I had just watched somebody die.
I looked at the green creature through the small window in the shelter. Every detail about the creature screamed out to something inside me. Relative to its distance to me, it looked about as tall as the average man. It didn't take much for me to see that that wasn't the actual reality of the situation. Despite its height, it was hunched over with is head resting on top of its chest. It had forward facing eyes and sharp teeth, which indicated that it was a predator species in whatever ecosystem it came from. It had two arms and legs and despite its green skin and jagged tusks, looked like a hunched over, heavily muscular man.
It was obviously not human though. Even to the untrained eye, there was a feral look about it. The fact that it had clothing at all, even if they were nothing more than a leather skirt and rags, indicated that its species was at least smarter than your average ape but I had no idea as to the upper limit of that intelligence. Its hunch and large, corded muscles reminded me more of a gorilla or a bear standing up, than a man. A part of me, with all this new scientific curiosity, wanted to go out there and study it. Green skin typically indicated an evolutionary path linked to plants or fungus. Either that, or the need for green camouflage somewhere along its evolutionary history. The deep red colour of its eyes gave way to other scientific questions. Red eyes were uncommon in nature because creatures with red eyes stood out and thus hunted first by predators. When the facts came together, I could only conclude one thing.
This was a creature built for violence.
And it was less than a hundred meters away.
After killing the figure in black, it had searched for any challengers and having found none, crouched down and had begun eating it. The casualness of the action sent my skin crawling.
I looked over at Esau, he was watching as I was. Instead of my anger and panic, his face was one of a cool indifference. A part of me felt anger. How could he not care? He must have seen how the fighting started, but reading was evidently more interesting than what was waiting for us outside.
Then again, there was nothing he could have done when the fighting started. Sitting quietly and observing the situation as he had done was probably the smart play.
"Esau." I called to him. "Why didn't you wake me up?" He stared at the being for a moment and returned to his reading.
"There was no point." He brought up one of his omni-tools and presented the screen to me. It showed my vitals. "You needed rest. You show signs of early stage dehydration and early onset heatstroke. Eating and sleeping as you did was best. Waking you up would have been counterintuitive to our survival. You would have made things worse for both of us if you were awake."
"That's cold." I said, without really thinking about it. Despite how right he was on a pragmatic level, I still wanted to be there if anything happened.
"I'm sorry."
"No, no. You were right. I needed to rest. Me working while exhausted would have resulted in a lot of bad decisions being made." I nodded to the window. "Now that I am awake though, we need to deal with the thing outside."
"I agree." He brought up his omni-tool.
"So I have been working on this while you slept." He pressed a few buttons, and half a dozen drones came to life and started floating. All of them were construction drones that were modified in some way. Two drones had what looked like thick hypodermic needles attached to the manipulators typically used for construction. Two drones had an angry red glow colouration and one looked normal but had a modified fabrication system underneath its manipulators. The last two drones seemed like normal constructor drones but considering what Esau could do, I doubted that they were normal. Needless to say, I was impressed.
"Good job, son." He smiled.
"Thank you, Father."
I looked at the logs Esau kept on his modifications. The 'Needle' drones each had different cocktails of chemicals that they could inject into a target. Every single one of them filled with chemicals strong enough to knock out an elephant. The two red drones were heat producers. Esau intentionally set them up to heat up, where they would then be sent to a target where they would vent the heat into the target. They were sort of like grenades that doubled as flamethrowers. The constructor drones were made to rapidly create nets. They would do this by extruding and knitting a soft metal that Esau had gotten from somewhere in the junk that surrounded us into intricate chains. From these designs, one thing was clear.
"You want to capture the creature." It wasn't a question.
"Yes I do."
"Why? I don't condone killing it per se, but it demonstrably will attempt to kill us."
"I have multiple reasons. First, I want to see if it is capable of communication. It came from what was likely outer space. We need information, so it seems reasonable to try to speak with it to get any information on the goings on of the planet and the space surrounding it."
"How are you sure it can speak a language that you would understand? I mean, I know you're a genius but-"
"I suspect that I am an omniglot." He answered, visibly getting agitated.
