Fighting Them There

### Fighting Them There ###

### Fighting Them There ###

### Chapter Thirty-Two ###

### Chapter Thirty-Two ###

Of course, Lieutenant Cortes was aware of what horrors awaited the janitorial staff when a hunter passed through a dungeon gate. Dealing with sanitation was arguably the most important part of the military infrastructure, right up with securing food and water. The list of wars where cholera killed more warriors than the spears of the enemies would take alongtime to read out. The fact that a hunter had apparently entered a dungeon gate while standing in her office was surprising, but the mess of partially digested pizza that was left behind was rather to be expected. "That was... disgusting," she said. She'd seen the piles of "non-self" materials fall out of a gating hunter literally hundreds of times, but previously always from a distance that physicists claimed threatened no danger of accumulated radiation burden even when viewed hundreds of times. Up close it was more upsetting looking.

The Shadow Elf's reaction was much more enthusiastic, and she said something in a thick Shelflander dialect which conveyed only emotional content to the others in the room. The Assassin seemed to remember her audience, and switched to English. "Master Max has summoned Sophie to his Domain," she said with the total confidence possessed only by experts, zealots, and the pridefully ignorant.

"That is...a possibility," Lieutenant Cortes conceded, "it would certainly be better for all of us if she has joined Hunter Mitchell rather than simply being lost forever in the endless folds of spacetime. Can we get an opinion from the invaders?" She drew out a question on her pad and showed it to the hunters and the monsters with them.

The written word has many advantages, but speech remained the faster way to deliver information when one was in close proximity. Even though the Tartarian's words had to be translated by Specialist Clark, the message still got back to the Lieutenant before the Mictlanian monster had written its runes.Herrunes. The hunters who had come back with her insisted that she was female now. That was very important, according to the monster in question. The hunters thought that gender was earned in the society of Mictlan, and that the particular monster they had brought back had earned one as part of betraying its home planet. Every part about that was going to annoy Colonel Pierce.

"She says that is the result of a dungeon... warden... selecting a conqueror to join their dungeon after they've gotten enough... progress... to expand." Specialist Clark wasn't confident about all the words, but she got the idea across. The Tartarian added some of her guttural raspings and Specialist Clark translated that. "She says that if we all trust Ma... Hunter Mitchell that he will be able to select more, or send a supply request stone." As Lieutenant Cortes understood it, that was a system by which the dungeon would send a pile of material through the planetary gate and then that would unlock a dungeon destination that the planetary gate could then send a single shipment through.

Weapons. Food.Guardians. The prospect of sending supplies made on Earth to the dungeon was something that made the brass salivate like trained dogs. Every one of them had dreamed of flipping the game board over by sending battle rifles and coil guns to go fight them there by human rules. According to the intelligence from their Tartarian defector, the enemy had no fucking idea how badly that would go for them. Year after year of raids, of invasions, of relying upon hunters to intercept the attacks before innocents were slaughtered. Was it any wonder that officers who had spent decades fighting this war wouldachefor the chance to bring the full might of the Earth against their enemies? Lieutenant Cortes sympathized, but when she heard mumblings of excitement about being able to prosecute the war without relying on hunters, she was uneasy. Every part of this operation relied not just on hunters, but on the powers of a single, specific, irreplaceable hunter. Powers they still did not fully understand.

She just had more questions. "So... if we send guardians through the planetary gate, how do we get them back again? I suppose for the invaders, the comparison would be corpse constructs and nightmares. War fighters that don't have the mark and can't do... whatever it is that our Valkyrie just did." Even translated, the question seemed to confuse the monsters. Apparently corpse constructsdid notreturn to Mictlan from the dungeons. Nightmares similarly were sent on a one-way trip to kill and die. Lieutenant Cortes found that possibility vaguely horrifying. She understood that sometimes the hunters she sent to fight in dungeons never came back, but to send people to fight wars with the intention that none of them would return, that was no way to run a military in her opinion. There were obviously historical examples of Earth militaries that had tried similar things, such as the infamous Divine Wind strategy. However, such callous displays were infamous for a reason, the brain drain from veterans consistently failing to return did eventually take its toll.

