baileysummers

Brandon, Bailey, Cindy, Jenna, Megan, Stephanie McKinnion were gone for us in regular time eight months with no clues other than the flash the dryvere core sent off as it vanished.

Most of us went batshit because it’s the kids. And we pooled who we could for space searches and who we could mystically and then some of us tried Ryan’s homeworld and hitting some of these dimensional markets where we might hear rumors, anything we could possibly find and I was drinking with the other “dads” and we talked about the Rifter Earth effects on changing metas and stuff to mega class and realized that there’s a good chance of them reaching us, some how some way the kids are smart and tough and the others are with them.

I shifted my focus on who was with who and what scenarios I could see them in. Count them, Synestry’s people and go from there…I had to think that wherever they are they’re trying to get home, and they might need backup when they do.

So I start training and it’s training professionally and we bring in Drey as a healer for magic and such and he’s not like Lani no, but he will heal us when we train and spar when we’re hurt and he’ll cast curses for us.

Training gets harder when you’re laced with weakness, slowing and confusion magics and wearing weighted gear.

Add in sparring old cop bastards in Northern Gun Power armor suits and both of them learning way too fast as they try and take me down, every weekend…pushing my focus and drive harder and harder.

Then actually learning from some of senpai's other old men. Helix and Sapphire come back from Avalon and add to the roster and the sparring.

It’s hard forms of Karate like Tang-Su and Kyokushin that’s that Japanese art of breaking one and sempai helps teach me because Kendo, Zanji, Judo and Kyokushin are pillar forms in swordmaster clans and it was going to be a surprise for her and I started light lessons in all of it just so I’d know things with Sasha and The kids. I needed some real training aside from Boxing and Prison yard fighting. I need to step things up a little at least and I pulled Kailynn in when he was getting too freaked out, He has nightmares about Jenna and doing his reg stuff while being Dad even if they’re with his folks during this. He needed the venting and I needed the training and he could show me whole new Sylvan fighting stuff.

And with several of our heaviest hitters I was the tank without Jenna or Victory and once word had spread then well a lot of the bastards than might not have tried stuff, tried stuff.

And Sasha and Aerin with her took up as much of Wraith's patrols and things too.

Fucking Brandon’s a eugenic able to go without sleep for days can function apparently like a normal person on four hours, two in a pinch, the hole he left him alone was huge and honestly in a bad place in society.

Victory and her speed gone missing and not just criminal stuff but we clocked her at two rescues an hour average from like accidents of other non criminal things.

When we got word and the gates for the kids were being cast I got geared heavy. An Vibro knight's sword, Modern shield, Borg light body armor I’m strong enough to wear…, it all felt like I had been doing this all my life and I think that some of this was happening even before the battle with Raevok the Seren Destroyer.

I fought him five times not winning but still able to recover as Jenna or Victory battled him at full power and everything else coming through gates in the leyline storm.

Ajara was there and helped for her daughter and we did this and John Wisdom’s estate and the super nexus and between buff and healings and armor spells he kept us alive and fighting.

The entire time Rynn had her fleeing heavy ships firing steady at the rifts to keep us gone and sent shock troops through on a suicide mission.

It got bad a couple times when he downed me the ground troops would dog pile and things were bubbling up as I was getting flashbacks of monsters and enemies and torture and I went on rages between those memories and my Darkstar memories and shit I did in fights bubbled up and I literally beat my way free to go fight again.

I was on my way for round six when Jenna took a power surge I seen from her kids and punched a hole into his chest and he held her inside himself dying them Jenna finished it with a Seren bomb inside of him and got hit with his cosmic energy shockwave so strong it killed the gates and we all rallied to deal with the stranded shock troops who fought to the death and when we started taking captives they started trying ending it and we saved about a dozen.

Bailey cloaked out as soon as the NHDF started giving orders and Bailey put his people first and the rest of us by refusing to pass over their hard won belongings.

