Chapter 154: Chapter 148

We lifted from the security platform and turned to fly back over the mountain to Silken Sands, a defunct starfish suit secured in a transport crate in the back.

“Don’t worry, I already allocated an emergency portal that only you can use. I heard your talk with Tollya,” he said. The Knowle leaned forward to look down as we flew over the wall, watching the hobbs on patrol. He glanced over at me and licked his nose.

“Just ask, Axle,” I sighed. “I can tell you want to ask something.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing, I just . . . did you know what that beast was?”

I sighed and looked down at my hands. A memory pushed up and intruded again. The first time I went into the Sleem dungeon beneath the campground, before we took it over and started housing people down there.

“No, but I have a bad feeling about it,” I said. “Can you find out who bought something if I sold it directly through BuyMort?”

My operations manager and friend scowled and glanced over at me again. “No, I’m afraid not. I can make an educated guess based on the markets where it ended up if you tell me what it was though.”

I sighed. “An egg. Something my people created before BuyMort, a long time before BuyMort. BuyMort classified it as a bio-weapon. The Reaper Hound.”

Axles eye’s widened. “Dearth, almost certainly. They always search for weapons on new planets.”

“We don’t know for sure if this is them, but dammit that dog-thing had scythes coming off its back,” I said, frowning. “Sounds like a reaper hound to me.”

Axle nodded grimly. “I’ll make some inquiries. Would you like me to loop in Lee?” he asked.

I blinked. Our retired intelligence operative wanted nothing more than to grow healthy food for reasonable prices and enjoy the sunsets through the dome with his gentle wife Suzanne.

“Not yet. I’d like to see what you come up with. Let’s leave him in peace for the time being,” I sighed. “Precious little of that around.”

We banked in for a landing as my friend nodded grimly.

He hefted the crate to carry it into the library after we were landed and secure. Before leaving, he turned and licked his nose. “I’ll get some camera equipment for the security teams. We have another affiliate problem to discuss, but it can wait. Get some rest.”

“Thank you, Axle,” I said, hands on my hips. “I will try.”

I should have gone back to Prescott, but instead my feet carried me out of the parking lot toward the residential areas. Darclau, my raven friend, hopped out of his fancy home and cawed enthusiastically at me.

The hobb who stood guard at their gates jumped, not used to the birds' unexpected noises yet. Raucous raven amusement sounds poured from the doorway of their abode. The former office structure had been improved upon dramatically, upgraded to a small, raven sized mansion of metal and wood.

About the size of a tiny house, the sides had multiple doors that could be pushed through for easy access, and several small machines whining or humming on the outside that provided comfort and fun of some sort for the birds. I didn’t actually know what, I never got a good look inside.

Darclau had a good laugh at the guard’s expense, and fluttered over to my upraised arm, where he perched using the starfish suit’s metal lines for leverage. He burbled at me in excitement, telling me something he had enjoyed about his day.

“We made big sale, big sale!” his translator said. He’d eventually purchased it once communication became too difficult for us. Sheena, his former translator, had helped him acquire the device, and his vast mortie horde paid for it.

The birds ran a salvage operation for us out of their land in the campground. Once we could communicate with them easily, they’d even gotten their own sub-MortBlock to operate.

My MortBlock coverage was filled with multiple sub-MortBlock owners. When I flashed my refresh button, I had it set to save each of their territories for them as well, but they were able to refresh it themselves as desired. The system required trust. Or competent military enforcement. We had both.

“What did you sell?” I asked. He wore his translator around his neck, and it burbled my question up at him in his own language.

Darclau took a few careful steps down my arm and lightly pecked the back of my hand. The raven turned and held his mouth open, waiting for my reaction.

I shook my head and chuckled. “Yeah I love you too buddy. Now tell me what you sold, you little goblin.”

His pendant burbled and cawed, and Darclau’s mouth dropped open again. His eyes squeezed closed, and he started laughing. I had to set him down so he could roll around on the padded lounging platform at the top of their fence.

Eventually, he calmed and hopped closer to me. He chattered and burbled, taking a break to laugh more than once.

“Sell land. Big land, many dirts,” his necklace translated. “Many close, many dirts, ravens still richer than Tyson. Tyson the goblin now!”

Darclau enjoyed his joke. He didn’t understand my finances, and that was okay. Hell, I barely understood my finances, and I had Axle to help.

My good friend and occasional bully Darclau had accidentally taken our campground over by force, in the earliest days of BuyMort. He’d asked the system for help with a list of tasks, and it sent him a mercenary force capable of taking our humble forces without any blood spilt. Since then, he’d thought he was rich, and I was poor.

Ravens.

“Okay then, smart-ass rich bird. Show me this many close dirts of yours,” I said.

Darclau stiffened and nodded. He cawed once and hopped off his platform to glide into the air.

