Chapter 45
Boat Building.
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Twenty-seven hours later...
"I can't believe we're even fucking here."
Mindy is grumbling as the two are going through the last few books they were brought. This particular dimension not having any magical copyright defenses, simple duplication charms are enough for them to eat a copy each and put the originals in their library trunks. Dave shakes his head.
"Yeah, it seems a little odd to me too. I mean, I'm willing to help, but let's be real. Three carriers. Their guess is fifty fighters each, and one of these 'Gunstars' of theirs should be a fair fight against at least ten of them, according to their propaganda anyway. So they need what, like twenty of these things to deal with the enemy? With this being the capital planet of their 'Star League' and somehow not even having one. Not a base, not a fighter, nothing. I've heard of 'Not-In-My-Back-Yard' but this is a bit beyond what is even normal by those standards. It has to be." He sighs. "I freaking hope it is, anyway. Are you getting much out of these?"
She shrugs. "Some of it. The piloting, sensors, navigation, how to run the gunnery chair on one of their fighters, all that is coming through fine. Most of the base skills just get a new specialization under the tab, though. Apparently, there isn't a separate skill for 'space engineering' but eating the book can give you some ideas on how to account for the needs of it with the engineering skill you have. That kind of thing. Did the language book work?"
Dave takes a moment to look at the door to the room they are in. "Yeah. The sign on the door is just a warning to look for red lights and not try to open it if there are any. Vacuum warning, though I have to say that if you're worried about the hull getting depressurized, maybe something more than some red lights ought to be the response." He sighs. "The bitch here is that unless the Kodan are beyond stupid, we're on a timer. No idea how long the travel times actually are between their shipyards or what other forces they might have laying around, and here. But it took them what, not quite a year to muster up a response once they'd punched a hole in the wall? If they have any kind of fast or even instant communication, which I think we have to say is likely if for no other reason than they have some kind of hyper-drive and a messenger pod could do it if nothing else, then we have to assume that since the occupation was successful like six months ago? Rylos has at best a few more months before a second wave of Kodan is likely to come in to lock down their holdings. Based on what I'm reading, they don't even have a real army here yet. They can't expect to hold it long term with what they have, this is just maintaining air, or I guess space superiority and showing the flag on the ground. But the troop transports have got to be on their way, and with these people being what they are? The whole planet got cowed by the complement of three carriers." He laughs. "Almost as bad as Harry Potter. They had what, maybe a couple hundred Death Eaters at the height of his power? Damn near brought low all of Britain. Here they have three carriers and they've managed to run roughshod on a planet, hell they've put a third of the galaxy on notice. It almost seems like we should leave for Darwinian reasons. Saving these people could be a slight against science."
He sighs, shaking his head.
"Net result though, is we need good enough now, not the perfect solution in a year. I'd love to try to put together a carrier of our own, but that just ain't gonna happen. So they have a couple dozen older model or junked 'Gunstar' class space fighters here. My take is that we pull apart a couple, get one working, and then rune the piss out of it." He fiddles with some numbers on his scrap paper. "These things largely run on liquid hydrogen, both for directional thrust and for electrical power generation. Not exciting, maybe. But it might work out well for us if we can sort out a rune scheme to make it on demand in sufficient quantities. Their hyper-drive looks to be a space fold type, runs on the electricity produced. No idea of the physics behind it, but that's why the engines are so damn big. Folding space to cut the distance down to a tiny percentage of what it was doesn't do you a lot of good if that distance is still enough to see you die of old age."
Mindy stares at him for a moment.
"English, please. For those of us that didn't have time when they were in their formative years to become Star-whatever-the-fuck aficionados."
Dave smirks. "The shorthand example is that you take a piece of paper and assume that the distance from one edge to the other is how far you have to go. Then fold the paper in half, and now you just have to hop from one spot to the other. Problem is that if that hop is still going to take a thousand years, that doesn't do much for you. So the Starship drives are as close to light speed as they can get them and still have their artificial gravity and momentum compensators keep you from getting mulched, but the vast bulk of the distance is actually negated. And no, don't ask me how the hell it works. I can only explain this much by cross-referencing the books I just ate and some stuff I picked up from some old sci-fi novels that one of my English professors made us read. Between the two I can get that it does work and I could probably put something together with the parts, but thinking about it too hard makes my brain bleed."
He sighs and taps the paper he's been scrawling numbers on again after unfolding his example and pressing it flat.
