Vivid Stars Online

That night provided the perfect opportunity to log out and return to Earth, but I was reluctant to do so. The issue of how blocking my powers would work outside of VSO loomed in my mind.

While I might have an Arakthian artifact to handle it here, I had access to no such thing back on Earth. There would be nothing stopping me there except for my willpower and attention.

The original prescription for solving my corruption had been self-management of energy levels, but I didn't know what that would have entailed. I couldn't even ask without looking suspicious; it was already handled, after all.

With how locked down information on Psionics was, I wouldn't have much luck researching it either. I would just have to do my best to keep it under control back on Earth, a worrying prospect given I was pretty sure my lack of pills there was the cause of my current predicament.

I would have to return eventually to tell Linnea and Elana's family what we learned from Broker, but there was no real reason to do so before then. We were still within the period I'd informed them I might be in full dive.

The best strategy I could devise was to wait as long as possible before returning. I was still reflexively trying to do things with my Psi powers, which would be dangerous if I were the only thing holding myself back.

A week or two might be enough to break that habit, making the return that much safer. Plus, we would be done dealing with Broker by then. Ideally, we would have a way to track down Elana's location on Earth, but in the worst case, we would at least avoid giving them false hope.

Given that, I spent the night sleeping in VSO and enjoyed a morning meal with the crew. Then, I returned to the town hall to handle the many meetings lined up for me.

That took the entire morning, mainly covering minor or unimportant issues, after which I'd made sure to leave the afternoon free. I used the time to head to the training grounds to test my new gear. I was long past the point of carelessly bringing new equipment into combat with me; I now knew to practice well in advance.

As expected, the new gun was much heavier than my old rifle, both in weight and in the recoil from firing it. There was no way I'd ever be able to fire it on full automatic if not for the supplemental strength boost provided by my new armor.

Together, the two pieces of gear worked perfectly. While slower than I was used to, I had almost as much offensive power as I'd had at my peak. With no limitations on energy reserves, I was likely superior as an overall fighter. That wasn't even mentioning the increase in accuracy from having Rifles as a class skill.

And with my Toughness restored and backed up with extremely heavy armor, I'd be almost impossible to damage. While I didn't plan to risk myself as a front-line tank for the whole group, I would become a solid emplacement in the middle of our strike team.

I was able to spy on them doing last-minute training on adjacent fields as I worked. They had an interesting combination of gear, some of which I didn't recognize, and they seemed to be skilled individually and as a group.

I'd never been able to dig fully into how the natives advanced in power, but I was pretty sure this group had some solid gains. However, it worked. The Captain had done a great job putting them together, and I was looking forward to practicing with them tomorrow.

After training, I spent the evening meeting with Captain Hendricks to review our strategy. He'd already seen the information I'd sent him from when Linnea and I had almost died, but he still wanted to go through it step by step in person.

I was happy to oblige, and I made sure to emphasize heavily just how horrifying the final wave of crystal spiders had been. That was the most significant risk of a follow-up expedition; if there were still enough enemies to form another wave, even an entire squad might not be enough.

It was hard to imagine any amount of plasma fire being enough to halt the horde once it started charging. Hendricks quickly agreed with me but, thankfully, already had a few contingencies planned.

The first contingency, and the primary one that would be used, was area damage weapons. The strike team was currently formed from two ten-member squads, and each squad had two heavy weapons specialists.

These soldiers were armed with plasma cannons resembling Linnea's heaviest weapon, though they were somewhat lower quality. On top of that, each squad member would be equipped with a number of grenades to use as needed.

Part of the training tomorrow would be a specialized drill for this exact situation, where everyone would practice throwing a coordinated grenade assault on command. With enough explosives together, it might be enough to stop even a tidal wave of bodies.

That sounded good; my only worry was that we might bring the ceiling down on top of us. Thankfully, the Captain had even thought of that. He'd sent my recordings to be analyzed by a structural specialist, who'd confirmed the corridors we'd seen should have little issue dealing with anything we could throw at them.

The situation might change if we moved further into rough tunnels, but Elana had enough knowledge to make a sound judgment call if needed. That was the other significant change to what I'd been planning; with my abilities compromised, Captain Hendricks insisted I take our chief engineer.

It made a lot of sense, so I was happy to agree as long as she was willing to come. While my base technical skills were solid at this point, I was leery about messing too much with unknown Arkathian technology.

On top of that, I was going to be busy leading our troops, so it only made sense to have someone else handling the tech side of things. That would bring the number of people we were bringing down into the tunnels to thirteen.

There were ten squad members, Elana, Linnea, and myself. While we might be bringing both squads on the trip, the space down in the facility was far too small to have over twenty people present at once. Even thirteen would be pushing it, necessitating training for close-quarters combat before we set out.

The last thing we needed was someone being shot in the back.

The other squad would stay at the top, securing the elevator site and the precious generator that would keep the lights on and the elevator running. While there was a chance the facility power would still be on, I strongly suspected that the spiders had trashed the place after we left.

Engaging it seemed to enrage them, so as long as at least a single enemy had survived, I couldn't see them leaving it alone. With my powers now locked, the surface generator would be critical. If it went down, we would be trapped.

Beyond that contingency, the second squad would be our source of backup. If a team member was injured or, even worse, killed, we would be able to bring a replacement down from the surface.

