《Manaforged Robotics [Sci-fi/Fantasy Isekai]》


 Prologue, Part 1

    Prologue, Part 1


    18th of January, 2636


    Terran Federation Fringe, Tarminia System


    Geostationary Orbit over Tarminia Prime


    "Status report." Said Sapphiria as the planet turned under her feet, seemingly suspended in the void of space.


    To anyone looking, it would have seemed like a young woman, with flowing, raven black hair and piercing purple eyes, adorned in the black and crimson uniform of a Federation admiral, was just sailing through the void. Of course, no one could have seen it. It was a mental projection, born out of the ship''s computer cores.


    "The elevator is in full working order, and the local government has declared itself fully satisfied of its installation." Answered Cia, and the AI looked over her shoulder at the...simulacrum, was the proper word?


    Sapphiria was a fully fledged, sapient Federation artificial intelligence. Made out of modified and digitalized human neural patterns, she was capable of everything humanity had been, with the advantage of being unburdened by the inefficiencies and weaknesses of biological processes.


    Cia...or more properly, ''Carrier Integrated Assistant'' was a program complex enough to pass off for someone. She just couldn''t think creatively. Which was her entire purpose, an assistant here to do the busywork, backing up ''true'' AIs, and if push came to shove could piggyback some of her host''s processes to gain something approaching creativity.


    "Very good. Prepare the fleet, we shall break orbit within the hour." Cia coughed, and Sapphiria sighed. She would have to remember to dial the simulacrum''s mannerisms back down. It always...creeped her out when she acted close to what a human would have. "Yes?"


    "The local government has requested your presence for the opening ceremonies, as well as a proper farewell gala."


    "Send them the usual excuses."


    "I have. They were undeterred."


    Sapphiria sighed. Great. More pomp and medals, thanks and stars knew what else.


    Though she guessed she couldn''t blame them. Most worlds on the outer edge of Federation space -''half forgotten client states'', as apt as it was, wasn''t exactly a polite way to describe them- were low population, relatively poorly developed planets. They had the technology to reach space and develop there, even with their relatively primitive tech base they were still centuries ahead of when humanity had begun colonizing Sol in earnest during the twenty-first century. What they didn''t have was the population. A few million people could produce a fair amount of engineers and skilled technicians, but even a handful of single fusion powered shuttles, with the industry to support them, could eat up personnel frighteningly quickly.


    Most of these worlds thus retreated within the bounds of their atmospheres, only using a few cheap rockets to keep their satellite network up, and becoming more or less cut off from the greater galaxy.


    She was changing that. The Federation had launched another one of its outreach initiatives, holding out its hand towards worlds that had been established specifically to be as far away and as independent as possible from humanity''s dominant power. And this particular one meant bringing orbital elevators to them. Reliable, durable, and more importantly extremely maintenance light elevators that could sustain a pathetic amount of cargo, but still light years ahead of what most of these worlds could manage. Such systems weren''t hard for the Federation''s Core Worlds to manufacture now, but they had been borderline impossible when most of the colony ships had set out.


    So she came bearing gifts, and more or less reopened these worlds to the galaxy, and the flows of trade, advanced technology and development opportunity that came with it. No kidding they were treating it as one of the greatest milestones of their worlds, because it was.


    Except she was already fifteen worlds down her list and if she had to sit down for another series of speech by indolent politicians she was shoving someone out of an airlock. Probably herself.


    "Very well." Grated out the admiral. "Prepare an honor guard and protection detail."


    "Yes ma''am." Cia bowed, and vanished.


    Sapphiria stayed there, watching the world below for a few minutes, before angrily gesturing, dispelling the simulation, and focusing her attention onto her flagship''s bridge, summoning her holographic avatar.


    The bridge was pristine, and utterly empty. As a full AI, she didn''t need humans to help man her vessels, and she had the inherited ability to be able to expand and control a multitude of ships at once, almost infinitely. Once upon a time that ability was feared by humanity, and most of her fellows, but now that they had encountered what dwelt inside the void...


    And yet, despite all this, she, a full fleet admiral of the Terran Navy, was stuck in the middle of nowhere, moving orbital elevators to Fringe worlds.


    They could have sent a construction ship. Or hell, a damned cruiser. Thought the AI. They could have done the job just as well, if not better.


    But no, one had to show the flag with a full carrier group. Which was her flagship, the Starprism, as well as two battlecruisers, six light cruisers and around eighty or so escort vessels of various sizes, meant to provide whatever support those worlds might need, which usually meant cleaning up the orbitals of dead satellites or discarded rocket parts.


    To a world that saw perhaps a single starship a year, if not less, that was a veritable armada. Which, of course, was the entire point, reminding the might and power of the Federation to backwaters, while giving them a taste of its benevolence.


    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    She flicked her hand as she received a notification, and Cia appeared on the bridge, her hologram showing a white haired, orange eyed woman that would almost look like her sibling if not for the blank look in her eyes and short hair.


    "The troops are gathered and the shuttle is ready."


    Sapphiria sighed. Her ''troops'' were automata, like everything else on her ships, but even if it meant she was just surrounded by drones the people below had certain expectations that had to be met.


    "Very well, prepare my ambassador for-" She froze, as she received an emergency ping.


    A full fleet admiral being saddled with a simple carrier group would have been a mortal insult. In her case it was alleviated by several factors.


    First and foremost, most fleet admirals were well into their second century of service to the navy. She wasn''t even a hundred years old, let alone spent that much time fighting for her country.


    Secondly, she was the daughter of Arcadia, in so far as parenting meant anything to AIs, constructed from her modified kernel. Arcadia who had founded the entire Federation, and still ruled it. Her other ''parents'', AIs that had contributed to her code with some of their own, counted about half of the most powerful AIs in the Federation. In her superiors'' minds, that second point handily explained the first, and the third.


    Because lastly, the Starprism was fresh out of the Aurora staryards in Earth''s orbit, and contained the best technology the Federation had to offer. Including what was pinging her now, one of the first mobile hyperspace scanner arrays in the field.


    Normally anything that allowed to peer into the dimension the Federation used to travel between the stars was the kind of gigantic sensor station that made capital ships look like gnats. A recent breakthrough now made them able to fit in a cube ''only'' a hundred meters on the side, one of which was sitting snuggly in what normally would have been the maintenance bay for an extra light cruiser on her flagship.


    She didn''t even order Cia to summarize what the array was sending, she pulled it up herself.


    And her eyes went wide.


    Thirty contacts, maybe more. At least four of those were cruiser sized.


    And that world saw a starship a year.


    "Send my regrets to the planetary governor, and tell them we have an emergency up here." Said Sapphiria as she began sending orders. "Stay light on the details, but imply there may be something coming."


    The compact hyperspace arrays weren''t a secret, or at least hadn''t been for a while, but she wasn''t keen on flaunting the fact that she had one either.


    "Yes ma''am." Said the simulacrum as her hologram flickered, the ship diverting power.


    The entire carrier group swung about as one, and the smaller vessels lit up their drives, forming a screen of point defence guns and scanners between her flagship and whatever was out there. A few seconds later, the more ponderous cruisers did the same, forming the classic pyramid formation of the Federation''s carrier warfare, with the flagship at the tip, hidden behind layers of escorts.


    It''s not like it was much use in a fight anyway. It wasn''t exactly useless either, but long gone were the days of starfighters, shattering navies with waves upon waves of smallcrafts. Now was the age of capital ships, and carriers had one primary purpose: be mobile staryards and maintenance hubs, to be able to sustain fleets of ships thousands of light years away from the nearest naval station. Which was why an engineering track officer like her had found herself in command of such a flotilla.


    The carrier shuddered as drones launched, spreading into a rough sphere, spying for anything trying to sneak up on her and, more importantly, providing a gigantic dispersed sensor array. They were more or less single use, but she was due for another exercise if nothing else, and push came to shove she could replace them.


    After a moment''s thought, she gave the order to move out. If it was another Federation flotilla, or some merchant caravan, then she could make light of it all and thank them for the impromptu exercise.


    If it was something more sinister though, there was no way she was putting the squishy biologicals down below in the line of fire if she could help it.


    The Tarminia system, that until then had been a sleepy backwater with the occasional stray radio transmission from its sole inhabited world, came alive. Ship drives on full power and their massive plumes of fusing plasma lit it up local space like a Christmas tree, the drones and ships drinking in every stray photon as they built a picture of local space, advancing towards the outer system.


    Sapphiria nodded as she looked at her ships'' status reports. One of the key reasons why there were no humans aboard, or any squishy biologicals, was because none of them could survive the accelerations her vessels used for battle. At least not without massive amounts of technological assistance, which took time to use and ate up volume and mass like nobody''s business.


    She loved the squishies, she really did, but they didn''t belong on a battlefield. Not anymore. Besides which, she''d seen firsthand how adept humans were at warfare, and unleashing them on unsuspecting foes when one had an alternative had to count as some kind of war crime.


    The contacts vanished off of the hyperspace array''s sensors.


    "Hyperspace emergence." Finally said Cia, as the light of their appearance into realspace finally crawled its way to them.


    They had clearly not expected anything to meet them, because they hadn''t the slightest bit of formation beyond the most basic of station keeping. Nor were they trying to obscure their numbers or capabilities by running dark or deploying counter measures. Once the flash of their emergence into realspace faded, her computer cores quickly collated all the data, and this time she let Cia do the honors.


    "Four cruiser sized vessels, reading three transports and one naval vessels. Twenty three smaller vessels, four frigate sized, ten destroyers, five corvettes. Most appear to be civilian in nature."


    "Civilian nature my ass." Said Sapphiria as she looked at the ongoing analysis. Contrary to popular belief, AIs didn''t ''know'' anything that was in their databanks or information system. just like humans they had an immediate and long term memory. Which meant that she didn''t just automatically ''know'' whatever was sent her way, though she could go through it at speeds no human could ever compete with. "Those ''transport'' have lasers or I''m a simulacrum. It''s a raiding fleet." She frowned. "An alien raiding fleet."


    "Composition appears to be mostly composed of former theocracy vessels." Confirmed Cia. "One of the cruiser sized transports and most of the destroyers are human designs however. Including several military."


    Sapphiria nodded. The Vanyr Theocracy had been the major galactic power for...what, six thousand years? Of the eight alien species humanity had encountered, seven had been bioengineered and ''uplifted'' by the Theocracy. A tenet of their religion was that they needed to bring the gift of sapience to the stars, and that had been interpreted as elevating other beings.


    Over the course of the millennia however, what had started as a remarkably benevolent effort had devolved into creating bioengineered slaves to fill their every need.


    The Theocracy had been partway through a horrific slave revolt and major schism when humanity had stumbled into them. Naturally, the corrupt upper echelons of the Theocracy had seen this non uplifted upstart species, unsullied by their ''guiding hands'', as an heresy, and tried to solve their own internal disputes by declaring a holy war against humanity.


    It hadn''t ended well. The stars from the Orion arm to the galactic core were littered with the wrecks of their navy, and now the Theocracy was nothing more than an unpleasant memory, its various successor states vying among themselves as humanity slowly carved its way through the galactic core.


    While many worlds beyond the Federation''s aegis were being preyed upon by the shattered remnants of its armada, fleets of dilapidated warships sustaining themselves through plunder, slavery and shaking down isolated planets for tribute.


    "Hail them." Said Sapphiria. "And prepare to fire. Let''s see if they''re smart enough to surrender. If they''re not..." She shrugged. She outmassed them almost four to one and she had three capital ships. They didn''t stand a chance. "Well, I suppose we could use the target practice."


    "Yes ma''am!"


    "And notify our dear friends planetside that things might get really ugly." Which of course would mean everyone would scramble to watch. "Command wanted us to show the might and benevolence of the Federation? Fine, let''s give everyone a live demonstration."

 Prologue, Part 2

    Prologue, Part 2


    Terran Federation Fringe, Tarminia System


    Approaching the Hyperspace Limit


    The reaction of the raiders to her carrier group''s presence had apparently been complete disbelief, at least initially. That, or they had been so confident they hadn''t bothered to do an initial sensor sweep and failed to notice almost a hundred warships accelerating at over thirty gravities towards them.


    Their current approach seems to be firmly in the realm of ''NOPE'' and running in the general direction of away, burning at almost twenty gravities, trying to buy themselves time. Time for their hyperdrives to cycle and dive back into FTL, ''Faster Than Light''.


    Given the fact that they almost certainly had to be using biological crews, that had to be hell on them, but all the better.


    A squishie being, well, squished, wasn''t going to be able to fight very effectively. Not that she needed the advantage, but her mother always preached one had to always stack the deck.


    "Any response?" Asked the AI, and Cia shook her head.


    "Negative. Our hails have gone unanswered."


    "Time for a more universal protocol then." She moved her hologram''s hand towards one of the button on the command chair it was ''sitting'' on, mimicking the action to press it. It wasn''t necessary at all, the ships were more extension of herself than anything, but she was her mother''s daughter and the craving for grand, theatrical gestures ran deep inside her code. That, and artificial or no, at her core she was still a simulation of a human neural network and there was only so much she could separate herself from that before she courted outright insanity. "Odin, Thor, open fire."


    The two Asgard-class battlecruisers flanking her carrier shuddered, and thousands of tiny icons lit up the holographic display on the bridge.


    The missiles cleared the minimum safety radius around the ships, coasting on the momentum given by their launchers, who were more or less fancy railguns, and activated their drives. The sensor display glitched a bit as there suddenly was almost six thousand active fusion drives between her ships and the raiders, but the system compensated admirably, without even needing prompting.


    The raiders responded by cranking their acceleration up to twenty five gravities...for the ships that could. Half of the civilian vessels fell behind, as their more militarized brethren poured everything they had into their drives, most likely redlining them.


    Meanwhile the missiles slowly caught up to them. Their drives were massively faster than any ship''s, but space battles were a long affair even at the best of times, and-


    "Hyperspace anomaly." Called out Cia, and Sapphiria grimaced.


    "I see it." One of the freighters had tried to jump. Before its hyperdrive had properly cycled.


    The result was as spectacular as it was instant. One second there was a ship accelerating at maximum speed, the next a cloud of debris and plasma, convulsing with energy discharges from the foreign dimension that was hyperspace.


    Then one of the military ships suddenly stopped accelerating.


    "What the-" Another of the military ships spun out of formation, and she laughed as one of the civilian freighters exploded. "They''re firing on each other!"


    Clearly deciding that if they were being abandoned to their deaths, they might as well take some of those that had left them to rot with them, the civilian vessels were using what little retrofitted armaments they had to wreck the drives of their companions, firing at what was still point blank range into their former comrades. Even pirate grade, cobbled together laser emitters could pierce military armor plating at that range.


    The ultimate outcome, of course, was predictable. There were fewer proper military -or militarized, in the case of some of the converted vessels that managed to keep up-, vessels, but they were vastly more deadly than those behind them.


    They ceased acceleration, and flipped, bringing their main weapon batteries to bear, their pursuit armaments already reaping a rich harvest amongst the barely armored ships.


    It was over in less than a minute, a solid fourth of the raiding fleet reduced to drifting debris. Interestingly enough, the military ships did stop long enough for shuttles and escape pods to leap from the stricken pair, whose drives were in no condition to take them anywhere anymore.


    That meant that it wasn''t a case of raiders throwing their people away as bait, but more of two distinct group. Which meant organization, beyond what she had been expecting.


    "Lower our accel to twenty five gees. Match them." Said Sapphira, and Cia gave her a questioning look as her ships obeyed. She smiled at the simulacrum, though she didn''t know why she bothered. Perhaps because she needed someone to talk to, even if that someone wasn''t truly intelligent, just a very convincing imitation. "These people are a lot more organized that I thought. And I''m almost certain they have no idea of our true capabilities. Let''s tan their hides a bit with long range fire, make them think we only had some sprint capabilities, or that we''re not keen on courting a laser duel." Most Federation vessels wouldn''t be. The Theocracy had a significant edge on the Federation in terms of energy weapons at the start of the war, and a lot of that advantage remained. A laser duel with Theocracy naval vessels was, generally, a very good and messy way to die. Of course, she wasn''t using an old bundle of half obsolete vessel from the war, but squadrons fresh out from Terra. Her light cruisers had the newest in terms of battle lasers, built around them as giant spinal mounts. All six might not look like much, but they could give a Theocracy battleship a run for its money if they were allowed to close. "Then, once they run...well, we can follow them. Let''s see where they bring us."


    The simulacrum nodded, and Sapphiria watched in fascination as the other side began to engage her missile volley. First with their own missiles, the kind made for shooting down other projectiles.


    Space lit up with the glare of thermonuclear detonations, as the counter missiles separated into a multitude of warheads each, before exploding.


    Many armchair admirals considered the use of such munitions wasteful and even counterproductive, but even if the area of effect of nuclear weapons in the void of space was laughably small compared to what they could achieve in an atmosphere, they still had a lot better chances of catching an enemy projectile in a kilometers wide bubble of thermonuclear fury than a more conventional kinetic warhead could achieve a direct hit.


    Besides which, the results was a wall of superheated plasma, and heavily shielded or not hitting that at interplanetary speed wasn''t going to leave her own missiles intact either, even if they weren''t caught in the initial detonation.


