I needed a place to set up. I had a long list of necessary conditions and desirable traits for this place, but the most important one was that it needed to be a place that could stay hidden for a good long time.

There were plenty of places to hide on Rubicon. Belius was a big continent, and it was covered almost completely by the Grids. As far as not being seen went, staying in the shadow cast by these colossal, multi-kilometre tall mountains of metal and industry seemed about the best decision you could make.

This wasn't quite correct. Sure, the significantly lesser amount of people now living on Rubicon meant that the Grids weren't in full utilisation anymore, and the disconnect that occurred from all of the events in the aftermath of the Fires of Ibis had made them a good place to hide, but there were better options.

Belius could be divided, roughly, into five parts. Going directionally, we could call these parts north, east, south, west, and central Belius.

Most of northern Belius was a cold place, catching the polar winds about as directly as it could. It was also a desolate place, extremely damaged and contaminated from the Fires of Ibis. Those northern areas had been caught in the thermal bloom of the ignition, the moment the Fires had reached the most concentrated release of heat and light. It had been such a ridiculous amount of energy that the northern Grids had suffered truly enormous damage before the shockwaves had even reached them.

A decent chunk of the northern Grids now didn't exist, and most of the rest were heavily damaged. There wasn't much life to be found there.

The further south you went, the more intact things were, though. Eastern, central, and western Belius were all far enough down in latitude to escape the worst of the polar winds. It was still pretty cold, but well within the range of Human habitable, especially with modern technology.

A large amount of western Belius was desert right next to a coastline, though this transitioned into something resembling a forest the closer you got to central Belius. Eastern Belius was technically more lush, but it was also mountainous, and a lot of that vegetation was vestigial after the Fires.

Southern Belius was the closest the continent came to widespread wetlands. Even so, the Grids interfered greatly with typical 'rain' patterns, and it was more like chequered patterns of dry land surrounding the Grids and wet, muddy messes wherever they didn't cover the sky. Nimbostratus clouds could form underneath the tops of the Grids, but that was a bit rarer.

Civilian presence was concentrated, roughly, in central Belius, though there were a few cities and pockets of civilizations throughout the entire continent, which were smaller and less common the further they were from central Belius.

The Rubicon Liberation Front, in turn, was focused mostly in those areas as well. BAWS maintained a few Arsenals here and there, which considering their affiliation, were basically outposts for the RLF.

Now, here's the thing. If I wanted to actually sell the illusion of a secondary allied group?

I couldn't just pick one of those places and set up. RLF territory was RLF territory, anybody operating there would be doing so either very subtly, or with the knowledge and likely permission of the RLF.

In turn, that cut off... quite a bit of hiding places. I could effectively cross all of central Belius off the list straight away. I could also cross off about ninety percent of western Belius, considering that there really was not a lot of room between the Dosers, the RLF, and the PCA.

Similarly, a decent chunk of eastern and southern Belius could be crossed out; the mountainous east had great terrain for going unnoticed, but there were a lot of Dosers there, and the PCA conducted fairly consistent and thorough checks on that area.

This left a rather short list of places I could go to. I could either pick the far-flung corners of the continent, ooooorrrrrr...

I could go to northern Belius.

It wasn't, all considered, a bad decision. The area was hard to access through the Grids, extremely difficult to survive in given that most of it was cold, contaminated, and lifeless, and it was far enough away from anything... interesting that only scavengers were fairly rare. It's not like the area had been anything special before the Fires. Expeditions there wouldn't uncover anything you couldn't find anywhere else on the continent.

It had great material wealth just laying around -on account of all the damaged and destroyed Grids-, the terrain was... mostly ash and snow, but it was decently hilly with cliffs and valleys. There were hard-to-access places that would be perfect for hiding from most scans that the PCA would do.

The only problems with setting up there were the facts that, A) It was far away from everything interesting and that was definitely going to affect operations going forwards, and B) I was going to have to handle the entirety of the environmental concerns. If it was just myself and my kids, I wouldn't have cared about that, but I knew I was going to get Humans here... soonish. I was going to have to make sure that the place was not just liveable, but comfortable.

"I think we can do it." Ezra spoke, considering the locations we had narrowed down. "It will also take time to study the Augmentation processes and develop it further. Constructing living facilities can occur at the same time."

"Most Humans on Rubicon are stronger than you'd think." Seria added. "These are people used to hardship. They might actually find it uncomfortable if things are too easy."

"Fair points, both." I acknowledged. "Still, I won't allow them to live in squalor. That's pointless cruelty when I have the option otherwise."

