Chapitre 173: Meetings
UNS Singapore, Conference Room
"Output of our current mines has risen by a total of 4%, while saltpeter output has dropped by 12% as military demand for saltpeter has dropped. We are reallocating manpower from the saltpeter mines over to the mines. Estimated transfer of manpower will take roughly three working weeks." Chief Engineering Officer Gale reported.
"A third of our all our M1 Magelocks have been recalled back to the factory for retooling to the newer 6.5 mm smokeless cartridge and will be issued out to the frontline troops first, while the Militia will still use the original black powder M1s till the Marines have all switched over to the new ammunition."
"Production of the new smokeless propellant is moving smoothly, but we had a couple of accidents. Thankfully all minor injuries," Chief Gale paused and looked towards Dr. Sharon. "Dr. Sharon and my team have worked out some SOP* (*Standard Operating Procedure) and safety measures for the workers in the factory. We will also be conducting more safety courses to ensure workplace safety for all our works in the entire production sector."
"Also the new slime factory for processing slime for use as raw materials is scheduled today, at 1100 hours," Chief Gale gave a nod to Captain Blake and the Princess. "This new factory will be able to process up to 4 tons of slime daily, with more room to expand should we need to."
"Slime captured or harvested will be gutted, cleaned, sterilized, and sorted out to either as a food product or raw material." Chief Gale explained the purpose of the Slime factory to those that were clueless about its usage. "Slimes like the Green and Yellow variants will be dried and processed into food. Honey Slimes will be sterilized and milked for its nectar, while Black Slimes found in the northern swamps will be sun-dried and aired, before being processed into bio-rubber."
Bio-rubber were made by using the rubber-like bodies of the Black Slimes, stacked together and heat bonded, before been shaped into the tires, gaskets, soles, or linings and many other products. The demand for Black Slimes rocketed, and teams of hunters ventured into the swamps to hunt for the Slimes, while farmers attempted to breed the Black Slimes in their own backyards.
Blake gave a nod, "We will be there for the opening. What else?"
"The vehicle factory output currently far exceeds our needs, so I might cut its production to half, we have sufficient vehicles like trucks, tractors, buses, harvesters, jeeps, and half-tracks to support a population of fewer than 10,000 people, not to mention the need for bio rubber for tires." Gale added, "On the other hand, the market for consumer products has risen, and I most likely will focus on that instead."
"Ok, work with the Princess on what the population needs most," Blake replied. "Next?"
"Sir, I had the boys comb over the entire ship and found dozens of hairline cracks in the main structural frame of the ship," Matt said as Gale finished his report. "The ship took quite a beating when it landed, but firing the main guns finally cracked the spine of the old lady."
"What can we do?" Blake asked.
"Either we refrain from firing the guns, or we brace the main structural frame with patches which will barely do any good once you fire the guns again. Alternately, we can remove the guns and site them on stable ground." Matt listed out his suggestions.
"Give me a detail report," Blake replied, "I take a look later."
"My team has fully surveyed the shipwreck and will commerce salvaging operations in three days once the Isles's Fleet has left the area," Matt said, "We will strap and secured the self inflating flotation devices we salvage from the lifeboat and wait for high tide before we attempt to float the ship out. Pumps will also be installed to pump out the flooding in the bottom hull."
"Great, make sure the Isles don't spot the wreck!" Blake said. "I don't want them to claim it."
Magister Thorn gave a cough, "I will have my best students cast a shimmering spell over the wreck before the Isles ships can spot it. I will also be there to oversee it." Thorn gave a grin, "Always wanted to pirate a ship!"
"Hahahaha," The people around the table laughed and smiled at Thorn's joke before Blake gestured them to cool down and listen to Matt's report.
Matt nodded, "Next, Ordnance have come up with a new weapon, a simple dual purpose breech loading cannon, 3" 23 monobloc gun design using a vertically-sliding breech block, firing a 76.2 mm or 3" shell. It can be mounted on a fixed pedestal or field carriage."
