Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Two: Morning Meetings (Patreon)

Gideon insisted on starting each morning's work with the four of us standing on the factory floor and drinking a cup of coffee together.

It was called a 'morning stand-up' and supposedly had something to do with being agile. Considering the temperature at eight a.m. was in the low tens and the three executives were wrapped up in thick woolen coats, I couldn't really see the benefit.

Since my Powered Nanofibre Weave was temperature-controlled, I suffered a lot less than the others. The only benefit was that these meetings were short.

Dr. Palmer opened the conversation that morning.

“Had a bit of a breakthrough yesterday. The team finished the selection controller."

"What's that?" Clegg asked.

"There's five main subassemblies to the fabricators we want to build," Palmer explained patiently. "The injection line, the synthesis furnace, the shaping control chamber, the weaving array and the extrusion bay."

"I read the project note, Sarah, I just don't remember seeing a selection controller anywhere in the lot. If you're changing the floor layout you need to tell me."

"The selection controller is part of the shaping control chamber. It doesn't need separate floor space."

"It's not in the original list of components."

"We're dealing with entirely new technology here, we aren't going to have a standard list of components!"

"Sarah, Will, please," Gideon interrupted. "Let's focus on how to deal with the problem. Sarah, apart from the space, do you see any issues with the new component?"

"Power requirements are minor. More than enough to be handled by the reactors Belessar has planned." She cast a gaze at me. "You can spare an extra three megawatts, right?"

"Sure." The microfusion reactors had an output of 1800 MW each, and I was planning three of them.

"What about the cooling capacity?" grumbled Clegg. "We're already running short of that."

"I'll admit that's a problem," Gideon said. "However, we can work out a solution, I'm sure. Perhaps pre-cool the water a bit more?"

"Might work," grumbled Clegg. "Will need more budget, though."

"We'll make it work. Belessar, any thoughts on the selection controller? Will it help?"

"It'll work," I replied. "The controller ensures that those nanofibres which don't have the right shape get seperated out. It's the last component needed for the shaping control chamber."

"That's great! That means we have a way to build most of the subassemblies, right?"

"Except the synthesis furnace," sighed Dr. Palmer. "That's the part we can't make head or tail of. Belessar, we could use some ideas."

I sighed. "It's not something that can be explained. I have a way to build one, but it needs…. precision work. Work which I can't get done yet.”

“Can we do anything to help?” asked Gideon.

No point in talking about speed-leveling Mechanic. “Let me help out Clegg and involve me in any actual assembly work.”

Gideon’s shoulders slumped slightly. Probably not the news he’d been hoping for this week.

WARNING: TRAP TRIGGERED.

A loud BOOM! hammered our ears. The others flinched, three sets off coffee-cups spilling on the ground.

“Attack!” I yelled. “Get to cover!”

The roar of a truck engine sounded, racing nearer by the second. I sprinted for the Greyhound even as the others scattered.

Except Clegg, who had produced a pistol from somewhere and was busy pointing it in every direction.

Something slammed into the walls, hard enough to make them shake. An instant later, a second blast assailed our ears.

Fire roared outside.

The walls barely showed it. Fullersteel reinforcement can do wonders for structural integrity.

I was in the Greyhound now, marching out to face the enemy - whoever they were.

The sight outside was chaos. Clegg’s autocar was in the parking lot, on fire. A truck had smashed through the walls of the compound, triggering my Explosive trap as it did, and rammed into our building. The burning skeleton of the vehicle was now spewing smoke against the side

Cloaked men raced across the turf, chuckling grenades at me. The bombs fell short - massively short - but I was in no mood to negotiate.

My HEPAR spat fire, setting the first target ablaze. He screamed.

UNIFICATION TERRORIST -100 HP! UNIFICATION TERRORIST DEFEATED, +50 XP!

The supposed terrorist’s corpse hit the ground in less than a second, still burning.

The others yelled curses at me in Urdu and started throwing grenades.

I dodged.

Shrapnel fragments bounced off my armor. For an unarmored human, they could have been dangerous; the Greyhound’s 100 damage negation, however, shut them down cold.

The HEPAR barked again, and another terrorist fell back, screaming in agony.

“Put down your weapons!” roared Clegg’s voice. The man was crouching behind the door, a Walther PPK in hand and aimed at the enemy. “You are surrounded and outnumbered. Surrender!”

Caught in the open with me on one side and Clegg on the other, the three men froze. The wailing of sirens announced the arrival of the Farnsborough police.

The terrorists glanced at the arriving wall of police cars. The sound of rotors from above alerted us all that the RAF had also arrived.

Good old Pemberley. You could count on her to always have a gunship or two handy.

In the span of a few seconds, the terrorists realized that they were stuck between police, a surprisingly well-armed Clegg, an arriving air patrol, and a battlesuit rated to kill a Carnotaur.

The men raised their hands and knelt on the ground.

3 UNIFICATION TERRORISTS DEFEATED. +150 XP.

Police officers darted onto the premises, cuffing the suspects with less than gentle hands.