While she was thinking about historical parallels, she must have put on a disgusted face, because Specialist Clark called for a janitorial intervention. The floor did need cleaning, but guardians needed to come home. Not all of them perhaps, but enough that Lieutenant Cortes could look their family members in the eye and tell them that their children weren't being simply sacrificed to a hungry god of war.

####

Max had a lot of explaining to do. There was a lot of text and he didn't know what it all meant. Sophie was better with Ancient runes than he was, though not so proficient as Chaeryn. Under the circumstances, he'd take what he could get. He'd hoped that Natasha might be able to help somehow, but she couldn't read. Thinking about it a bit more deeply, the googly eye paintings on her faceplate weren't actuallyeyes, so Max didn't understand how she perceived the world at all. Her yes/no answers didn't clear up that point for him in the slightest, and he resolved to think about it later.

The first set of options were for Assignments. That had three subheadings: one for People, one for the Zones, and one that was for Ownership. The last one didn't have any options in it, which meant that Max understood what it did perfectly. When all doors were closed, everything was equally possible. He figured that it was likely that more options would be unlocked by something, but until that happened, he didn't have to think about it. The Zones he had come to understand a bit. Areas in his dungeon needed to be zoned for a certain kind of use before zone equipment could be summoned into them. Zoning a well had allowed him to summon a bucket. Zoning a kitchen had allowed him to summon cornmeal, chilis, and beans. He hadn't figured out which one zoned a bathroom, but considering his new diet he was absolutely going to need to find the option that allowed him to summon a toilet.

Which left thePeopleAssignments. He found one of the options that had his class name in it, and wrote down the runes as he saw them for Sophie to see. "Master shoemaker," she said.

"Wait... what? That can't be right." His initial reaction was incredulity, because what else could it be. But he was forced to admit that she was correct. It was the same construction as the Master Swordsman class, but instead of having the "use" suffix, it had the "creation" suffix. And obviously the modified object was abootrather than asword. "Do you think it means something that the master shoemaker assignment is male only? Is that why I can't give it to you?" The Ancients were apparently pretty sexist, and many of their runes that described occupations were gendered.

Sophie shrugged. "It might be because I know fuck-all about making shoes." They both laughed at that, and for the moment they were content to just be with each other and not dwell on the fact that they were in a barren ruin surrounded by stone and darkness awaiting an assault by monsters from another world. Max turned his attentions completely to the blond beauty next to him. They shared a kiss and it was like they were back in high school together, stealing kisses after gym. Her hands strayed all over his back, pulling him into her embrace with a tender strength that he couldn't overcome even if he wanted to.

Making out was wonderful, but it couldn't last forever. The reality of their situation quickly ruined the moment and with some reluctance he opened the status window again. They went back to work, trying to figure things out. "This one is feminine," he said, drawing out another title that might be bestowed on a person. It also had his class name in it, but he had already come to terms with the fact that most "masters" were just good at a specific task.

"Master cloth maker," she decided, "probably you could call itseamstress, because it's for a woman. Or weaver. Weaver-woman? Sounds like a pretty weak super hero." She shrugged.

Again, Sophie did not seem to be a valid target. "I still can't assign it to you. Maybe you're right about it needing someone who has the implied skill." A thought came to him. "You know, the base's tailor has cloth making skills. Do you think Lamiryl could be appointed royal seamstress or whatever this is?"

Grinning like a dog who had returned with a particularly prized ball, Sophie gave him a gentle elbowing. "One Shadow Elf not enough for you? She'll totally suck your dick, you should bring her on." Unsure of what to say, Max responded with an incredulous stare. "I'm serious," she insisted, "have you seen how excited she gets about making clothes themed around the Spider Herald stuff? You're a rock-star to her. If you whipped it out, she'd be on her knees in half a second. Seals or no seals."

He shook his head. "She's sooldthough. I'm like a kid to her."

