Chapter 254: Uncle Vinny

The Fleet Commander dropped the evacuation shuttle in as if he were expecting enemy flak at any moment, with the cargo ramp already open, and the cargo deck prepped to lock down the vehicles.

Once the first vehicle started moving, the power armoured warriors rushed to pull the second in line, dragging the whole convoy with them.

The power of the suits shocked everyone, and then the flight suit team left their utility shuttle and flew down to join the effort. In under a minute, they had all the vehicles pulled into a cargo bay and locked down by the crew that the Fleet Admiral had brought, leaving only Yara’s father and two men outside the shuttle.

"Yara, do you want us to join them in the shuttle, or do you want to bring them with us?" Sanchez asked.

"Bring them with us, it’s easier that way.

Trying to explain everything that has happened in Marimgar alone would be too much. But with more examples, it’s easier."

She gestured for the doors to be shut, and then led her father and his bodyguards into the utility speeder as the shuttle left the ground. They had just closed the door when a rumble made the speeder shake.

The pilot launched them into the air, preparing for attack, but nothing ever came up out of the sand.

There was definitely something down there, which had been alerted by the large vehicles and all the rumbling of the thrusters. But they had gotten in and out just fast enough that it didn’t manage to catch them.

If that was a skill of the Fleet Commander, it had definitely saved lives today, as well as his shuttle.

As they reached cruising altitude, Yara set her helmet in her inventory backpack, and leaned against a wall to get to the less pleasant part of the conversation.

"Alright, I need to know the full details. You said that the Giants breached the house, which implies it happened recently. How many of your people have a System Class, and how did you decide to make a run into the desert?"

"Everyone that we have left has a class. Either they started with it, or they got it later during the fighting. There are a few mages who awakened later, but mostly it was just more warriors.

You know how the made men are. Not big on thinking or fancy books.

We originally wanted to stay near the house, in case more of our people came. During the first week, we made an alliance between the Families to hold the city of Camson. It worked out pretty well at first.

We had fifty thousand people, all armed from the army’s reserves, plus a small naval fleet from the great inland lakes.

But the trial by weather didn’t end well for us, we got ten metres of rain in a week, and the whole damned city flooded. Everyone who thought that underground bunkers were safest either drowned or crowded into the hilltop fortresses.

Then, the temperature dropped to minus fifty for a week, and that wiped out a bunch of the smaller families.

Who would have thought that Datia, with its tropical heat, would face such a disaster? None of the buildings were designed to survive that. So, our numbers kept dropping until the infighting started, and Camson split into factions, mostly based on the old Families.

We held on the longest, but every attack got worse.

The sixth day of the Third Trial was Giants, ones with mottled brown skin, like they were made to blend into the trees of the hillsides.

We fought them as well as we could, but they wiped everyone else out, and eventually overran the house. That’s when we decided to move.

We have been receiving the pings from your safety tracker, with your vital sign data, so we knew that you were alive and still somewhere near Marimgar. That was enough for us, so we figured we’d head that way until we found a group of survivors strong enough to hold out."

Yara nodded in understanding. They had been travelling on a satellite ping and a promise of survival.

They hadn’t known how well Marimgar was doing.

Or even that it was still Yara wearing her tracking necklace.

Yara wiped a happy tear from the corner of her eye before speaking, "Well, it’s good to have you back, father. Marimgar is in a unique sort of place right now, and I believe that you can do well there. You see, the Kalkan Fleets brought three quarters of a million civilians with them. People who haven’t yet gotten a class, though we’re working to awaken them all.

Then we’ve got a few thousand above ground. Well, we might be close to ten thousand now, if you count all the people who are in the level 0 waiting for a class stage where they can start taking quests.

But all of the government leaders are dead, other than the Fleet Commanders. They manage the civilian population, as they have from the start. But we’re trying to reestablish a proper city system, when all that we have to go on is System Points and our own production."

"You’re trying to set up a monetary system, based on extremely limited resources, with no outside trade? Have you considered that a bit more authoritarian of a leadership might be better?

I don’t mean in the ’obey or die’ way, but in the ’you will take what we give you and like it’ way, where resources are rationed."

Sanchez laughed. "We already do that. We’ve got a digital app to track food and clothing distributions, where you have to personally vouch for everything you are entitled to. But instead of just running a soup kitchen, we’ve got restaurants as the middlemen, or they can get ingredients from the warehouses.

Making everyone bring their whole family to get groceries lets leadership make sure nobody is being starved or abused.

The restaurant and warehouse owners are happy to inform our security people if they suspect that there are issues, and nobody wants a plague outbreak in a packed hive city."

Vinnie nodded, then smiled. "I will pretend that I understand what you mean by hive city. But I see opportunity everywhere. I ran multiple clothing and textile factories, banks, restaurants and more in the past.

When we get there, I would like to speak with this Kallista De Marimgar, and perhaps we can arrange something to allow me to be useful even when we’re not on the battlefield.

Tell me, is she from one of the Great Families?"

That was a very good question. And nobody actually knew the answer.

"You can ask her when you see her, she runs a System Shop for heroes, where we can trade System Points for magical gear. But she doesn’t generally speak of her past," Sanchez cautioned.

"She did shoot a man in the face without blinking on the second day, though." Yara added helpfully.

Vinnie smiled at his daughter.

Perhaps this Kallista woman would be a suitable match for one of his sons? Or perhaps his daughter? She had been tormenting that boy Reggie for so long that he was beginning to suspect that she might actually prefer women.

What Vinnie didn’t know was that Reggie was in the shuttle, in the copilot’s seat with his helmet on.

Yara saw the calculation in her father’s eyes. But if she had known what he was actually thinking, she might have beaten Reggie to death for being an insufferable idiot and giving her father the wrong idea.