TBoB - Book 8 - Chapter 14 - The Spire (Patreon)

It took me two whole days, but I finally got a new chapter of TBoB done. Wooooo....Well, considering that I usually get two chapters a day, getting a single chapter done shouldn't be something to be proud of, but since I had to drag myself kicking and screeming out of my funk to get it done, I'm not going to complain. It means that I'm in better shape than I was earlier in the week.With a little luck I'll get a whole chapter done tomorrow. Or maybe two. I can always hope.Anyways... Thanks for sticking with me the last couple weeks. I know my production levels have been FAR below usual. I'm trying, to get back into the groove, but Depression is one hell of a disruption. I'm doing my best.I also want to thank you all for giving me feedback on TBoB last week. It was actually very helpful, and helped settle my mind when it comes to the current arc, and gave me a couple ideas for the future. Look forward to it!Anyways. Have a good night all.

-Wombat

“So, where to, boss?” Dusty asked as he jogged ahead to reach the Kodiak first. He hammered the button to lower the ramp, then turned back to me expectantly. “Off to Mudflap’s garage?”I shook my head. “I sent him a message a couple of minutes ago asking if I could drop by, but he still hasn’t replied,” I told him. “He must be working on something fairly important considering he both skipped our meetup earlier and is ghosting my calls.”“Either that or you did something to really piss him off the last time you met, and he’s avoiding you,” Dusty replied.

“I know he wasn’t thrilled by my sudden departure, but I don’t think he’d be so petty as to ghost me; Quite the opposite actually,” I said. “If he was truely pissed off I would have expected him to have tracked me down and decked me in the face.”“True,” Dusty admitted. “So where to?”

I paused at the bottom of the ramp and glanced around for a minute. “I could head back to Wild’s place, but it would be awkward to show up again when the get-together is starting to wind down,” I said. “Since I’m not needed down here right now, I say we do a flyby of the tower, take a look at what they’re doing, then head back to Bear Force One.”

“Just a flyby?” Dusty asked. 

“I forgot to get the contact information of whoever is building it,” I replied. “I don’t think I even got their name… I don’t want to just drop in on someone I don’t know. That’s how you start off on the wrong foot.”“You could ask Nyx to look them up,” Dusty suggested. 

“I could…” I admitted. “However, I’m not in a rush to explore the place; we’re probably going to be here for a while anyway. I just want to get a better look at it so I can figure out the scale. The fact that it towers over the super tank, even at this distance, must mean that it’s at least as tall as a skyscraper.”Dusty just shrugged. “You’re the boss.”I stepped past him and crossed the small transport bay towards the wall of monitors, radios and other electronic equipment placed right against the back of the vehicle’s cockpit. Since this was my personal transport, I’d installed a complicated system of counter-ECM in order to deal with a particularly nasty Antithesis. 

Now, after upgrading the command center of Bear Force One, the bulky equipment was probably unnecessary, but even though I would have liked a more streamlined monitor setup, I refused to take it out. You never knew when something like that would be useful again.

Grabbing one of the monitors, I twisted it so it was angled to the side, then knocked on the cockpit partition to signal the pilot to take off. As the APC shook violently, signalling it’s accent, I sank down onto the hard bench bolted to the side wall in order to watch the monitor.

“Hey Boss, I’ve got a question for you,” Dusty said as he sauntered forward after closing the rear hatch. “Why haven’t you ever put more comfortable seating in the Kodiak?”“Because the Kodiaks and Ursas are designed to be troop transports, and occasionally rescue vehicles. Having fold up benches means that we can obtain the highest BPSF, bears per square foot, possible,” I said, glancing back at him for just a minute. “We’ve been in a couple conflicts where we’ve had to pack the transports past capacity just to get our troop on the ground in time, you know that.”“I know, I know,” Dusty replied. “That’s a very reasonable design feature, at least on mass produced Kodiaks. What I want to know is why you’ve never upgraded the seating in the back of your own Kodiak after all this time.”“Oh, that. I guess I could give you a couple different reasons for that,” I muttered. “Like how I’d rather have it available to carry civilians from a combat zone if nessisary, or how I find the uncomfortable benches remind me of the days when I was just starting out as a samurai, and want to stay grounded. However, the real reason is I haven’t done it is because I’m concerned that if I put comfortable seats in Bob might blunder into them in excitement and accidentally break them.”“Come on, Bob isn’t that careless…” Dusty said.

