Chapter 75 - Arcana

Notes : Chapter 76 has been written and added to the queue !

Medical stuff tomorrow. I hope it goes well. I've been stressing the hell out about it for a while now and I could really use some good news.

Chapter 75

Starborn Mountains, Mount Nebula

Crash Site

"The inscriptions match no known languages in the database." Said Cia, and Sapphiria nodded.

She was sitting cross legged in the middle the simulation, surrounded by tablets and holograms, some floating, others on the floor around her like some mad diagram.

"Didn't expect them to." She gestured at a handful of holographic windows. "And they're compromising the door's structural integrity, as well as its thermal barrier." Which, arguably, was the most important part of a modern blast door. Stopping a shockwave was easy.

Stopping the thermal energy of a thermonuclear detonation, also known as a literal miniature star, was a lot harder.

"Which means they're not for decorative or cultural purposes." Completed the simulacrum, and the AI nodded.

"Seems that way."

Even the Theocracy, which was...well, a theocracy, didn't compromise the integrity of most of their tech with their iconography. Their ships, at least early on, were flying temples, covered in murals and other icons, but they didn't do it in a way that made their armor useless or less effective.

The only exception were computer systems. For them, AIs were anathema, and so the ones required for the complex calculations of hyperspace travel were basically built into altars and covered in charms of protection.

They'd tried, and succeeded to make them biological to some level, but there was only so much neurons could do.

What was hilarious was seeing how much they went out of their way to avoid using complex computers and see the 'computation centers' in their starports, where legions of flesh and blood aliens crunched numbers for traffic control and spaceship flights the old fashioned way.

Then again, one of the founding nations of the Pan-Asian Confederacy, one of the major powers of Earth during the interplanetary and early interstellar ages, had supposedly built their first nuclear submarine with abacuses.

"...Do you think these inscriptions might be magical in some way?" Asked the simulacrum, as she gazed at the mass of data around the AI.

"I'm extrapolating off of many things, but yes." She didn't even look as she gestured at a set of recordings. "These are the runes I observed appearing during the uses of magic we have witnessed." Most of them being during that fight to defend Astralis from the Bane or its aftermath as they healed the wounded, plus a few on the skeleton they'd killed in the crash site and got back into the lab before its energy faded. "None of them match, however..." Several sections highlighted on both those holograms and the ones of the door. "They are organized in a similar fashion. Like...functions in a program, or paragraphs in a novel. Plus, the style of their runes is similar." She frowned. "Mostly."

None of the runes matched, but they seemed to have the same general style, with the ones on the door being the most radically different. Kind of like trying to compare the different writing systems descended from the chinese logographs.

If she had to guess, the ones from the skeleton and Malry's magic were meant to be written. The ones from the door were meant to be printed.

"Interesting. What would be the purpose?"

"Shielding, I would guess. Perhaps reinforcing the layers they were integrated into when powered in some way. We've seen that magic can create energy shields. Having that in front of a blast door would be worth a lot." Though some of those shields seemed to have reacted weirdly to her plasma bolts. She wasn't entirely certain why, but her analysis of them seemed to indicate they had tried to disperse her attack. Which, on something like a shaped charge or a laser would have rendered it harmless, but on high powered plasma bolts just turned them into bombs. "No condensate or anomalous materials. Whatever this was, it was active, not passive. Which meant we can presumably power it back up once we get mana, and reproduce it."

She looked directly at Cia.

"I want every square centimeter of it scanned and mapped." Continued the AI. "Then, and only then, we'll make some precision tools and start taking this apart for lab analysis."

"Understood."

The AI sighed.

"Alright. What the routine status reports? Anything new?"

"Preliminary perimeter construction for Astralis is complete. All approaches are covered." Sapphiria nodded. The full plant was for sentry guns with overlapping fields of fire, but better to have a thin defense around the whole town than a full one in just a corner of it. It would get better as it went on but it would already allow her to breathe a little easier. "Beginning assembly for the new autocannon gun towers, to have them ready by the time the weapons are."

"Excellent. Have the Bane done anything new?"

"Negative, at least according to the latest messages."

"Any other monster encounters?"

"One of the foraging parties reported signs of activity on one of their paths, and diverted to a new route. Nothing else."

"Mmmhhh." Most likely, she'd blasted the boldest before leaving. The more cautious, and thus slower to move out, creatures would start trickling in. But it was only a matter of time before they pulled off an ambush, even if they didn't attack frontally again. "Stars I wish I had a satnet and a gunship."

A gunship because a fusion powered craft would think the weather was positively hilarious. All of her current options...less so.

She had drones. She could make more, but not only would their primitive sensors fail to detect any of the stealth monsters, and probably not make much headway against the canopy, that for some reason remained whole despite the clear and imminent arrival of winter, they would be grounded more and more frequently. Sometimes even destroyed, as it wasn't like she had a meteorological station to see bad weather coming.

And the satellite net would allow for communications and extra reconnaissance on top. Plus that meteorological outlook.

But at that point, she might as well wish for her carrier back and a dozen troop transports with a Federation planetary invasion force. Or, you know, the entire Home Fleet with the Terran Guard in tow.

"I believe you would settle for another fusion plant at this point ma'am."

Sapphiria grimaced. Downside of the simulacrum getting more and more lifelike, she was starting to sass her more.

Plus, she was absolutely right. Damn it.

"Everything else on schedule?"

"Affirmative."

"Alright then. Let's get some work in. We need to get some defenses near the pass."

"What about the Barrier? To keep the monsters out of the valley?"

Sapphiria gazed at the holograms, and sighed.

"Honestly? Too big. Too random. I thought I knew enough about the monsters, but I doubt it now." She tapped a report on a tablet by her side. "And the Bane are deploying to fight something. If it gets through...I'd rather we had something better than a few scouts and harsh language to greet them."

