[MFR] Chapter 60 - Gravitas

Note :

Forgot to post the rules for Cuprum Duelists earlier. I'll do it tomorrow.

Really like the new schedule. Knowing I get a break tomorrow helped because today has been pretty awful overall. Though, on the good side of today, book 9 is doing really well on amazon ! Arrived all the way up to rank #1804 so far and breached the top 2k, which is amazing !

Chapter 60

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Ruins of Myrtran

"Well this place is about as fucked as I left it." Said Sapphiria, as she strolled to the edge of the ruins.

The bones of the Banes she'd fought were still there. But their equipment was missing. Her sensors detected absolutely no activity. Here, or further down the road into the mines' vehicle access, that the undead had been trying to open up again.

"Quite the mess." Gregor nudged a skull with his armored foot, and shrugged. "I've seen worse from war mages. But not from just a gun."

"That sounds like a compliment. I'll take it."

"Sure. Let's call it that." They continued walking, skirting at the edge of the tree line. There probably wasn't much risk in just walking through the town, but she wasn't here to pull aggro today. "May I ask you a question?"

Sapphiria glanced at the skeleton, and shrugged. He wasn't completely invisible, his own camouflage roughly on par with her own in visual terms, though he was remarkably hard to see with sensors. True cloaking in this case, not just jamming or stealth.

Damn she wanted that stuff so bad. But how would she approach this? They thought that, at the end of the day, her stuff was powered by magic.

When she revealed that she didn't even know what magic was, what would happen?

They were already panicking because of something as mundane as spice. The paradigm shift of having an entirely new way of doing tech...

"I'm not going to stop you." She said.

"Right. I wanted to ask if you were the one who'd done the expedition in." Sapphiria came to a halt, and so did the skeleton. "I saw marks, in some places. Marks that look a lot like what your weapon makes."

Sapphiria looked at him, and then retracted her helmet. From his point of view, her head had probably just appeared out of thin air, before she shut down the camouflage altogether. Technically, the projectors could hide her without the helmet, she'd just shut it down for this.

He dropped his own cloaking, facing her and meeting her gaze, clearly divining her intentions. Eye to eye was the best way to speak one's innocence, regardless of whether you were or not. Though it was a risk gamble if you were guilty.

Eyes were the window into the soul after all.

"I didn't. I haven't the slightest clue what killed them, and honestly? That terrifies me. Because it means that something is down there with me that might be able to best or maybe even kill me." For some value of kill at least. "I've taken what precautions I can. But bringing down half the mountain didn't seem to have stopped it, whatever it was."

The skeleton listened, and then slowly nodded, after holding her gaze for a few seconds.

"Alright. Still, makes you wonder. There's a lot of unanswered questions here."

"Like what?"

"Like how did you get down here without the mines?"

"I don't know if you realize this, but I did bring out a small army of digging golems to make the foundations for the workshop. What makes you think making my own way in is impossible for me?"

"That's...actually a very good point." He seemed to perk up. "Does that mean there's a second exit?"

Sapphiria blushed and coughed.

"I may or may not have, ah, collapsed it. I'm trying to dig it back out again."

"Collapsed it? When? Why?"

"Let's just say that not everything I do is the height of subtlety or without collateral damage."

He gazed at her plasma gun, and laughed.

"Yeah, I can believe that!" He shook his head, raising his cloak again. "Alright, let's go. We need to be back before the sun goes down or Kalia will have our asses for dinner."

I wouldn't mind that...

Sapphiria shook her head. No, bad.

"Right behind you." She raised her helmet, and activated her camouflage as she followed him into the forest.

*****

"Alright. I don't think we should get closer." Said Gregor, as he knelt down at the edge of the tree line, and Sapphiria joined him.

The valley rose before them, narrowing into some rocky parody of a funnel, the pass that ended the valley.

No trees on the slope for some reason, no stumps either. Maybe they just didn't grow there?

She briefly made some calculations with her armor's rangefinders, and nodded.

"It's good enough for what I want to do." Answered the AI, and the undead flicked a glance to her.

"I'm sorry, 'what I want to do'? I was under the belief that you were here to take a look at the pass."

"That I am. But as promised, I won't put myself in danger to do it." She reached down, and a compartment in her thigh armor opened, letting her retrieve a drone.

It was a standard civilian quadcopter model, made for squishie leisure. It didn't have any form of active sensors, just some passive receptors with cameras, a communicator and the bare necessities of flight.

Which was what made it perfect. She didn't want the Bane to realize they were being observed. It was why she'd shut down her active scanners well away from the pass.

"Is that...?"

"A golem. A flying one." She raised her hand, and powered up the drone. She stood still for a few seconds, coloring as her semi-dramatic gesture turned into awkwardness as the tiny robot took a bit to power up, and finally take off. "Sorry, still tinkering with it."