I turned towards him fully this time, eyes narrowed. “Less then thirty seconds ago he tried to send a massive armored wall section sailing into a populated area because he was too excited to get on the right side of it,” I said. “I love the guy, but even after giving him common sense co-processor, he’s still the same excitable goofball he was before. The guy jumps from transports mid-flight because embedding himself in the pavement is slightly faster than waiting for them to land. He’s a force of nature and can be gentle when he’s cautious; it’s just that in the middle of a combat zone he tends to get excitable. And things occasionally break. Besides, I don’t need anything fancy in here; as I said, I’m happy with the basics.” 

“What if you ever have to take the kids somewhere? Wouldn’t it be nice to have comfortable seats for them?” Dusty asked.

“That’s why we have my Semi, or Jane’s SUV now. Nice, comfortable, and safe vehicles to take the kids around in. Just because I don’t mind suffering a little while I travel doesn’t mean I want to subject the kids to the same thing,” I said.

“That’s a sweet sentiment, even if you delivered it during a mini rant about the quality of the seats in your transport,” Dusty replied.

“Well, you were the one who asked,” I muttered before leaning forward and flicking the switch on the side of the monitor a couple of times, causing the display to flick through the different exterior cameras until I found the one that had a good view of the approaching spire. 

It didn’t look like much from a distance: a slightly tapered cylindrical structure with exposed superstructure poking out of the top. There weren’t any windows, and the only access points I could see were several docking platforms mounted around the exterior of the structure, just above the crater’s edge.

I was so focused on the design that it took a minute for the building's scale to sink in. From a distance, I thought that the structure had been sitting right next to Dial-up or Lag’s super tank, making it look like nothing more than a skyscraper by comparison. The truth was the tank was several hundred meters closer to the town, slowly combing the area and collapsing Antithesis tunnels with it’s weight, and I’d been fooled by the perspective. 

What I’d originally assumed was a skyscraper was much larger than I’d thought. It was anchored within the crater, not on the edge like I’d thought, and the base had to be several blocks wide; More than a match for most mega buildings. It tapered off quickly, but was tall enough to dwarf all but the largest buildings back home. 

“What are they trying to do, build all the way up to space?” I asked in disbelief. 

Do you really want me to answer that, or did you really want to wait, as you said earlier? Nyx asked.  

“I said I didn’t want to disturb anyone or show up unannounced,” I replied. “I don’t think telling me what the fuck that is counts as either of those things.”As elegant as always, Nyx sighed. It’s the first stage of a joint project between several high ranking samurai who returned from mars. Right now they’re planning to set the place up as a combination spaceport and research center, but if everything goes well they’re planning on upgrading it to a space elevator eventually.

“A combination research center and spaceport, that’s an interesting decision,” I muttered, before pausing a second. “What the fuck is a space elevator?”It’s an elevator. To space, Nyx replied sarcastically. 

“Yeah… I mean, I got that much from the name,” I grumbled. “Why?”Because it’s cheaper and easier to transport resources up to space using a stationary structure connected to a geostationary space station than it is to send them up in ships, Nyx explained. Having a space elevator would make transporting supplies up to the orbiting samurai ships cheaper, and might even encourage some corps to invest in exploratory programs. At least, that’s the theory.“Who’s behind this crazy idea? Why haven’t I heard of it before now? And why the fuck did Wild and Mud okay something like that on their doorstep?” I asked, gesturing towards the display.

“I thought you weren’t interested in finding out who was responsible until you were introduced?” Dusty asked with a cheeky grin.

“That was before I saw this thing up close,” I grumbled. “I admit it, now I’m interested. Who do I have to talk to in order to find out more about this thing?”

Someone you’d really wouldn’t expect, Nyx replied.

“Oh yeah, try me,” I muttered.

If you really want to get in contact with the samurai involved, the best person to talk to would be Sharron.

I blinked a couple of times in confusion. “Sharron? Not Wild or Mud? Why?”Because she worked with all the samurai involved on Mars, Nyx replied smugly. Told you it’s something you wouldn’t expect.