I opened the wooden boxes the alien ship had in their storage space.
“Look at this. They seem to be transporting luxury goods.” I picked up a large green gem “and something I can use to build an AC with.” I said.
Shark looked at the green gem I had in my hand, “That''s one big gem and what do you mean you can build an AC with that gem?”
“General, do you know where my family got our money from 100 years ago?” I asked.
“Air Conditioners and Desalination plants, why?” Shark asked.
“Correct, the Pentagon has been using my family company’s ACs for nearly 75 years now. But do you know how the AC units work?” I asked, placing the green gem and looking at the other big gems.
“I actually don’t really know myself. That''s something my son would know.” Shark answered.
“Well the Building AC HVAC System the Pentagon has installed, uses 5 520 nm DPSS 10 watt Lasers reflected at a 45 degree angle hitting water to cool incoming air in the system. An AC system that uses green lasers based on the Photomolecular effect, an oversimplification but that''s how my family started to gain all of its money it has today. And an AC unit using those patents is what I was taught to build and manage. I was expected to at least know how to build my family''s legacy from scratch. These green gems might allow me to do that.” I said finishing my explanation.
“Your family got all its money from revolutionizing AC units? I thought it was developing revolutionary dedicated robotic and AI hardware?” Shark asked.
“That''s what allowed us to be worth a trillion dollars by 2080, but not what started it. Remember my company is nearly a century old and started in the 2030s after my Great GrandFather showed off his AC system to his entire neighborhood before a major heat wave hit San Antonio.” I said.
“I didn’t know that, and I worked with you for a year.” Shark said, opening another box and then immediately closing it.
“Well it was only for a year and it''s not like we went out for dinner or anything other than that. Well I could build an AC Unit assuming this is the type of gems used in the lasers the AC Units use, but it''s probably not.” I said.
“Well there''s probably something out there you can use or make it yourself.” Shark said.
I looked at Shark and said “You honestly think I know all the intricate processes of making a laser? I studied aerospace, and I didn’t build AC units at the same time unlike my Great Grandfather. Honestly I don’t think I’ll ever do what he did.” I sighed as I attempted to end my spiraling thoughts but to no avail.
“Look kid, your Great GrandFather is an old man from a bygone era that influenced what we are today. Do your own thing different from him, and the situation we have today is very much different from what he had to deal with. So let''s take all of these items and check out that fort not to farm from here.” Shark said.
I sighed, “You are right about that, attention everybody!” I yelled to the force “Take these boxes out of the ship if we can. If not, leave them here and we’ll go check out the fort we were originally planning to get.” I said.
Everybody that was in the room nodded and began trying to move the boxes. I tried moving one myself, but it felt like it was connected to the hull itself. No amount of force would even nudge the boxes.
“James.” Daniel said, approaching me.
I stopped my attempts at moving the boxes “Yeah?”
“I think we have to take everything out of the boxes if we are to move them. Unless we are missing something about the boxes, as we can’t even nudge the boxes without breaking the floor.” Daniel explained.
I sighed and said “I completely agree with your idea.” I turned to everybody else in the room and said “We’ll get the items later, after we check out the fort we were originally out here for.” I ordered.
All the soldiers nodded and I entered the room next over where the captured crew was held, Hippo looking Tuwkm was watching over the crew. A few other members were free and were feeding the ones that were in chains.
A lieutenant I recognized as the commanding officer of the second Platoon of the Company came up to me. “Ma’am what do you want us to do with the captured crew?” He asked.
“Well have the unarmored part of the company take them to the Broken Wall for further interrogation and information gathering. Maybe we could learn their language and figure out who they are and where we are exactly.” I ordered.
“Alright ma’am.” He said and then left soon after I received a message from the lieutenant towards his platoon.
“Gather the prisoners and march them towards the Broken Wall.”
“So you are taking them to the walls?” Shark asked.
“Yes, it''s the only place I can think of that we can keep them safe for interrogation purposes.” I said.
“Well the entire stormtrooper force is ready to leave and we are waiting for you to get moving as well.” Shark said.
“Well I’ll be going with y’all, the Lieutenant and his platoon can handle himself well enough. They aren’t marching on a fortification, you are so I might as well join you to give a bit of extra firepower.” I said, as I began walking down the stairs towards the open hole in the hull.
The bottom deck was claustrophobic but at the end was an opening around the size of a grown man 6 feet tall. I carefully moved through the hole which while much bigger than me had splinters everywhere which wouldn’t be pretty if I wasn’t careful.
On the other side I was met with 50 armored men standing around waiting for me and Shark.
“Well let''s get moving to our target.” I ordered, taking the lead of the disorderly crowd of stormtroopers.
Ronin took the spot behind me, while Daniel was on my right and Shark on my left.
