First off, my apologies because this is later than I had planned on. Secondly, this chapter doesn’t include everything I wanted to get to but it was getting a little long and what I still had to say would make up another chapter at least.

As always, if you spot any mistakes please point them out, thank you for reading.

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Chapter 20: Down Came The Rain and Washed the Spiders Out.

As we slowly drove towards the giant silvery spider, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we had all been transported into the H.G. Wells’ novel War of the Worlds; the alien machine was absolutely immense. I don’t know how Sergeant Miter was able to drive so calmly towards it; this plan of mine was idiotic at best. I was literally shaking in my boots; I hoped Star and Derrick thought it was because of the cold. I conveniently forgot that Star could read my mind, ah crap, I just remembered it.

We were only going to drive two hundred feet beyond the Stronghold’s walls, which should still leave us outside the two thousand feet maximum estimated range of the spider’s steam cannons, at least we hoped so. Once we arrived at our stopping point, we simply waited. I stood fully exposed in the commander’s hatch with my new transparent aluminum shield held before me. Star had the gunner’s hatch open but she was wisely staying down inside the turret. Derrick on the other hand had his head poking out of the open driver’s hatch.

We decided not to wave a white flag because we didn’t know what that might mean to the aliens. I tried to wave my right hand in a friendly fashion as the mechanical beast came closer.

I felt like a Monty Python village idiot as I stood there and I’m sure that I looked like one. Maybe I should practice my lines, “Ooh, Ar, Ar, Aargh, Oogly, Ooh.” Lady Astrologer; peeked her head out of her hatch and gave me a very concerned look. I held out my hand but she didn’t give me a farthing or even a dead sparrow. It could be that my performance was lacking something maybe I should have fallen off the tank?

The ground shook more violently as the giant mechanical spider drew closer and the sounds of its footsteps were like explosions going off, boom, Boom, BOOM!

I almost told Derrick and Star to teleport out now because I was sure as hell leaving but I didn’t, nor did I leave. I could see my own epitaph, “Here lies the Hermit King Vincent Standish, he was stupid, got stepped on and died.”

The machine finally stopped when it was less than six hundred feet away from us, which I had to assume put us within range of its steam cannons.

The arachnid gave an immense blast from a mournful sounding steam whistle, and I almost crapped my pants. A few minutes after that blast all of the spiders on the county road stopped moving as well. At least there were no more thundering footsteps as a background noise.

Our cannon was pointed at the armored arachnid, they were coming to our home and they should realize that we wanted them to come no further, sadly their belly cannon was also pointed at us, kind of, they seemed to be having problems aiming the thing.

The spider crouched down, lessening the height of its central body by more than a third; then it gave an even longer blast of its steam whistle, as if it was angry. It was acting almost like an enraged bull just prior to charging.

Star again poked her head out of the turret but this time to speak to me. “My King, they are arrogant creatures and they are angry at our effrontery in blocking their way. At the same time they are scared and recognize that we might represent a powerful force, they are far weaker than they once were. I feel that if they weren’t so weak right now that they would happily and negligently squash us as if we were ants beneath their feet. But I am having trouble reading them; their minds are so very different from our own.”

Well isn’t this good, so we have a chance to get out of this peacefully but only a small chance. On the other hand did we want to get out of this peacefully? It sounded like the people in those machines were not the sort that we would want for neighbors and what happens if they regain some or all of their former power. The thought of such huge machines flying around was terrifying, I wondered if they were space capable?

Well everyone deserves a chance but only a small one in this case; let us see how this plays out. We no longer had radios and we had been forced to fall back to audible communications, as a result the Scorpion had been equipped with a loud air horn. After warning Star and Derrick, I gave our visitors a horn blast which was just as long as theirs, if not so loud as their steam whistle.

The spider in front of us did nothing but the spiders that had stopped on the county road let loose with almost all of their cannons, firing towards the Stronghold.

I took that as an aggressive act. “Get us out of here Sergeant Miter!” I screamed at him. We started to back up and the spider’s belly cannon fired at us.