Then he began Cindy style beating them with the law, his titles, The Alliance Charter and he was a great fighter as a kid and a second or a squire when he left at 13 he’s 16 now and in command, undercover and there was something else because he was polite with generals but he had this feeling of having seen this so many times that they could even feel through the coms, he’s cloaked, and right, the law it the law.

Aristocrat… that’s it, not like the petty ones you hear about but those people that you meet that you can feel run whole countries or colonies or systems.

It was like watching Cindy when she has the right or the means behind her she will circle you and hit you with laws and policies and subsections and it’s like watching an experienced boxer only socially and they could only beat him by cheating and turning on us which would be AA vs the NHDF and then someone got it wasn’t just him doing this but Victory and Wraith were back and were added to the com chat.

He did negotiate and we had a bunch of talks over what to turn over and what should be safe to turn over and landed the ships in the sylvan embassy islands and negotiated and still hold a grudge meanwhile his story gets out and people of his generation sort of rallied.

But like last time that cosmic energy from the Seren shook my spark enough it was like an earthquake hitting me in PTSD and rushes and hits of memories that I remember being a knight, in a star age, fighting monsters, Magog, Skryxx, Dread… the Dread are the only ones I knew before but feelings came with memories and wars fought and enemies at home and all the political stuff and I talked to Kailynn about it and we do a mystical look.

He patterns us to Quest Drift which is where Jenna’s dad lives and his N’yai clan and he has a lab there and uses things designed by Robin Quest Jenna’s half brother that sees math like Amber and when he’s not doing that or being on navigation he’s a self taught tech mage.

And one of those things being piece by piece a tech magic med lab that lets him look hard and mystically and S’rai Jenna sister did telepathy with me really carefully but when with these fragments she teaches me meditations and picturing and is willing these bits to respond to me.

Find out just what’s going on with me and Kailynn and James Quest is the best one for this he’s as science nerd as Jaimes was an elite jock. Like Jaimes but less built but still that look and instead of athletic the guy’s got three PHD’s plus whatever he’s learned from out here and he’s a Star-pirate or on the crew.

Select one and explore it until I can do it on myself and turns out it’s a good way to look back and take a longer or different route then before and she helped me get better there as well and when I get stuck she takes my to the biggest gym and fighting gym on the drift and I got to work out with aliens and mercs of all kinds and there’s classes even, it’s like a mall but for training and I’m ripping that off.

Ark City and PC that’d be great in the busy downtown cores.

I learned a shitload more motion exercise, body core stuff and Jesus zero grav workouts where you use lowered or zero gravity and the room or the ship and it introduced a hundred other options.

I remembered flexi tech while doing this and listening to podcasts I had saved up and one was talking about crystalline engineering and the twins helped me get it the next day and Prime’d call it a Manipulation where you use Will to move a molecular recipe and it’s a crystal sheet with bio-electric power and interface and it works because crystals want to grow and many are energy related.

Prime is who I’m calling the guy Mom designed me after, Darkstar on a bunch of reflection was someone else, something else?

I think a lot of this Seren caused cosmic energy exposure rattled my spark again and these things are his.

It’s weird knowing the tech for this, it’s weird that I’m using power to Sense and put together all the particles for it like a recipe.

Bailey gets some of his obsession from me my mind went off on tangents that first day on ideas that I journalled.

The first thing I made was a bluetooth guitar pick and when you think of playing and the cords you can air-guitar out of usable speakers.

Then yes of course a guitar but then other things… drink glasses that display the ingredients inside.

I can make inert just grow crystals as well and that’s easier but that’s fiber optic cable, tiles, pipes, shingles, garden pots and items.

S’rai pulled me out of that too, it’s handy having her here a strong telepath and mystic.

I had a few old man moments as Jenna’s much younger sibs are fully grown adults now.

Sasha is forging me armor and like met took time off.

Some of her and Aerins stuff replacing Wraith was very gang oriented and that gets bloody from our fights but between them and innocents involved and Sasha is a samurai first so effectively fighting…They both had to put a lot of people down especially when the better gangs have really illegal weapons. Ultra tech stuff is even illegal in the galactic market.

