Chapter 85

It was late in the afternoon of the next day before I got to get away from business and have a moment or two to myself. At the time I was standing on a slope of a hill overlooking the site where Hope was building her mega-teleportation system. The site stood a few hundred yards to the south of the resort in a large clearing. The area was a beehive of activity and I was impressed by what I saw. Structurally the facility was almost complete.

The facility was roughly the size of a small two-bedroom bungalow. The foundation had been laid the day before and all the walls were up and in place. The only thing left to do was to put a roof on it and that was happening right before my eyes. A small army of service robots were waddling about doing the work. While one group was constructing the roof, another group was installing the complicated equipment into the building. A third group was running power cables from the building to the resort where they would eventually connect them to the resort's main power grid. Thankfully the people who had originally built the resort had thought ahead when they had constructed it. The main power source of the resort would easily handle the energy requirements of the new teleportation system.

Watching them work left me amazed at what they had accomplished in such a short time. It also helped that the robots were using construction material from advanced worlds that could be thrown up in a matter of hours instead of days and weeks. It left me wondering what else could be done with it.

"Do you actually trust those mechanical men," Dork asked as he walked up and disturbed my solitude.

The big guy was still decked out in the camouflaged combat clothing that we'd been wearing lately, both in Africa and on our raid to the other Earth. Over it he wore body armour. As for weapons he had his assault shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm and an automatic pistol in a holster hanging off his belt. In addition to these more modern weapons he still carried his warhammer which he had dangling from the other side of his belt. The only thing he wasn't wearing was his helmet.

"I trust Hope," I said after taking a glance at the big man. "Hope sent the robots here and she said that they were safe and we didn't need to worry about them. I have to take her word for it."

"You're going to trust the word of another machine?" Dork muttered shaking his head.

"Yes," I stated with a hint of annoyance in my voice. "Hope may be a machine but she is our ally and we share the same goals and desires."

"For now," Dork grunted dismissively. "I still don't trust these machines."

"I know you don't," I admitted with a sigh, "and I don't blame you for that, but you have to understand that the machines aren't the ones we need to worry about. They can only do what they are directed to do and that is it. It was the network people that ordered them to attack us and to kill Kola and Goiania not Hope. Hope has ordered them to build and that is what they are doing."

"I still don't trust them," Dork grumbled, "and I don't like the idea of them going to Oak Hall. Anything could happen there."

That was one of the things that had dominated our discussions this morning. I had called a major meeting of my mates, my friends, my closest advisors, and a whole lot of other people that morning right after breakfast. I wanted to talk about the fact that we were dealing with a renewed threat from the networks and I wanted to explain to people what I was doing to contain the threat and to counter it. I also handed out a large number of assignments to those who were at the meeting.

"We'll need the robots in Oak Hall if Elsa is to accomplish the construction work that needs to be done there," I said with a hint of finality in my voice.

It was something that had been debated at the meeting. The last time I had been at Oak Hall the city council and I had sat down and we had worked out a five year development plan for the city and the villages about it that would see the clearing of land and the building of homes, businesses, city works like municipal baths and hospitals, defensive installations, and a new and better harbour. That plan was now defunct due to our current situation. The fact was that I had over two thousand new outworlders living at the resort and at the complex in Africa and I needed to find someway to move them from the resort where they were doing nothing and get them to Oak Hall where they could integrate into the community and start building a life for themselves. What made the matter worse was the fact that I estimated that we would probably add another two or more thousand people to that original number as we raided the other network hideouts and we liberated slaves throughout Game World. It was a daunting problem and one that could only be resolved if I moved away from the idea of doing things ourselves. Instead of building our new city using local resources as Elsa had with the village on the promontory, we were going to send in the robots and we were going to import construction material from other Earths. Doing that would expedite the whole process and it would free up human resources for other jobs that needed to get done. Some people had argued against the idea and Dork had been one of them.

"I still dislike the idea of sending robots in amongst our people," Dork went on, continuing in the same vain as he had in the meeting that morning, "and I really don't think we should be using security robots at all."