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Captain Mesquida was on top of the southeastern wall, which was closest to the enemy spider and the Scorpion tank. George thought that it was slightly humorous that there were two arachnids facing off against one another. He just wished that the Stronghold’s own Scorpion was a little larger.

He had almost opened fire when the monster got too close in his opinion but he swallowed that urge. When the mechanical creature crouched down and sounded its steam whistle he and Candace had to rush along the firing line, calming the sharpshooters and ordering them not to shoot. The Scorpion’s defiant blast of its own air horn had bolstered their spirits but when over twenty of the giant aluminum arachnids had fired their cannons at the Stronghold that was too much.

“SHARPSHOOTERS,” George roared out, “FUEGO!”

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The steam cannon had missed the retreating Scorpion by over ten feet but the projectile had been huge and it would have surely spelled the end for the tank’s occupants if it had hit.

Star had, had enough; she was ready to climb out of her own skin. Craft-makers were extremely intelligent and none more so than Star Astrologer. She learned things quickly and she learned them well. As a result she had kept the Scorpion’s cannon locked on the central body of the beast, even when Derrick had started to back the Scorpion up. Hearing the 20mm rifles firing she decided to add to the noise and fire her own cannon at the beast. Does a hot knife through butter mean anything to you?

The Scorpion’s fifty millimeter enchanted shell of death went through the giant spider in a blast of molten fury that any modern tanker would have envied. The mechanical monstrosity not only fell but it lost structural integrity as well, causing the armored central cylinder to collapse in on itself, at the locations where its legs connected to the main body. With the cylinder being so grievously compromised, it lost structural strength. Its own immense weight acted like a hammer, while its still rigid legs admirably performed the role of an anvil. Then the spider crashed down to Earth, it all looked really cool.

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The sharpshooters were exuberant at the defeat of the lead spider but they were also pissed. They were sure that their own projectiles had been effective and they were certain that they could have killed the arachnid, if only the Scorpion had not butted in. In response to their anger they started shooting at those spiders that were still on the county road, at least at those spiders that were within the range of their rifles.

The fifty-two sharpshooters had been broken down into teams of four; almost every team was targeting a different mechanical beast. The team members coordinated amongst themselves on which location to target on “their” monster, such as the “hip joint of the front leg” or “just above the middle leg.” A single round would destroy an area almost the size of a manhole cover in the spider’s outer layer of aluminum armor and put a crater in its middle layer of ballistic gelatin. A second projectile, on the same spot, would blast out the gelatin and dimple the inner layer of armor, with a third round very bad things began to happening to the arachnids. It took less than a minute and a half for all fifty-two sharpshooters to accurately fire three times. That put a minimum of twelve enchanted bullets into each of the eleven spiders that were within range. Most of those spiders came apart catastrophically; only two or three of them looked like they might have a significant number of surviving occupants.

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Captain Mesquida was elated by the success of his soldiers. He ran down the steps from the curtain wall because he needed to confer with his boss, whose tank was just now driving into the Stronghold.

“Vince what should we do now? Do we pursue them or do we let them go? With how slowly they travel we should have at least an hour to make up our minds.”

“My opinion, is rather gruesome, I think we should end them now while they’re still weak, because according to Star that is the only thing that saved us today. But let’s get the council quickly together and we’ll get a few more opinions. I could be making a mistake, and like you said we have at least an hour to make a decision. However, you might want to pass an order along to your Lieutenants and have them ready a pursuit force in case we do go with that option, that way we won’t be wasting any time.”

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We met in the Council room which used to be my second garage located next to the shop. As for my classic cars, they were now underground where they were better protected. As for my Caterham, I heard whispers that it was pretty banged up, but if it had saved two people’s lives, I wasn’t going to bitch and moan about it.

Star spoke first telling us what she had sensed from the occupants of the mechanical spiders.

Most of those in the meeting did not offer an opinion or even speak. Captain Mesquida said that if we were going to do anything that we should do it now.

