[MFR] Chapter 69 - At Long Last

Notes : NSFW Special 03 for The Fallen World and Chapter 70 of Manaforged Robotics have been written and added to the queue !

The Special will be up on friday, chapter 70 on Sunday. The special is, actually, the one that was voted on a looooong time ago, with Allya and Pyn having some maid roleplay.

Also, I have a poll up in the patreon nsfw discussion channel for the next special ! Hopefully it won't take me...a year and a half to get to it again. Yikes. The poll is open until sunday, so you'll get to see the special before voting (it is related to one of the options).

Anyway, the title of this chapter is in relation to its ending, which has been long awaited for many of you ! Some of you on discord already so the teaser, but this chapter will be a bit of a read (2.7k words, normally I'd have cut it up, but...well, it was too good of an opportunity, chapter number wise).

I hope you'll enjoy it !

Chapter 69

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Workshop

By the end of the next day, every member of the crew hated her guts.

Sapphiria had just run them through the wringer. Drills, drills, drills. Bailing out of the vehicle, getting in as fast as possible, dragging casualties in while maintaining a perimeter, and even tipping the vehicle and having them put it right again.

When it came to this kind of stuff, she was the same opinion as her aunt: the squishies would be in an acceptable level of readiness when they could literally do it in their sleep.

Unfortunately, she wasn't going to have the luxury to do that. For once, most of them weren't military, and they were volunteers. Granted, they were pretty tough for having made it this far, but she had a limited pool to draw from and couldn't afford to drive them to give up and wash out. The Federation had the luxury of an almost unlimited pool of manpower in Sol alone. She didn't.

Next, there also wasn't time. They needed to get moving ASAP and bring back that mana before the Bane's reinforcements arrived, or they were absolutely screwed. Fighting the Bane with almost no magic had almost proven catastrophic, Kalia's spell having bought them the space needed for ekking out a victory last time. She couldn't scale up fast enough, which meant she needed to get the squishies back on their feet to give her breathing room.

And, more importantly, she was going to get her hand on that mana, see those aberrations that apparently were the source of the first spells, and be able to use them. Hopefully. Even just some better understanding of what she was fighting would help but...

Well, if she got her hand on antigravity, all bets were off. The Federation might not have been able to make it, but there were entire sections of her databanks dedicated to what could be done if gravity could be mastered and controlled. Some by her various parents and other family members, but literally every engineer worth their salt had daydreamed about this stuff and put together serious enough proposals to be integrated within the library core.

Which, incidentally, was one of the reasons she had the library core. Even without artificial gravity, it was incredible how much tech you could get past the watchful eyes of the navy's censors if it was marked as some of Arcadia's daydreams about antigravity technology. It just didn't say on the tin that said daydreaming was about making European Federation 'Mirage' laser siege tanks float, and thus contained a great deal of the information on how to make the tracked version of the thing to begin with.

"I think we're ready." Said Paul, slightly out of breath, as he joined her on top of the bunker, gazing at the group sitting down and sharing drinks after yet another exercise.

"As ready as we're going to be." Said the AI, before shrugging. "Everyone familiar with the interior?"

"I can't promise you they'd be able to find their way to the lavatory if it was upside down and dark, but I can guarantee you they'll get to the doors or engines."

Incidentally, those were the two places you could properly bailout from. The principle being that if the main doors weren't useable, you could use the maintenance hatches around the fusion core.

And if those were destroyed...then so was the fusion core at which point the vehicle was just a hunk of metal and you could get the plasma cutters out and start making your own exit.

"Good. Let's hope they won't need to."

"Agreed." He straightened himself a bit. "So, time to go home?"

"Pretty much. One last night with their loved ones, then the departure ceremony tomorrow morning."

Sweet stars, she wished her night would have been with Kalia...

It said something to her state of mind, and what had happened yesterday, that she didn't chide herself for those thoughts this time.

Paul nodded.

"Alright, I'll round everyone up."

Sapphiria watch him go down the staircase on the side of the bunker, and nodded appreciatively. He didn't seem to have any real military training, at least not in the conventional sense, but he was slotting in to her slot as Executive Officer, or XO for short, almost naturally.

Ramina was also proving to be quite the capable...Chief of Engineering might be stretching it a bit, but a solid backup to her own abilities as well. Of course, that was helped in no small parts by the easy to use schematics and the onboard, portable fabricator, but still.

Speaking of, that thing was what concerned her the most. She'd loaded a full complement of tools onboard to repair it or even replace the thing if it failed, but it was still the only way to make new parts or service the bots in a hurry.