“The fort is a lot less than I expected.” Daniel said, as they got closer to the fort.
“Well it was barely perceptible with binoculars twenty feet up, what''d you expect?” I asked.
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The fort they saw had a central wooden watchtower up on a hill which was in the middle of the compound. Which was somewhat large with wooden fortifications that were in the shape of stakes, there were two large double gates with two shorter guard towers flanking the gate.
It looked almost like a prison with the way it was built, I couldn’t see above the tall wooden walls which were made out of tree trunks tied together with rope of some kind. The walls were around ten feet tall along with the gate, the guard towers were no more than fifteen feet off the ground.
“Is it just me or is no one home?” Daniels commented.
“Yeah, the guard towers next to the gates are empty.” I said, trying to look into the wooden tower next to the gate. Which was a simple open air tower, with short walls probably acting as cover placed behind the wall.
On either guard tower it was empty; you would expect someone to be on it guarding the gate, especially after the first attack.
I sighed and approached the closer wooden gate, which seemed to be the most well developed out of everything here. It was a wide double gate spanning about 15 feet for each individual door of the gate.
I pushed on the gate, and it nudged but it seemed blocked.
“It''s locked.” I said, I looked around and saw there was no mechanism, just a simple wall. “Probably with a big piece of wood that prevents it from moving.” I concluded.
“I say we blow up the gate.” Daniels said.
“Well that''s the only way we can get in. But I am surprised we haven’t been attacked yet.” I said, looking at the guard tower with suspicion.
“As I said, probably no one is home.” Daniels said.
“Well we have to be cautious anyways, hopefully us blowing up the door will get anyone there to surrender.” I said approaching the closest Stormtrooper AT Gunner, “you blow up the center of the gate with your AT gun. Everybody get away from the gate!” I ordered.
Everybody did as I ordered and the Stormtrooper I ordered from before got into position, aimed and aimed. I was wondering if he knew how to get magic to run when the gun activated with a light hum and five seconds later a red beam of light came out of the barrel and immediately after an explosion rang out.
The gate flung off its hinges and away from the wall, and a loud crash was heard. The doors of the gate seemed to hit a building of sorts as the crash followed by a loud collapse of wood and maybe dirt.
As a lot of dust came out of the gate obscuring the view passed the gate, when the dust settled. Saw dust, possibly dirt, and smoke revealed on the inside was neatly arranged mudbrick houses flanking two sides of a road or street. It seemed almost like a ghost town in it, there wasn’t a soul insight in the gate.
No one dared to move an inch closer to the gate, in fact everybody agreed that the silence wasn’t good and holstered our weapons out. Including me.
I didn’t even need to give an order as everybody looked in all directions. Even the banks of the river.
“Shark what do you think? An ambush or something?” I asked the middle aged general.
Shark answered as he had his LMG pointed at the gate. “Not sure, I mainly use drone swarms to deal with enemies. Gunther you participated in the 2071 American Invasion of China, what do you think?” Shark asked the middle aged man standing next to Ronin.
Gunther on the other hand seemed eerily calm in the midst of the tense situation, “Well I think Mr. Daniel''s deduction that no one is home is correct. If there was a large force here waiting in ambush, I think they would realize that us blowing up the gate means they just lost their defensive advantage of being able to perform urban warfare. If we can just blow up the walls and let loose a hail of bullets into their mudbrick houses, which 9 mil bullets is the only bullet type that won’t be able to pierce the walls of the mudbrick houses.” He said.
“And I am assuming the moment they realize that they didn’t have that advantage then they would’ve attacked by now?” I asked.
“Yes, and if they were lying in wait in the houses. We would’ve heard screaming from the building that was hit by the gate.” Gunther said pointing towards the collapsed mudbrick single story building.
I sighed, “Well, I hope Lieutenant Gunther is correct.” I turned to the rest of the very tense company. “We are going inside the fortress, I cannot promise no attack but be prepared. There''s probably no one in there, and we killed them all last night. If they are there, let''s hope they surrender.” I said, everybody seemed unconvinced by my speech.
A few nodded weakly they seemed equally as scared as I was, while most continued looking at all of our flanks.
I sighed, “let''s get moving, watch all the angles where we can be attacked from. After we confirm it''s clear we’ll move onto the next plan of action, which we’ll discuss later. Any questions?”
“What is our goal here?” A stormtrooper asked in the back.
“Gather any information we can find, it doesn''t matter. Books, maps, weapons, letters, and most importantly gather any food we come across.” I looked around, “any more questions?” I asked, no one said anything. “Alright then let''s go inside.”
The 2 Platoons cautiously moved forward, and passed the gate without incident. Passing the gate I saw the road was littered with well nothing, it was empty like a place meant to be slept in but for nothing else.