Lady Night Storm stood up. “We should not show mercy to a foe that threatened and attacked us without provocation. I believe Lady Star Astrologer as regards to their character and I do not believe that they would have shown us any compassion. I have a child and I want her to be able to grow up and I will gladly kill anything that threatens her life. We are a small community and we cannot afford any mistakes. I still have trouble sleeping at night because of the horrors my clan faced when we first came to this world. Please don’t give those horrors a chance at killing my baby.”

I spoke next. “I was going to take a vote and get it on record but I just decided not to, because whichever way you voted I was still going to order the Guard to destroy those spiders.” There seemed to be a sigh of relief that went around the table, like that is what they wanted me to do, but they were afraid of looking like a bunch of merciless bastards. I had no problem with that; I liked being a merciless bastard. “Captain Mesquida, you will order your forces to pursue and destroy the Spiders. You will take into custody any orange or green screen beings that surrender to your troops but as for any blue screen foes you will allow your soldiers to make that decision on the battlefield whether those blues should be taken prisoner or not.

I will speak more plainly, if your troopers wish to execute surrendering blues, they can. We do not have the luxury of keeping many prisoners like that nor can we allow them to leave, because of the possibility that they will return at some time in the future seeking revenge. We also have to keep in mind that there are other good people on this world that would possibly suffer because of those Spider drivers.”

My orders drew some gasps from those at the table but nobody objected, it wouldn’t have done any good anyways, perhaps they sensed that.

Captain Mesquida sent off two pursuit groups. One group was based on the Sherman, the T800 and eight flyers. The second consisted of the Scorpion, the Hellcat and another two flights of flyers. The flyers would attack first, the armor was there to rescue them if needed and would get their own shots in as well, if presented with the opportunity.

Two of our armored tractors were going out with forty Guards to check on the downed spiders, I would be going with that force. Captain Mesquida would be in his Hellcat and Boris Khan would be commanding the other pursuit group. Meanwhile Lady Murphy would be in charge of the Stronghold’s defenses.

We had to keep in mind that enraged mandrills might still be out there and that was a part of the reason why, I was going with the dismounted soldiers. I was fully charged now and I could burn down a good number of those monkeys if it proved necessary.

The two pursuit groups were just in front of mine. My group was being commanded by Lady Knight Night, some of us, okay maybe it started with me, frequently use the English translation of her first name and it could be that I also corrupted her young daughter into doing the same thing, she likes caramels and I have a supply of them.

When we reached the first spider we found Boris’s forces had been stalled because the giant arachnid was blocking the gravel road and even its verges right up to the tree line on either side. Tracked vehicles could pick their way through the trees but not the T800 so it and the Sherman, which it was partnered with, were stuck. As for the Hellcat and the Scorpion they had gone on ahead.

Star informed me that she didn’t sense any living minds in the spider which made sense from looking at it. When its central cylinder had been compromised, the body had been crushed inwards by its legs starting at the front pair and working its way back to the middle and then the rear legs. The legs had remained upright and rigid just long enough for all of that to happen. When the legs’ hydraulic fluid had bled off sufficiently, the spiders had collapsed, dropping the main body from over fifty feet in the air which hadn’t help it much either.

The central body was blocking the road and there was nothing we could do about that right now but if we removed its legs on its left side, the T800 should be able to get through, by driving just to the right of the road.

Using my Earth Magic, I dismembered those three legs into sections which the two tractors pulled out of the way. That took almost a half an hour. During that time we could hear the sounds of combat and once we saw flyers returning to the Stronghold probably for more IRODs. It was convenient that both they and the Holman projectors used the same kind of shells.

Once the way was cleared Lieutenant Khan and his forces took off in pursuit of their share of the metal monsters. We followed along behind until we reached the county road, then we turned right, there were four fallen arachnids south of us and seven more to our north, we would check the southern ones first.

The second machine had lost its legs on its right side which caused it to obviously fall in that direction. The cylinder had been only partially stove-in on that side.

