3 Weeks Later

“Green team, you are free to engage.” The only response was the rattling of suppressed rifle fire, as half a dozen rangers picked off their targets. None of them missed, the rounds found their new homes, and all but two of the guards fell instantly dead. The two that didn’t, fell half a second later as the backup snipers unloaded three quick bursts with larger, more powerful rifles in the British style. They died less than two heartbeats after their compatriots. The two teams of rangers moved in, silent, deadly, ready to visit violence on the enemy in all its many and varied forms while the British snipers kept over-watch of the shipping container fort. They used hooks and ropes to scale the wall, and once over, they entered the two small buildings at the center of the small compound. The flashes of rifle fire in the darkness captured by the drone overhead attested to their deadly success.

“Those British SAS boys proved their usefulness.” Greaves growled under his breath as he chewed the hem of his dress uniform. It was a nasty habit that John had tried to break the man of for years, but to little success. “Do you think our boys will do as well?

“The Rangers know their business.” Was John’s reply as he refocused on the three missions happening simultaneously. “Red team, green team has engaged. You are weapons free.” An identical scene played out on the second shipping container outpost. When the reaper rangers moved in for the kill, he opened his coms to the third group. “Yellow team, Red team has successfully engaged. You are free to engage. Repeat, you are weapons free.”

The third team repeated the mission like clockwork, ending the six guards. This time, the sniper team wasn’t needed, as all the guards died to the suppressed rifle rounds.

“Green team leader to Monarch Actual, we have secured the first compound and are starting disposal.”

“Monarch Actual to Green team, well done, boys.”

“Monarch, I received a prompt from the system saying I can either destroy, ransom, or conquer the base sir. What are your orders?”

“Conquer the base, son. When prompted, use the script provided.” Greaves said, interrupting the exchange. A few seconds later, John received a prompt in his system window.

A leader under your command has conquered a minor military settlement,“Outpost 3”. Population: 0. Status: Recently captured. Would you like to take direct ownership of “Outpost 3?” Yes / No

John mentally selected Yes, and a new interface appeared in his vision. “Do you have the screen?” Dr. Rodny asked from her seat at one of the dozens of computer monitoring stations.

“Yes.”

“Great, General. When you have control of all three outposts, please place your hand here.” John waited as instructed. When he had accepted ownership of the third outpost listed as Outpost 6, he placed his hand on the flat white slab Dr. Rodny had asked him to.

“Thank you. Keep your hand there. This is a Survey Projection Table we purchased from the systems shop. One of the few items we could afford. You should be able to survey the land remotely from here, and place the first set of buildings. We can also see what your display is showing here.” She tapped the large projection screen on the left side of the room. “So if you need advice, or help we can provide it.”

John looked at the interface and found nearly a hundred different options for buildings available to him. They labeled all of them as “gifts” and would only cost something called “Electric Units” to be placed in his newly conqured domain. He mentally scrolled through the list until he came to the building labeled Southern Gatehouse and tried to place it. He realized before he did that there was a problem.

“The fort’s building site is in the northern part of the map, but I don’t think I’ll have enough space to place all the sections on the map. Not if I want to keep the Connection Pillar in the center of the circle.” Greaves growled, a noise John knew was his way of telling others he was thinking of a solution to something that annoyed him.

“We planned for this gentleman.” Dr Rodny said. “Place the first block as per the plans. When the first team takes ownership of that section, your map should expand and you should be able to place the last pieces of the wall, no problem.” John did as instructed, placing the southern gatehouse where the schematic he had been given indicated.

“Alright, I’m ready to place. But it’s still red. I got an error saying I don’t have enough Electric Units.” Greaves turned away from the conversation and spoke into his radio device.

“Site Zero, this is Monarch Actual. Switch control of two generators to General McIntire.” A few seconds later, John found the number of Electric Units increasing by thousands per second. Then tens of thousands.

“What the hell did you hook me up to Greaves?” He asked. Staring in disbelief as the number kept skyrocketing.