Which meant The Fabricators and those assholes build custom Merc gear that the villain's consistently use and we’ve even faced off vs their security and extraction teams.

And these guys are the guys that invented Flexi-steels and make Nate class guns and hold out and they have borgs, exo-suits and metas in their payroll including design we think, seriously advanced stuff.

It got rough and now we’re both on Break and actually mental health leave and then will use backlogged time off and maybe we’ll see what’s going on with him and this place and we took our family ship a fusion powered four floor cargo hauler that Aerin and I got from Alex and restored it but made it designed to be really nice and living based and we have lots of rooms for short trips and Aerin and some friends are coming to help and maybe build their own space here and what’s not in the “Open” is in the caves and the mushroom.

To get to his place we just land but it’s a meteor crater that eroded out from under and it’s connected to the lake belts here and has its own lake with a few decent beaches.

“Coventry town” is pretty much the only town with people building in the cliffs. So booze, night market food, general markets and it’s also where dwarves built in and used the leftovers as building stone outside especially given access to mega crete and it looks less like a refugee slave camp and more a cared for colony getting its feet.

We land and go over the rules and I open up the ship going into camped mode and we’re not expecting attack so armor plates slide back and different extensions come out and I build a yard on the landing pad and lattice and post fences and a couple new grills I build and a pizza oven and nice deck furniture and even a couple fridges. The cargo bay becomes my shop and there’s more than enough room to come and go and Sasha helps while Aerin is gone with her friends and the plan is to support and wait and if this looks like a place he’s going to stay then we’ll build something.

We actually took advantage of being alone several times and we hadn’t done that that much in a while and we settled in and started helping.

I saw the Glass swan come in and The Sylvans came through some I know some are surprising to see like the Skywood contingent and the people on it.

Vallen’s here to meet them, he’s here sometimes helping when he’s not taking over the his clan’s runnings now and he helped build a few good eating places and is one of the few that’s been to Aera.

And he has enough of his uncle in him that he gets along really well with the dwarves.

I wasn’t expecting Kiera and Kiero together and in uniforms and part of the Skywood Royal Guard and they’re together with another young one with the commander colors and Skydancing and he had a young man with him as a squire and he was a Bastion. And then Princess Shaya coming through dressed for the chiller atmosphere here but in rangery, hunting in the fall clothes.

All the Chases of course think it’s summer and half of them are in swimwear.

His generation was coming here, following him here almost, Aerin’s kind of included in that as the next closest generation and some of course came and checked it out.

I sit with Kai and I text and I contact the others and that means mystically I’m not cut off here since the phone uses tech magic to dial out to our specific phones.

D-phones came as gifts from Plato.

I take a few alchemy pills that the herbalists make that’s sort of a boosted mixture of herbs like “Ninja pills” when in reality it’s painkiller and tea and headache herbs and we have a few green talents with us we have decent medicine and a functioning hospital.

Given we needed to build, mine and farm we needed a place and well with enough healers, doctors and nurses in the family we have a really strange mix of things but it’s a functional hospital.

But yeah the rush of memories and things just meeting Alex and seeing his father in him and remembering things and I just don’t really fight the rush of it I let it go, flood, I just be calm as it happens and I’ll clean it up after it’s done.

It’s a good thing I’m obsessive and really good at being task centred and driven.

Coventry which we named it since no one ever did is a strange planet, Earth sided with no major bodies of water but a thriving shrub and mesa based bio-sphere with a lot of live in these caves that absolutely cover the planet and are shelter and rain catches and out of the elements and wind growing areas, the soil here is iffy at best and suited for prairie and midwestern animals.

So we settled in the biggest collections of caves which seem to be around the equator and are even connected by tunnels for the most part.

WE are in a mile long and really wide tunnel into a huge crater that was created by a large meteor and we live in the cliffs there dug in and interlaced with walkways and our own cut tunnels and we’re living within a massive tower shroom thing we think Kai planted and the fungus grew through the caves and it’s still alive on the surface and in other places but here it’s dead and dried out and it lined the cave with like this mushroom hard fake wood.

