Luck was on their side; who knew that the five of them would live to see another day, though that other day might be too short if they did not get any medical supplies soon enough.
"How did we survive? Who killed that?"
Qasim asked as he propped himself against the wall in the upper story of a building not too far from the battle site. He looked through the ripped wall and saw the massive corpse of the Gigant lying at the center of the intersection.
He and Toby were the first to regain consciousness, but it was clear they weren't fit to travel far yet. Sarah and Justin were still out cold, so Megan needed assistance moving them. The three cooperated.
To answer Qasim's question, Megan was looking blankly at the street, unable to put two words together. To find an answer, she asked a question of her own.
"Do you think that other worlds exist?" Megan asked.
Qasim and Toby frowned.
"The monsters had to come from somewhere, right?" Qasim replied.
"No, I mean another world of humans just like us—ones that are more powerful and advanced, where an elite soldier can kill a Gigant alone?"
Hearing her, Qasim looked blankly and shook his head.
"I don't know. We didn't stand a chance, and we had everything you could think of: guns, tanks, and nukes…"
"But what if they have more?" she asked. "Supersoldiers, Power Armor, Plasma Swords…"
"You're talking Wartopia? That faction you used to play?" he asked, a smile on his face and his head shaking.
"Yes, the Solarium." She nodded, her face rather serious.
"I mean, one of those Power Armor dudes from that game could actually do that, I guess… but you know, we play Dice of Destiny. I can say the same about a Celestial Knight or a Runeforged Berserker." Qasim dismissed the notion before pausing. "Just what did you see?" he asked her.
The look in Megan's eyes became distant, and she looked back at Qasim, shrugging with a blank yet freaked-out look on her face.
"It may be the trauma… mostly," he said, looking at the dead Gigant and the burning Van that it destroyed not too far from the Gigant. "Well, all we know is that something killed them. It didn't rescue us per se, so… even if it's a Power Armor dude or some superhero, let's pray it's on our side."
Megan fell silent and brooded for a while, unable to shake off what she saw.
A Star Paladin was right there in front of her eyes; it was as alive as she remembered it, and the wounds on the Gigant are a testament to his handiwork. But right now, she can't really be sure of what she saw.
But who else can slay a Gigant? Who else would leave battle marks and footprints like that?
"Hey, Megan." Toby approached her and passed her some canned fruit. "You are the least damaged among us now, so you need rest more than anyone. We'll have to rely on you. Keep sharp."
She received the can silently and looked at it without uttering a word.
"Tomorrow, we try to head back to the shelter. The amount of Gobzkin activity is increasing. We need to warn them," Qasim said.
"What if we don't make it?" she asked, her eyes growing even more desperate at the sight of her battered and bruised friends around her.
"Then we get to a radio and contact the Professor. A communication tower or something—we can do it," Toby said, his eyes determined.
"We will not make it." Depressed, Megan put down her canned food and started thinking.
"Hey." Qasim called to her. "It's alright if we die. I mean, what are the odds we'll survive another week?"
"Don't say that." Toby said harshly to him.
"I'm okay with it. You should be too." Qasim said, looking at Megan. "What I'm not okay with is dying without doing something."
The three looked at each other and had an understanding. If they go, they'll have to make it worth something.
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
"Yes, yes… we can work with that. The space is nice, and the roof is mostly there. We have many spare building materials and some parts; the rest will be made quite easily."
Amidst the ruins of the Tanaka residence, Sergeant Elena stood in the middle of the devastation. Her sharp eyes scanned through the wreckage, seeing not the ash of the burnt-out place, but the phoenix that could rise from it. A full-blown refurbishment was being planned in her keen mind, just as Adam and Kave had suggested.
The second phase of the plan was the most ambitious thing they could build: a Command Center.
In all the RTS games of Wartopia, as well as every RTS game that existed, there is one very basic, shared aspect that never changed: the most elementary building of all: the building that can produce worker units, research core technology, and act as the heart of every base.
Most classics called it the Town Center or Command Center, others called it the Nexus, the Construction Yard, the Capital Building, the Keep, or the Headquarters, all depending on the theme and flavor of the game.
In Wartopia's RTS games, the Command Center could produce basic units like the Auxiliaries by attracting recruits from nearby Silo-Cities and Solarium Settlements that are under the protection of the base. The Command Center also establishes a large communication range around it without the need to build Beacon Towers everywhere.
But the most enticing thing that can be made in a Command Center is the Swiss Army knife of all Solarium vehicles, the Crawler.
The Crawler is a resource-gathering and construction vehicle of the Solarium. It can crush and gather scrap into a dump box with its front grinder gear and robotic arm, or it can be switched to the Concrete Printer, carrying a concrete mixer and using the robotic arm to 3D print buildings.
If one of those were ever produced, nothing would be impossible from this point onward.
"Another task, Commander Clay." Elena said.
"Shoot, Sergeant." Adam knew that there was something else needed since Elena was hinting at it from the start.
"Since most of the squad will be busy with preparing and fixing the Command Center, we will empty the garage and move the workbench inside."
"Alright, how can I help?"
"How are you with making your own Blazer?"