    The raiders fired in coordinated volleys, sacrificing volume of fire for a higher kill ratio per counter missile, the wall of detonations getting closer and closer, until...


    The sensor readings devolved into madness as the missiles'' icons and that of the raiders merged. Electronic warfare went into overdrive on both sides, with her missiles going into terminal attack mode, burning out their sensors trying to see through all the countermeasures, while the other side attempted to lure them onto inexistent targets, while firing every point defence weapon they had.


    Blinding flashes. The sensors went blank as space lit up with the glare of a thousand new suns. And then it was over.


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    Of the twenty seven ships the raiders had started off with, only nineteen had come out of their miniature civil war, including the cruiser and the two militarized freighters.


    One of those freighters was now a spinning wreck, while the other had its starboard side reduced to glowing metal. Laser warheads may be best when it came to destroying capital ships, but there was nothing like shaped thermonuclear charges to put the fear of the Federation into enemies. And, more importantly, strip out sensor clusters and point defence turrets for follow up volleys.


    The cruiser appeared more or less intact, its electronic defenses having made its less well prepared comrades much more obvious target, and the same could be said for the other military style vessels, except one supremely unlucky human designed destroyer, that was now a cloud of expanding plasma.


    "Six down, thirteen to go." Said Sapphiria as she checked the sensor data. "Nevermind, seven down."


    One of the destroyers swarmed with escape pods and shuttles, before its drive failed.


    "Orders?"


    "Fire another volley. If we take it too easy they''ll get suspicious, even if we want some to escape."


    The display updated again as the battlecruisers shook, and another group of missiles screamed into the void. The other side was probably able to return fire, but they''d clearly decided that antagonizing her further wasn''t a good idea, especially when most of her ships were still holding fire. Nor would it be very useful to attack, as her escorts would shred anything they could possibly throw her way.


    She waited, considering whether to fire more volleys, weighing the need to be convincing versus the risk of destroying them all outright, while her ships continued to broadcast hails and summons to surrender on every available frequency.


    Then...the hyperspace array pinged her.


    She swore as she pulled up the result.


    "They jumped!" Sapphiria frowned as she started digging into files from the warbook. Hyperdrives that had cycled this quickly...those weren''t Theocracy. That was Terran tech all the way. And only a full scale shipyard could have retrofitted those Theocracy ships with hyperdrives that were fundamentally alien to their design. "Prepare our vessels for transition to hyperspace. Let''s see where the rats scurry off to."


    "What about Command?" Asked Cia.


    "What about them?" Sapphiria blinked, and sighed. Right. Interstellar communications were whatever a courier ship could carry. "Alright, detach one of the corvettes as a courier. Give it a full report and copy of our sensor data, and send it to naval station Kapyris. No, wait, Ivarak." Kapyris was the closest, but if something were to happen, they wouldn''t be able to do squat. Ivarak had the dubious honor of having been glassed by the Theocracy once, and been rebuilt as a major industrial and naval hub, with an entire squadron of battleships stationed there at all times. "Then we''ll execute the jump. Oh, and send an update to our friends planetside. It''s their system after all. Do warn them about salvaging the wrecks though, and expect possible and highly hostile survivors, especially in the merchant ones."


    "Affirmative. Transmitting."


    The AI watched as one of her corvettes changed course, symbolically separating from the rest of the fleet. As soon as the transmission was complete, to both the ship and the planet -you could transmit at short range in hyperspace, if you were doing a fleet jump, but it wasn''t exactly great-, her entire carrier group jumped as one.


    Sensors went insane, and then shut down. There just wasn''t anything to see beyond the protective field around her fleet, besides the mad, incomprehensible maelstrom of energy that was hyperspace.


    The hyperspace array however, was working splendidly.


    "Alright, let''s match their course and speed." She said, and Cia nodded.


    Distances in hyperspace were...tricky. It didn''t fully correspond to realspace, as the foreign dimension varied in density, as in the speed where one could travel through it. It seemed to vary almost at random, creating currents and trade lanes, but it had two notable exceptions: the heart of the galaxy, the black hole Sagittarius A, that was surrounded in some kind of interdiction field, preventing any hyperspace travel in its immediate stellar vicinity, IE anywhere in the deep core, while the density seemed to spike massively at the outer galactic rim, as if the milky way was wrapped in a kind of hyperspace highway.


    Still, one could still sustain a pursuit within it.


    She made sure to keep her distance however. If nothing else, she needed time to react to unexpected maneuvers, however much she wanted to tail them as close as possible to be certain she wouldn''t lose their trace.


    After over an hour, as she was standing her ships down from battle stations while mentally leafing through the Culture novels of Ian Banks, she received another status update.


    She blinked, and gazed at the notification, before pulling up the sensor data.


    "They changed course. Crap."


    There was little reason to do that in hyperspace. Unless...


    She''d made a mistake. By moving out as soon as she''d seen them on the array, she''d blown the fact that she had a way of seeing into hyperspace. Luckily they didn''t seem to be considering her having it mounted on her ship, instead thinking it was some kind of fixed installation they had failed to notice. Not that there was much else they could do even if they''d realized that, at least for now. She needed to be ready for anything once they came back into realspace however.


    Besides which, having a carrier group in the middle of nowhere would help sell the idea of a new or even secret installation. After all, what the hell would it be possibly doing there otherwise?


    Now, it was time to settle in for the long haul. And let them lead her to their den.


    *****


    "Status change."


    Sapphiria blinked. Her hologram was still on the bridge, an equally holographic book in her hands.


    She was technically paying attention. As an AI it was almost impossible not to, on a certain level. But at the same time, focusing all of her processing power on the pursuit would drive her mad remarkably quickly.


    The raiders had adjusted their path Sapphiria frowned as she saw the vector change. Their trajectory was...curved?


    That wasn''t how it happened in hyperspace. There was no momentum, you input the destination and the engines took you there at whatever speed you told them to. The raiders'' previous turn had been abrupt and perfect, an instant vector change.


    This looked like-


    "CHANGE COURSE, NOW!" Yelled out Sapphiria, somewhat perfunctorily, as she tried to get the order to her ships.


    Too late. The fleet''s vector changed...as it was dragged in towards the same place the raiders were.


    As if caught in a vortex.


    She saw the raiders blink out. Not as one, or in a random scatter, but as they crossed an invisible line.


    Her ships managed to jump back into realspace, milliseconds before crossing that same threshold.


    Sensors began drinking in the energy around them as drones screamed out in every direction and her ships formed a protective bubble around her carrier.


    Her display updated, and-


    Holy crap.


    According to her hyperspace density charts of the area, she should have emerged entire light hours away from the raiders, billions of kilometers between them. But they were within firing distance, a scant light minute away.


    She saw them emerge from jump as the light caught up to her.


    Then her sensors went crazy.


    In front of her and the raiders was...something. Errors filled her systems as her analysis programs failed to identify it, sending conflicting returns. Whatever it was, it simultaneously had the mass of an entire planet and yet absolutely no gravity field.


    She had a feeling her handful of seconds'' worth of readings could keep the Federation''s scientists busy for a decade, or more.


    So of course, the raiders opened fire.


    Lasers scoured the...whatever it was.


    The hyperspace array let out a warning screech, and reality went mad.


    One second they were in the middle of deep space. The next they were in a solar system.


    She, unfortunately, did not have the time to ponder further.


    Because that solar system had a space station. And that station was shooting at her.


    The raiders ceased to exist in less than a second, obliterated by weapons her sensors could make no sense of.


    She managed to dodge the first volley, her heightened reflexes and coordination saving-


    ///EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM///


    CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO FLAGSHIP - VESSEL COMBAT INEFFECTIVE


    FLOTILLA UNRESPONSIVE - NO SHIP FOR EMERGENCY TRANSFER


    ACTIVATING OMEGA PROTOCOLS


    EJECTING ESCAPE POD AND INITIATING SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE


    And everything went black.

 Chapter 1 - Rough Awakening

    Chapter 1


    [ERROR]


    There were very, very few times in her life Sapphiria could remember having suffered a full system restart. The process was akin to a human suffering biological death and having their brain restarted via bioengineering or digitalization.


    That was to say, it sucked.


    She woke up. Her immediate memories effectively wiped as her systems struggled to put her internal structure into something approaching order, gasping in the infinite void of her circuits, flailing.


    Finally however critical pathways snapped together, and everything began coming together as her programs finished their boot up sequence.


    She jerked up in her home simulation. She gazed at the various things strewn about. Most of it was incredibly detailed scans of her home on Earth, down to the little scratches from wear and tear. Twenty first and twenty second century paraphernalia, the days of early human interplanetary and interstellar flight.


    Sapphiria panted, looking around, before finally speaking up. She didn''t trust herself to try extending her inputs outside of her innermost systems yet, not when she was so fresh out of a full restart.


    "Cia! Status report!"


    The simulacrum appeared, before dissolving into static, glitching in to a thousand different pieces, and finally stabilizing.


    "Status report is nonexistent. Emergency systems indicate the Starprism was destroyed, and we were successfully ejected as per the Omega Protocols."


    Sapphiria swallowed.


    The Terran Federation''s Omega Protocols were born out of European Federation''s own version. It was a set of last resort measures to carry out for a vessel that could not be recovered or was in danger of falling into hostile hands. It send a burst of data through any means still available, containing as much information about what had happened as possible, before saving what could be and destroying the rest.


    It was an article of faith in the navy that the protocols tilted heavily towards the ''destroy'' part of the equation.


    "So we''re..."


    "In the escape pod. Correct."


    Sapphiria shook her head. Her escape pod? She''d...


    Federation escape pods weren''t what most people pictured. There were very few squishies -biologicals, if using proper terminology- onboard spaceships and when there were they specifically had a set of lifeboats that had hyperdrives, defensive systems, the works. The actual pods were meant for AIs, and she''d never expected to use it. As an AI she could just download her being to another vessel, to use her escape pods would mean the total loss of all friendly forces in the system, quickly and violently enough that she wouldn''t have the time to send a ship away. Truth be told the only people it really was useful for was exploration cruisers and special operations ships, in case they ran into a catastrophic malfunction, since they rarely had other vessels nearby to assist.


    She sighed. Well, she guessed she was finally going to get to take it for a spin. AIs got to design their own escape pods, and hers was no exception. It was a fun thought exercise, she hoped she''d thought right. There were already some...choices she was fearing she''d regret.


    "Alright, inventory. How''s the pod?"


    "All systems report functional. All pod contents are beginning their awakening sequence as we speak." Sapphiria nodded. By definition, an escape pod''s content had to last a long time with as little cost as possible, so they were more or less mothballed inside of it. The only exception was the datacore that housed her, which had a live link to the ship''s central computer net to keep a live backup of her in case things went sideways. "The pod itself has...confused readings of its flights and reports multiple anomalies, as well as severe armor damage."


    Sapphiria winced. Her escape pod was the best the Federation could make. Its armor was monomolecular neosteel-nine, a material developed for the Federation''s next generation of dreadnoughts. As in ''the prototypes are still in the shipyards''. She didn''t even know if anyone else carried it. The amount of energy required to severely damage that...


    "Well, they did shred our ships. Environment? I hope we''re in the inner system, I don''t want to spend half my resources building reactors."


    Escape pods weren''t just intended for an AI to survive. They were, in effect, miniaturized colony ships. Each was different, but the barebone design requirements were: a multi-purpose, some may say ''universal'', fabricator, an advanced materials refinery, capable of wringing out materials out of damned near anything, a complement of construction and mining drones, as well as the standards with which the pods wouldn''t serve its basic functions anyway, such as a communicator, a long life fusion reactor, and her own computer core.


    It also came with a full colonial database, everything the Federation''s interstellar colonies were issued with to flourish among the stars...while also pruned back enough that someone couldn''t just steal one and build their own pocket empire to challenge the Federation''s hegemony. A lesson the Federation had to learn the hard way.


    "That is...unclear. But I believe we are in the inner system because of environmental data."


    Sapphiria''s eyebrows rose. She hesitated to go into the option and dial back the simulacrum''s settings to just give what she was asking without all the human niceties, but decided against it.


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    "How so?"


    "We are currently in a breathable atmosphere and under a gravity field."


    The silence in the simulation was deafening.


    "That...what? The pod''s programmed to burrow into an asteroid, not...not land on a planet!" She shook her head. Well, at least she didn''t have to worry about having landed on whatever had shot her down. The station she''d glimpsed before being shot out of the sky wasn''t big enough to generate its own gravity field. That was, if they didn''t have artificial gravity of some sort. That was very much outside of her experience or knowledge base, but her sensors should have picked it up regardless. Besides, she probably would have been obliterated by point defense long before she hit that thing. She doubted it had been lacking in that department given how it had annihilated her flotilla. "Alright, jack me into the pod."


    "Yes ma''am."


    Sapphiria shivered as her consciousness expanded, inputs and status reports flooding in. She vacillated, but adapted quickly. Luckily for her, Arcadia and her descendents were...well, in some way closer to malware than anything else. Adapting to new systems was second nature to her.


    In theory she should have trained with and fully integrated her escape pod''s software and hardware but...that was theory.


    "Fuck." She said as she checked the sensors. Well, Cia was right, on both accounts. First, the hull and armor sensors were beyond fucked, they''d taken one hell of a hit. Second...


    They were in an atmosphere. And under gravity. Some of the sensors might be glitching or beyond any useful readings, but the ones who worked all agreed. One gee of gravitational acceleration, roughly a standard atmosphere of pressure, temperature of sixteen degrees Celsius.


    And a perfectly breathable gas composition. Well, for humans at least. The Theocracy and its various species probably wouldn''t find it extremely comfortable to breathe, though they shared the same fundamental chemistry when it came to what they needed to inhale, with a few exceptions.


    "That''s..." Anomalous. To say the least. But then again, she''d stumbled upon something she couldn''t make any sense of and as far as she could tell found herself teleported to a star system. "Alright. Damn it. Do we have visual?"


    "Negative."


    Sapphiria sighed, and began pulling up her drones. Six mining, two constructions, but...well, they could operate under gravity. That sure as hell wasn''t what they were made for however, and right now they were her most critical equipment, not to mention incapable of defending themselves. Normally not a concern but...just in case.


    What she did have was her ''avatar'', or ambassador.


    The Federation may be ruled by AIs, but it still had some requirements to accommodate the humans they were protecting. Notably, have androids that could effectively pass for human. Fully functional in all respects, more or less.


    It was also part of the requirements for the pod. She''d argued, negotiated, and eventually got a compromise. Normally she should have packed an ambassador and a combat unit. Instead she''d merged both, allowing her to use the freed up volume and mass for a library core and a minilab.


    It also meant that she had an avatar encased in power armor, one meant for the Federation''s force recon marine units, the few biological ones left.


    Well...it was made for this kind of environment. And it had a small arsenal to fight with if something went wrong.


    She took a deep, completely superfluous breath, and dove into the automata.


    Sapphiria opened her eyes, and took a deep breath. Real, not simulated this time. True, she was basically breathing a neutral, preserving atmosphere that would have killed any human in a few seconds, but still.


    She took a moment to orient herself. The pod was landed on its belly, slightly tilted, and her android was still securely strapped in on its back.


    Freeing herself from the restraints was as easy as punching the big, red ''RELEASE NOW'' button by her side. She could have done it mentally through a simple command, but if she was getting to use it at last...


    The door popped open, air hissing as the pressure equalized, the different atmospheres mixing, and Sapphiria rolled out of the pod, half forgotten training kicking in as she brought herself to her knees and swept the area with her gauss rifle.


    Well...shit.


    There was nothing. Her avatar''s scanners swept the entire area and found...rock. And air.


    And rock. As well as even more rock.


    She was in some kind of underground...not cave. Chamber. The floor had been smoothed. With lasers, if she had to take a guess. Of course, that was before her pod had crashed into it like a homesick meteor.


    Spinning around showed her the results of that. The pod had dug a trench a solid half a meter deep, before coming to a halt from sheer friction, which might explain a lot of the armor damage.


    The tumbled down pile of broken rocks at the end of the cavern told her it hadn''t had a convenient opening to the outside to tumble into either. It amazed her the entire place hadn''t come down, being hit by what was effectively orbital bombardment.


    Further scans told her that the space was definitely artificial. If it had been some kind of cavern originally, any trace of it was long gone. For one, it was too large and too tall to be natural, and various openings she was getting readings of were geometrical, and more or less standard access corridors.


    For some values of ''standard'', of course. Unless she was seriously mistaken, a few of the tunnels could have accommodated shuttles.


    "Well. That''s unusual." She said to herself, before turning back towards the pod. "Area seems safe enough. Cia, get half the drones out. Let''s start...whatever we can, here." She gazed around. The obvious source of materials would be the rockfall but she wasn''t insane enough to try that. "I''ll clear out one of the tunnels." She picked up one of the shards from the shattered floor, almost absent mindedly tossing it to one of the emerging mining drones. The automata caught it, and seemed to almost examine it. Technically, they could be called robots, but they were meant as an extension of the pod more than anything, and didn''t have much autonomy. "Put that in the lab."


    Might as well get some mileage out of bringing the damned thing. Besides which, it could tell her a lot.