And the fungus’s water systems let us jury rig plumbing and water pumps.

We got and we still get a bunch of donations and I used most of the cash and money I had on hand in getting supplies for here.

Magic and portals and just being sneaky helps and Jinn is a great thief in salvaging stuff having grown up on Rifts Earth more than New Haven.

I kinda gotta do that as I’m actively disliked by the NH government because I stole Three Alien Starships I salvaged and had the political power to have them be mostly hands off right now.

Right now.

But I’m followed and tailed and so are other members of the family sometimes until Victory gets pissed off and we start pointedly doing surveillance of people in control of giving the orders on us.

Wraith.

But 5000 souls and animals and different races with special needs are with us, like people that live in or on the water and under it. I’ve an easy 800 people that are aquatic required in order to live between different races and bio-mods done.

That all needs special things, gear, food, and us adjusting.

The same for Dwarves like I said to Roxy we’ve Titan Dwarves, Rune ones, Pandorans who call themselves Salt Dwarves and are sailors and fisher folk or were, Gnomes and other kinds of small folk must be over 2000 people.

Sylvans and elves and different kinds of humans from all over the cosmos and some just born into captivity and just learning now. But Sylvans and elves added another 2000 altogether to our numbers.

The rest are varying kinds of humans and there’s enough handful pockets of people that our Misc is about 300 people.

So farming we can do but just not really at a trade level as of yet and well everything costs money or most things and buying resources tapped me out.

Thankfully I’ve a lot of smart people around me and the Chase clan and other family here in my age group so even if I have a good idea I have people who I can get help from even if just verbally.

Like a vibroblade tiller that chews hard stone down to soil and sand and dust, not cheap to build and it’s a custom unit with only a few of them so far but add in regular soil and bags of moss or potting soil and compost.

The soil here is easy added too and we end up doing that mostly and we get a rainy season and it’s cold but no real winter here so we can still grow things and rainy season is a great time to plant rice and let things flood naturally.

I had to bring in a lot of things, farm animals we have mostly rodents here and possum like things and small breeds of deer here and there in isolated herds and we have a few natural predators here as well with birds of all sorts and this planet is a haven of things that den up and live off the roots and mushrooms and we have rats, serpent rats and mice and all those things because they have homes and loads of food.

Rat and mice are not bad really cooked crispy or bbq and grilled so you can crunch through the smaller ones.

Still we needed stable food so there’s loads of chickens, ducks, geese, quails, and small sized chicken breeds, pigs and goats and sheep, the grazers that can eat anything and are good for food and milk and fur/wool.

I even bought a cargo bay load of Llama’s and Alpaca’s since they’re perfect for here.

Also potatoes… once we have the friend mushroom and the local stone ground in with the soil potatoes like it and we get normal sized potatoes by we get really great yields in numbers.

And I have stocked this place several times with fish.

We only have fresh water here so we have to bring in sea food and salt is really hard to naturally come by mining. I get mine from The Salt coast by shuttle and literal shovel and barrels.

I leave some mined gold with the local village elders that we’ve been pulling from space.

This planet has a pretty mining useful moon and the second planet and the first planet have small asteroid belts between them and there’s a much bigger one further out that are more common and we use one of out ships and we mine for gold, silver, iron, anything we can mine pretty easily and sell at drifts and colony markets for galactic credits.

I use galactic credits so people can buy stuff from the Coventry Market store or from each other and people get basic numbers and credits even if they never had money of their own.

It gives them goals and things to do and strive for and look forward to and it really helps me run things if we all use this system for buying things and getting people on board.

Still my want list is huge and sitting here mentally going over things for them and us I am adding things in general to my shopping lists.

Family will show with things and Dad especially as he won’t waste the trip and then it’ll depend on what’s going on with the rest of this.

My enemies I get, things I pissed off as rakasha in Ryntarro and things I pissed off or my family did in New Haven and other places.

I know them,I know those foes better than these old ones that I and Alex might have or Kai.

This will be unknown.