Chapter 20 - Gate Construction

Note : Eloise, the village girl Airah slept with, has been renamed to Elaine. So this Eloise, the engineer one, is a different character, don't worry. Chapters 21 and 22 are ready and will be posted in the coming days as well !

Chapter 20

Salran Mountains, Starnor Imperial Border Territories

Road to Kaisersgrenze

"So, what now?" Asked Rolan as the wagons stopped by the side of the road.

"Now we get off the beaten path. My lair is there." Airah pointed at a mountain in the distance. "I recommend you start moving as I start ferrying the wagons. Just make sure to try and stay in cleared area, and on a straight path so I can find you again and accompany you all the way back. Will you be able to keep the heading?"

Rolan smiled, and pulled out a compass out of a pouch on his chest, and smiled.

"I came prepared." He quickly looked at the compass, turning it around to determine the azimut, and Airah looked at it curiously. It looked far more sophisticated than what she'd have expected him to have. "330 degrees. Should be able to hold that, although we won't be going in a straight line, obviously."

"Obviously, yes. I could, but, you know...dragon." They chuckled, and Airah shook her head. "Anyway, if you need to gather my attention, start a fire and make some smoke, and I'll come investigate. Do that anyway at sundown if I haven't rejoined you yet."

"Yes ma'am. Alright people, let's get the horses far from the wagon, I'd rather not have them scare off like when our dear lady took to the air a bit ago!"

Airah smiled as the engineers went to work. It had been a few hours since the alchemist incident, and they'd made quite a bit of way since then. They'd even passed by Karl's wagon, and the battleground surrounding it, which had several of the engineers looking vaguely ill as they passed by the pile of incinerated bones left of the dead bandits, as the alchemist had simply piled on the remaining bodies and set them alight on top of their comrades' remains.

It only took a few minutes to remove the horses and attach them to some convenient trees deeper into the forest. Hopefully deep enough that no one would just take them while passing by. They could have set up someone to guard them, but they'd make an easy target, and Lenna had clearly been uneasy about allowing too many people into the knowledge of what Airah actually was, and kept the number of persons in the engineering party to the bare minimum.

"Alright, looks good. I'll start getting the cart to my lair. I'll keep watch from the sky as well!"

And with that Airah turned into her dragon form, carefully grabbed one of the carts, and took off.

*****

"Well mission accomplished. And with minimal..." Airah glanced at the crashed cart at the end of a furrow into the ground, adorned with splinters and leaves.. "...Ish, casualties."

"You rammed the cart into a tree. And then let it crash into the ground."

"It survived!"

"It doesn't have wheels anymore! Or anything below the main body for that matter!"

"Well, yes, but the cargo is intact!"

"Because it was bags of cement!"

"Still counts!"

The AI huffed, and rolled her eyes, but didn't argue further.

"Alright, slight accidents aside, I believe it's time to rejoin our engineer friends." Airah looked up and frowned. "The sun is getting real low as well."

"Hopefully we don't meet a hulking green mutant along the way."

"I should have never given you that pop culture reference file."

The AI smiled.

"Well, you did, and you were the one to insist that I read it to understand all the references you were making. So who's to blame, uh?"

Airah declined to answer, and simply took off again.

It only took half an hour to find the engineers. They weren't exactly being discreet, and they had started lighting up lanterns as the sun got lower and visibility in the forest simply vanished. Airah had asked about what fuel they used during the trip, and found it interesting that their lanterns were powered by some kind of animal oil, akin to some kind of whale, but not fossil fuel. It was fascinating because they obviously knew what fossil oil was, and could extract it, which meant it should at least have been some competition, but the only thing she'd gotten out of the engineers was cryptic answers that it usually didn't end well when that fuel was put inside a lantern.

Finding a good spot to land was a bit harder, but after a few minutes she was down on the ground, and making her way towards them.

"Halt! Who goes there?" Asked a female voice in the underbrush.