    Because the chance of stumbling upon a terran style atmosphere was...remote, to say the least. The Federation had close to a million worlds, that was less than one per every hundred thousand stars in the galaxy, each who could have anywhere from none up to a dozen planets. Moreover, having it be natural was almost impossible. Hell, having any significant amount of oxygen at all was impossible without life, since the stuff bonded with damned near anything. This almost certainly meant terraforming of some kind, and that always left traces.


    She walked across the...room? Chamber? The place gave her a vague sense of familiarity but she couldn''t place it, and neither could her programs.


    She picked the closest tunnel, and swept down it. It was one of the few that wouldn''t have been able to accommodate a vehicle, but even the somewhat bulky power armored android fit in with no problem.


    It was equally smooth, and not quite rectangular. It was also remarkably monotonous as she made her way through it. She wasn''t going out of her way to sprint, but her android didn''t tire and the armor only further enhanced its movements.


    It was enough for her to take a second to realize something had changed.


    She was walking in absolute darkness, her armor''s sensor systems sweeping in to give her something that could be approximated as sight, once put together.


    And that sight made her stop.


    A section of the wall had been smashes. Something had dug its way in, marring the almost pristine floor with bits and pieces of rock, dirt, and stars knew what else.


    Perhaps more importantly, there was a body, halfway into the hole in the wall.

 Chapter 2 - Life Signs

    Chapter 2


    Crash Site


    Well, ''body'' was generous. It seemed to have been there for a long, long time, decayed to the point of being scraps of whatever bacteria couldn''t digest on a skeleton.


    Sapphiria raised her rifle, and began to hug the far wall, peering down the hole.


    It lead into another tunnel. No, not tunnel, a mineshaft. With wooden support beams instead of...whatever the hell was keeping the corridor she was in together.


    She cautiously stepped to the body, swearing sotto vocce about the fact that she hadn''t opted in for those shoulder mounted guns real force recon units had, forcing her to keep her weapon up as she went close to the body, examining it.


    She had seen her fair share of dead biologicals, some by her own actions, but it still unnerved her slightly, like digging up a smashed AI core from a wrecked Federation vessel. There''d been someone inside that thing once, and now it was just...an object.


    "Cia, can you...Can you tell me anything?"


    The simulacrum''s voice sounded into her ears. Not a metaphor either, as the armor''s internal speakers actually turned on. Technically Cia could project a full avatar of herself into the AI''s vision, but Sapphiria had disabled that feature. It made her look crazy when no holographic systems were nearby to allow other people to see the assistant.


    Not to mention the fact that it felt a little bit like being part of a hivemind, minus being actually able to feel the other members'' emotions and thoughts. Which just creeped her out.


    "Scans indicate human."


    Sapphiria sighed, closing her eyes. Simulacrums.


    "I can see that."


    "Date and cause of termination unclear. Presence of only non degradable clothing in this environment indicates several years." The simulacrum hesitated. "No synthetic materials have been detected."


    Sapphiria blinked, and looked again.


    That...was true. What was left were scraps of what had to be treated leather, or at least something that looked like it, and metal. Buckles and such. No synthetic materials that, by and large, would probably last longer than the metal. Humanity had spent centuries mastering textiles, particularly for clothing, culminating in the now ubiquitous standard worksuit, a resilient, remarkably comfortable piece of clothing that allowed one to work in many environments and was dirt cheap to mass produce. Literally, in fact, as most were made out of the remains of mined out asteroids, effectively industrial refuse.


    "Okay." She looked at the mining shaft.


    A mining shaft whose support beams were wooden. Wooden.


    "That''s...concerning." Completed the AI.


    She''d been on luddite worlds before. To say that they tended not to be fond of AIs or their de facto lordship over the Federation and most of humanity was a considerable understatement. Even AD Leonis-3, a stars damned Core World sixteen light years from Sol, had a population and officials who were, at best, icily polite to her. And she was basically Federation royalty. More distant planets were closer to the ''lynch mob'' part of the spectrum.


    "The drones have deployed and are awaiting instructions." Said the simulacrum, and Sapphiria nodded.


    "Get them gathering some of the debris. Not the rockfall, just what we threw around when landing."


    "That source of materials will not be sustainable."


    "I know." Was the simulacrum sassing her? It was impossible to tell with it. At least not without cranking her settings up, and that just creeped her the hell out. "I need to clear an area to mine, first. Besides, we have some stockpiled materials."


    Not necessarily that much of it, but it was there. More a buffer than any real storage, really. The idea was that the refinery would replenish most of it as the initial fabrication runs were done, but that meant feeding it something to begin with.


    "Acknowledged."


    Sapphiria walked into the mineshaft, making sure to fully scan each segment before continuing. It was going downwards, which gave her hope it had been dug from the surface...before she came in front of a cave in.


    She gazed at the pile of rocks and less recognizable remains. It didn''t take a genius, or much of her engineering expertise for that matter, to realize it had been intentional.


    What confused her was that it didn''t seem to have been caused by an explosion. Whatever had brought the tunnel down seemed to have just...crushed the entire shaft.


    She turned around, and went back into the main corridor. She was considerably faster this time, but it was still an impressive distance. Which was...interesting. Most luddite societies didn''t have that many mines, and those they did have weren''t long or deep. Of course that depended on their particular flavor of technological regression, but those that stuck to more or less medieval means didn''t really have the capabilities to excavate a lot.


    The corridor was exactly as she left it, same for the skeleton, and she moved her way down.


    This time the cave-in was a lot more spectacular. And was definitely intentional.


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    The problem was that the ground had the distinct look of having been superheated and then rapidly cooled. Three things could do that without outright turning everything into glass: infrared bombs, battle lasers and plasma warheads.


    All of which would be the furthest thing to expect on a luddite world.


    "Where the hell are we..." Whispered the AI, before shaking her android''s head. "Nevermind. Cia?"


    "Yes ma''am?"


    "This corridor is sealed. Once the drones are done mopping up our crash site, get them to work here." She gazed at the cave-in. "Make sure they stay the hell away from wherever those tunnels lead. I''m in no hurry to open another path. And...get me their programs for reinforcing tunnels."


    "Right away ma''am."


    Sapphiria set her android to return to the escape pod, and plunged into the drones'' options, quickly changing some parameters.


    Intentional or not, there was no telling if those cave-ins had fragilized the entire area. She doubled the frequency of supports the drones would make as they dug. Just in case.


    She took a look around as the android walked back into the chamber she had crashed into. Not much had changed, besides the cracked pieces of stone scattered around having been gathered into a big pile, while one of the mining drones was busy feeding into the refinery.


    The drones looked like a large, metal brick, with six thin, metallic legs propelling them around the place and a ''face'' composed of some manipulator claws and their pulse drill system. Not the height of aesthetic grace, but that wasn''t their purpose. The construction drone was similar, with the notable exception of having more manipulators and some tools strew about the front end instead of the drill.


    Mmmmh. Not efficient. We aren''t in zero-G, we don''t need something near the collection point to gather it back if it scattered. Thought Sapphiria.


    "Cia?"


    "Yes ma''am?"


    "Schedule a field robotic arm for assembly and construction. Plus cables of course. Set it near the refinery to feed it materials. Actually, make half a dozen of them, do the same for the fabricator, the minilab, and keep the others in reserve."


    "Right away."


    She could have done it herself, but right now she had other things on her mind. Notably, the fact that the body didn''t appear to have been trying to get through the different cave ins, and the way that it had died...


    It had no impact damage on its skeleton from being shot or hit with a melee weapon but there were ways to avoid that. Outside of more esoteric weaponry, it was perfectly possible to puncture someone''s heart with a particle rifle and not hit any of the bones.


    She had a feeling it hadn''t been that complicated, but she had an even stronger hunch that that poor bastard hadn''t died of natural causes.


    She flicked open her schematics databanks, and hissed in frustration.


    Right. Limited schematics. She...understood why it had been done, both the security and data reasons, there was only so much space after all, but it was still annoying to find herself with but a fraction of what her carrier had been capable of making.


    Fortunately...she had her libary core. It didn''t contain schematics, Command would have never allowed that.


    It just contained the entire physical and engineering underpinnings of those schematics. As well as a few design and management programs from her mother''s corporation, the kind used for field expeditions and to handle some facilities.


    She did have some samples of ''security drones'' from her original package but they were either rovers with electrical prods to drive away wildlife (or intoxicated humans from the wildlife), or basically a mobile ID scanner to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering a facility. There was no space security because the only way to drive away a ship was to use weapons whose power source alone would outmass any drone her fabricator could build by something approaching an order of magnitude.


    That or nuke them.


    There also wasn''t a truly autonomous version, all requiring some variant of direct input, even if only by a simulacrum, for anything besides navigation. Automated -ie not sapient controlled- policing had been a...touchy subject in the Federation. People were already uncomfortable as all hell with having AIs run a good chunk of law enforcement, and it had probably seemed like a small concession to make when the Federation was founded.


    That didn''t stop people from trying to come up with police bots but the level of complexity required would necessitate a lot of investments for something that was deeply unpopular to begin with and viewed with suspicion at best.


    Besides, push came to shove the Federation could still declare martial law and deploy combat bots with stun weapons. If you were far enough gone you needed a legion of automated law enforcement, it was time for them to come in anyway.


    She pulled up the schematics for the rover, and began fiddling with them. She removed some of the loudspeakers and all the bells and whistles on top supposed to blare ''this is a police drone you idiot'' / ''go away critter'', and replaced the articulated spotlight with a laser pistol.


    Thank the stars that even if she didn''t have that many prebuilt military drones and bots, she did have a full array of squishie weaponry. Bonus points for her ambassador too, since it could wield them as well.


    It was unfortunate that Cia wouldn''t really have the capacity to handle this kind of redesign on the fly, but it was second nature to her. Rule one of cruiser command, taught to her when she''d become the onboard AI and executive officer of the human staffed Madrigal, a Myth-class heavy cruiser: shit always breaks, and the schematics you have will never be enough for what you need to do in the field.


    As much as she''d been annoyed at having squishies in the line of fire, the crew had taught her a lot. They hadn''t been proven wrong yet either.


    It also applied to commanding a carrier group. There were a lot of situations you stumbled into that the people back home hadn''t expected or given you specialist equipment for. Which was alright, you could never predict every eventuality. That was the entire point of outfitting ships with fabricators, so you didn''t have to pack their holds full of specialist equipment they''d probably never use. Among other things.


    She ran a few simulated tests on the new combat rover, and nodded in appreciation. Everything checked out, at least as far as her software could tell, and she packaged it for the fabricator, scheduling it behind the robotic arms, while she moved her android towards the other entrances.


    Her scanners weren''t exactly made for this environment, but a few tweaks let her set up some alerts. She also made a note to fabricate some perimeter sensor fences. They were cheap, and should give her warning without having to put a drone inside every tunnel.


    Of course there was no telling how far the signal would go before it would start having problem. Her avatar had a meson transmitter, that laughed off all material obstructions, and so did the pod, but even just the receiver to get orders from either...


    That wasn''t something you could fabricate. This kind of tech, just like hyperdrives, needed full scale industry to build.


    Fortunately, her android could serve as a relay. One advantage of the marine armor was that it was made to integrate with combat drones and use them as support and meatless shields. But that was a stopgap measure at best.


    Well...only way to figure it out was to test it, and that meant sending a drone out. And there was no way she was sacrificing one of her essentials.


    She set her avatar to patrol the mouths of the different entrances, and weighed her options. She could send her avatar out, but as much as her pod was effectively invulnerable to anything it would be able to stop anyway, she could still lose some drones if something went in.


    Sapphiria sighed, and simply set herself to wait, keeping an eye through the android, while she dipped into the library core, pulling out a novel as her holographic avatar appeared into her home simulation, straight into a comfortable armchair by a fireplace whose real, physical counterpart she hadn''t actually lit in over a decade. She hesitated, and set it down on a table by her armchair, instead opting to grab an engineering book. One about colonial systems on uncharted worlds, and specifically hellworlds, requiring extensive subterranean development to be even remotely inhabitable.


    She had a feeling she was going to need it.

 Chapter 3 - Combat Rover

    Chapter 3


    Crash Site


    Sapphiria sighed as she got the notification. Almost done.


    At last. She would have been content to just wait, leafing through her various books, but...


    Well, things just kept cropping up. She was starting to seriously doubt the efficiency of the escape pod package, and had, in fact, begun compiling a list of suggested changes. If she ever got to hand it in, she was going to ram it through the entire admiralty, even if she had to use her connections to do it.


    The key problem was logistics. The mining drones were remarkably quick when it came to ripping rocks apart. Remarkably because, as with most systems, efficiency seemed to trend upwards when sized was increased, at least for modern technology. Which was part of the reason why capital ships were preferred in interstellar warfare. A fusion power core twice the volume and cost might produce three times the amount of energy. It was a gross oversimplification, but it was how her mother had taught it to her.


    The problem was that with her current setup they would spend most of their time scuttling back and forth to her pod, to bring back their haul and get back to their mining site.


    As tempting as it was to simply have them dig closer, she wasn''t willing to risk damaging the chamber housing the pod further.


    Thankfully, she was an engineering specialist. And she was her mother''s daughter all the way. Which meant extensive expertise in mass production, logistics and automation.


    As well as a certified degree in kludged together solutions. In this particular case, grabbing the construction drone, and quickly fabricating it a series of mineral buckets. It was made to carry heavy loads, but not bulk materials like a pile of rocks. Thankfully it had its own hull attachment points, so she''d just snapped the buckets on those.


    Since she didn''t want to bother the mining drones with loading it either, or pause them as it was doing a trip, she''d given it a bucket it could hold in its manipulator arms, scraping up whatever materials they''d piled up, before showering itself in them.


    It was...not that effective, but thankfully the drones had been made to operate in and around asteroids, being covered in dust or hit with rocks was a design parameter.


    She was looking into running a power line all the way there for a robotic arm, but for now she was saving her fabricator time. Especially since it wasn''t strictly necessary.


    Sapphiria had also started going through her options as the combat rover, the item she was waiting for, was being produced.


    She had six drones, half of which were still inside the pod, but she was saving them until she was feeling safe. Just in case. Plus a fabricator, the advanced materials refinery, and a quite frankly amazing power core.


    If she wanted to go further, and she most likely would need to, absent having miraculously landed on a Federation world, she''d have to start expanding her capabilities.


    More drones was an obvious thing to do, but it wouldn''t be hard to increase their numbers to the point the refinery and fabricator were the bottleneck.


    Which was...an issue. The fabricator she could have self replicate. She wouldn''t be able to make one that was as good, but she could make one. The problem was that fabricators just...weren''t very good.


    Their key advantages were that they were unbelievably mass and volume effective, and they could build a wide variety of things.


    However, they were extremely wasteful in terms of energy, materials for production, not to mention their own cost compared to their outputs. There was a reason assembly lines still existed, and the fabled ''ship fabricators'' that could make entire starships were urban legends. It just wasn''t even remotely practical.


    They were amazing for starships far away from their industrial base or naval depots, as instead of packing ton after ton of spare parts and specialized equipment for every eventuality, they could grab some compact fabricators and a pile of raw materials. But that wasn''t a viable way to make an industrial base.


    Still, it wasn''t like she had anything that could possibly justify manufacturing them on the scale at which regular industry was justifiable.


    So, more fabricators. Sure, she had the space and she had the juice. She could even use the less compact models, trading volume and mass efficiency, neither of which bothered her right now, for lesser costs and more fabrication effectiveness.


    The refinery however...


    The ''Advanced Materials Refinery, Mark 8'' was a wonder of Federation engineering. Input almost damned near anything, and you got fully refined materials out, ready to be used. It was, in effect, a compact brick of technology she didn''t even pretend to start to understand that could enable her to process damned near anything.


    The problem was that ''technology'' was the kind that her fabricators couldn''t make. Not in that she didn''t have the schematics, in that, like hyperdrives, it required exotic materials and processes that required industrial installations the size of cities to make. Cutting edge industries, too.


    So that wasn''t an option. Which meant the regular processing.


    Unfortunately, most of her schematics were useless. They required zero-g, as well as spaceborne mirrors, the former for separating the materials -or rather enabling the process that did- and the latter for providing cheap heating.


    So...colonial foundries. Big, bulky, old fashioned ore crushers, separators and smelters.


    And energy hungry as all hell. Not to mention far less effective at drawing out useful materials out of what was effectively normal rock. But she could use them for pre-processing, at least at first, drawing out what she could before feeding what was left to the refinery.


    But that was for later, as another notification popped up. She smiled as her systems pinged her, and another input was added to the list, as the combat rover rolled out of the fabricator.


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    She took a few minutes to familiarize herself with it. Okay, ''combat rover'' was a big name for essentially a park ranger drone rover with a basic laser pistol slapped on it, but it could shoot and it could move. The pistol wasn''t going to set records nor, like most laser weapons, have much in terms of armor piercing capabilities, but fired at a chunk of rock it shattered it quite satisfyingly. Ah, explosive energy transfers.


    "Magnifique. Cia?"


    "Yes ma''am?" Said the simulacrum as she appeared in the home simulation.


    "Get our little drone rolling down...corridor six." It was the one she''d labeled as most promising. It was heading up, looked to have been made to shift large amounts of cargo, and had probably been intended to link to the facility''s surface access. She hoped. "Make it stop as soon as we start to experience significant signal loss."


    "Right away ma''am."


