Chapter 78: Chapter 74

I chuckled and we both hung up our phones. Good timing as well, because Jada burst in the side door, panting.

“Where is it?”

I frowned. “He is right in front of you.” I pointed to the little metal block on the raised platform.

The Knowle squealed and clasped her paws, taking a few steps closer. Her nuzzle reached right down next to Cube, and she sniffed deeply.

“Hello little one!” Jada’s head cocked to the side, and she sniffed the little metal box again. Cube shuffled in his seat, turning to face her more fully.

She reached a claw out to scratch his surface, and he began purring. Maybe he just hated being picked up?

Jada reached both hands to the little box and lifted it, bed and all, from the stand. The purring increased. Okay, good to know, it was just me.

I became irritated and frowned. “Well, you guys seem to be getting along. I’m gonna take off, we need things.”

“Things, yes,” Jada replied. When I glanced back at her, she was staring at the infant Cube in her paws, and not paying attention to me in the slightest. I chuckled, secured my helmet, and left the house.

On my way past Phyllis’ place, I saw Molls by her side. The women were having some tea, and Phyllis was chatting away. Molls mostly sat and sipped at her tea, with the occasional nod. I purposefully kept my presence from their attention, walking on the far side of the road and not pausing on my way by.

Rayna was slumped on a bench, with Tollya sitting next to her. Tollya was rubbing Rayna’s back, but quickly stopped when she noticed me approaching. Rayna’s attitude also shifted, she straightened and met my eyes with a nod.

“Yeah, Tyson?” The tall hobb woman asked.

“I’m sorry to keep bothering you today Rayna, but we need to talk about the raid. I want to do it soon, we need to neuter the militia as fast as we can,” I said, sitting down across from the women.

“Neuter?” Tollya scowled.

Rayna smiled, a grim chuckle slipping past her lips. “Means remove balls.”

Tollya started smiling too, a wide grin forming on her features. “I like this word.”

I chuckled with the hobbs and raised my hands. “I’m not here to take up a bunch of your time, I just need to let you know where we are. Right now, Darclau is in the air scouting the militia’s base. I think. We’ll find out when he gets back. I’m also going to go talk to Lee again, at Sundew Valley Foods. He has a pretty comprehensive map of the area, he might know more.”

Rayna nodded along as I spoke, and Tollya watched the surrounding area with sharp eyes. She was listening too, I knew, but she was primarily watching out for that sneaky dark elf.

“We should hit them soon,” Rayna grunted.

“Tomorrow, early. If we can move with yarsps in the area, I want to hit them just before dawn. Sunrise is brutal in the desert, we can use it to our advantage if it comes to a fire-fight.”

She nodded. “Sound good. I’ll have hobbs ready.”

I nodded back. “Okay, thank you. I’m heading out, gotta make that food run. I might be gone a while, it sounds like they have trouble at Sundew Valley. I want to try and help. That’s our food source, after all.”

Rayna stood and stretched. “We keep camp safe.”

I waved as I moved away from the table toward the pickup truck. It was still warm from the long sunny day, and I happily got in the cab and started it. Noticing the missing driver's side door, I instead chose to securely buckle my seatbelt. That felt just as safe, and I drove the beat-to-hell truck out of the campground gates.

Thankfully, the drive was peaceful. I needed some quiet and was happy to soak it up. I did keep my eyes on the distant tree-line and surrounding desert as I drove, but the experience was primarily stress-free.

When I arrived at Sundew Valley Foods, Lee himself opened the gate for me. As I pulled in the truck and parked it, I noticed the hobb mercenaries were all gone. Lee and Suzanne’s regular crowd of workers and neighbors came out to fill my truck, and I took off my helmet to speak with Lee.

He led me away from the crowd, and up onto the wall. “I’m concerned, Tyson. Need to know if that offer of housing everyone here was serious.”

“As a heart attack,” I shot back immediately. “We have the space. That’s one thing we have plenty of.” I sighed and rubbed a hand over my forehead. “And after today, we have more than that. It wouldn’t be what you’ve got here, but I can get some basic shelters whipped up so every family or group can have their own space.”

“And I’m guessin’ you’d be happy to get our growers too,” Lee grumped.

“I wouldn’t ask any of them to do anything they’re uncomfortable with, you included. But yes, damn could I use a good food growing operation right now.” I stopped walking and leaned on the edge of the wall’s defensive fencing. “Our population has spiked, I think we have to be closing in on a hundred people.”

“That’s good. Really good.” He leaned on the wall next to me and stared at the ground for a long moment.

“Our hobbs abandoned us,” Lee finally sighed. “They told us we had twenty-four hours to renegotiate our contract when it was actually twelve, and they took off when the twelve was up, all of 'em all at once.”

“You guys are fairly flush, no? Should be able to hire more.” I looked up at him, a frown of confusion on my face.