"If we can get that liquid hydrogen rune thing off the ground and a liquid oxygen rune to go with it, then we have two pretty good-sized tanks that we can ditch and repurpose the space for. Honestly, given the size of the things I'm half tempted to say we should try to make a small living quarters in there. It'd be tight to start, but an expansion charm would solve that. Then all we would need to do is rework the cockpit into something that is maybe not quite so vulnerable and would give us access to the back, then pimp the thing with all the runes we would need to be able to shrink it down without it breaking the ship to attempt it, and we can maybe even take the thing with us when we go. Some runes for life support? Air, heat, cold, waste disposal, all that kind of thing? We can strip out even more tanks and air scrubbers and whatever. Then runes to increase the strength of it, hell, maybe even runes on the underside of armor plate to have them self repair when they get damaged, like a standard, preset repair charm just waiting to do off whenever that piece isn't whole."
He looks a little preoccupied for a second as he scribbles out numbers, and Mindy looks up from her own reading when he hasn't said anything for a few seconds. "Problem?"
He clicks his tongue once and then shrugs. "Just trying to figure out an edge we might employ to have a better shot at this and I'm not entirely possible this idea can be made to fly. Be cool if it did though."
She lets him have about ten more seconds before she rolls her eyes.
"And what, oh what could that idea be, oh guru of the arithmantic crap?"
His voice is a bit muffled as he scratches his head.
"Trying to figure out the power costs and viability in making the whole damn thing a reusable portkey that we can target based on sensor data. I can already tell you the magic cost is way too high to make it a viable long-distance travel option by space flight standards. But even if we can only manage to activate the thing a few times a day for thousand mile or so hops, that might give us what we need to get close enough to the carriers to put them out of commission." Then he looks at her. "That's assuming that we actually want to take them out at all. Pretty tempted to see if we can find some way to get on board and just take them over. That'd give the Rylans a chance to fight back when the ground forces we're expecting arrive. The only reason they would be taking things so careful is if their troop transports had the comparative armor value of bubble-wrap. Take them out in orbit and all of a sudden it's a done deal. Buys them another year, probably."
Mindy nods, considering. Infiltration has always been more her thing than his, and now her toolbox has a hell of a lot more options than it once did.
"I still like your idea of us having our own spaceship, and with the sheer amount of runes you are thinking of putting on the thing, it sounds like I've got my work cut out for me getting the sets designed. But as far as your infiltration scheme goes? As near as I can tell from the reports, the Kodan aren't maintaining any kind of barracks here on the planet. They're bringing down soldiers each day to show the colors and cause trouble, but the main method of observation is still from orbit." She snorts out a half-strangled laugh. "Probably the only reason they haven't found this place. So if we knocked out a couple of their soldiers here and put a portkey target on the inside of their helm or something, and a second one here? We could hop up, wipe out anything living on the thing, and hop back down. The only worry then would be keeping the other two carriers from wrecking the one we took."
Dave nods absently. "That and not being sure how nasty a situation we could be porting into, but yeah. Might be worth it to run that scam for a while before we act on it. Make sure that there are targeted soldiers on all three before we start. Pop up to the first one together, then split off and take one each if we think we have what we need to do it solo."
Then Dave smirks. "Plus, the control tower on the carriers that the Rylans are all hot to destroy because that's how Alex won? I would bet you anything you like that those same com towers can remotely operate the fighters. I'm not a psychology major, but you don't need to be one to recognize that a power-hungry race bent on control and enslaving everybody else would be the first to do something like that. Bring the fighters in for a landing, say, if the pilot is unconscious or even just getting uppity. So if we can wrangle the programming once we have control, we can just force the pilots to come in for a landing and then grease them when they get out. Take the whole thing completely intact and just hand it over to the locals. They don't want to pull the trigger, but ships that can be remotely operated can also be computer-controlled. That'd at least give them a fighting chance once we're gone."
Mindy shakes her head, her face in something that could accurately be called 'the ultimate sneer.'
"I think assuming that anything we do is going to give these morons a 'fighting' chance is doomed on its face, but as long as we build our ship first, I'm not sure I really care."
Dave sets aside his notepad and looks at her directly.
"They annoy me too, but you really don't like these people. Care to tell me why?"
She shrugs. "They're arrogant enough to lord over all the other races in their area of space while at the same time being cowardly enough to hide behind them when things get tough. I looked into it. The lizard guy that is Alex Rogan's pilot and navigator? Him and his family live in a fucking cave. And apparently, they're pretty well off by the standards of their planet. Co-saved the known galaxy, isn't even paid enough to buy his wife a freaking house. Plus, the fuckers are so damn pussy that when their great defensive wall fell they all rolled over like two dollar whores and took it. This shit should have been handled months ago, and you know it. Even if you ignore the rest of the 'Star League' you have the resources of a fucking planet here, and the overwatch on them at the moment is laughable. You can't tell me they don't have the smarts to have worked out something to take out three ships by now. Before we met you, Dad and I came across an eleven-year-old girl being abused by a three hundred pound fat bastard. She was already bloody, barely conscious, half-dead, and stripped bare before we got there and saved her. She was still fighting though, and if she can do it they sure as hell fucking can. It's just really hard to care about a bunch of entitled shit-sucking ass clowns that that would rather show their belly than fight for themselves. It's no wonder the Kodan wanted into this sector of space so bad. They knew it'd be a cakewalk once they were here."
