Chapter 6: Chapter 5: Woo hoo! Overtime!

"Any luck, Adjutant?" Jack asked yet again, for what felt like the hundredth time over the last four days. He had fallen into a rhythm, gather a bunch of minerals during the day, discuss plans with the adjutant at night, and get his daily virtual battle in just before bed. Tonight was going to be the night he got that last point he needed to level up. He hadn't seen hide nor chitin of a Zerg since the patrol of Zerglings, and neither had the Adjutant. "Negative. Still no signs of Zerg life form. Active scanning has been maintained at all times at your request, despite the additional mineral usage." His mineral counter ticked down steadily, all the way down to 672. The scanning was a minimal part of the energy usage, though it had raised the uptick from a single mineral an hour. The main use of his resources had been on building four more SCVs, one each day. 

As for all the minerals he had harvested, they remained in the storage units of the SCVs as they sit in the charging bay. He didn't have a pressing need for the minerals at the moment, so leaving them stored in the SCV and filling up a new one every day didn't hurt anything. And the Adjutant had mentioned that the processing of high-value golden minerals had a very distinctive signature, one that could possibly have attracted the Zerg who showed up last time. He wasn't going to risk anything for the time being, so he intended to process the whole batch all at once to get it over with when he really needed the resources. 

"What about Vespene gas? What sort of emergency landing site doesn't account for there needing to be a Vespene gas geyser in order to lift off to move anywhere else?" That was the big problem at the moment. Sure, Jack had all the minerals he could want, or close enough to it... but without a source of Vespene gas, he didn't have any way to lift off the command center if danger came knocking on his doors again. "The location was the most optimal landing zone in operational range of the relocation thrusters. Would acting manager like the coordinates of the previous location's Vespene geyser? The travel distance would be over a hundred miles by SCV, and a method of battery replenishment would be required." "Not to mention the hostiles that are probably still there, and are probably Zerg, considering I don't trust your sensors as far as I could throw them after last time. No thanks. Just... ugh."

Running both hands across his face, Jack tried to come up with a solution. A sensor tower would allow them to scan the area with more accuracy, but that required him to already have some Vespene Gas on hand to build it. He could upgrade the satellite communications array of the command center with only minerals, making it into an orbital command facility, but without any satellites in orbit to command, that wasn't going to do him much good. He could go out on patrol with an SCV out of the range of the sensors to see if he could find something manually, but that was just a desperate attempt to get lucky. Still, it was worth thinking about, because a Terran base operating without gas was crippling. 

He had already built a barracks nearby, which had all the facilities to produce combat-grade armor and weaponry that Terran Marines would need, but unlike the game, he couldn't just create the fighters from mid-air. He produced one set of armor for himself, though, and spent the entirety of today learning how to don it, remove it, and walk around with it. With the C-14 Impaler gauss rifle in his hand, he enjoyed blasting furrows into the side of a nearby hill for an hour or so, leaving it riddled with 8mm-thick spike-like rounds. The powered armor suit didn't give him quite the power-trip that the twelve-foot-tall SCV did, but adding a couple feet to his height and the motor-assistance during movement actually made him experience the sensation of being athletic. What it didn't do, however, was make him immune to the resulting muscle aches and pains from the motion the assistance made him do. 

So here he was, lying in bed and arguing with the Adjutant over what else he could do at this point. The barracks had the required facilities to make all sorts of weaponry for infantry, but he needed to make an engineering bay to get access to automated turret defenses. "Put that at the top of the list to do." Jack said, wincing at the soreness he felt when he made even the slightest motion of his arms, and lay back into bed like a salted fish. "Tomorrow. Probably." 

There were a few hours to go until he was able to do his virtual battle, and he wound up dozing off in the interim. When he woke up with a stretch, feeling only a dull ache rather than outright pain, it took him a moment to realize what happened. "Wasted all that potential cooldown time by falling asleep...!" he swore at himself, as he hurriedly went in for another virtual battle. He had repeated the exact same strategy every day, earning a single experience point each time. He might have been able to earn more on a higher difficulty, but he didn't want to risk losing and having to wait a whole day to make up for the loss. The virtual battle's AI didn't seem smart enough to vary its strategy, but then again, Jack had been choosing equal battles, leaving the enemy with only worker units to bring to a fight. Worker units with 10% less HP than his own, so each victory snowballed faster and faster than the last.

'Virtual battle victory! +1XP' 

'Level up! New Commander level: 1! Unlocked: Terran Civilian!'

"Come on... please do what I think you're going to do...!" Jack mumbled to himself, confirming the screen and jumping his eyes toward the 'Production' button. No longer greyed out, he was able to press it and saw on the list: Terran Civilian: 5 minerals. "Yes! That's what I needed! Bodies!" Glancing around and deciding that his bedroom wasn't the place to test this, he hurried to the Mess Hall and opened the menu again. He was practically spamming the button with his finger, mashing the Terran Civilian entry over and over, before an error played with each mash. His minerals rapidly dropped down to 627, and his supply limit had hit a 10/10 as nine more figures in similar-looking jumpsuits all appeared before him. It was surprisingly without fanfare, no teleporting in animation, it was like he blinked his eyes and nine human figures were standing in front of him in a loose mob. 

