Chapter 3 Part 1 of 1 (Patreon)

Chapter: War Machines

“Looks a little different,” Erik West leaned against the office’s window, looking over the shipyard below. The years had added a few more lines to his face, some patches of silver entering his beard, but his eyes were as bright as ever, a piercing blue.

“Last time we got here all three of us were half dead, with half fused bones and trying to keep a group of Roc’s off our asses. Damn flying assholes.” Rugrat muttered.

George just rolled his eyes, he stayed in his human form more often now, he was reading a book on cultivation and eating a sandwich Momma Rodriguez had made for them.

Even as the mayor of Alva Dungeon there wasn’t no way in hell she was letting her boys leave without food.

“Ubren’s little bolt hole in the mountains. Now our fourth biggest shipyard.”

Taran, Alva military’s technology development director, damn good smith, friend and originally from Alva village walked into the office, talking to someone outside the door.

“And make sure that they check the damn mana drill formations, stick a fricking arrow on it pointing at where its aiming. I don’t know, just don’t point them into  the friggin’ ship!”

There was a series of yes mister Taran’s and general shuffling of feet as he turned, stopping as he saw the trio in his office.

“Was that meeting about the ship progress today?” He yelled.

“Yes and you’re late!” His secretary yelled back, like a mother finding her child late back for dinner. Taran winced, pulling his head in at her tone.

“The others?”

“Are also running late.”

“Be careful now, else your secretary’s gonna have you over her knee and tan your hide.” Rugrat said, the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile.

“Thank you Sarah.” Taran said placatingly and closed the door.

“I thought it would be Glosil or the Silaz boys or something, what you two doing haunting my office.”

“Glosil wanted us out of his hair and probably away from the front line for a day or two, sent us here to learn about the ships.” Erik turned and they moved to a drafting table and chairs in the corner of the room.

“And they dragged me along for the ride.” George kept reading his book and eating his sandwich, glaring at them.

“You got mayo all up in here,” Rugrat gestured at his mouth and dropped onto a stool, scootching himself forward to build up momentum catching himself on the drafting table.

George’s cheek tremored at the edge of a smile taking out a napkin to wipe his face.

“Should’ve tried out for water polo,” Rugrat said.

“It’s curling man, how many times I gotta tell you,” Erik crossed his arms and leaned against the table. “Water polo is when you tread water like a fucking mad man and throw a ball at a floating net Curling is when you take a big stone and roll it down a slab of ice at a target. Like ice bowling.”

“Why is it that there’s polo with horses, sticks and balls, then there’s water polo that’s an aerobic night mare of volleyball and floaties.”

“Can’t use floaties.”

“Fucking bullshit is what it is, and! Why can’t they just call it like water football or horse golf? And curling, like that’s not like a curl at all.” Rugrat curled his arm. “That’s a curl how you doing precious?” And kissed it.

“Annd we’ve lost him,” Erik smiled to Taran. “Rugrat, guns, ships, armor, bang explosions.”

“Well what you got for us?” Rugrat asked looking up.

“A straight jacket,” Erik coughed.

Rugrat flipped him the bird as Taran shook his head.

“Good to know that some things don’t change.”

The door opened as Delfina walked in. She came from south American origins, shorter than Erik but built like someone that worked on machines constantly, complete with jumpsuit and grease on her cheek. She looked like she’d just woken up.

“Mornin’” She flashed them the peace symbol and dragged herself to a stool, hunched over, resting her elbows on her knees.

“Do you want to go over the ship designs?” Taran asked.

“You know as much as me,” Delfina yawned.

“You speak military better,” Taran sighed.

“Alright,” Delfina pushed over to the wall and the chalkboards on it.

“How dumb we need?”

“Marine,” Erik gestured to Rugrat.

“Hey, and who out of us knows more about formations?”

“Still a marine.”

“Oorah.”

Delfina smiled and cleared her throat.

“We got designs for seven ships, only built or converted four types. We’ve got twenty Corvettes, think of them like big bombers and troop transports. Frigates nine of them, packed from nose to ass with missiles. Three destroyers, multi-role, got some cannons, some missiles, some aerial beasts and ground forces. Last but not least, the Cruisers, three in service, ship killers, larger aerial contingent, as many missiles as a frigate, four centerline accelerators, phoenix breath cannons, without exposing our oh so gooey centers and using railgun principles.

She moved the chalkboards, finding an image of the ships.

“Look like a Russian tank screwed a stingray that looted an armory,” Erik said.

“Looks fucking awesome.”