"What?" He took a breath.
"My…understanding of machinery, along with my ability to know a language upon first hearing it is abnormal. I had thought that it was a natural consequence of my brains ability to process information quickly and use it to draw conclusions. This could only explain my skill with machinery. My ability to process language could not be as easily explained." He opened up his omni-tool's settings and showed me the language setting.
"There are a large variety of languages present here. I understood all of them. Even when exposed to a single word, the language reveals itself to me."
"That makes no sense. It's amazing, really, but it makes no sense." While it was now clear to me with my newfound scientific ability that Esau couldn't possibly be a result of natural processes, even artificial processes have limits in terms of what they can bestow to a person. Or they should at least. I have no idea where or when I am so my preconceptions regarding technology and what should be possible were probably very wrong.
There was no way biologically program the ability to instantly know any language you come across as far as I knew. Since languages were a result of environmental stressors creating the need for language in the first place, one would also need an understanding culture the language originates from.
"You have limits, though." I said, remembering our previous conversations. "You have trouble with words you have no reference for. Like acronyms."
"I concede the point." He said, though I could see it annoyed him. "Accounting for that, however, the amount of knowledge we could gain as a result would still be significant."
I could have argued the point but he was right, the thing outside could have knowledge that would be invaluable.
"You said you had multiple reasons."
"I do. The second was the Forge."
"How so?"
"You said that the forge would only reward you for your achievements. So I wanted to see what counted as an achievement and how much you would personally have to be involved in said achievement for that to count. Would it count, if you partially planned the assault? Or would it only count if you fully planned the assault? Would the assault count at all? There are many things that I wish to know about the Forge, Father. " I could barely keep the astonishment out of my voice as I responded.
"You want to use the scientific method to test the Forge."
"Yes, I do."
"That is a very good idea, son."
"Thank you, Father."
"I do not approve of the methodology, but any result would be invaluable for future plans."
"Any result would be." He agreed. His smile told me he knew that he had me hooked. Any reward from the Forge would be an immense help to our survival. Thus, anything that would increase the rewards received would be invaluable. I sighed.
"So how did you want to do this?"
Esau showed me a series of plans of attack, all of which began with corralling the green thing away from the shelter, into an area where the terrain altered from the meteor shower caused a dip in otherwise flat rocky terrain. Here the green beast would be attacked by nets weighed down by debris in the area before covering the dip in terrain using a second series of nets, like foil on a bowl. The needle and flamethrower drones would then be sent in through the holes in the net to either knock the thing out or kill it, depending on the situation.
The plans were good but mostly accounted for situations occurring exactly as they had to for a maximum chance of success. We had to have contingencies in place in case of failure. The very thought that the plan would fail annoyed Esau but he came around to seeing the wisdom of having a back-up plan. First thing we had to do was to increase the defensive capability of the shelter. Both for upcoming fight in case we had to hide, and to lessen the chance of us dying from debris hitting the shelter in our sleep.
Despite my immense scientific knowledge, I had little to no architectural ability, so that I left to Esau. Even though he only really read a few primers on architecture and emergency construction, his mastery of the field was likely already immense. I, on the other hand focused on weapon production.
The omni-tool had a few weapon designs in its database but those were largely useless. As Esau explained to me, the fabricate function on an omni-tool mainly used a substance called 'Element Zero' or 'Eezo' to turn plastics and metals into omni-gel. Eezo was both irreplaceable and a perishable resource. Interestingly, this meant that Esau had two omni-tools that had no 'eezo' at all. They were just high powered mini-computers and scanners that had a small set of tools attached.
With each recycling run, some Eezo was lost and used to create omni-gel, though the data recorded by the omni-tool itself indicated that this was way less than usual. So any weapons that used 'eezo' as a resource were unusable. 'Eezo' also couldn't do stuff like turn elements into other elements so if since the rocks that surrounded us had no sulphur, we couldn't make gunpowder for any bullets.