"Hello?" The civilians formed up in a line with a slack order that was as if a bunch of suburban dads decided they had an idea of what military formation looked like, and one of them offered a wave. "What'chu need, Boss?" A southern-sounding drawl came from the one closest to him. People! People who can TALK! It was a little concerning that all of the civilians looked identical, down to the thin mustache and the wrinkles around the eyes, but they didn't seem like mindless robots. "Can you pilot an SCV?" Jack asked, with a hopeful undertone in his voice. He was really getting sick and tired of having to do everything himself.  "Sure as shootin'. Get me a ride and I'll get to work!" 

"Alright, you... do you all have names?" The doppelgangers all looked at each other, confused, before shaking their heads, "I'ont think so?" The drawl was so thick you could have cut it with a knife, and Jack sighed, pointing to each in turn. "One. Two. Three..." he went through each and assigned them a number. Surprisingly enough, as he did so a number appeared on the back of the jumpsuit, and a smaller one on the chest above the heart. "Right, one through five, come with me to the SCV bay. Six through nine, uh... Adjutant, where do we need help the most at the moment? And can you talk to them?" The robotic voice chirped in his ear, "Affirmative. The production facilities require maintenance." it suggested, and Jack pointed at the other civilians. "Right, you all do what the Adjutant needs, for now, unless I come up with something else."

The crew nodded without complaint as Jack turned and led his newfound SCV pilots to the bay. "Guess it's time to bite the bullet. Everyone get in an SCV, and dump the minerals in the grinder." A slew of "Roger"s and a single "You got it, boss!" came over in reply, the civilians moving into the SCVs with practiced ease he was almost jealous of. While they started grinding their minerals, he went to the last SCV and climbed in himself. "Adjutant, I'm going to need the blueprints for an engineering bay. At least I don't have to build it myself." He rumbled out once the SCV bay door opened, speeding well ahead of the other SCVs due to his boosted machine. 

A few hours of labor later, they had managed to get it built, a squat-looking, wide single-story building held up by four metal struts, one on each corner. It looked a bit frog-like, as if the building was just going to hop up into the air. Which it could! If he had any Vespene gas he was willing to waste in the process. "Additional research unlocked. Staff required to begin research on upgrades. Available avenues of research: infantry armor, infantry weaponry." Glancing at the other SCVs, he opened his communications to number 1, "Can any of you guys work a research lab?" There was a long pause, before the drawling tone replied, "Uhhh... boss, I'm a wrench monkey, I can fix the structure of a lab, but I'm liable to smash something on the inside." That made sense. There were separate units for Terran scientists and Terran civilians, after all. "Forget about it, then."

At least he had finally unlocked the automated base defenses. "Alright, anyone who doesn't want to get up close and personal with the Zerg, start building a turret. I want a proper defensible position up before the suns go down!" he shouted, and a few of the SCVs waved their arms at him and started going toward the engineering bay's production facility to grab the appropriate parts. He put a series of anti-aerial Longbolt missile turrets around the perimeter of the base, and alongside each planted two Perdition flamethrower turrets. The multiple days worth of minerals had shot his available resources up to 4122, but each turret placed ate a chunk out of his bank account. 

He would have drastically over-prepared and dumped almost everything he had into defensive turrets, but the Adjutant chimed in and warned him that each defensive position required more energy from the command center's reactor in order to maintain its operation. The more he built, the more it drained. He settled for five defensive nodes in a pentagram shape around his few structures, each with one anti-air turret and two flamethrower turrets, bringing his balance down to 2747. "Alright, Adjutant, send number 6 out to take over my SCV please." Jack ordered with a delighted expression. Finally, he could sit back and let someone else do the worst of the manual labor, like a commander should. Well, maybe not should, but he was going to get some perks out of being in charge! "Everyone else, mining duty until the suns set, then you're all free to do as you please!"

Back to his room, sitting at the desk this time, rather than climbing straight into bed, he went back into the interface of the system. He hadn't earned any more achievements over the course of his days of virtual battles, so either his bland and repetitive strategy of 'punch them in the face with my buffed SCVs' wasn't exciting enough to be worth recognition, or he wasn't going to be getting any buffs out of the fake battles. Jack was hoping it was the former, but had a bad feeling about it likely being the latter. The system seemed to have rewarded his reckless, desperate fight with his life on the line, after all. He glanced at his new 'Level 1' upgrade bar, sitting completely empty, and the icon that appeared to the right of the bar to replace the civilian. It was a portrait-shot of an armor-clad figure with the helmet visor up, chewing on a thick cigar stub and glaring toward the camera.

"That's a marine! I was wondering if I could give the civilians combat training, and I still might have to give it a try, but if I can call down actual combat units immediately with my resources, that changes everything!" Jack felt his pulse racing at the possibilities. After all, there hadn't been any restriction or timer on him creating Terran civilians, so if he could almost instantly create as many marines as he had resources for, he could drop an army at a moment's notice! His excitement tempered slightly when he remembered he actually did have a limitation on spawning the civilians: it only let him spawn nine of them, and his HUD showed his supply sitting at 10/10. That just won't do at all. "Hey, Adjutant? I'm going to need to get some Supply Depots built..." Jack was already daydreaming about what he might be able to do the next time the Zerg decided to show up...

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