Chapter Two Hundred and Seventy: A Day on the Factory Floor

The Nanofibre Weave Fabricators were running full-tilt when I reached the factory the next morning. 

Every few seconds, a Fabricator spat out a sheet of fullersteel, to be wheeled away to storage. With the stores almost depleted after my ‘appropriating’ them for the suits, there was plenty to be made up. 

Forklifts ran across the floor, with pallets of nanofibre weave being shifted into storage. For suits, reactors, and anything else that might call for the third strongest material on Earth. 

“First batch of materials for the octanitrocubane came in today,” Armand briefed me. “Let me know when you’re getting started, and how much MP you need - we’ll plan production schedules accordingly.” 

“Which fabricator went down last night?”

Armand frowned. “How’d you know that?”

“My MP was being consumed at 400 MP per second when I slept, and dropped to 350 when I woke up. That’s one fabricator offline. Which one?”

“.... Number four. It’s a problem with the preloader, so we shut it down for maintenance. Should be up and running in a day.”

“You’re going to need to shut down all of them soon, when I start work on the Type Fives and the octanitrocubane. When do the materials get in?”

“Later today, hopefully. We won’t have much fullersteel stockpiled by then, Belessar.”

“As of yesterday we’ve shipped several months worth of Boar Armour orders. That should keep them happy for a while, and meanwhile we can get the octanitrocubane orders shipped.”

“The raw materials for that are going to take a few days. It’s a lot.”

“I know. Which is why I’m going to work on the Type Five Fusion plants first, then start off on the octanitrocubane, and as that ships out, work on my next armour project.”

“You mean the giant slabs you’ve got in Warehouse Four, with all those armed guards around it?”

I frowned. “Armed guards?”

“Bunch of troops showed up last night, full battle dress and ammo, and parked themselves around Warehouse Four. Gideon said he’d been briefed.”

Warehouse Four was the storage for the Tauralloy stocks and the raw materials for the Leopard Class. With some concern - and a tiny bit of alarm - I decided to check out the new guards.

Who turned out to be very old guards, indeed. The unit bore the patches of the Rapid Response Division, and I could see half-a-dozen familiar faces among the men assigned to sentry duty. 

The officer on duty - a lieutenant whose nametag read HARRISON - snapped off a salute as I approached. “Mr. Belessar, sir!”

I awkwardly returned the salute as best as I could. “Lieutenant - Harrison? What’s with the security measures?”

“Commodore Pemberley’s compliments, sir, and she said we were to ensure adequate protection and security for your workshops at all times. No visitors except those cleared by you.”

“That’s obvious… I hope none of your men tried to get in?”

“Obviously not, sir. You haven’t cleared us, sir.”

“Well, tell them not to. There’s a bunch of automated defenses in there and I haven’t programmed them with your identities yet.”

“As you say, sir.”

“Aren’t you RRD boys a bit overqualified to be guarding a warehouse, though?”

Lieutenant Harrison beamed. “We understand you’re making some special weapons in there to kill the aliens, sir. We volunteered.”

Sighing, I dialled Pemberley’s cell. “Did you send a squad of troops to guard my warehouse?”

“Good morning to you too, Belessar. Yes, there’s a unit assigned specifically for factory security.”

“We have our own security.”

“It was pointed out to me by several very important people that you’re going to be making a lot of very explosive materials in a very small space a very short distance from the heart of our very important capital city. Take the guards.”

“Your ‘guards’ are Rapid Response Division personnel, some with combat experience. Don’t they have better things to do than guard a warehouse?”

“As I said before, very important people plus very explosive plus very short distance. Take the guards.” 

“What kind of soldiers volunteer to guard a warehouse?”

“The kind who get drunk while on liberty, get arrested by the local constables, and have a very awkward conversation with their CO about choosing between administrative punishment, a court-martial, or volunteering for a less than popular assignment.”

“... and the Lieutenant?”

“All you need to know is that he is one of several people who feature prominently in my bad books this week. Satisfied?”

“... if you say so. They’ll need to keep quiet about what I’m working on, though.”

“Belessar, even I don’t want to know. I’m sure you’ll tell us when the time is right, but in the meanwhile, loose lips sink ships. Keep it to yourself.”

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I stood in front of the array of raw materials that were meant to form a Type Five fusion reactor. 

Ingots of hafnium carbonitride sat at the base, surrounded by bricks of tungsten carbide. Neatly stacked sheets of nanofibre weave and a spool of cord, accompanied by a slab of fullersteel exactly fifty kilos in weight and the gravitic controy arrays from my stocks. 