Even weapons that used little to no 'eezo' in the database for the construction of a weapon meant that essential resource would be destroyed. For example, the database had a design for an electromagnetic railgun, but for that one weapon we needed electricity production far in excess of what was currently possible with just solar panels. Even if they were advanced future-tech.
So I had to innovate. Esau had good ideas regarding altering the drones but I was less mechanically inclined, so my designs were relatively low tech. I had thought about making something like an automatic crossbow, but that seemed like a bad idea since crossbow bolts have been known to simply bounce off animals with tough hides. Instead I decided to go with something more robust. I was making a spear launcher.
The actual launcher itself wasn't a problem to design. It was just a set of chambers that were connected tightly to a couple tanks of high pressure gas, which was collected using nothing more than a slightly modified air pump. It looked something like a Gatling gun with six chambers holding a single spear each. The spears were more of a headache. The shaft was no problem because it was just a metal tube but the spearheads had to go through significant redesigns because a regular spearhead wouldn't cut it. In the end, after a back and forth between me and Esau, we decided on a spear tip that was more a harpoon than anything else.
I was adding chains to the spears, where spear tip met shaft, when Esau called for me. Had the creature moved? Did we have to redesign our plan? I got to the leftmost area of the shelter, where Esau was looking through the window. At first, I just saw the creature sitting down a rock picking its nose, having finished its meal. There was nothing left, besides the black figures clothing, that is. Then I saw it. A hand sticking out of a pile of metal and rock that I was sure hadn't been there yesterday. The hand was green. It started reaching wildly around itself until it found purchase on a particularly jagged rock. It pulled itself out and I saw it.
It was a second greenskinned creature, fully naked and covered in gunk. It shook the gunk off of itself; saw the big green creature, and immediately tried to attack it. The green creature seemed amused, if anything, by the whole endeavour as it just backhanded the thing into the ground. The action was so sudden and so vicious that I was sure that if I was the one who was hit, I would have died. Surprisingly, the smaller green creature survived and just stood up, walked to the side and sat down next to the green creature, suddenly domesticated.
What the hell was going on?
Next to the green thing, in the same pile of rock and trash a second hand shoved its way out, and again another large green creature appeared. As with the first one it attacked the biggest greenskin creature as soon as it laid eyes on it and was smacked for the attempt. As with the first one, the creature stood up and sat next to the hulking green figure like a domesticated dog.
This was getting ridiculous.
A third hand appeared. This time instead of a big green creature, another green creature, this time with long spindly arms and legs and a long pointy nose instead of the snubbed almost pig like, nose of the big one. It was also the size of a large toddler, though it also stood hunched over, which meant it was likely taller. This one didn't attack at all, and immediately grovelled when it saw the big creature.
We were in trouble. Though I didn't really understand the mechanism, these things were reproducing, and quickly at that. We had to take care of this now, or we would be overrun.
We stopped watching the creatures. The time to attack was now, or we would never get the opportunity again.
Esau bodily lifted the spear launcher towards that vault-like door of our shelter while I coordinated all drones just behind us. The plan had to be altered somewhat since there was more than one creature to deal with now.
The new plan was; we would open the door, launch the drones and have them make nets to catch the creatures. This would cause a distraction long enough for manoeuvre the spear launcher close enough to launch the spears at the big green creature. Here we would either fight and then capture or if possible, kill the big creature and or run, as necessary. By the minute, it looked like we were going to be making a run for it after the initial assault.
The door rolled open and almost as soon as we left the shelter, we were spotted. It seemed that the smaller green creature had excellent hearing and the door opening had signalled them. Wonderful. The very idea of having people to kill seemed more than enough a motivator and the entire quartet of strange creatures ran at us. The three big ones started to roar.
Briefly, I thought about locking me and Esau back up in the shelter to wait them out but that seemed like a bad idea. We had no idea about the full capabilities of these creatures and if they kept up the speed in which they reproduced, we were screwed anyway.
Esau pointed and the needle drones took on one of the naked big ones creatures each. They moved much faster than the biggest so they seemed the more pertinent problem. The moment the drones reached them, they roared in pain as needles drove into their necks. They barely slowed down, despite what was likely a set of horrific chemical cocktails being driven into them.