"Right. But what help is it going to be, exactly?" Gregor had the definite look of someone who's eyes had widened, despite his skull staying the same. "Can you see through its eyes?!?"

"Not live, but I will get a recording of what it has seen once it returns." The drone rose into the air, out of earshot, and began to advance. She'd just programmed and loaded in a flight plan. Nothing complicated.

Technically it was fully available for remote control, and her armor was built to network with a bunch of bots and drones, but this drone wasn't made for a place that didn't have an entire datanet, even a colonial one. It had short range coms, a barebones navicomputer, and that was pretty much it.

"Amazing." Whispered the skeleton. "I know Tribunes and Legates that would have sold their souls for this. Divination and airships are all well and good, but they're not discrete."

Sapphiria twitched, and she spoke before she even realized.

"Airships?!?"

"Oh. Right. Not a recent invention, but yeah, we have ships that sail through the air." The skeleton shrugged as Sapphiria stared at him in slackjawed astonishment. "They have something that cancels out the pull downward. Don't ask me how, I'm no mage."

Something that canceled the pull downward? What-

Antigravity. They had antigravity.

Had she been flesh and blood, she would have fainted. As it was, she experienced a cascade of system failures.

Gravity manipulation, whether to generate or cancel it, was the holy grail of technology. Her mother had been chasing it before she'd even invented the hyperdrive. And centuries of research by the most brilliant minds of the Federation and the nations that came before it had yielded exactly nothing.

If this world had it...

This wasn't just a matter of rescuing squishies. This was national security, progress, a leap forward of unbelievable proportions for the Federation! What could they build if they could manipulate the fundamental underpinnings of the universe like that?

For the first time, the true meaning of 'magic' sunk in. It wasn't just some kind of perverse imitation of technology by making self propelled carts or animating skeletons. It was magic. Reality as she knew it was just the beginning.

She sat down, as her entire vision of the universe and the future was flipped upside down.

"Hey? Hey are you okay? Sapphiria!"

She shook herself, and waved off the skeleton as he knelt by her side.

"I'm fine, I'm fine, I just..."

"You don't sound fine kid. Uh, I mean high elder. You sound like you just got hit by a bone tyrant."

"I'm fine." Sapphiria took a deep breath, and raised her hands, realizing that even through the armor, they were shaking. She closed her fists, willing herself to calm.

For a human, it might have been an exercise in futility, but she was an AI. Her systems stabilized, and she closed her eyes, taking a few breaths to fully steady herself, before opening them again, turning to face the skeleton.

"I'm fine." She repeated. "Just a bit, ah..." She looked at the ground. "Floored, so to speak."

"I can see that. I guess you're not the only one bringing change."

She laughed. It wasn't half hearted either, it was full throated, 'body convulsion' laughter.

Gregor looked worryingly at her, then the pass, and she quieted down, though not without the occasional chuckle.

"No, I suppose I don't have a monopoly on that." She stood up, and took his proferred hand. It wasn't necessary at all, but it was the intent that counted. "I'll have to talk to Ramina about them."

"Might have more luck with Kalia, actually. She studied this stuff."

Her ears prickled.

"Truly?"

"Yeeep. Before she was a mage-magistrate, she wanted to be an airship mage. It's why she ended up in the Free Cities for a while. Ask her about it, she loves to talk about those days."

"What made her change?"

The skeleton grimaced. Or at least, conveyed the gesture. She'd have to investigate how he did that. Body language seemed unlikely with so little body to do it with.

"That's not my place to say."

"Alright." She looked at the sky, and sighed. "Do you want to sit down and take some rest? My dro- golem might take a bit."

"Sit down? You just stood up!"

"Well perhaps I like to have my butt on the ground and laze around." Joining words to actions, she sat back down.

"Is that why you made a bunch of golems? So you didn't have to move from your bed to get things done?"

"It's called task delegation and effective management."

He snorted, but sat down with her.

"You're starting to sound like Ramina."

"Well, we both are artificers."

"True enough." Suddenly he had a deck of cards in his hands. "Fancy a game?"

"I'm not...comfortable with games of chance." Notably because as an AI, not running the probabilities was pretty much impossible. Also depending on the game she'd start counting cards or doing all manners of things most would consider cheating.

"That's alright, I can tell a few stories."

"But then again a few hands couldn't hurt!" She added with almost indecent haste.

The skeleton chuckled. Damn, had he maneuvered her into that.

"Alright. Do you know how to play Cuprum Duelists?" He smiled at her head shake, seemingly becoming more animated. "Oh boy, I haven't explained the rules in forever! Okay, so you see-"

*****

Sapphiria squinted at her hand. She had an Emperor, but she was almost certain he had a Legate or a Dominion, and she wasn't going to play her only way of defeating those cards.