I thought there might be some survivors but Star told me no. For now we would rely on her abilities for this first sweep. While the county road was wider this mechanical beast was also an impediment to travel so we took the time to remove the legs along one of its sides.

The next three spiders had all failed catastrophically like the first one and additionally they had all been at their maximum height when they fell, so that had aided in their destruction. Star detected no survivors and we only delayed long enough to clear away some more legs, we were beginning to get good at doing that. We then turned our attention to the northern group of seven arachnids.

The sixth mechanical spider was damaged similarly to number two and again Star detected no life signs. I was beginning to think that we should give her a mock up of a tri-corder and make her the Stronghold’s official science officer for any and all away missions. Would she look good with pointy ears? Could I teach her to say “Live Long and Prosper?” She just gave me a dirty look; she might have heard what I just thought. I think it’s time to start mentally singing the worst commercial jingle or pop tune that I can remember.

Spiders seven through nine were in even worse shape than number sixth and there were no survivors in them according to Star, so far we still had no idea what the enemy actually looked like, I had to admit to being curious. We removed legs and went on to ten, eleven and twelve. Number ten looked to be in fairly good shape.

Star looked at me, “Vincent there are definitely survivors in that cylinder. I can feel at least eight minds.”

I had Star inform Lieutenant Storm, who was commanding this shindig, about what she had sensed.

Lady Knight Night had us rush the machine so that we were too close for its one intact top turret to target us. Its cannon probably couldn’t work anyways but you never know. Then she had me use my Earth Magic to remove a large portion from the mirrored front of the cylinder, which was almost exactly like our own transparent aluminum except it was denser.

We finally saw the dead body of one of our foes. It was a snail, a really big snail. It was about four feet high, two feet wide and six feet long. The one in the destroyed cockpit was mostly withdrawn into its shell but its shell had apparently gotten crushed when the machine fell. I did an appraisal on it.

This is a corpse of a Gleaming Shell of Radiant Intellect. Many portions of it naturally contain substances that are poisonous for human consumption. Since its death these toxins have saturated almost all of its body, leaving very little of its meat safe to eat.

Well that wasn’t exactly helpful and I had never been that much of a fan of escargot anyways.

Star yelled “Get Back!” A burst of flame suddenly came through a partially open door that was in the back of the large cockpit.

I tried to use my own Fire Magic to take control of the approaching flames but I didn’t have much time and we were not on my land any longer. If I only had a second or two I might have been more effective. Being burned hurts, a lot! I could feel myself falling, I blocked my pain centers and I used my own Fire Magic to extinguish all of the high heat sources that I sensed nearby me. I knew that I had not been the only recipient of that attack. The question was would any of us live?

The major damage seemed to be to my face and hands. My body armor and leather clothes, seems to have done a good job of protecting me from that flame attack but I had a feeling that what I wore had lost most of its usefulness.

I ignored my hands for now and concentrated on my face. I could feel that I was being picked up and carried away. They had better not concentrate on healing only me, there were other wounded too!

I’m pretty sure that I was brought to the infirmary and that I was given an IV. Someone was cleaning my wounds, removing dead flesh and skin. It’s a good thing that I had almost a three quarters full magical gas tank before all of this happened or it would have been curtains for me and I’ve always preferred shades to curtains. Boy, is that a bad joke, it lacks the sophistication of a true village idiot.

I was concentrating on re-growing at least a partial covering of flesh and skin over my exposed jaw bone as quickly as I could. I was ignoring everything else that was going on about me. I could always regenerate my nose and those portions of my ears that were gone. I could also repair my eyes but if I lost my jaw how was I going to be able to eat and gain the nutrients that I needed to complete my repairs? Could I possibly scavenge materials from let’s say my foot to repair my jaw if necessary, I’m not sure that I could.

When I had blocked incoming pain signals, I had actually turned off all of my physical senses, so that’s why I couldn’t hear, it’s not like I needed the distractions anyway. But I could still somehow sense what was going on all around me, though I felt much removed from it. Which was a good thing since Healer Denise Murphy was busy snipping off the charred digits from my ruined left hand. I wondered if I had a kind of new magical hermit sense, perhaps I was bitten by a radioactive hermit as a child?