“Didn’t get to the new generators in your brief reading last night, huh?” John winced, but Greaves just shook his head. “You’ve just been given temporary ownership of two experimental cold fusion generators at an undisclosed location. One of those bad boys is going to be powering your entire fort. It has a life expectancy of nearly a thousand years if you keep it properly maintained and fueled.”

“And what fuels it?”

“Any, literally, any nuclear material. Hell, you can shove raw uranium ore into the thing and it’ll keep running no muss no fuss.”

“That’s not exactly accurate. You still should purify . . .” The ground rumbled and shivered.

“Sorry,” the pilot said from the adjacent room where he controlled the airship. “Got a bit too close to the waves. One clipped us, but we’re fine.”

“How low are we flying?” John asked as he looked back towards the pilot.

“You two finish placing the first few blocks in this play set. I’ll go deal with Mr. ‘Let’s see how close to the ocean we can get without getting me fired’ over there.” Greaves said. He stalked off in search of the piolet in the room next to the command suit where they stood.

John smiled and turned back to what he was doing. The numbers ticked up to just barely above 1 million, enough to place the first block. The red light around the building in the display turned green. “Alright General, just give the mental command and. . .” John watched the feed from the drone as he gave the command. Just like the pillboxes he had seen appear before, a bright blue light shone for a second before solidifying into the massive concrete wall larger than the one he had seen in the underground construction yard. “And the first gatehouse is placed. Well done General. Now wait one second while I contact the first division and—”

John found the map size increased immediately. The accumulation rate for energy units was still increasing, and now he had almost enough to place the next one. He found it in the drop menu and moved it to the right place. This one took more of his concentration as he maneuvered the metal frameworks to line up properly between the wall segments. Once he had enough units, and moved it in the proper place, he paid the units and laid the next segment.

“Uh, General? Did you want to wait for the division to see if the building was laid correctly before we moved to the next segment or?” John thought about it, then shook his head.

“No, we don’t have the time for a full inspection of every segment of the wall. We need to place it, and if there are issues, then we will fix them in the field. The Central African Republic or another regional power might see what we’re doing and decide they want to contest the fort. Tell the rangers, and the first division, to hold at the forts until I finish laying the sections. Then they can move in.”

“Yes General.” Rodny said before turning and issuing orders of her own through the radio set up at her station.

It took nearly three hours to lay the rest of the pieces. John realized that the more energy units he had available, the faster the energy units accumulated. Whenever he spent EU’s lying a wall section, the accumulation rate decreased. When the last wall segment fell into place, John realized he had well over a million EU’s still in his resources. “Well, we need to let the wall and foundations settle. Have the first division move to capture the rest of the fort sites.” John ordered and a few minutes later, he saw the indicators of the first armored divisions on site who had been reinforcing the rangers who had taken the southern outposts move out to encircle the fortress.

“You know there is nothing at any of those sites, right?” Greaves asked.

“Yeah, well. I have a lot more EUs right now to buy stuff in the government store. In the briefing, I was told I had unlimited access to the store for the first week, right?” Greaves barked a laugh and patted him on the back.

“The fact we’ve gotten this far, and this has actually been working, is a freaking miracle. One the president fully supports. Yes, you have access to the store. Most of the stuff in there right now is obsolete, anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

Greaves just rolled his eyes. “Sorry, top secret. Can’t tell you.”

John ignored him. The man had secrets, and it was clear to John that Greaves was having sleeping problems. He’d let the cryptic messages and slight disrespect go. For now. But when this was finished, he was going to have to insist Greaves got sleep.

“So what do you think I should get if it’s all obsolete, anyway?” Greaves shrugged.

“If I may General?”

“Yes, Dr. Rodny? Do you have any suggestions?” John asked while looking pointedly at his friend, who just rolled his eyes again. The sight nearly made John laugh, but he let it go. Dr. Rodny and he sat down together at the drafting table and worked up a few options. “The outposts were always meant to protect the six outlying support settlements. I think this will work well to accomplish that goal.” Greaves peeked at their work and smirked.

“You missed something.”

“And what would that be?” Dr. Rodny asked, annoyed.

“Fuel reserves.”