"So far, tests results are quite favorable. Its range, firing at a 45.3 degrees angle, it can land a 5.9 kg shell at 7,315 meters away." Matt read off the numbers from his notes as the display screen showed a video clip of the weapon being test fired. "At an anti air angle of 75 degrees, laser calculation recorded the shell reaching heights of 5,181.6 meters."
"That's pretty impressive," Blake whistled, "Give my thanks to the team."
Matt nodded and continued, "The R & D on the fast craft is still proceeding, the team is currently testing out a 1:10 scale model, once their results are refined, they should be starting the next step of testing."
"Good, we need at least some presence in the waters around us," Blake grinned. "And with a light gun, we can at least have more firepower on the field or at sea against large sailing ships like what the Isles have!"
"Sir, why not develop torpedoes?" One of the naval department heads asked. "Won't it be more devastating against their ships?"
"Yes, it will, but we know nothing of building a torpedo, and the amount of resources we need on developing a torpedo is not worth it as it can only be used at sea," Blake explained to clarify the doubts of his people. "While a dual purpose light gun, it can be used at sea, land, and against air targets."
"Also. mounting a light gun takes up less space than a torpedo," Matt added, "A 3" gun can carry more ammunition than a torpedo launcher, and sink or damage more ships per gun than what a single torpedo launcher can do."
"All clear?" Blake looked around the table, "Good? Ok, what else do we have? Magister Thorn? Dr. Sharon?"
"Captain," Magister Thorn stood up and gave a slight bow, "Dr. Sharon and I have actually discovered something strange and disturbing about the origins of the Hero."
"What is it?" Blake frowned when he heard it was about the Hero.
"We are unsure as of now," Magister Thorn replied, "But we will like to request some help in finding out more before we release the information."
"What help do you need?" Commander Ford asked.
"We need some people to help with our research." Dr. Sharon spoke up. "I like to access HR's records."
"You need HR records?" Blake looked at Ford in confused, "Ok, sure."
"Thank you," Dr. Sharon replied. "We will give a full report once we have finished our investigations."
"Eh... ok, next?" Blake looked around the table.
"Sir," Major Frank spoke, "Search operations for the missing platoon is still ongoing, but there were reports of what appeared to be gunfire, therefore the platoon is most likely engaged in combat, I took the liberty of deploying a third platoon in for support into the area and also increase the search radius."
"Ok, keep me updated." Blake nodded.
"Master Sergeant Pike has also revised the troops' loadout to maximize their firepower out on the field after the incident with the Hero," Frank loaded up a chart on the main display for everyone to view. "1st and 2nd Battalion will be reorganized into the following, Three infantry Companies, One Weapon Support Company, and One Motorized Support Company."
"Infantry Companies will have an HQ company and four rifle platoons," Frank further detailed, "Each rifle platoon now will have an additional machine gun section attached." Previously, each platoon only has four seven-men sections.
"Each section will now consist of an AT (Anti Tank) and assistant AT, a grenadier, a marksman, a point man, and finally the section IC and 2 IC (InCharge)," Frank continued, "Machine gun sections will be a three-man team, consisting of the IC, machine gunner and assistant gunner. An ASAG will also be supporting the MG section."
"Under the Support Company, four 120 mm mortar platoons with three mortars in each platoon will provide heavy fire support for the Battalion, while the Motorized Support Company provides logistical support to the Battalion."
Blake nodded, "Looks good, when will it be implemented?"
"Within the month or longer," Frank replied, "Depending on how fast we resolve the current issue with the missing platoon."
"I like to nominate the whole of Claymore One for Silver Valor Cross, another other merit awards," Frank pushed a list of recipients and nominations over to Blake. "Also for a few outstanding Marines."
Blake nodded and looked towards, Commander Tommy, "What's the Air Force status now?"
"We lost two pilots and three aircraft from the fight with the Hero," Tommy reported, "Our current manning is at 27 F/A - 1 Cobra and 6 T-1 training crafts." The T-1 training aircraft were the original two-seater prototypes that were improved and turned into trainers for the pilot trainees.
