Building from Scratched.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita collapsed onto the dirt as she stumbled through the gate. Her body turned corporeal, she turned and stared at her hands. It had only been a few hours, but she had feared that shroud of darkness would trap her forever.

Just as suddenly, the heat hit her and she winced. She staggered to her feet, and with difficulty began to summon her police cruiser.

After it had come into existence, she collapsed into the air conditioning with a sigh of relief. She rang up Chip, and groaned until the link started.

++Carmelita! How was your trip?++

“Eventful. I think I… died?”

++...++

“Nevermind. How about you? The AI friendly?”

++You could say that…++

A third voice interjected, the static of the mouthpiece completely absent.

++Hello, my name is Al3x,++ it said ++I am willing to let you use this facility on the provision that you owe me rent.++

“Uh… sure? Maybe? What sort of rent?”

++Inclusion in your policing force, and some favours I can call in at a later date.++

“Done.”

++Right then! See you shortly?++

Carmelita pinched her muzzle and nodded.

“Yeah, see you both soon.”

She groaned as she hung up and pulled herself into the driving seat, starting the engine and driving away into the desert.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita drove through the night, a tiredness tugging at her that she chose to ignore. The patrol car could handle the arid scrub outside of Carrefour, and she coasted past the Town With No Name in the dead of night, late enough to startle a few sleepy deputies into taking wild potshots at her dust trail. She ignored them, and continued onwards, into the wasteland.

It was as the sun peeked out from over the top of the dunes that the sight of the tall laser turrets that bracketed the compound finally came into view. Carmelita yawned and slowed down, driving towards the gates.

“Carmelita at the gates, requesting permission to-”

A blast of laser fire hit the bonnet of the car and she dove out the door just as the vehicle’s engine went up in flames and it crashed into the desert floor. She extended her cloak and hid in the smoke before swearing loudly into her earpiece.

++Carmelita! Are you all right?++ Chip asked, before clearly turning to yell at the AI. ++What the hell!++

++I appear to have less control over the defence grid than I thought. Switching it off now.++

The red lights of the towers blinked off and Carmelita stared at her burning hunk of a vehicle with a resigned look. Instinctively she began summoning a fire extinguisher before hosing what remained of the patrol car with foamy water. Chip soon came jogging out, and Carmelita handed the tri-eye a second extinguisher. The two spent the early hours of the morning putting out friendly fire.

---

By the time the heat started getting to the two furry women, they left the still smouldering wreck to burn itself out and headed inside the control tower at the centre of the base. It was much the same as Carmelita had left it, banks of computer servers lit up with a green light and blinds over the windows keeping the worst of the sun's rays from entering the room, but two noticeable differences could be seen. One was the hammock, made out of chain and sheets and hung on one corner of the wall, and the other was the brightly lit monitors with a rather sheepish looking avatar of an anthropomorphic sand devil (the weather phenomena, not the demonic being).

“You must be Al3x,” Carmelita said, yawning. “Let’s keep this brief, otherwise I’m going to fall asleep here. Reason for deactivation?”

“I was deliberately mislabelled an ‘irretrievable asset’ and left behind by an Imperial Officer who didn’t like me. I was forced to take a power nap thanks to low energy reserves. Speaking of which, Chip here managed to get some solar panels up and running that are maintaining my current level of activity. When you’ve rested, I’d like to talk more on the whole ‘base rental’ shindig, I’ve got ideas…”

“Fine. Now, Chip, do I have permission to use your hammock?”

“Uh, sure?”

“Right then. Night.”

“Actually, it’s-” Chip began.

“Night!”

---

Carmelita woke up after ten hours of restful sleep to find Al3x talking with Chip as the monitors displayed a base map. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and got out of the hammock, padding quietly over to the two of them.

“Hello again.”

Chip gave a little shout of surprise, holding a hand over her heart and whirling round. Carmelita couldn’t help but smile a little.

“Good morning, Inspector. Are you ready to talk plans?”

“I do believe I am. So, Al3x, Chip, what are we working with here?”

The map span and showed the base as a whole. As each building highlighted itself, Al3x would add a little moniker to it.

“So, here in the centre we’ve got the control tower. Good line of sight down the four main avenues, slightly off to the side, has my AI hardware and the base processing power all locked up up here. Speaking of which, I’d like to get my mind and body into a slightly more mobile platform, especially one with a hologram projector. If you’re going to be doing the heavy lifting as our resident prime, it’d be best if I could show you how we want to lay out plumbing, electricity, all that jazz.”