I was of course worried about the other casualties but there was nothing I could do for now.

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Sandra was working in the infirmary that day, she saw a man with his face practically burned off, which caused her to rush to the bathroom to puke. A short while later she found out that the burned man was her own father and she fainted dead away.

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After fourteen hours, I had my mouth and jaw functional again if not exactly looking pretty. I could even talk a little but it was painful to do so. Currently, Star was feeding me some terror bird soup which wasn’t too bad. The council would be having a meeting this morning which I planned on attending, my legs were perfectly fine and my right hand was healing. Give me a week or two and I’d have my eyes, nose and left hand back as well.

Healer Murphy wrapped bandages around my head, making me look like the invisible man. I then walked to the Council Meeting holding onto Star’s arm, she was my seeing-eye craft-maker. “Ouch,” she had just painfully pinched my ass. One of these days I’ll have to remember that she can read my thoughts; that is if I begin to truly care about something like that.

I was still perfecting my Amazing Hermit like abilities but perhaps I had guessed wrong about the origins of my super powers. Maybe, the flames that had burned me were in reality some kind of toxic magical radioactive plasma that had just sharpened all of my senses. Even though I was now blind I should still be able to fulfill my dreams and go to law school. Once I graduate I can fight for the oppressed against the dreaded Queen-Pin of crime, Star Astrologer, and her evil Craft-Maker Gang. “OUCH!” Everyone in the room stopped talking and I could sense that they were all looking at me. Star has little claws and when she wants to give you a pinch, it’s a PINCH! But I still plan on making myself a cane with lots of cool hidden gadgets.

“Hello everyone, I’m glad to know that we are all here except for Lady Knight Night Storm who is still in the infirmary. First off, Lady Denise Murphy, how many total casualties do we have?

“Your Majesty, there is only one fatality and that was from our battle with the mandrills. Quentin Lee died up on the Southern Wall. Our three most severely injured were also wounded at that location. As for the battle with the Gleaming Shells, you are the most grievously injured with Lady Knight being second to you. The craft-maker, Stinky Tanner, was injured at the same time as you but not nearly so severely. That is the total of our dead and injured.”

“I’m glad our casualties were so light, all things considered. On reflection, I think I should have ordered even harsher rules of engagement against the Gleaming Shells; we could have just cracked that tenth spider open and not tried to enter it. Besides the emotional pain we have to deal with when our people are killed or wounded, we cannot afford the loss of trained personnel when that happens either.

In regards to Private Quentin Lee, I was going to do this myself but I can’t now. I want a cemetery to be built somewhere along the road leading from the Stronghold’s gate to this compound. The cemetery should be at least a half an acre in size but whoever makes the thing should sadly plan for it being made larger at a later date. I want a memorial statue made of Quentin as true to life as possible, perhaps showing him in his combat gear, it will be used as his headstone. That man died doing his duty while protecting us and we will not forget him, which is why I want the cemetery along that road, we will pass by it almost every day and it won’t be hidden in some far off corner of the Stronghold.

Captain Mesquida, how did the rest of the battle go?”

He snorted, “except for what happened to you, it wasn’t much of battle. It only took three or four bombs from the flyers to bring a spider down and when their shells crack on the top, those machines are almost guaranteed to fold in upon themselves and crush their crews. The tenth spider that you assaulted and the eleventh according to Lady Star were the only ones to have any surviving Gleaming Shells. Enchanted bullets from fifty caliber rifles and a couple of bombs from some nearby flyers put paid to them.

Boss, what about the trip we were planning to the National Guard Armory? Now that you’re wounded are we going to delay it? Because I don’t think that we should, you can’t go along on every mission outside this fortress.”

“Let me think about that George.”

Lady Knight Faith Harper spoke up. “I don’t know what else is at that armory, but I seem to remember hearing that there was a transportation company stationed there with some huge heavy hauling equipment. I don’t know if that information helps or not.”

