Chapter Thirty-Six - Diggy Diggy Hole

"One must understand physics. It makes it so much more interesting when you bend what you know to be absolutely true over and up and back into itself, because even as we break physics, the fundamental truth of it stands. It just becomes far more complex. And I think that's beautiful!"

--Grasshopper's Guide to Physics for Kids for K-3, 2055

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The next morning, after a nice breakfast, catching up with the Kittens around the house, and giving Lucy a parting kiss that broke the minute mark, I picked up Rac from her corner of the house, then headed out again.

I could have stayed at the site the night before but... why would I ever want to do that? Sleep in a tent that belonged to some sweaty soldier or sleep in my bed, at home, with a warm Lucy? It wasn't even a choice.

Rac seemed to prefer to head back home as well, which was only fair. What was more surprising was discovering her ready to head out the next morning. I half expected her to want to go out and do her own shit.

Still, I decided not to comment on it. I knew for a fact that if I was doing something helpful for someone and they made a comment, even a positive one, the chances that I'd want to keep it up were slim.

Oh, and I had to gear up a little better. The day before I'd been heading out in more casual gear. It was a little strange to think that I had enough clothes, let alone armour, that I had to choose between sets, but that's how it was.

Lucy had found a place to dry-clean that armour I'd... shed in. I inspected it real close and didn't find anything suspicious or gross, so that's what I was wearing again. It was better armour in any case, and it was the set that Emoscythe had helped design.

We rode my bike back across the city and through the countryside beyond.

When we arrived near the site I noticed two things.

First, we weren't alone in the air. There were several balloons hovering a kilometre or so up in the air. Looking at them made my augs fritz a little on the edges, like they were glitching out. The balloons were set in a circle around the entire site at more or less even intervals.

The second thing I noticed was that shit had been moving overnight.

I wasn't sure what criteria Grasshopper had for a space, but they'd found it in what was essentially a roadside stop. One of those little sideroads that lead to what was basically a large parking space in the middle of fuckall nowhere. It was surrounded by some sparse forest that was overtaking what had probably been fields once.

When I'd left, the engineers were going to set up a camp. Tents, the mobile base, some trucks and shit. It wasn't fancy.

Now? There was a trench being dug out of the earth by three tractors. A crane was set up to one side, moving loads of crap out of the way. Dump trucks were moving about, and there were six cement mixer trucks parked in a neat row off to one side with their drums spinning away.

There were more people, too, moving with speed. I'd seen a few construction sites here or there. I'd never seen one where the workers all jogged around as if their boss was whipping their asses.

"Looks busy," Rac said.

"Yeah," I said. I noticed a few Samurai cars parked way off to the side where they wouldn't be in the way. My mech was there, as was Gomorrah's Fury and Tankette's... shit, what had she called her tank? Oh, and Grasshopper's entirely out of place little car too.

I pulled my bike in next to her car, then climbed off and adjusted my coat while Rac looked past me. All of the construction work was kicking up a whole load of dust into the air. There was more organisation to it than I'd realized, though.

The moment we were closer, my augs pinged me, letting me know that there was a site-wide alternate-reality system in place over this area and asking me if I wanted to join into it. I accepted since Myalis wasn't kicking up a fuss.

That lit up areas in different colours, threw up warnings into the air, and painted a dozen lines and dots across my vision. No wonder people were walking past each other without colliding. Someone, or something, was orchestrating all of the work, and it was doing it at the kind of pace that was probably well-past sustainable.

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We navigated through the area, apparently already having clearance to pass. The AR system directed me and Rac over to the mobile base which had one side unfolded and covered in tarps to create a bigger pavilion.

I found the other Samurai within, as well as Major Tinwhistle and what had to be a half-dozen lower-ranked officers.

"Stray Cat!" Grasshopper said. She was dressed in a cute, if modest, summer dress. It was railgun patterned, with the streaking lights coming out of the barrels drawing lines across her dress. She still had all the arms though, and a rifle slung over her back that looked like it could take out a tank.

"Hey," I said before stepping aside to let some hard-hat wearing guy past. "Damn, this place is busy."

"It is! At this rate the location will be ready for the installation by nightfall."

"The installation?" I asked.

"She means the big gun," Gomorrah said as she stepped over. "We've been going over all of the details for it. It's good that you're here, we're going to need some of your catalogues to help."

"None of my catalogues are that expensive," I said.

"Yes, but if we don't use them, then it won't count as though you helped. Well, it won't count as much. You did organise some of this," Gomorrah said.

Right, we were trying to game the system a little. The system run by the AIs in our heads who definitely knew what we were thinking.

"Well, if you've cleared it out with our passengers." I gestured to my head. "Then I guess it's fine. What are we going for here?"

"Oh! Let me show you!" Grasshopper said. She reached down and took my hand, then started to pull me towards the door only to stop on seeing Rac. "Raccoon! Oh, a pleasure to see you again. How are you feeling today?"

I suffered through some pleasantries, not quite daring to pull my hand free from Grasshopper's grip because that might have been just a little too rude. She chatted with Rac, then remembered that she was leading me somewhere.

So back outside we went, this time straight towards the big hole that was being dug out. It was long and pretty narrow, maybe thirty-ish metres wide, a hundred long or so? The hole wasn't super deep yet, but it looked like it was being dug out.

"Once this is done it'll have room for a cannon half a kilometre long buried twenty metres into the ground and anchored into the bedrock. The water-table here is quite low, and the ground is mostly solid stone. It's going to make digging deeper a bit tricky, but we have lots of high explosives and plenty of manpower!"

"Uh, wait, we're digging that big of a hole for the base of the cannon?" I asked.

Grasshopper turned and blinked at me. "No, it's for the entire cannon."

"So how long is it?" I asked.

"One kilometre long," she said.

"And we need a kilometre-long base for that?"

She stared, then something lit up in her eyes. "Oh! No no, we're not pointing this upwards, Catherine. This will be level with the ground. Well, level with gravity, actually."

"I am real confused," I said. "Isn't the enemy, you know..." I gestured vaguely upwards. "In space?"

"Of course! But shooting something through our atmosphere would be quite silly. The drag, the gravity." She shook her head, then gestured to my hip. "That gave me a brilliant idea."

I looked down to where Void Terminus was hanging by my side. I'd gotten pretty used to the sword's weight by now. "My sword?"

"Your sword-shaped portal into space," she corrected gently. "Why shoot through atmosphere when you can fire a quarter-ton sabot through a kilometre-long magnetic rail right into a portal whose exit is already in orbit? In orbit and on its way to Phobos, even! Though at the speed that the exit-portal, or rather the machine holding it, is moving, the difference in range is rather negligible."

"Oh," I said.

I eyed the growing hole again.

"Oh."

Yeah, no wonder Grasshopper wanted this to be kept on the down-low. People would shit themselves for this kind of tech, or this kind of weapon. And we were going to use it to punch bullets at space aliens... actually, that was probably a great use for this kind of thing.

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