Ceo


    August 5th, 2133


    Colonel’s Quarters


    I shot up out of my bed, the light blanket falling down from my chest. I felt sweaty, and my palms felt constricted. ‘A nightmare now of all times?’ I wondered to myself.


    The alarm''s high pitched bells ringing hurted my ears, even across the room. I looked at where the door was, the light to the clock face was on, dimly lighting up the floor around it.


    I got up, went over to the clock, picked it up, the time was 07:01 hours. I placed my finger on the hammer, the ringing stopped. I took my finger off and the ringing started again, I just stared at the clock, which kept ringing for an entire another minute which then it stopped. I gave a sigh of relief, flipping the light switch on, the incandescent lights dimly lit up the room


    Moving over to the restroom, I saw it was the same as I left it last night. I  moved to the sink, nothing about me changed at all. Still the same length of hair, face, everything. Opening the water faucet led to water with good pressure, I washed my hands then splashed water on my face. I dried off my hands and face, then moved to the closet, I grabbed an extra Kyntari Officers Uniform, then another trench coat, followed by the yellow officer band with my rank on it. I then grabbed my pouches, ammo was still in them.


    After getting the pouches on I left my quarters into the War Room, I felt for the switch next to my door and I flipped on the lights, no one was here with me. I moved to my desk, grabbed my spellbook, clipboard, and moved to the gun rack and grabbed my SMG, and sword.


    I moved to the door out of the War Room, putting my hand on the round door knob. I didn''t immediately open it. “Let''s hope this is an uneventful day.” I mumbled to myself, opening the door I felt cold air come in.


    The central hallway was devoid of people, a soft breeze blew in from the right and both inner and outer bunker doors were open to the outside trench. The smell of cooking wafted in from the outside, a quick walk to the outside and a climb out of the trench. I was met with several stands all with signs of being a food stand. Several metal stoves were behind each of them with a small team cooking food.


    The ground was damp and wet, yet no snow. The stands had empty lines, with only a couple of people at them, the stand''s food was laid out in a buffet style. The food items were placed on a metal plate with no organization to what went where.


    I went into an empty, almost sad buffet line, which was a wooden and steel structure haphazardly thrown together, a wooden sign was at the beginning of the line.


    “Grab only one plate, no seconds.”


    I looked for a kidney, and I quickly found one and picked it up. There was no exit register, just a team behind the line managing the food.


    Nobody in the team didn’t address me, just talking to each other or doing something else. I then quickly left the food buffet to the surrounding trench lines. There I saw more people, most were just sitting around mostly in foxholes and trenches that remained.


    Someone tapped me on the shoulder, I looked behind me and saw Ronin. He gave me a big smile and waved.


    He pointed towards a spot near a still unfilled trench, Major Shark, Lieutenant Gunther, Crumpet and several others that were likely a part of Shark''s company were there.


    “Oh you guys want me to sit with y’all?” I asked.


    Ronin simply nodded and moved to the trench. I followed him, Ronin sat down next to Crumpet.


    “Good morning Colonel.” Shark said.


    I responded “Good morning Major Shark.” I responded, I took a bite out of the kidney.


    The others said good morning, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.


    “What are you doing here, I thought you were at the Broken Wall?” I asked Shark.


    “Well, my lieutenants told me to get some sleep at around midnight and they said they’ll handle everything there while I rest. I am going to return by 9 AM or so, don’t worry about me ditching my job.” Shark said, tearing a chunk of meat. I nodded at his answer.


    I took another bite out of my meat, as everybody talked with Gunther and Shark surprisingly enough, occasionally speaking in Japanese to Ronin.


    “I never knew you could speak Japanese Shark?” I asked, taking a bite out of the kidney.


    “Well I was an intelligence officer for the US Army in Japan during the war.” Shark said.


    ”So a lot of people here are in fact from Earth.” I said.


    ”From what I’ve heard from my company that holds true. Though there are a couple of Venusians, and Martians here.


    “Martians are here? I thought Mars had worse light lag time than Venus, also isn’tMars on the other side of the system from Earth?” I asked.


    “The Martians were on Island 3 when the game had shut down.” Shark said.


    “Even worse, wealthy Martians.” I said.


    “Do Venusians and Martians have a rivalry?” Shark asked.


    “If it isn’t clear, yes. We pretty much competed for resources from the Federal Government during the early days of each of our colonies, then the break off happened and today we are competing for territory on the moons of Jupiter.” I answered.


    “Oh, I thought it would be more like, y’all are blowing up each other''s colonies and not fighting for moons in the Jovian System?” Shark said.


    “Terrorism is an Earth thing Shark, and is the least effective warfare tactic in space and in fact will piss off more people than rally to your cause. You blow up one ship and now your home colony is now either a crater or sinking into the atmosphere.” I explained.


