The Heavenly Host (Demons of Astlan Book 2) (71 page)

“Tanning supplies?” Tom looked her askance. Why would D’Orcs want to tan? There was not even a sun, or rather Fierd, in the Abyss. Normal demons could not tan; a good number were red already.

“Yes.” Zelda looked at him, surprised by his surprise. “We have all these kills, and we have a lot of D’Orcs who could use some new clothes. The hides, bones and ligaments of the kills are going to be more useful in the long run than the meat!” She seemed surprised he had not considered this.

“Oh yes, of course. I was thinking of a different type of tanning.” Tom shook his head. Tanning like tanning a hide, making leather. Clearly, he was a city demon.

“Another type of tanning?” Zelda asked.

“It’s not important. Humans like to lie out in the sun, I mean Fierd, to darken their skin; they call that tanning.”

Zelda blinked. “That doesn’t make much sense. Why would you want to dry out and age your skin like that? From what I’ve read, nobles and rich people like pale, soft, supple skin, not the leathery skin of a field worker!” She shook her head. “I do know that Morok and his tribe, who have very pale skin, have to use special ointments when on planets to avoid starburn.”

“Same idea, but on some worlds people of light complexion sometimes try to do a little bit of starburning—more like starbaking, I guess. In that sense the ‘tanning supplies’ I was thinking of were ointments to control the amount of darkening of the skin,” Tom said, realizing as he said it how stupid and pointless such an act would seem to a D’Orc, or an orc.

“Wow, you’ve had to deal with some really strange cultures and people on your journey home!” Zelda shook her head, marveling at the strange lands he had seen.

Tom smiled. He liked the idea of this place being home.

~

“Excellent! I think that covers everything for now. Are there any other issues?” Tom asked the leadership team in the command center. They had just finished a long discussion of the ceremony and the party afterwards, as well as discussions on guard duty rotation during the party. They needed to ensure there were some at least some semi-sober sentinels on duty. That meant that they had to rotate people in and ensure that no one scheduled to go on duty drank too much. On-duty soldiers would have food and traditional glargh or ale, which would not get them drunk.

This included sentinels in the Command Center, which was currently seventy or so percent functional, as well as guards at the entrances. After one of their first meetings, Tom had ordered increased security and monitoring of all entrances, such as the one he and his friends had used. His hope was to eventually have wards on all gates to alert the control center and then just use patrols; but for now, guards and locked portcullises would be the order of the day.

All of his commanders had just signaled they had no other details to discuss when a loud cheer came from the adjoining Tech Command Center. Tom and a few other commanders, particularly the tech-based ones, headed into the Tech Command Center.

“What you DIB’s yammerin about?” Arg-nargoloth growled as he entered beside Tom. Tom had learned that DIB stood for D’Orc in Back. It had been adopted from GIB, or Grunt in Back, because on medium-sized starships the scanning and radar operators often sat behind the pilots. Years ago, they had continued it here since the Tech Command Center was sort of a back room off the main Command Center.

“We’ve got the phased array radar antennas online and working again!” said Horken, one of the senior DIBs.

“Or we will have; I’ve got one more array I’m tweaking the SNR on,” said Varn Starsplitter, the D’Orc Tom had met in the armory.

“SNR?” Tom asked.

“Signal to Noise Ratio. It’s an adjustment we do to distinguish background topology from active targets,” Varn explained.

“The other twelve arrays are tuned correctly and we are able to discern standard known landmarks.” Horken pointed to what Tom realized was a translucent computer screen. “We have a database of what the base topology should look like; the computer then filters it to show us only what shouldn’t be there. See all this?” He pointed to numerous orange objects on the screen, along with numerous white items.

“Yes?” Tom asked hesitantly.

“The white stuff is missing landmarks that used to be there; the orange stuff is new stuff that’s there now. We have to go through and confirm that previously fixed objects have moved.”

“What is moving?” Tom asked.

