Chapter 100 - Bring Your Girlfriend To Work Day

Note : Chapters 104, 105 and 106 have been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 100 ! Wooo !

Wrote three chapters this morning, so I'm a bit winded, but I'm happy where I ended up.

Construction is also going like crazy in the place next door. They're drilling directly in the wall separating my building from theirs and it is SO loud. Gods. I thought construction was supposed to be over a month ago, but no ! The bureaucrats are never satisfied, apparently.

I hope you'll enjoy this first triple digit chapter !

Chapter 100

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Tunnel Entrance

Sapphiria and Kalia returned the salutes of the sentry as they stepped into the bunker, and the mage-magistrate came to a halt.

"You know...I've been here, seen the workshop and everything, but it really hits me know just how big this thing is." Kalia spun around, taking in the whole edifice, before stepping outside and looking up, and finally getting back in. "Like, this is a proper fortification."

"It is. But also a limited one."

Kalia knew what she meant. A bunker was nice, but she couldn't just surround Astralis in them. Not right now anyway. Nor could she plug the pass with one.

Eventually, it would be more or less a matter of course. But right now she had to prioritize her limited industry. The tunnel entrance was vital, and fully under their control. That meant it could get priority and had the time for proper construction.

The mage-magistrate nodded.

"Right. I'm curious to head on down." She looked at the militia, and smiled. "Don't worry, I'll be safe."

Sapphiria had to suppress a chuckle. The militiamen weren't worried about their leader's safety. They were trying to suppress jealousy. Down in the tunnels was the forbidden fruit. She knew the last enlisted man who'd headed down there, a messenger from before, when her infrastructure only extended to the mining hub, had been relentlessly squeezed for info.

It was also interesting that this post was still manned. The squishies were, when you came down to it, superfluous to its security now. The bunker and workshop had multiple machinegun turrets with overlapping fields of fire, and though most of the bots were gone, some still remained. The riotbots, especially.

It seemed like the bulky units would have been good for the artillery gun, but in truth they were relatively clumsy and not very good at precision handling. Which was what interested her when handling primed, high explosive shells.

"Alright. Uh..." Sapphiria looked as a minecart came to a halt before her. Right. So, in case they needed to get someone down there in a hurry, she had Cia manufacture a couple of 'personnel' minecarts, that is to say, carts with modified attachment points at the bottom of the bin so you could snap on standard crash seats. The only problem was that they were...'snug', for two people was the best way to describe it. "We can head down in a minecart if you'd like. But we can do it the old fashioned way."

Kalia was already preparing to hop in, and raised an eyebrow.

"Walking down?"

Sapphiria licked her lips, unsure on how to answer.

Kalia had insisted to come along. Saying that the box of mana crystals was as good an excuse as any to accompany her down.

Apparently she'd gotten to a point where she could be trusted around crystals, and would need some to practice with.

"When Ramina came in, before the rail network was complete, I, errr...was able to use my armor's enhanced locomotion to assist our progress?"

Kalia's eyebrow rose, before she smiled.

"Do you mean you carried her?"

"Yes?"

"Did she scream the whole way down?"

"...Maybe."

Kalia's smile softened.

"Well, while I'd love to have you bridal carry me through the tunnels, I think our difference in height might make that awkward. And it's not like me carrying you will help any." Sapphiria twitched at that. It summoned...delightful images in her psyche. Some of them quite vivid, since they were only a few days ago.

There were indeed some, not many but some, advantages to having her avatar be so damned short.

"Alright. But be warned, this isn't the most dignified ride."

They both hopped in, after Sapphiria showed the mage-magistrate how to secure the box. Thank the stars for universal attachment points.

Then...

We're ready Cia. Take us down.

Yes ma'am. Propulsion on.

The minecart's electric motor noiselessly powered on, and they began gliding into the dark maw of the tunnel. Sapphiria activated her armor's lights as she realized that otherwise it would look spooky as all hell, while trying not to think about too hard that the way they were sitting in the minecart, she could have just leaned back a bit was the seat not in the way to rest her head on her girlfriend's chest.

Kalia's arms came around her, and the AI had to stop herself from jumping. Her armor pinged her an alert about increased vitals activity.