    “Is that the Inner System Conflict correct?” Shark said.


    “The only war to have been fought between Martian and Venusian Colonies, and is the reason why we don’t fight over asteroids or Moons. If someone has control of the core of a known protoplanet that you want, suck it up and find your own cause it isn’t worth the hassle of spending months in space and thousands of tons of propellant only to be blown up by a strike craft carrying a missile designed in 2030 that is printed out of fucking ABS.” I explained.


    “If we ever get home I’ll need to consider that a part of the American Space Defense Plan.” Shark said.


    “You’re an American General?” I asked.


    Shark gave a sigh, “Yes I am Marine Corp Lieutenant General Hammond in the US Marine Corps.”


    “Well, that is either going to be a blessing or a curse for me.” I said warily, I looked at Gunther and he just simply cocked his head to the side, Crumpet and Ronin weren’t paying attention.


    “If you’re thinking that I am going to usurp you, I have no intentions of doing so. I joined the Marine officer corps to command an army, and I will keep that job.” Shark reassured me. “So who are you exactly, I already told you about me.” Hammond said.


    “I am James Maldonado IV.” I said even more warily than before.


    Gunther just looked at me confused, Hammond didn’t immediately respond. “Oh, the person who is said to have cannibalized half of his crew on a journey to Pluto.”


    Gunther finally spoke, “The Great Grandson of the governor of Plymouth Base, first permanent settlement on the moon, planner of the Three Islands Project, and near the end of his life, creator of the first Venusian Colony San Cielo. Along with the person who funded research into the creation of Smart A.I’s, and later wormholes.” Gunther said.


    “What? Wormholes?” I exclaimed, “To my knowledge my family has never researched Wormholes or to my knowledge funded research into wormholes.” I said.


    Gunther didn’t immediately respond, “Schei?e.” he exclaimed under his breath.


    “Guess that''s classified then.” I said.


    “Yes, it is.” Gunther said, seemingly very worried. Hammond looked very confused at Gunther, and leaned over to me.


    “If you wish to know I am not in the loop at all with whatever he is afraid of.” He whispered.


    I nodded, and Hammond leaned away, Gunther looked to not be in a talking state as he hurriedly looked around, like he was afraid someone was going to come out of the shadows. “So I''d like to ask how the defenses are going, has anything new happened in the past night?” I asked, changing the subject.


    “Last I checked we’ve built a wall around the gate on the inside and have set up some trenches alongside landmines and barbed wire, outside the gate in front of the broken wall. There was only one attack at around 9 and after that nothing happened.” Hammond answered.


    “That''s either a good sign or a bad sign, keep me updated.” I said.


    “I’m not sure either.” Hammond said.


    I finished my food and sighed, “I’ll be taking my leave, I’ll be at the river figuring out something to do while I wait for noon to see what Silenz and Fish have planned.” I stood up and began to leave.


    “Ronin is asking if he can join you.” Crumpet said.


    I turned to the two, Ronin had all of his equipment with him already.


    “Sure, but Ronin needs to learn English.” I said, “does he know where I am going?”


    “He is starting to understand English, speaking it is another thing entirely.” Crumpet added.


    “Alright, good, let''s go.” I motioned for Ronin to follow, he stood up and said something to Crumpet who nodded. I climbed out of the trench via a ladder to the top.


    Ronin tapped me on the shoulder, and he pointed towards another booth with nothing but the metal plate we used to eat on.


    “Please place your dishes in this pile here.” The sign pointed towards an ever growing pile of plates in a ditch.


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    “Well that''s one way of dealing with items that can simply be cleaned, very wasteful for sure.” I mumbled to myself, but I still threw the plate into the growing pile and it''s not like I had any better alternative currently.


    “Come on, let''s go find Major Fish.” I said to Ronin, who took a moment to process what I said and then nodded.


    ……


    Ceo


    08:26 Hours


    Banks of the River


    Ronin and I were several dozen yards away from the banks of the river. Where a lot of things were happening, there were logs stacked in a triangle, several squads were splitting logs, others making them smaller, or carving into them. A mile upstream off in the distance I saw a log raft of sorts floating down the river.


    I headed towards the log stack which was the closest thing to me, the logs were large, around 2 meters in diameter stacked on top of eachother like how one would stack a house of cards. The logs were around 4 meters in length. Possibly one of the biggest trees I’ve ever seen, especially ones that were found out in the wild on Earth.


    The logs were stacked together in groups of 10, first layer having 4 logs, second 3, 2, and 1 log respectively. The next closest thing was the squads carving into the wood logs, so I moved there. There were only 12 people carving, but amongst those 12 was Major Fish.


