The duo stored the egg and got some imps to begin repairing the room. It took the red workers nearly two days to do so, during which the Cloud Ships rumbled closer to the coordinates that Tetra had left with them before Grim blew her mind with a power upgrade. She still hadn’t woken up, and while a tad concerning she was still alive.
So Grim wasn’t overly worried.
What he was worried about was the fact that those flying lizards seemed more interested than ever in their convoy. Probing attacks, curious flyby’s, and even a couple of outer deck landings had the entire group on edge. Something was going on, but no one really seemed to know what.
Grim found himself sitting in a room with Stella, Rat, and Captain Vincent. Rat had managed to make his way over from the lead airship using an odd assortment of ziplines and controlled crashing. The Anubis Demon was, even now, holding a pack of ice to his rapidly swelling eye. It turned out landing on his head was the safest thing he could have done.
“I disagree,” Stella said, mildly impatient. She tapped the map where Tetras coordinates were leading them. “It cannot, in any way, be safer to go over those mountains than landing this side of them. They are miles tall with air currents we haven’t mapped. Attempting this with no preparation is borderline suicide.”
Vincent shrugged, “Lady Stella, I am not arguing that point. But I am pointing out that Lady Tetra’s coordinates do not have us flying over the mountain, or even through them for that matter. I am unsure of what exactly her goal was, but Lady Tetra has us landing on the mountains.”
Rat nodded emphatically. “Yeah! I was there when my little scouts came back man. There was a ton of weird plains and valleys high up on the mountain and stuff. Lakes, rivers, canyons. It was alike a whole new world, just at a higher altitude!”
“Altitude? You’re expanding your vocabulary Rat. Keep up the good work,” Grim said, taking a sip of his tea. He liked the tea on this world. It was incredibly… earthy.
Stella sighed in exasperation, “I don’t know how else to convince you that this is a very bad idea. We could be buffeted right into the side of those mountains and torn to pieces,” she emphasized.
“Actually… we won’t,” came a weak voice, causing the entire group to turn to the doorway where Tetra was supporting herself on the frame. Rat rushed over and, picking her up in a bridal carry, brought her back and set her on a couch with the rest of them.
Grim pushed a cup of tea over to her and gestured for her to continue, “Right,” she said, taking a quick sip. “Contrary to how the Cloud Ships look, they aren’t filled with gas, don’t use mechanical propulsion, and aren’t jet powered. They use a variable movement device that interacts with gravity to propel us forward. We could fly through a hurricane and not even tip a quarter inch.”
“What about the combat maneuvering? We nearly all fell off,” pointed out Vincent. “That was terrifying enough.”
“You can have the strongest glass ever made, but if you turn it upside down it will still spill,” Tetra said, pointing out the flaw in his logic. “Besides, the location that Rats... rats found is a massive mesa like clearing a dozen miles wide with a small lake in the center. Its on the side of the mountain in an alcove. While we will need to take further estimation of the environment when we arrive, the numbers don’t lie. It’s a simply amazing spot, creature free as far as I can tell, to set up at least a temporary base camp.”
Grim set his cup down loudly, causing everyone to look at him. “Then that’s where we go. If it doesn’t work out then its not as if we have a shortage of places to look at. Most of the planet is empty, at least according to what Mr. R alluded to. Now he’s fucked off and we get to find out for ourselves.”
Stella sighed as Tetra, Rat, and Vincent looked pensive. There were doubts. This was, as far as anyone knew, even what was recorded in the entirety of Jeeves databases, the first attempt to expand outside of a given territory in such a way… and certainly the first attempt to do so by air.
“We are establishing what amounts to a new country,” Vincent said slowly. “I cannot think of a better location than a fortified mountain range. While the center mountain is certainly imposing, the ring surrounding it has hundreds of miles of valleys, rivers, and resources that we can utilize.”
Tetra cleared her throat, “Thousands. Thousands of square miles of space, and an unknown number of beasts as well. My location was picked and the base designed to remain an active military installation with a civilian backing. While we need to scout, extensively, the plan is to claim the central peak. At some point,” she explained.