"Sorry, probably should have warned you." Said the AI.

"No, it's okay." There was a pause. "So, Cia...is she...with you like, always?"

Sapphiria nodded, before speaking up as she realized it might be hard to interpret the gesture.

"Always, yes."

"Even when we..."

Kalia trailed off, and Sapphiria blushed.

"There are safeguards and privacy filters in place. Don't worry."

"Oki." Kalia shifted, looking around. "So, you crashed at the bottom of the Imperial mines?"

"Not...exactly. There's something I have to show you down there."

"That's mysterious." The mage-magistrate's hands shifted slightly, trying to find a more comfortable way to hug the armor, and Sapphiria checked a few things. Why were they going so slowly?

Cia, why did you stop accelerating?

We are staying at a low cruise speed to prevent accidents.

Sapphiria squinted at the empty air. She could practically taste the simulacrum's calculated neutral expression and its implied smile.

Oh she was taking the scenic route, so to speak.

...Right.

She looked over her shoulder.

"I'm not trying to be, but at the same time I'm trying to not overwhelm you. There's just...so much to tell you, and so much to go over, and I don't know how much of it you're ready for." She sighed. "And unfortunately, I'm afraid this will be one of those occasions where I might pile on too much for you."

"Well, we'll just have to see then, won't we?"

"I guess we'll have to, yeah..."

*****

The ride down was as pleasant and excruciating as Sapphiria could have imagined. It had been a long time since she'd just had time to...chat with someone. Kalia had been surprised by the state of the mining hub, and commented on the activity as they passed by ore veins being actively mined, but mostly chatted up the AI. About random facts. Like, what sports were played on Earth? What clothes did people wear? Was there the same food? The same plants? The same animals?

Explaining to her that Earth was an ecumenopolis had been complicated, and had left her stunned for a minute, but she'd recovered and started asking even more questions.

"-and yes, the weather is artificial in most of the habitats, and- Oh. Hold on, we're almost there." Sapphiria gazed forward. The end of the mineshaft.

"What is it?" Kalia squinted. "Another tunnel?"

"One of the things I needed to talk to you about."

They came out into the PDC tunnel, and the minecart seamlessly came to a halt.

"Wow." Kalia looked around. "That's...weirdly smooth. Did you dig that?"

Sapphiria unbuckled, and disembarked, offering her hand as Kalia followed suit.

"No." She said as the mage-magistrate joined her, and touched one of the walls. "I didn't made these tunnels. This is one of the reasons I was so protective of you guys heading into the tunnels. I think this is one of those 'vestiges' you guys talked about." She looked at Kalia's surprised expression, and gestured at the wall the mineshaft had pierced. "And from what I found, I wasn't the first there."

Kalia simply fell silent.

Finally, she spoke up.

"There was no mention of a vestige in the archives."

"I know."

"Is that...did they find it by accident?"

Sapphiria licked her lips.

"I found many apparent ore veins. And almost no tunnels who seemed to have been made to follow ones."

Kalia's eyes widened.

"Are you saying...The Empire knew this was there?"

"And built an entire expedition to access it. I think that's why the whole scout outpost was maintained until the Empire went into its civil wars, yet their data about Icerend is basically nill. The Empire never cared about the Convergence." She nodded towards the hallway. One end of it was plugged with a concrete wall, the other simply had the rails disappearing into the distance.

They could have just continued onto her lair in the minecart, but it was better to take things one step at a time.

They started walking.

"They were keeping an eye on...their claim?"

"Would make sense, wouldn't it? Only two functional tunnels, one somewhere in the pass, the other next to the outpost." Well, 'next to' was something of an exaggeration, but it was still the closest location here. "I assume the Empire kept some kind of force in the pass?"

"Yes. To prevent monsters from getting out of the valley. Which is...weird now that I think about it, because there never was a problem with that once it was abandoned."

"There you go."

"Do...do the Bane know?"

The AI slowed down, and looked at the mage-magistrate.

"And that, my dear, is the million credits question, isn't it?"

"...What does that have to do with debt?"

"Debt?"

"Credits."

Sapphiria sputtered.