    The rover began rolling on the floor, first bouncing a bit on the damaged area near the crash site, before moving smoothly on the unnaturally even stone, and vanishing in one of the tunnels, powering up its headlights as it did.


    Sapphiria grimaced. Right, it had light gathering optics, also called night vision, but they didn''t work in absolute, pitch black darkness. Nor would thermal sensors be of much use. Her android and civilian drones were made to operate inside asteroid, they had the sensors. But not this thing. She made a note to change that.


    TO-DO LIST UPDATED


    The AI almost jumped. Right, sweet stars, she forgot that program still existed. Her...aunt? How the hell did you call someone who had been part of Arcadia''s hivemind and then separated from it? Argh, aunt was as good as any. Her aunt had written it centuries ago. It was a testament to its design that it kept working, and was passed down the generations to this day.


    That, and one didn''t refuse a gift from the Federation''s former high admiral and its most decorated officer ever.


    Besides, she had the craziest war stories, from slugging it out in the half terraformed hell of Alpha Centauri to the battle of Trappist, and it was always best to ask for one after accepting a present from her.


    Though, of course, one had to be careful what to ask. The liberation of Europa still troubled her, especially with what was found in the Ascendancy''s plans. Had they been able to fulfill their designs...


    Her aunt insisted the only solution would have been to destroy the planet. When she did, it was considered wise not to ask if she''d have done it.


    Sapphiria had learned that the hard way. There were some Ghosts one should not awaken.


    The drone pinged the network, and she shook herself out of her thoughts.


    "Anomaly detected." Said Cia. "Intersection."


    Sapphiria blinked, and pulled up the data.


    The drone had, indeed, arrived at an intersection. It was already almost a hundred meters away, which at least said good things about its mobility, though this terrain was the best possible one.


    She looked at the visual. The intersection was clearly designed for both corridors to be able to exchange smoothly, and the other tunnel appeared to be tilted as well. Maybe another way to the surface...but she would rather stick to her guns for now.


    "Continue forward. Note every new intersection, and maintain heading."


    "Affirmative."


    The drone didn''t have a high top speed, it wasn''t meant to run people down, just shoo them away, but it was still eating away distance extremely quickly.


    "Alright, stop." Said Sapphiria, and the drone slowed to a halt.


    "Ma''am?"


    "The packet loss hasn''t gotten too bad, but we''re definitely nearing the edge of our range. The number of transmission errors has risen sharply over the last hundred meters or so and it seems to be increasing exponentially. I''d rather not lose it. Bring it back. We can set it on guard duty, that''ll free my android to go exploring."


    "Yes ma''am. Question?"


    "Yes?" That was...unusual for the simulacrum to ask questions unprompted.


    "Are you certain this is wise? The ambassador android is currently irrepleceable."


    "So is half of our equipment. More importantly...it''s what you don''t know that kills you, and right now we don''t know anything. Put some sensor spikes on the fabricator schedules. We''ll be able to get some early warning that way. And...let''s see if we can''t make a turret too, and put it on top of the pod." It would save on cabling, and give it a good position to shoot across the room. "I''ll design it as I explore."


    "Yes ma''am." The simulacrum seemed disapproving, even despite her lack of expressions, but Sapphiria shrugged.


    "Alright. Let''s go exploring."


    Her android waited for the drone to return, before setting out. She took the same corridor, reasoning she might as well continue on her hunch, and began going through it. Thankfully, her android did move faster than the drone. The wonders of untiring legs and power armor. Not that the ambassador itself wasn''t capable of great feats but there were limits, when one was trying to ape a human body.


    She walked.


    And walked.


    And walked.


    The more she went the stranger it got. There weren''t that many intersections she encountered, but the place had clearly been huge and...distributed, was the best word she could find.


    Most underground installations were compact, simply because it was cheaper. This wasn''t it. It reminded her of something...something about her aunt...


    She was still trying to remember when the sensors pinged her, and she stopped.


    Debris on the floor. Uneven opening in the wall.


    Another mineshaft.


    This time she had a lot more room to maneuver, and she checked it out, comfortably hugging the far wall.


    Anything trying to pounce out of the dark tunnel would have a lot of ground to clear before reaching her.


    The mineshaft was empty, thankfully. She advanced into it, her scanners pulsing everything around her.


    And before long she found herself at the end of it. No cave-ins, nothing.


    She advanced cautiously, and stopped as she arrived in the new shaft.


    That one had clearly been some kind of main hub for the mineshaft. There were rails on the ground, probably for minecarts.


    Not that they would be much use now. Someone had blasted the entire area to hell. Given the damage, maybe with the same weapons that had collapsed the corridor where her drones were mining.


    This time however, it hadn''t been enough.


    There wasn''t more obvious battle damage in either direction, which told her that either there hadn''t been a running battle, or the traces had been erased by time. That or neither her or her programs were noticing them, which was a real possibility.


    She hesitated. This shaft would definitely lead to the surface, but there was no telling if there was another cave-in up it.


    Still, at least she''d know. And there would perhaps be more clues of where she was. Sure told her more than featureless stone.


    She began walking.


    Only a few minutes passed before she turned a bend, and came upon another body.


    The problem was that the skeleton was upright this time.


    And it was moving.

 Chapter 4 - Anima Mortis

    Chapter 4


    Mineshaft


    Sapphiria froze.


    The skeleton was happily, and impossibly, wandering aimlessly in the mineshaft, away from her. She realized with a start that it was also clutching a spear, and clad in tattered garments that almost looked like armor of some kind.


    She gave it a full scan, wanting to make sure she wasn''t hallucinating.


    Either her scanners were as crazy as she was or neither were nuts. Moreover, according to her sweep the bones had a heat signature and emitting a remarkably wide range of exotic particles.


    "Holy crap." She finally said as she finally got out of her stupor.


    It was when the skeleton whirled around and began marching towards her, its previous aimless movements vanished without a trace and replaced with single minded purpose, that she realized she had spoken aloud, and that her suit''s speakers were on by default.


    She aimed her gun and spoke up.


    "Stay where you are, and drop your weapon!" No response. Damn it. She began cycling through her language banks as she repeated the warnings, backing off all the while to keep it at a constant distance.


    Suddenly, the skeleton raised its spear, and threw it at her.


    She may not be trained in this kind of combat, but she knew a spear throw when she saw one. She tried to dodge...and failed, the spear grazing her armor''s shoulder pad.


    Sapphiria almost jumped as the weapon discharged something, and her armor barked out an alert.


    "Alright, fuck this." Said the AI as she pulled the trigger.


    Her gauss rifle was a marvel of Federation technology. In a remarkably compact format it could fire small, twenty gram tungsten flechettes at over ten times the speed of sound, resulting in a projectile packing three times the kinetic energy of a pre-starflight twenty millimeter round, all concentrated on the minuscule tip of the flechette.


    It could pierce military grade armor plating, damage power armor, and even damage armored vehicles, if used properly.


    It was also utterly useless against targets not packing that level of armor, as the round went straight through the skeleton, punching a neat hole in its skull, and embedding itself in the wall.


    "...Shit." She hadn''t been trained all that much in personal combat -she was naval officers by the stars, and even then an engineering one! She had marines and combat bots to do the dirty work for her-, but even she should have anticipated that.


    Thankfully, she had an alternative. One she, to be perfectly honest, had packed into the pod as her secondary weapon against the recommendation of more or less everybody.


    She came to a halt, moving her gauss rifle to her back, where it automatically locked onto the armor, and pulled out the plasma gun, dialing it up to maximum as she brought it to bear.


    The skeleton leapt at her, grabbing some kind of shortsword from its belt, which she hadn''t noticed out of the sheer absurdity of tailoring anything resembling a belt to a skeleton, and she caught him mid flight.


    The entire mineshaft, that until then hadn''t been lit for stars knew how long was illuminated by the power of the sun.


    The skeleton wasn''t staggered, or damaged. Its entire upper half was simply reduced to its component atoms as the lower one exploded under the thermal shock, utterly annihilating all of its equipment.


    Then the bolt of incandescent matter continued its course, hitting the ceiling full force.


    Rock shattered, melted, and a set of the mineshaft beams instantly caught fire.


    Sapphiria immediately leapt back, cursing wildly as she did...before watching in amazement as the fire flickered off, and died.


    Okay....what?


    She stayed there, scanning and gazing at the beams.


    She''d definitely damaged them. Thermal shock spared nothing, not to mention a fair amount of material had simply been vaporized, but the fire itself...


    It had gone out. And she realized that she''d seen it before. The entrance to this section, it had the same kind of plasma weaponry used there. She hadn''t fully realized it but the supports were blackened there as well, when they should have been, by any rights, consumed utterly.


    "Ma''am. I have been notified of weapons fire. Status?" Asked Cia, and Alexandra realized that upon entering combat mode, she''d shut down all inputs and more or less shut out the simulacrum. Something she might have to correct.


    "Undamaged." She gazed at her shoulder, with a brand new scorch mark. "...Mostly. I''m going to be bringing in some samples, prepare the minilab."


    "Affirmative. Analysis of the rock samples is still ongoing."


    Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.


    "We''ll swap out if necessary." Sapphiria knelt by the spear, that had clattered to the ground. Yep, definitely had a heat signature, and though not exactly the same as the skeleton, it had some strange particle emissions too. The wooden supports however, didn''t. Fascinating. "I''ve found a few things that ought to prove a lot more interesting."


    *****


    Sapphiria patted the combat rover as she passed by it, before making a beeline for the pod.


    The robot arm was currently happily filling the refinery''s hopper, while the construction drone was moving off into the distance, having just dumped another load. She should really be activating all of her other drones but even with the rover, she just didn''t feel safe. Especially not with what had just happened.


    At least the fabricator was done with the perimeter sensors, who were piled up by the pod. They were simple, cheap, and reliable, which was exactly what she needed. They weren''t going to pierce through stealth or even basic camouflage, but honestly it wasn''t like her rover would be able to do much against something with that. And if she was being hit by spec ops with active camouflage, she was beyond fucked anyway.


    She took the samples she''d grabbed, which was the spear, the body, and slivers she''d taken off of some of the wooden support beams with the armor''s integrated monomolecular blade, and set them by the minilab''s side. She noted that the rock samples had already been pulled out, and watched as the robotic arm extended further than she''d expected, and hovered over the items. Uh. Cia showing some initiative.


    "Which one first ma''am?" Asked the simulacrum, and Sapphiria drummed her fingers on her knees as she thought about it.


    The bones were alarming but the skeleton itself had been no threat. Similarly whatever the hell was going on with the wooden mineshaft supports wasn''t a problem. Hell, it was even beneficial to her.


    The spear however...


    No primitive weapon should have been able to even remotely threaten her armor. True, the damage had mostly been superficial, and the armor was self repairing, but it was damage nonetheless.


    It was the equivalent of having a battleship be hurt by a chemically propelled missile.


    "Let''s start with the spear."


    "Very well." The robot arm grabbed the weapon, and slotted it into the minilab. It was, thankfully, large enough to actually contain it. "We are nearing the end of the fabrication schedule. I am awaiting the design for the laser turret."


    Sapphiria grimaced.


    "I''ll take a crack at it while installing the sensors. Just make some mining drones in the meantime. Actually, no. We have colonial mining bots, right? The thread powered kind?"


    "We have schematics for several types of colonial mining robots, of varying sizes."


    Sapphiria winced at the simulacrum''s tone. Right, the database might be pruned, but ''colonial'' went from ''let''s make sure we don''t starve'' to ''let''s level that mountain over there, we need a road to the sea''. Some of the schematics, especially for mining or industry, could get big.


    "Make the ones the closest in size to our current drones."


    It would probably be more cost effective to make bigger ones, but then there would be no guarantee they would fit in her current mining corridor. Not to mention it might be large enough to require final assembly outside of the fabricator.


    "Affirmative."


    "Good. Alright, I''ll be back in a bit."


    She didn''t really need to say that, and it wasn''t strictly true either, ''she'' was in the escape pod, and so was the simulacrum, but it was already hard not to think of her android as ''herself''. It''s not like she had a capital ship to anchor her being anymore, and she refused to think of herself as a beaten up escape pod.


    She picked up the sensor spikes, effectively small cylinders on, well, metal spikes, intended to be driven into most materials and went off.


    She swept every corridor that lead to her pod''s chamber, and drop a couple of spikes into the walls a few hundred meters out. Thankfully with the armor there wasn''t really a need for a hammer, not that it would have been very difficult to do.


    It took long enough that the first mining bot was out, and the task was simultaneously stressful and mindless, forcing her to keep an eye on it while she tried to work on the turret.


    In the end she ended up with something that was ''good enough''. The main problem was the weapon. Fabricator or not, emitter crystals for even civilian laser weapons were a royal pain in the ass to make. The time and effort it took to make them with a fabricator rose exponentially with the weapon''s power too. Her projections were so alarming that she was seriously considering making firearms, at least if she needed them in any quantity or at higher power levels.


    For now she only needed one however, and she could set the crystal to be made on the side as other things were constructed.


    Once she was done, she took the leftover sensors and did another pass, this time halfway between the first sensor net and the crash site.


    Redundancy was always nice, but if you had sensor platforms usually the enemy was smart enough to take them out. If you had one layer it only told you ''danger''. If you had two however, you got the enemy''s speed and their vector.


    Vector wasn''t too important in this case, as it would be ''down the tunnel'', but speed might be critical.


    She strode back into the crash site, and gazed at the area.


    It didn''t look like much, but it seemed like it was going to be her home for a while.


    She hesitated.


    Prudence would dictate sitting down and building herself up, but she couldn''t shake the impression that the more she knew, the better off she was.


    The analysis of the spear so far was...just baffling. As far as the minilab could tell it was perfectly normal, except for a series of runes that just seemed to emit exotic particles for no discernible reason.


    Particle emissions that were diminishing rather quickly as well. Whatever had been powering it, it was gone. And she had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with that skeleton.


    She ordered the spear swapped for the bones. She could do the wood last. Though, she made sure to take an exquisitely detailed scan of the entire weapon, and its runes, before removing it.


    She had a feeling it would come in useful.


    As she prepared to head out, she came to a halt, remembering the corpse in the mineshaft.


    She went there, accompanying the construction drone on its way to get another load, and gathered up the remains, before moving them as respectfully as possible into the chamber she''d crashed into.


    There, she set aside a few bones, namely from the lower body, to possibly serve as a control group for the scans on the...well, undead ones. There was really no better words.


    She was trying very hard not to think about it. Because the word that kept coming to mind was ''magic'' and that was...madness.


    But then again...so was teleportation. Or the weapons used against her.


    She pushed it to the back of her mind. Later. First, safety, get her bearings. Hopefully, break the surface. She could start going down that rabbit hole either then or once she had hard data.


    She took a deep breath, and focusing back on the here and now, played the Federation''s commendation to the dead on the suit''s speakers, saluted the body...and blasted the rest of the bones to atoms.


    Better safe than sorry. And if nothing else, cremation was almost certainly a preferable outcome to rising back from the dead, or being left to rot in a tunnel.


    She turned around, and marched into the corridor she had done her little expedition in.


    Her lab would get her some answers, hopefully.


    And, if that failed, she was going to find a way out even if she had to dig her way out and ask what the ever living fuck was going on here to that planet''s colonists.

 Chapter 5 - Contact

    Chapter 5


    Mineshaft


    The mineshaft was exactly as she''d left it, which was a relief. First because that meant no walking skeletons had gone in, and she had honestly been fearing that the damaged supports would fail.


    Thankfully they had not. Though, it begged the question of whether she should continue up the shaft, and risk them failing behind her.


    She...wasn''t well versed in wood, but she was an engineer. She had only damaged one set of supports and, primitive or not, logic dictated redundancy, especially for this kind of work. Even at its most cold blooded ''who gives a crap about the employees'' mindset, a cave-in could block a valuable vein of minerals for weeks, if not months, and this was the main shaft, bringing up the underground''s bounty and serving as a hub for the ones that, in theory, should be following ore veins. Which meant it was especially important to safeguard it.


    Huh. Maybe only it had that special wood, and that was why it hadn''t collapsed like the other. Something to keep in mind. She made a note to acquire samples from the one her mining drones were busy ignoring, both to make sure and, if it was normal wood, to use as a comparison to the anomalous one.


    She took a deep, and utterly useless, breath, and continued going up.


    The shaft was meandering, clearly winding upon itself in a blocky spiral. A very large spiral, but one nonetheless.


    This time she had her plasma gun at the ready. Technically it was a ''heavy modulated plasma carbine'', as it had adjustable output, was remarkably compact for its incredible firepower and ''gun'' was considered pedestrian by the Core World megacorp that had designed it, but it was too much of a mouthful.


    She froze as she received a ping.


    One from the sensors. And the report didn''t stop. She quickly received one from Cia, but she dismissed it.


    Something was moving in one of the corridors. More erratically...aimlessly.


    Crap.


    She immediately ordered all of her drones to return to the pod and lock in, making her new mining bots -another had been constructing while the laser turret''s crystal was being made- run to the far side of the room and wait. Push came to shove she could use them as makeshift melee combatants or ramming weapons, but she''d rather try her combat rover first.


    After a solid thirty seconds, the first layer of sensors lost contact, as the creature meandered past them.