"It's me, Airah." Simply answered the dragon as she made her way through the underbrush. Despite her clothes being relatively light -or skimpy, according to Stellyra-, she didn't really have many problems. Her skin barely even blinked when she smashed small branches and bushes aside, and in fact having lighter clothing helped, as it left less areas to be caught on vegetation. The only problem was her cloak, which was very practical when it rained, but a pain in the ass when trying to move through the forest, so she had it bundled in her bag.

"Ah. Welcome back milady." Said the engineer as she lowered her sword, and sheathed it once more. "It's good to see you again."

"Likewise, ah..."

"Eloise milady."

"Right, Eloise." Airah looked around at the group of engineers, and gestured towards the mountain. "Come on, let's get you to my lair. It's not much, but it'll be better than prowling around in the dark!"

*****

"Welcome! My home is your home, as some would say."

"No offense lady Starfire, but I prefer a more, ah, homey setting. Still, it is appreciated." Said Rolan as he set down his toolbox. "So, is this where you want the gate?"

Airah nodded.

"Past the first bend in the tunnel, so that way it's not immediately visible, but far enough up that I have some space."

"Alright. Eloise, Connor, start taking measurements. Valdor, Cosner, get me the cement bags and the bricks. Might as well get the materials on site!"

His men nodded -with Eloise literally saluting-, and leapt into action. Airah looked at him and rose an eyebrow.

"Very efficient. Your people seem to be very….effective."

"You mean they're not behaving like a herd of cats."

"Well…Yeah."

"We've worked together on a lot of projects before. Plus we did get some coaching from the militia to be a bit more cohesive. Lady Kostner was rather unimpressed by our original performance and had commander Stavros train us. Well, 'train', more like 'yell loudly at us', I suppose."

"For a lot of militaries, that counts as training." Actually, for anything short of the Galactic Empire's commandos and Imperial Guard, it was pretty much the only thing instructors did. Combat training simulations had long since been refined far beyond the point of needing any form of human -or AI- intervention, and as long as you were training grunts and not elite soldiers the only thing you needed on top of that was cohesion and esprit de corps. "The good ones do tend to tell you what you're doing wrong though."

"Well, I suppose we were in excellent hands then, as he was rather, ah, expressive about our shortcomings."

Airah chuckled, quickly followed by Rolan.

"Alright, I shouldn't just stand here and watch. I'll go give my men a hand." Continued the engineer.

"And I'll stand guard, just in case."

Rolan looked around dubiously.

"I'm not sure what would come to attack us in here."

Airah smiled mirthlessly.

"Oh believe me. There's a fair amount of things that would attack us even here. There's a reason I'm having this gate made after all."

That seemed to give the engineer pause, and he nodded thoughtfully.

"I'll try to keep that in mind. Especially for the construction. I think we'll go a bit harder on the sturdiness aspect."

"See to it that you do." Said Airah, before turning back towards the entrance. She wasn't especially worried about the engineers taking from her stuff -she knew everything she owned by heart, and even if she forgot Stellyra was an AI and by definition the best record keeper in existence, and they'd have ample time to recover anything taken before the engineers left-, and she was definitely worried about what might happen to their cart outside or the engineers ferrying supplies to them.

Do you think we'll get attacked? Said Airah over the mindlink.

Usually I'd say 'no', but that was without us bringing a bunch of squishy humans as an 'all you can eat' buffet.

Hey! I used to be a squishy human.

One, you were never that squishy to begin with, thank the stars for anti-ballistic fabric, and two, you never uninstalled that commando implant suite. You couldn't exactly juggle battle tanks without the armor or the full package, but you sure as hell could have tanked a plasma round.