Mack; was next to speak, “it might Faith, I have a proposal for you or rather Jean White who was a civil engineer with the county does. Jean, go ahead and talk, Vince won’t eat you, he only acts like he will.”

I gave Mack the finger and Jean began to speak. “Your Majesty, I would first like to say thank you for saving me and my children. I also wish you a speedy recovery.”

“Suck up,” I thought. SHIT! That got me another pinch. I started mentally singing “Safety Dance” by Men without Hats. I secretly liked the song but I knew many people that found it annoying.

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Star had been talking to the humans about what kings were supposed to be and she was bound and determined that her people were going to follow a proper dignified king that inspired his people, AND LED FROM THE REAR WHEN THERE WAS A BATTLE, if it was the last thing that she did!

Exactly what kind of King thinks of himself as the village idiot?!! “Ooh, Ar, Ar, Aargh, Oogly, Ooh.” Indeed!! The next time he even thought that she would give him such a pinch! She decided that it was long past time, that she talk to the women in his household and get them to start taking proper care of their man.

“We can dance, we can dance.” She stifled a groan, please someone make him stop.

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Jean continued talking. “I’ve been in love with castles, walled cities, fortresses and keeps since I was a child. I’m a nut about the subject and with my education; I think I qualify as a fortification expert in our new world.”

There were some snickers around the table mainly from the men.

“I did not mispronounce fortification. What kind of Royal Council are you? Maybe you should all be back in high school!” Jean said with a huff of breath. The snickers turned into smothered laughs.

Jean paused to collect herself and then resumed her presentation after glaring at certain men sitting around the table. “This fortress looks impressive but it has some great weaknesses. One of those being it doesn’t have enough soldiers to adequately defend its walls. What you have here, you’ve appropriately named a stronghold. It’s not a castle since it’s missing many key elements and it’s not a walled city since the population is too low. At best it’s a walled village with a really impressive wall and moat, but both should be improved.

While historically, the majority of ancient fortifications had walls that were between twenty and forty feet in height, many of those quickly fell when faced with a determined assault. This stronghold has walls that are according to my measurements almost forty-three feet tall, which is in my opinion the lowest height that a fortress’s wall should be in our old world.

In the past there were many castles with walls in excess of sixty and even eighty feet, personally I always thought eighty feet was the minimum height for the walls of a truly impressive and nearly impregnable fortress. As for the best shape, all experts agree that the star fort is the ideal design.

The great Mehrangarh Fort in India has walls that are 118 feet tall and sixty-nine feet thick. The compressed stone, you used to build the walls here, is at least fifty percent stronger than natural stone but if the walls could be made thicker, I think they should be. The Stronghold of Hermit’s Forge has already been twice assaulted by giants; I am referring to the sky krakens and the mechanical spiders. Who knows what else is out there or still might be coming to our World?

My proposal has six stages or steps. What I am proposing may sound extreme, Your Majesty but I have been greatly impressed with what you have already done with your Earth Magic.

Step one; widen the moat that lies in front of the Southern Gate Wall to at least one hundred feet. Where the current gate is located, the wall needs to be built outward by at least another twenty feet. Where the land bridge ends a barbican should be built with walls at least forty feet high. A barbican in our case is a smaller fortress which protects the outer end of the Stronghold’s bridge.

Step two; raise the height of the Southern Gate Wall to be higher than the length of the drawbridge that will be required to span the newly widened moat. The wall should also be thickened overall by another ten feet. We will need heavy trucks for that phase of construction and for the rest of the work as well. What I envision Your Majesty; is that you if you will use your magic to remove dirt and rock while widening the moat. Then that material will need to be magically compressed into large blocks of stone, which will then be trucked inside the Stronghold and used for the projects that I am describing. I am told by Chester Fletcher that you now own a very large Caterpillar loader that still sits at your quarry. That loader can be made functional and used to load the trucks, while inside the Stronghold the crawler crane can be used to unload them and position the blocks on or next to the curtain walls for you to magic into place.