Mmmmhhh...She could sacrifice a couple of peasants. Maybe a legionaire. But chances were, he would realize she was baiting him.

Instead, she put down her two centurions.

He raised his eyebrows at the cards. Or rather, somehow gave the impression that he was.

"Interesting." He set down a card face down in his reserve, and played a Legate.

"AH!" She slapped down her Emperor, and he smirked.

Oh crap-

He flipped the reserve card. Throne. Shit.

He placed it in front of her Emperor, over his Legate.

"It looks like I win this round." He said, smiling as the battle was calculated, and the cards were discarded.

"Yeah. This round."

She had better analysis than he did, but she was still grappling with the rules and he had several lifetimes of experience.

She'd beat him though.

Eventually.

"Mmmhhh hhhhm. Now, I believe-" He stopped as she raised her head as she received the ping.

Saved by the gong, thought the AI as the drone lowered itself into the clearing, and she grabbed it. Technically she could just download the data remotely, but that would take forever with that piece of crap's so called 'communication systems'. She pulled a data connection cable out of the armor's wrist and jacked in.

"I'm going to look at what the golem found. It'll be a bit."

"Of course." Said the old skeleton, clearly realizing the game was over and restacking the cards. "We should head back as soon as it's done though. It is getting late."

She nodded as she took in the data. It was raw, but her system automatically recompiled into a summary. Which was great because going through raw sensor data took forever and didn't really tell you much, unless you were meticulously hunting for anomalies, which was the usual way of detecting stealth ships.

As she'd seen with her own eyes, the pass began as more or less the end of the valley, rising up like a normal slope, before abruptly stopping. That's where it got weird. Normally mountain passes were effectively a 'saddle', and would go down immediately.

Not here. It continued straight on for several hundred meters, getting narrower, before widening and falling back down again, presumably on the other side of the mountain.

The wind, pushing through the gap, had abraded the sides of the pass significantly and widened it, but she could still see the evidence of glassing. If she had to guess, this is where the big guns had been targeted during the bombardment that had created the valley, punching straight through to the other side while the smaller weapons pummeled the auxiliary parts of whatever they'd been targeting into vapor.

The fact that they stopped so abruptly spoke of an extremely well coordinated attack, with exquisite levels of fire control. That was terrifying, because it implied the other side hadn't just been throwing everything they had at the fortress, but precisely calibrated their assault to what was needed to destroy it.

Given the level of damage, that was a horrifying thought. The Federation could have definitely inflicted that amount of hurt, but not with such an exquisite degree of finesse. Federation dreadnoughts had the big guns but they weren't exactly what one would call precision weapons. This was using supercapital ship weaponry like a damned scalpel. Who the fuck could, or would, do something like that?

That latter part was important. You could make weapons extremely accurate by piling on more sensors and computing capacity to refine targeting solutions, but you rapidly hit diminishing returns. This implied someone who had just an absolutely staggering amount of resources to waste on this, that wouldn't be better used elsewhere.

Then again, if you had magic and antigravity, or they were the prize to take...perhaps you had resources to spare.

She took a deep breath to steady herself. The physical effects may be null but the psychological ones were very real, thank the stars.

Regardless, the Bane, scurrying around like bony ants, were on her side of the pass. Just that would have been enough to tell her they weren't worried about her or Astralis as a threat, even without seeing the defenses being erected to protect the pass.

There were some towards the wider valley, sure, but those were almost an afterthought compared to what was happening on the other side. So far she could see what appeared to be at least two trenches that had to be for stopping siege weapons like rams and siege towers, three abatises, the first being nothing more than dirt and sharpened stakes, the second sporting a sizeable palisade and the third having what looked like a full on fortress wall being constructed, with cement and everything. All of that was backed by wooden watch towers and what seemed suspiciously like artillery emplacements, though thankfully empty.

For now at least.

The abatises were fascinating. She wondered if these had existed before or if they'd been learned by fighting the Magistracy? They're only really appeared after firearms started taking over warfare in the late 17th century and onward on Earth, to defend lines of riflemen from being rushed. They probably worked somewhat for less technologically advanced forms of warfare, but surely there would be more effective-

Oh. Oh shit.

If they could just resurrect people...why wouldn't they have guns? Or rather, undead who could use them? They'd have to have engaged the Magistracy's military, wouldn't they? And apparently crushed it too.

They might be preparing an abatis because they were expecting firearm equipped units to arrive to reinforce them. Probably with artillery to fill these emplacements to boot, and not just making medieval siege weapons in the field.

That was bad. That was very, very bad.

"I need to talk to Kalia." She said out loud. "Now."