“Is that a Fujitsu GS81?” I asked Armand.

The man nodded proudly. “Just came out last year. Latest generation mainframe, costs a pretty penny, but lightning fast in computations.”

“Isn’t it also an energy hog?”

“Maybe. Will it take up much of the plant’s power?”

I chuckled. “Barely a fraction. It’s a pretty good computer - I might get one for my next combat suit.”

“Go ahead. We get a bulk discount from the Fujitsu folks.”

I chuckled to myself, and then it was time to test out Phased Assembly.

The first step in embracing a new MP-based skill is to gather your will, and choose what you want to exercise the skill on. It wasn’t hard doing so - I’d plenty of practice, as the little exercise with the Boar suits had shown - but getting it right was always a bit tricky. 

Reaching out to each of the stacks of components mentally, I focused a thin line of MP on each. Blue tendrils of light sprung out between me and the various piles of material, forming an intricate web that touched each and every item in the list.

I forced myself to exercise Phased Assembly, only to be rewarded by a prompt.

YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO CRAFT AN OBJECT. WHICH BLUEPRINT DO YOU WISH TO USE?

Type Five Fusion Reactor, I thought silently to myself. 

TYPE FIVE FUSION REACTOR SELECTED.

MP REQUIRED: 800,000

UTILIZING MP RESERVE.

At one stroke, the entirety of my MP pool drained, leaving me feeling - listless. 

MP OBTAINED: 5,822 x 10% = 582.

REMAINING MP NEEDED: 799,418.

DIRECT MP REGEN TO PHASED ASSEMBLY?

Yes, I silently thought.

MP REGEN DIRECTED TO PHASED ASSEMBLY. 

DIRECT MP REGEN SUSPENDED. 

PHASED ASSEMBLY RATE: 56.8 MP / SECOND.

ESTIMATED TIME REMAINING: 03:54:35 

The lines of blue light thickened, and the items on the factory floor began to melt. Gradually, a layer of solid black began to form on the ground in front of me - the base of the new reactor. 

More blue light rushed into the circle, the ever-hungry maw of the skill consuming all that I fed into it. Layer by layer, the molecules that made up the raw materials took their place in the new device.

That was what Phased Assembly was doing - using telekinesis to manipulate matter at the molecular level, creating something new by re-assembling molecules into the shape I wanted. Or needed.

No… that was what ALL my engineering and crafting skills did. I wasn’t simply willing things into existence, I was moving atoms around to create the items I wanted! 

Which was why my blueprints mattered. They weren’t simply designs - they were instructions for my power to perform thousands or millions of telekinetic movements at the same time!

Normally, when I created an object from my blueprints, it appeared in a flash. This time, the object in question was large enough that I couldn’t assembly it in the fraction of a second needed - which meant I had enough time to actually SEE what was happening. 

Namely, that Mental Energy Points were simply a large-scale application of telekinesis - at a level that no-one had ever imagined before.

Was this true of all inventors, or just myself? Worth checking.

YOU HAVE GAINED A FUNDAMENTAL INSIGHT INTO THE MECHANISM OF YOUR POWERS THROUGH OBSERVATION AND REFLECTION. +1 WISDOM. 

… Always happy to get good news, especially since it had been a while since the last one. 

Meanwhile, I continued to pump MP into the Reactor’s frame. Layer by layer. One by one. 

I hadn’t realized how absorbed I was in the process until Armand spoke. “Is this going to take a while?”

“It’ll take…” I glanced at the countdown on my interface, “three hours and forty-seven minutes longer. For this reactor alone.”

“Well, unless you need any help, I think we’d best get going. Terry, for god’s sake put that camera down.”

“I’m making a record for history,” protested Terry. 

“If you don’t stop recording, you’re going to be history. All of you dimwits, stop gawking and get back to work. Belessar, if you need anything more, just give a holler.”

As the others drifted off to their own jobs, I stifled a laugh. Couldn’t blame them, though. When you’re using Phased Assembly, it’s quite demanding - a lot of concentration goes into making sure that the MP flow is stable and just keeps going in there. Like driving.

However - much like the act of driving - watching someone else do it is downright boring. 

Despite Armand’s warning, Terry hung around for a while longer recording. I decided to ignore it. After all, it wasn’t as if anyone was deeply interested in videos about industrial manufacturing….