Airah winced, but nodded. Full Imperial commandos had more in common with androids than humans, given their level of augmentation, but the basic implant suite was very much covert and contained enough stuff to turn anyone into an unstoppable killing machine, relative to a normal human. Which was part of the reason basically every Devourer captain or fleet admiral was issued one by default, as it made assassinations drastically less likely to succeed. She hadn't used hers -much, one drunk idiot that didn't take 'no' for an answer ended up tasting a fire hydrant-, but she had been perfectly aware of its presence.

Fair enough. Well, I suppose time to stand guard and look menacing.

Sure, you do that. I'll continue working on my files.

*****

In the end they both spent their time arguing over and sorting through Stellyra's new files. As their briefing files had been incomplete, to say the least, they were attempting to fill the gaps, although a fair amount of it was extrapolation.

It took an hour for the engineers to complete their measurements, and once Airah had approved, approximately 6 to fully do the installation.

That was a remarkably fast feat of masonry, all things considered, but a few potions helped explain how. Apparently energy potions not only allowed them to stay awake and in form, but it also had made them basically tireless, although she had a feeling they'd have some muscle sores they'd feel in the morning.

She'd offered to help but they'd turned her down. Their arguments ranged from the task being beneath her, to Eloise simply mentioning that she didn't want to have to clean up after the dragon if Airah fucked it up. Which was…fair. A bit hurtful, but fair.

"Alright, we're done." Finally said Rolan as the sun began peeking over the horizon. The joy of summer and short nights. "Only the gate will need to be installed, and we'll have the full dimensions for Victor."

"Excellent. Anything else?"

"Well, I reinforced the gatehouse as much as possible." Said Eloise as she unceremoniously stepped in. "Keeping out wildlife isn't my specialty, but it should hold. As a bonus, anyone trying to bust it down with more conventional means -bombs, battering rams, or hell plain old digging- will have a harder time as well. It's a good thing the baroness is footing the bill though, alchemical cement ain't cheap."

Airah nodded, but made a note that alchemy didn't seem to apply to just potions which…made sense now that she thought about it. It was a special type of chemistry, but that field had implications on a wide variety of techs on Earth. Which meant that a lot of stuff that she would usually take for granted and relatively mundane might be significantly different here. Like, say, gunpowder.

"So it should hold a warg at bay, although mind you I wouldn't recommend living in Warg valley with that for protection." Continued the engineer.

"Wait, 'Warg valley'?" Said Airah, with Stellyra pulling out a map of the surrounding area into a holographic screen. The area where all the wargs warnings were centered around was a valley, although its name was quite different. "Ah, you mean mount Travelli valley right?"

"Well, yeah, but no one calls it that here."

"I suppose that makes sense. Do people actually live there?"

"Some tried. Few lived long enough to tell others how much of a terrible idea it was. The place is fucking infested, must be where they make their nests or whatever."

"Must be…" Airah looked at the map. Looks like she had her next exploration target. It would break the monotomy from looking at bandit camps anyway. And if she kept to the sky she'd avoid unfortunate encounters with oversized wolves.

"Well, we're not here to discuss warg habits. If you're satisfied with our work, lady Starfire, we probably should be on our way home." Rolan said, before smiling. "I mean no offense milady, but I told my wife I'd be home for next supper, and if I don't hold that promise I wouldn't hear the end of it."

Airah chuckled.

"Of course! I'll transport the carts back to the road, and escort you back, it’s the least I can do."

"Thank you, lady Starfire, it's much appreciated."

"No, thank you for coming all this way to install the gatehouse." Airah looked at the piles of various tools, debris and empty cement bags. "Will you be needing all of that back?"

"We'll take back the tools, but we'll make sure to clean up the rest."

"Sure!"

In the end, it took less than half an hour for the engineers to clean up and pack their equipment. The trip back to Kaisersgrenze was about as monotomous as it got, with not even the slightest hint of bandit activity (besides the pile of incinerated bodies by the roadside). Airah quickly looked up Karl's potion shop, but found it closed for the day, with the stated reason being that he had to take care of his wounded apprentice. The dragon simply mentally shrugged, and went home. She could always visit later.