OOCS
Chapter 46 : Waterway / Campsite One
So here they where, not much of an idea of there position on the planet, let alone what planet in the galaxy Karl-Heinz got dragged of to at the start of this fumbling miss adventure. They had enough supplies to last them weeks food wise. Karl had started to sort of explain to an hyperactive Gohb what little he knew about PC´s, which turned out to be much more than expected, given the small stack of hand written papers and diagrams littering the ground.
A lot of what he knew was just raving and rants about scummy companies in the computer industry, more or less repeating what he heard in podcasts. Still it was requested and thus written down so that someone with more free time, maybe more autism and a lot more ability to focus could crack that puzzle into something useful.
At least sometime in the future with a more stable home than a Train driving around with a current average of one catastrophe per day. The current day was still young, so the average of possible life ending events statistic could still need some high up adjustments.
“Man I am glad this axiom magic doesn´t summon demons or other funky stuff, like in other dark fantasy settings.” Karl sighed as interdiction.
He was being very nicely entertained by the computer questions. The training of the crafting ability to the T-Benchers was going good enough as they managed to reshape metal bits semi securely without turning the whole lump of metal into a waiting structure failure from internal damages. Still there was a long way left to go, as the shapes produced where not precise enough yet and could easily fail when only slightly distracted.
Practice makes perfect, so they where again doing repeat task training, this time more on Sarsa´s and Laka´s demands, as they both would love to have a rotating train tunnel crafting team instead of just poor overworked Husband, but they also don´t want to derail if someone close by sneezes and spooks the current crafter on task by accident.
One did sneeze near Karl-Heinz once, but he didn´t much care over it one way or another and was easily able to keep focus on his then crafting tunnel task.
As repeat tasks get boring fast for most people, so the T-Benchers abused the walls for their skill training. Others even joined in as not much else was there to do. Turning the train tunnel into a slowly increasingly well crafted marvel of engravings and some sunken in simple sculptures, They all had not yet managed to grasp the concept of moving atoms, that Karl had adapted out of luck and his believed way such a skill should work, thus all but the T-Bench gang and Karl-Heinz were able to only carve away , but not add together or shift around.
Tris somehow managed to find the way to even become stronger with axiom out of sheer boredom.
She was trying to show off her grip strength and managed to turn a piece of metal ring into a more squeezed shape. But her hand suffered an injury from the effort, so she is now working on trying to find out a way to mitigate the damage one sustains from over-strong muscle use.
Tris was also trying to train with axiom enhancements on at all times, by walking around carrying heavy stuff most times.
So the day was mostly boring and every now and then Karl-Heinz would add small Air vents to the tunnel for the illusion of airflow. He had in mind ideas of opening up pockets in the rock to pull in that sweet fresh air, but doubt was still his main feeling over big plans and he was not cured of his depression, so he didn´t give that a high chance to properly work each time he may try it.
Regardless of what could go wrong, they did manage to get to the end of their day without another tunnel incident and didn´t much notice any issues with the breathing air. There where attempts at quickies, but that was normal day to day part of life now for them. They all where still drowning in his pheromones and only staying upright due to the extended exposure causing them all to grow somewhat resistant to the chemicals effect.
But this evening came a bit earlier than usual. They still had no idea of where exactly they where in regards to anything else on the maps that they possessed. Thus they let Karl-Heinz set up a proper bunker to reside in for a few nights. This included proper ventilation holes with air flow fan like the last bunker had. The construction of defensive lines and greeting room, that would get to have stairs to the surface.
So this night they send Karl-Heinz to sleep and scouts to the surface. Oddly enough they wanted to give the new craft cheat skill users a chance to shine.
Karl-Heinz himself was to pleasantly happy and tired to care and just went to the new fuck room, of course with today's lucky few already waiting on the bed for him.
- - -
“We will slay the Dragon!” That was the war-cry, or was it a rally cry? That Karl-Heinz heard as he jerked awake. Given his muted sens of his own emotions, the lack of a sun and the genuine distortion of day cycles due to shift works and possible alarm everyone on deck situations, He had no idea what time it was. The adrenaline cursing thru his body, from the sudden wake up, didn´t help him either in trying to guesstimate that answer.
“What is going on?” He grunted out a bit groggy and half falling out of bed in haste to get ready.