“We took what we learned from fighting with mana barriers and our enemy’s and then Elan’s Intelligence department stole enough information about everyone else’s barriers, they’re solid, outer barriers can inter-link with the other ships, near armor barriers interlink across the ship, creating a second layer. That bastardized PPSH machine gun, we took it, added sensory formations, chambered in twenty millimetre flak rounds, new defensive weapons. Armor plating is sandwiched composites, reactive armor, on the outside, Celestial Iron along the core areas, whole ship is run from the ‘spine’” She pulled out a sheet and stuck it to the wall, a cross section of the ship.

“Center of the ship, wrapped in armor, gunners, pilots, crew, everything is housed here. We lose the outer ship, our people are protected, need to take one hell of a pounding to take her out of the fight.”

“Nice,” Erik said.

“Hey, you and Rugrat got us the Iron with your mission points. Carrying on, rail cannons, upgraded, auto loaders, one person per cannon, can even slave them altogether if you wanted. We got bombs that’ll fucking rattle your grandparent’s teeth, missiles, better seeking systems and more bang,” She gave Erik a worried look.

Rugrat was about tipping his stool forward, bouncing both his legs, with throaty breathing.

“Ahem, spell formations upgraded, for power, we’ve got basically jet engines, didn’t have the time to develop real jet engines, but enough formations, mana and fuel” Delfina shrugged. “Mana gathering formations we took from Alva, and remote mana gathering formations. Also, mana drills, Egbert came up with a way to find out where ley lines are and mana stones in the ground. We find a cache or line, drill into it, tap and fill. You can also use it as a ground based weapon.”

“How did you get this much done?” Erik asked.

Delfina sat back, cracking her neck.

“Well, with dungeon cores, could prototype in a few hours, no one to say what we couldn’t do. Then we could use the dungeon cores to basically print gear, bought the components we could outsource and had the factories building everything else. When you and Rugrat were working on this stuff, there was what maybe ten of you in a shop?”

Erik nodded.

“Well, now we’ve got a few thousand crafters, some from Earth, some from the ten realms, most of them Experts in their own fields. Co-opted in the military’s Engineers and those that were engineer trained, which gave us a few hundred thousand more bodies, crafters from Alva and the dungeon cores for the ships had been fed materials and power to get started.”

“And we had like half of the ships come through the Sha,” Taran said.

“Okay, okay I get it.”

“Magic allows us to take a lot of shortcuts, these ships are smaller than anything in Alva in their class, but they’re built to be airships first, taking all we know on modern warships, helicopters, fighters, and submarines, even some theoretical stuff on spaceships. You did make a railgun,” Delfina grinned at Rugrat.

“How have things been going with Edmond and Esther?” Erik asked.

“Thought that there might be issues with them selling their warships to Alva. They have been here overlooking the changes and getting their people trained up and working.” Taran said.

“Seem to be more excited with what we’ve done. Waste of materials what they did with them, more pleasure ships than ships of war really. Chonglu has been training his Crows alongside them and the crews are all Alvan, some old Sha are mixed in, but they all swore their oaths,” Delfina shrugged.

“Our biggest problem is people, we have a lot of good soldiers, but not everyone has reached level seventy and passed their eighth realm trial.”

“How many could fight in the ninth?” Erik asked.

“Couple of corvettes, a frigate or two, maybe a destroyer?” Taran shrugged.

“Ouch,” Rugrat shook his head.

The door opened as Julilah and Qin walked in.

“Nice for you to show up,” Taran said.

“You want to go over the flying formations?” Qin said.

“Got it,” Erik held up his hand.

“The barriers?” Julilah asked.

“All good,” Delfina said.

“Oh,” The girls looked at one another and took a step backwards. “Do you need us for anything?”

“No we’re good.”

“Nice to see you, got some testing to work on!” Julilah said.

“Those formations in the corvette glide system are still giving me a problem, I swear I could get ten percent more power!” Qin growled.

The two girls seemed to have forgotten about them, speaking in formation master code as they left.

Erik smiled, he knew that they had both taken the deaths of Tan Xue and Tanya hard, Taran had helped Julilah get back on their feet and they had jumped into helping develop any technology that could help the military.

“Thank you both for all your work, these ships sounds like some nasty business.” Erik said.

“Just doing our job,” Taran said.

Erik bowed his head and left the room, following George and Rugrat trailing.

“You think that I could fire one of those machine guns standing?”

“If you don’t want working shoulders.”

“Well got healing spells for that.”

“Never change Rugrat, never change.