“Speaking of which, the base facilities. Most of the good stuff’s been stripped out, but they couldn’t nab the hardware. That means that the underground parking bay is still here, if a bit empty, and that stretches a long way underground. There’s room for dozens of vehicles and mechs down there, and of the larger variety too. We’ve even got a Warhound bay, though how on earth they were going to get one of those through the entrance was always glossed over.”

A good five storeys of tunnels and bays displayed itself on the map, the three dimensional image spinning to highlight its complexity.

“There are four exit ramps for the bays, one at each corner of the base. They’re currently hidden by loose dirt and foliage, but they’re there. For the purposes of accessing them for maintenance, however, the main entrance is in this building next to the tower, which I’ve labelled bay access.”

“As far as amenities go, we’re down to the basics. The mess hall just opposite the tower has a nutrient synthesiser and a moisture condenser that were in decent condition even before Chip had a go at them, and there’s electricity from the backup solar panels that were stored with them. To get more juice, mind you, we’re going to need to repair and replace the old solar plant that took up this space in the north corner of the base.”

“Once that’s done, we’ve got to fix up the auto defence mainframes and systems. As the charred skeleton of a hover car will attest, I don’t have proper access and I suspect we’re going to need a manual reset of each tower, but they are at least serviceable and used to have stun features as well that I have a feeling we’d prefer as a less-bloodthirsty group than the Imperial Security Forces were.”

“Completing the quartet of central buildings, you can see the armoury’s over the crossroads next to the tower, the mess hall and the bay access. It’s empty, of course.”

“The rest of the buildings are split in four. This building over by the solar plant in the northern quadrant is the research lab, again empty of anything useful but it could be used for its original function. This building in the east quadrant is the main garage, with plenty of empty space outside for parking and maneuvering the vehicles.”

Chip interjected at this point, tapping the table. “Give me tools and materials, Carm, and I’ll be happy rearranging the two mechs that were left behind. On top of that, there are workshops here, in the south quadrant, that if restocked could quickly be used to start making prototypes and reconfiguring old equipment.”

Al3x gave a quick thumbs up on screen before returning to the map.

“It’s as the pretty girl says, and more besides. I’ve got a bunch of manufacturing programs for making all sorts of stuff with the automated equipment that fill in the space between the workshops. While the computers aren’t there any more, the wiring still is, so with time all seventeen of them could actually do something useful.”

Carmelita frowned, leaning in.

“So far I’ve heard a lot of technical talk, but the concept of a being an outpost for a non-political police outpost requires training facilities, bunk-houses and briefing rooms. What do we have to serve those needs?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Al3x said. “May I please present to you all fifteen buildings in the western quadrant. Fifteen completely empty warehouses, one of which used to be used to house site personnel. Chip can vouch that the plumbing is still functional.”

The tri-eye made a face and scratched her purple fur.

“Barely…”

Al3x rolled his eyes on screen and drew up a list of contents.

“So first, the solar plant. Second, the automatic defences. Third-”

“The plumbing,” Chip scowled.

“Very well, third is the plumbing. Fourth, my mobile body. Fifth, the garage and your patrol car. Sixth, the workshops. Seventh, the policing facilities.”

Carmelita’s eyes perused the list, mentally ticking off each item.

“Seems good. We’ll get started after I grab something to eat.

[Carmelita]

Chewing on the meager fare spat out by the nutrient synthesiser (Chip had laughed on seeing her face, then patted her on the back and told her that she’d get working on it sooner rather than later), the two of them headed into the afternoon sun.

The northern quadrant was mostly empty at first glance, wide open tarmac and bare dirt stretching out from the research building. The occasional warped remains of a solar panel stood as lone sentinels, gazing crookedly at the sun.

Carmelita turned to Chip as they stood in the shade of the research building.

“So, what needs doing?”

Chip gave a grin, turning two of her eyes towards the fox.

“We’ll have a look at one of the broken ones, I’ll show you what needs fixing, you memorise the structure, then you duplicate them while I install them. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?”

Giving a nod, Carmelita followed Chip into the blazing heat. The two of them crossed the hot ground as quickly as they could, arriving in the shade of the broken solar panel as quickly as they could.

Chip began showing Carmelita the undersides. The solar panels were mounted on big, tubular mounts that allowed a functional solar panel to track the sun through the sky and anchored them into the earth. Chip requisitioned a shovel from Carmelita’s omnilium and began digging to reveal the latch mechanism while Carmelita had a proper look at the wiring and panel. She braved the direct rays of the sun to brush loose dirt off the panel itself, revealing a few cracks and broken connections even she with her basic understanding of electronics could fix.

