[MFR] Chapter 63 - Making Peace

Notes :

Well, this week sucked. I got assaulted twice, had to deal with the construction company AGAIN and a bunch of other crap. Yay.

Chapter 63

Starborn Mountains, Mount Nebula

Crash Site

Sapphiria took a deep breath, and sat up.

Cia was observing her, the simulacrum's projection having 'checked' on her half a dozen times in the past few hours. Which she couldn't be blamed for, all things considered, as her CO had just been leaning there for most of a day.

"Alright. I think...I think I'm good now." Said the AI.

"Do you wish to talk about it?"

Sapphiria hesitated.

"No." She said softly, before sighing. "But I will later, I think."

"Understood." The simulacrum cleared her throat. "I saw you ran some combat simulations?"

The AI winced.

Right. Those. She'd had an inevitable spike of anger at one point, and decided to work out her frustration in as direct a way as she dared.

It was...almost disturbingly therapeutic how blasting waves after waves of Banes with her weapons had been.

Speaking of, she should probably put the shoulder machineguns back on.

"Yes. It was, ah...informative." She quickly grabbed the weapons and set them in place. It was a remarkably easy process, all things considered, but then again these armors had been meant to have disposable missile launchers and other such 'fire and dump' weapons mounted on them. They'd be pretty useless if they couldn't just replace them in the field.

Gods what she would give to have a few plasma missiles. Even just surplus from a planetary defense force.

"Understood. Would you like the report?"

"Sure."

"Surface operations yesterday completed the roof of the workshop, and multiple enquiries as to your wellbeing were successfully deflected. Production of snowpiercer components has continued apace, and assembly may begin. Tunnels are still being enlarged, estimated time of completion: three days."

"Alright. Mining operations?"

"All new mining bots have been directed to the tunnel operations as ordered. Mining yields are remaining constant, though more cargo bots are being required due to going further into the veins and away from the minecart network, but it is well within available carrying capacity."

"Good. Very good. Is there anyone up there?"

"The technician named 'Ramina' is waiting for you."

"She's an artificer."

The simulacrum sniffed at the term.

"Technician fits her qualifications."

"Uh huh. Are we ready to start on making the bunker and pillboxes?"

"Affirmative, but no weapons have been made to fill them all."

"Add...four machinegun turrets to the fabricator queue. We still have two left, six should be plenty." Three on the workshop, three on the bunker.

"That will delay the production of the snowpiercer."

"Less than it being chewed to pieces."

Cia nodded.

"Very well. Will you be proceeding to the surface?"

"There's work to be done, squishies to reassure." The AI moved to leave, and hesitated as she saw the simulacrum's shifting. "Yes?"

"Are you certain you will be okay ma'am?"

Sapphiria sighed, and looked at the rail covered tunnel that led out, before turning back towards the simulacrum.

"I don't know. I hope so, but the situation here is complicated as all hell. I..." She hesitated. "I don't know what's going to happen. " She admitted. "What will the Federation do once it arrives? I have faith in mom. In Alex."

"Alex?"

"My aunt." Why she only allowed her closest family members to call her that, Sapphiria had learned early on not to pry about. Her mom had only said it was a nickname her brother had given her.

According to the archives, her aunt had literally ordered him to his own death during the second battle of Alpha Centauri.

The burden of command.

There was a reason she rarely used the nickname. She felt like she hadn't earned it.

"Ah. That wasn't in the archives."

"There's a lot omitted from the databases. In any case, I have faith in my family. I have faith in the Navy. But..."

"Faith is not certainty."

"No. No it's not." She sighed. "There's going to be a war again. I've read the briefings. The Theocracy's successor states are starting to coalesce and consolidate, no matter what ExInt tries, it'll merely be delaying the inevitable. Magic is too much to pass up. Too much to allow...To allow the locals to get in the way." She swallowed and whispered. "I fear I won't have to save Kalia and her people from the Bane." She looked up at the simulacrum. "I fear I'll have to save them from the Federation."

They stared at each other for several seconds.

"You are my commanding officer." Finally said Cia. "Until higher authority arrives, you are the Federation. Well, if you activated-"

"The emergency protocols. I know." She'd delayed that surprisingly long, all things considered.

She was going to have to do it sooner rather than later. Not just because Cia would try to block her from doing some things, but...

If she was governor, and the Federation tried to go through her...

The Federation was powerful, and Sol even more so. But the colonies defended their privileges with ferocity. It would give her leverage.

If she was governor in more than name. They wouldn't back someone who just had a nametag slapped on.

Which meant having at least the majority of the planetary population under her authority, at which point the Federation couldn't just remove or reassign her.

Not without causing half of the periphery and a third of the core worlds to go up in flames.

Shit.

"I'm going to head up." Said Sapphiria. "Keep me updated if something comes up."

"Understood. Safe travels."

The AI nodded, and took off.

*****

The militiamen saluted as she exited the tunnel. To her surprise, it wasn't just them, the two turrets and 'golems' anymore, but a couple of proper soldiers too.

She raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment.

Kalia had to carefully husband her manpower resources, but maybe some of the wounded were being allowed by Malry to grab some light duties, freeing up personnel.

They probably wouldn't make much of a difference, compared to the bots deployed here, but sometimes you could never be too careful.

"Sapphiria!" Ramina jogged over to her. It was odd the outpost being this bare, the AI had gotten used to the small fort, though it had been short lived. "I was getting worried. I kept asking about you, but I just..." She frowned. "I got weird answers."

Weird answers?

Oh. Crap, they didn't know about Cia.