As he wasn´t smothered in a very furry hug and a motherly check over, instead being greeted with a statue of a person in the corner of the room, Sara was his current guard and it seems like she was not yet able to un-clench her stiff posture enough, to either extract her life line of a stick up her shapely behind or was herself shocked by the noise of a hundred voices calling for blood of a monster.
He did not have 100 wives when the train ride had started 3 days ago, but as there are stairs that go up to the surface again, that could have changed as part of some deal or recruitment effort. The enthusiasm of the cry-out was enough to warrant the number he had guessed it at.
Before Sara was able to do more than guard the door, Karl had managed to get himself dressed and was walking past her out said guarded door. Sara filed in behind him, as he walked the short distance from out of his room, across the the 3m wide hallway to the other wall and into the mes-hall door.
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Seeing that this communal room was empty, his quest for answers, if nothing else to know how much his sleeping cycle has been fucked up by now, he walked on thru the room and into the forward armory.
Better labeled as “the big empty room to store some stuff in and is the last line of defense”. The open room was connected to the railway tunnels and had the train sitting neatly near one of the edges of the hall.
But this room was seeming to hold the answers to some of his questions, as a command post on box tables with a war council and a general assembly of most wifes could be seen.
Sarsa was looking over maps, Tris was berating the T-Benchers to make her more ammunition for her Gatling Rail-gun and Vaskra was seeming doing a not to bad job at raising moral.
Walking over to the good girl first wife Sarsa, he tried to get some answers. “What dragon?”
This got him a confused look and a long enough pause that even he noticed his own mistake. “What are they trying to kill?”
“Oh, well they saw “Here be dragons” on a map with empty space. So now some of the wives rallied the others into a more aggressive way of thinking. Most likely to get to be more valuable to the family and thus be able to sleep with you. Also Tris is just bored and itching for a fight.”
“I heard that! And you are not wrong!” Came thundering back over the noise of the crowd from said land shark.
“Where is Laka? Is she taking a break?” He asked whilst getting himself comfortable on Sarsa´s coils as a seat at the map crate table.
A lifted torso, a scan of the room and a quick kiss later. “Yeah she is sleeping in one of the rooms and we better let her get some rest while we can.”
Then the current flow of things gets interrupted, the crowd half parts, half disperses into the defenses, as there are arrivals coming into the bunker. They must be friendly or the actual first line of defense would have raised an alarm or at least made one hell of a noise to try and fend them off.
The scouts must have returned then, leaving Sarsa in no need to move. It was like when you have a cat sleeping on your lap, just that she had Husband sitting on her coils. But the Nagasha had also one more excuse at hand, she was in command and could demand them coming to her, it also would help a lot in hearing any reports given with maps spread out to point out where the reported findings even are in relation to everything else.
So they waited the few moments that it took for the arrivals to come to her and Karl-Heinz. Only to be surprised by a turning visible nudist opportunist Cloaken arriving most likely 4 moments ago. “Yeah they got back much slower than me, I get to run and stay unseen and they have to stay in the shadows and out of sight.”
Before Scavera could steal another kiss from Karl-Heinz, the mistress of the snake den smacked her head a bit. “Stop being too cheeky, some playfulness is acceptable, but try to rain it in a bit. You will suck his lips dry if you keep up that rate of stolen kisses.” Sarsa huffed at the spy turned scout.
“So what did you find? Where are the closest land marks?”
The barely organized gaggle and chatter of answer that get replied to that question as an attempt of an answer, do not please the first wife at all.
Scavera for her part sneaks some pebbles to Karl and whispers in his ear. “Can you make me figures of a mountain, three hills, two forward army bases and a few lines for rivers and roads. Then use the rest to make some trees. Please?”
Shrugging and ignoring the dressing down in an attempt to get the reports straighten into an orderly fashion, Karl crafts the requested miniatures and goes to the happy place of single minded distraction land, getting lost in making way to many minis that start at map markers and then quickly shift into fantasy-figures.
At the point when he reaches the attempt at making not just minis but going over to thinking up battle map parts, that could be assembled and changed around like LEGO bits, with the added details of not using square pieces but hexagonal ones, the reporting seems to have been done with success.
Sarsa was now facing him with her torso and asking. “Can I please borrow one of the small figures to use as a map marker?”
“Yeah sure,” He says and hands her a knight in plate armor looking mini, which quickly gets placed on the sprawled out map. The change that he missed was that they had set up a blank table for the placement of their map marker findings and are now shoving around the “We are here” marker on the actual map. Trying to find the position that the current bunker has in relation to the guesstimated navigation points.