A flash of memory, something down in a bunker with an escape pod, hit her almost physically. A hand to her head she staggered back beneath the shade of the solar panel. Chip looked up and frowned.

“You okay?”

Carmelita nodded slowly. Chip stared at her for a few minutes before getting back to cleaning up the connectors.

After half an hour, the mechanisms were revealed fully. Chip showed Carmelita how they needed to be fixed, and then the two of them heaved the solar panel out of the ground and laid it on the earth.

Chip asked for several repair tools, holding out her hand while Carmelita tried her best to summon the correct one. Sometimes it would take several tries, and when Chip asked for a biwave calibrator she ended up having to guide Carmelita through the process of building one from scratch.

As the sun was setting and the day’s heat was evaporating, the two of them finally finished repairing the solar panel. Carmelita stepped forwards and pushed her omnilium through the whole structure, the intrinsic piece of her existence memorising and cataloguing every bit of the structure. As she did so, Chip marked out where the rest of the connectors were, allowing for the full field to be reinstalled.

Working under freshly summoned floodlights, they got to work, shovels in hand, opening up the old holes. It was tiring, but necessary to keep warm as the temperatures dropped dramatically. After three hours of digging, the entire field covered in regularly spaced holes.

“Looks like we should call it a night,” Chip said. “You alright with that Carm?”

Carmelita nodded. She turned towards Chip, a question on her lips.

“So Chip, how’s Al3x?”

The tri-eye smiled in the wan light.

“He’s not that bad, thankfully. He’s got a sense of humor, an eccentric way of talking and seems to have his chip’s screwed in straight.”

“I meant in terms of health, but glad to know you like him.”

Chip spluttered a little and Carmelita let herself laugh a little before the two of them headed back to the control tower.

---

Once back, Al3x greeted them with a cheerful wave. He appeared to be playing solitaire.

“So our two heroines return from the dusty trail. How’s it going out there?”

“Not too bad,” Chip replied. “I should be able to install them as fast as Carm can summon them. We’ll have the field ready by tomorrow mid-morning then I can head inside and reinstall the junction box we’re missing. Then you can run a systems check and we’ll fix any broken wires that are left in the grid.”

Carmelita nodded and gestured for Chip to take her hammock. At her protests, the Inspector insisted, reminding the girl that she’d had rougher nights in the field.

She stayed up, waiting for Chip to begin snoring, before turning to Al3x.

“Okay, I need you to be straight with me. What sort of favours are you looking for?”

The AI smiled, the sand making up his avatar circling faster.

“Nothing ridiculous, Inspector. I have a few leads on some hardware I’d like, probably lost in an abandoned site, and there are a few personal issues I wouldn’t mind a second set of hands on, but I’m not going to ask you to go kill someone or anything like that. I checked the Imperial public records and all the soldiers stationed here have either retired or moved on, in either sense, mind you. At some point, I’m going to need someone to remove this base’s existence from Imperial records. Last thing any of us need is some Imperial bureaucrat finding out about it and leveraging us into the dirt over it.”

“You’ve given me a lot to sleep on,” Carmelita muttered quietly. She left the AI to his games and curled up in a comfortable patch of floor, hoping for as restful a sleep as she’d had that morning.

[Carmelita]

http://omniverse-rpg.com/showthread.php?...1#pid81691

Carmelita woke in a sweat, hand clutching her shock pistol instinctively before she realised where she was.

It was still night outside. On one of the monitors, Al3x had a laptop perched on his sandy knees, clearly browsing some site or other. He looked up in surprise as she rose from where she was sleeping.

“Wow, you’re an early riser. There’s still two hours until dawn.”

“Tell Chip I’m getting an early start,” she replied, sourly. “I won’t be getting much sleep after that…”

Carmelita headed out into the darkness, her head whirling. There was still a fog over her time in Dante’s Abyss, though it was clearing, and with the corruption of a lot of her eyepieces audio and visual files she could only hope it would reveal what had happened.

In the cold night, she began summoning the solar panels, each one resting neatly by a pair of holes. The work wasn’t strenuous, but focusing on the feeling of omnilium coursing through her took her mind off her past and her recent troubles and condensed it into her current tasks.