Quickly I readied the spear launcher as Esau signalled the two net drones to move forward, along with the two heat drones. Each net drone was knitting metal into nets at blistering speeds. As they got into range, I fired. There were six spears, and in my panic, I had fired all of them as I fumbled with the controls.
About half hit wide but three were on target. One flew at the small goblin-like creature and two flew at the big one.
The small one just jumped out the way of the spears, but the big one didn't seem to care. In fact, it seemed to be amused by the idea of getting stabbed. One spear hit it in the thigh and the other hit it on the chest. Both went in deep, sending out sprays of thick, black blood.
Besides a roar of pain as the spears hit, it kept charging forward and sending the debris around its feet flying, albeit slowed down somewhat. The small green one panicked and jumped onto the bigger one, attempting to remove the spears, exclaiming all the while. Esau was right, these things definitely had a language. Even if did sound like the verbal equivalent of a punch to the face. There was no point in trying to remove the spears though, as they opened up inside the green creatures flesh, sending it tumbling onto the ground.
The sheer difference in size between the big creature and the small creature meant that when the big creature fell, it crushed the small one. The big creature barely noticed as it, with grunts of pain tried to stand up. The sheer ability to tolerate pain was astounding, and terrifying in equal amounts as nothing seemed to put it down.
I was vaguely aware of the sound of pained screaming in the background as I tried to furiously reel the big creature in using a crank on the spear launcher. Despite the chains on the ends of the spear being as taught as possible, the big one wasn't moving unless it wanted to.
Finally, the net drones completed knitting the nets and laying them down on the creature, in layers. Esau and I got to action and weighed the ends down around any that could count as even mildly heavy. Esau's end of the net was stronger than mine of course, as what he considered light was what the average man considered impossible to move. The creature struggled as the spear shafts caught in the net, trapping it further. It was trashing wildly, but it wasn't going anywhere.
I breathed out in relief before I remembered the other two green ones. I looked around for them and found them fighting of them fighting off the heat drones despite both of them having immense burns all over their bodies. Some of the burns were so bad that I could see bone sticking out from the creatures bodies. I put two and two together. The chemicals in the needle drones were flammable if they weren't mixed.
Esau likely had them destroy themselves to douse the creatures in flammable fluid before setting them on fire with the heat drones. The creatures were slowing down. Despite being impossibly hardy, they were slowing down. One of them collapsed. The second one was able to destroy the second heat drone with a lucky downwards fist before it collapsed onto the ground. From the agonized breaths I could hear, despite being more ash then flesh at this point, they were still alive.
"Esau. Stay here."
I had to put them out of their miseries. I picked up a heavy, sturdy looking rock and walked over the creatures. Without ceremony, I brought the rock down hard onto their heads. Each creature took over three bashes with the rock before they finally stopped moving. I felt a pang of guilt as I killed them but it was us or them. And I would choose us every single time.
The whole ordeal must have taken maybe ten minutes, if that, but had felt like it had taken hours. I let the rush of adrenaline fade of a minute as I calmed down. As I came up close to the big creature, I could see that the creature was at least twice my height with a shoulder width equal to two bodybuilders standing side to side. Fighting the beast directly would have been a nightmare. If the other two were any indication, these things were almost impossible to kill. Still, capturing the beast still meant something, right? Apparently, the Forge agreed.
[Action: Capture an Ork Nob
Reward: Satisfactorio Builder | Craft Bench Card | Pattern Extension Chip (Satisfactory-factorio Gauntlet)]
Again, I was staggered by what the Forge had given me. It was a little object that looked like a fuel nozzle from a gas station with the nozzle chopped off. It was apparently called a 'build gun'. Instead of a metal projectile being shot out of a narrow tube like a normal gun, this was a gun that builds stuff. Like something out of a videogame, this gun would disassemble any man made structure it was pointed at, store the resources whole in the gun and use the resources to build the very building that was destroyed, or anything else really. As long as you could design what you wanted built. Also, despite having different design principles and technological levels, the build gun synched perfectly to the omni-tool. Did I mention that it would return to me if stolen or destroyed?