Step three; build a bascule bridge which is the correct name for a drawbridge. We are fortunate in this new project for two reasons. One, because with your magical powers we can build the bridge on top of the existing isthmus and when it is complete, Your Majesty can magically remove said isthmus. The second reason is that, courtesy of the Gleaming Shells, we have a large supply of “smashed aluminum” sitting right outside this very fortress. Glen told me that you said that smashed aluminum is similar to titanium. Titanium would make an excellent building material for our new bridge.”

I held up my hand to stop her from talking. “I hate to rain on your parade but from what I’ve read smashed aluminum is literally made by mechanically compressing aluminum. While it might have a similar strength to titanium it will still have aluminum’s old low melting temperature, which might make it not the best material to use in a project like you are talking about. Please continue with your proposal.”

Engineer White said, “Well shit, I had been really looking forward to using that stuff.”

Many of us laughed at her change in decorum, then she resumed. “We can use steel for the bridge then. The hardest part to make will probably be the giant trunnion for the bridge which is large pin approximately ten feet in diameter and the width of whatever bridge we build. Can you do that Your Majesty?”

“I would need a supply of metal and at least a day to get it right. Making intricate parts with my magic is beyond me but I should be able to manage such things as pins and I-beams.”

She breathed out a sigh of relief. “A properly made bascule bridge is counter weighted and it doesn’t require a large motor to be lifted. I am thinking what with the low torque of our steam engines that even a single one hundred horsepower engine with no gearing might very well be able to lift the bridge but we will have to do some testing to make sure and we can always use one of the two hundred horsepower units or even two of them if necessary. But one thing we do not want to do; is to lift that bridge or lower it too quickly. Newton’s First Law of Motion, ‘an object in motion stays in motion.’ Moving something with too much mass too quickly can lead to a calamity.

Step five; thicken all of the other walls and raise them to at least eighty feet in height. At the same time widen the moat that corresponds to that section of wall. We now live in a world filled with monsters that not even the Stronghold’s smooth walls can prevent some of them from climbing. Starting at the height of our existing walls, I think we should incorporate spike strips into the outer face. The lowest wide band of spike strips would stick out three or even four feet to stop the largest monsters, and as the spike strips go up the wall they would reduce in size in order to stop the smaller creatures. I realize that some creatures will be able to use those spikes in their climb but anything that can already go up forty-three feet of glass smooth wall, probably wouldn’t be stopped by another forty feet of it. That isn’t even taking into account that it is actually in excess of seventy feet of wall from the water in the moat to the top of the currently existing battlements.

At the top of the new heightened walls, machicolations will be built and on top of them another parapet and wall walk will be constructed. Machicolations permit our defenders to fight from cover and drop things on anything that is directly below them. The machicolations will be equipped with armored hatches and shutters to prevent unauthorized entry through them.

Step six; add extremely large bartizan turrets to all eight corners of the Stronghold and to either side of the bascule bridge. Oh, going back a few steps, the gate wall was thickened to either side of bridge in order to protect the bridge and accommodate the required machinery. The counterweight room will be quite large and it will probably dip below the water level of the moat. Normally, a star fortress has spear-tip shaped towers that go all the way to the ground. Because of the already existing moat, I think that it will be far easier for us to incorporate turrets that are built on the wall and project outward from it instead. These turrets will also have a spear shape and rise upward at least thirty feet. As for how far outward they will project, that will be at least fifteen feet but I am still calculating what is feasible with our current materials.

I realize that this all sounds like a daunting task but what you have built already, Your Majesty, is honestly amazing. For obvious reasons, it is my recommendation that the work on the Southern wall and the bascule bridge be done as quickly as possible, the rest could be done at a much slower pace.

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“Captain Mesquida, what is your opinion,” I asked?

“I wanted the star fortress design to begin with, but we settled on an octagon as the best compromise, Engineer White’s plan gets me one. I like it.”