Horken chuckled. “In the normal course of things, it would be targets. However, after four thousand years, the landscape is bound to shift a little bit. Particularly after Doom shut down and then restarted. The first would have caused settling of geological features; the second would have meant some minor quakes which could dislodge stuff.”

“Got the SNR on thirteen!” Varn shouted excitedly.

“Excellent; next up is twofold,” Horken explained to the commanders who had entered with Tom, Zelda included. “We have to update the geographic database as I just mentioned, and then we need to start fine tuning the aperture synthesis algorithms.”

“The aperture what?” Zelda asked.

“Aperture synthesis. It’s a post-processing algorithm that we used to track moving objects with a phased array. We then supplement it from our secondary Doppler radar antennas. The phased array units that use PDP—sorry, pulse Doppler processing—also need to be calibrated; however, full calibration of that requires the sweep antennas to be active, and those will take more time since they have a lot of moving parts.”

“So, in short, a lot of sophisticated electronic equipment is coming back online without a lot of issues after four thousand years?” Tom sounded a bit incredulous.

Horken chuckled. “Oh, there are issues, but we had quite a bit of redundancy. And most of the systems are heavy duty, built for deep space military craft and bases. The Abyss around here is not that much worse. At least, it isn’t when Doom is dormant.”

Tom looked at him, puzzled.

“Metal equipment does not like water,” Horken explained. “That is one of the biggest issues. In space, the problem is ice crystals that can melt. In the Abyss, when there are no storm clouds, it is very dry, so rust is not a problem. Dust can be a problem, but again, almost no wind if Doom is sleeping. You may have noticed the only place in the Abyss that actually has weather is Mount Doom.”

“And we have not had any of that in a very long time!” Varn added.

Several other DIBs laughed at this. One whom Tom did not recognize added, “We started cleaning the arrays and equipment shortly after Your Lordship’s return. We had been hoping to get these babies back up.”

“This is excellent!” Tom was very pleased.

Horken and the others nodded in acknowledgement of the praise. “There are some more advanced detection systems we will eventually bring up. But we cannot calibrate those until we have the simpler systems fully calibrated and functional,” Horken said.

“How long before you will be able to detect invaders or trespassers?” Darg-Krallnom asked from behind Tom.

“That depends on the size,” Horken replied. “Something large, or a large swarm, we would see now.” He shrugged. “One or two demons, though, we won’t be able to detect for at least a day, maybe longer. We have always had problems with smaller demons. Imps, shadows, smaller fiends by themselves are too small to detect. It varies a bit from region to region, depending on the equipment we have in a given region.”

Horken gestured to the main Command Center. “The real calibration will begin once we’ve got full control of both rooms. Then we can start to correlate information from the runes and wards system to the tech systems. That will take a few weeks, or likely months.”

Tom thought for a second, feeling the outer regions of the rune network. “How far out can we go with the tech systems?”

“Sweep times get longer the further out we reach, so it gets tricky, but with this system we can go about thirty to forty leagues out in all directions. Some of the more advanced stuff can go further, much further, but a lot of that is tricky to bring up. Always was, being on the ground and not in a starship.”

A very old DIB snorted. “We got one system we managed to acquire that has a very extreme range. Unfortunately, we have never had enough power to use it, but if we could, it could irradiate a three-dimensional radius of several thousand leagues with huge tachyon flux. We could monitor the damned she-beast, Lilith, herself!”

Horken rolled his eyes. “Even if we had the power to turn it on, none of us are qualified to calibrate it. We have no engineers left that understand FTL engineering.”

“FTL engineering?” Zelda asked.

“Faster than light,” Tom quickly replied.

Horken and the old DIB grinned brightly at him, having not expected him to know the reference. “My Lordship knows his technology.” Varn clapped his hands.