She looks at him, shaking her head. "If it wasn't for the fact that I don't want all their client races to suffer, and I want to get the hell out of here as soon as possible? I'd say fuck 'em. Build our ship and just disappear somewhere for a few years until the nimrods in charge of this bullshit garbage detail we're on get fed up and pull us out. Spend the time fiddling with runes, arithmancy, this new tech, and making sure I can't walk straight as often as humanly possible."
She pats him on his crotch with a lustful smirk in the most creepy display of affection ever, and yet he can't help but smile. It's just such a Mindy thing to say. He laughs as he stands up.
"Okay. Well, you work on the runes and I'll go see what I have to work with in the scrapyard. Be back in maybe eight hours or less? Might take a while to sort out what's all there. Do me a favor and work out how to do the shrinking runes first. If it turns out that we can't do it without wrecking the ship, then that changes a hell of a lot in what I am going to bother with."
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'It's actually kind of sad.' Dave muses to himself as he is using a magically hardened metal stamp to apply the rune sets they need on the current section of armor plate. 'We could probably walk in here and demand their firstborn and as soon as they saw we had a full head of hair, all they'd want is to specify boy or girl.'
It has now been three weeks. Three weeks of learning as they go construction done at breakneck speeds. At this point, he is actually working on putting together four Gunstars. They have just enough parts for that many, and whenever he thinks he might be running into a problem with something missing these helpful aliens scurry off to either find or fabricate whatever he needs. He genuinely wasn't sure why they weren't already doing this themselves but had come to find out that none of the Rylans here had any idea how. None of them were spacecraft engineers. Apparently, anybody with that kind of education on file was taken prisoner months ago.
The first three Gunstars are pretty standard. The last one? Theirs? Is decidedly not.
First, instead of putting the cockpit way out in front, and the gunnery and navigation stations one in front of the other, they are instead one on top of the other, with the gunnery station on the top.
Second, they are losing the cockpit glass altogether in favor of using the same cameras the gunnery station uses for all-around fire control and putting it on screens rather than suffer the weak point.
Third, both the seats can swivel around, and then their occupant can exit behind them into a space expanded room that sits where the fuel tanks used to be. Just big enough that on either wall they can place one of the bulk storage units. Giving them space expansion storage on a fairly decent scale on either side in their space expansion room. They are both pretty sure that continuing this indefinitely could cause issues, but so far it seems completely stable. Not wanting to put anything on the two long walls makes the interior of it a bit strange, as most things are set against an interior wall when they get out the kitchen trunks and whatnot, but it's plenty serviceable and gives them an armored to hell space they can live in when they are using the ship.
Fourth, the armor plate is all set up to be self-repairing, stronger than it should be, and set up with an all-over color change charm to basic black. So if they aren't using the engines, the whole thing can fade into nothing more or less at the push of a button. The engines generate enough light to make that not really viable, but for hiding and ambushes, it's a pretty cheap camouflage.
Fifth, they have moved all the life support systems into magical equivalents that are in the space expansion and used the leftover real estate where they were to increase the energy storage capacity. Apparently, because you don't have to maneuver the whole ship to get a shot it is very possible to overrun the electrical generation capacity on the ship with weapon fire. This should triple the time it takes for that to happen.
Sixth, they added the permanent and programmable portkey to the ship. This is by far the most time consuming of all of their magic modifications, and they almost didn't bother except that even only being able to do it once every half hour or so, a thousand-mile portkey will make entering and exiting an atmosphere a hell of a lot quicker, easier, and less dangerous. While it's nice in some ways that the things are designed for vertical take-off and landing, the fact that they do so in a rocket fashion is... Concerning. Being able to just skip that part altogether and put the ship on the ground, facing the right way every time? Is just too useful a thing not to have, never mind possible avenues of engagement or retreat.