"I...Oh, uh...it's the Federation's currency. Errr, million mana question?"

Kalia smiled.

"We don't use mana as currency."

The AI blinked.

"Wait, really? I remember someone saying you even drained the coinage to power your spells."

"That's...the magistracy's drachma has a mana crystal part in some of the coins, to hold a mana charge, yes, to back the currency. We started doing that when we began phasing out platinum coins, and gradually expanded it across all denominations."

Sapphiria stopped. Platinum was...one of the rarest materials in the universe. It was rare even for asteroid and planetcracking mining. In terms of exploitable surface metals on a terran type worlds, it was among the rarest, if not the rarest, even compared to radioactives. How the fuck would you even make coinage out of that?

"You had...platinum coins?"

"Crazy, right? Given how it's needed for enchanting."

"I mean how did you get enough platinum to get any meaningful amount? Did the magistracy have platinum mines?"

Kalia shook her head.

"No. But we had the best transmuter mages."

"Ah." Transmutation. That was a topic she was very interested in. "Could you teach me that?"

"I only know the most basic things, and that was from my initial education, before I specialized. But I can try?"

"That would be appreciated. I know we've only gotten started, but...it's probably one of the thing I need to know about the most."

"Well, if it helps, you are learning exceptionally quickly." Kalia smiled. "I'm kind of jealous honestly."

"Perfect memory helps." Well it wasn't technically perfect, but to a squishie it might as well be.

"Yeah, but where were you during my end of the year exams?"

"It's not like I could have whispered to you the answers."

"I'm sure I could have fit you under my desk, and given you an invisibility cloak." Sapphiria blushed madly, and Kalia did a double take, before sputtering. "N-Not in that way!" She smacked the AI over the head. "Get your mind out of the gutter."

"Of course! Of course." Sapphiria smiled. "I think that would have proven rather detrimental to your concentration."

"That's one way of saying it."

They both giggled.

There was a short pause as they walked in companionable silence, before Kalia spoke up again.

"So, those vestiges...the people from First Landing, did you know them?"

"I think I knew who they were, once." Said the AI. "The UIS." She smiled at Kalia's questioning gaze. "Sorry, it's an acronym. The United Interstellar States. They were a powerful interstellar nation once. And a pioneer of space exploration." Not the pioneer, since her mom, and thus the European Federation, had invented hyperspace. But the UIS and the other major nations had wrangled the basic schematics out of the EuroFed's grasp. Not that they wanted to hold on to them for too long, as that would have been a recipe for war. The UIS had then tried to catch up through pure, brute force, and ended up blowing a rather large hole in Pluto. Turns out, you could make a powerplant that drew energy from hyperspace. The problem was that 'stable' and 'hyperspace' didn't really go hand in hand.

They were just lucky Sol was in an area of relatively low hyperspace density. Had it not been, they could have caused a lot more damage. As it was, the debris ejected from the explosion already created a host of minor disasters of their own. There was a reason no one had touched the planetoid until after the founding of the Federation, and even then it was just to finish breaking it up, as it was too heavily damaged -and orbited by too much debris- to be useable as an habitat. Handy source of raw materials though. The Pluto-class exploration carriers had been the bedrock of the Federation's early expansion. A few were still in service even, mostly doing follow up surveys in the inner Periphery, to refine the data on systems that were once considered poor prospects for colonization or industrial exploitation, but which evolving tech now made a desirable, if secondary prospect.

"How do you know that?"

"I found one of their doors down here."

"Oh." The mage-magistrate laughed. "That's kind of anticlimactic."

"What do you want, an ancient stone tablet with a prophecy foretelling my arrival?"

Kalia snorted.

"That would have been terrible for your ego."

"Probably. Speaking of." The AI came to a halt right as they were about to go around a bend. "Right around this corner, you'll be able to see the crash site. Are you ready?"

Kalia opened her, mouth, then closed it. She took a deep breath, closing her eyes, before nodding.

"Ready."

The AI guided her in, taking in the reason why she had closed her eyes, and then tapped her hand as they had a full view.

Kalia opened her eyes.

And Sapphiria smiled as her girlfriend's jaw dropped.

Yeah. Her ego was doing juuuust fine.