TBoB - Book 8 - Chapter 2 - The Quiet (Patreon)

“Do you have anything you need to do before we go?” I asked Sharron as I slammed the open hatch button on the back of the Kodiak. The ramp slowly lowered, revealing the extremely empty flight deck of Bear Force One. 

I don’t think I’d ever seen it that empty before. The first time I’d stepped onto the mammoth flying fortress there had already been half a dozen Kodiaks on board, transports which had delivered the command and engineering crews to keep the thing flying. 

Now, the cavernous hanger bay was nearly empty. It had Sharron’s RV, my truck, and a trio of Kodiaks which I’d kept on standby in case of emergency. That was it.  

It made me realize how accustomed I’d come to having my bots around. Having nearly the entire force off doing something else felt… lonely. 

“Hey, Evelyn, you okay?” Sharron asked, patting me on the shoulder. “You kind of zoned out there for a minute.”“Yeah, sorry, I was just thinking about how long it’s been since Bear Force One has been this quiet,” I replied quietly. “Yeah, I know, I’m the one that sent all the Kodiaks to help resupply the fleet, but still… kind of spooky.”“I think it’s peaceful,” Sharron said. “I can’t remember the last time I came to your place and I didn’t have to worry about tripping over some sort of fuzzy animal.”

“Well, I’m looking forward to getting back over land and picking up Bandit, Deadbeat, Dusty, Bob, and the rest of the Antithesis suppression force that I left in Great Falls,” I said. “It’ll be the first step into returning to normality.”

“Normality? Really?” Sharron chuckled.

“MY normality. I realize that my life is extremely abnormal by regular standards,” I said, walking towards the end of the hanger, trying to ignore the sound of my boots echoing across the metal floor. “Anyways, getting back to my question… did you have anything you needed to do before we left the area?”“Like what? Going on a last minute fishing trip?” Sharron snorted. “I literally came here right off the transport back from Mars, and I haven’t had a moment to rest. I’m as eager to head home as you are, if not more so.”“That’s fair,” I replied. “In that case, as long as there aren’t any emergencies I’m planning on setting off tomorrow morning. That should give the bears more than enough time to make the last of their deliveries, as well as let the Beavers complete the last of their integrity checks.”

Sharron frowned. “Integrity checks? I thought Bear Force One had been too far from the major battles to participate, never mind taking damage.”

“No, you’re right. The only time it was close enough to provide fire support was when we were assaulting the hive, and between the numerous defensive turrets and PAWS anti-projectile emplacements, nothing got close enough to threaten the ship,” I said. “The reason the beavers want to do integrity checks is because I had them performing numerous upgrades on the ship during, and after, the fight in Great Falls. I received such a massive influx of points I pretty much tiered up every single system on Bear Force One. The beavers did an admirable job of installing everything, but since the ship remained in constant combat readiness they couldn’t take anything down to do their final checks. Now that the threat has passed, they’ve insisted that I give them the proper time.”“How long will it take?” Sharron asked.

“From what I understand, around a week,” I replied. “And that’s only if I don’t take any of them off the inspection to work on anything else.” 

“What? Really? That long?” Sharron asked, turning to me in surprise.

I shrugged. “It’s a big ship, and I replaced the reactors, engines, weapons, comm systems, shield systems,” I said, counting all the systems off on my fingers as I listed them off. “Pretty much the only thing that I HAVEN’T replaced is the hull, and I’ll be honest, if I have the points to unlock the Class III material catalogs, I may have them do that too once we get home.”“I thought you said you wanted to leave tomorrow. Won’t a complete integrity check interfere with that?” Sharron asked skeptically. 