And lastly, at least for now, they have messed a bit with the weapons loadout. The stock version has lasers, photon bolts, and particle beams. Lasers are pretty self-explanatory. Three front, two rear, and between the lot they have an almost unprecedented field of coverage. The 'photon bolts' are this dimension's version of missiles. They do a lot of damage and are self-guiding, which is great. But they glow a bright blue when fired. Not so great. So there are two changes made here. A rune set to accurately copy temporary ammunition at need based on a 'master copy' kept separated in the magazine, since they finally had a version of that rune set that works. And another color change to black. They still aren't invisible to sensors, as heat is heat whether it is spreading light or not. But it should be quite a bit more difficult to pick them out of space with the naked eye. There are four of these launchers, and while they are technically forward-facing the fact that the things can self-guide around the ship to nail a target makes that less of a concern. Lastly from the original design, there are the particle beams. These are four massive, spine-mounted weapons that are forward-facing only. Obviously there specifically to be used against things like these carriers and probably worthless against enemy fighters. In the end, Dave decides not to fiddle with these because particle beams are an oddity to him. He doesn't mind having them, he won't shy from using them. But until he has a better idea of how they function, he won't be messing with them either. The power draw on them is high enough to be entirely too scary to screw around with until he knows a hell of a lot more than he does.
In the end, they only add a single truly magical weapon to the mix. In fact, he isn't sure if it should be called a weapon, even though he's positive it'll get used that way. It's mounted on a simple turret located right in front of the gunnery chair, and even with the runes helping it requires that a person's wand is inserted into the joystick to use the thing so you can assert some control over what it actually does. Which is to conjure a temporary ten-ton sheet of steel plate, around ten feet by ten feet and just under six inches thick. The original idea was to pop it out to catch incoming fire if needed, as a makeshift defense. It took Mindy less than three seconds to speculate on what would happen if you were to conjure one into existence in front of an enemy craft that was going thousands of miles an hour.
It's as he is in the process of placing these last few pieces of armor that the call comes out over the junkyard that there is an attack in progress. They've had one or two of these a day for the duration of their stay and they've had to ignore them and just get on with the work because they were too far away to do anything. The whole issue would be handled by the time they got there, as most of these attacks are happening in areas where the resources are gathered. Places where, by and large, people aren't interested in living.
This time is a bit different. He bursts into the room they share to see that Mindy is working on chiseling something into a steel plate. Her annoyed expression is foregone at the look in his eyes.
"What's wrong?"
"The Kodan are dragging people out of that hospital we woke up in and are killing them when they won't tell who actually killed the four that came for us. Terror tactics to find us, they must have given up on denying food and the occasional beating. I find myself wishing to do violence."
The expression on her face is one of rage that is somehow kissing the edge of bliss.
"Get geared up, I remember the parking lot well enough for a portkey, and we can set up one each extra to bring us back here."
Less than two minutes later, they are looking up as the door to their room is thrown open by a pair of desperate Rylans, who get a clear view of the two of them vanishing right in front of them.
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When they drop to the ground in front of the hospital, there are a thousand people to witness their arrival. Fifty of them Kodan soldiers. The rest on their knees.
Twenty that are already dead.
The Kodan have a firing line set up for executions, and Dave's response is to pull the blade off his shield and fling it with a roar of hatred at people that would do something like this. Then he follows it in a charge to disrupt the formation, shield out front to tank the bulk of the shots as his bright green aura flares to soak any other fire that finds him.
Mindy immediately uses her semblance and teleports herself to the roof of the six-story building. But she leaves her spearhead on the ground where she was. Then that spearhead goes on a rampage, seeking the throat of Kodan by the dozen.
In less than two minutes, between the two of them, the Kodan are dead. When Mindy hops down the seventy feet to the ground there are screams, but when she lands on bent legs and the spearhead whips itself clean before sliding back into its metal sheath, they all just look at the two in awe. While the two gamers take a few minutes to loot, Dave calls out to the Rylans on their knees.
"Good odds they'll blow up this hospital in retaliation. At least the hospital. I'd spread the word, get the hell out of the city. We can't protect you against an orbital bombardment."
The kneeling Rylans, finally realizing that this chapter of their horror is at a close, begin to disperse. A good half of them go back into the hospital.
The two gamers turn to each other and shrug. They'd done what they could. Anything else is on them. Thanks to months spent looting the Combine, they have gotten ridiculously quick at this and it is only a few minutes later that they portkey back to their room.
Where they find they are surrounded by very confused Rylans which Mindy simply glares at until they leave. Even Dave is starting to really despise them at this point.
Fifty Kodan. In a city of millions, out in the open. Murdering civilians. And nobody could even bring themselves to hit them with a car?
How in the hell did they make it so long without finding their backbones?
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Author's Note:
Just one more to go here. Then I can get on with bigger and better things. At first, I went here for a chance to smack around how ridiculous the story here really is, but now it's just kind of getting depressing.
Anyway, take care and reviews, even ones that basically say:
'dis werld id lamez. goez somwher elz'
Are welcome. And in this instance? Probably true on top of it.