    He was hunched over a log about 3 meters long with 5 other people, the log had several cracks in it that were slowly being scraped open. I approached Fish from the side, getting a good look at what he was doing. He held a metal handax, which he held over himself and then slammed into the bark of the wood, removing it revealed a notable gap between the parts of the log.


    A crude outline of a boat, or canoe was what he seemed to be forming. Though it was only halfway done, that didn’t stop the others from scraping off wood from the outline that was there.


    It looked like they started a while ago, as a notable amount of material had been removed already, revealing the older layers of the tree. Fish brought up his handax once more and slammed it into the wood removing it and another clean indentation into the log was added to the growing outline.


    “Major Fish.” I said.


    Fish immediately stopped what he was doing, along with everyone else. He didn’t seem to recognize me immediately but when his eyes scanned my armband. “Colonel? Is it already noon?” He asked.


    “No…” I said unsurely, “I think it''s nearing 8:30 in the morning or so.”


    “It’s only 8:30?” Fish said.


    ”Yes, it is. Did y’all start working early?” I asked.


    ”We did, I dragged out my entire platoon from their beds at like 5 in the morning.“ Fish explained.


    ”You’ve been at this for a while then.” I said.


    Fish shook his head, “So what are you doing here Colonel?” He asked, changing the subject.


    “I am here to hear your plan of action you proposed last night. I feel like it''s going to be a long day, so I might as well get things over with.” I said.


    Fish nodded ”Oh, alright. Um…” he stood up, “follow me, I can explain it to you in private.” He turned to the rest of the men working on the canoe. “y’all keep working.” He ordered. He then led me away from them. ”What I am doing right now is making a canoe.” I nodded,


    “And what about the actual specifics of your plan?” I asked.


    “The plan I came up with calls for 10 canoes and 5 rafts, mainly to transport people and items around. It also calls to make some fishing equipment, like fishing spears, rods, and hopefully nets. So I have around half of my squads cutting down trees for the materials, 3 more to make the canoes. The rest are moving the logs from upstream to here, Village is also here putting his plan into motion.” Fish said.


    I nodded, “A relatively simple one, is there anything you need?”


    Fish didn’t immediately respond. “Uh… we need more nails, and rope. Especially ropes, the ones from the trenches are good iron nails. I think we’ll be fine for the short term.”


    ”Alright, I’ll see what I can do about that. I don’t know how to make ropes, but I’ll see if I can find someone here who knows.” I said.


    ”I know how to make ropes, what I am specifically asking for is more men so that they can make ropes.”


    “I’ll make sure Buzz sends you more squads you can work with.” I said.


    Fish nodded, “Alight.”


    “Anything else you wanna add for your plan?” I asked.


    Fish shook his head, “For now that’s the short explanation of everything.” Fish said.


    I nodded, “Alright, get back to work I’ll be taking my leave.” I said.


    “Will do.” Fish said, getting back to work on the canoe. I walked away with Ronin following me.


    I turned to Ronin as we passed a squad clearing out a trench of all its items, there was a pile of logs and nails near it. “You understood all of that, Ronin?” I asked the kid.


    He looked at me, and just tilted his head not understanding.


    “We really need to work on your english.” I gave a sigh, unless of course he was messing with me. Even then I’d have no way of telling if he was.


    ……


    Ceo


    08:54 Hours


    We had walked around half a mile down. I saw Major Village who was giving orders to a group of engineers. They were busy placing logs into the water that was ankle deep, “See if the log will stand if you hit it down.” Village ordered.


    The engineers hammered the log down into the ground under the water. I approached the group along the bank of the river, Ronin had stopped to peer into the clear river water.


    The log being placed into the water was the third ong, and was only a meter tall, it seemed to be left over scrap pieces from the canoe logs. It looks like they have just started on building it.


    “Good now get the other one down, 6 feet away from the first log.” Village ordered.


    The men did as ordered and brought another log in of equal length, and afterwards began to hit the log into the water. They placed a longer log horizontally on the ground, held it in place and began to nail it into the other log.


    After watching for a few more minutes, and their surprisingly fast work where they were able to set up another set of supports, and with no one noticing me, I approached Village.“It looks like y’all just started.” I said


    Village turned towards me, “Oh, Colonel. Yeah we only started like 10 minutes ago, we had to wait for the logs and nails to come in.” Village calmly said.


    I nodded, “So what is the plan right now?” I asked.


    “See if we can build a bridge across the river, simple as that.”


    “Do you know how deep the river is?” I asked.


    “Uhhhh… Let me get back to you on that.” Village said.


    I gave an exasperated sigh, that wasn’t a good sign. “If your plan is to just hope you can cross the river without any issues, then tell me how the clean up is going.” I said, pointing to the trench lines.