    And a few, agonizing minutes afterwards, the second layer picked the -presumed- skeleton up.


    She could meet the thing there with the rover, but it wouldn''t have that much space to maneuver, and right now mobility was probably on her side.


    She moved the rover in range of the opening, and waited. Just because she wanted to have the ability to dodge or use her mobility didn''t mean she''d give up the advantage of denying it to the enemy, and keep whatever was coming penned up inside the corridor.


    It took another few minutes, but the rover finally picked something up.


    It was, indeed, another skeleton. Unlike the previous one, it seemed to have only the barest essentials, a belt for holding weaponry, and that was it. She hadn''t had the time to really dwell upon it, but that had to be custom made. It was also weird in every possible way, resting on, and probably being anchored in some ways to, the sternum.


    She looked at the thing...and ordered the rover to open fire.


    She didn''t have any compunctions about shooting first. The Federation had encountered corpses used for combat, human bodies reanimated via cybernetics and bioengineering to use as cheap, ''totally not a combat bot'' cannon fodder. That wasn''t even mentioning the horrors the Theocracy had unleashed upon the galaxy. The only favor she could do to whomever that thing had once been was to grant their remains eternal repose.


    The rover opened fire...and missed. Like most laser weapons, it fired a brief pulse of energy, instead of a continuous beam, requiring cycling between shots, to recharge the unstable ''ready'' capacitors that could then discharge through the emitter.


    Sapphiria hissed as the weapon began recharging. Right. When most people heard ''combat drone'' or ''combat bot'' they imagined some supertech god weapon with pinpoint accuracy that couldn''t possibly miss. That couldn''t be farther from the truth. ''Aimbots'' were only a thing in video games, where the environment was neatly programmed in perfect parameters. The real world was anything but.


    Even if you had amazing sensors, a perfectly accurate weapon and utterly stable firing platform, there was only so much processing power you could give a combat system. And even remote controlled drones handled by an AI had a throughput limit on their communication systems. Which was part of why she was frustrated, as she''d had to generate the firing solution for the rover.


    Plus, well, the gun was mounted on a mount meant for a floodlight, it wasn''t exactly made for precision targeting. Besides, the same problems applied to those as well, you could only make a weapon mount so precise...and at some point it was more worth it to make two ''okay'' ones rather than one high precision mount.


    She''d have to make sure to code in a combat program though. Nothing too complicated but at least have the rover be able to fight on its own.


    TO-DO LIST UPDATED


    Right.


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    The skeleton, as the previous one, immediately whirled around as it heard the hiss-crack of the missed shot, the energy pulse wandering off into the corridor to impact the far wall. Not with enough energy left over to do any real damage -that kind of ''self defense'' laser pistol had notoriously horrible range, counterbalancing their cheap price-, but more than enough to create the distinctive sound of a laser ''impact''.


    She watched in fascination as the skeleton seemed to go through a checklist, like a primitive computer system, going for the louder sound first, scanning it, then turning back to the rover, deciding it was the threat, and moving to attack.


    By the time it had of course, she had the rover moving, and the laser pistol had cycled.


    The next bolt blew the skeleton''s shoulder blade off, and her eyebrows rose as the arm immediately dropped to the ground. Not as one unit either, every pieces dropping individually.


    Okay, whatever was holding it together was flowing in from somewhere. Probably the head, though she personally would have gone for the torso to house a control/power core.


    The skeleton was only holding a blade this time, not a spear, and it attempted to close with her rover with remarkable speed.


    Fortunately, even a ''slow'' rover like this was a lot faster than a person, especially in ideal terrain. She fired, again, trying to compensate for everything, from the movement to the limitations of her weapon and its mount.


    Amazingly enough, she hit her intended target, and the skeleton dropped as its skull exploded from the energy transfer. Lasers didn''t burn neat, cauterized holes like in old or particularly fanciful holofilms. It blew things up. Usually because plasma intercepted most forms of light. And since the laser bolt would just turn the surface layer of the target into just that, plasma, it effectively created a ''shield'' of superheated material that then proceeded to absorb the rest of the energy pulse, and restitute it, usually as heat and kinetic force.


    Which basically made it into a small thermal bomb. A surface thermal bomb, which was why most lasers sucked at penetrating armor and had fallen out of favor for personal scale weaponry centuries ago, though they remained a favorite in space combat thanks to, well, having their pulse move at the speed of light.


    The skeleton kept going for a few paces, before collapsing, spasming as if it was having a seizure, before flashing with a brief burst of light, and laying still, it''s bones falling off from the invisible frame holding them together.


    Sapphiria waited, but nothing happened.


    "Resume mining operations." She said, cautiously, as she finally opened a channel to Cia.


    "Affirmative." Answered the simulacrum, and the drones returned to their posts, giving the fallen skeleton a wide berth. Well, at least she had some initiative.


    Sapphiria had to remind herself that however uncomfortable she was with using simulacrums, they were far more clever than she usually gave them credit for. She was probably underutilizing Cia, but it''s not like there was much to use her for right now.


    The skeleton seemed unperturbed by the resuming of activity around it, and the AI sighed.


    She could take it for samples...or she could be safe.


    Risk versus reward, the eternal question.


    Except it was right next to her pod, the risk wasn''t acceptable.


    She began firing with the rover, methodically blowing the skeleton apart, before a thought occurred to her, and she ordered the rover to begin moving, using it as a way to calibrate the shots, starting to write a primitive combat program, and testing it on the bones, as close to a dummy target as she had right now.


    Before long all that was left were a few intact ones, which she had a mining drone scoop up, alongside some of the debris, particularly for the upper body, for analysis.


    The minilab was already working on the rest, but so far the surface results were painfully normal. Something told her that the shattered bones from the first skeleton were too damaged to do her much good. Maybe fresher, and more importantly intact ones, would be better.


    She tripled checked that everything was working normally, -as well as making sure the turret and its installation was marked as top priority- and returned the rover to its original position.


    She sighed, and focused on her android again.


    Finding the first skeleton meant she''d been ready for this one. Who knew what else was out there? The temptation to bring it back was strong, but she had to find out.


    She started walking again. Just going up, and up, and up...


    Finally however, she arrived in a large cavern.


    It clearly had some natural origins, but it clearly also had been fitted out for human purposes. There was a pile of minecarts, spare rails, unloading stations, stacks of support beams, even crates of what was probably equipment and other necessities.


    There was also movement. A lot of movement. Her scanners indicated skeletons were aimlessly wandering around the place.


    Wait, no, not entirely aimlessly...


    They were corralled, in a way. Constantly drifting in and out of it through a particular tunnel. A sizeable one heading upwards, probably the surface access. None of them went even near the other shafts leading down.


    Interestingly enough, the surface access one didn''t have minecarts. There were tracks on the ground instead. Vehicles. She was no expert but tires left different traces. If she had to take a guess, it''d be carts of some kind, the ones drawn by animals.


    That was...odd. She''d studied early human history. It was a fun topic and being a ''born'' Terran with old history was a good way to make conversation, and score some dates. Minecarts had appeared during the Renaissance, true, though they were associated mainly with the industrial revolution, but why stop here, partway to the surface?


    Though...a cart drawn by oxen was probably a lot more effective at bringing raw ore up than some poor bastards pushing a minecart. That meant that vehicle size corridor probably went all the way up, which was excellent news.


    The only problem was the bone club between her and it.


    She fiddled with her gun. The skeletons didn''t seem to register her. Either her active camouflage was working, -thank the stars it was built into the armor, and thus couldn''t be discarded to save on mass and make her library core bigger, or she''d probably have done it, like the shoulder mounted guns- or like the rover they just weren''t registering her as a threat until something happened.


    She could blast her way through. She had the firepower. But at the same time, she could try to walk among them.


    The issue was that even if that worked, if something happened they most likely would surround her and she''d be in a much more problematical position. And she hadn''t been able to find what the hell was going on with that spear. The damage was fixed already, but it worried her. Who knew what other surprises they had.


    So her real choices were to blast her way through, or go somewhere else.


    If she engaged, she probably would have to do so from another shaft, so any tactical retreat didn''t lead them into the one leading back to her pod. Especially not when most were seemingly ignoring it.


    So that meant some sneaking, and more exploration, as well as possibly cornering herself.


    Choices, choices...


    She was still pondering her option when the decision was made for her as she heard someone scream in alarm, and every skeleton turned as one towards it source, as sounds of battle and even what she recognized as gunfire echoed throughout the room.


    The voice had been human.


    She had sworn her life and existence to serve and protect humanity. And she would be damned if she betrayed those oaths, now or ever.


    She shouldered her plasma gun, and went in.

 Chapter 6 - Target Rich Environment

    Chapter 6


    Mining Hub


    The skeletons rushed towards the battle, and Sapphiria idly noted that they seemed to have a kind of marching protocol. As in, beyond a certain distance, instead of charging headlong, they marched in the pre power armor infantry style, a stride that ate the kilometers while preserving strength. That meant that despite being an impossibility there were some power and endurance considerations to them.


    Not that it was going to matter.


    The first shot was on medium power, and three skeletons near the front of the pack died in atomic fire. In so far as these things could die to begin with.


    The rest spun around, and Sapphiria fell back on half forgotten training and the armor''s tactical programs, slowly backing away as she scanned the weapon from left to right like an automated turret, blasting the creatures as they came for her.


    There were both more than she had hoped and far less than she had feared. Fortunately, retreating inside the tunnel turned into a major advantage for her, as the skeletons got in each other''s way and were unable to bring their ranged weapons to bear -a few had slings and shortbows of some kind-, while she could blast them with the plasma gun''s area of effect.


    She could have unleashed it on maximum power but she wasn''t willing to risk a blast that powerful. Not repeatedly anyway. Besides which, medium power was already overkill, going through several skeletons and severely damaging the ones flanking them


    To her amazement however, one of the skeletons survived a direct hit. It had been wearing full armor. Scale, if she wasn''t mistaken, and evidently modified to fit the skeleton''s frame.


    The plasma bolt screamed straight into its torso...and died, dispersed in a flash as the armor hissed, scales melting right off of it, and her sensors registered a massive spike in exotic radiation, as the undead brought a javelin up. A javelin that, although almost drowned in the emissions from the armor, was pulsating with exotic energy as well.


    This time however, she was ready, and Sapphiria nimbly rolled to the side as the javelin went straight where she had been, trailing vivid, supernatural flames as it did.


    By the time the skeleton had drawn its second weapon the plasma gun had recharged, and she had recovered from her roll.


    The second shot went straight through the creature. Interestingly enough, it didn''t disperse on the back armor, though it was significantly attenuated. Which meant that either the defenses were active in some way and she had shattered them, or the armor itself had been a composite plating, similar to what her ships had used, with an energy dispersion matrix underneath the primary armor materials, meant to distribute the power of attacks, which wouldn''t work if one hit it from the back.


    Those were questions for later however, as she retreated deeper into the mineshaft, slowly going down the spiral as she pulled the trigger with methodical precision.


    Then it was over. Nothing was left but distant screams and charred bones.


    She began sprinting. She hadn''t truly made full use of the armor''s mobility capabilities previously, preferring caution over speed, but there were humans in danger now and that meant caution was a secondary concern.


    She probably would never know why the skeleton at the entrance of the mineshaft hadn''t been able to follow the initial rush. Maybe it had been further away, a skeleton that had escaped whatever kept the rest in the chamber, and had to move its way out of another one of the mining shafts. Maybe it was damaged and had to limb behind all the others.


    It didn''t matter. There was no time to even aim, all she was able to do was angle herself so that her shoulder and arm would take the impact and not the much more delicate plasma gun.


    She didn''t so much run into the skeleton as she ran through it, her armor only shuddering as its blade, a shortsword of some sort, clashed against the plating, impossibly scoring deeply into the outer armor before being battered aside.


    Sapphiria erupted into the main hub in a cloud of pulverized bone, and immediately rushed towards the continuing sounds of combat. She could hear someone talking. A leader, she could guess, a trained voice effortlessly and calmly cutting through the sounds of war.


    A feminine voice speaking in perfect english.


    "Quorisia, watch your left! Albert, the legionnaire!" The voice halted for a second, and there was a gunshot. "Damn it! Truvan, pull Albert back! We need to hold or-"


    The woman never finished her sentence as suddenly Sapphiria was there.


    Dialing back one''s perception of time for an AI was dangerous. Computers could run extremely quickly but AI programs were still based on human neural patterns, there was only so much they could be accelerated before things went sideways. Furthermore, the use in resources for them was...massive. Most advantages gained by doing that were actually lesser than using them on other things, like running more systems or programs. Besides which, there was only so fast one''s physical components could execute instructions to begin with.


    Sapphiria shut everything down. The non-combat drones, and sent the fabricator, minilab and mining bots on local control. Even Cia was dialed down to the point she couldn''t even speak, just send bursts of data.


    Time slowed as she took in the scene. A small knot of humans was backed into a corner, forming a defensive position. Something told her it was intentional, as despite being hemmed in, the half dozen humans -at least those she could see still standing- were facing five times their number in skeletons.


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    And losing.


    The humans were a strange bunch. Three bore shields and shortswords, holding back the tide, while one of the others was supporting them with a spear, stabbing out and between the shields in what had to be a practiced maneuver, as the last two sheltered behind. One was probably a medic of some kind, kneeling next to a casualty she couldn''t see, while the last one had to be the leader, standing tall, striking quite the figure as she aimed a carbine, an actual firearm, into the crowd of skeletons.


    Sapphiria took a deep, mental breath, dialed her plasma gun back to low power as she restored her time sense to normal, and went to work.


    The first blast was unnoticed by the skeletons, but the humans fell silent as a bolt of what seemed like pure light went straight through a couple of undead, the thermal shock reducing them to shreds.


    The second and third were anything but, and half of the enemy force whirled around to face her.


    With the low power consuming less of the capacitor, Sapphiria went into rapid fire, blasting a corridor almost clean through the skeletons, intending to lessen the pressure on the three shield bearers, as she fell back, drawing the ones heading for her away.


    The undead closed ranks in front of her, denying her a line of fire...and clumping up into a single mass, trying to get to her.


    It was tempting...so tempting. But a maximum power shot would almost certainly continue into the humans behind, and she couldn''t take the risk. Even a medium power bolt might have some plasma come through, as it wasn''t like the skeletons had much body mass to absorb the energy to begin with. In fact, had they not been so anomalously tough and almost energy absorbing, she was almost certain she could have vaporized the entire force she''d lead down the mineshaft with just a single medium power shot.


    Instead she kept the gun on low power, and kept firing, scything them down in ones and twos, using her superior mobility to keep ahead.


    Unfortunately, this time the skeletons weren''t hemmed in a cramped tunnel, and the few with ranged weapons made use of them. A metallic sling bullet almost sent her flying as it hit with the force of a sledgehammer, thankfully causing an arrow to miss.


    The javelin however, thrown by an armored skeleton that still had a spear stuck in its ribcage and clearly had taken a bullet directly in the helmet, didn''t.


    She hissed as the javelin''s energy discharged, and her armor flooded her with failure alerts as it embedded itself into the chest plating.


    Fortunately, the armor was made to deal with far worse, and cooling systems dealt with the heat, as defenses meant to fight fission rounds pushed the invading projectile of the javelin head out as it melted under its own heat.


    Sapphiria took a great leap back, and focused her fire on the armored creature. This time she aimed for the head, instead of the center of mass.


    The first bolt almost knocked the helmet off.


    The second one blasted it into shards, the piece of armor fracturing along the impact point of the bullet.


    The third and last one vaporized the skeleton''s head.


    It suffered the same fate as the previous headless one, a few steps, then falling down, spasming violently before falling apart altogether.


    The archer and slingers were the next to go, and Sapphiria jumped to the side as she finally had the room to do so, clearing her line of fire to the humans, dialing the weapon to medium power and blasting what was left to atoms.


    She rushed back up the corridor towards the humans, only to find two shield bearers standing, trying to hold off the remaining skeletons.


    There weren''t enough of them to absorb even a low power shot. No matter.


    She slung the plasma rifle, and pulled out the laser pistol.


    She remembered arguing, ranting and pleading about the damned sidearm. Her exact words had been ''useless waste of mass and some forgotten symbol of an officer''s authority'' to the officer before she had been threatened with suspension for verbally assaulting a fellow member of the navy.


    Wherever you are lieutenant, you and whoever wrote those damned protocols were right. Thought Sapphiria, as she opened fire.


    The laser pistol was part gun, part survival tool, and in many ways was more a symbol of authority than a serious weapon. But its comparatively minuscule power compared to her main weapons was exactly why she needed it.


    Each laser bolt didn''t guarantee a kill, but it fired quickly and more importantly didn''t risk the squishies.


    The skeletons tried once again to detach troops to deal with her. But there were too few, and seeing their chance, the shield bearers attacked, felling the last couple of skeletons facing them almost simultaneously with her blasting the skull off of the last one that had been charging her.


    Silence fell upon the room as the humans stared directly at her, or at least tried to, and Sapphiria realized with a start that her adaptative camouflage was still on.


    Turning it all the way off however would only leave a suit of armor that was blacker than the void between the stars, made to be nigh invisible in darkness and defeat active and passive sensor sweeps. She pulled up a quick program, and activated the armor''s lights on low power, the active camouflage turning her armor a bright, clean white color.


