the tunnel he had made beforehand and with more metal he maybe could even install a track switch. Still on they went in a different direction completely for what felt like a kilometer, as to avoid that hazard.
Being bugged by not knowing how far they have managed to travel and by the now included periodic air vents, they may or may not give away their rout and may or may not can cause the tunnel to flood in due time of strong rain, Karl crafted a simple extra wheel out of some metal scraps. The extra wheel was running along on the ground and driving a small ticker, he had made as his last boredom distraction and was now counting up hopeful meters.
Hopeful meters were even engraved on top of the ticker, as he was in no way sure to know if his wheel had the right diameter for its rotation to count a meter, thus he didn’t dare call it a meter. As for this ride into a better life it was a good enough tool for now.
Time went by slowly again after his current idea was fully squeezed for its distraction value and its function. He even had added a possibility to set the numbers to other positions without needing to be disassembled and reassembled.
Either way the day went by and he made a more simplistic hiding hole to camp and sleep in for the night. He specially made no rooms, claiming to be tired, to try and avoid getting milked again.
That plan almost worked.
But there is always someone who doesn’t care of the other family members in the harem see them fucking or not, especially with no kids there yet. So, he was forced to make himself a room and from there it was business as usual.
- - -
The next morning came a bit very early. He got woken up by Laka. Dragged out of the simple stone room and brought before the group of leaders.
Laka, Tris, Sarsa, Vaskra, possibly Scavera and Sara were all there with him at the edge of the cave wall.
The Nagasha started to speak but got interrupted by the ground, walls and ceiling shaking.
After a moment the shaking stopped again and first wife spoke fast. "It is raining up top, no one knows we are here and even if they followed us, they would need time to open up supply lines for digging equipment and explosives."
The cave rumbled again for about a minute.
"So, we need to get on the move again, I don t want to die in a cave in and going up top is a bad idea too. So, get into the train, we will get the rest loaded as quick as possible." Sarsa added and the nodded to everyone.
No complaints came so they split up and Karl-Heinz got carried away by a worried mother caring their problematic and very very loved child.
Once everyone was back in position, with a passing buy crafted cooking station on the first trailer of this train, the machine got set into motion and the tunnels got crafted.
The movement was slow, the crafting of new tunnel tracks was careful, so they all could feel the rumbling of the ground away from the position they had made their night camp. But given that the orbital bombardment had not stopped after 1 hour of them driving worried them all.
As the rumbling of the ground did not lessen in intensity after 2 hours, made them all the next level of worried before panic. So, the speed at which they traveled got increased.
The rain did not feel like it had stopped after 3 hours and thus speed got increased again.
At the 4-hour mark, Laka called a halt and a break. "Husband can’t keep up with this speed and needs a break!"
Feeling very stressed himself from all the rumbling in the ground, Karl objected. "I can rest when we are save, we are not save, so let’s keep going!"
"Can any of us learn your trick to shape the tunnel?" came a helpful voice, from the crowd of the not slowing down train. It was one of the T-Bench girls.
With looks returning back to Karl, he answered, "I don t know? Have you ever tried to impose your will on objects? That is how I do it at least, I think."
Being excellently externally motivated by the dread of the shaking tunnel and moderately internally motivated by the desire to learn such a proven extremely useful ability, a few of the T-Bench women went ahead and recreated scenes one could have found in psychic magic shows.
Only that this time the spoons didn’t bend because they were prepared.