Tom chuckled. “You DIBs know more than I will ever know. Keep up the good work.” He looked over at Zelda. “I need to head to the temple to send invitations to my shamans for the ceremony and party. I also need to check in with Vaselle to see how the cooling devices they are making are coming along.”

“Excellent, My Lord. I am going to head to the kitchens to check on the staff preparing things. Tegdolar is in the temple right now, monitoring for any dream walkers that might show up.” Tegdolar and his sister Tegleesa were the two younger orcs assigned to monitoring the temple along with their mother, Teg-Gala, who was one of Zelda’s best confidants.

“Good lad, Tegdolar,” Tom said with a nod. He had said “lad,” but Tegdolar was probably twice his own age. It was amazing how one fell into certain roles. He nodded goodbye to his commanders and left the command centers. He was feeling pressured and warn out again. He was still fueling at least a third of Mount Doom, and it was getting exhausting. It was a continuous drain on his ever-lowering reserves. They really needed to get some more bodies into this place to generate more mana.

~

“So do you have a plan yet as to how we prove ourselves human?” Bess asked Exador as they sipped on Denubian Choco-Coffee
TM
at the Outpost.

“I and my team have been working feverishly on amulets that will nullify the effects of the wards,” Exador said.

“This assumes they turn the wards back on,” Rameses said. He was normal-sized and wearing an elegant silk robe rather than his war garb. “What if they invite the Rod in with that stupid mirror?”

Exador sighed in frustration. “Unfortunately, I am but a single archdemon…”

“With a staff of over a thousand demons,” Bess noted.

“Most of whom are incapacitated and regenerating after the Freehold incident.” He shook his head. “Further, most of them weren’t any good at wizardry or magic.”

“What about that sycophant of yours?” Ramses asked.

Exador shot him a look indicating the demon was insane. “Randolf? Ignoring the fact that he’s one of the councilors I must convince, he is also singularly unqualified to do much of anything arcane.”

“He’s an archimage, which must mean something,” Ramses said.

“Do I have to keep pointing this out? Archimage is a political title; it means he owns a country! It has nothing to do with skill, of which Randolf has very little,” Exador said wearily.

“So who is this team?” Bess asked.

“I do have a couple of decent demon wizards in my employ, as well as one warlock in Etterdam and two in Romdan,” Exador said.

“You conduct business in Etterdam and Romdan?” Ramses asked, puzzled.

Exador gave him a puzzled look. “Yes, why?”

Ramses shook his head. “Nothing—it’s just that your insistence on living in Astlan for so long had convinced me you had a singular unnatural attachment to that plane.”

Exador shook his head. “It comes and goes. I have estates on other material planes, but the time I spend in Astlan depends on my current interests. Since the Abancian incident, I have spent quite a bit of time in Astlan. Once that arrogant prick Lenamare showed up, I admit that I did end up spending the majority of my time there.”

“You have to admit, Ramses,” Bess said in defense of Lenamare, “the book was, or is, in Astlan, which is something that in my opinion justifies Exador’s attention.”

“True,” Ramses conceded. “Has Lenamare made any progress?”

Exador shrugged. “I rather doubt it. Apparently, two of his wizards have disappeared with Trevin D’Vils on some crazy quest. Therefore, I have to imagine he is quite shorthanded with his school. Further, I suspect he would be the one in charge of proving that I am an archdemon.”

Bess shrugged and took a sip of her delicious beverage. “That is whom I’d hire. Those wards were quite remarkable.” Exador glared at her.

She chuckled. “What is this crazy quest?”

Exador shrugged. “I have no idea. It is tied to some visions by Lenamare’s sorcerer and this seer from the Society of Learned Fellows. Trevin is leading it for the Council.”

“The Society of Learned Fellows?” Ramses asked, sounding surprised. “They still exist?” Lenamare waved his hand, indicating that they apparently did.

“This Trevin—remind me who she is again? I am not as familiar with Astlan as the two of you,” Bess said.

“She’s the Enchantress of the Grove,” Exador said.