His reaction made Sophie giggle. "She's like twenty-seven. I know that sounds old to you, but Ipromiseyou that the elves don't think she's too old to get her laid. You know how weird it is for Chaeryn and Thelenia that their bodies are queening at our ages." He blanched at the mention of Thelenia, he still felt bad for the Scout. To his limited understanding, the Shelflanders like Lamiryl and Chaeryn had a place in their culture that was ready to celebrate the changes that Max's class made to their bodies in the name of his aesthetic preferences, and the Washlanders like Thelenia... did not.

"Well, regardless, she's not here. We can't ask her."

"But we can askforher," Sophie quipped, "the sooner we figure out how to send a requisition stone, the better. And we can write a request for your sexy tailor on it."

"She's notmytailor," he said, although that wasn't quite right. Technically, she was his tailor. She just wasn't his. Not in the way that Sophie seemed to be implying. "Anyway, we should figure out what some of these are." He doodled the Ancient runes for one thing after another.

Sophie stared at the symbols intently. They weren't exactly the kind of Ancient runes that normally went with a hunter's own class, and she lacked the confidence to deliver a verdict even on some that she probably understood the general meaning of. "That's a drink-maker, like maybe a brewer. Or a wine presser? Does a wine maker have a name that's not just wine maker?" Max shrugged in response to her question. The drinking age was different for people with hunter's marks, so he could purchase wine if he felt the urge to do so, but he didn't actually know anything about wine. At Camp Acheron, they mostly served hard liquor because it was easier to ship through the gates. The matter unresolved, he squiggled more runes. "Doll maker... Riding maker... Stone fixer... Song user... Foo - um, chef... Dunno... dunno that one either." The Valkyrie looked embarrassed and distressed.

He didn't think that was reasonable, considering that she was doing better than he was. "I think it's clear that there are a lot of these, and they cover a lot of skills that we don't have. Maybe we need to try summoning someone else and see if I can assign something to them." A thought came to his mind. "Katherine and Monique are available to summon. I think they can probably... use songs?"

Whatever reaction he'd been expecting, it wasn't exasperation. "Master! Their names are Slave Cat and Slave Fifi. If you summon them, they have to understand that they are here as your sex slaves." When he had no response other than to stare blankly, she continued. "I do think it's a good idea, but before you summon one of them here, we need some things. Toilets. Bedrooms. We need to check out your Zones."

####

Colonel Pierce looked like he'd been chewing on grapefruit rind. "Lieutenant, run that by me again. You want to organize a planetary defense team, send it into adungeon, and you want them all to be women?"

Wantwas a pretty strong word, she thought. Lieutenant Cortes did notwantto have her name associated with such a plan in any way. However, she didn't have any better ideas, and she was professional enough to make the best recommendation she could at any given time. No matter how much of her did not want to. "Yes Sir," she said in as neutral a tone as she could manage, "the only current plan we have for getting our guardians back is to have them placed in Hunter Mitchell's... storage space. He can only do that with people he has put seals on. And his seals only go on women."

"I hate it when orcs are right about things," he said without the any of the usual tact that a decorated officer was supposed to employ when speaking about allies, "you know the different members of the delegation from Nurn didn't agree on much, but getting those seals upgraded so that they could be placed on men was one thing they all told us to prioritize." He sighed. "Seems like the tuskers were right." He harrumphed.

Lieutenant Cortes sighed. Possibly not the most professional thing she could have done, but it was a discussion that had gone everywhere and nowhere for months. The reality was that while they could give Hunter Mitchell orders, they had no way to directly affect the advancement of his class. The argument wasn't about whether to have him get the upgrade to allow men into his party, it was about the degree to which Hunter Mitchell should be encouraged to get that upgrade over other upgrades. Privately, she thought it was a waste of time. The argument that it woulddoublethe potential recruiting pool only sounded convincing until one remembered that Hunter Mitchell could only recruit a handful of hunters and there were dozens of hunters just in his crop. The whole Alliance hadthousandsof hunters to recruit from. Now that they were discussing the possibility of sending him military personnel without hunter's marks, opening up recruitment to men would increase the recruiting pool by a lot more than double, but such an increase was even more irrelevant. They were talking about sending half a dozen guardians, a rounding error on the Space Force's available troops of any gender.

