Kick the Sphere 15 (Patreon)

A/N: so. two exams, a clinical, one lab, and also sick for two days. My condition is not great. It is not an excuse for me to produce subpar work, so if this came out to be subpar, you lot have to tell me so I can fix it, because my ability to reason and decide is currently being hampered by my illness. It might be a little short because I literally cannot sit down for more than thirty minutes before I lose it.

-VB-

Kick the Sphere

Chapter 15

-VB-

The use of antimatter warhead missiles … proved to be very successful.

It had been my first go-to answer to the problem of fighting against a heavily armored opponent (relatively speaking) with a barebone corvette and fighters.

My girls returned home as heroes, though most on this planet would not know it for a long time to come. After all, I only held nominal control over a small area of the planet, not the entire thing. It also showed me that we were ready to take on similarly sized invasions or raids, but anything larger would mow us down before we mowed them down unless I upgraded the ships. Speed and maneuverability had been the one factor that my ships had plenty of in comparison, which was what allowed them to dodge the alpha strikes from the dropships’ guns and rocket launchers.

Well, if the problem was overall weakness, then I just had to work to remove that weakness!

But first…

I watched as the five ships landed on our makeshift landing pad next to our compound, and greeted my girls as they walked out of their hatches, ladders, and rear ramps.

“All of you did great!” I laughed as I hugged Rebecca, who’d run up to and glomped me with a tackle-hug. The girls cheered with me with big grins and smiles on their faces. “We’re gonna have a feast of victory! I got the yalk meat from the villagers!”

There were more whoops and hollers from saying that than the fact that we won our first space battles. My girls had some odd priorities.

Oh well. They deserved it.

-VB-

The pace in the compound changed the very next day when I took my 600-point stockpile in the Forge and purchased a “Manufactory.” It was an almost completely automated factory that could assemble anything as long as I had the materials and the blueprint to make it.

An incompetent human working at a normal biological level would output one hundred tons per minute of whatever their blueprints were for. Now, I didn’t know what an incompetent human was by the Forge’s definition, but it was a safety net for me. Even if I went bonkers stupid, I could still make things. It was highly unlikely that I would go “bonkers stupid,” but I was never the optimistic kind of person.

I also knew that by placing down the Manufactory, I would more or less also need to conquer the rest of the planet. I could not allow anyone to land and gather an armed force of sympathetic or opportunistic locals not allied or aligned to my goals.

So.

I took a deep breath in.

And placed it down.

My inventory lit up as the Manufactory in it disappeared, and a flash of blinding light overtook everything for a moment. There was a loud boom and a strong gust that nearly tripped me over.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself staring at a giant skyscraper. Or rather a conglomeration of giant skyscrapers tightly packed together. It was also right next to the compound.

“Woof,” I muttered because I honestly had no other words to say at the moment. I just plopped down a giant skyscraper next to my compound! What was I supposed to say to that?!

“You have defense emplacements in your inventory as well? It’d make our jobs real easy,” Spas-12, or Sabrina as she named herself, asked with a smile. “No need to patrol means we have more time to eat.”

I snorted. “No,” I replied. “But I will be making some automated drones to help you in your patrols. Less ground for you to physically cover that way.”

“Sweet~!” she sang.

“Right. I want to test this out right now,” I said as I walked towards the entrance of the Manufactory, which was right in front of us. The door slid open when I approached and revealed a dark room inside that I could not see anything. Then the lights lit up and I found myself looking at a definitely futuristic sci-fi set-up; a well-lit room of white walls, floor, and ceiling held within its confines a number of blue and white equipment with smooth curves and lazily blinking lights.

I took bold steps forward the centerpiece of the lab, a heavily built chair with panels and cushions. I knew that this was where the Manufactory’s operator would begin their work. When I got up in front of it, I turned around and sat down as my T-Doll girls watched in trepidation and anticipation.

Then I pulled out a simple data stick with the blueprints of a replicator loaded in.

It had been found during the week that I frantically worked to make us a few ships.

I might not have been able to use it then but I now could without anyone not from this planet to see how the Manufactory was brought to life. I leaned back into the chair, and holographic controls immediately showed up within my hands’ reach. I got to work determining the fine details of what I wanted to be made and where the materials would come from.

Thankfully, my Resource Generator was capable of producing all of the exotic and normal materials the Manufactory needed to make a replicator.

With that done, I inserted the stick into an open slot and, after a minute of a blue spinning circle of a loading screen, got a confirmation from the Manufactory that the digital format was compatible.

I only had one more thing to do.

I pressed Start.

I jolted a little when I felt the Manufactory come to life.

“Alan, what happened?” Rebecca quickly demanded as she hefted her signature Negev up and approached me.

I looked at her in surprise. “You didn’t feel that?”

“Feel what?”

Before I could answer her, there was a clunk as the Manufactory shut down after completing exactly one order.

I quickly got up, phasing through the holographic controls, and glanced at the chair as it deactivated while I walked outside.

Right next to the open door was a slot of open space that hadn’t been there before, and a single cube popped out from it. The slot then closed.

My girls quickly came out and looked at the cube along with me.

“What is that?” one of them asked.

“This,” I smiled as I held up a fist-sized cube. “Is what you call a replicator. And it is our answer to all of the Great Houses ruling over hundreds of worlds each.”

“And that is…?” Sabrina asked.

I gave her a nasty grin.

“Fuck around and find out.”

-VB-

A/N: so I didn’t know about the Manufactory (7.0640 on Celestial Forge V.2) until yesterday. It also happened to be exactly 600 points for what it offered.