Instead of leaving the underground, as Rayna and Jada both were, I diverted to the hangar. As I approached the end of the natural lighting we had installed, I noticed a different glow take over. It was soft, white lighting, and seemed to be centered in the middle of the hangar.

An illuminated, oversized balloon came into view, wearing reflective skirting around its top portion. The light from inside it bathed the entire hangar in soft, whitish-yellow light, only leaving the edges of the oversized room in shadows.

I walked down the stairs, enjoying the new lighting as I approached Axle and a squad of a dozen hobbs. The Knowle was addressing them.

“Right, I need all the rest taken out of their packaging and set into ready positions like this one,” he said, pointing a claw at a broken down Sleem freezer. Its parts were set around the primary box unit in a small circle, and a line in chalk had been drawn around it, with dimensions scribbled on each line.

“Chalk out the areas using these dimensions, set the parts in the area, move onto the next.” Axle looked around his gathered crowd of hobbs. “Everybody good?”

One of the hobbs thumped his chest at Axle. “Hobbs good!” He turned to grab a nearby oversized BuyMort box, and I saw behind him that there were dozens more. Possibly over a hundred, tucked in place beside the already operating Sleem farm. The hobbs all turned and broke out their knives, opening boxes and tossing the flesh-tape into a pile.

The old pile was tucked into a far corner, but even from there I could faintly pick up its gag-inducing scent. That stuff was disgusting. BuyMort wouldn’t buy it, and nobody wanted to handle it.

Axle turned to me as his hobbs began their work. “Ah good, I hoped you would come find me first. Walk with me?” he asked, gesturing with a paw.

I nodded, and Axle took the lead, heading toward the secret door behind the Sleem farm. Before we could leave fully, I hesitated and pointed to the balloon light. It was anchored to the floor by a thin cable.

“Hey, what is that thing? Really cool lighting,” I asked.

“Oh that’s just my emergency light. Simple product to deploy, but complex computing and inflation system. Says it works on any planet that supports life and has an atmosphere primarily composed of gas,” he said. “It scans the air around it, then draws in appropriately buoyant gasses that can also be energized to create lighting.”

He pulled an ad box out of thin air and projected it at me.

A Revolution of Safety Lighting the entire multiverse can enjoy! From Winding Road Illuminati, Kings of Brilliance. Around the multiverse people struggle to survive. They gather food, build homes, fashion clothing, and make a living selling whatever they can get their hands on. Over and over until night comes and the darkness forces them to stop.

But what if the darkness never came? Bringing to you the work-amplifying, power-independent innovation of the WorkHard Lamp. WorkHard Lamp isn’t just a light — it’s a lifestyle. Always on and always bright, this amazing device functions in any place with any gaseous atmosphere. Forever. 1500 morties. 3.7 stars.

I was not impressed.

“On forever sounds good,” I noted. “But the ad copy looks choppy and what’s up with those stars? Plus it’s super cheap!”

“The ad copy looks choppy. Look at you. It doesn’t take long to fall into the system, does it?” Axle laughed. “Here’s the thing. Sometimes the sensors foul up and the wrong stuff gets drawn in. Then it’s either kaput or kablammo! But I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve got tricks in the trade. Put it away from battle, in little nooks and crannies sheltered from the outside. Then give me some salvage and a workbench and I’m able to hammer out a lot of those defects myself.”

I smiled at the item, thinking about how lucky I was to have such a resourceful ally on my side. I nodded and Axle turned away from me, swinging the secret door open. As I turned to depart, I saw a few of the hobbs watching.

I frowned. Guess the door wasn’t so secret anymore. Just an easier way to get between residential and the hangar.

Axle closed the door behind me, after clicking on a small flashlight in the mesh of his top. The beam provided enough light for me to see by, even without my helmet. Dro’erja and Shela, the dark elf’s giant spider, were not present as we walked through the area.

“If you’re wondering where your new delf went, he’s top-side with the spider. Their cover got installed before the bomber hit us, so its safe for them to be up there,” Axle explained. “But given that it's still quite bright out, I rather suspect they are indoors. Drusk has been accommodating anytime I have had to interact with him. I understand there is some conflict between the two of you?”

“Eh, I hope not. He attacked us and hurt Molls, before you were hired on,” I answered.

“Ah,” Axle nodded. “I can safely assume you are the cause of his many fresh wounds then.”