Though, to make it fit (and make it even remotely affordable), it was extremely limited. It wasn't that much smaller than the one in her escape pod, but she didn't have the industry of Sol to make it, let alone the top of the line factories of Terra and the Luna industrial arrays.

But it would do. Hopefully.

Get in, grab some mana crystals, fill the hold, get out.

Simple, right?

Then why did she feel like everything was going to go terribly wrong?

*****

Everyone might have been getting a good night of sleep -or, concerning Ramina, doing all sorts of wicked things to Malry-, but the Federation never slept, and neither did Sapphiria.

She checked her shoulder mounted machineguns, after putting them back together in the snowpiercer's workshop section, and nodded.

It had a whole panoply of tools and the field fabricator, but it was a distant echo of what she could do even with just her pod. Fortunately, the machineguns weren't exactly the height of Federation technology, and were already considered thoroughly obsolete by the time the first snowpiercers were built, let alone when the Federation started standardizing their blueprints and making the first colonial packages.

The problem was the ammunition. She had packed a full chemical synthesizer onboard -they were compact, though a bit power hungry-, but she couldn't place a damned smelter in the vehicle. That meant that whatever metals she took with her was her finite limit for bullets, repairs, everything. Though, thankfully, she was using caseless ammunition, so she didn't have to worry about picking up brass, like her aunt at the firing range, with her immense collection of antique firearms.

After a bit of consideration, she'd actually decided to pack the storage hold full of ingots. Push came to shove, they could dump the excess when they found the mana crystals, and though the loss would sting somewhat, better to have it and not need it than to lose a squishie because she was being stingy.

Besides, it was nothing compared to the cost of the snowpiercer itself.

Which reminded her. She pinged Cia, and the simulacrum appeared.

"Ma'am?"

"How are we doing on metal production, now that we're done with this?"

"With the newly built mining bots no longer occupied with enlarging the tunnels, our mineral production is at an all time high and growing rapidly." The simulacrum coughed diffidently. "We are going to require additional smelters."

"Plural?"

"Plural."

"Damn. Alright, put them on the list. The fabricator?"

"It is well capable of handling the increased production." Sapphiria nodded. The advantage of using a barebones, colonial fabricator that could only handle simple tasks involving metal meant that it could do it fast. "I have begun assembly of the simpler turret parts for the settlement's defensive perimeter."

"Good. Did you resume metaconcrete deliveries to Astralis?"

"Affirmative. With the freed up capacity from the minecarts, even accounting for the extra minerals, we are able to ship our entire output."

"Keep some aside to continue the plugging project." With some of the extra metaconcrete they'd made while everything was dedicated to getting snowpiercer bits topside, she'd started walling off some of the tunnels leading deeper into the PDC. It was unlikely to stop whatever was down there, at least not if the cave ins were any sign, but it made her feel better and more importantly it could prevent it from waking up due to her own activity. "I assume our waste stockpiles are increasing?"

"Currently being absorbed by the metaconcrete plants, but they will outscale them within a standard week."

"Great. Put more on the schedule as well." Sapphiria sighed. That was going to delay things further, but once she had Astralis surrounded by her guns, and supplied with mana, she would hopefully have the time to properly scale up. "Anything on the power projects?"

The simulacrum shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortably.

"Colonial fission plants are built on the assumption that optimal mineral sites can be found from orbital surveys, and thus use optimal fuel mixes."

"But?"

"But as instructed I have looked through the database, and have found designs that may use various MOX fuels." Which was a nice way of saying 'a mixup of whatever we can cram into them'.

"Excellent!" She looked at the simulacrum's face, and sighed. "What's the catch?"

"These designs are pre-Federation, and were built for the Outer System habitats of pre-interstellar colonization. Their fuel recycling system is non existent, and relies on ejection into space."

The AI winced. Sol's outer system was a story of hopefully pioneering and monumental betrayal. After the discovery of hyperspace, what had once been the shining frontier has suddenly found itself left for dead by everyone in the race to the stars.

Investment had dried up. New colonists also. Those habitats had effectively been left to fend for themselves in the dark, at least economically speaking.

That had spawned massive resentment. Which eventually led to violence.

The Outer System Pacification Campaign was still remembered as one of the most heavy handed police actions in the history of humanity, but to be entirely fair the so called 'Outer System Republic' had managed to nuke several sites on Earth by using a Q-Ship, in what became known as the Arcstar attack, after the vessel they used to fire missiles at point blank range at the homeworld.

The Orbital Defense Grid could handle a lot, but not 'four hundred plus MIRV warheads from low orbit directly towards the surface with no warning or time to warm up'. It was a miracle so few had gotten through to begin with. Though the fact that they were using cobalt warheads, irradiating the area they'd hit to uninhabitable levels, had hurt, and explained why the response that followed had been so harsh.