"Still midway." The focus crystals are proving a bit tricky.
"If you finish it, you will be upgrading the workbench by giving it two robotic arms."
"Two?"
Adam was certainly surprised. Robotic arms are great for automating tasks, and the Sacred Code can operate them once they are linked and configured to the workbench. However, he had never done it before, building robotics, that is. He was confident in his programming and basic mechanical skills, but the motor aspect was outside his scope of expertise.
Elena certainly didn't leave him alone and offered him her knowledge to assist him in creating servo motors, whose blueprints were available on the workbench terminal. And after a few hours of trial, error, and programming runs, Adam was finally able to make the first arm move.
Having such a robotic arm functioning was a miracle in itself, and Adam never imagined how terrifyingly helpful that thing proved to be. With the Sacred Code running and evolving its efficiency with each cycle, Adam found that the robotic arms were quickly compensating for all his shortcomings in the mechanical department, and as soon as he completely set up the first arm, it helped him finish the second arm in no time.
If there was space to fit more arms, he would have added them at this point, but one look at the limited space of the workbench, and it was easy to imagine how cumbersome this would turn out to be.
The arms boosted Adam's efficiency so much that he finally solved the problem he was having with crafting his Blazer gun. He was having a hard time connecting the polyfiber wires to the capacitor that was being fed energy from the power cell through an array of carbon nanotubes. That crystal was the core piece that would transform power and heat into Blazer energy, capable of both building and destroying.
While rudimentary at best, Adam was finally able to make his first makeshift Blazer Beam emitter, which was too early to call a gun just yet, as he was still missing core technology parts.
But for now, this emitter he made was enough to project Blazer beams capable of cutting and welding, giving him the instant idea of investing his first Blazer into the workbench as a robotic arm attachment. He then programmed that arm to fully utilize the beam emitter along with its functions, giving the workbench a much-needed upgrade.
Another upgrade was a simple material scanner made by attaching a phone's camera to the circuit board and giving instructions to the Sacred Code on how to run it to read material codes that were outputted by the Refinery Rig.
With all that established and gratefully put together, Adam could easily declare himself the proud owner of…
——————————
> NAME — WORKBENCH
> STATUS — FUNCTIONAL
> POWER — ACTIVE
——————————
FUNCTIONS
— RECIPES LIST (19 Recipes)
— BASIC TOOLSET (Active)
— HOLDERS (Active)
— SAWBLADE (Active)
— ROBOTIC ARM A (Active)
— ROBOTIC ARM B (Active)
— BLAZER EMITTER (Active)
— MATERIAL SCANNER (Active)
——————————
Work was far from over, and Adam was running back and forth between the rig and the workbench in his first attempt to combine silicate panes with polyfiber in order to create rudimentary printed circuit boards, using specialized blueprints from the workbench. Since this was a very sensitive and focus-intensive project, he gave most of the workload to the new robotic arms while he focused on maintaining their code and making it as efficient as possible, almost pulling his hair out during the process.
Now he also understands why Techno Monks would go bald. And after he pulled an all-nighter, he was finally able to print a number of terminal-grade circuit boards, attaching salvaged microchips on them, using Blazer beams.
By the next morning, almost everyone was dead-tired from the assembly project they had to go through, and the Solar Plant had long since run out of juice, leaving the sun to charge it gradually.
Adam managed to assemble a makeshift keyboard and wired it to the motherboard of the new terminal he was building. After that, they pulled out a large LED screen from the salvage that looked intact and used it as a display. With the makeshift motherboard with its main computing components inserted and power being supplied, Adam let the Sacred Code do its thing to identify the Command Center on its own and run diagnostics.
Hungry but tired, everyone rested like the dead, each in their own corner. This time, they weren't sleeping on the outside like they had been; they were all in the Tanaka family house, now the almost-complete Command Center.
> REPORT — RUNNING DIAGNOSTICS
> REPORT — BUILDING UNITS IDENTIFIED
> REPORT — BUILDING SET AS COMMAND CENTER
> REPORT — PRIMARY PREREQUISITES MISSING FROM BUILDING LOG
> REPORT — COMMAND CENTER IS 55% COMPLETE
> REPORT — WAITING FOR CONSTRUCTION COMPLETION REPORT
——————————
> NAME — COMMAND CENTER
> STATUS — /CONSTRUCTION ONGOING/
> POWER — /NO POWER/
——————————
> PRIMARY FUNCTIONS
— CENTRAL OPERATION TERMINAL — /ONLINE/
— BUILDING FRAME — /COMPLETE/
— TACTICAL HALO-TABLE — /OFFLINE/
— COMMAND DATA CORE — /OFFLINE/
— COMM RELAY TOWER — /INCOMPLETE/
— COMMAND VEHICLE GARAGE — /INCOMPLETE/
— COMMAND TECHNO SHRINE — /OFFLINE/
— AUXILIARY TRAINING MODULE — /INCOMPLETE/
— COMMAND OFFICER QUARTERS — /INCOMPLETE/
——————————
> LOG ENTRY ENDS
> PRAISED BE SOL IMPERIUS
> GLORY TO THE SOLARIUM
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
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