    Village looked at the direction I was looking at, “The clean up is going good, we are mostly ignoring individual foxholes, but whatever is on the main lines got to go, we have all the dirt we could possibly need. It''s simply moved up to make the trenches, so just to fill them back in, but we also are taking the wood and nails that are in the trenches.”


    “Alright, that''s good we need planks. Anything else?” I asked.


    “We’ve cleared out several areas free of landmines, and taken apart several HMGs and Artillery guns as well, we aren’t sure what to do with them though.” Village said.


    “Send them to Major Shark’s company, he’ll know what to do with them.”


    “Alright, anything else you want to know?” Village asked.


    “Any plans for a town here?” I asked.


    “The bunkers aren’t enough?” Village asked.


    “They are for now, just that I have a feeling we’ll be here for a long time. Even then we need some heavy and light industry, if we are going to be fighting constantly.” I explained.


    “What makes you think that?” Village asked.


    “Just being cautious, that''s all.” I said.


    Village didn’t immediately respond, but then nodded “Alright I’ll look into building a workshop.”


    “If you are going to look into it. Make sure to properly plan out every little detail, this isn''t a sandbox game. Remember that.” I scolded him, he seemed to be a poor engineer or one that is in training.


    Village nodded, “I understand ma’am.”


    “Get back to work, or maybe start planning before it''s too late, doesn’t matter.” I turned and left.


    Next person to find was Silenz.


    I turned to look at Ronin who seemed entranced by the clear water, holding water in his blue hands.


    “Ronin!” I yelled to him, and the kid turned to face me. “We’re moving.”


    Ronin looked at me and then water. I gave a sigh and turned to leave, may as well leave him to his own devices. I then heard heavy footfalls from steel toed boots, I turned around and I saw Ronin catching up to me.


    ……


    Ceo


    09:15 Hours


    We arrived at the main bunker, only a few people were sitting around here, the food vendors were still active, surprisingly enough they were busy with keeping the food from this morning warm, or were washing the plates we had eaten on. There however was a notable amount of food missing meaning people had come in and taken food.


    I was about to enter the main bunker when Robin had tapped on my shoulder.


    I turned to face him, “What is it?” I asked.


    He pointed to an unfilled fox hole, where I saw two people, who I recognized as Major Shark and Major Silenz. I nodded to Ronin.


    I approached the Foxhole. I didn''t hear what they were saying, but there wasn’t any work happening, just talking.


    “I did not expect you two to be here?” I said, towering over them.


    Silenz and Shark looked up to face me “Oh, Colonel.” Silenz said. “Come join us. I was just talking to Shark over here, about how to procure seeds and food from outsiders.” He explained.


    I climbed down into the old shallow foxhole, and I quickly realized what Silenz was getting to, “You think that the Goblins can farm?” I asked.


    Silenz said “Yes, I think they can farm.” He said.


    “Let me guess.” I stopped Silenz from saying anything more, “You want to raid them for food and farming supplies?” I asked.


    “Yes.” Silenz said.


    “Simply that? Anything else I should know?” I asked.


    Shark surprisingly was the one to talk. “Yes, there is more Colonel.”


    “Go on.” I said to Shark.


    “I believe the goblins have major cities with a metal industry and more.” He stated plainly.


    “What?” I said.


    Shark procured a small knife from his pocket, it was burned and slightly warped. “This knife here was recovered from the Broken Wall, the blade is made out of hardened steel.” He said.


    “Hardened Steel? That is only produced by a civilization with an advanced understanding of metallurgy. Which means they have lots of food, or have the capability to produce a lot of food.” I said.


    ”And a whole lot more.” Shark said.


    ”Yes! That is one of the best news I’ve heard since we got here!” I excitedly said.


    Silenz, who was silent during this part of the conversation, finally spoke, “Going off topic, I do want to know why did the goblins attack y’all?”


    My excitement at the fact the discovery of a technological civilization died when Silenz said that. “You know that is a good question, one I hadn’t considered until now.”


    ”It couldn’t’ve been a recon force.” Shark said immediately afterwards checking off a mental checkbox.


    ”Yeah, if it was a Recon force then they wouldn’t have attacked us.” I said.


    “What if they were reinforcements?” Silenz said.


    ”Reinforcements? For whom exactly?” I asked.


    ”The question we should be asking is where they were going, because if I was a commander who was in charge of some reinforcements and a walled society suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I would simply go around them or at the least send someone to open a dialogue to get an idea of who they are.” Shark said.


    “The more you explain how you would do something, the more it makes it seem like the force that attacked us last night wasn’t just some violent locals.” I paused for a second. “But what if instead they are a part of a larger force.” I said, a dozen different possibilities racing through my mind.


    ”So where is that larger force then?” Shark asked.


    ”Shark, have we actually bothered to check everywhere inside the walls?” I asked.


    Shark eyes grew wide in realization, and he stood up. ”Shit!”