The delightful smell of Osar’s brewed coffee, fresh-baked bread, and exotic but strangely-familiar spices welcomed Eric in as he stepped through the door.
The breakfast meal that Osar had claimed was a Legion Quick-Spread consisted of what looked like flattened bread lathered with a combination of oils and spices and topped with a generous selection of preserved meats. A large bowl containing what looked like an egg and vegetable dish sat beside another wide pan containing several stuffed tubers that looked vaguely similar to potatoes except that they were about half the size of a standard volleyball and colored a pale green.
The people gathered around the breakfast feast looked up as the large doors cycled open, wide welcoming grins breaking out over everyone’s face. One of them, a short but compact woman with olive skin and dark hair rose from her chair and offered him a mug of dark, steaming coffee as he approached.
“Glad to see you up and about, sir.” Her voice was cheerful and welcoming, and her smile stretched and accentuated the paleness of the ritual tribal scars that adorned her cheeks.
“Outstanding work on the appendage repairs my friends,” Eric said warmly, flexing his newly-replaced arm playfully as proof. The almost invisible line where the arm had been cut moved freely without any signs of undue stress or tearing and Eric’s smile widened at the lack of pain. “The client asked me to personally tell all of you that he is completely satisfied with the results!”
“Yay bonus!” Cid, a big man with unruly hair exclaimed happily, taking a pull on his upraised mug.
“Would that be on top of our nonexistent salary, sir?” Serra, the woman, said mockingly, though her eyes were suspiciously bright with moisture as they inspected Eric’s arm.
“Sure! Everyone gets a ten percent raise!” Eric answered cheerfully as he took the mug of coffee from Serra’s hands and took his place around the laden table. As his friends exchanged smiles and low laughter, Eric took a sip, reveling at the rich, bitter, slightly acidic taste as the beverage slipped down his throat. An information window appeared which he quickly dismissed, even as he looked out over the spread and breathed in deeply to take in the delicious aromas.
“Let’s eat, Primus.” Osar, the burly alien at the opposite end of the table, said as he carefully picked up a slice of the flatbread and sat down.
For several minutes there was no talk around the table as all four of them focused on the food. So many notifications popped up from Eric’s God-Tongue ability that he had to instruct Pig to keep them subdued, just so he could enjoy himself without distractions.
Beside him Serra gave an appreciative sigh as she bit down on one of the green tubers. “I never really liked veggies,” She mumbled as she chewed. “Never had much of them back at the old planet, but this… This is pretty good, Cid.”
“It is, isn’t it?” The scientist beamed happily, enjoying a mouthful of the salad dish. “Ajela suggested that particular stuffing, mentioning they used to eat something similar back in their village.”
“Ajela is one of those bird-people, right?” Serra responded; her words slightly muffled by the food that filled her mouth.
“They prefer to be called Mayarad, you monkey,” Cid replied pointedly, snatching up the last of the tubers from the plate. “And we had better enjoy these while we can, since these are the last of the kikari tubers we have on hand. We won’t be getting any more of them until we can get our food supplies replenished.”
That last caught Eric’s attention. “Are we getting low on food?”
After a short pause and an exchange of glances, it was Osar that answered. “We’re still pretty stocked up on various meats and other animal products, but our vegetable and spice selection, in fact, most everything else not found in a monster’s carcass, has gotten pretty low, Jad-Os.”
“Food is going to be even more of a problem going forward,” Serra said softly, reaching for another slice of the flat bread dish. “Especially since we already added those six new people to the chow line, not to mention the rest of those that are still in stasis in the Issurath’s prison space that we also plan on setting free.”
Eric slowed down his chewing, his brows furrowed as he thought about the matter. “I’m still not sure I want a whole new bunch of unknowns tramping around a facility we still have minimal control over.”
“Captain, you… I mean, we, don’t really have a choice!” Serra blurted, waving the piece of flatbread she had taken for emphasis. “We need the additional bodies, sir, complications be damned! We can win over their hearts and minds later, but bodies come first.”
“I get that Jakobin,” Eric said, shaking his head amusedly at her exaggerated response. “It just feels wrong to let unknown scrubs into our operational area without me going through their former lives with a fine-toothed comb.”
“Control-freak!” Serra muttered, rolling her eyes. Eric felt a bubble of mirth rising at the irreverent mercenary’s very typical remark, something which he quickly suppressed for the sake of dignity even as the others around the table chuckled. Before he could defend himself Osar broke into the conversation.
“I’ve been going through the Issurath and its contents with Jurub, Jad-Os,” The big man said calmly, his chin fronds moving sedately with every word. With a few gestures he sent a data-packet to Eric’s personal datapad, waiting patiently as Eric took a leisurely bite of food before opening up the list he had been sent. “That Nurixan may have been a useless asshole, but whoever set up his ship’s brain was a grandmaster artificer… We still can’t get past most of the wards and protections for much of the more useful and sensitive information, especially anything regarding the Giboga Clan and their deeper motivations for sending the bounty hunter out and a-roving, but we did get into the extensively detailed files it had on every one of the prisoners the Bolseq was transporting.”