The sun peeked over the dunes as she reached the halfway mark and Chip appeared from the direction of the control tower. Wordlessly, the tri-eye joined in, beginning to wire up and fasten the solar panels in place before filling the holes in around the connections. Once Carmelita had finished, she took over the shoveling and Chip made good work of the remaining panels.

Chip headed inside to fix up the electrics and Carmelita finished shoveling dirt. Once she was done she stood back and surveyed the result of their exertions. A field of identical solar panels shone in the light, angled directly upwards. A moment later, a whine could be heard and the entire field began tilting as one to catch the sun’s rays full on. She headed back to fetch breakfast.

The two of them ate in the control tower, discussing with Al3x what Carmelita had internally labelled ‘New Interpol’. In the end, they came to calling it Suprapol, a shortening of Supranational Police And Response Team Agency that didn’t sound quite so martial as SPARTA.

After they’d eaten, they headed out to deal with the automatic defences. Al3x had deactivated the towers, warning them that if the base was attacked they’d have to get out of the way before he reactivated them.

The two of them walked to the northern corner and stared up at the autoturret that stretched up on a solid metal pylon. The large sphere that was perched on the top was dark, the red lines that ran around the outside dull and lacking energy. Carmelita forced the door on the pylon and the two of them ascended the ladder inside, Chip checking the wiring every so often.

They reached the top to see a cramped set of computers, cooling apparatus, targeting equipment and laser capacitors. Chip instantly set about checking over everything, asking for the occasional tool to fix it. Carmelita wiped her brow as the sphere began to roast, heated by the sun outside. After reconnecting Al3x to the control system by rerouting the wiring, the two of them descended the pylon and shut it before the tower powered up. They could feel the thrum of energy as the tower lit up, bright red lines mixing with bright green lines in a dazzling dispay. The tower shot out beams of red and green, kicking up sand and dirt from where they hit. Carmelita gritted her teeth to bear the brunt of a stun hit, and ended up waking up in the control tower that afternoon to applause from Chip and Al3x. Apparently while she had been out of it, Chip had fixed up the remaining three towers, and the automatic defences were now being guided and updated by Al3x.

With that, Chip and Carmelita rolled up their metaphorical sleeves and got down to the horrible business of dealing with the plumbing.

[Carmelita]

Chip seemed somewhat surprised when Carmelita unfurled the plans for the base’s plumbing and immediately set about them with a permanent marker muttering under her breath.

“Uh, Carmelita? What are you-?”

“Shush! Someone had the bright idea to put the septic tank here, of all places, and there are at least ten unnecessary junctions in this building. Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t silted up completely, given it needed a pump to build water pressure. If instead we pull that up here, we can get a decent pressure even on the outskirts of the base.”

Chip stared at her in confusion.

“Wha-? I thought you didn’t know anything about engineering.”

Carmelita scoffed slightly.

“This isn’t engineering. This is DIY. Growing up in a slightly aged cottage we needed to replumb, then an apartment where the landlord would give me discount if I handled the piping problems, then living with a trio who, for all their skills with lockpicks, computers and vehicles, couldn’t put together a wire brush… I’ve learnt from experience.”

She also added crosses to the diagram.

“Also, no one expects backup weapons in the facilities. The number of times I’ve been undercover and had a hitman follow my unarmed person into a toilet or shower, I learnt to stash something just in case.”

Chip’s confusion gave way to a grin.

“Well, perhaps this won’t be so bad after all!”

---

“This is the worst.”

The two of them had begun rejigging the piping, and everything had been going great. The condenser had hooked up nicely to the new water tank, the heater and cooler had been easy to sort out and the showers and facilities were all in working order. Then they had had to begin dealing with years old sewage.

The smell when they opened the pipework had been intense, and as they had made their steady way through the large open sewer that serviced the whole base and dealt with each and every blockage in the pipes that lined the walls it only got worse. Carmelita had already put a mask over her muzzle and was grimly powering through it, merging pipes, adding U-bends and attaching sensors and sealed parts for shock pistols in various sections, but Chip was finding the whole affair particularly unpleasant.

Carmelita’s voice was muffled as she comforted the tri-eye.

“The sceptic tank is just coming up. I’m intending to remove the entire thing and its contents, so we won’t have to deal with that, just attach a new one three sections back that way.”

“Yeah, but it still stinks. Literally.”

Carmelita gave out a snort of laughter before looking down at the plans.

“If you want, I can handle the remainder. Al3x will probably need help designing that holographic hovering body of his, so I can finish up here.”

