Chapter 174: City Infrastructure Team
Sanchez came back a little over an hour later leading two men and a woman.
"Coordinator, I have found our development team. These are Nigel, Fara, and Tymon. Nigel and Fara are architects, they were running a company in the Capital for a few years, before they were pulled for the Government’s design program all hush hush.
Tymon was the Urban Development Professor right here at the Academy. He was on Paternity leave, so he wasn’t at the school when everything started, but he was evacuated to the base when they realized that he awakened.
I had hoped that he would get one of those life skill classes, but no such luck. The Professor is an Earth Mage, which I suppose is somewhat related to his talents."
The Professor rolled his eyes, "The Sergeant has exceedingly high standards for what he expects of his fellow heroes. But fear not, I am capable both as a mage and as an urban planner. In fact, the opportunity to rebuild a city using this modern construction might be just the sort of project that I excel in.
You see, I often assign projects for students to improve upon our current urban sprawl methodology.
And now, we’re essentially starting from a clean slate, with the chance to bring three quarters of a million residents into the city, if we have the capability to prove that it’s worth relocating."
So, he had been fully briefed on the situation, and at least the basics of what their modern buildings could do. That would save them a lot of time on the development phase of the city’s growth phase.
But there were other things that needed to be done as well.
The repairs, obviously, but if they were going to move everyone into the city, they needed to do some infrastructure improvements.
"Welcome to the hall of heroes, Professor. My apologies, but most of the Academy will not be familiar to you anymore after the improvement. Only the main building wasn’t changed much, all the outbuildings and dorms are completely different than they were.
But there is some good news, I can send you information directly to your computers, or if you happen to have a smart device, like the one that I wear, which came from the System, you can inspect it there as well.
It’s all personal preference, but I like the three dimensional holograms that the smart device can project.
Why don’t you take some time to familiarize yourselves with what is available, while I go and double the number of defence turrets along the outer wall?"
"You’re not going to have the mages increase the wall height?" Professor Tymon asked.
Kalli shook her head. "I thought about it, but it would involve moving all the turrets, running new power lines, and a lot of work that would leave our mages exhausted for when the next attack starts at midnight.
I want everyone to be well rested by the time that the next wave starts, so that we can try to get two more waves done in the next twelve hour event.
That extra time is a blessing to us, and we can’t afford to pass up the chance to gain it again if there is any chance that we will actually be able to manage it."
The Professor nodded. "Should we consider the chance that that city will be breached when we design the street layout?"
Kalli nodded. "Make it defensible, but don’t make it a hassle to get around for the residents. Even just making clear firing lanes will be good for us, since the enemies we’ve seen so far don’t use any projectile weapons, and have limited magical attack range.
Ten or twenty metres with a skill is nothing compared to a heavy weapons emplacement."
That gave Kalli an idea. They could have the mages and riflemen team up at the start of the fight. If she gave them a bunch of actual heavy weapons, they would be able to clear a battlefield even more effectively than the pulse rifles and turrets.
It might be points intensive, but she had to spend a bunch of them anyhow.
{Pulse Cannon} heavy energy weapon. 50 damage per shot. 270 pulses per minute of continuous fire, uses 60 mana per minute. Holds 270 rounds of energy charge. Tripod mounted man portable weapon.
{100 Points}
Kalli smiled at the entry in the Rare Grade section of the weapon list, then decided that they would make a great addition to the lines.
The heavy energy weapon didn’t do much more per shot, but the fact that it could fire continuously if you kept pouring mana into it would turn it into a battlefield chainsaw. Just hold down the dual triggers and sweep the enemy lines.
But there was one more option.
If she purchased some light armoured personnel carriers, they had a turret on the top for a mounted weapon, and the Pulse Cannon would be perfect.
They would be able to send out patrols to clear enemies further from the walls, instead of waiting for everything to approach.
That had to count as controlling territory, no matter how the System looked at it.
Sanchez had one, so she would give his team one of the Pulse Cannons, then she could make more, and let the teams decide how to use them.
Instead of putting them behind a sandbag wall, they could put them on top of vehicles, and park slightly downhill of the top of the ridge, so the guns could fire down to some degree, but the vehicles wouldn’t be directly in the line of fire if the next enemy had ranged attacks.
"I would just like to say, for the record, that smile of yours is absolutely terrifying. I don’t know what you thought of, but I’m very glad that you’re on my side," one of the heroes joked.
Kalli laughed, and created a Pulse Cannon for Sanchez.
The weapon was over two metres long, and weighed over twenty kilos.
"For your team, since I know that they’ve got a thing for big guns. Or, you can drive your new APC, and give this one to Esmeralda. I bet that she would find a way to strap it to her Crocolisk.
In a moment I will requisition a bunch more vehicles of some sort with heavy weapons on top, so that we can have a mobile heavy weapons force for the next wave. The specs on that Pulse Cannon should make any special forces soldier smile but you’re going to need a solid mage to keep up with the drain."
The Professor laughed. "You know, there was a joke that my students used to make about wizards with guns."
One of the younger heroes giggled as she remembered the meme.
"You think you’ve won because I’m out of mana? I cast {Non Magic Missile}," she announced, complete with hand gestures for the wizard shouldering a rocket launcher.