Days dragged on, feeling like months as Thomas sat at the desk in the control center and stared at the screens showing the outside world. He thought back to the meeting with the two Matrons, smiling at how serious they had been when they came to him with their thoughts and proposals, as if he was some petty king playing court. He did smile at the memory though, especially the part where he had convinced them that alcohol was mandatory for any negotiations. It had turned into a splendid night in his opinion.

On the screens he watched as the Rakus began tearing into what had previously been an administrative building, clearing it as part of the plan they had hashed out to create a surface community for the tribe. It still struck him as weird that they had come to him as the owner of the base, and technically, if one squinted and blurred their vision while looking at the contract his parent company had with the government…er.. former government, he was a military contractor with a civilian ranking and thus viewed as the highest ranking person on the base.

Thinking about that just made him want to reach for a bottle, so instead he shook his head to clear his thoughts and returned to watching the demolitions.

It had been several long days, working with Delvik and the other scouts to inspect the base, find the best spot for their settlement, which conveniently happened to be several buildings adjacent to the old mess hall, and then go through each building to inspect them.

All together, the buildings were near total losses, structurally unsound for the most part and infested with all manner of nasty critters, and even a few partially active defensive systems. The old administration building had been the worst, the upper levels literally crawling with mutated insects and the basement sealed with terribly decayed, but still sorta functioning defensive turrets. Thankfully they only had a few minor injuries for the scouts and one of his builder bugs was a pile of slag, but hoo boy, did they find some treasure, with the centerpiece sitting in his lab waiting for him to take a crack at it.

Apparently, that admin building had housed a section of the base's archives, both in digital and paper form. The Rakus had spent days hauling out a literal mountain of boxes of files and documents that Thomas dreaded having to wade into, but the prize was the intact server mainframe. He had personally handled removing all of the data storage units and transferring them to his lab, all the while being extremely thankful for the bureaucrats refusal to go to offsite, or cloud storage.

Thomas had managed to do some preliminary diagnostics with his mobile terminal and found that the server had continued running for nearly a year after he was teleported and the world ended. He still couldn't quite bring himself to fully believe what Sara had told him regarding the apocalyptic events that had ended life as he knew it, but the dots did connect in a strange and conspiracy filled manner.

Regardless, he was just waiting on the MRD to finish printing out the parts he needed to build an interface device to access and read the data on the storage units.

Shifting his view to another monitor, this one displaying the frame of a new building being constructed, he stifled a grimace at their structural imitation. He had never been a fan of american westerns, but apparently Delviks people had fallen in love with them. He could sort of see the appeal of the rugged frontier spirit, especially for a relatively young species, but he had tried to steer them towards something utilitarian and defensively focused.

It seemed that someone, and he wasn't going to besmirch the dead, even if they had bad tastes in movies, had quite the collection of old western movies, some even dating back to the nineteen fifties and sixties. Regretfully, the Rakus had found them and fallen in love with everything about them. He had gotten at least several requests a day to use the MRD to create revolvers, big hats and clothing for them. Fortunately though, they had accepted his explanation that the machine was required for more pressing needs, and in a mixed blessing kind of way, they had begun to produce the clothing themselves through plenty of experimentation.

This made looking between two of the monitors a sight to behold. On the one side there were Rakus wearing highly reflective, bright orange and yellow vests and protective helmets as they tore down the buildings, and on the other, raccoon cowboys, complete with hat woven from reeds or grass, using ropes and pulleys to build a structure straight out of the eighteen hundreds. Thomas was just glad that someone competent had been in charge of filling the bunker's digital and physical library with books on various low tech and DIY construction.

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Thomas just shook his head with a light chuckle, “it's their town and they can build it how they like”, he thought to himself. At least Delvik hadn’t fallen in love with the look like so many of the others.

With that thought, he stood and went to check on the parts he was printing. He couldn't wait to dive into the data that had been collected after the apocalypse, and hopefully it would shed some light on what actually happened, and perhaps, begin figuring out a way to prevent it from happening again.

***************************************************

Months ago…

The wind howled as thunder split the sky, rain poured down in sheets and seemed to fall sideways at times. The screams of panicking horses and shouts of their handlers could be heard across the camp as Boldran wove his way through the hastily erected yurts. The storm seemed to have snuck up on them, normally the seer’s would have sensed its coming days, if not weeks before and properly warned the tribe.

Something was wrong, he could feel it in the wind. It was not a normal storm, at least for the Desolate Plains.

Firstly, it was massive, almost as large as the giant storms that lashed the coastal regions to the south.

Secondly, it was blowing in from the east, pushing rapidly west. He feared that it could spawn a ‘nado swarm. Boldran had already ordered extra watchers to the perimeter to watch for the signs.

Finally, the storm was glowing. Flickering lightning strobing through the clouds. Occasional pillars of lightning reaching down to smite the earth below. It was truly an awe inspiring sight, and if it were passing to the north or south, he would sit and appreciate its destructive beauty.

Alas, it was barreling down on them, and much too large for the tribe to strike hard either north or south to avoid it. And so, as his grandfather had told him many time, “if you can't avoid or evade it boy, endure it!”,

Boldran continued on his winding path through the camp, assisting where he could, offering words of comfort or encouragement to those who needed it. A blood curdling scream, filled with terror like he had never heard before, sent him sprinting towards the center of the camp. There, he found a growing crowd surrounding the Seer’s yurt, panic filling their voices as they all stared at the yurt.

“I will handle this,” he shouted at the crowd, “return to your tasks to prepare for the storms arrival”

The crowd began to break up, tribesmen and women returning to their tasks, but he could still see uncertainty and worry in their body language. Screams from the Seer’s yurt rarely had good portents.

Pushing through the heavy flaps of the yurts entrance, another scream nearly deafened him, and as he felt blood begin to drip from his nose, and leak from his ears. Boldran quickly reached for one of the carefully maintained, fragile metal hats kept near the entrance of the yurt to protect visitors to the Seer’s. He felt the flimsy metal crinkle as he pulled it down on top of his head, and made his way into the main chamber of the yurt.

Light from several sun stones cast a dim light inside the tent, reflecting off of the hundreds of strips of the same flimsy metal that made up the hat that were woven into the walls and hung by string from the support poles, making the room seem to sparkle.

On the hide-covered floor lay his grandmother, shaking violently and foaming at the mouth as his mother, sister and the other Seer’s tried to keep her restrained.

She went rigid, as if every muscle in her body contracted all at once and emitted another ear piercing scream before collapsing to the floor.

“Lentina, what is happening to grandmother?” he asked his older sister as she let one of the others take her place and moved to stand next to him.

“It is a vision, a most powerful vision.” she said as she watched the older woman convulse on the floor. “She may not survive it, but we have heard her words, brother.”

“Tell me, what has she seen that is so powerful?” Boldran asked.

With a shiver, she turned to face her brother and looked at him with milky, sightless eyes.

“Hear the words of our Matron Seer, Oh chieftain of the Areasi.” she spoke with a deep and even tone.

“A ghost awakened, key to the old gods and bringer of rebirth or despair. Frozen hearts may yet reign, for the candle grows weak. The empty maw opens to consume all.” she spoke, her voice softening after taking a deep breath, ““those are the words of our most powerful seer. A great warning, an omen of things to come, and they appear to be focused to the east.” and gave him a knowing look.

Boldran stood silently for a moment, processing what he had just been told.

He then looked to the east as the massive storm continued its approach and wondered if his foolish child was involved in this.