NOVEL NEXT Chapter 15: 15
* * POV Outpost #6 * *
Strange happens occured today, a convoy of vehicles arrived at the outpost today they must have been sent from the nearby Fortress city of Trent but if that was the case they didn't they let us know they were coming by?
And with them they had brought a large quantity of preserved meats which they traded to us for seeds and other food stuffs that we attempt to grow out here in the outposts to provide ourselves with food when the hunting of beasts goes badly.
could it be that the fortress city is facing a food crisis right now?
That couldn't be right but maybe that's why they hadn't sent us a message beforehand about the visit to hide the crisis from everyone until it had gotten to a point where they could hide it no longer.
Since this was the belief and the soldiers who were all in the 3rd Tier did not confirm it but just provided us with vague answers when we tried to learn more it reinforced this belief in our minds.
Since anything that happened to Trent would eventually also affect our outpost we happily traded with the soldiers, without even seeking a profit either, while getting more reserves of meat was always a good thing, offering up some of our best seed would surely hurt us in the coming year but if the larger city could benefit from this and increase the overall crop yield perhaps the excess could be sent out to us as additional supplies since the outposts most of the time were just barely staying alive.
Constantly under threat of attack by the mutant beasts, it had already become a well established fact that the life expectancy of an outpost was only about 10 years.
And only those who managed to awaken could possibly escape this fate as they'd be the only ones standing a chance to be accepted citizenship inside the citys.
* * Alpha POV * *
What a glorious day, this new outpost seems to have already learned the glory of our Supreme Commander, when we came to conduct trade of the preserved excess mutant beast meats the citizens happily traded with us, though some were shocked to learn we wanted to get seeds as our accepted form of payment, but in the end they aquiesed to our request and from the trade of our 400lbs of dried meats we managed to gain bags of 8 different crops that just from a glance you could tell was very high quality seed.
This against for a sign of respect for the commander, rather than giving us only the most base of seeds from which we would need to raise up into superior crop they were giving us high quality from the start that would not require the time and effort from the commander to develop it into a superior crop.
The commander is truly great isn't he!
Plus his worries about the quality of food in the base will be alleviated, while the army can survive on the MRE rations, it pains us all to know the commander is forced to eat the same as his men, but then the words of the commander to us before this mission resonated deeply within our hearts.
His trade was meant not only to gain food stuffs for himself but also to provide to us in his army as well as the slaves who dared to come attempt to cause the commander harm.
If it was possible to become even more loyal to the commander than we already absolutely were every member of the trade mission present when the commander spoke those words would surely have increased to the maximum possible value if they weren't already there to start with.
True to the commanders foresight once we'd completed trade and rejected offer to spend the night in the outpost we set off heading away from the base, this was to throw possible pursuers off our trail.
While it wasn't very difficult to hide the signs of our movements when moving on foot, the same could not be said for our convoy, even if we travelled single file to disguise the total number of our vehicles the treads would still cause the land to bear changes showing exactly the path that we took, however the commander had already solved this problem.
If we first led the tracks far enough away until we passed into an area where even wheel based vehicles would not leave any signs we could then shift our path back towards the base, unless the adversary was willing to search such a large swath of land we would simple appear to have disappeared from their eyes, as the only guess they could follow would be that we continued to head straight on like we had been up until that point.
While it was troublesome to waste the time to hide our destination like this, in the end our secrecy was the request of the commander so we obeyed.
* * Jake POV * *
The trade group had returned and Alpha had done a very good job, our excess monster meat had been converted into enough crop seeds to easily plan close to 100 acres of open land, and thanks to the engineers now having access to a tech centre our method of farming had gotten even better.
Using Ore trucks first we ferried a truly massive amount of dirt and from that it was placed into a couple of buildings that the engineering core had built, while not the same as you'd expect in the modern age due to our limited access to iron and from that steel.
But even still their ability to create 3 story cement builds was amazing, each of these floors were filled with the dug up earth and the soldiers began to till the soil, thanks to the tech center we were capable of developing simple grow lights to simulate the outdoor sun to facilitate indoor growing, while in the other building a series of water channels were created similar to a rice paddy field and within this flowing water repository a simple hydroponic growing operation had begun.
This was our experiment using half the seed in each build we would be able to learn about if this method of farming was possible first off and if so, we could further develop it with fertilizers and heaters so that year round production was possible without causing the moved earth to die.
Power was our biggest worry in this new world but second to that was food, for without food power was meaningless since we'd just die, and while the MRE's produced by the system could keep us alive there was still the worry about eating them year round as I don't think i'd ever heard anyone actually trying to do that before.