Star Force: Marauders (SF63) Read Free

the Human indicated, scooping it up and carrying it over to several dump
sites around the perimeter, forming a ridge-like mound that started to stretch
around the square edge of the clearing as they continued to add more and more material
to it.
    When they got a stretch of nearly half a mile long
cleared out from the area in front of the ramp, Mandy ordered the next set of
crews to come out. Several small hovering craft flew down carrying stacks of
panels which they first deposited at the foot of the ramp. With the rest of the
small convoy holding on the ramp and within, floating in place patiently, a few
Kiritak clad in their own environmental armor unloaded and unfolded the ‘road’
plates, further scraping and smoothing the exposed areas of ground before
laying down the first section, which was 12 meters square after unfolding and
1.3 meters thick.
    When that one was set they added three more on the
sides of it, excluding where the ramp now was, with the convoy beginning to
come down and unload more plates as more and more workers were given workspace
to use. They continued to add to the grid, locking them together like legos and creating an offloading plaza that they then began
expanding into much narrower roads that stretched around the perimeter of the
MCV and eventually connected to each piece of machinery that Mandy had went
around and activated.
    When a road spur finally connected, the Kiritak
workers would come with it, traveling on the smooth paving stones and avoiding
the mass of muck around them, with the ground water now leaking into the small
trenches alongside and outlining the roads with tiny, muddy moats.
    When the roads hit the coring machine Mandy returned along with the work crew, seeing to it that they got
underway. She didn’t need to issue any orders other than to get to work, so the
tech just watched from a distance, standing on the edge of the loading platform
the road plates had made nearby as several mechs waited beside her.
    With a huge lurch a drilling pylon dove down from the
center of the machine like a spike and ate into the muck beneath. Within a few
moments that material was shot out another arm on the machine where it fell
into an open collection crate that was the equivalent of a huge bucket. Mandy
watched it fill up, then the spout shut off and a mech walked up to remove it
as the mud and dirt, soon to become mixed with rock from below, began flowing
out another arm into more waiting crates so there would be no delay.
    The mech behind Mandy picked up an empty crate and
moved it into the open slot while the full one was carried away down the road
then off it and onto the mech tracks that led to the perimeter mound. The
Kiritak at the controls tipped the crate over and dumped the material on top of
what was already there, piling it up higher in a wall that would eventually
encircle the construction site.
    Mandy liked how procedure had them build their own
little fort out of the excess material, and this one was going to get some very
high walls before they were done. Those walls would eventually be cannibalized
by factories within the MCV and sorted into various useable materials, nearly
all of which would be shipped elsewhere. Everything in this base was going to
be built from parts shipped in, but the ground they were hollowing out had to
go someplace.
    Star Force would find a use for it somewhere on the
planet, in one form or another. That wasn’t Mandy’s concern, she was just here
to dig and build, which right now meant playing in the mud.
    As one of the walkers came back by her it stomped on
the road plates, leaving a trail of mud behind and smacking tiny bits of it up
into the air with each step, some of which splattered Mandy’s faceplate. The
energy shield covering it didn’t allow any of it to stick, but the rest of her
green armor was already dotted with brown and she knew it’d get far worse as
the day went on, especially given the rain clouds to the south that were