She waited for a response, only to hear the patter of Chip’s footsteps in the distance. She gave one last grin before she tackled the septic tank properly.

---

She emerged from the tunnels to the sun rising, having worked through the night. Carmelita had a shower, the first in weeks, and let the warm water soak into her fur. Her hair, in its bright blue, hung down around her shoulders like a curtain as she released all the tension she’d built up under the stream of water.

Sadly, she had installed regulators on the showers to minimise water usage, and the shower came to an all too quick end. She set about taming her hair with a towel and a brush before drying off her fur vigorously and heading over to the control tower to sleep.

As she entered, Carmelita could hear the sounds of laughter, and she poked her head round the corner to see Al3x and Chip joking around with each other as they made minute adjustments to a complex diagram on one of the monitors. Clearly, they had been having plenty of fun, and she decided to leave them be. She headed down to the mess hall and summoned another hammock, attaching it to the ceiling struts before closing her eyes and drifting off to sleep.

[Carmelita]

http://omniverse-rpg.com/showthread.php?...3#pid81723

When Carmelita woke, she felt content to just keep her eyes closed. The hammock she had been struggling in all night now felt as though she was floating in the air, her hands splayed out and the light soft and pink.

There was something different about how she had woken, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Aside from the soft light against her eyelids, there wasn’t anything else she could think of.

She opened her eyes as the light suddenly spiked.

Falling with a thud to the bottom of a three meter diameter pink sphere, Carmelita blinked in astonishment. The sphere had just been pushed out of the mess hall by Chip, who was looking relieved and was saying something that didn’t pass through the shield. Carmelita had a chance to look at the sphere closely before it suddenly popped and sound returned to her ears.

“-thank goodness. What on earth was that, Carm? I found you floating in a giant pink bubble! What did you do?”

Carmelita looked up in confusion.

“I… I think I used the Dreamtime.”

“The what?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you have any idea how little sense you are making right now?”

“I’ll make more sense when you ply me with lunch. I’ll explain in the control tower, I’ll work on Al3x’s projector over food.”

“Fine, but it had better be good! I spent fifteen minutes panicking over this!”

---

The explanation took way too long for Carmelita’s liking, but that did mean that by mid-afternoon when she had finally managed to get Al3x’s projector active she still had plenty of stuff to talk about. She cut the two of them off their, suggesting that she’d test out her proficiency with the move when they’d finished the training rooms.

As it was they decided to take a break for the rest of the afternoon. The little hovering projector that now displayed Al3x’s avatar at roughly the same height as Chip followed them around as they toured the buildings of the base. Several times, Al3x projected ideas into a room, forming illusory images of what it might look like once they had finished.

The garage sent Chip into quiet squeaks of joy, as the AI transformed the sight temporarily into a fully stocked hangar filled with tools, vehicles and mechs. The same could be said of the workshops, which briefly were filled with images of tools, computers, equipment and similar. The research lab, the armoury and the parking bays each received the treatment in turn, and Carmelita fixed each image in her mind, bringing herself round to the plans that were settling in her mind.

The warehouses were where Carmelita took over. She described the training facilities, an assault course and training mats taking illusory shape in one warehouse, a firing range in another, a vehicle piloting simulation room in yet another. One warehouse became divided briefly into briefing rooms, both big and small, while another became temporary holding cells and processing.

Al3x added the last touch in the sixth warehouse they came to. He spun up an idea of employing the space for a Recall station, but one that could be branched off and experimented with in neighbouring rooms for what he postulated might be ‘quantum deployment’ of assets into the field that primes might be able to call on. Carmelita suggested that the idea be put on hold until the rest of the facilities were put together, to which Al3x reluctantly agreed.

[Carmelita]

Carmelita’s rest that night was, thankfully, dreamless. She didn’t think she could handle another.

Chip was tapping her plate impatiently throughout eating breakfast in the control tower, barely disguising her excitement at getting the whole garage put together for her to use. Al3x made a few jokes about it which she brushed off, but Carmelita couldn’t help but feel a bit of contentment at seeing the girl this excited. She could still picture the scrappy state the tri-eye had been in when they’d met, as well as the eventful night during the search for the Mech Depot, and seeing the young woman so full of life definitely brought the mood up.

After finishing breakfast, the three of them headed out into the early sunlight to repair the patrol car enough to float it into the compound. Since Carmelita had summoned the thing herself, it wasn’t much effort to recollect how she’d constructed the propulsors and soon the burnt out wreck had been gently brought to rest in the hangar, next to the only wreck of a mech left in the facility.