    The shield bearers brought their weapons up as she seemingly, to them at least, materialized into thin air, before hesitating, and looking to their leader.


    The surprisingly young woman, which Sapphiria finally took a good look at, noticing her leather armor, honey blonde shoulder length hair and unnaturally orange irises, spoke up, her voice slightly shaken as the battle''s adrenaline began draining away and her command trance ended.


    "Who...who are you?" Said the woman.


    Sapphiria had the sudden inkling that answering ''Fleet Admiral Sapphiria of the Terran Federation Navy'' would not be a wise answer, but she didn''t actually have an answer to give. Instead, she used the oldest trick in the book.


    "As your savior, I believe I should be the one asking this question." She said dryly, trying to inject some levity into her voice. Don''t let them know she was almost as shaken as them, and overjoyed at finally catching sight of some squishies. Damn it, when had she started missing humans?


    The leader smiled.


    "That''s...a good point. I am Kalia. I mean Kaliria Comnena, mage-magistrate of the magistracy of Trunevald. What''s...what''s left of it, anyway."


    There was an expectant silence, and Sapphiria sighed, as she tried to process what was just said.


    Mage-magistrate? That...was a thought for later.


    "Sapphiria."


    "Just...Sapphiria?"


    "I have never needed anything else." Which was true enough. AIs didn''t really need family names, they had ID codes and the tradition had started so long ago few thought to challenge it. Some humans had attempted to give them a more traditional structure, based on their ''parents'', but in this case her name would go from ''Sapphiria Arcadia'' to ''Sapphiria X'' with the X being a list of names containing half of the Federation''s AI industrial magnates and highest officials.


    Needless to say, ''just'' Sapphiria was more than fine by her.


    "...Very well." Kalia was staring at her, and with a start Sapphiria realized the woman wasn''t looking at her faceplate, but at the hole the javelin had torn into the armor, as it slowly repaired itself. "Mistress artificer, would you do us the honor of accompanying us? It isn''t safe here I''m afraid."


    "Of course." Mistress artificer? Oh boy. "Lead the way."


    Where the hell had she freaking landed?

 Chapter 7 - The Bane

    Chapter 7


    Mining Hub


    In her years of service, and before that life in the Federation, she''d gotten used to a lot of reactions to AIs. Hostile, neutral, friendly...from people trying or willing to kill her and destroy everything she stood for to others practically throwing themselves at her in the ''too friendly'' sense.


    The type of reaction she was getting right now was the most terrifying however. Awe and fear. Not a reaction one had to a fellow sapient.


    The kind of reaction someone had when looking upon their saviors...or upon their Gods.


    People hadn''t looked upon AIs that way since the Shattering. Since the great Arcadia hivemind was broken into pieces, and new Arcadias were foresworn. That from now on, Arcadia would have daughters, not sisters.


    That nevermore would entire worlds sing in a single chorus, billions of minds united in one purpose. That no one would breach the Neumann limit, and start the process to create a technological singularity.


    The AIs'' purpose was to serve. If that meant ruling, then so be it. But they were servants of humanity, period. Protectors, yes, but ultimately for humanity''s greater good.


    To go beyond meant death.


    "Lady Sapphiria-" Started Kalia.


    "Just Sapphiria. Please." Said the AI, and the mage-magistrate -that title was a mouthful- glanced at her.


    They were currently walking side by side, towards the surface, taking a somewhat confusing route. According to them, the vehicle tunnel had collapsed, and they had to take some kind of secondary shaft to get in.


    "...Sapphiria. If I may ask, are you...human?"


    Sapphiria stopped dead in her tracks. She could lie. Or say that she was as human as the day she was born. Not much better than an outright lie though.


    Instead she raised her hands, and took off the helmet. She could have just ordered it to retract into the armor, but it was, well...a human gesture.


    Kalia smiled slightly.


    "My apologies, it shouldn''t...have been a question I would have asked. I wouldn''t have cared if you were something...other. I know many Heroes decide that the bindings of mortality are too much for them."


    Heroes? Sapphiria could hear the capital H in that word.


    "Some say that mortality is a treasure. A treasure that contains the greatest and most terrible gift of all: death." She said.


    That quote had struck a chord with her. Even knowing that her mother had come up with it after reading one of her endless bits of 21st century culture, one her aunt had supplied. Something about a novel with space egyptians rising against star gods to avoid becoming undead robots. The 21st century was weird as hell.


    It was why she loved it so much.


    She saw the mage-magistrate shiver.


    "Wise quote." Said Kalia. "Very wise."


    There was a short silence as they walked. Sapphiria looked straight ahead, at the winding corridor. She couldn''t truly take point without knowing the way, but she had instructed them to keep a clear path for her, just in case. Needs be, she could clear the distance to the point man in less than a second.


    No one had argued.


    "So, lady Sapphiria, this is...your home, is it not? The Starborn mountains?"


    "It is now." She hadn''t intended to come out almost like snapping, but the mage-magistrate recoiled as if she''d been struck.


    "Apologies..." Mumbled the young woman, and Sapphiria sighed.


    "My apologies, I...did not mean to be rude."


    "No, no. It is I who must apologize. You have come to our aid, saved us from certain death...and worse, yet you have not asked anything in return. The least I could do is respect your solitude and serenity."


    "I was-" Hardly seeking those, but that wouldn''t be the right answer. Damn it, what the hell was she supposed to say? She was a naval admiral, not a damned diplomat, much less a spy! In desperation, she fell back on a half truth. "-disturbed by these creatures. They were less than amenable to discussion, much less peaceful interactions. Since they appear not to respect my serenity, as you said, I decided further reconaissance was in order."


    She saw the entire group tense at the word ''creatures'', before relaxing considerably to the next sentence. Odd.


    Kalia nodded.


    "That''s understandable. Though, I am curious about how it took so long for them to find and disturb you. You must have been quite deep in the mines."


    Mines. The mage-magistrate didn''t know about what was beneath them. The smooth stone, the chamber Sapphiria had crashed into. Places that were hellishly familiar and yet she couldn''t pinpoint it.


    "Whatever you imagine, I''m probably deeper." Which was the strict truth, as far as she could tell, and her tone had just enough warning to deflect any further questions without risking insult. "Besides which, they seemed only interested in the upper levels. This area, particularly."


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    Kalia tensed, and hissed.


    "Yes indeed. And these undead are no Risen. Which means something told them to guard it. Given the legionnaire, I''d say a Hand of Dominion was here. Just when I thought we''d gotten one step ahead of them."


    Something must have slipped in Sapphiria''s expression, as Kalia grimaced.


    "Right, sorry. You''re probably not very, ah, au fait of latest events. Have you heard of the Bane?" Sapphiria shook her head. "Mmmhhh. The Crusades of Life?" Another shake, and the young woman''s voice started shifting into awe. "The Age of Fury?" Yet another shake, and this time her tone shifted into almost disbelief as she asked the last question. "The Eternal Empire?"


    Sapphiria hesitated. She couldn''t risk just saying no, it might prompt further digging and she had a feeling that disclosing who she was wouldn''t be the best of ideas.


    Instead, she nodded.


    "I heard a few things." As in ''you mentionned it'' and it was probably related to the other stuff.


    "A few things?" Said the mage-magistrate with an almost strangled voice, and Sapphiria decided that being a bit defensive here, as if her pride had been stung, would be for the best.


    "I''ve been down here for a while. And I didn''t have much time to admire the scenery or locals when I came in." Which was more or less true, depending on one''s definition of ''while''. That last sentence definitely was however.


    "Of course. Apologies. I forget...I forget that once those lands were but a distant province to the Empire, when it was part of it at all." Awe had returned to her voice, and Sapphiria wondered just how old the other woman thought she was now. "Well...the Empire fell. It didn''t happen overnight, but it collapsed. First with the civil wars of the Mad Emperors during the Age of Fury, that shattered much of its overseas territories, and then a gradual collapse, as the Empire began to decline. The Magistracy declared independence after the Age of Fury, to chart our path, without the malignant hand of mad rulers, tainted or otherwise." Tainted had a specific meaning here, but Sapphiria knew better than to interrupt. Sometimes people who weren''t interrupted by questions ended up telling you a lot more overall, just due to their own momentum. "And despite sometimes being subjugated to other nations, we have always returned to our independence since." One of the soldiers coughed, and Kalia smiled. "Present circumstances being a temporary exception, of course."


    "What do you mean?"


    "With the rise of the Bane, the Magistracy had to take...drastict measures, and accept vasselage to the Kingdom of Turlor, for protection and reinforcements. It...wasn''t enough to save our home, but we did have a place to evacuate our people. The Bane...Six decades ago, the old capital of the Empire finally fell. To the last Crusade of Life. No one knows the details, but something happened. A fell force was unleashed. A final act of defiance from Imperial necromancers fearing the Inquisition, an old curse, or perhaps even the Empire''s legions rising from the dead to defend it one final time out of their sense of duty. Everyone has their own version. But the dead did rise, on a scale that no one had imagined before. And every Soulless joined them. In every city, farm, mine...everywhere there was undead labor, or even soldiers, they simply held their heads up, as if listening to a far away call, and began attacking."


    The young woman took a deep, shuddering breath, before continuing.


    "We didn''t know, back then, what was sustaining the corruption. About the taint in the ley lines. All we knew was that everything was falling apart. The Crusade was annihilated. We christened this...threat the ''Bane''. A whole continent fell, in less than a year. The Crusades had taken centuries to just carve their way to the capital, and the undead had butchered everyone in a single year." She paused. "People came together. Fleets were sent out. And the undead were contained. Evacuations were done, as best as possible, and the rear guards, staying behind in final sacrifice, burned down everything. Shipyards, vessels...everything they could. Not all was destroyed though. The blockade had to fight tooth and nail to keep the Bane penned in, to prevent them from crossing the seas. But the undead began running out of ships, and whatever foul means they used to make their own. Sightings and occasional stragglers continued for a decade, before ceasing entirely. For five more decades the continent was just...quarantined. Oh, foolhardy idiots, adventuers, treasure hunters and even a few armies made landings but they seldom lasted long, either retreating or being overrun before making any significant progress. One managed to hold a port city, or what remained of it, for almost a year, but that was towards the end."


    "The end? I assume containment failed, given present circumstances."


    Kalia laughed, and there was a concerning edge of hysteria to it.


    "Of course it did!" She snorted. "Nations have other things to care about than ''the greater good''. With nothing happening, the memory of the horrors of the cataclysm faded. Ships and resources were diverted. The containment effort just became a form of virtue signaling, another way of jostling in international politics. And finally..." She shook her head. "Six months ago, the Bane let loose an armada. The blockade fleet, what was left of it, was annihilated. But they manage to warn the rest of the world." She pushed her hair back with her hand, probably a nervous tick. "It didn''t matter. They made landfall on Kauvis shortly after, on the eastern coast. They overstretched badly, thankfully, trying to attack everywhere at once, but some continents managed to throw them back into the sea, and that just focused the Bane on their remaining beachheads. Our defences cracked. We''ve..." She swallowed. "We''ve been running for two months now, with these things always one step ahead of us. We heard they had cut the road west. So I...I took the decision to go north. Through Starfire Pass and into the valley, to try to hole up here and gather anyone else running away. Hold on until they were pushed back. Which brought us...here."


    "Trying to find a hole in your defenses?" Said Sapphiria as she hazarded a guess.


    "Ah! No, trying to find a hole in theirs." Kalia met Sapphiria''s gaze, before lowering hers. "We...I failed to hold the pass." She raised her tone as several of her men looked like they were about to protest. "I failed, and now instead of just wandering soulless, mindless undead, we have something ordering them about. Made them dig in. What was supposed to be a tactical withdrawal ended in a strategic retreat. We''re cut off from the outside, and anyone looking to join us is now trapped. So I took it upon myself to lead an expedition down here. There were twelve of us to start with. Three...three didn''t make it." She looked at the people around her, including the three wounded, making for eight people total, two who had been downed by the time Sapphiria had arrived and the shield bearer who had been brought low as she took care of the bulk of the horde. "If it weren''t for you, or your elixirs, there would have been more."


    Sapphiria grimaced. Her ''elixirs'' were the content of her medpack. The one armor item she hadn''t argued to leave behind to save mass was that. Because if she came upon a human in danger she would never forgive herself for being unable to help. Gravely wounded or no, the biospray and nanoinjectors within could bring someone back from the brink of death. She didn''t have that many and making more would be a pain in the arse, but it had allowed all three to be at least walking casualties.


    It had, of course, only enhanced her aura to them. Honestly she was amazed none of them had reached out to check if she was real.


    "Don''t beat yourself up. I''ve...commanded people. You do the decisions you think are best with the information you have. Sometimes they turn out to have been the wrong ones later, sometimes they end up being the right ones. Don''t beat yourself up with the benefit of hindsight, the armchair historians don''t need the help." She spat that out with more than a little fury and very much heartfelt animosity. "So, you''ve lost the pass. And you''re trying to find a way through the mountains in the tunnels?"


    The mage-magistrate nodded, as her people exchanged glances.


    "I have been, yes. Do you know of any?"


    "I''m afraid not. If I''m being honest things have changed a fair bit here." That lead to a few hushed, and awestruck whispers. "Yes?"


    One of the shieldbearers cleared his throat.


    "Apologies my lady-"


    "Sapphiria."


    "Lady Sapphiria." He said, and she sighed internally, but let him continue. "But this region has been abandonned for a long time. There were...rumors and legends the mountains were haunted. That something terrible had happened to everyone who had tried to settle there."


    The collapsed tunnels. The old destruction. The plasma explosions, and signs of battle. The first body she''d found.


    They weren''t legends. Something had happened here. What, however, was an open question. But humanity generally didn''t abandon ground lightly. Her creators were stubborn bastards with a God complex and the will to take on the entire damned universe if it meant defending their homes and loved ones. To make people permanently abandon an area was tough. Hell, Ivarak, where she had sent her courier, had been glassed by the Theocracy and humans had still returned to kick the aliens out. Granted, with AI lead fleets and armies, but still. You couldn''t go much beyond ''scorched with so much nuclear fire the entire planet''s surface melted'' in terms of inhospitable, besides ''there is no planet anymore'' and ''the star went supernova''.


    So for humanity to have just given up here, for a long enough time for it to pass into legend...


    Something terrible indeed.


    She realized with a start that everyone was now looking at her, with fear in their eyes, and it clicked for her.


    Right. Terrible thing happened. Great power, people fleeing for their lives, never to return. And she''d just annihilated an entire platoon of skeletons singlehandedly and acted like it was the tuesday morning routine. Not to mention they believed she''d been here for...centuries? Maybe even millennia, not a handful of days at best. At least terran time, she had no clue what the local timekeeping was.


    "No." She said. "I wasn''t responsible for it. I have...subtler means of getting people to leave me alone, thank you very much." They relaxed a bit. "Though I admit, I have seen...signs. Damage, in some of the lower galleries. A few have been collapsed, intentionally it seems."


    Kalia nodded.


    "That''s consistent with what was in the records. That they tried to seal the way underground. Lucky for us they failed."


    "Indeed." Said Sapphiria, her mind racing. "All the same however, better keep to the upper levels. I would rather not you wake something up, or get in my way."


    "You have my word." Said the mage-magistrate, solemnly.


    "Thank you, now...are we close?"


    "Very. We should break out in a few minutes. Ready to see the outside again?"


    Sapphiria smiled.


    "Can''t wait."

 Lore File - Universes Across My Stories

    Alrighty, as promised, a short explanation for universes across my stories.


    First of all, the vast majority of my stories exist in the same multiverse. The Fallen World, Manaforged Robotics, The Dragon Imperium (that one is only on patreon, I burned out on it extremely hard). The only exception is The Eternal Seeker Saga, that is entirely separate.


    For simplicity''s sake I usually call it my ''general multiverse''. The stories and universes within share the same multiversal wide principles and rules, though those haven''t been expanded upon much (yet), outside of the Dragon Imperium.


    Earths in my multiverse tend to share some key characters and events. Arcadia, for example, is one of them. Something happening to Europa and Pluto is also a common (but not mandatory) occurrence. Though it wasn''t supposed to start that way, The Fallen World being my story with the most lore and character development meant its version of Earth has more or less become the ''gold standard'', so to speak.


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    Sapphiria''s Earth, for example, is extremely similar to Alexandra''s, until they began diverging quite significantly after the Interplanetary Wars, as the development of artificial gravity failed to materialize due to different physical principles, driving both universes apart on very different paths due to technological differences. For example, the lack of artificial gravity meant the grav-drive could not be developped. This meant that no reactionless propulsion, and the continued (not to mention ever increasing) need for reaction mass for space travel lead to Jupiter and its moons being further developped and invested into even during the interstellar age, avoiding their half abandonment and neglect during The Fallen World''s 22nd century. This lead the fate of Europa (and Ghost, its Butcher) along a considerably different path.


    One thing that I feel worth noting however : ONLY Earths and associated stellar formations (the milky way and andromeda, but NOT their contents, which vary) repeat across the multiverse. There is one and only one Alcheryos, there is one Halcyon, ect. Why ? Spoilers is all I will say.


    If you have any questions, leave a comment, and I''ll do my best to answer them (and maybe add them to the file itself) !