You are reading story BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit at novel35.com

I followed and walked past Phyliss’ place, my ninety-four year old bodyguard in a mech. She’d celebrated a birthday in the suit, but she seemed to be getting younger instead of older.

Since she’d melted, the suit healed her slowly back to someone that looked to be in her mid-seventies, instead of late nineties. She even had streaks of faded red appearing in her hair again. The old lady raised a cup of tea I was sure had LSD in it and smiled from her porch.

She had a porch to lounge on, and a drydock system to work on her mech, which she did continuously. But that was about it, she was very low maintenance. Just spent her free time off doing who-knows-what with Doofus, and upgrading her mech. Seniors need hobbies too.

I waved, and she raised a giant metal hand to wave back, teacup held daintily in the other. Thankfully, I hadn’t had much need of her bodyguarding services since our army became sizable and equipped. Still, the hulking shapes beneath tarps near her dry dock told me she was likely ready, if needed.

Darclau cawed at me from the nearby guard tower.

“Here! See here!” his translator shouted.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” I muttered. The wall was easy enough to climb, with a simple mud-crete staircase at the guard tower. Hobbs patrolled day and night, keeping an eye on the compound as much as the areas outside of it.

Our security dealt with more dream storms than anything else at Silken Sands those days. Dro’erja in particular had some bad nightmares. We’d looped in Molls, since I couldn’t keep anything a secret from her anyway, and the delf was getting therapy that really seemed to help. Still. We had extra guards on the ranch anytime he was asleep.

I followed Darclau to a gathering of hobb guards near the southern edge of the wall. They were grouped up and staring into the distance, occasionally passing a pair of binoculars between them. I stepped up to the group, returning a series of salutes, and accepted the binoculars they handed over.

In the distance, a light cloud of dust hung over a chunk of missing desert.

My helmet flooded from my pores at a thought, and I pulled up its ‘magic’ connection to the Fumble-Bee network of advanced drones. The video came from a crystal ball with swirling flame in its depths, but it was just a video link.

We had a major sinkhole just a few miles to our south. Segmented layers of sunken earth showed the hard edges and descended lower at each stage. The ravens must have sold the earth as it was sinking, freeing itself from my MortBlock Coverage.

I sighed and refreshed it again.

“You are a goblin, you little thief. That was my dirt!” I grunted.

Darclau pecked my hand again, harder this time.

“It not have your name on it. Free sales, big sales. Many dirt. Ravens not goblins!” The bird burbled at me frantically, before walking closer and leaning against my hand on the railing.

I immediately succumbed and ran a finger down the back of his neck the way he liked. “Ravens not goblins, you’re right. It’s okay, Darclau, I’m not mad.”

The ravens took BuyMort very literally sometimes, and if something ‘had my name on it,’ they’d never have sold it.

“Good good!” he cawed, before flapping his wings and flying off to check on the sinkhole again.

“Just another thing I have to deal with,” I sighed, turning to look over the Silken Sands compound.

I called Axle. He picked up on the first ring, as always.

“Yeah?” he said. The Knowle was seated at a large metal desk, and appeared to be working on the defunct starfish suit.

“Was the other problem the sinkhole down south?” I asked, a weary sigh in my voice.

Axle hesitated, looking at me over the psychic phone connection. “Yes,” he finally said. “The earthquake must have damaged our aquifer, it’s now draining rapidly. We have to find a new source of water for Prescott, and the new Los Angeles desalination plant won’t nearly cover our needs.”

I nearly crumpled. Any affiliate that couldn’t provide clean drinking water to its people was essentially a failed state. Just a disaster waiting to happen.

“Don’t take this on too, Tyson,” Axle said. “I’ve already ordered a shipment of water that will buy us some time, and I’m working over some plans. You need some rest, some relaxation. Go get a drink or something.”

I nodded and thanked him, before we hung up. Another problem for another day.

Evening was just starting to fall, and I could hear the crowd at Morbin’s bar, Morbin time, getting started for the night.

“I need a drink, you around buddy?” I whispered to the air.

A heavy flapping sound filled the air, and my small bat-like alien friend Morbin descended from his bat-box apartment. It was attached to the side of the apartment complex now, four stories in the air.

He landed at my side and raised both long arms overhead. “Morbin time?!”

“Yeah buddy, Morbin time,” I said with a faint smile.

“Put your silver skin away, you scare the locals like that,” he chided. I refreshed my MortBlock again, to frustrate Darclau’s thieving, and compelled the helmet to recede, while we climbed down the wall to head to the bar.

You can find story with these keywords: BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit, Read BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit, BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit novel, BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit book, BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit story, BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit full, BuyMort: Rise of the Windowpuncher – How I Became the Accidental Warlord of Arizona. Apocalyptic GameLit Latest Chapter