I got the impression that this was another minor item by the standards of the Forge. If this was a minor item, what the hell counted as a major one?
"So even a minor participation in an achievement counts towards the Forge. That's good to know." I turned to Esau. Wow.
"You really know how to hit where it hurts, son." He shrugged.
"Your only achievements in this battle were supplying some of the plan for attack and building and deploying the spear launcher. I, on the other hand built the drones, supplied the plan and commanded the drones. While you may have killed the two greenskins, they likely would have died due to the actions of my drones. I am simply stating the truth as it stands." He was right of course, but humans weren't built to suddenly stop taking offense when revelations like that were correct. I also knew he meant well. He didn't want me to feel bad on purpose, he was just pointing facts out.
"Yeah I know." I was so excited that I had almost forgotten about the green beast we had captured. Until it spoke that is. I didn't understand a single word, of course, but Esau clearly did.
"What is it saying?" I asked him.
"It says that it must have gone soft, if it could be captured by a 'humie and a half'." Amusing statement aside, I was surprised by the creature's ability to speak in full sentences. Speaking implied that the organism in question possesses the intellect required to solve problems and also communicate the solution to those problems in some form. Despite this, prior to speaking, this creature gave off no indication that it had any reasoning ability at all.
Esau talked back to it in its guttural violent language. It answered back. Before I could ask what they were saying, he told me.
"I told it to tell me what it was doing on this planet. It said that it was and I quote 'Krumpin' gits.' I asked it what that meant and it asked if I was stupid, because the phrase was self-explanatory." Despite his calm explanation, I could hear the annoyance in his voice. Still, this was somewhat illuminating.
"A 'git' is a slang term meaning 'jerk'. I don't know if that's what it means in it's language but if it is what a 'git', then we could take 'Krumping' to mean-"
"Killing, yes. Hmm." He talked to the creature some more before speaking in English again..
"You were correct. It seems that any word that does not have an English equivalent in Orkish may be replaced with a synonym for violence of any kind and you wold be correct."
"Interesting. That likely means that Orcs as a society put violence above near everything else in terms of importance if they have so many words for it." I then processed what I had just said. "You said that they were Orcs?"
"Yes, Orcs." The creature growled. "Sorry, Orks. Apparently there is a difference between the sounds to the Orkish ear."
Was I in some sort of fantasy dimension? Or in a parody thereof? Why else would an alien species' name itself for a fantasy creature that matches its description? I could see the resemblance to fantasy Orcs from places like World of Warcraft with their size and skin colour matching the modern interpretation of an Orc; big, green, with sharp tusks and a horrible smell along with a general barbarian aesthetic.
"Ask it how it got here and where here is." Esau talked to it for what was probably five minutes before he answered.
"It doesn't know." I was incredulous.
"It doesn't know?" I asked. He nodded. "What do you mean it doesn't know?"
"The Ork says that from its perspective, it was fighting and I quote 'them pointy ear gits' on 'one of them Craftworld things' where he was 'krumpin' those gits good' and next thing he knows, he, some other Orks and the people he was fighting fell into 'the warp thingie'. Most of the creatures he was fighting then spontaneously combusted. They then made it out of 'the warp thingie' using an Ork built ship. Then it collided with a traveling 'spiky pointy ear ship' which then crash landed on this planet. Then seeing as the other Orks didn't survive, he 'krumped' the spiky gits and their slaves before eating the last one because he was hungry."
"That was useless." I said.
"I agree." Esau commiserated.
It was clear now that asking an Ork a question was an exercise in futility. Each and every sentence out of Esau's mouth just created new questions. 'Pointy ear gits' implied the existence of elves. What was next, Hobbits? Dwarves? Demons?
If this trend continued, I was going to find out that every fantasy creature existed, but as an alien race. And what was a 'Craftworld' or 'The Warp'? I don't think the Ork would be providing any satisfactory answers today, or ever.
