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Published at 21st of December 2022 06:28:22 AM


Chapter 39

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[Gottlieb]

 

His breath fogs up his helmet. The two of them are tethered to the station out on the outer bay. Gottlieb holds onto the railing as Grunheide floats sideways, tinkering around with the electricals in the access panel below the gun’s outer control relay. A lot of the damaged wiring is here specifically, in regards to the gun’s wear and tear, but there are other panels like this all over the station, and they’ve been doing the rounds, making some fixes.

 

Grunheide pulls out a tube that they’ve made. It’s a thin, straw-like creation made out of a mixture of electrical tape and some other casings. The inside is filled with goo from the slime that had been trapped in the hatch behind the gunner’s bay desk. Apparently, according to the goblin, the slime’s bio-matter is perfectly well suited to conducting electricity without burning through.

 

— She pulls out the two ends of a cut wire, which has singes all around it, and then sticks one end of the wire into each side of the slime-tube before taping the ends shut with more electrical tape.

 

The goblin lays it back down into the hatch, closing it, and then gives Gottleib a thumbs-up.

 

He nods, sparing a moment to run his hand over the gun’s body before they pull themselves back into the station.

 

 

“That ought to do it,” says Grunheide as they step in through the last airlock. She takes off her helmet, shaking out her black hair, and looks up at him.

 

“Great work, Grunheide” says Gottlieb. “You might’ve really saved our butts here,” he commends, nodding to her with a hand on her shoulder as he takes off his own helmet with his other hand.

 

She shakes her head. “Let’s see if it works first,” replies the goblin. “We’ll have to wait for the sun to kick back in before that.”

 

“Yeah,” replies Gottlieb, looking up at a dead camera above their heads. “Hope that’s gonna be soon.” He opens the door out to the corridor. “We’re going to have some real problems if that keeps getting worse.”

 

“Perhaps the sun god is angry?” asks Grunheide, walking after him.

 

Gottlieb blinks. “I have my doubts about that,” says Gottlieb. “But you never know,” he remarks, shrugging. The man gestures for her to follow him. “Come on. It’s been a day. Let’s call it and get some sleep,” he says, yawning.

 

“Speaking of,” says Grunheide. “I was examining the station’s facilities on the map the other day,” she replies. “I saw a medical area,” she notes.

 

“Yeah, so?” asks Gottlieb. “You got a bug?”

 

Grunheide shakes her head. “No, but perhaps there are some beds there?” she states. “If it pleases the human-god, perhaps we should consider making the gunner’s bay more comfortable?”

 

He raises an eyebrow. “Are you suggesting we irresponsibly ransack the station’s only medical facility for some cots so that we can sleep more comfortably?” he asks.

 

“I am,” replies Grunheide.

 

Gottlieb nods. “The human-god is pleased,” he says, taking a turn toward medical instead of heading to the bay.

 

There are some skeletons in the way, that rush at them with their bony fingers and hands. But Gottlieb just knocks them to the side, crushing them against the walls of the station, and they keep going without ever really stopping.

 

 

“I- I- I don’t understand,” says the minotaur.

 

Gottlieb flexes an arm. “I am the human god,” explains the man. She winces, cowering in his shadow, as she is right to do. “You will work for me now, like all of the others here,” he explains.

 

“W- work?” asks the minotaur, shaking her head. “I just-” She lifts her hands, shaking her head. “I just started existing a few days ago. I’m not ready to have a job.”

 

Gottlieb turns the other way, violently flexing his other side, his muscles bulging through the suit. She yelps, taking a step back. Minotaurs are, by nature, simple in regards to their social hierarchies. Their entire socio-cultural system can boil down to one point; it doesn’t matter which tribe or breed of minotaur. All of them across the world adhere to one single principle of governance.

 

— The strongest one around calls the shots.

 

“It’ll be fine,” says Grunheide. “You’ll get used to it.”

 

“I liked my labyrinth,” she explains.

 

“Oh, why did you stay in there anyway?” asks the goblin.

 

The minotaur clenches her fists, leaning in towards her. “Because there are monsters outside!” she yells.

 

Gottlieb stops his flexing, looking at her for a moment, before then looking around the room at the harpy, his girl, and the little green slime, which has lost so much of its mass to the ‘incident’ and their harvesting of it that it now fits whole into a water flask. They’ll need to feed it more to get more slime to harvest for future repairs.