The left gate door was on a building, looking around the other buildings were literally just mud bricks, from dirt you can get out of the ground. It wasn’t clay bricks, just dirt probably dried and combined with some other things. They were also not that tall, only 6 feet in height at max, which was why we couldn’t see them over the wall.
“These houses aren’t of good quality.” I commented.
Shark was next to me looking at the entrance of the building. We were looking at “how can you tell?”
“I am not a professional but I don’t think the bricks these houses are made of are clay. It looks more like dirt, probably using some processes used to make bricks but instead of a specific clay, they grabbed dirt from nearby and used that.” I explained.
“Yeah, this looks like it could be washed away by a flood in a snap and be destroyed. Instead of just being floated away by a flood.” Shark said.
“Yeah, I can agree with that assertion.” I said.
“Calm down, but yeah I saw someone in that tower over there.” Gunther said.
I looked at the guard tower again, I saw it clearly and it meant the ones in the tower could see us clearly too. All the way down the roads, I didn’t see how many roads there were but I didn’t see any ever cross over one another.
I brought out my clipboard, and sent: “Ignore if you''re in the walls. Someone is home, go towards the wall that is away from the entrance gate.” Orders from Ceo MacNCheese.
Immediately thereafter all 100 people of the 2 platoons that were a part of this scouting force quickly began rushing down towards the wall.
Daniels rushed up to me and asked. “You said someone was home?”
“Yes, in the guard tower there.” I pointed to the left guard tower.
“That''s not good.” Daniels said.
“Should we scare them by blowing up the gate?” Daniel Suggested.
“Well it is the only real option we have, especially since this is the place where last night attackers came from.” I said.
Daniel nodded “Alright you heard her, get the AT gun up here and blow up the gate!” Daniel ordered the closest AT Gunner.
Who got to the front and everybody else got behind. The magic spell opened and the moment it activated, I heard foreign yelling from the otherside.
“It sounds like someone is home.” I said.
Right after that the gun fired, an explosion rocked the walls and the buildings seemed to lose some structural stability even. The gates flew backwards, and I heard cracking beyond the smoke, and dust followed by a few splinters flying out.
When the dust settled, I saw the gates had slammed into the hillside causing the gate to splinter into pieces.
I looked at the guard towers once more, and I saw someone or something in it. This time much more clearly, they looked on in shock at us all very much confused and scared.
I couldn’t see many details other than it was a dark green in skin color and small. Although the distance and angle I saw it at didn’t help.
“I guess it is time to go inside this wall now.” I pointed at the thing in the guard tower “also capture that thing you see in the guard tower there.” I ordered Daniel.
“Alright, I will get it.” Daniel turned to the ten armored men behind him, “let''s go squad.” He ordered and they took off followed by everyone else cautiously passing the other gate.
We passed the gate without incident. I was in the front surrounded by Daniels men, Ronin in front of me cautiously looking around, almost scared. He was looking at the guard tower I did too.
On the back was a wall that prevented me from looking into it, except for a ladder that entered the tower.
We stopped right at the foot of the hill as Daniels'' men moved towards the two forts and looked inside of them.
I heard a resounding clang from the left guard tower and I looked left. An arrow had slammed into the top of the stormtrooper''s helmet who was at the entrance.
The stormtrooper responded by rapidly climbing the ladder which gained the response of more arrows having been shot into the armor. From the resounding clangs I heard from the guard tower followed by high pitched nasally screaming in an alien tongue.
The stormtrooper that had entered the tower dragged a small green humanoid out of the building, no taller than four feet in fact. Its leg was bruised, which was likely the spot it was grabbed and pulled down from the guard tower.
I approached the small thing, it looked similar to the attackers from last night. The goblins as I had dubbed them, and I was confirmed they were goblins from last night. This one was disheveled and looked like it was hungry, deep bags were in its eyes.
The pupils of the eyes were tiny, like they were more adapted for seeing in the night than the day. It wore ragged clothing, which only further exaggerated its disheveled state.
“What are you?” I asked.
The tiny Goblin immediately began crawling backwards up the hill, yelling and it was trying to avoid looking at me. The moment I looked at it, it tried to look away avoiding my gaze. I didn’t think much of it, except for the fact it was trying to run away yelling.
Halfway up the hill I saw it get onto its hind legs and began running upright, with a bit of a limp. By then its yelling stopped when it no longer was crawling backwards and looking at me, when it reached the top it disappeared over the hill with only the tower being viewable from the angle I was at.
Moments later I heard a deep guttural yell in an alien tongue, followed by the goblin from before falling from the sky in two pieces.
The upper half of the body landed right in front of me with a disgusting squelch as its intestines oozed out of the dead body. The bottom half somewhere in the crowd, we all looked at the hill.