The section of wall was massive, and still incomplete. The machine’s long and thick arms reached up, gripped the top of the wall, and pulled the printer higher onto the structure. A third arm started putting out massive amounts of liquid concrete as a fourth and fifth arm shaped the concrete and smoothed it so it better meshed with the dry concrete already laid.

“The extruder arm can pump out and shape nearly two tons of concrete per hour if we set it to its highest setting. Of course, at that point you lose structural integrity to some degree. But it can be very useful in patching holes, or quickly building defenses in the field.” Dr. Rodny said, pointing towards the arm that had been spewing the wet concrete. “You’ll have three up-armored versions of these crawlers when the base is fully staffed and supplied. This is the last section of wall that needs to be constructed. After this the only thing that needs to happen is, deploying the structure to the field.”

“It’s a quarter mile tall, and supposed to encompass nearly four square miles of open terrain. How in the hell are we going to deploy it to the field ma’am?” General McIntire asked. He tried to keep his skepticism in check, but the thought of moving the thing even a few inches was ludicrous. The only thing mobile that John had seen that even came close to its size was an aircraft carrier.

“Not quite that big, General. Only about 189 meters tall. A little taller than the hoover dam.” John’s eyebrows went up, leaving the unspoken question lingering. “You should see the two gatehouses. They’re twice as thick and nearly 50 meters taller.” John rolled his eyes and looked at his friend. Greaves was enjoying this, beaming like a kid in a candy shop. After a long moment of silence, Greaves finally picked up on the fact that John had grown tired of him holding out.

“Oh, just tell him already, Jannet.” He leaned over to John. “Spoil sport.”

“It’s Doctor Rodny please, General Greaves. Fine, if you want to cut the tour short I guess I’ll cut to the chase.” She pressed a button and the white wall that had existed previously reappeared, blocking John’s view of the dam-sized wall segment and the crawler still building it. “As I mentioned before, this is our viewing platform for all the construction sites. It allows us to see each as if we were standing there. Wait just a moment and I’ll. . .” The wall shifted again, disappeared, and revealed a completely new scene. A giant mountain range crackled with lightning at its peak as a storm raged overhead. A man stood close to them, on a flat plain in front of the mountains in the distance. Minor rivers streamed over the surface of the slightly hilly area as far as the eye could see, with only the mountain range and the North American Pillar in the distance breaking the monotony.

“Do you remember Sedrick?” Greaves asked.

“The guy who took on those South American cartels with the CIA? Yeah, I do. Good man, thought he died.” Colonial Sedrick had worked with the spooks and spec ops people back in the day to take on the drug cartels who kept trying to destabilize pretty much all of South America. The guy was completely unflappable. If even half the crap John had heard about his work was true, Sedrick and the men and women under his command had all earned medals.

“Nope, that’s him. Watch what he does. The building was scheduled for this morning so he should be able to bring it in.” Greaves looked at his watch. “Right about. . . now.” Sedrick stood alone on the open plain. The Connection Pillar was not far off in the distance. He stretched out a hand, and a bright blue light flashed brilliantly for a heartbeat, and John had to blink to get his vision back. When it returned, John found a set of three new pillboxes in a line. Each with heavy turrets mounted atop the boxes, with mudholes for half a dozen defenders to shoot out at the enemy, and each of them sported three heavy .50 caliber machine guns from reinforced spots on the concrete bunkers. The line of pill boxes was interposed between the mountain base John knew was still being constructed, and the bright blue beam into space that was the Connection Pillar.

“Uh. . . Did he just teleport an entire trench network from somewhere else?” John asked, as he watched three helicopters land and disgorge dozens of troops who took up residence in the new fortifications.

“Yup.”

“And, I am supposed to do that?”

“Yup.”

“How?”

“That is part of the mission briefing. Long story short, you need to own the land first. That allows you to place buildings and purchase upgrades from the system.”

“Then what?”

“Well, then you need to make purchases to set up your fort. There are two stores you’ll have access too. First you can purchase from the system’s store but its pretty expensive. You won’t have the budget for many system store purchases. At least not in the way of hard defenses. You’ll want to invest in people more than structures whenever it comes to the system. At least, that’s what the geeks tell me. The other alternative is, you can purchase from the government store. The US Government paid . . . well we paid a hell of a lot of something called EU’s to be able to set up our own store that works alongside the system. We can do that because the system will recognize you as the regional governor for the federal government. As part of your initial grant package, the federal government will grant you the entire physical building of the fort, the support buildings and infrastructure, and all the personnel necessary to staff, maintain, and perpetuate the fort. Even . . .” Greaves trailed off for a second, as if in thought.

“Even what Greaves?”

“Even if you get cut off somehow. With what we are going to be giving you, you should be able to maintain the fortress practically indefinitely. No matter what happens.”

“Does that mean I’ll be taking care of civilians?”

“Yes. Who do you think is going to live in those support towns? The immediate families of the military personnel will be flown in on the second wave of people. First, we have to get the fort established.

John had more questions, but from everything he’d seen so far, he was sure Greaves at least had some kind of answer for him. For now, he only wanted to know one thing. “When do we start?”