That had been another long and lengthy debate that had divided my people that morning. While most accepted the logic of using service robots to help in the construction process, almost all were opposed to the thought of bringing in a small army of security robots to help bolster our defences. While technically I had a very large army at my disposal, the bulk of it was only equipped with blade weapons and bows and arrows and I knew that such a force would not be able to withstand a concentrated attack by an army equipped with automatic weapons and other more modern weapons.

"That had been only a suggestion," I growled in response, making my annoyance clear to the man, "and when I had brought it up I had said it would be only for the interim. Once Suzy had trained up her militia and the Wu warriors we would have gotten rid of the security robots."

That had been the gist of my plan. With almost five hundred troops deployed either at the resort or on the alternative Earth or marking time waiting for me to give them a target that they could attack, it stripped Oak Hall of what trained soldiers we had at our disposal and it also stripped us of a few men who'd served upon our fleet of warships. In essences it left Oak Hall vulnerable to attack by forces not indigenous to Game World. Unfortunately no one came forward in support of my suggestion and while I could have imposed it on everyone, I chose not to do that. Instead I threw all our eggs into one basket and hoped that they didn't get broken.

The plan instead called for crash training in firearms for the militia and for the Wu warriors with the hope that their experience as a fighting force would transfer when they were introduced to the ins and outs of fighting with firearms in squads and in formation. Only time would tell. Thankfully I had a cadre of people I could leave in charge of their training while I went off to fight the network people. I had decided to leave Suzy in overall command. The militia knew her as did the Wu warriors. Under her I returned Talbot and Danvers. The two men were disappointed that they were losing the opportunity to kick some more network ass but they understood the necessity. They had already worked with Suzy and others at Oak Hall in training our current force of men and I was hoping that experience would help smooth out any problems that arose during the new training effort. With them I put Ben, Jake, Dave, and Don. The four men were under instructions to help in the training with the goal of building up a new strike team that they could take back to Africa. I figured that in a month or so they would have a force trained sufficiently that they could overcome most of the slave operations in East Africa. Again that was a matter where time would tell.

"Have you spoken to the cat women yet?" Dork inquired in an obvious attempt to change the topic.

That was another issue that had pissed me off during the meeting. Of all the people invited to the meeting, the crewwomen of the Bowden had declined the offer. Instead they had sent the blue girl to talk to me in their place. Technically I shouldn't call Ileana a girl. She was certainly older than most of my mates. From my chat with her I found out that she was twenty-one years old in our years although she was older than that by her own planet's calendar. According to Ileana, the planet called Piz had a rotational period that was forty-two days shorter than the rotational period of Game World. That made her twenty-three plus years old on her planet. More importantly it turned out that Ileana was an officer in the Piz Defence League and that made her an important source of intelligence for me and Hope and I needed to treat her with respect even though she looked like a teenage kid.

In the meeting that morning it had fallen on Ileana to answer questions about the Bowden and about her people and the crew of the spaceship. That had proved interesting. It turned out that the Piz was only one race amongst a number of races that spanned a far of galaxy who had formed an alliance based on trade, shared political ideology, and defence. The crew of the Bowden belonged to the same alliance and their home world was called Tyro. Ileana had ended up talking about her world and the crew's world for at least an hour before I was forced to move the discussion along. While the information she was giving me was interesting, it hardly impacted on our current situation. Once I had learned that the worlds that made up the alliance to which Ileana belonged did not exist within our galaxy and that neither the crew of the Tyro or Ileana knew where their world was in relationship to Game World I pushed things on. Without the threat of an alien invasion hanging over our heads I needed to focus on the immediate and not what might or might not happen in the near or distant future.