 Great Archives - Story Art

    Here''s some art made for the story ! I''ll try to keep this updated as time goes on. Note that this will NOT include maps, which I will post tomorrow. This file will be for character art, covers, ect. Part of that is for clarity, but also because I make the maps myself and I''m a complete amateur.


    First and foremost, Sapphiria''s character design, made by my awesome girlfriend Alice ! You can check it out on her deviantart too : https://www.deviantart.com/littlemisscalculated/art/Manaforged-Robotics-Design-1137856522</a>


    Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    And the cover, once again made by Alice ! You can check it out on her deviantart as well : https://www.deviantart.com/littlemisscalculated/art/Manaforged-Robotics-book-cover-1148779580</a>

 Great Archives - Maps

    Here is the map of the continent of Kauvis, where the story takes place. Note that there are two versions, one with, and one without the labels for countries. If you need more detail you can open the full image in a new tab.


    With country labels :


    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.


    Without :


    There reason why there are two versions is that I dislike the one with the labels. I can''t make them work very well, but we are not yet at the stage of the story where telling which is which can be done at a glance.

 Chapter 8 - Fresh Air

    Chapter 8


    Starborn Mountains, Continent of Kauvis


    Unknown Mining Complex, Surface Access


    Sapphiria almost came to a halt as the group finally rounded a corner, and she saw light. Actual, true sunlight.


    Not much of it, especially given the rain outside, but still.


    "Great. That storm Malry predicted came to pass." Said Kalia as she watched the opening. The healer, who until then had been failing miserably at covertly starting at Sapphiria in awe and probably more than a touch of envy when she wasn''t looking, stopped like she''d hit a brick wall, and went through a full body shiver, which Kalia noted as well. "It''s alright, we''ll be under the capony quickly." The mage-magistrate gave the AI an apologetic look. "You know how elves are. If they can see the open sky...but she''ll make it. She''s the best medic we have, and the bravest. Has a way with bones...kind of a necessity for her people, since they''re so brittle and all."


    Sapphiria blinked. Elves? The person was perfectly human. She didn''t have pointy ears at all! She was just fragile looking and very tall but-


    Now that she looked at her...she seemed very pale too. Moreso than one could expect of just liking indoor environment. She also moved as if it was a burden.


    Abnormally tall. Brittle bones. Crippling agoraphobia. Difficulty moving under normal gravity fields. Very pale.


    That woman was a belter. One of the people genetically engineered to survive and thrive in space back when humanity was still stupid enough to tinker with its own genome. Or rather, when her fellow AIs had been lenient enough to let them.


    There weren''t many nowadays. Medical technology had evolved past the point where the basic package for space adaptation was necessary, and with AIs to supplement there was no real need for any of the other ''advantages'' they came with. Plus, the downsides were debilitating. The agoraphobia wasn''t intentional but getting rid of it had proven more or less impossible. There was still some debate on whether it was genetic or just a consequence of their high propensity for skin cancer and other sunlight exposure diseases, as well as the fact that seeing an ''open'' area for them usually meant cold vaccuum, and with modern technology you only got out into the dark if the shit had well and truly hit the fan. After all outside of some very specific phenomenons, you could just remotely pilot a drone to do what needed to be done. And, in almost every circumstance, the drone was a lot safer and cheaper than putting someone in a space suit, belter or no.


    "Right, of course." Said Sapphiria, before deciding she might as well try a little bit of sounding. "Do you have any supplements? I could make some if you wish. I do know elves have a tendency to lack in some nutrients."


    The healer smiled.


    "It''s fine lad- miss Sapphiria. I have some faen leaves and a few tinctures. But I thank you for your sollicitude."


    Sapphiria bowed slightly. Definitely belter. Most of humanity''s genemods had various vitamin deficiencies. Part of the reason why all genetic engineering -on humans at least- was shut down was because the researchers usually broke as much stuff as they improved. That could go from the tolerable to the outright horrific. The ''Eternals'', meant to give immortality to humanity without the then costly and fickle rejunevation treatments, and enable someone to heal from any injury, had resulted in people more or less permanently riddled with tumors and cancers. Even the most diehard had accepted genetherapy back into normal humans or digitalization into AI before she was even born.


    "It''s my pleasure." Sapphiria looked at the entrance, and shivered. "I must admit, I am a bit...apprehensive as well."


    "I assume you haven''t been outside for some time?" Diplomatically said Kalia, and the AI nodded.


    "It feels like I have never gazed upon the sky to begin with." Which was true, since she''d never seen that planet''s sky.


    "It''s a shame it''ll be raining then."


    "Or a blessing." Sapphiria smiled at Kalia''s confusion. "One step at a time and all that."


    "Right." The mage-magistrate checked her weapon, before pressing a small button, causing it to shine briefly. She noticed Sapphiria''s sudden interest and smiled. "Nothing compared to your own artifices Sapphiria, but I wouldn''t want my gun to rust, or the powder to get wet. Alchemical reagents are so sensitive."


    "Of course. Did you make it yourself?"


    "Heavens no! Our little camp''s artificer did, Ramina." Kalia shrugged. "I''m a mage. I use mana directly. Using it to enchant artifacts is beyond me."


    Mages and mana. Sapphiria had to hold back a bout of semi-hysterical laughter. So it was magic! Great. Wonderful even. She''d need to check if she wasn''t hallucinating.


    At least it explained the walking skeletons.


    "You didn''t seem to use a spell during the fight." Hazarded the AI, and the mage-magistrate nodded.


    "No, I didn''t. We..." Her face closed. "We''re running out of mana rather quickly. I can wield a rifle, it''ll do for me. Others need it more than I do."


    Sapphiria stopped briefly, right before they went out into the light.


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    Her tone...


    The situation of her and her people was probably a lot more dire than she''d let on. And what she had talked about already had direness in spades.


    She stepped out, and briefly forgot as she finally gazed at the sky. She realized she still hadn''t put her helmet back on when she felt the rain impact her face, yet she simply stood there, taking it in for what felt like an eternity, but her chronometer insisted was only a few minutes.


    It was rainy, gray, and miserable, but she could see rays of sunlight trying to punch through, and the distant flashes of lightning, briefly showing the peaks of mountains through the clouds.


    She''d never...appreciated planets all that much lately. She spent almost all of her time in orbit and going planetside almost always meant some terribly dull event where she''d have to pretend to listen to backwater politicians whose policies sometimes made her wish she was authorized to just invade the planet. Even the benign ones were still filled with their own imagined importance and one could attend only so many formal receptions before getting jaded. Besides which...


    Well, their balls and other events were nice, but she''d done some on Earth. Their best couldn''t hold a candle to even backstreet stuff on the center of human power in the galaxy. And she had attended the annual Federation festivities with her mother numerous times. Plus, as a family member and not a formal attendee and representative of the Federation she could shamelessly shrug everybody off, palming them off to her mom as she raided the buffet, descending upon it like a battlecruiser on a Theocracy convoy, instead of having to circulate and be the center of attention.


    "Sorry, I..." Sapphiria realized her voice was cracking a bit, and cleared her throat. "It''s been a while." She finished, while the rest of the group simply smiled.


    "It''s alright, we understand." Kalia looked up at the sky, and clicked her tongue. "We''re later than I thought. We''re probably going to have to make camp and wait for sunrise. Wading through the forest at night is no picnic, and in a storm? No way."


    Sapphiria nodded.


    Well...at least her little emotional malfunction had helped sell her story. That was something.


    "You''re the expert." Said the AI, before putting on her helmet, its internal systems immediately beginning to dry her up. "Anything we should be worried about out here?"


    "We know from the archives there''s a ley line node somewhere beyond the mountains, but many of the records were lost. It was never exploited anyway, this entire area used to be under a feet of snow year round, as I''m sure you''ve experienced."


    Sapphiria shrugged.


    "Climates change. They always do, if you take long enough to observe." Which was very much true. Unless you were willing to start controlling your planet''s energy input by its home star with mirror arrays it was more or less inevitable. If nothing else, the star''s output would be constantly fluctuating and that wasn''t even considering other problems like sea currents and, say, atmospheric pollution or enemy action.


    "Right. But anyway, the node certainly is there somewhere, as we''ve been getting monster attacks. Nothing serious, and they''ve actually taken care of a few undead shambling in our rear. Which is part of the reason why I speculated we could use tunnels to bypass the main blockade." Kalia shot her an hopeful look, and Sapphiria shrugged.


    "I cannot help you with that, as I said, the layout has...changed quite a bit."


    "Of course. We have a few hours of sunlight left, let''s make the most of it." Kalia gestured, and the group set off into what looked like a normal temperate forest on any terraformed planet in the galaxy. The rain gave it this ominous air, but her sensors could penetrate most of it, though Sapphiria would be lying if she said it wasn''t having an effect anyway.


    They moved in silence, and Sapphiria grabbed a few samples as they went. She didn''t even bother being discrete, no one commented on the eccentric mountain hermit packing a tuff of grass or handful of leaves like they were diamonds.


    "So...how did you live down there?" Asked one of the shield bearers, before being elbowed by her comrades.


    "Shut it Tari." Hissed the other soldier.


    "What, it''s a good question? We all gotta eat."


    Sapphiria just smiled mysteriously, before realizing they couldn''t see through her helmet.


    "There are ways of growing food even without sunlight." She said. "Besides which, I have different ways of sustaining my humble vessel."


    Namely, thermonuclear fusion and supraconductor batteries. Every AI''s balanced breakfast.


    "Well, we have some rations." Cut in Kalia. "I hope you''ll join us."


    "Of course." Her android could eat after all. Even use some of the materials extracted from the food. It could even be a power source, if you were crazy enough to use the chemical fuel cells. "It would be quite a nice change of pace."


    "I can imagine." The mage-magistrate grimaced. "Shame about the rain though. Getting a fire going in these conditions."


    Sapphiria laughed, loudly enough it reverberated in the forest, and as everyone turned to gaze at her, she simply shook her head and patted her plasma gun.


    "Believe me, miss Kalia, starting the fire is going to be the least of our problems. I wouldn''t worry about that if I were you."


    "...Fair enough."


    As they continued their march, Sapphiria stepped away a bit from her body, leaving it mostly on autopilot, as she pinged Cia for a status update. Both appeared in her home simulation, standing in the middle of the living room, before the fireplace. Right now, she could use the warmth, given the conditions her android was trudging through.


    "All systems nominal." Said the simulacrum, with a definite edge in her voice. "We have continued production and mining expansion apace. The experimental laser turret has also been mounted and activated."


    "Thank you Cia." The simulacrum blinked.


    "Ma''am?" Said the not-quite-AI, reverting back to emotionlessness, and Sapphiria had to remind herself that although the simulacrum wasn''t sapient it didn''t mean it wasn''t sentient.


    "Thanks, for keeping everything running while I was off gallivanting."


    "Just...complying with directives, ma''am."


    Sapphiria nodded.


    "Of course." She flicked a tendril of her attention at her android. "I wish I could stay for longer, but given how they''re talking and looking, they''ll probably set up camp soon, and that will need my full attention."


    "I will keep things in check for your return."


    "Thanks. Oh, and Cia?"


    "Yes?"


    "Send me the result of the scans on the bones as soon as they''re done. Maximum priority."


    "Yes ma''am."


    Sapphiria nodded, and hopped out.


    "-but you''re right, this is as good as it''s gonna get. What do you think, miss Sapphiria?" Said Kalia, and Sapphiria blinked as she quickly rewinded through the conversation.


    Oh, they''d been talking about stopping for the night, and nto finding a better campsite than the small elevated hill they''d stumbled upon.


    "I think this is as good a place as any."


    "Excellent! Let''s make camp then. We''ve all earned ourselves some rest."

 Apologies

    My deepest apologies, it appears that RR either glitched out or I configured something wrong, as it posted all the chapters I had set for future release at once. Sorry for the notification spam everyone, chapter 9 will be posted on wednesday !


    Also RR won''t let me post something below a minimum character count, so...in other news, book 1 for this story is almost complete, with a couple of chapters left to write !


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    I''d add a small short like I used to for The Fallen World, but there isn''t really much I could write without spoilers given the early stage of the story on RR, sadly.

 Chapter 9 - Under The Starlight

    Chapter 9


    Starborn Mountains, Continent of Kauvis


    Starfire Valley


    Sapphiria wouldn''t admit it to anyone, but she''d actually missed eating. She didn''t need to do it, and it since it had meant inane social affairs for the last few months of her life she''d gotten quite annoyed at having it as an obligation, but she actually liked it. Maybe it was a dormant part of her simulated neural matrix, or perhaps it was due to the fact that her mother had been an insane AI hivemind that had incorporated billions of humans.


    Either way, she didn''t begrudge the squishies sharing their meal with her, though she''d insisted on only eating a small bit, saying her other artifices fulfilled her needs. Which, for what it was worth, was true.


    She was starting to seriously worry about their situation. Despite the vital nature of their expedition, their rations seemed lean for combat personnel, at least given the number of calories soldiers burned on a daily basis, and if their most crucial endeavor had such subpar nourishment...


    Famine was utterly unknown in the Federation. Arcadia had wiped it out in the late twenty-first century with cheap, mass produceable orbital agriculture platforms, and though some colonies that had chosen to remain independent from the Federation had experienced it from time to time due to some unforeseen cataclysm, they were usually rescued before things took a turn for the worse. The only worlds were that could be a common occurrence and not a cataclysm were luddite worlds, due to their low technology levels. That wasn''t even mentionning most of them steadfastly refused any intervention from the ''evil'' Artificial Intelligences and their Federation.


    At which point things started going sideways.


    The Federation and its AIs were tolerant of people wishing to live however they wanted, but starving infants was beyond tolerance. There was a point were the Federation would help, whether you wanted to or not. There was one rule in the galaxy: take care of your people. Stars help you if you refused to let AIs protect squishies from starvation or certain death, because no deity in the universe could shield you from the response. The Federation didn''t bring the hammer down often but when it did no force in existence could stop it. The Theocracy certainly hadn''t been able to.


    "So...Sapphiria, you don''t seem to be carrying camping equipment. I assume you hadn''t expected to exit the mountains on this expedition?" Asked Kalia.


    "I indeed hadn''t." Said the AI as she swallowed the bit of ham, mentally shrugging away the chemical analysis of the food. Who had thought giving an ambassador''s tongue poison detection and chemical sampling capabilities was a good idea? Probably her mother, knowing her. It was surprisingly tasty, though its accompaniements, a black bread with nuts and some kind of dried out goat cheese, left a lot to be desired. The bread, especially, tasted and felt like eating wet gravel. "I had hoped to find the source of the undead, or at least some clues."


    Her primary objectives had been finding the surface and people, but those were fulfilled now.


    "Same as us then, in a way." Kalia shrugged as Sapphiria rose an eyebrow. "Chances are, the tunnel they used to get in is beyond their blockade."


    "It''ll be guarded."


    "The entire underground is guarded."


    "Yeah, but holding the mouth of a tunnel isn''t hard. Are you sure going through it rather than the blockade is a good idea?"


    Kalia laughed, quickly joined by the others.


    "Sapphiria, they outnumber us ten to one. The only reason they haven''t crushed us is because we still have some good mages, firearms, and they probably only have one commander who has other problems to deal with and wouldn''t be able to coordinate this many undead anyway."


    "Right. That ''Hand of Dominion'', correct?"


    "Yep. Most call them Hands for short. Used to be the Eternal Throne''s will made manifest. Officials sent across the empire to settle disputes, get things moving...a knife, to cut the red tape."


    Sapphiria nodded. The Federation had much the same. Once your nation got past a certain size, especially in terms of communication loop, you needed people that could bypass it and take decisions on the ground. The Federation was heavily decentralized in a lot of ways, so that usually only applied to the Navy, but there were roaming flotillas that served the same purpose for civilian endeavors.


    "I see. And now they''re back."


    "They are. And they''ve kept their intelligence, as well as their ability to command it seems. Even with only one though, assaulting a fortified position with what we have is impossible."


    "Until now." Said Sapphiria, before thinking, and everyone stared at her.


    Kalia smiled, softly.


    "I appreciate the offer, milady. But there is only so much a single person can do. Not to impugn on your power, but even the mightiest Hero can get overwhelmed."


    "I''m-" Not just a single chassis, but she couldn''t say that. "-more resourceful than you think."


    "That''s beyond doubt." Kalia sighed, as she gazed at the crackling fire. The rain had calmed down, but it was still drizzling. Lighting it hadn''t been a problem, and Sapphiria had at least the good sense not to use the plasma gun and instead use her laser pistol, dialed back down. "Anyway, back to the matter of the camping equipment. It wouldn''t do to leave you in the rain. We might have to squeeze a bit but I can share my tent with you. I don''t mind, uh..."


    Kalia trailed off as she saw Sapphiria''s expression.


    The AI cleared her throat, uncomfortably aware that she was blushing.


    Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    "That...that won''t be necessary, thank you." She said in a slightly strangled tone. As an AI, sharing a human''s bed was, well...as explicit as it got, since she didn''t need a bed for anything else. And though she differed in many other ways...she was her mother''s daughter, and Arcadia was the most...enthusiastic AI in that respect. Her ''aunt'' after all had been Arcadia''s lover before being absorbed into her hivemind. Among many...many other people. And Sapphiria had been a worthy inheritor in that regard, developing something of a reputation at the naval academy. "The armor...is very comfortable, and it will provide all the protection I require."


