With the help of both the Homunculi and the workbench’s automation, Kaleb’s work went swiftly. He still had to do much of the grunt work, but somehow the little devils made everything easier. They prepared pieces for assembly, brought tools closer, and were constantly cleaning the workspace of clutter. All that remained for him to do was re-code the scanner. But Roy and Terrance had come back from their shopping trip to get server racks.
After the gremlin hunt ended, the two boys took off in Roy’s truck and came back just as Kaleb finished working. Marie, meanwhile, was back at her own station forging armor. While Daivor took a well-deserved, if somewhat long, break. Now that the boys were back and picking up their own projects again, Kaleb felt the need to stretch his legs. Being bent over a workstation for a few hours was getting to his back. So, standing and stretching, he worked out the knots in his lower back and legs. Once that was done, he grabbed a lab coat from the rack and hurried out of the shop.
As soon as he left his shop, he was inundated with smiles and cheers from the surrounding NPCs. Ever since the gremlin incursion, everyone had been riding a high that seemed nowhere near dissipating. But Kaleb wasn’t mad at it. The workers were doing their jobs well. The drone operators and pencil-pushers were happily typing away at their terminals. Two Gun had rushed off to join the ladies, so now it was just Kaleb and the NPCs.
Kaleb hurried over to the office to set-up the server room, getting more pats on the back as he went. Once inside, he quickly grabbed some coffee and brought up the hangar’s menu. The various rooms on the top floor of the hangar lit up, and he cast an easy glance over everything. All the rooms had taken some damage from the gremlins, but none more-so than the workout room. Even with the Homunculi helping, it was taking a while. Most of the other the rooms on the hangar floor were sitting within 90% integrity and rising.
He quickly glanced through the basement floors as well, but it didn’t look like the gremlins had gotten down there. The power generators were still whirring away, and their enclosed area was still locked off and warded heavily. Once Kaleb was sure the rooms and the generators were fine, he brought the map back up and swapped over to the Room Construction tab. That’s when he got a surprise. There were a few new rooms added to the tab now. They had little blue dots denoting their addition to the tab. Thankfully, they were separated into two categories, new rooms for Brutes and new ones for Hunters.
The Brutes had a wide selection of workout rooms, everything from sparring arenas to targeting ranges. But they also had a few interesting choices for recreation. There were sun rooms, saunas, and a sort of lounge that was half submerged in water. Kaleb thought all of them looked appealing, but he wasn’t going to buy anything without input from the rest of the group. He also noticed that each room would increase the loyalty and work ethic of their NPCs.
Switching over to the Hunter side of things, Kaleb saw a lot of the same types of rooms. Their training rooms were less severe, except for the one that called for live creatures, and they had a collection of resting rooms too. Those were more of the standard teenager fare. Large TV rooms and cinemas, arcades, bars for the older hunters and general social areas. Kaleb was sure the group would elect to build some of those spaces, but for now, he wanted to get his server room up and running.
Rot and Terrance and leaned the server racks against the southern wall of his workshop, as he had ordered. So the Floor Plan had the server room right next door to his area. Kaleb was fine with that, so he started working out the dimensions of the room. Thankfully, with the spare metal and most of the items already provided, the cost of the room would be kept low. But it was still a sizeable chunk into his own personal savings. But he went ahead and clicked accept after giving the room proper the proper ventilation. The last thing they needed was an overheating server room. Which reminded Kaleb that he needed to build a cooling system for the room.
Finishing his coffee and pouring himself another cup, Kaleb left the office in time to see the server room building itself. The walls sprung up and attached to Kaleb’s workshop before shooting slightly southward, creating a small, square room. Then the vents sprung into existence along the top and bottom of the metal walls. Kaleb didn’t see it, but he was sure a door grew into his workshop’s southern wall as well. Nodding at a few more smiling NPCs, Kaleb returned to his shop and immediately checked. Sure enough, his workshop was now attached to the hangars server room.
He clapped his hands together for attention and all three teens in the rooms turned toward him.