“Mack,” I called out, “how about you?”

“We still need to clear cut the woods on two sides of the Stronghold but I like the plan too. She’s shown me some sketches and they look damn impressive.”

“Clyde, we’ll need more heavy trucks and trailers.”

“I know where we can get some and so does Chester but if that Armory did have a transportation company stationed there, they might have some or all of what we need, though it’s long drive.”

“Glen, we’ll need more of the big steam engines.”

“Vince, we’ve got production lines going for 40, 100, 200 and the variable 50 to 125 horsepower engines and their matching boilers. We have also started careful disassembly of the Priest’s former 330 horsepower engine and hopefully we’ll be able to reproduce it.

When we have the time, Grace and I would like to tear apart one of those spiders and look at its steam turbine, it might give us some ideas or some useful materials.

Clyde and I are currently deliberating the addition of some small steam engines to the turrets of our tanks. The engines would be located in an armored box mounted on the outside rear of the turrets. Right now our turrets can only rotate two hundred degrees before being forced to go around the other way because of the hydraulic controls we installed. If the turrets had their own power sources they could rotate in three hundred and sixty degrees circles all day long but there are weight concerns with mounting engines and their boilers on the turrets. It might only be barely possible for the Sherman and not for any of the other tanks at this time. It’s the boilers that are a big part of that problem if we could build a smaller and much lighter steam generator that might solve that dilemma for us but so far we’ve had no luck, not that we’ve had much time to spend on that matter.

However I had been hoping to use some of that ‘smashed’ aluminum to manufacture engines and boilers. I thought that since engine blocks could be constructed out of normal aluminum then that smashed stuff should work for our steam engines as well, but hearing now that it still has the same melting temperature as normal aluminum has ended that particular idea.”

I replied, “Don’t forget the Gleaming Shells probably didn’t construct their steam turbines out of aluminum, they may very well have used titanium. If so, there should plenty of it in couple of those spiders to build some small steam engines and boilers. Even so that will only get us a forty percent weight reduction and that still might not be enough. When I have the time and my vision is restored; Grace, you and I should sit down, discuss what we know about steam generators and see if we can come up with a magically enhanced version that will do the same job but be both lighter and smaller. It will probably need to be frequently recharged but it might be our only option. So many great mechanical ideas missed being successful by only a smidgen, in this new world while we lost electricity, we’ve gained magic so when it comes to engineering we can sometimes cheat if necessary.

Also it will be a good idea if we save everything we can off of those mechanical spiders and store what we recover properly. That ballistic gelatin of theirs might offer our vehicles a significant lightweight armor upgrade.

Back to the snails, I never saw a living one. Did they have arms or what? How did they manipulate things?”

Star answered me. “They had four tentacles that were very strong and muscular; which looked like large worms or leeches to me. The tips of their tentacles ended in a natural spear point and each tip could splay apart into four equal sized fingers. According to my appraisal their tentacle tips were poisonous as well. They had two eyes on thick muscular stalks and they possessed pupils that were very strange which allowed them to look in two directions at once.”

Steve commented; “their pupils sound like those that the Sky Krakens had.”

There were murmurs of agreement, from around the table, about his observation.

“George I am going to be down for at least a week because of my eyes. Come up with two plans for your Armory expedition. One plan doing it without me and the other with me. But you might be delayed anyways, since those spiders represent a real windfall in materials, which we should recover as quickly as possible, and we’ll need an adequate security force to protect our salvage teams while doing that.

I think we’ve covered everything or at least everything where I had something to contribute. I’m tired and going to bed. You can continue or depart but I’ll see you all later.”

I got up to leave the room with my faithful seeing-eye craft-maker leading the way. DAMN IT! Star pinched me again!

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Monty Python Village Idiots Sketch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhDJxEPRDek

Safety Dance by Men without Hats, only masochists should select this link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM4okRvCg2g

Mehrangarh Fort in India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehrangarh_Fort

Star Fortress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_fort

Bartizan Turret

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartizan

Machicolation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machicolation