Eric gave a noncommittal sound around a mouthful of food to acknowledge Osar’s words, even as he rapidly scanned the short list projected in front of him. “Will we have room for all of these people?”
Osar nodded and turned to Luna, who obligingly stepped forward.
[Living accommodations will be more than adequate, Commander, as the Fortress Belzond was built to comfortably house and provide for all the needs of a compact, elite, defense-oriented security force.]
Still chewing, Eric wagged his eyebrows suggestively as he directed his attention to Luna. “Did you say provide for all the needs?”
Serra laughed out loud and even Cid chuckled as Luna, nonplussed and likely not understanding the crude innuendo, directly answered Eric’s question.
[Yes Commander, in addition to the expanded living quarters, I have also taken the liberty to activate and refurbish most of the personnel amenities of the Fortress’s first and second floors.] The Vessel Interface sounded extremely pleased by her initiative, both sets of her projected eyes blinking rapidly. [That includes the communal baths, two instruction rooms with a fifty-person capacity each, one of the larger training rooms as well as three smaller ones, and finally one group and ten individual cultivation cells.]
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Despite his amusement at the VI’s obliviousness to his very human, and slightly off-color joke, Eric found himself swallowing hurriedly, astonished at the number and variety of the rooms available for their use within the Fortress. “What are cultivation rooms?”
Seeing the human’s puzzlement at Luna’s last words, Osar quickly filled them in.
“Cultivation rooms are specialized chambers equipped with aetheric condensers, layered esoteric energy buffers and directed conduit flows to provide an optimum environment where people can maximize their cultivation gains.”
“Why do we need so many of them?” Cid asked.
“We don’t actually need so much, friend Cid,” Osar replied. “Although continued use of a room by a single individual has been shown to have beneficial effects as the levels of his personally refined aether increases within the chamber’s confines.”
“Ahh,” Cid nodded in understanding. “So, the more you use a room the better your gains, which is why there are a lot of individual rooms…”
“To an extent yes,” Osar beamed, showing a mouthful of sharp teeth as he grinned. “Although anyone with a reasonably similar aetheric suite could share the room… The gains are not that great an advantage in truth.”
“Convenient, but not really a necessity, eh?” Serra said, to which the gray-skinned alien nodded in agreement.
“Do we even have the aether reserves to power all of these new features?” Eric asked quietly after a moment of contemplation, digesting the information he had just received.
[Yes Commander,] Luna said readily, although Eric could hear the slight hint of hesitation in her voice. He waited a moment, and predictably Luna elaborated on her initial response. [At the current usage levels and my most recent aether consumption projections the Obsidian Moon can adequately provide power to the additional facilities with minimal chances of severe disruption. If, in the future, our consumption rates increase… To be safe I recommend that your staff address a few of the remaining Stage objectives I have identified as high priority for power sufficiency.]
“You’ve prepared a document regarding these matters?”
[Yes sir… Let me send it to all of your datapads.]
Once more silence descended around the table as everyone intently studied the file Luna had sent to all of them.
“Wait,” Cid said suddenly, excitedly pointing at one of the entries. Luna disappeared from where she had been standing and reappeared behind the scientist and almost instantly, everyone’s copy had the entry in question highlighted in bright gold. “Isn’t this that tower we went through that had all those hydroponics and vertical crop-gardens?”
“I remember that,” Serra said, nose crinkling at the memory. “Those fungal colonies were a bitch to clear away.”
“Luna, why is this building included in a list for power-efficiency?” Eric asked curiously.
[The Nusitral Tower was built by virtue of a limited-time contract between the original Commander and the Girondal Clan as a research and development facility for aether-saturated alchemical ingredients and void-capable, disease-resistant crops.] A tri-D projection appeared over the nearly-empty plates on the table, showing the tower in question with glowing multi-colored carets detailing areas of particular interest. With a gesture, Luna zoomed into the schematics of the top three floors of the tower, showing a strange flower-like structure with unfolding metal and crystal petals that extended across all three floors. [To ensure sufficient and suitably-diverse aether flows for their experiments, the Girondal elders commissioned the Ashin-Vetel Sect to create the Nusitral Rose, which is essentially a giant aether collector-condenser connected to a floor-wide conduit network with refiners and pseudo-biologic converters that then carry the newly-refined and aspected aether to the various experiment and research rooms within the Tower.]
“Fascinating,” Cid whispered, wonder and excitement lighting up his face as he tried to make sense of the unfamiliar tech Luna mentioned even as he studied the schematic before him. “And you think we can use the output of this Nusitral Rose to augment our aether reserves?”