Alright, northern Belius it is. In terms of sites to set up in, though... Mountains, underneath Grids, inside Grids-

Hello there. A deep canyon that had several crashed Grid structures in the vicinity. That was a lot of raw material, a likely decent supply of lootable devices, and a good hiding place to boot. Fairly constant snow and river that would provide all the water any Human inhabitants would need without synthesis options... And a good kilometre of rock to hide under.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm liking the look of that.

"What do you think of this place?" I asked, flicking the data to the pair of them.

"Scenic." Ezra stated.

"It looks great."

"Seems we've got a decision, then." I smiled.

I had to make a modification to my drillship before we set off. I needed a bit more space to store a bit more Coral. Density was not, unfortunately, infinite, and I didn't really want to store Coral under pressure, for reasons both obviously bad and already stated.

That took about a week to get done, after which I packed up my stuff and donated everything I couldn't carry to the RLF.

It took several more weeks of travel before the drillship eventually arrived in northern Belius, but it arrived without issue. I waited a couple of days for a Coral Storm to pass overhead for maximum stealth, and then I got to work.

First step; getting a deeper look at what I was working with.

I was... quite deep into the Contaminated Zone. That meant there was a lot of ash, a lot of snow, and a lot of melted and cooled earth. The canyon was pretty deep, some fourteen hundred metres at its deepest, decently wide, and surprisingly long.

It also had an entire Grid just about cutting it in half. The structure had clearly been damaged so badly that it's supports and base had broken, leading to the whole thing just... falling over. That was a lot of metal readily available, with more littering the area from the broken, cast off pieces of the Grids, and even more within a relatively short distance from other nearby Grids.

I picked a point that wouldn't have direct satellite vision and which I thought would also be fairly stable, and then had the drillship start displacing dirt. I was going to build an underground facility, but first I needed an actual space to set up inside. That took enough time that it ate up most of duration of the firestorm coverage, but it was done before the firestorm had passed, so it was fine.

I left the displaced earth in a big pile against one of the canyon walls were it would hopefully go unnoticed, did my best to disguise the entrance just in case, and then got to work on the interior. I would, in the future, have to find a better way to deal with all the earth; though realistically getting rid of it all was going to require some Nucleosynthesis Plants in order to turn it into something more useful, and those were quite a ways off.

I got a small scale industrial setup going, and started to produce some local items, before I turned my attention to the fallen Grid.

We'd taken the AC with us, obviously, and I let Ezra go wild with scouting the place out. It was surprisingly intact, honestly. Sure, it might have literally fallen over, but the superstructure hadn't broken completely, and that meant that a considerable portion of its internals had survived. None of it could be used, obviously -absolutely none of these facilities had been designed to function when tilted eighty degrees on the side-, but that wouldn't stop me from pulling some of those parts out and installing them elsewhere. I also found a fair bit of material that was in fairly good condition, and quite a bit more that was in 'only needs a bit of refurbishment' condition.

After a month of work, the base actually began to resemble something deserving of the name. Our simple underground cavern turned into an actual, reinforced room, while the entrance went from a hole in the wall to a disguised door that we could open and close as we pleased. It was a ramp, with hydraulic arms that lifted a platform that had some specifically shaped rocks attached to it. It looks very natural while it was down, and it was surprisingly hard to detect unless you launched a scan while standing directly on top of it. I'd begun to dig extra rooms and corridors out, this time with much smaller drills and more precise drills than the drillship.

Flatwell came through on his end of things at the month's end, sending Dolmayan to drop off some datashards with info on the Augmentation processes. Credit where credit was due, it was a hell of a lot more than I was expecting after just a month. The man handed me full scientific principles and digital examples of Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Gen Augmentations. I've no idea how, but he also managed to acquire info on some Seventh Gen Augs, not nearly so complete but that's because Seventh Gen had just started.

"I am incredibly impressed, but also a little concerned about Flatwell's sheer competence." I'd admitted.

Dolmayan had laughed. I sent him back with the schematics for Coral vacuum breeding chambers, as well as a fully-stocked one, sufficient to meet a good amount of the RLF's Coral requirements. It wouldn't sustain them on its own, but it would definitely ease their burden and let them start squirrelling away resources where it mattered.

I got to studying the Augmentation Processes in detail while the base continued building up. Every time a firestorm went overhead, I pulled more and more equipment out of the fallen Grid, speeding things up just a bit more. Even so, getting everything online and functioning -and getting the base to a state that was comfortable to Humans- took six months from start to end.

But, I had food, I had water, I had comforts, I had communication, and I had just enough industry here to produce something of actual quality.

After that, it was a single letter along encrypted channels, and we were ready to go.

'We're in business.'