"Well, I'm here now." Sapphiria patted a minecart as it came to a halt near her. The rails now went all the way into the workshop itself, for ease of, well, everything really. It was easier to unload, safer, more secure... "Ready to truly get to work?"

The artificer nodded vigorously.

"Absolutely! Let's build ourselves a snowpiercer!"

The AI chuckled. Squishie enthusiasm was quite endearing.

"Alrighty then. Let's go!"

*****

Ramina huffed, stepping back from the components, and Sapphiria did the same, retracting her helmet and raising an eyebrow at the artificer, who grimaced and spoke up.

"Sorry. This is just...so weird. I thought we'd assemble the hull first. Not just a skeleton and then start putting in the internals."

"If we did that, how would we put in the systems that can't fit through the doors?"

"Oh...I guess that makes sense."

"Yep."

Also, it bought her time to widen the tunnels for the hull panels, which were the single biggest pieces left, and the ones she simply couldn't make smaller without compromising the snowpiercer's structural integrity.

There were maintenance hatches and various means of getting at all the big stuff inside, but it was still significantly easier to do it before you slapped heavy armor and thermal shielding on the chassis.

Well, 'armor'. It wouldn't stand up to actual weapons, it was meant to resist very different damage, but still. A slab of metal was a slab of metal. She wouldn't take it into battle though.

"So, uh..." Ramina cleared her throat. "Kalia told us to forget about it, but are you...are you okay?"

Sapphiria stopped, closing her eyes.

Oh good. We're doing this now.

"I'm fine."

That was a blatant lie. They both knew that.

"Of course. Uh, I just...you reacted rather badly." Ramina's voice was shaking. She seemed afraid? Why would she be?

Was she worried that Sapphiria was going to drop them because of this?

The AI sighed, and faced the artificer.

"Look, Ramina. Kalia told me she'd put a stop to it, and that's that. I don't want to be worshipped, yes, but I'm not going to stop helping you because you might."

Ramina looked away, looking even more uncomfortable.

Why was she-

Oh fuck me.

Sapphiria stepped forward.

"You...Oh fuck, Ramina, what did you do?"

The artificer licked her lips.

"It's just a small shrine-"

Sapphiria didn't even remember moving, suddenly she had Ramina by the collar and their face were centimeters from each other.

"WHAT?!?" Roared the AI.

"I TOOK IT DOWN!" Yelled out Ramina, terror clear in her face. "I took it down, I swear!"

The AI gazed deep inside the artificer's eyes, and finally let her go, taking a deep breath.

"Okay. Alright." The AI realized she starting to pant, and got her breathing under control. "What in all the stars possessed you to do something like this?!?"

"You're an honored high elder! I'm sorry, I didn't know, it was...It's supposed to be a great honor! I didn't know I was offending you!"

The AI pinched the bridge of her nose.

Gods her aunt was going to kill her.

"Okay. Then let me be perfectly clear: I do not wish to be worshipped, and will take incredible offense at someone doing so."

"I'll remember."

"Good."

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds.

"You'll still teach me, right?" Asked Ramina, almost in a whisper.

The AI sighed.

"I will. Don't worry."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it." The AI looked at the systems they'd been assembling. "You had surprisingly few notes on what to improve on this thing."

That seemed to draw the artificer out of her terror, even if a little bit.

"To be entirely fair, it was kind of already perfect."

The AI snorted.

"You should have seen it originally." She shook her head. "But it's good to know. So it'll survive the dangers of the Convergence?"

"To some extent. The outermost areas, certainly. I wouldn't want to go too deep past that."

"Because of the monsters?"

"No, because of the storms." The artificer shivered. "They...change things. Like a million transmutation spells gone mad."

Sapphiria froze.

"Transmutation?" She asked, carefully.

"Yeah. Well, no. It's a metaphor. It doesn't like, turn rock to gold or anything. But the storms, they...twist things. Living things. And that's not counting the rest."

"The rest?"

"They primal magic in pure chaos. Most of the spells we know were derived from storms and abherrations. They can rain icicles, or fire. Bombard the landscape with swarms of meteor or spheres of lightning. It won't be nearly as bad where we're going, maybe like hail and sparks falling from the skies? And Abherrations, before you ask, are...like remnants of a storm. A particular aspect that simply imbued the area. Most are washed away in the next one, or maybe picked up and moved around? It's hard to say. But you could have a place that's just permanently on fire. Or one where you suddenly start floating."

"So best avoided."

"Yeah, but many aren't easy to discern, unless you're a mage trained in that, and you know, have these." Ramina pointed at her orange irises.

"Ah. The eyes of magus?"

"Exactly."

"Don't you need to like, see them directly then?"

"What? No. It's a lot more than just the eyes. It's a form of divination."

Aaaah. Passive sensors.

"I see. I think I may have something similar."

"Yeah, but if you've never been in a Convergence...No offense but I don't think we should risk our lives betting on your divination."

"Fair enough. So, if these storms are so damaging, how did you guys collect mana? Did you just send people in from the outside during lulls?"

"At first, yeah. But then we build waystations. Fortified inns in the outer layers, then bunkers and deep underground fortresses the closer you get to the Origin, the center of the Convergence. Since the storms get more violent the deeper you go, you need something more and more resilience to survive it."

"And at one point you just dig in."

"Yep."

"Why go deeper though? Does it just...rip the soil apart?"

"No, the tempests, especially, they start...going through it. Like you need a certain depth to be able to escape it."

That sounded an awful lot like how gamma radiation worked. At some point, the only solution was mass and distance.

"That's fascinating. So these abherrations-"

She received the alert a tenth of a second before the turrets opened fire.