[It will take some modifications to the conduit fields along the interior and exterior of the building, but if successful I project a ten percent increase to our overall aether capacity.]
Cid looked troubled for a moment. “Will those modifications detract from the research and agricultural capabilities of the Tower itself?”
[Not significantly,] Luna replied confidently. [Once sufficient saturation is achieved within a specific Tower chamber, most of the Rose’s output was just stored in artificial cores that the Girondal sold for extra revenue. Connection to the Stage grid will essentially serve the same purpose.]
“Excellent,” Cid said with a relieved smile, although the words ‘artificial cores’ gave him another piece of tech to be excited about. Setting aside his curiosity for the moment, he turned to his companions. “With savant Ranla and the Mayarad helping, as well as any additional technical personnel we acquire in the future, I think we might have a partial solution to our food supply problems.”
“Temporarily at least,” Eric said thoughtfully, although he agreed with the scientist’s assessment. He sighed, setting aside Luna’s list for later, popping the last bite of his flatbread into his mouth. “I guess this means we really do need more people.”
“See Osar,” Serra smugly said. “I told you the Captain wasn’t as dumb as he looks.”
The big Urgan shrugged, his face studiously blank, while Cid smiled politely at Serra’s jibe.
Eric’s answering smile was slight and he carefully kept his voice even as he replied. “Well then, I guess this means you will have to come up with an operational model for this new organization you’re so hell-bent on starting, Ms. Jakobin.”
He had meant it as a comeback, but her next words proved that Serra had apparently spent more than a little time thinking about how she wanted her hypothetical organization to work out.
“I was thinking we start with something most of us here are familiar with,” Serra began, leaning forward across the table, her scarred face turning serious. “The functional structure of the Hexguard under Halden-Xiao had four primary departments, yeah?”
Eric and Cid nodded, while Osar crossed his arms and listened intently.
“So, we’ll probably need to have the following departments: Executive, Internal Affairs and Security, External Affairs and Logistics, and… I guess let’s call it R&D.” Serra gave Cid a nod and a smile, ticking off each of her points on her fingers. “We assign a head, or whatever you want to call the position, over each Department and Section, allowing them relative freedom to make decisions regarding their purview, and refer everything larger in scope, as well as any major decisions over to the Captain… err Primus, who of course will be both Head of the Executive branch as well as the Commander in Chief, or CEO, or you know… whatever.”
“Seems like your set on placing me securely behind a desk, Jakobin.” Eric quipped, but his brain had already begun thinking about ways to implement his friend’s ideas.
“I could compile a working org-chart and duty outline for your approval sir, adapted from the Hexguard Ops-manual that we revised.” After having been strangely silent for most of the morning, hearing Pig’s voice was a bit of a welcome surprise. Happy to see that his AI was emerging even a little bit from the shell it had seemingly retreated into, Eric was glad to give Pig a mental nod of approval for his suggestion. “I’ll update the file as new data and personnel information is collected and can have the initial draft ready for your inspection by the end of the day.”
“Not at all, sir.” Serra was saying in reply to Eric’s previous statement, unconvincingly trying to project an air of intellect and sagaciousness with her words and body language. “However, I would like to suggest that, given her capabilities, I nominate Luna to the task of managing the division of the Internal Affairs department that will be handling supply and requisition, as well as salaries, corporate incentives, and points-reward distribution since we’d need someone trustworthy overseeing all that boring but important stuff…”
Cid huffed with amusement and both Eric and Osar cracked smiles, but all of them were also nodding in agreement. Seeing that none of them were opposed to her ideas, Serra continued. “Overall strategic direction will of course be handled by you, Captain.”
Everyone at the nodded their agreement to that last statement, except Eric, who raised a hand to get their attention before he spoke.
“Most of that sounds good, Jakobin.” He said, drawing out his words and taking time to order his thoughts, seeing the excitement and trust in faces of his companions as he met their eyes one by one. “Except I’d like to suggest a modification to that last part: I propose a Steering Committee composed of everyone here, with provisions for adding seats as needed, since I’m pretty certain that our merry little band will very likely need to be augmented in the future.”
“I can have my implant get started on creating a document of procedurals and by-laws that we can all agree on,” Cid contributed, his large hands fiddling with his empty mug. “We should schedule a general meeting soonest to hash out the barebones of this new thing we’re creating.”
“Hellfire.” Eric said softly as he realized just like that all of them had committed themselves to creating a new society in an alien environment. Everyone around the table was silent and wide-eyed, the immensity of the task they had set for themselves finally dawning on each of them.
“Now comes the most difficult part, sir”
Before Eric could ask Pig to clarify his statement, Serra spoke up.
“So… what do we call ourselves?”