The fourth terrorist was still on the ground, screaming in pain. Badly burnt, but not dead.

A policeman stared at me. “Can you help him?”

I sighed. “Heal.”

+200 HP TO UNIFICATION TERRORIST.

+1 ETHICS FOR HEALING AN ENEMY WHO WAS ATTACKING YOU.

Thanks, power, just what I needed to start the day…

The dazed and confused man found himself wrestled into submission by the cops. Steel cuffs around his wrists, followed by a quick check to see if he was an ultra.

Observe told me he clearly wasn’t.

“Who are you?” I growled at the terrorist.

The man’s eyes burned with the feverish gleam of a fanatic. “Allahu akbar. You will pay a heavy price for the lost lives of our brothers in the faith.”

“I’m sorry, have you converted the Raptors?”

“Foolish American. Your harlot burned thousands of innocents at Rawalpindi. She shall suffer, as shall you who stand by her.” A sneer of triumph. “In seconds, our souls will be taken for judgment before the Almighty and we shall see the truth of the faith.”

Had the man a bomb?

I burned MP, hitting him with a dozen Observes in quick succession. Plenty of personal information, but nothing about a bomb.

“Should we evacuate?” a nervous-looking constable asked.

“Wait one.” I quickly swiveled, around, hitting every surface I could with an Observe….

There.

At the edge of our complex stood three steel cooling towers, their smokestacks rising into the sky. On the side of the first was a package of….

Dynamite.

About ten sticks of dynamite.

TEST OF PERCEPTION: PASSED.

TIME TO DETONATION: 00:00:02.

00:00:01.

00:00:00.

“Never mind, Constable,” I said, as the dynamite exploded with an ear-splitting boom.

Smoke began to trail from the side of the tower wall. A cloud of white steam spewed into the air.

The constables covered their ears. Some dived to the ground.

A gentle puff of air passed over us, then… nothing.

The terrorist leader’s expression turned to confusion. “What? You have stopped the blast?”

“Nope,” I chuckled. “That was the full force of your blast. Uninterrupted. At four hundred feet.”

“How much time do we have?” asked a policeman. “Before the reactors explode?”

“About four billion years.”

“Four billion….” The cop’s expression was bewildered.

“That’s not a reactor,” I pointed at the structure. “Those are cooling towers. They’re designed to take waste heat from a fusion reactor and safely purge it to the environment, at the rate of three thousand megawatts.”

“The smoke coming from the top…. Is there any danger to people in the surrounding area?”

“Yeah. A lower heating bill. Constable, that’s steam - basically what you’d get from a kettle. Well, four hundred thousand kettles, but it’s not a lot.”

“That’s it?” The policemen looked amused now. The terrorist leader, on the other hand, was gaping like a fish. “They didn’t blow up the place?”

“It’s designed to withstand Hierarchy airstrikes, officer.” I pointed to the truck, burning against the factory wall. “That wall is rated to take hits from a tank and keep standing. They didn’t even get past the first layer.”

A round of chuckles from the policemen followed. “Well, buddy,” one of them addressed the stunned militant, “it looks like your plans for world domination have been thwarted.”

“We will have our vengeance!” shrieked the terrorist as the cops dragged him away. “You haven’t heard the last of us!”

Clegg walked up to me, pistol still in hand. “Not even nine in the morning and it’s already like a cartoon around here.”

“Thanks for the assist, Will. Didn’t know you carried.”

“I was in the Royal Engineers for ten years before I opted for civvy street. Gets to be a habit after a while.”

“Didn’t know that.”

“No reason you should.”

“So is Gideon secretly a MI5 operative?” I joked.

“No, Gideon’s exactly what it says on the tin. Good accountant, great business guy. Sarah’s probably the one you have to watch out for.”

“Really?”

“You’d need NSA supercomputers to crack her passwords.”

“And you know this because?”

Clegg grunted. “Maybe I’m the secret MI5 operative, pretending to be a retired Royal Engineers sergeant.”

We trudged over to the burnt-out truck. Firefighters had slathering the wreck in foam, leaving a mess.

“Hell to clean up,” remarked Gideon, surveying the damage.

“Let me try a shortcut,” I suggested.

REVERSE ENGINEERING INVOKED.

YOU HAVE REVERSE ENGINEERED A BURNT-OUT EICHER MOTORS TRUCK.

THIS DEVICE IS ONLY AT YOUR CURRENT LEVEL, SO YOU DO NOT GAIN ANY SIGNIFICANT KNOWLEDGE FROM IT.

BLUEPRINT UNLOCKED: RUBBER TYRES, 7-TON TRUCK CHASSIS.

“That’s one way to clean up a place,” commented Dr. Palmer as the truck dematerialized. “Although perhaps the police would have liked the evidence?”

“... Sorry, didn’t think of that.”

“Too late now. Still, I appreciate the cleanup. Remind me to teach you about the five S method.... Any problems with the damaged cooling tower?”

“Maybe a slight efficiency loss.”

“We’ve got bigger problems to worry about right now,” Clegg pointed at the gate.

“More attackers? Cops?”

“Worse. Press.”