"I am also recommending Blue Thunder and his crew for a Silver Valor and also confer them the title of Ace pilots for their efforts for taking down six confirmed aerial dragon kills." Tommy handed over a list of names to Blake. "As for the injured Blue Thunder, he is recovering well and will be flight capable in a couple of weeks."
"Next, we are working on a heavy rotor lifter," Tommy added, "We are designing a helicopter that will allow us to transport troops and supplies. The Valkyries are overworked at the moment, and if any one of them goes down, or is down for maintenance, our lift capabilities will be seriously screwed."
"Not only that, we are looking at designing a cargo plane for short haul air transportation purposes," Tommy said, "This will be useful not only for the military but also the industrial and civilian sectors in the future."
"Also, we are working on a parachute course for the Marines," Tommy gave a nod towards Frank, "It will improve our combat reach in the future."
"Great work people, good initiative all around!" Blake grinned. "How's about the civil side, Princess?"
"Rebuilding of the city is still underway," the Princess replied, "Shelters for civilians are also being planned out."
"On agriculture, we are expecting a large bountiful harvest, and with the new harvesting tractors, we do not expect large spoilage. So food will not be a problem for winter this year. Also with the trade agreement with the Isles, we will be able to start our own fishing industry which will also increase our sources of food." Sherene read off her notes.
"There has been some unrest due to the damages in the city caused by the cannons, but we managed to pacify the affected parties," Sherene looked up from her notes and said, "Issues now is the production of winter clothing."
"Matt and Gale. Can you work out a heating system to the city?" Blake asked, "Or some heating stoves for those outside the city grid? And also see if you can start up a proper clothing manufacturing process. We got like, five months roughly before its winter? Work with the Princess on it."
"Got it, Captain!" The two nodded.
"Anything else?" Blake asked.
Quartermaster Chen raised his hand up, "Sir, I have a proposal here."
"Go," Blake gestured to Chen to speak.
"Sir, the rail gun has actually left a small trail of destruction directly into the Uncharted Forest," Chen said, as he pulled up some UAV imagery onto the screen which showed the blue-green canopy of the forest and a somewhat pencil straight line of destruction could be clearly seen from the over top view. "While it is not a straight line from Sawtooth Pass to the town of Falledge, it at least covers a third or more of the distance."
"Look, what I am saying here is that we can actually make use of the destruction to carve a highway into the forest!"
L’AVIS DES CRÉATEURS 
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Chapitre 174: Getting Out
"Fuck!" Mills yelled as a bolt of greenish magical energy blazed past his ear. He paused to turn around and fired at the direction of the shaman who cast the spell. In the dark, he doubted he was able to hit anything but it should make the goblin duck for cover, he hoped.
"Come on!" Someone yelled, and a barrage of machine gun fire erupted from somewhere in front of Mills, the bright tracers leaving after strobes of light in his eyes. The machine gun appeared to suppress the chasing goblins as Mills heard the shrieks and cries of goblins fading behind him as he ran.
Hoping over a tree trunk, Mills leaned against the tree and took a breather, before yelling, "Report! Section 1 and 2?"
Shouts slowly drifted from the forest, as men shouted to each other, passing words along the strung-out Marines. The machine gunner kept up the fire in short briefs, keeping the goblins at bay while word traveled back up to Mills.
"Section 1 and 2 both have two men missing each, fuck!" Mills cursed under his breath, meaning now he has only 13 men, including him. "The lieutenant is one of the missing?"
Mills gave out a deep breath and looked at his spent men. They had been running for several hours in the night while being chased by goblins. "We hole up here! We are on a slight raise terrain and have nice lines of fire here. And with the ruckus we are making, I am sure search parties from HQ should have heard us by then. Once they get into contact with us, we regroup, resupply and return back for the fallen."
The men most of them veterans fighting in the Pass nodded, "Take this time to quickly clean your weapons too!" Mills added. "and rotate the MG gunner!"