Chip couldn’t help but bust out music she’d found on the dataverse, a light, jovial dubstep that built up to an epic crescendo. As Carmelita focused on making Al3x’s holograms a reality, pouring out her omnilium to form sheets of metal, bins of nuts and bolts, racks of tools, car jacks, hydraulic lifts, mechanical cranes, electric saws and many more items, Chip was literally dancing around, stroking a hand over the finished products and already assembling all the tools she’d need to fix up both the mech and the cruiser.

They stopped at midday, after Carmelita had restored the air-conditioning. They cranked open the hangar doors and let the sunlight illuminate the garage fully, the cool air a delightful relief. About three-quarters of the garage was done, and all that was left for Carmelita to restore were the big mech stations and the truck lifts. They grabbed some dry sandwiches and some fresh water from the mess hall and sat, with Al3x’s avatar sitting in a space on the shelf above them, and took a long look out at the dunes that lay in the distance.

After they had finished eating, Chip got to work on the patrol car, fixing up the internal parts and getting to grips with all the new tools she had to play with. A soft flow of ambitious plans swept over Carmelita’s ears as she finished her work, returning to lean against the rusted mech in time for Chip to start the patrol car once more and for her to gesture for Carmelita to restore the aesthetic it had originally had.

Her patrol car restored, it occurred to Carmelita that she had, in fact, left another in the Town With No Name. She mentally made a note to return there and retrieve it once they had finished the base.

---

That evening, Al3x and Chip were discussing plans for the workshops. While they did so, Carmelita took a walk out to the open space outside the garage and lay on her back, relaxing her mind and trying to recall the memories from Dante’s Abyss. She could remember all the details up until the rest in the forest now, and snatches of detail from afterwards. It was as she was thinking that the memory of her death finally came to her.

Hiro’s face, looking shocked at the bloody hatchet he held, had been the last thing she’d seen.

She brought up her dataverse connection on her earpieces, and began typing out a message to the hacker.

[Carmelita]

http://omniverse-rpg.com/showthread.php?...1#pid81741

After sending the email, Carmelita sat outside until Al3x fetched her to give her input on the workshops.

Once inside, the conversation gradually turned towards the future.

“So, Carmelita, what’s the plan?” Al3x asked as the women prepared to bunk down for the night.

“The first two things to do once the Depot is up and running is to start recruiting and to get ‘in principle’ approval from the main law enforcement groups in the Omniverse.”

Carmelita lay in her hammock and turned to face Al3x and Chip. Al3x had set down his projector on its charging stand, reverting to using the monitors to display his avatar.

“Why not jump straight to operating?” Chip asked. “We have the equipment…”

“Because if any of them straight up object to us interfering, we get scuppered. What we need is to get their approval of the notion, then convince each group individually to let us operate in their territory. We can build from there. The point is, we’re non-political. As long as we can give all of them the chance to catch border jumping criminals, they should be happy to let us improve the safety of living standards for the average citizen in the Omniverse.”

“Eh, I’ll take your word for it. Night!”

Carmelita let herself drift into another dreamless sleep.

---

The next day was a near perfect repeat of the day before. Carmelita set up a bunch of workshops, with electronics, metallurgy, ceramics and textiles being some of the few she understood. Each workshop was set up with a computer linked into the automated machinery that stood unused between them, and soon Chip was happily tinkering away on some new project.

Carmelita left the young woman behind as she and Al3x progressed to the warehouses. The two of them began forming the facilities required in each of the buildings, modifying it as ideas occured to them. The briefing rooms gained a few offices for paperwork, the assault courses had varying levels of automated difficulty and there was a simulation room added next to the firing range.

Overall, Carmelita was fairly happy with the set-up. That evening, she agreed to set up the Recall Station Al3x had envisioned, and the three of them planned it for the next day.

---

After a stressful night of revisiting memories from Dante’s Abyss, Carmelita found that the familiar feeling of summoning things with her omnilium soothed her nerves. The Recall Station took the form of a large number of tubes, each with blinking lights and computer chips that Carmelita could only hope would function as intended.

It was a moment of truth when Carmelita keyed her communicator to the station and pressed the buttons that would allow her to teleport there. It took a while, but soon she found herself behind the clear plastic that prevented her from falling off the raised platform.

The three of them gave each other congratulatory pats on the back and Al3x and Chip keyed their own communicators to the station and tested them carefully.

The SupraPol Mech Depot was ready for use.