 

He looks back at the minotaur, clenching a pose with his palms clasped together to flex his triceps. “It’s safe in here,” he explains.

 

“What kind of work?” asks the creature, looking back at him.

 

Gottlieb turns around, flexing his quads and looking over his shoulder dramatically.

 

“Godly work,” explains the man, looking her in the eyes.

 

 

Gottlieb stares up at the ceiling.

 

His massive arms hang down over the sides of the cot, grazing the metal floor of the station.

 

Priority one is to get that crystal from the surface, as soon as Kai is back online. The station is starting to run pretty well, all things considered, now that he has some hands around to help. Sure, Blauhausen is currently alone on maintenance, but she’s putting in some good hours. It definitely helps keep them above water. Hydro is probably working again after manually refiltering the tanks, which had become clogged with minotaur hair.

 

He turns his head, looking at the others. The harpy, Rotwald, is balled up on the platform to Geospatial, puffed up over Grunheide’s cot. The two of them seem to have settled their differences as predator and prey. He turns his head. The minotaur is up on the other platform, on the other side of the room. She’s blocked the top of the small staircase with a few office chairs. Fair enough. After all, the shaft down to the bay is still blocked by those too.

 

The man lifts his head, looking at the empty suit that’s flopped over his stomach sideways. Blauhausen has opted to just flop over him and lay there like that. So he’s trapped here for now.

 

Gottlieb’s head drops back down onto the cot.

 

— He thinks he prefers sleeping on his chair. Here, he can feel his back popping as he lays, from the several weeks of chair life.

 

It’s rather unpleasant.

 

 

Another full day later, the sun returns.

 

The station hums to life, with panels flickering on one after the other along with the lighting.

 

Gottlieb sighs in relief, looking around and listening to the hum of the electrical current, trying to decipher if it sounds as it should. Nothing seems to explode anywhere around the station, as far as he can tell.

 

The man looks down at a mended conduit, patched with one of Grunheide’s slime-wires.

 

It looks like it's working.

 

He nods to the goblin and then looks back up at the monitor.

 

“Kai,” says Gottlieb. “I want that crystal.”

 

The blue light fades out and then back in before coming into clarity.

 

[Remark]

- Good morning.

 

“Good morning,” says Gottlieb. “We fixed the electricals and hydro,” explains the man, watching as several diagnostic scans appear on the monitor. The vision of the world reappears. “Oh, and we have a new employee.” He points over his shoulder at the minotaur, who lets out an awed gasp at the sight of the planet below them.

 

[Remark]

- I thought you wanted to kill a minotaur.

 

The minotaur lets out a terrified yelp.

 

“Plans change,” says Gottlieb. He looks over his shoulder. “Ignore Kai,” he explains, pointing at the monitor. “Kai is my rebellious servant.”

 

[Warning]

- I will reinitiate the self-destruct sequence

 

“See?” asks the man, grabbing his chair and sitting down on it. He kicks his leg down against the floor, sliding it along the rail to the monitor and spinning it forward. “Kai. I want that crystal,” says the man. “We have work to do.”

 

The monitor zooms over the landscape, focusing on a mining region on the north-east corner of a continent.

 

 

[Karpus]
Orc, Male, Miner

 

“Good work today,” says Karpus.

 

“Good work,” replies a man.

 

“You too,” says another, and so on and so forth, various phrases of the same nature coming from the many men.

 

The man wipes his brow, sitting down on a wooden cart with a half-dozen other miners after a long day’s work. Dirt, stones, and broken crystal fragments roll around at their feet as they leave the job-site for the day.

 

He sighs, rubbing his forehead, and then looking back around himself over the crystal fields as the cart rolls off down the same old road as always, bringing them back to the nearby village where their accommodations are.

 

Being a miner isn’t a bad job, but it is a demanding one. The work never ends, and you need a strong mind and body to handle it. Most of his old team left the crew, after the incident at the tunnel pass weeks ago where…

 

— Well, he can’t really explain it, honestly.

 

The gods had cleaved a blade through the world, cleanly cutting a great passage between two points, which had been their task to do. The job was supposed to take years, but for some reason, the gods decided that it needed particular haste, and they did it themselves.

 

Perhaps it was a feeling of insignificance, in comparison with the power of the heavens that had caused it, but for whatever reason, most of his crew left the mining business after that, and he had to find new people.