“Won’t be necessary with the refit we can purchase on the lighter vehicles. That means we only need the primary fuel depot at the base for the heavier stuff.” John said, pointing towards the list of vehicles the two of them had compiled. “Particularly with the micro fusion generators we’ll be providing each of the outposts.”

“What? How much do you have those to play with? I didn’t think those designs would be available for another month.” Greaves looked a bit shocked, but from his tone, John knew it was not unwelcome news.

John looked back at his EU total. “Looks like I have about 3 million EUs left and still growing. How long until I need to give those generators back?”

“Uh, we should probably shift them back now.” Greaves looked at his watch. “We’ve had them for several hours.” John realized that he and Dr. Rodny had been laying out the plans for the outposts for longer than he had thought. “Other projects are going to need that energy soon. Let’s give it fifteen more minutes, accumulate a bit more, and then we’ll hand them back over. I need to contact Site Zero and coordinate that, anyway.” Greaves got on his radio and John took one last hard look at the plans.

“These micro-generators can put out how much electrical power?” John asked.

“Nearly three hundred million kilowatthours. Enough to power a small town of about twenty thousand people comfortably. They come with enough fuel to run for two years.” John looked at the total Electric Unit cost. “If you’re wondering, the exchange rate between the systems Electrical Units and our measurement of kilowatthours, is about a hundred to one. So a single micro generator creates about 3 million EUs an hour. Please keep in mind, General, that these generators will also be hooked up to their town’s defensive electrical grid. The towns will have their own generators, but we expect them to be available for civilian use in the forges, excavators, drones, and so on. The outposts will be required to provide for the town’s defense.”

“Right. Which is why we chose installations that can be moved to defend the towns once they are established.” They had discussed this already, and John liked the idea. Though it meant that the installations would be more open to attack and he would need to reinforce each fort with a larger amount of troops than he had originally planned. But that would be down the line.

Greaves reappeared. “They’re ready for the handoff.”

“Give me just a few more seconds, let me lay the first fort at least.” Greaves talked into the radio and John put his hand back on the metal slab. This time, instead of individual pieces, the entire design that he and Dr. Rodny appeared. The entire outpost would cost nearly half a million EU’s. He had more than enough. Once he moved the base around slightly and got the green go ahead from the system, he mentally selected Yes to his purchase. Another bright blue light filled the night sky and suddenly a fully functioning fire base, with half a dozen auto cannons using US standardized Friend or Foe identity tags, appeared in a fan-like formation around Outpost 3 stretching towards the two neighboring outposts.

Would you like to reposition troops currently inside the construction site? Cost: 1,000 EU’s. Yes / No?

“Oh, shit.” John selected Yes, and suddenly the blue light disappeared and his radio squawked angrily.

“Monarch, this is Green leader! What the hell just happened? Me and my men are standing in the middle of. . . what the hell is this?”

Dr. Rodny took over the explanation for the rangers, while John made the switch with whatever the hell Site Zero was. In the end, they left him with 4,397,423 EUs. As he watched, that number slowly ticked down. He had expected that, without a proper storage system like an electrical grid or battery bank, the EUs would slowly degrade. He gave the order to evacuate the other two fire bases before he placed the infrastructure for the empty plots that had never been built. When the last outpost was put in place, John felt exhausted.

“What time is it?” He asked as he sat back in his chair, removing his hand from the cold metal slab of the Survey Projection Table.

“Nearly 0500 sir.” said a helpful lieutenant who was manning one of the control stations for the cargo hauler they flew in.

“We’ve been at this for nearly six hours.” Dr. Rodny said as she leaned back in her chair and stretched. She yawned and John had to fight one himself.

“Maybe it’s time for some rest. How long until we arrive on site lieutenant?”

“Five more hours, sir. This thing might carry almost as much as a cargo ship, but it moves like a turtle, sir.”

“Greaves, get some sleep, too. If what Dr. Rodny said is true, you’ve been up too long.” John said, standing and stretching.

“I went and had a nap while you two were playing with blocks.” He smiled his normal wicked smile, and some of the tension and worry John had felt for his friend dissipated. “But I’ll try to get another one in before we land. You two go get some rest. I’ll wake you when it’s time.”