“I tried that, the service claims it's processing my request, even though I put it through with an urgent tag.” He puffed out his cheeks and pushed off the wall. “Feels like a stall. Don’t rightly know what to do, Tyson. My people aren’t fighters. Hell, doubt I’m much of one anymore.”

“Let me call my guy real quick,” I said, digging for my phone. When I pulled it up, I noticed my statistics tracking app had shut down its widget, with a little notification waiting for me to watch an ad before I could use it again. My three days of free use must have run out.

I ignored it and called Axle. The Knowle answered after a few seconds.

“Hey, Axle, real quick question.” I glanced at Lee and saw him staring at the furry visage in my phone.

“Yeah,” the Knowle nodded.

“Is there any reason BuyMortMercMart would ignore or delay an incoming customer request?” I watched his expression as it went through a few phases. First confusion, then his ears perked up, and finally his visage fell.

“Yes. It is rumored that BuyMortMercMart plays favorites for morties. Bigger affiliates have an easier time getting mercenaries because they often pay for far larger contracts. That much is normal business, but I have heard of conflicting affiliates having their requests ignored, if a larger affiliate is planning to hit them,” he finished.

“Okay, that’s what I was afraid of, thank you. Any chance we can spare some of our own troops to guard Sundew Valley for a bit?” I asked offhandedly, already sure of the answer.

Axle shook his head. “I can ask, but I doubt Rayna would be willing to spread her people that much thinner. She was just here a few minutes ago, lamenting the lack of soldiers she has to field. We need more weapons, first, I think.”

“That’s what I thought, Axle, thank you. I’ll be back later, might be coming with more people.”

“We still have plenty of tents available, and a few huts remain empty.” The Knowle smiled, baring his sharp teeth. “More hands is less work for us all.”

 I nodded at him and hung up, turning back to Lee. “Well, at the very least we can evacuate your people. I’ll be happy to put in an order for mercs, maybe mine won’t get ignored. Then I can just assign them your usual detail and we can work out the cost in food. I was also hoping to get another look at that map of yours, maybe pick your brain on these militia clowns a little more.”

“Oh my, would you? That would be excellent.” Lee took a deep breath and let it out past his mustache. “I’ve been worried about what to do. Most of my people won’t take kindly to the thought of leaving, but we’re damn near over-run every day with those giant wasps. They climb right up our walls, cause of all the damn tires. Without our hobbs to fend ‘em off…” he finished with a shrug.

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“Don’t worry about it, Lee, we’ll figure it out.” I already had BuyMort up and was scanning through BuyMortMercMart. When I tried to place an order for mercenaries, I received a strange message on a popup screen.

“BuyMortMercMart is having an unusual amount of requests for that service area. Please wait for assistance with your order. An associate will be with you soon.”

I relayed the information to Lee, and his jawline tightened. “As I understand it, the only part of mercenary contracts that BuyMort is privy to is the money and initial meetings through its interface. But the merc companies themselves take or reject contracts as desired.”

“That sounds an awful lot like you’re about to get hit, Lee.” I paused to look around at the growing dark of night around us. The desert was silent beyond the walls.

Lee followed my gaze and frowned as he stared out over the walls. “I never thought to leave my own home, but I have to agree with you. I’ll talk to Suzanne about it, follow me. You can have your time with my map, and I’ll be happy to tell you what I know.”

I followed him back down from the walls and into his place, where he showed me to his study and left me to go speak with Suzanne. While I unfolded the map he provided me, I took a moment to appreciate the trust he had shown me, leaving me alone around his books.

While they spoke in the next room, I used my helmet to take several pictures of the map. The helmet itself was capable of storing them, and I no longer needed to increase my impending phone bill for the sake of taking a picture.

The information I could glean from the map was limited. It said the militia headquarters was located at an old mine on the outskirts of Prescott. There was some limited scale information, in regard to how much territory the mine covered, but that was it. Nothing else of value to be had, just a red dot on an old man’s map with a note.

I sat down and waited for him to come get me. When he entered the room to see me sitting in his chair, his mustache twitched. I got up and offered it to him and he smiled. I moved around the desk and sat back down as he got into his chair and got comfortable.

I had put the helmet on to take my pictures of the map, and I decided to keep it in place for the next part of my planned conversation with Lee.

“Hey, I was just wondering. You didn’t happen to bug our compound, did you?” I asked, innocently.

Lee’s eyes snapped up to my helmet, but he looked away instead of staring at his own reflection. “Thought you might ask that. Yup, sure did.”

I nodded. “Oh. Okay. Can I ask why?”

Lee finished folding his map and tucked it into the drawer at his side. “I need to know who I can trust, and how, Tyson. I need information, and I need it as quickly as I can get it. That’s how this works. We learn everything we can, as fast as we can, or we die.” He finished his sentence and sucked on a tooth for a few seconds before nodding. “Yep, that’s the long and short of it. I won’t bother apologizing, I think you know it would be meaningless prattle.”