“Okay, can I get a hand moving the hard drive and robotic cores into the new server room? Please?”
With surprisingly little grumbling, his three assistants hurried to follow his orders, and Kaleb joined them. He scooped up an armful of what were essentially robotic brains and hurried into the new room behind Roy. Terrance and Marie were looking around the new room as row upon row of empty rack sat before them.
“Let’s start with the hard drives on that end, and then we’ll add the cores over here.”
Marie nodded, but Terrance looked at the hard drives in his arms, confused. “Boss, are you going to be able to wire all this together? I know the processing power of a robotic brain is a lot, but can the hard drives keep up?”
Kaleb grunted as he placed a fairly large Titan-class core on the nearest shelf. The big orb wobbled slightly on the flat rack, but it eventually stopped. Kaleb ran his flesh hand across the orb's metal shell until he found the access ports. He spun the orb toward him and checked the ports over as he answered Terrance.
“Yes. There might be some chugging as the cores get used to working with the slower hard drives. But I think we have enough robotic brains that things will even out quickly.”
The tall teen nodded as he started placing his drives into the racks. “So these things will just be holding and transferring data, right?”
“Essentially. My new scanner will ping the dish on the roof, which will then send a signal to this room for the information I’m looking for. The cores and drives will search out that info and send it back up to the dish and then back to my scanner.”
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“Won’t that take a while?” Marie asked.
Kaleb spotted a few Homunculi moving about the new room carrying cores and drives. They were passing them off to his assistants, which made him smile.
“Yes,” Kaleb answered Marie. “But not as long as you’d think. The dish is calibrated to use R-Waves. So things should be pretty snappy. Like everything, though, it’ll take some troubleshooting.”
“Blegh! This is why I prefer working with armor. If it works, then it works. And if it doesn’t, then your customers aren’t around to complain.”
Kaleb, Terrance and Roy all stopped what they were doing to stare at the shorter woman as she happily took another hard drive from a Homunculus. Sensing their gazes, Marie scowled at them before going back to work.
“I’m not saying my stuff doesn’t work! Just that if my armor is bad, then I won’t see many repeat customers.”
Kaleb absently reached down to the floor and grabbed some cables a Homunculus was handing him as he asked.
“Marie, you are stress-testing your stuff, right? At least a little?”
“Yes, Professor. All the items I create are tested for cracks and imperfections before I pass them out to our workers. And no one has complained yet. In fact, some of the Brutes were getting antsy because they hadn’t had a chance to use their new equipment.”
“So there’s one positive that came from the gremlins.” Roy added.
“I don’t know,” said Terrance. “Those gremlins weren’t really that much of a challenge. One swipe with a sword and you’d kill three of them.”
“Not to mention they got under my armor pretty bad,” Kaleb agreed.
“Well, what other way do they have to test our stuff? Most of them don’t use their gear until they swap out with a new group from Under-Town. At least our fellow Hunter’s get to test our stuff in the sparring circle.”
Kaleb thought about the Brute’s Sparring Ring room as his fingers started connecting wires into the Titan-class core. He attached a diagnostic pad into the other end of the wires and started going through the core’s code as he asked.
“How do you think they would feel if we added a sparring ring to the hangar?”
Roy’s delight was writ large across his face, but Terrance and Marie looked a little more unreadable. They both put a few minutes of thought into it until Terrance spoke up.
“I think both groups would like it. But our parents are pretty stringent on the training we receive. A lot of hunter training is steeped in tradition and rituals.”
“Okay. So maybe not for the Hunters. But we can add something for the Brutes.”
Kaleb nodded to himself as Marie and Terrance made noncommittal sounds. Roy was practically nodding his head off his shoulders as he started on the next row of servers. The four of them shared benign conversation as they worked on getting the servers placed and reworked. Kaleb went down the line, reformatting the cores and hard drives with his diagnostic pad. Once everything was in place, Terrance and Marie went back to their work, and Roy helped Kaleb format and link each drive to a core. The hope was that the robotic cores would give a boost to the hard drive. He just hoped nothing caught fire.