Grim nodded. He had seen the plans, discussed them, and couldn’t find much fault within them. They were detailed and precise, at least with this first step. The following steps fluctuated with what they found. All the way from claiming the ringed range of mountains to running away entirely were they to be overwhelmed.
He raised a single finger, “The attack a few days back was from some kind of nest built into the much smaller mountain we passed. What do we know about this area? This whole place seems like a perfect location for a ton more of those to pop up,” Grim pointed out.
Rat nodded, “The center mountain is definitely a nest. Its big man, like huge. Way, way bigger than the one we fought off.”
“That nest in the center is a serious problem then. My armor and abilities are meant for stopping individuals… not armies,” Grim admitted, sitting back into the couch. “While I can certainly play the part of an anti-aircraft battery, I have a feeling the group we ran into was a small one in comparison to what is living in the center mountains.”
Grim just grunted in agreement, his deep purple eyes landing on Tetra. “Figure out what secrets this area holds. We won’t learn everything immediately, but locating places with raw materials, getting a mine of some kind going, and building a base camp with fortifications will be a requirement for survival,” he ordered.
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The cat demon nodded frantically, if a bit weakly. Grim was uncertain how her new mutations had affected her, as she looked physically unchanged from how she was prior. However that was often a poor indicator of how powers had changed. Fully half of the upgrades he had done hadn’t resulted in any exterior changes. Well, the ones that had survived at least. The ones who hadn’t tended to either melt, catch fire, or explode.
Science was a messy business.
“Nest or not, there is plenty of space for us to avoid running into those… dragons did you call them?” Tetra said uncertainly.
Grim shook his head, “No. Not dragons. If they were dragons it would have taken one to kill all of us. No, I think those are some kind of drake analogue. They may even just be big flying lizards.”
“Right. Drakes are as good a name as any,” Stella said, locking down the flying lizard’s new name. “The issue here is if we piss them off they can throw tens of thousands of potentially expendable little fuckers at us. So, the question here is really if we can afford to set up so close to something that can wipe us out.”
They were quiet for a moment before Grim spoke, “Predators,” he said, pausing for a minute. “Predators usually have a territory. Everything inside of that territory is either prey or uninteresting. Easy prey is good prey. No predator attacks the hardest prey to consume if there are alternatives. I heavily suspect whatever is in the center mountain knows we are here, is assessing us, and will make a few probing attacks or scouting runs. If we prove to be a prey that is more difficult than its worth to consume, they will go back to what is easy. Preserving energy while consuming prey is, at its core, a predator’s objective.”
“And what if the things in the mountain are intelligent?” asked Vincent, curious about his Don’s perspective on things.
“Then we are fucked,” Grim said with a smile small enough not to unnerve anyone. “Intelligent species are greedy, violent, and view territory as something to be conquered and owned rather than managed and lived in. We can stop a few scouting waves, show ourselves to be a hard nut to crack, and deter anything outside of the occasional attacks. But if there is a sentient intelligence directing those Drakes? We may as well throw ourselves off the airships right now.”
“Do we have nothing that can hold them back?” Stella asked, looking at a new very pensive Tetra.
The mad scientist nodded, “Yeah. Yeah there are two things we can do to hold off a virtually unlimited number of enemies. But the first idea, courtesy of Boss Man, will take time and a shit load of materials. The second is to use the Boss’s gem crystal thing.”
The group pivoted their heads to Grim, who took a sip of his tea. Setting down the cup he said simply, “No.”
“But why?” asked Tetra, legitimately confused. “That thing has more power than even my power can fathom. Every time I think about it, and I draw an utter blank, like it is something that I can’t even comprehend. Which should be impossible. So tell me Boss, why can’t we use it?”
“The gem, as you so simply label it, is called a Shard of Reality,” Grim explained slowly, the group hanging on his every word. “You won’t use it because you can’t use it. The Shards are only able to be used under exceedingly specific circumstances by even more exceedingly specific individuals. If I handed it to you, you would disintegrate before it even touched your skin. It is an object that both exists within our reality… and does not. A twelfth of a piece of a whole. What that whole is, I haven’t the faintest idea. I spent nearly my entire life looking for them and found one. On accident. If you try and use it you would die and probably take everyone with you. There is no using the gem, there is only attaching it to something and hoping you don’t die in the process.”