That would ensure a full-strength team continued until we secured our objective. Given that we would be bringing civilians down to do the mining, I would only consider the job complete once we had cleared the entire cave network.

With that tangent complete, Captain Hendricks hesitantly moved on to discussing his second contingency. It turned out that his main worry was cost; the device he suggested was extraordinarily expensive and would likely be a single-use item.

Taking inspiration from when I'd held back the horde with my Fell Shield, the man had managed to locate a portable force field generator at the palace. It was bulky and would only last a couple of minutes, but it would block an entire tunnel for that time.

It would almost certainly allow us to flee but would likely be destroyed after the field failed, essentially making it a throw-away last resort. The truly exorbitant cost made me pause, but I had enough profit from our winter trip left to purchase it, if barely.

In the end, I shelled out the money for it. If we didn't end up using it, we could keep it for another emergency or re-sell it, and if we did have to use the device, I would consider the cost worth it.

While Linnea, Elana, and I would come back, though at a significant cost, the other team members wouldn't. That wasn't something I would allow if I could avoid it.

More pragmatically, I also couldn't afford to lose an entire squad of highly trained and well-equipped soldiers. These were the best we had to offer, trained and forged in battle over the entire winter.

With our limited population, they would be difficult to replace, even more so if I got a reputation as someone who lost a whole team on a mission. Few would sign up if they expected to die whenever I called on them.

The planning session lasted longer than I'd expected, but we continued so the plan would be nailed down for the next day's training. Finally, at midnight, we both signed off on it, and I returned to fall into bed with Linnea.

The next day started with an open forum outside the town hall. Much as I had last time, I let anyone who wanted ask questions and did my best to answer them. Any I couldn't answer, I left with the Mayor for a follow up.

It went even better this time than the first one I'd held. The town seemed extremely happy with how things were progressing, and most only had specific concerns about how the following years would affect them.

The biggest positive for most people was the upcoming planting season. While we hadn't released the full details, it wasn't hard to tell that fields were being planned outside the town, and everyone was looking forward to having enough fresh food to go around.

While the situation here had been better than most with the abundant fishing, no one could happily live forever on just fish and the few vegetables that could be foraged from the nearby forest. A solid agricultural setup would ensure no famine would touch the local area again.

Even a drought would do little to stop us here; it was almost unimaginable for the entire gargantuan lake to be drained of water. That was an advantage few of the heavy agricultural regions to the south had access to.

After I left to a surprisingly rigorous round of applause, I returned to the training grounds. There, Linnea, Elana, and I joined the two squads for training. Elana had quickly agreed when I asked her to come along in the morning.

She claimed that the months she'd been cooped up in the spaceship were too much even for her, but I suspected she just wanted the Resulum as quickly as possible. It was the last thing she was missing to truly fix the ship, and I was pretty sure that was eating away at her.

With her was a pair of floating drones, twice the number she'd brought last time. Despite this, she seemed to have little trouble controlling them both at once, and each was of a much higher quality than she'd had before.

It was enough to make her solidly useful in addition to her technical abilities, and the two squads were quick to welcome her.

Like I'd been introduced to the night before, each squad was made up of a set of specialists. There were the two heavy weapon specialists I'd already been introduced to, along with two medics, two scouts, and four close-assault soldiers.

The close-assault soldiers were the most interesting. Instead of rifles, they were all equipped with shotguns, like Adam had used to great effect, along with long spears. The spears had a cross-section along the shaft like an old school boar hunting spear and were used for much the same purpose.

It was an intriguing solution for massive Beasts. The four assault members were split into pairs, and whenever a larger Beast charged, one pair would attempt to halt its advance with braced spears.

Between the incredibly durable materials and the cross-section stopping the creature from just pushing itself all the way down the shafts, the pair would be able to catch and halt almost anything.

Then, the other pair would circle and lay into its sides with shotgun fire while it was stuck. The strategy was brutal but highly effective and was a large part of how they managed to take out all threats with no deaths over the winter.

For smaller enemies, like we were facing, they would primarily be using their shotguns at range before switching to spears when the enemy got close. While the weapons were a little harder than usual to wield due to their design, they could still fend off most enemies.

Given the massive quantity we might be facing, it would be useful to have them there to keep the longer-range combatants safe. With heavier armor than the rest of the squad, they were also less likely to be injured if something got past their weapons.

We spent three days training with the squads before Captain Hendricks was satisfied that we were ready to face the tunnels below the mining outpost. A longer training period would have been ideal, but I was highly aware that time was running out on all fronts.

I suspected we had less than six months before I would need to have all my ships combat-ready and possibly as little as three. Even after securing the Resulum, we would still need to finish repairing and rearming the ship.

That would take at least a month or two to complete, and that was to just get combat-ready. With my crew being made up entirely of fresh academy recruits or veterans who'd never seen space combat like Brian, we would need as much time to train with the ship as possible.

Then there was also the Earth situation. I had less of a timeline for when the supposed integration event would happen, but I suspected that it was less than a year as well. I would need the diagram from Broker to have even a chance of resolving that, and then we would have to actually build it with Earth materials and tools.

There was little doubt that it was going to be a nightmare and one that I would be far less useful for than I'd planned. If we couldn't get Elana freed to help, we might miss our only chance to move here for real.

This operation was vital for both issues, and it was time to wrap it up.