“And the guy who paid the bill to fix them, if that counts,” I sighed.

Axle looked at me over his shoulder and nodded again. “It does, I believe. He strikes me as a genuine mordren, not given to dishonesty, or guile. I believe he shall work with Dro’erja well.”

I turned the wheel on the far door, spinning it to unlock the mechanism. “Okay, good. I was worried about that.”

We entered the underground residential portion of the base, stepping out of the old barbershop into the hallway proper. The primary bulk of our new hobbs were there, as was Tollya. She was going door to door asking for volunteers for work assignments and getting plenty of takers.

The hobbs were moving in, otherwise. Families were establishing rooms, hanging curtains, doors, even animal skins or plaited chitin bead curtains to use as privacy shields. The hallway was alive with movement. Young hobbs were in the area formerly used as drug lounges, installing oversized planter boxes, and filling them with rich, dark soil from bags. Banks of grow lights were being installed above them.

In the place of silk tapestries, thick leather and chitin murals were being unrolled and hung. Some of them looked very old and came from heavy metal boxes covered in wear. The images on them depicted a great hobb army experiencing a heavy battle on a mountainside, where armored, mobile bunkers fought floating ships. After the battle, the hobbs gave up fighting and turned to a life of peace.

Axle got my attention again, and I realized I had been staring. The hobbs were still in the early phases of moving in, I would have to look forward to seeing what they did with the space later, when it was more complete. The hulking Knowle led me further into the depths of the block, down the stairs to a newly installed door covering the final staircase down.

A massive slab of dull metal rose from the floor, covering the staircase down entirely. It seemed to jut into the concrete wall but slid open at Axle’s approach. I looked down into the cavernous room that Quadrum the beholder had made their own.

The staircase was gone, a thirty foot drop to the floor below in its place. The walls and floor were the same dull metal as the door, having replaced the concrete entirely. Thin steps slid from the wall at our side, allowing Axle and I entry. They silently vanished into the wall again as we passed, and the door closed without a whisper.

A tiny artificial star hung in the center of the room, burning brightly inside a bubble of energy. Streams of energy flowed from the contained star across the ceiling and down the pillars, traveling across the dull sheen of the metal in imperfect streams, wavering and wandering, but staying mostly in line with the elements they powered.

“Touch nothing, for fear of your life,” Axle said. “It is not personal, but beholders are notoriously bad at remembering how fragile most sapient life is, comparatively. I do not understand them fully, but I have the sense that several of the experiments in here could take your life, completely by accident, if you approached them incorrectly.”

“And what are those experiments, exactly?” I asked, eyes narrowed.

Axle looked up, but hesitated to meet my eyes. He blinked rapidly, and shook his head. “I’m not sure how to answer that question. I cannot understand the experiments in any of the ways that I can interact with them; sight, sound, and smell. None of that tells me anything substantive.”

I frowned. In too many ways this felt like another Sada situation, where I was doing everything for someone who didn’t deserve my efforts.

The thoughts of Sada made his face flash across my vision and I sighed. The dumb bastard. If only he’d have gotten over himself and stopped making things difficult for us.

I was going to make it up to him, do things how he should have done them and do them well. And that included figuring out whatever the hell was happening down here.

“But?” I asked.

“When they connect with me, I can sense some of the beholder’s mind. Quadrum doesn’t experience desire or motivation in the same way that we do, so it can be difficult to understand them,” Axle started. He licked his nose and continued, “but I can sense that they are very interested in the population rate of the Sleem, and I can sense that this interest is not limited to Sleem on this world, or even in this universe.”

Axle blinked and shook his head. “Somehow, Quadrum is studying all Sleem, through our Sleem.”

“So, we basically have a super powerful being that made a huge deal about breaking free from their handlers so that they could, what, watch our Sleem quantum bang?” I scoffed.

Axle breathed out a snort of amusement. “More or less. Again, I am highly invested in understanding this creature, I will happily keep you posted. It is your affiliate, after all. Understanding the beholder’s technology is like learning about the sun with a telescope.”

I nodded and blinked. I couldn’t help but think that the experiments could be super insightful and might offer us a technological edge or even a new income stream. But Axle was right. Now was not the time, and we could only understand so much by staring at the sun. I took in the room, then made my way down the moving staircase.