What was important that did come out of the conversation with Ileana were the details about the Bowden. It was a six-hundred ton military transport that belonged to the Piz world government and its crew had been mercenaries hired to operate it. The ship had been on a resupply mission from Piz to an alliance border outpost when it had encountered technical problems that had slingshot the vessel through jump-space until it had appeared in our upper atmosphere. At that moment the vessel's main drives had failed and the captain of the vessel had landed the craft where it currently sat. If the ship was made functional it would give me and my people total control over Game World and any other alternative Earth that did not have space technology at its disposal. That had been the reason why Sahara Network had put so much of their effort into recovering the craft. The vessel had four turrets of offensive weaponry and two turrets dedicated to point and long range defence. Nothing on Game World could have stopped it if the network had gotten it operational.

That was a problem that I had inherited when I seized the ship. Ileana had told everyone at the meeting that what repairs had been done on the Bowden had been superficial and none of them had restored power to the vessel. Until the main power plant was repaired the ship was just a big piece of scrap metal. Hopefully once the mega-teleportation system was up and running, Hope would transport the Bowden to the resort. Once that had been accomplished, more service robots would begin the construction of a mega-replicator. It was the only way that we would be able to repair the vessel. Naturally, all of that would take time and energy and a lot of patience and even if and when we got it repaired we had the problem with the fact the crew wouldn't talk to me or any other man. That was something I was going to have to solve and hopefully I wouldn't have to do what Ileana had suggested at the meeting that morning. That had caused everyone to laugh.

Ileana's suggestion was that I marry the eldest crewwoman of the Bowden. The culture of Tyro was such that the women only communicated with males of their own clan and no one else. By marrying the eldest crewwoman I would become a member of their clan and they could then talk to me and follow my instructions. It was something I wanted to avoid if at all possible. Unfortunately I had very few other options. All the crewwomen of the Bowden were of the same clan as that was how they functioned beyond their own world and they would never accept a non-clan member aboard the ship in a working role, even Ileana who technically represented their employers if one were to push the issue. The feline aliens' clan superseded everything and if I wanted to use the crew to operate the craft I needed to find someway to become part of their clan or to make them part of my family. That was something I had thrown out at Ileana to find out for me. I had countered her suggestion that I should marry the eldest crewwoman to establish control over the crewwomen with the suggestion that I adopt the crewwomen as my children. If it turned out to be culturally acceptable, I would do that. Ileana was in charge of pursuing the issue with the crewwomen and to get back to me on the subject as quickly as possible. Until then I couldn't make use of the Bowden even if we got it repaired in the next week or so.

"Not yet," I answered with an exasperated sigh. "I've got Ileana talking to them, but I don't expect to hear anything back from them for a few days or so. Ileana said that she would have to broach the topic very carefully and that the other aliens would have to discuss it before she could give me an answer."

"Well," Dork also said with a sigh, "I hope your idea works out for you. If not, things are going to get strange around here."

"I thought you were an open minded guy when it came to cross-species relationships," I mentioned, looking at the man with a bit of curiosity in my gaze. "You never blinked when it came to my relationship with Nimue."

"Nimue isn't a cat woman," Dork said with a shrug of his shoulders, "and it isn't me you have to worry about. I'm just saying that I hope your plan works out and you don't have to do what Ileana suggested. While many of your people are more open minded than most, a lot of them and I'm thinking both local people and outworlders are not. You might win one thing by taking that feline crewmember as a mate but you'll probably find that you will have other problems arising from the deal that you hadn't expected."

"I know," I said nodding my head in acknowledgement. "I think so as well."

We stood watching the construction going on for a few more moments and then the two of us started to walk back towards the main complex of the resort. As we did we crested a hill and spotted the newest additions to our military parked down upon the first green of golf course. Hope had teleported in three more Sparrow Hawks for me and my two newest recruits. That had been something that had come to my attention over breakfast that morning. Josh had uploaded the names and details of every person we'd liberated from the other Earth and in the process he had identified two combat helicopter pilots for me. Both had come from the same Earth and both were qualified on both fixed wing and rotary aircraft. I had spoken to them prior to going into the meeting that morning and by the time I was done speaking to them I had both men recruited into my nascent air force. Right now they were down on the green familiarizing themselves with the workings of the Sparrow Hawk. With them was a service robot that Hope had uploaded enough information into that it could act as an instructor for them.