I grabbed another beer and headed to my office. “Kelli, I need to add a brewery and med center to the city, can I afford that?”

She said, “Oh certainly Chief. We now have 5000 people using the store, we will never hurt for credits again unless you start building more Villages.”

That stopped me short. “Are you implying that I could build another Village somewhere? Me? By myself with no help from our... Friends?”

She said, Of course, Chief, we are currently living in a Village, we do have all of the plans to make another.”

I just grunted at the thought of that. Maybe in another ten years or so, who knows. I opened the city holo scrolled around for some building plans and put in a brewery, a distillery, and a med center. I glanced at the north and south harbors and built new smaller versions of emergency med centers there.

I looked up vehicles and found some very basic hover boats that were dirt cheap and bought four of them and had two placed in each of the new docking areas, just in case. Our old river which used to be so busy looked strange to me being so empty.

It kind of frightened me that an army could approach us under the water and I found simple sensors were dirt cheap. I placed a dozen up the riverbed covering the entire area. Jax showed up just in time before I spent more money and I forced myself out of my office.

Kelli piped in “Chief, there is a man named Willy already trying to use one of our new boats... his class is listed as Harbor Master, should I grant him access?”

I looked at Jax and he just shrugged, “Not just yet Kelli, I want to talk to him first. Let's head over there Jax.”

We made our way to the elevator and ported to the stables. Onida was there waiting. She just smiled and said, “Kelli told me you would be here soon.”

I said, “Where have you been all morning?”

She said, “In a training facility getting ready to fight. It's been a little while for me, I have been playing scout for some time now.”

We mounted up and headed straight out to the northern border. We found a huge native man with a flat ass and his jeans falling off of him tinkering with one of my new boats. He heard us coming upon him and turned.

“Chief, this thing floats, it has no drag, I have to get out on it and figure out the turning radius.”

I said, “Before you take my boat out for a spin, how about you tell me who you are and what you plan on doing.”

He gave me a look of frustration and then caught himself. “Oh boy, sorry Chief, I forgot you don't know who I am, I'm used to it the other way around. My name is William, everyone calls me Walrus. I used to be the guy that ran the Port Of Alaska in Anchorage, got me a Harbor Master class and everything. Did you know that you have one of those Lindblad National Geographic Fleet ships sitting down south inside of your city limits? It's not one of those older ones either, It is brand spanking new, barely used. Don’t know how it’s untouched… It can only carry two hundred people, but it is built like a tank, and chock full of all the goodies. Not that anything works anymore without System gear on it. It will make a good flagship for now for our fleet...”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I held up my hands “Whoa, whoa, slow down there Harbor Master. I didn't see the ship yet because I haven't been down that way yet, we are headed that way now. Did you say fleet? What do you mean?”

He said, “We are 100% going to need a fleet Chief. If you didn't notice yet a dozen massive islands are sitting right next to our city. Good thing we have so many people because those islands are going to need to be cleared all of the time or we will get flooded with monsters from them. Those monsters that spawn there are not going to go out to sea, they are going to come right here to try and eat us.”

I looked at Onida and Jax and they both nodded. “Damn, another expense and more problems.”

He nodded and said, “Good thing you have me, I know all of the surviving Captains. We have some military water dogs too. I was built to take on this challenge. We are just going to need more boats and a couple of big ones. These little hovercrafts are good for getting around our waterfront, but not much else. I don't imagine you would want to take them out anywhere else, monsters will just leap up on these low decks and eat ya. We are going to need some real armored ships.”

I said, “Have you seen the beached cruise ship yet?”

He nodded. “Yep, I spent the morning walking our shores and looking at maps. Haven’t spent much time in Juneau, but it’s small enough that I already have a grip on it. Talked to the guards down there, I think that thing is already a dungeon, won't do us any good except for leveling hunters.”

I sighed thinking that a dungeon right at my front door might be a dangerous thing. I would need to get a rotation started daily on it.

“That Nat Geo ship is down at your old Franklin Dock, not much dock left there, but the ship is still tied up. I was gonna head down to it and try to see if I could manually start it up. Got a Mechanic and a Ship Captain coming with me.”

I said, “Good to see you just taking over.”

He shook his head, “Nope, not taking over, I was assigned this job like everyone else.”

I said, “Kelli please give the Harbor Master full access to anything he needs related to our waterways and talk to him about what kind of ships we will need. Let's get some pricing estimates please.”

In my head, she said, “Already on it Chief.” I looked over at Willy, but he was already starting up the boat with a grin on his face. This guy really liked boats!

I said “We will take the horses to this ship and meet you there. Kelli can you tell Smitty and Jane to meet us down at this ship please.”

Ten minutes later we were at the ship. It looked like some kind of exploration vessel. I could hear some laser rifles firing sporadically about a mile south at the border, but it wasn't so steady that I thought that I might need to go help so I studied the ship. It still had that new equipment look to it, bright and shiny. It looked like a scientific ship, but it had five levels with room windows, so it was a cruise ship built for the adventure-minded. The front of the ship sloped down and looked like an Eagle's beak that could cut through ice jams making it different from most other ship designs. I saw Willy and a couple of men pulling up and we hopped off our horses and went aboard to check and see if it was cleared for the men to work.

The ship was dark inside without lights even during the day and it was eerily silent. My night vision started to kick on. Onida had some tracking skill as a druid but said that even though she didn't see any life forms on the ship that something could still be hiding from her. We went through the different levels and looked in every room checking for monsters but found nothing but a few bloodstains.

Willy and his men came aboard and we followed them down to the engine rooms. The guy with the Mechanic class was named Bobby, and the second we entered the room he held up his hand for us to stop and whispered, “Something isn't right here. I don't recognize some of those machines along the back wall.”

As soon as he said that the room filled with the noise of metal screeching and vague shapes started moving. Mech forms started to take shape and as the monsters began to unfold before our eyes and I focused on one.

Mechanical Grease Monkey (Level 25)

I whipped out my All-Weapon and thought “Earth” and cast a Grasping Earth spell automatically. Hands shaped out of rock reached up from the decking and grabbed onto four forms. I swapped to a fire bow and started launching arrows. The rest of the group sprang into action. Jax activated some kind of humming chant that made me fire faster and Onida cast a spell that had thorny vines wrapping all over the mechs.

The Mechanic started throwing heavy pipe wrenches non-stop at the metal monkeys and the Captain and Harbor Master produced laser rifles and started pumping beams into them. Jax had pulled out the bow I had bought him and was firing mana bolts as well.

The monkeys never even managed to make it to us before they were blasted into metal heaps. Everybody was drawing deep breathes from surprised nerves when the silence fell after the short battle. Willy started laughing. “Grease Monkeys eh? It seems the System has a sense of humor in it somewhere!” We all laughed nervously peering around for more monsters.

The Mechanic moved about the engines bobbing his head up and down. “Everything in here is almost brand new, I can get this up and running with no problem once we bypass the electronics. We might need a portable mana genny though.”

I said “Good, do what you gotta do, we are going to go check on that cruise ship.” We left the ship and headed down to the border.