Having a brain wave and not seeing the tool already present on the table, he makes a fancy set of circles. Some can be bend open and closed, the fixed in place with a friction screw, some need to be opened and closed with a turning of a screw that holds both bow-limbs at a fixed distance.
But non of his wifes so far had ever gotten, or in Tris place cared to pay attention when they most likely had gotten, training in extensive map reading. Thus they had only minimal use of how to use a circle to aid in map work.
Still they were ever grateful for his effort to help. Sadly this kind of gratitude reached Karl on the mindset of not having brought success and made him feel patronized in a bad way. He didn´t show it of course and lucky for everyone, Laka swooped in for the rescue.
She had now awoken of her sleep and had snuck up on all of them. Staying out of sight and rather quiet, she managed to sneak a hug in on Karl.
Out of social reflex, Karl stumbled out a greeting. “Morning, slept well?” Whilst being stiff as a board in her bussom embrace.
She somehow seems to know that Karl-Heinz is in need of a scene change and so asked, whilst still embracing Karl. “Is the area around the entrance clear for some small walk around?”
The scouts look at each other a bit uncertain, then nod yes.
Tris tries to rise from her seat, but before she can fully get over to join in, Sarsa cuts her down a bit. ”Yes you can come, but you will run from any danger and not fight anything, we need to stay hidden or risk losing our chance to find our map position.”
So the gaggle of Laka and Karl plus the gaggle of equally interested and bored, go up the stairs to end up in the early morning sun in a waist land, The Ground is covered in a spotty coating of grass. Trenches where dug and fought in but got abandoned as the front line moved. Trees where littered around and only very few still stood, but all tree trunks had burn marks in them when they were used as cover.
Happy enough, no grave markers or abandoned carcasses were to be found, it all got cleaned up and the air was nice and fresh, not tainted with chemical warfare poison or gunpowder smog.
“Your world war is so much nicer than the ones on earth were. Here you can breathe clean air instead of death stench or poison from warfare. Do you even have smoke grenades or other weapons aside from your laser guns?” Karl half mumbled to no one as he walks around the not quit muddy ground.
Lucy then answered. “We do have melee weapons and some keep tools at hand to build small ballista to lob stuff. I don´t know what a smoke grenade would even do. I don´t know if we had them.”
“We sure got non of them in storage. Only grenades we do have are the bastardized battery magazines you made for us.” Someone else said.
“Oh, I maybe could make frag grenades, but I don´t know chemistry enough to do any other ones.” Karl replied rather shy.
The group then walk around a bit, the conversation died down for Karl-Heinz, as he had no more thoughts to really add. Instead he walked around like a tourist and looked and touched all the war marks left in the landscape.
The others instead started to dig trenches, collect wood, or just walk around. It seems as if the daylight and surface visit of Karl, broke the notion of stealth to a degree that now resources would be collected and work was to be done.
Trying to be helpful, with out the idea or confidence of knowing that he would end up being helpful, Karl made a miniature depiction of the scenery. The thing was big like a map table and all the details of the mountains, scenery, rivers, roads and what other points of interest he could see.
With the nice fitting engraving along the side. “Not perfectly up to scale but it was a rushed job.” To reverence that good movie trilogy and to free himself of blame, that would never come anyway.
The whole harem loved him, at least that is what the inner circle tries to give him feeling wise, even if they too had infighting and politicking. Also everyone who didn´t love him had a few chances to run and try a better life elsewhere by now. This did not include some of the newest members of the harem, but they didn´t run yet.
Now that his head was back running down the rabbit hole of self doubt and bad thoughts, Laka managed to notice that his staring at the wood crafted scenery was not detail contemplation but depression. So she did her job and picked him up into a suffocating hug, kissing the top of his head.
“Now now, no bad thoughts for you, go and do some work with the wood or defenses to get your mind of things.” She cooed into her chest.
This did have the intended effect of spooking him out of his funk and current depressed mood. Sadly it did not last long until he realized how badly this position was as a defensive strong point!
Which switches his mood nicely over to desperation with a hint of insecurity of his harem.
Immediately he jogged off to clear out the dead trees and wood debris, followed by digging trenches, setting up pillbox hard points for the Gatling guns and worrying in a more constructive way.
Laka sighed, wisely stopped while she still was ahead and followed him around in his quest of the perfect defense.