Actually, if something could punch through a position that favorable and well dug in, they were completely fucked anyway. What was more probable was having the Bane try to fall back in good order with the remaining maniples, just like the Hand had done in the tunnels. At which point they'd probably go to Myrtran, and that would create a lot of issues.

If she positioned some forces correctly, she could pin the Bane inside the pass, forcing them to fight whatever they were expecting to the death, err...final death, whatever the hell 'death' meant to something which had come back from it, and then turn it into a bottleneck against this mysterious foe if they turned out to be hostile.

"Understood. A fortified position to start with, then?"

"Actually..." Sapphiria gestured, and more holograms appeared. "I was more thinking of those."

The images showed the towering barrels of howitzer cannons, the kings of artillery until the invention of the fusion reactor and the development of mobile railguns and heavy lasers.

"...Ma'am, these are not supposed to be in our schematics database."

"No, but there are remarkably complete diagrams in the museum files on the Terran Hegemony War." Notably the hellish Augustus howitzers of the french army and the UIS Starblades, also known as 'we have just invented plasma shells and you have volunteered for their field tests'. Both had been so effective they'd remained in service well into the Interplanetary Wars, though neither were capable of operating outside of Earth's atmosphere. Though something had to be used to defend the home front.

The simulacrum glared at her, and Sapphiria did her best to look innocent.

"That is...a contravention of the design directives of the escape pods' data complement."

"No, it's just information. It's not useable for fabrication, you'd need quite a lot of design time to make it workable."

"Design time you are more than happy to contribute." Snapped back CIa.

The AI leaned forward, and for the first time the simulacrum took a step back, as she saw her expression.

"I am your superior officer, assistant. You are allowed to think whatever you wish of me, but you will keep a lid on it."

Cia nodded, choppily.

"Of course, ma'am. My apologies, ma'am."

"Apology accepted. And to put it in a more clear perspective, would you rather I not use this data and leave them to die?"

The 'them' being the squishies of course.

She saw the battle going on in the simulacrum's eyes. Several high level directives contradicting one another.

However, ultimately, one won. As it should.

The Terran Federation and its AIs, thus by extension their simulacrums, had one overriding objective:

Protect humanity.

Everything else was secondary.

The simulacrum straightened.

"Yes ma'am! Ad Astra!"

Sapphiria's eyebrow rose. An old naval motto, latin for 'to the stars'.

But a fine one.

"Ad Astra."

She preferred her aunt's. 'Semper Invicta', always invincible.

But she hadn't earned that one yet.

Perhaps, but the time the dust had settled, she would have.

"Alright." She sat up. "Let's get to work. We have asses to kick and squishies to save."

"Yes ma'am! Right away."

*****

It said something to their state of mind that the Hand wasn't playing with a coin this time, their skeletal digits wreathed in energy, ready to unleash the full fury of their arcane might at a moment's notice.

"How many?" They asked, and the centurion held up four fingers. "Alright." They looked at the carnage around.

Underestimated they may be, but the other side wasn't made of idiots either.

This time several ghouls had come. Fighting a semi coordinated manner.

Not trained soldiers, as that would have been a grievous waste of valuable bodies. But militias, probably. Their discipline half remembered even after being thrown through a manastorm and the ministrations of necromancers.

Clearly, the other side had realized that there was no way they were sneaking anything past the horde in the pass. So they'd tried a more...direct approach.

It had failed. But the ghouls had taken a lot of the horde down with them, able to cover each other as they regenerated.

They were learning.

The Hand gazed at the pass, then began walking.

The centurion and bodyguards followed them, augmented by an entire maniple. The rebels wouldn't attack on the drop of a coin, and right now they needed the security.

Before long they were on the other side of the pass, surrounded by a few horde soulless, milling about aimlessly.

The Hand gazed at the hills beyond.

They were dead silent now. Not just mostly devoid of wildlife.

Completely empty of it.

"They're here." They said. "This was the last of the infiltration attempts." They gazed at the hills beyond. "They will begin probing attacks soon." The Hand turned back towards the centurion. "Pull everything in the pass back to the first defensive line, and redeploy the maniples to the second. When they come, they'll fall on us like a thunderbolt, and try an infantry rush attack."

It was their way. The age of expansion had been driven by disposable mercenaries and local proxies sent into the meat grinder first, before the true soldiers got stuck in. If it worked? Great, give them a pat on the back.

If it didn't, you still got some solid reconnaissance in force.

The soulless centurion nodded, and slammed their bony fist against their breast plates, before gesturing at their soldiers, who began herding the horde back towards the defenses.

The Hand gazed at the hills...then, driven by impulse, grabbed one of the standards from a legionary, and walked at the very end of the pass, where the rocky ground, scoured clean by the ever present wind, finally gave way to dirt on the end of the rend in the mountains.

They raised it, and slammed it into the ground, adding a trickle of arcane power to punch through the rock beneath the thin covering of soil.

Then they stood back, the imperial standard defiantly flying from high above, impossible to miss.

The ones in the hills would see it. And they would seethe.

Professionals wouldn't blink at such a thing, except answer it in kind of simply shrug and take the implied challenge and slight in stride.

But the other side's discipline hadn't impressed the Hand so far. And if there was ever an insult designed to make them lose control of themselves, it was this.

And at this point, the Hand needed every advantage.

Reinforcements were on the way. They just had to hold on.

The Hand stood by the standard for several minutes to hammer the point home, before turning dramatically, sure they were being observed intently, and imperiously walking back into the shadowed shelter of the pass proper.

Time to get back under cover...and wait for the noise to start.

As well as pray they would make it. Because at this point victory would necessitate ancestor intervention.