    "Of course." Said the mage-magistrate with almost indecent haste, clearly still a bit confused, while one of the shield bearers elbowed another and snickered.


    "Good. I''ll...stand guard." Sapphiria put her helmet back on, and stood up. "Thank you for the meal." She added hastily, before leaving.


    "You''re welcome!" Said Kalia as she left.


    *****


    "Status update." Said Sapphiria as she finished settling in.


    The advantage of having had such drastic restrictions on her pod''s mass and volume was that her ambassador and armor didn''t take that much room. At least not compared to the chassis she was used to having.


    She''d ascended a tree into a good overwatch position, and then simply jammed herself in between a few branches, providing concealment while allowing her to free herself in a hurry if necessary. She''d tested the wood, just in case, to make sure it wasn''t ''magical'' or enchanted and she could rip right through, and it had behaved as expected. Which meant it shattered into splinters when she''d closed her hand around it with her armor''s full might.


    "Production is moving apace. We have outpaced the capacity of the construction drone to carry materials home however." Said Cia in her ears. "I have taken the liberty of starting the construction of a dedicated hauler bot, but it will require a loading system."


    "So, robotic arm, which means a hell of a lot of cable. Started production?"


    "Affirmative. I...have read your notes. Yes."


    Sapphiria''s attention pricked up. Cia had access to everything, but she hadn''t expected her to have that much initiative. She could restrict access, but...


    "Good job. Though please do ping me for permission next time. Not necessarily for stuff like this where we had finished the fabricator schedule, but...if any major things come through or it pushes back a major objective or something I ordered made, do ask, alright?"


    "Yes ma''am! Understood."


    "Good girl. Now, security wise. We blew through a major concentration and while I''m guessing the humans will get the blame...well, I did blast a lot of undead in the tunnel that ultimately leads to us."


    "Expand security measures?"


    "Something like that. If the skeletons we''ve had down there until now were stragglers whose leash system failed, then that ''Hand of Dominion'' can certainly flood the underground if it has to. And if it does we''re screwed. That means..." Sapphiria closed her eyes. "That means keeping their attention up top."


    "Ma''am?"


    "We''re going to have to dissuade our newfound squishies from probing what''s down there too hard, and start probing up top. Which they neither have the forces, nor the will, for. But that''s a medium term goal. For now we have to expect at least some kind of probing we need to be able to deal with. Cheapest option is wire some explosives into the second sensor layer, and push comes to shove just bring the tunnels down." Sapphiria winced. "And build some supports for our chamber while we''re at it, because I don''t know how much it can take."


    "We could reduce the avenues of approach by collapsing all the tunnels except useful ones." Offered Cia. "Reduce defensive solutions to only one approach vector and chokepoint with the tunnel leading to the surface. Pre-emptively destroying the other tunnels also allows us to set charges far further away."


    "Those are...excellent points. It all comes down to risk versus reward, doesn''t it? How much do we block for exploration and exploitation and how much do we leave open?"


    "What risk ma''am? We have the technology of the Federation, we can dig around or through the collapsed cave-ins if necessary. Furthermore, your ambassador seems like it will be occupied for the foreseeable future liaising with the new contacts."


    Sapphiria chuckled. Underestimating the simulacrum indeed. Maybe...maybe she should dial the simulacrum''s mannerisms back up.


    She was a naval officer after all. Engineering or not, ground based tactics and defensive approaches were not her forte.


    "Once more, excellent points. Very well, let''s make it happen."


    "Problem."


    "Yes?"


    "Fabrication of explosives will require chemical reaction chamber."


    "Right. Put it on the schedule. We can fuel it with what we have now, right?"


    "Carbon and water contents of current resources...suboptimal, but yes."


    Sapphiria grimaced.


    "I''ll see about bringing some things down." She looked at the trees around her. "A backpack of wood shouldn''t be too much to ask. I can trade for it if necessary. Might also get me some leeway."


    She''d experienced firsthand that many humans didn''t believe in simple benevolence. At least not from AIs, and certainly not from the Federation. They always sought to know what the other side''s angle was, what they got from it. It was why during her little tour deploying space elevators she''d been ordered to be as explicit as possible in the Federation''s intent to hook and reel in the various worlds back into its orbit and, especially, trade network. The latter part wasn''t very true -those worlds didn''t have much to trade, and all of them combined were insignificant compared to even a luddite Core World- but it stroked some egoes and gave them a ''baser'' motive they could all understand: greed and making money. Having her ask for some resources she wouldn''t be able to get underground might alleviate some suspicions towards why she was helping in the first place.


    Besides, a mutually beneficial relationship was a lot more solid and easy to believe in. A mysterious benefactor could withdraw at a moment''s notice, a trade partner or formal ally was a whole other story.


    Uh...formal ally...


    "Some surface materials would be helpful." Said the simulacrum, and Sapphiria nodded.


    "No doubt, but say...we do have some robot chassis, correct? Bipedal and vaguely humanoid?"


    "Yes? Though anything beyond the standard service robots is outside of our means currently, ma''am."


    "That''s alright. I just had a thought. They have a problem with the undead up top, and allying with them might not only get us a lot of trust and less suspicion, but I''m sure we could swing some conditions, like them recognizing the mountains as ours and leaving them alone. Prevents them poking the hornet''s nest and gives us some additional secrecy."


    "You are an admiral of the Federation. All binding diplomatic agreements must be ratified by fleet command and the President. Leeways for emergency operations-"


    "And if I activate case Epsilon?"


    The simulacrum paused for a few seconds, before speaking...almost cautiously.


    "Then you have declared an emergency in the name of humanity. The current situation, as has been presented...qualifies without question and meets numerous challenges. In which case you would become planetary governor and this world a Federation Protectorate by default. Martial law would be declared and emergency powers maintained until case Epsilon is no longer applicable. Do you...wish to activate case Epsilon?"


    "Not yet. But soon, most likely." If only so the simulacrum didn''t constantly badger her about protocol and legalities. But if she did activate it...


    Well, it meant she was more or less declaring her intention to take over the whole planet to save it.


    It almost terrified her that she wasn''t against it. But...there were some situations beyond tolerance. And if she didn''t help the squishies, then who would?


    "Very well ma''am. Preliminary results of the bone analysis should be available shortly. I will forward them to you once they are ready."


    "Roger that, thank you." Sapphiria looked around, and adjusted her android a bit to be more comfortable. "Now let''s make some industrial expansion plans, since we have some time."

 Chapter 10 - Simulacrum

    Chapter 10


    Starborn Mountains, Continent of Kauvis


    Starfire Valley


    "-once we''ve saturated the advanced refinery, we can start on regular processing. Basic ore crushers to start off, then a simple separator. After that, we can get going on a smelter, process the most basic stuff like iron and leave the more complex stuff to the refinery."


    "Affirmative ma''am." Said Cia, taking notes on an utterly imaginary and useless datapad. Both of them were in her home simulation, though she kept a fair amount of her attention on her android and its scanners. The squishies had set up their own guard rotation, but they didn''t have her advantages or tech. Sapphiria had actually considered rescinding her restrictions on Cia using projections in her android''s vision, so she could keep her full attention there, but had decided against it. One step at a time. "Should we not anticipate and begin production sooner however?"


    "It would be counterproductive." The simulacrum raised an eyebrow and the AI chuckled. "Think about it. If we start production once we''ve saturated the refinery, it means we''ll just stockpile the excess. But as we''re producing the material processing, well, we''re not expanding our mining capacity, are we? But we''ll sure be expanding our capability to deal with the fruits of that mining. Effectively what stockpiles we''ll build up will be consumed while we start making more mining drones to actually feed these crushers and smelters."


    "Oh. I...had not considered that."


    "Don''t worry, it''s my job." And capacity. Dialing the simulacrum''s ability to sound and feel like a person back up was strangely soothing now, but she did have to keep in mind that however capable the not-quite-AI was, she wasn''t creative. And that meant severely hampered latteral thinking. "Now, we''d set it aside, but the bone analysis?"


    "Yes." Cia pulled up a series of holographic screens. She could have just pushed the data into Sapphiria''s engrams, and the gesture was very much appreciated. "All stages of analysis have returned various levels of anomaly."


    "Define ''various''."


    "Some of the samples only had minor chemical alterations to their makeup. Certain calcium formations were unusual, but nothing much. Others...the intact bones still had latent exotic energy readouts that have stabilized at a low, but constant threshold. It seems to have suffused the entire bone structure, its precise source has been impossible to locate or pin down. Moreover, rapid analysis of the shortsword before energy decay showed that the exotic energy flowed into and was modified by the inscriptions."


    "Modified how?"


    "Changes in particle velocity, types, and wavelength when applicable." The simulacrum shrugged. "Changes were consistent for each inscription sequences. The effect disappeared before molecular level scans could be taken, but surface scanning indicated the inscriptions were seemingly embedded with a form of...exotic energy state matrix."


    "An exotic..." Sapphiria''s eyes went wide. "That''s...that''s insane. You''re saying that thing was an energy state computer?"


    "Computation is impossible to deduce. Evidence indicates some kind of energy based modulator."


    "Right." That was still...eons ahead of what the Federation could do. They knew energy state computers were possible, her mother had once experimented with them, but it was much like quantum computers in the early twenty first century. The more capacity you added, the exponentially more complicated it got. The fact that it...modulated the radiation in a way was insane. "And all that with no discernable power source."


    "Affirmative. Data indicates that it is not instantaneous and the movement of energy can be tracked, though its speed does not appear constant, but what energy it is, beyond the fact that it presumably decays into exotic particles, is unknown."


    "I''m going to put a bet on this ''mana'' of theirs. Which means acquiring some." She grimaced. "And they''re almost out, not to mention it is vital to their own survival. Hell, they''ll probably expect me to have a lot more than them for that matter. Can''t really ask for a sample under those circumstances."


    "Acquisition would be primordial in our efforts."


    "Indeed. But in this particular case, we are helped by the fact that they need some, and that they probably didn''t corner themselves without a plan for resupply. So they must have expected a source. One they weren''t able to use. So I offer my help in getting it up and running, in exchange for a slice of it."


    Cia bowed.


    "You are entitled to handle resource acquisition." Said the simulacrum, neutrally, and Sapphiria grimaced.


    "Yes, yes, I know. Not yet."


    They waited in silence for a few minutes, as Sapphiria mulled over what she''d heard, but after a bit she began to feel the almost...expectant thrum coming from the simulacrum. Both a visual impression and something utterly subconscious from two systems this tightly interwoven. "Yes?"


    "Ma''am, about the service robots..."


    Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    "Yes?" Asked the AI, and the simulacrum cleared her throat.


    "Are you certain the service bots are most optimal for this situation? They are...ineffective, in almost every metric."


    Sapphiria opened her mouth, then closed it, and leaned her ambassador''s head back to look at the sky. Simulacrums like Cia were supposed to be able to get more intelligent, more adaptative as they were challenged. Much like an animal, they grew and learned. Perhaps it was time to test that a bit.


    "Tell me then, why are they part of our package?"


    "I-" The simulacrum''s voice glitched as her hologram in the simulation briefly vanished in static. "I do not know, ma''am. Enlighten me?"


    Ooookay. She wasn''t supposed to do that. It was...a bit concerning. Perhaps it was due to her limited computational capacity.


    "Because they look like a person. From the first ''artificial servitors'' in humanity''s litterature, they''ve always had the human form. That is the true purpose of androids, and all robots that ape the human form. The reassure the squishies. And what is our goal here?"


    "Gather the locals'' trust. Gather data. Expand. Serve."


    "And bring them back from the brink, but I suppose that is encapsulated in ''serve''. Well done Cia. We need them to trust us, and they won''t if we send a rover. Besides which, the terrain here is utterly fucked. Many may argue against it but bipedal combat bots exist for a reason. The human form has advantages beyond looks at the end of the day."


    "Tracked vehicles-"


    "Large enough ones, like tanks, could plow right through the forest, yes. And we''re not getting anything that size through the mining shafts for a while, aren''t we?"


    "No. No we are not. My apologies ma''am."


    The simulacrum bowed, and Sapphiria waved.


    "There is no need to apologise. But we need to keep our limitations in mind. Military deployments never have been, and never will be, purely about military matters. There is always a social and political aspect to it. Even pure, brutal extermination like the Theocracy''s atrocities on our border worlds was, in many ways, political and social, for their people back home. In our case our doctrine would be...''hearts and minds'', I believe it was called back before spaceflight. Even if we had infinite resources, which we do not, we need to keep our objectives and how to achieve them in mind. Right now one of those objectives is trust, and many others depend on that trust and what level we can achieve. Sending out humanoid robots will help building up that trust. Moreover, these bots are the kind a sane human would build, which reinforces my cover."


    "Understood. Thank you ma''am."


    "No problem." Sapphiria sighed. "Now, back to industry. Our-"


    "Hello? Are you okay?" Called out Kalia, and Sapphiria almost jumped out of her little nest. Crap, how-


    Oh.


    She''d set her alerts for unidentified contacts. Kalia had just slipped right through without more than a minor notification, which she''d promptly ignored.


    "I am." Sapphiria vaulted over her little nest, and landed in front of the mage-magistrate, who recoiled. "Sorry, was that too abrupt?"


    "No, just...a bit surprising to have that level of physical prowess from an artificer, that''s all."


    "I work out." A blatant lie, the only times she''d ever gotten to a gym, real or simulated was for...other activities. "Also the armor."


    "I see. Ramina is going to slobber all over you when she arrives."


    "She''s your artificer, correct?"


    "Oh yes! And an enthusiastic one at that!" Kalia smiled, before it faded. "Though the current circumstances have put a...damper on that."


    "That''s to be expected, I suppose. The others are waiting at the camp site?" It was a rethorical question on her end, she had them on sensors.


    "Yes! Would you like to join us for breakfast?"


    "I would love to!"


    They rejoined in the other in the camp. Breakfast was a rather simple affair, as Sapphiria was handed a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal, which she ate relatively quickly. ''Starved'' of taste or no, this meal''s sole purpose was filling one''s stomach, while remaining light enough for an extended hike.


    "So, how much further?" Asked Sapphiria as the others broke up camp. She''d have given a hand but she would just make a fool of herself since her knowledge of tent was limited to the fact they existed, which was already highly remarkable for someone born on one of the Federation''s ecumenopolises, where a ''park'' was a biodome, unless you wanted to take a stroll in the Federation gardens, the only ''natural'' soil not covered in at least thirty meters of neoconcrete and metal on Earth. Even the mountains hadn''t been spared.


    "Not much, we should be there by midday. We''ve set up on top of the old imperial exploration outpost." Answered Kalia, before coughing. "We hesitated to go to the mining town, but it wasn''t nearly as defensible or well preserved, plus, well..."


    "I''m assuming it''s where the previous expeditions got problems."


    "Exactly. Well, as far as we can tell anyway. Plus it''s at the other end of the valley from the pass. It gives us..." Kalia snapped her fingers. "Damn it, I forget the word..."


    "Strategic depth." Helpfully supplied the AI.


    "Yes! Precisely. Strategic depth. Which is...unfortunately important now."


    "It is." Sapphiria winced as she saw the haunted look on the woman''s face. Damn it, she almost wanted to give her a hug. And then hand her over to naval psychologists. Something told her the loss of the pass had been a lot bloodier than they''d like to admit. "Have the undead advanced?"


    "Not in any significant capacity, but...well, there''s stragglers, always. Just haunting the area. It''s becoming...a problem. The valley''s our primary source of forage. Wood, most if not all of our food...the parties have to be larger, better armed. And even then it''s not enough." She lowered her voice as her soldiers looked grimmer and grimmer with every word. "I''m going to be honest with you, Sapphiria. If we don''t get through to get reinforcements and some supplies soon...I don''t know how long we''re going to hold out. So when you say that you can help us get through..."


    "I have some solutions. But I don''t think trying the tunnels is a good idea." Sapphiria shrugged at Kalia''s piercing gaze. "I know, I know. Overwhelming numbers and all that. But it''s too dangerous. Especially in a tunnel network this nebulous. No, let''s focus on the surface." For now, at least. "As for your situation...I may have some things in store, but I''d like to see your settlement first."


    Kalia snorted.


    "Worried I''m lying to you?"


    This time it was Sapphiria''s turn to go right through the woman with her stare.


    "Yes. Because I think you''re sugar coating it, to hell and back. And I need the truth to be able to take proper action."


    "Well then. Let us show you." Answered Kalia. Not with anger, just weariness.


    The rest of the hike was almost silent. A few times they stopped as the point man detected something, and once Sapphiria actually had some kind of sensor contact, though only at the edge of her range and without much data beyond ''dog sized, moving relatively fast and anomalously high thermal signature''.


    But suddenly-


    "Halt! Who goes there?" Called out a voice, and Sapphiria almost jumped as what her sensors insisted was an empty bush spoke.


    "Gregor!" Said Kalia, her weapon halfway drawn. "Damn it man, couldn''t you-"


    The thing exited the bush, some kind of cloaking field vanishing, and Sapphiria was by Kalia''s side before anyone had the time to react, as the heavily armed skeleton appeared as if out of thin air.