Mills peered over the root, but in the pitch dark of the forest, he barely could make out anything. "Shit, and here I was so fucking proud I made Sergeant, should have stayed a corporal and remained at Camp as a trainer... fucking hell."
Shrieks, yelps, and giggles were soon heard again as the goblins regrouped, Mills checked his watch, barely an hour has passed, "Watch your front, boys!"
"MARINES! WHEN YOU GO TO INTERESTING PLACES, WHAT DO YOU DO?"
"MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE!"
"AND WHAT DO YOU DO?"
"WE KILL THEM!"
"HOORAH!"
-----
Goblin Coast, Shipwreck
"Watch your step!" One of the techs warned as Chief Engineer Matt gripped the rope ladder and pulled his way up, grunting as he made his way up. Hands gripped his body and pulled in over the railing and onboard the deck of the ship. He stood carefully on the slanted deck, as the ship was tilted to the side at an angle.
A massive groan came from the ship as a wave slammed into it, and Matt felt the whole ship shifting slightly. He ran his hand along the wooden hull of the sailing ship, observing the lines and workmanship while taking a tour of the top deck. The main mast of the two-masted ship had two third of its length snapped away, most likely caused by the storm.
"Chief! Good to see you!" A tech came up and started to report their progress. "This ship is quite similar to a Terran brig, judging by the number of mast and type of square rigging they use. We cleared away the remains of the rest of the sails to prevent winds from toppling or shifting the wreck more."
"That mast must have broken off in the storm and dragged the ship towards land before the sailors could cut it off and the Captain must have ordered the men to abandon ship," The tech said, "We searched the Captain's quarters for maps and any intel, only finding some dairies and personal efforts. Most likely thrown overboard or carried away by the Captain."
"Most of the ship's store is missing, and so are the weapons like swords and crossbows," The tech continued as they toured the Captain's room, "We suspected they took all the food, water. and weapons before abandoning the ship."
The Captain's Quarters were quite spacious, with a large work desk and high back chair, with the back facing large shuttered window openings. A couple of sea chest took up a corner of the room next to a messy bed against the wall. A wet moldy smell came off from the sad looking animal skin serving as a carpet while wall mounted cupboards covered the remaining wall.
"Anything of interest here?" Matt asked as he pushed out the shutters of the window, letting in fresh air to air the cabin and light flooded in.
"We cleared every item and swept the entire cabin for hidden compartments, using metal detectors, echo sounding and even with magic. We did find a hidden compartment magically locked under the animal skin, but it was empty." The tech used his booted feet to peel the skin back and tapped at a spot on the wooden plank. "Students from the Academy spent a couple of hours cracking the magic lock, well they were pretty excited at first but turns out to be empty."
"I see, the students are still here?" Matt asked as he looked into the small compartment roughly the size of a shoe box.
"Yes Chief, they are casting a ritual to create fog to hide the wreck from the Isles' ships," The tech gestured to the outside of the ship.
"Good, make sure they have everything they need, the Isles' fleet should be less than a day away. They most probably won't come within sight of land, but it pays to be safe," Matt straightened up and walked out of the Captain's Quarters, "Show me the damages to the hull."
"This way Chief," The tech led Chief Matt down into the cargo hold and portable lights set up at fixed intervals lit the interior up. An engine roar grew louder as they passed by a couple of ballistas on their mounts, the shuttered gunports tightly closed to prevent sprays from the waves from getting into the main deck. A V9 radial engine rumbled on a stand attached with to a capacitor with cables snaking off to various locations onboard of the ship, provide power to the lights and water pumps that hummed and sucked out the seawater flooding the ship through two areas, the hold, and the crew quarters at the bow.
"Here, Chief, this is the hold," The tech stood before a hatch cordoned off with yellow warning tape. "Ware the steps, they are slippery!" He bent under the tape and carefully climbed down the wet slimy wooden stairs.
The hold had several rotting barrels and crates sitting on ankle-deep seawater and the smell of the sea and rot was very thick. Sounds of crashing waves and the groaning of the ship like it were in pain could be constantly be heard over the power generator upstairs.