Tetra growled, “You put it into that nasty Hell Spike construct of yours! What would the difference be? We can slam it into a piece of shielding technology and put up a dome that would be impenetrable!” she exclaimed.
“You are completely right, it would be impenetrably,” Grim agreed, startling her with his easy agreement to her statement. “Where would the excess energy go?”
She thought about that for a moment, and with a frustrated sigh responded, “What excess energy?”
“The Shard is not a generator. It is not a fire that can be put out, or even one that burns to begin with. It is, quite literally, outside of our fucking reality,” Grim said harshly, shattering his cup in his hands. “You cannot contain it. You cannot redirect it. You use all of what it offers, or nothing at all. Period. The only reason that the Hell Spike was able to contain it is because I used less than a billionth of a billionth of a percent of its energy. The rest the Hell Spike dumped into another layer of the universe. You can’t even measure the energy output of it, because you can’t. Its not that there isn’t a tool or power that has yet to be invented or developed. You just can’t. The Shards are beyond our full understanding. Period. I won’t kill us all because you want to experiment. I have too many things I want to do yet. Things I have to accomplish. So, what is option B?”
Tetra sat down as the rest of the group absorbed what he had said. They didn’t often dispute what he said, and certainly couldn’t go against his wishes. The Converted demons literally couldn’t, it was hard wired into them during their conversion. However, they could make their thoughts known, and even debate those when necessary. Grim didn’t want mindless slaves, but he did need unquestionable loyalty.
“Matter conversion power plants,” Tetra said at long last.
Grim whistled. “That’s a big jump. A very, very big jump. Straight past fusion even. To be honest, I don’t think you can build those within a-“
“Stop!” the cat demon said, holding her head. “I… my powers work so much better than they did, but that was putting me on the edge of something I couldn’t… couldn’t wrap my brain around Boss,” she said, panting as the migraine retreated.
Grim nodded. “Right, right. Stick with fusion, cold fusion in particular. Its much easier to maintain, cleaner, and will provide you will all the energy you need. We can discuss the other things later.”
Tetra nodded and stood up, “I have work to do. Rat? Vincent? With me. Lets get these big blimps landed so we can start putting together our little base of operations.”
Grim gestured at her to go, and Tetra walked out with Rat and the Captain following. Stella remained sitting where she had been, watching the trio go with curious eyes. Once the door closed behind them she turned to Grim.
“That could have gone better, and this gem thing. The Shard. Why not say anything before now?” she asked, curious. The succubus was remarkably intelligent, forward, and savage when she had to be. Nothing like her hero persona before her conversion.
Grim shook his head, “I figured out Tetras powers a while back, its what let me upgrade her,” he said, sitting back into the couch. “She takes what is said, ideas that are discussed, and her power super charges her mind and imagination to make the intuitive leaps in their construction. What her power does not do is explain to her why it works. That’s why she was drawing a blank in regard to the Shard. No one in a dozen realities know how, or why, they work. Or even what they do. Just that they are scary powerful. I am not going to hand infinite power to someone who understands it less than I do in order to power what amounts to a small kitchen appliance. We would all fucking die.”
Stella nodded her head. She could understand that. It was never wise to give power to those that didn’t understand the ramifications of having, or using, that power. It was almost never a good idea to give power to someone who did.
Sighing Grim reached across the table and picked up the succubus’s cup. With a smirk on his face, he poured himself another cup of tea. Taking a sip he said, “Now, lets get landed and set up. Then we can begin expanding. We also need a new Hell Spike. Like I told Tetra earlier, the Shards are beyond our full understanding, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find a use for the one I have.”
Smiling fully, Stella shivered from head to toe as she could see the very inhuman visage hiding in plan sight. “Its just a matter of tweaking the right settings.”