Page 7 of Dark Shaman: Love Found
"We can spread the manufacturing across multiple facilities, with no one location producing enough to raise suspicion."
"What about the assembly? The training? You can't hide an army of humans training to fight in exoskeletons in a warehouse in Detroit."
"No, but you can hide them on an island." Kalugal's smile turned predatory. "My father did the smart thing and bought an island for his army of immortals. What's to prevent us from doing the same? We find one that is private and isolated, and where we can easily control access. We can set up the final assembly and training facilities there."
"Your father's island would be perfect for that," Kian said. "Except we need the army to take the island in the first place."
"Precisely." Kalugal pulled out his phone, scrolling through something. "Private islands go up for sale more often thanyou'd think. The Caribbean alone has dozens of possibilities. We'd need something with infrastructure—power, water, basic facilities—but sufficiently isolated that our activities won't draw attention."
Kian uncapped the Scotch and poured it into the two glasses he had brought with him. "How many suits are we talking about? A hundred? A thousand?"
"The end goal is tens of thousands, but we can start with five hundred." Kalugal took his glass. "That's enough to test the idea with a significant force, but not so many that production becomes impossible to hide. We can scale up once the systems are in place."
"Five hundred humans trained to operate military-grade exoskeletons." Kian took a sip of the Scotch. "That's not a small undertaking. Where do we find that many people willing to disappear and join a private army?"
Kalugal waved the hand holding the cigarillo. "Don't worry about that. There are plenty of aimless males who are looking for something to give their lives meaning. Ex-military are ideal. They often find it difficult to reintegrate into civilian life, and they are also disillusioned with traditional service." Kalugal swirled his drink thoughtfully. "We'd need to be careful with screening, of course, but that's not a problem given that we can get into people's heads. If Edna is willing to help, her probe could be very beneficial as a secondary screening. We have to be careful not to recruit anyone connected to existing power structures."
"Or anyone who might balk when they realize they'retraining to fight monsters, which is what the enhanced super-soldiers are," Kian added.
Still, he liked the idea more than he was willing to admit to Kalugal. He could have the army he needed to defend the village and fight Navuh's forces much faster than he'd ever thought possible.
"Those are details we can handle as they arise," Kalugal said. "The point is, this is more feasible than waiting for William and Kaia to perfect artificial soldiers." Kalugal leaned back, studying Kian over his glass. "What do you think?"
Kian was quiet for a long moment, weighing the proposal.
It was ambitious, risky, and would require resources on a scale they'd never attempted before. It was also their best shot at creating a force capable of standing against Navuh's enhanced soldiers in a reasonable timeframe.
"Those engineers from Mechanicals Inc.," he said finally. "Do you have specific targets in mind?"
Kalugal's grin was answer enough. "I may have done some preliminary research. Dr. Sarah Weng is their lead mechanical engineer She specializes in joint articulation and power distribution systems. Marcus Ross, software integration. He's the one who solved the latency problem between human movement and suit response. And Judy Torres, materials science. She developed a composite armor that's forty percent lighter than previous versions while maintaining the same protective qualities."
"You've done your homework."
"I've been thinking about this for a while," Kalugal admitted. "The Odu project is brilliant, but we need something we can implement now, not in five years or a decade from now."
"Assuming we can acquire these engineers, how long before we have production-ready designs?"
"With their expertise and our existing prototypes? I assume that we can have a combat-ready design in about six months. If we can use the same facility that produced the exoskeletons we have now to manufacture these, then we can have the new modified suits ready in under a year. If we need to scatter production between different outfits and assemble them in our own plant, we will need a little over a year. If you want everything built from scratch in one place, it might take a little longer than that. In the meantime, we can start recruiting and training humans on the suits we have."
It was aggressive but possible. Kian had seen what motivated engineers could accomplish when given unlimited resources and a clear goal. "It won't be cheap."
Kalugal shrugged. "I'm willing to fund it if you are not going to limit who I can sell the suits to. There are communities all over the world that desperately need protection and could use them."
Kian snorted. "Are you trying to sell me on the idea by pretending to be a humanitarian suddenly?"
Kalugal affected an offended expression and put a hand over his chest. "You wound me, cousin. I care deeply about all the poor sods who get slaughtered all over the globebecause they are members of the wrong tribe or the wrong religion or whatever else their savage neighbors don't like. That doesn't mean that I have to provide these excellent protective weapons for free. Someone else will foot the bill."
That was more like Kalugal, and even though Kian could see a number of problems with the idea of supplying these kinds of weapons to warring tribes, he also saw merit in giving people the ability to protect their families.
But that was all peripheral. What Kalugal was suggesting was an elegant solution to their limited numbers problem. Guardians could provide leadership and training, while human operators in exoskeletons could provide the bulk of the force.
Kalugal pulled out his phone again and showed Kian a real estate listing. "Look at this—private island in the Bahamas, two hundred acres, existing infrastructure including a small airstrip. The previous owner was some tech billionaire who got divorced and needs to sell all of his possessions for the settlement agreement. It's been on the market for eight months, which means that he's getting desperate by now."
Kian studied the images. The island had potential. It wasn't isolated or impossibly remote, but it could be kept private. "Price?"
"Thirty-two million. That's pocket change given that some Beverly Hills mansions are going for more. It's a good investment."
"Islands are typically not a great investment, but our motives are not purely financial."