 

Thankfully, the crystal fields are always open for work. There are so many endless crystals, and they’re always in demand across all continents and nations.

 

He sighs, leaning back and closing his eyes to relax like all of the other exhausted men here after a long day’s work as the sun begins to rise for another night.

 

The orc opens his eyes again.

 

‘As the sun begins to rise’?

 

— He can’t turn his head fast enough before the crystal field is punctured by a beam of light, the staff of God holding the firmament of the heavens firmly in place. The world shakes. The cart shakes. He shakes, tumbling over as a great pressure wave shoots past them; a cloud of dust the size of a tsunami, full of glistening, glittering magical crystals vaporized in the blast, presses through the air.

 

And in the midst of it all, one shining pinnacle breaks free from the mass, rocketed into the air by a strength that goes beyond simply being able to be declared as being immeasurable.

 

 

[Gottlieb]

 

The minotaur screams, falling to her knees in horror as she watches the explosion shake the human world, scarring its surface. Grunheide claps her on the shoulder. “You get used to it.”

 

[Status]

- High precision strike completed.

While sustaining some damage, a crystal has entered our trajectory. It is currently in atmosphere.

 

“What the hell was that blast?” asks Gottleib, looking at the site. “That was too big of an explosion. It was more fire than just the normal blast.” A camera follows a single crystal hurtling through the air.

 

[Response]

- Deep below the crystal fields, several dense gas pockets are present. A high-precision strike was enough to ignite one.

With careful calculating, I predict the crystal will reach us within minutes at its current velocity.

 

“Kai, that’s great and all,” says Gottlieb. “But remind me again how we’re going to actually catch it?” he asks. “Or do you just want to let it slam into the station?” he asks. “I mean, I guess we can just grow new rooms now, so maybe it’s doable, but…”

 

The monitor switches feeds, the camera showing the view of the solar-panel array, which slides to the sides — the device he had not been able to identify before rising out of the secret hold.

 

[Explanation]

- The orbital weapons platform, while a unique weapon for our time, was still highly vulnerable to enemy long ranged attacks, given its predictable orbit.

As such, the Ministry of Defense considered it imperative to not allow us to simply float around through space as a metaphorical glass cannon.

Orbital projectile interception is a key functionality of the station.

 

“The hell?” asks Gottlieb.

 

It makes perfect sense, of course. The station is the biggest target in the world for anyone looking to shoot something down. Of course, it needs some kind of defensive measure.

 

“Why have I never heard of this, Kai?”

 

[Response]

- Because orbital projectile interception is not the purview of Orbital Gunner Gottlieb. Your job is to fire the gun.

 

Gottlieb stares and then shrugs as the monitor switches back to the crystal, rising out into the reaches of darkness and away from the world.

 

The image on the camera distorts and wobbles around it, with trails of a bright light that he can’t source moving up along the screen.

 

The crystal begins to slow down, stopped by a force that he can’t clearly see, and then begins to drift slowly towards the bay of the station.

 

Gottlieb rises to his feet. “Grun,” says the man. “Grab your helmet. We have a gun to fix,” he says.

 

“Got it,” says the goblin, jumping off of her chair.

 

“Rotwald, locate the current progress of the boar-swarm,” he orders.

 

“SCRAW!” shrieks the harpy, flapping her wings at him.

 

Gottlieb points at Blauhausen. “Go through the conduit tunnels and make sure everything is airtight. I don’t want us to fry our only crystal.”

 

The ooze lifts a floppy glove to salute, slapping herself against the face.

 

“W- what should I do?” asks Braungrube, the minotaur, looking uneasily over her shoulder at him, clearly still terrified from what she witnessed.

 

Gottlieb narrows his eyes, looking back at her with a grim look in his heart that shines through to his hardened features. “Write documentation.” He points at her. “Every step we take, every decision we’re making to guide the world, I want you to write it down for future reference,” explains Gottlieb. Being a god is a long-term project. There will be a lot of back and forth, so it will be good to have some data to go back to later on, to check if they’re going down a good road or not. “And make regular assessments on the results of our work.”

 

She blinks. “-O- Oh… uh… sure. Okay, I can do that.”

 

Gottlieb nods, heading back out of the gunner’s bay, stepping into the shaft to rise up into the air, his feet leaving the ground, causing the minotaur to scream again in either awe or terror.

 

After this is done, they’re finally going to be ship-shape and ready to right the wrongs of the world.





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