Kaleb was about to start building cooling fans for the room when he heard his workshop door open. For a moment he thought it was Abby or Claire, but instead, Farrah’s voice echoed through his shop.
“Professor! It’s time to go to work!”
Kaleb grumbled as Roy shot a grin his way. Picking himself up from the floor of the server room, Kaleb walked into his workshop, a mock-scowl on his face.
“What do you think I’ve been doing?!”
“Summoning gremlins on my innocent trainees and drinking all our coffee.”
Kaleb’s face became deadly serious as he dropped the scowl from it. “We aren’t out of coffee, are we?”
Farrah rolled her eyes. “No, Professor. But we have a mission lined up and waiting for you.”
Kaleb nodded and got himself kitted out before he issued instructions to the others. Daivor was leaning against his Gnome Home and listening. So Kaleb was sure some of what he wanted done would get done by the time he returned. After issuing his orders to his assistants and Familiar, Kaleb followed Farrah to the Control Room. There, multiple drone operators were relaying information to the various terminal workers. Kaleb tried to follow the action. But Farrah quickly dragged his attention to the main screen.
The camera footage showed that it was getting late in the evening now. The streets were dark, but the streetlights had yet to come on. Farrah’s screen was pointed at a heavily populated area, clearly not in their jurisdiction. He raised an eyebrow at the bunny-woman, but she wasn’t paying attention to him.
“In case Two Gun hasn’t informed of what he found during his excursions the other night, allow me to inform you. During his investigation into TekNik’s automaton store, the old man found several documents noting an upcoming change in the company’s direction.”
“Biological enhancers?”
“The documentation didn’t say. All that was written was that their stores would have to clear space for the upcoming new product. The space would be wall-mounted near the register and have enough at least two inches of clearance above and below the shelving. There were also several requirements for the shelves themselves. Such as padding, temperature control runes, and locking clamps so nothing could knock the thing off the wall.”
Kaleb nodded before waving a hand at the screen. “Okay, so how does all of that lead us to the Austin headquarters for TekNik Electronics?”
Farrah nodded. “I checked with Alderman Madden’s office. TekNik’s R&D division has not submitted the paperwork for any experimental products. Nor have they recently announced anything.”
“So they are stealth-launching a product.” Kaleb shrugged. “That’s not new.”
“Professor, I’ve checked every database we can get into. There’s no record of TekNik submitting any of the forms necessary for this product launch. Which is suspicious enough. Then you add on the fact that the new product is a biological one from a company specializing in robotics and vehicles. All of it is suspicious enough that Madden’s office has given us the go ahead to sneak into the TekNik regional offices to see what we can find.”
Kaleb blinked. “That seems… excessive. But what the hell, I’m sure the others will love a stealth mission.”
“Wait!” Farrah said, raising a hand, palm out. “It’s just you on this one. The downtown PD would accept a team of one. And you are restricted to the C-suite of offices. Your job is to get in, find any evidence of wrongdoing and then get out. The building is locked down because the executives took their employees on a company retreat. So all you’ll have to deal with is the building’s security. Now the PD has been asked to step back, but the HLO hasn’t responded to my phone calls. Also, independent heroes are still a thing. So be careful, Professor.”
Kaleb flexed his fingers as he looked at the image of the five story building. It appeared to be a typical office building in the middle of downtown Austin. But with TekNik being a robotics company, who knew what defenses it had? He could already think of a few counter measures and he was wondering if there was time for him to build a few more. But by the look on Farrah’s face, he needed to hurry.
“Okay, let me grab a few things and I’ll be on my way. Send me the address when I’m in route?”
Farrah nodded as she immediately started barking orders at her staff. Her NPCs started to moving drones and into position. He heard a few even coordinating with the downtown police department. Kaleb grinned as he counted the taser-eggs in his pocket. Those would come in handy when dealing with robots. At least, he hoped they would. As the flurry of movement behind him picked up, Kaleb was secure in knowing that, at the very least, he’d have the most overwatch of the night.