“No, I got the beaver’s assurance that, while they’ll be shutting down entire systems, or sectors of the ship, they won’t be shutting down the engines. I expect the worst we’ll have to deal with is the power going out, leaving us in the dark, or without hot water for a while,” I said, before pausing. “Well, I guess there’s a small chance we could run into some Antithesis when the weapons are offline, but by that time the peacekeeping force should be back on board, and I can just throw the bears at them. I’m confident the bears can handle anything that’s thrown at them above ground, unlike those disastrous battles underwater.”Sharron reached over and patted me on the back, causing me to jump. “You’re being too hard on yourself, the aquatic campaign was difficult, but we did triumph in the end. You’re even the one that killed the Gene Tender,” she said. “A lot of other samurai would have died in that situation.”“A lot of samurai DID die,” I muttered. “I do acknowledge that despite the heavy losses we did get the job done. I just realize that both I, and my bots, are WAY more effective on land than we are under water. I’ll leave the underwater combat to the professionals from now on.”“Fair enough,” Sharron replied.

Just as we were about the reach the access stairs which led to the rest of the ship I turned slight, heading towards the back of the hanger.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Sharron asked. “I thought we were going to have dinner together?”“We are, I promise,” I replied. “I just want to take a quick detour through manufacturing to check on something.”Sharron sighed. “You know, you don’t have to dance around the subject. You could just say you’re going to check on Heavy,” she said.

“I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m going to check on the big bear,” I said. “I know his new frame isn’t complete yet, but I really want to see how much progress the beavers have made with my own two eyes. He saved my life in that fight, and he received a spike to his core processor as a result. I’m going to feel anxious until I see him up and about again.”“I understand, he’s been with you for years now; Your squad is nearly as important to you as your family, I can understand why you’d be anxious,” she said. “Go. I’ll head up to the residence and start prepping the food, you can catch up once you’ve checked on him.”“Thanks,” I said, shooting her a small relieved smile. “It’ll only take a minute, I promise.”As she turned towards the stairs up to the elevated catwalks that led into the core of the ship, I jogged across the material delivery corridor and through the massive open blast door that could be used to separate the production area from the flight deck. 

Beyond the door were dozens of molecular fabricator machines of various sizes, and classifications mounted in alcoves along the walls, each fed by its own independent material feed from the adjacent room. I don’t think I’d ever completely shut down production ever since I purchased my first machine, and even now they were busy pumping out a variety of my latest bots, weapons and vehicles. 

I ignored most of the machines and headed towards the left wall, where the Beavers had set up a mechanic workshop. There were several vehicle maintenance bays, half a dozen work benches full of tools, a huge assembly area, and most importantly, a single Class III machine which had been assigned to the beavers for their personal use. 

As I approached the beaver which was standing in front of the machine, staring at a tablet grunted. ‘Boss’ without looking up.

“How’s our boy doing?” I asked.

“I’m pretty sure that I’ve been sending you minute to minute updates through the network, but…” it gestured towards a large, half assembled frame standing a couple feet away with some massive cables running into the back of the head, and torso. “Body’s been complete for awhile now. We made a number of minor changes to his frame, including a modified armor layout and redundant processors which should make it a lot harder to take him down in the future. We tinkered with his servos, resulting in an eight percent loss in his max strength, but around a fifteen percent increase in mobility. Figured he didn’t need to go flipping cars with the badgers running around.”“He had the strength to…” I paused and threw up my hands. “Never mind that, it’s not important. Just tell me how much longer you’ll need.” 

The beaver looked up, and scratched the tablet against its head. “Well, we installed and checked his OS a couple days ago, and we’ve been installing the mental imprint transfer ever since then. It’s going well, but since each one is unique I can’t give you a precise time. I think it’s almost done. I’ll do some integrity checks tonight, and get him ready for a reboot tomorrow.”“That’s it? He’ll be back to normal after that?” I asked.

“Woah boss! I’m not going to make any promises,” the beaver exclaimed. “His mind will be back, we’ll have to wait until tomorrow to see how much of his personality survived the process. I warn you, he might not be exactly the same at first, but if you treat him the same way he should recover just fine.”“If you say so,” I muttered. “I’ll be back first thing in the morning!” I declared, turning away and heading back towards the entrance. “See you then!”

“So long,” the beaver muttered before going back to its tablet. I’d just about reached the door when I heard it mutter “Always in a rush. The boss needs to learn to sit still.”I smiled to myself as I stepped through the blast door. “Where’s the fun in that?” I whispered.