"So what do we do with him?" Esau asked. The smart move was likely to kill it. I still had no idea how Orks reproduced but its death would mean that there would be no more Orks.
"I will kill it." I was Esau's father, and I would be damned if I had him kill the thing. I didn't want him to be a killer. Even a kill of necessity, such as this one could result in him viewing murder as a possible to solution to problems that could be fixed without it.
"Esau."
"Father?"
"Do you know why I want to be the one to end its life? Why I chose to end the lives of the others?"
"Because you want to see if the Forge may reward you and if it does, that would result in invaluable res-"
"No." I said interrupting him. I looked at him, complete seriousness in my eyes.
"Because I never want you to kill."
"Why?" he asked me. There was no insolence or disappointment, just genuine curiosity.
"I have three reasons. The first is that, exceptional abilities aside, you are a child. Children are not supposed to have blood on their hands, and because of a lack of ability on my part, you have the blood of four on yours. I am sorry for that, son. I have failed you." I felt tears in my eyes as I realised the enormity of my failure.
Esau's annoyance at my remark at his age was forgotten as he saw me, his father, cry.
"The second, is that killing is wasteful. I chose to kill those two Orks because they would have absolutely killed us if given the chance and I had no other options. I choose to kill this one because its life would mean it could reproduce and that would mean more Orks and they would absolutely try to kill us. Do you understand?"
Solemnly, Esau nodded.
"The third, and this is the most important." He stood there enraptured. I continued. "Killing stains the soul of the killer. It haunts the killer, as I suspect it will haunt me. This is because while the consequences of most other crimes may be fixed, a murder cannot. Death is permanent. It means the destruction of all the dreams of the person killed. No matter how bad it gets, murder should always be the last option – do you understand?"
Again, silently, Esau nodded.
"Good." I lifted up a large rock over my head. "Tell the Ork that I hope that it rests in peace."
Esau acquiesced. Now, the Ork was got visibly irritated. It spat at me, visibly shaking all the while. I brought the rock down hard onto its head. Then lifted it up and brought it down again. And again. And again. Ten times I brought the rock down, before it stopped moving and it died.
I threw the rock away.
"Let's go home."
[Action: Guide the Primarch of the Second Legion
Reward: Make Me A Better Man! (Franken Fran)]
Notes:
3.1. Perk(s) earned in this chapter.
Domain: Toolkits: Mundane – Satisfactorio Builder | Craft Bench Card | Pattern Extension Chip (Satisfactory-factorio Gauntlet) (100CP):
Satisfactorio Builder (0CP): The buildy gun from Satisfactory. It can place down buildings and other artificial structures, either from parts or premade. It can deconstruct buildings and other artificial objects, either breaking them down or storing them whole. It can give orders to logistic or construction systems that you are authorized on (including the ones from this Gauntlet.) It can configure the settings of machines. It has an internal inventory that can be upgraded (to a limited extent until you leave the Gauntlet.) Always fully charged, can be upgraded in other ways, automatically imports into similar handheld stuff, and syncs up with other inventory/storage perks and items. If lost, stolen, or broken, it will respawn in an appropriate and safe place immediately, even during the Gauntlet.
Craft Bench Card (50CP): This card, when installed in the Satisfactorio Builder, lets it craft any recipe that you can craft at any crafting station internally, though slower than you could at a dedicated station.
Pattern Extension Chip (50CP): This card, when installed in the Builder, grants it the ability to create ad-hoc blueprints based on existing machines, and then fill those blueprints in. You can use it to quickly and easily extend groups of belts, or lines of machines. It will faithfully execute patterns that change as they iterate. It also allows doing multiple patterns, such as two production lines for different products and the foundations at once, even if those patterns don't line up or have different lengths.
Domain: Crafting: Biotech - Make Me A Better Man! (Franken Fran) (300CP): Your skills of surgery do more than heal and correct. You can augment others with superhuman abilities and grant small portions of your power. If supernatural powers can be transferred through physical means, you can do so through surgery.