"Regardless," she said, attempting to regain the initiative in the conversation, "depending on how many guardians we can send, I've drawn up lists of one through ten guardians to deploy. If we can only send one, my suggestion is for Sergeant Moreno to go. Her marksmanship is excellent and she has previous experience with Hunter Mitchell and his associates." She slid her prospectus from her pad onto his.

Colonel Pierce looked at the pad despondently. "I don't seeyourname on the list, Lieutenant. You know, if I were writing a list of people to go shoot those fucking monsters in the face... it would be real hard to not put my name down."

"Yes Sir," she said, acknowledging his statement without committing to any position on the matter, "the rest of the crop I'm managing is on active duty, I cannot abandon my post." Hunter Mitchell's part of the war might have become unprecedentedly interesting, but there was still a war on. The dungeon gate was scheduled to be used four more times by the hunters in her crop before they were to have leave on their home planets. And while they'd be gone for a month, she would have a lot of work to do in their absence to ensure things were ready for them to raid dungeons on their second tour.

He looked at her with a calculating eye, as if weighing whether he thought her answer stemmed from dedication to her duty or cowardice in the face of danger. Of course, he wouldn't approve her transfer to a dungeon from which there might be no return, but she felt that she was being tested. The Colonel clearly wanted to go there himself, and he wanted her to feel a similar driving passion. Driving passion was unnecessary, in her opinion. Her entire world was at war with monsters who would slaughter millions if given the chance, what difference did it make if she was happy about her place in things?

"Hmph," Colonel pierce smiled gruffly. It seemed that whatever test he had been giving her had been passed. He went back to the pad, and of course there were other concerns. "The CRBS coilgun is the finest defensive emplacement on this or any other world. It can be fitted to fire massive rods at extreme distances to take out approaching armored targets and to spray lighter ordnance at high velocities in patterns to suppress assault by irregulars or take down aerial opposition. The Space Force has emplaced them to defend gate bases and favored political institutions on four planets, where they have been very successful at repelling both dungeon breaks and banditry. As well as quite thoroughly trouncing even more determined attack from the now-defunct Khanate of Glamagh." He looked at her expectantly.

"Yes Sir. Um... Sir? Are you trying to sell me a fixed-deployment weapon system?"

Colonel Pierce chuckled. "Well, I am curious as to why you're not buying one. Lieutenant, I notice that you have a number of proposals for shipments to this new battlefront depending on the tonnage that the gate logistics allow. Of course, we do not know how much tonnage we will be afforded, and the multiple proposals you have reflects that. And yet, even on the higher end of your wishlists, I don't see any magnetic mass driver weaponry. Is there a reason for that?" He had switched to a stoneface that he used in poker, meaning that it was all but impossible for Lieutenant Cortes to know if she was being tested or if he just actually didn't know the answer.

Either way, she was prepared to justify her decisions. "The dungeon that the hunters described has no visibility on any star. No wind or water. There is nothing for us to charge batteries with unless we wanted to put hunters in a hamster wheel. One thing that our bases on Earth, Nurn, and Ithil all share is that there is a star that is..." she had almost been about to sayvisible, but that wasn't right and she corrected herself, "available to charge solar cells. Whether that dungeon is even on a planet isn't something we know, but it certainly doesn't have a star in the sky. Or a sky at all, Sir."

That earned her a harrumph. "Lieutenant, do will-o-wisps charge solar cells?" She was about to respond and he raised his hand. "Don't answer that, we both know the answer is that nobody knows.Yet. If this gate gets off the ground, the science hippies have a lot of questions they want answered, and they are going to send some people and equipment to try to get those answers. They are going to want to try and locate that dungeon. They'll want to detect magnetic fields, X-rays, other lesser known kinds of rays I suppose... Look, I'm out of my depth here, but even before we know how many spaces there are for that gate, we've already promised some of them to aRe and Dee. Whatever the tonnage ends up being, military only gets half of it."