"It was almost at chest height when we first came," The tech explained as he pointed to a gaping hole at the side where glistering seaweed and barnacles covered rocks could clearly see jutting in. The rigged lights showed the damage clearly, the splintered hull with a hole roughly a meter wide and 30 cm tall, had seawater splashing in every few seconds. "Now its almost low tide, if its high tide, this area will be chest height in water."
"We cover up that hole with space foam once its low tide, "The tech added, "And we will continue to pump out the remaining water, after that we will attach the floats and deploy them. The stab resistant material of the floats will be more than able to handle the reefs and rocks here. Once high tide comes, the ship will be able to float out."
"This way," The tech continued on, "We checked the crates and barrels, all of them either biscuits of some sort or salted fish, meat and fresh water. Most of them are already contaminated with seawater, not sure if we can still use them. We are removing everything that is not bolted down to lighten the ship now."
The tech led Matt through to another hatch and into the forward crew quarters at the bow. Light from outside flood through from the hull as another tear in the hull, large enough for a fully grown man to climb through.
Spray from the waves splashed in and flowed down towards them as the bow of the ship was actually slightly angled towards the sky, allowing Matt to see the horizon through the hole. "If it's high tide, the water comes in more," The tech explained, "oh, the guys are here to fix the hole."
A couple of techs carrying what appeared to be red cylinders on their backs entered the crew cabin and saluted Chief Matt, who nodded and gestured them to continue their work. They started spraying the quick-drying space foam over the hole with a nozzle attached to the tanks of space foam used to quickly patch holes in spaceships.
They sprayed both the outside of the hull as well, to create as much of a perfect seal as possible and within 10 minutes they were done, after spraying two coatings of foam to ensure that the foam sticks to the wet hull.
Matt tapped the dried foam that hardened into a rigid substance, and nodded, "Good work, now we wait for the Isles's ships to pass by us before we float this baby home."
"Sir, how are we gonna float it to Far Harbor?" One of the techs with the space foam asked. "We got nothing to tow it back. Are we gonna sail it back?"
"Yea, Chief, I know we all did a basic sailing course back on Earth but I doubt anyone remembers anything from that course any more." The other tech spoke up.
"Oh that's easy," Matt grinned, "You saw those V9 radial engines I bought along with me?"
The men nodded, remembering the pile of equipment the Valkyries airlifted in earlier.
"When we float this lady out, we are gonna jury rig the engines on the side of the hull, most likely from the gunports and attach the two paddle wheels I had them specially made," Matt winked at his astonished men. "We are gonna paddle back and we don't need sails!"
-----
When the search platoon came into contact with 1st Battalion, Bravo Company Platoon 1, they found dozens and dozens of dead goblins littering around the last stand of the lost platoon. "Thunder!" The point man of the search party yelled from the cover a tree.
"Flash!" A tired yelled replied the point man and he cautiously came out of cover and climbed over the bodies of the dead goblins. "Hey, glad you guys are here to join the party!" A soot-covered Marine Sergeant covered in wounds called out from a small mound of dead goblins.
"Sarge?" The point man looked at the terrifying face of the three striped hooman covered in blood, gore, and black powder residue. He looked around the area and found several more wounded Marines, all covered in wounds and surrounded with dead goblins on all sides.
"Help is on its way!" The point man turned an yelled out, "Medic! We need medics here! You guys alright?"
"Just peachy, private," Mills grinned tiredly, as he used his broken M1 rifle, breaking it when he ran out of ammo and swung it around like a baseball bat after his sword bayonet snapped off. He braced himself up from the dead goblins he laid on after exhausting all his strength fighting off waves after waves of goblins
He looked at the rest of the surviving lost platoon and laughed, those that survived joined him and started laughing and cheering too, as they saw dozens of Marines emerged from the undergrowth.
"Nothing beats starting the day killing goblins, sleeping on their bodies and the smell of fresh blood!"
L’AVIS DES CRÉATEURS
Neobear
Neobear
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