I nodded again, this time removing my helmet and setting it down on the desk between us. “Understood. I’ll be happy to be straightforward with you, Lee.”

The old man’s mustache shifted again, and he clasped his hands over his belly. “Will you now? Well, that’s good, I thought for sure you’d be mad with us, our signal cut out earlier today. This afternoon, in fact, a few hours before you called.”

Lee tapped his thumbs together and stared at me for a moment before chuckling. “You ever gonna make a move on that priest of yours? I been wondering about that for a couple days now.”

I snorted, then smiled. “Let you know when I figure that one out. Wow, whatever bug you’re using is effective.”

“Was using. Tyson, I’ll be straightforward with you, in exchange,” he leaned back and kept eye contact with me. “I trust you, a great deal already. Seem like a decent fella. But learning about you from you and learning about you when you’re not aware I’m learning about you are two different things entirely. I did what I had to, to learn about who our only ally really is.”

“I understand. I don’t know that I particularly condone or condemn it, but I understand.”

“Information warfare is like that, I’m afraid. If your feelings are hurt, I suppose I might apologize after all, on reality's behalf, if not my own,” he said.

I smiled at him and snorted a laugh. “You’d do it again in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you?”

“Already am.” He grinned in return. “Been looking for a new connection since mine died today.”

“Well, just don’t try and take over or anything.” I chuckled. “Please.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, not my forte,” he said, sitting forward.

“You got anything on Dearth, or the militia, to share?” I asked the question with a smile, but in a serious tone of voice.

“Oh course, the location. They both sweep for bugs though, so the cheapies I bought didn’t work on them. Think Dearth mighta tipped off the militia, since I put ‘em in the food. Dearth’s bugs went down the instant they got into place. All I got was the location. Militia ordered a day later, and the same thing happened,” he reported. “Can’t imagine those fellas thought to sweep for ‘em themselves.”

“Darn. I’m thinking about hitting them soon, we need more weaponry and those idiots are sure to have a lot,” I casually said.

Lee blinked a few times and nodded. “There’s a joke they like to tell, I heard it many a time before all this went down. One of ‘em came to the local town hall meeting to tell it, even, when I was trying to first get this land to build on.” He paused and cleared his throat, sitting forward.

“If given a choice between a can of beans, or a gun, they would take the gun. That way they’d have a gun, and a can of beans, they said. Then they laughed and laughed. Never did manage to get that out of my head, their laughter. Suppose I can’t muster much sympathy for em. Do your worst, won’t change things between us none.”

I nodded, slowly. “Appreciate it Lee. I don’t much like the thought of what’s likely to happen, but they seem dead set on killing me if I don’t.”

“And they’ll come for my can of beans one day soon if’n you don’t shuffle ‘em loose. Hell, the loss of our hobbs might even be them making their move. Hard to suss out from here.” He shrugged.

In the silence that filled the next few minutes, a fireball suddenly bloomed behind Lee, through the window. The explosion’s shockwave struck us instantly, blowing in the window and causing Lee to duck in his seat.

Shards of glass sunk into the back of his chair and flew past to strike the table and my exposed torso. One of them shattered off the starfish suit, but a few good sized ones made it into my ribs.

Lee’s eyes went wide as I sighed and stood up, pulling one of the shards out myself. The suit deployed tendrils for the rest, and Lee stared with wide eyes as the Starfish suit went to work. Flesh foam filled in the small wounds, and lasers seared everything back to how it should be. I quickly reached for my helmet and slipped it on.

I crushed the large shard in my hand, and my cartoon starfish danced into view, on the desk. “Oooh, thank you user, good charge!” I ignored it.

“Suzanna!” Lee suddenly exclaimed. He jumped up and crunched across the broken glass to the door behind me.

He opened it and shouted her name down the hallway, as another blast went off, near the same area. This one was closer to us though, and I took the brunt of what came through the window. Shards of wood and glass tore free from the wall behind us and ripped into my back. I grunted and took it as I covered Lee. The suit would fix me.

Suzanne’s voice rang down the hallway. She sounded distressed but unhurt, and Lee turned to stare at me. I doubled over at the waist, burning wood and more glass embedded in my back. He jumped when he saw me, and his eyes bugged wide.

“I’ll be fine, go,” I rasped, waving a hand at him. I found more glass to break as the starfish suit did its work, and the cartoon danced vigorously on the desk.

I narrowed my eyes and glared at it through the haze of painkiller. “What are you?”

“I’m your starfish suit interface of course! I let you know when you need a charge and answer any user questions about functionality. You turned off cranial repair function using me a couple of days ago, user, don’t you remember? Perhaps you should turn it back on.”

Lee was back behind me before I could answer the cartoon. He gaped. “They blew our wall. The northern wall is breached in two places.”

My tendrils yanked out the last bit of burning wall and I straightened up my back to face him. “I’m coming, just go.”

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