Then, by the time they'd started picking themselves back up and actually thriving as investment rolled back in and the interstellar craze died back down, Arcadia happened.

They were rolled up in the hivemind...and the first to be liberated by elements of her aunt's fleets as she started probing attacks into Sol, in preparation for her massive thrust for Terra. Which, of course, her mom tried to counteract, being no one's fool and not wishing to allow her former lover, former hivemind member and thus sort of but not quite sibling due to how being separated from the hivemind worked, a foothold and possible beachhead.

In short they spent almost the entirety of the Arcadia war being liberated, retaken, liberated, until half of the habitats had either been completely destroyed or rendered unusable for anyone but powered armor infantry, taking potshots at each other through the hallways.

The Federation had actually done right by them, mostly, but that was more of a consequence of Sol's economic boom than any dedicated policy, though her aunt and mom had tried their best.

"And I'm guessing that the safeties aren't great?"

"They are below standards." Said the simulacrum, neutrally, in a way that screamed 'deathtrap' to Sapphiria. Which made sense, the people who'd made those plants were trying to survive on the outer edge of a star system after being more or less left out to dry. Without the industries of the inner system backing them, thermonuclear power was out. And there was no sunlight to speak of that far out, you would receive more energy from the damned milky way than the sun. Well, that was something of an exaggeration, but the point was that solar panels were out.

So, that left fission.

And in their situation, every corner that could be cut would have been. Including using whatever they could scrounge up from their asteroids and not quite dwarf planets for fuel.

"Send them to me. I'll review them." She blinked as she got pinged by her alarm. "Crap! The sun's coming up." She made her way to the cockpit as she spoke. "Need to get to the ceremony!"

*****

Thankfully, her worst fears failed to materialize. Kalia had made it clear that she wished to use the occasion for morale boosting, but she was a woman of efficiency, not some grandiloquent politician desperate to keep their ratings up.

"Today marks in the first time in almost three hundred years that someone ventures into Icerend." Said the mage-magistrate, before the assembled population of Astralis. "Not since Cravh's disastrous expedition has anyone attempted it. We do so now not for profit, or glory, but for survival. And unlike those that have failed before us, we come with an advantage greater than any could have wished for." She gestured at Sapphiria. "A high elder, to both build the marvel that will enable this expedition, the snowpiercer, and lead it to success."

Applause erupted, as people smiled, both at Sapphiria herself, who was probably one of the most popular figures in town, and the towering vehicle before them. Given the fact that for them, carts with engines had been the height of transportation, at least on the ground and off rails, the snowpiercer had to look mighty indeed.

Kalia let it ride for a bit, before raising her hand, and everything went quiet again. It was almost startling really, civilians never followed instructions this closely. Except all of those people were survivors now. Veterans of the horrific march to get here and the constant attacks by the Bane.

"But she cannot do this alone." She gestured at the assembled crew. "And these brave volunteers, our best and most skilled, will accompany her, to bring back the mana crystals we desperately need! And together, they shall triumph! We will get our magic back, and with the might of our mages and Sapphiria's constructs, we shall drive the Bane back! For we are the Magistracy! The masters of magic! We do not bow down to reality, we remake it in our image!"

This time the applause was on a whole other level, accompanied by cheers, and Kalia went off to shake the hand of every crew member, who immediately after doing so, boarded the snowpiercer, somehow making climbing a set of steel rungs welded into the hull look dignified and momentous.

Finally, there was only Sapphiria, standing by the ladder, and Kalia stepped in front of her.

"Please come back to me in one piece, alright?"

Sapphiria nodded, and Kalia seemed to melt...then leaned down, parting her lips. The AI's heart would have skipped a beat if she had one. As it was, her programs did a reasonable approximation as she suffered multiple errors.

Then the squishie stopped, coloring, seemingly realizing what she was doing.

"O-Oh. Sorry, I-"

Sapphiria grabbed the mage-magistrate's collar, unceremoniously yanked her down and gave her a very, very thorough kiss, weeks, months of tension bleeding through as she pressed their lips together.

Kalia flailed, surprised, before closing her eyes and leaning in, grabbing hold of the AI's power armor.

They just stood there, lost in each other's embrace...until Sapphiria received an alert from the sensors in her mouth, and she let Kalia go.

The mage-magistrate stepped back reluctantly, gasping for air.

"Take this...as my promise, for coming back." Said Sapphiria.

Kalia nodded, her cheeks thoroughly flushed and looking like she was going to faint, dance, and kiss Sapphiria again all at the same time.

Then they both suddenly realized they weren't actually alone when the entire crowd exploded into cheers, so loud it felt like the entire world was shaking.