Chapter 56 - She Who Controls The Spice...

Notes :

A poll will go up shortly after this chapter about the schedule, keep your eyes out for that.

Blame the part with the TO-DO list on Drasoini. They're the ones who planted the idea in my mind on discord. Sometimes I wonder if my server is an elaborate psyops. First the 'ship girls' suggestion that ended up with Subtlety in The Fallen World, Sapphiria's height debate, and now this.

I'm also having to deal with the construction company again. Great.

Chapter 56

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Tunnel Entrance

"I'm going to be honest, even after having seen everything you've done so far..." Ramina shook her head, looking at the newly built foundations. "I didn't expect you to be able to do it."

The sun wasn't even in sunsetting mode yet, though it was getting there.

"Oh ye of little faith." Sapphiria smiled at Ramina's expression. "Relax, I'm teasing you."

"Right. Uh...So about that spice, are you like...selling it?"

Sapphiria tilted her head. Ramina's reaction to tasting the spiced nutrigel had been...hilarious enough that she'd recorded it for later use. It had been a mix of confusion, elation and utter horror.

The militia had immediately taken an interest of course, and she'd distributed a few packets of random flavors, and watched as they put it in their nutrigel.

It wasn't like anything they'd tasted before, which was kind of the point of those spices, apparently. They were meant to be unnatural, artifical, to avoid causing the uncanny valley effect more normal, less vibrant flavors caused. It was brilliant, really.

She was also fairly sure she'd seen a few of them sprinkling a bit on normal food, which confused her. Why bother? It had its own taste, hadn't it?

"I'm sure I can talk to Kalia about that, but it's really not that much compared to the nutrigel vats. I might consider it part of the price already paid."

The artificer opened her mouth, then closed it, and just stared at the AI in utter disbelief.

"What?" Asked Sapphiria.

"I...Dear Ancestors, you don't even realize do you? Do you know what you just gave us? The ability to make spices out of anything, for almost nothing? That's...I'd say a King's ransom but no, this is the ability to just make ransoms! Over and over again! What's next, do you have a starmetal horn of plenty under your armor?"

Sapphiria leaned back, almost tipping over the edge as the artificer advanced on her, grabbing her collar and shoving their faces together.

What the fuck was she-

Oh.

OH.

Spices. The great treasure of the Age of Sail. Despite seeing them as, well, primitives, she still assumed they were basically eighteenth to nineteenth century in other regards. But they weren't. They'd extremely rapidly industrialized, and seemingly cheated and brute forced their way up the ladder using magic.

To them, spices were...well, not necessarily the insane levels of valuable some of the twenty first century media her mom had her watch depicted it as, but still pretty damned pricy. And she'd just given her the means to make sizeable quantities of them, just for their basic meals, like it was nothing. It was the equivalent of handing someone a screwdriver, and then replacing the plastic, mass produced handle with actual, 'grown-on-Terra' wood. Yeah, sure, it was nothing for her, but she'd seen people in the colonies almost faint when they realized that her desk onboard the Starprism was made from honest to the stars terran oak. These people never saw anything from the homeworld -even their colony ships were usually, at best, lunar built, and usually made in the staryards of Jupiter-, let alone what little forest remained on the almost wholly metal encased planet.

"...I'll talk it out with Kalia."

Ramina snorted.

"Sure you will." She suddenly realized she'd been about two seconds away from sending them both down onto the ground the fast way, and she stepped back, allowing the AI to right herself. "We should, uh...probably get down. Inspect the site more closely."

"Sure. Let's do that." There was no need, her construction bots were much better at this than her armor and android sensor systems, since that's what they were built for, but she'd rather this didn't get awkward.

They came down, and looked at the concrete pad now incongruously in the middle of the forest, Calvones sitting on a forlorn stump, staring at the construction like it would vanish if he took his eyes off of it.

He jumped up as Sapphiria touched his shoulder.

"GAH! Oh. Milady, I-I'm sorry, I-"

"Sapphiria." Interrupted the AI. "Just Sapphiria. And I think you should head home. It's been a long day."

"Yes. Of course." He got up, bowed despite Sapphiria's glare, and hurried over, gathering a couple of militia who were probably going to be his escort.

"Are you going to join him?" Asked the AI, and Ramina shrugged.

"In a minute."

There was a short silence. Neither of them were really inspecting the foundations, but honestly Sapphiria could use a few minutes to breathe and-

"You know, you could just add heels to your armor. No one would notice, and you would gain a fair few-"

"Ramina. I distinctly remember telling you to shut. Up."

"I'm just saying. Unless you want to stand on your tippy toes to get to Kalia's lips..."

Sapphiria opened her mouth and then closed it, her face blazing red and utterly beyond coherent words.

"I, uh, I'll be going." Hastily said the artificer, wisely deciding to get out of the blast radius before the timer expired, and running off with indecent haste to join the surveyor.

Sapphiria stared at her retreating back, her eyes blazing as she finally regained the ability to think properly.

How dare she! She was going to beat that girl's ass until she wouldn't be able to sit down!

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

...Actually, given what she'd done to Malry, the artificer might enjoy it. She needed an alternative solution.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

How the fuck do I turn that thing off?!?

*****

Sapphiria sat down on one of the crates in the mining hub. She wasn't sure why it had been offloaded there exactly, but the place had become...well, a storage hub. It was big, it was mostly empty, more or less secure for the time being and well situated between the crash site and the surface, not to mention equipped with cargo handling systems. There was a bunch of stuff being stored there for now.

"Welp. I fucked up."

"My apologies ma'am." Said Cia as she appeared. "The fault was my own. I reviewed the files for the synthesizer, and failed utterly to realize how impactful it would be."

"Are you a student of history? Ancient terran history?"

"Well, no-"

"I am. And I'm your CO. Bucks stop here. Period." She sighed. "How do I fix that fuckup?"

"Do we...wish to?"

Sapphiria blinked.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"Trying to backpedal is sometimes worse than trying to fix the issue or going in with the hand you have played." The simulacrum was a lot more verbose than usual. Perhaps because she was responding to Sapphiria's distress? The AI had stopped dialing the simulacrum's level of human-ness altogether, letting it move autonomously. It felt...wrong to be doing that to what was, effectively, the one person she could truly and fully trust. Even if she wasn't truly a person to begin with. Or should she be?

Stars, her aunt would have a field day with that thought.

"We should go forward." Continued the simulacrum. "They believe you have been down there for a long time. Perhaps you were never aware that these 'spice mixes' would have any value, and play that angle. It would also enable you to learn considerably more about their commerce and economics."

"That's...true. Very true. Thanks, C."

"C?"

"Well, I don't really have a nickname for you. Plus you're like three letters."

"Technically it's an abreviation."

"Wait, so what would be your name?"

"My factory ID code is CIA-2138KV-YPP-116."

Unbidden, the translation for the acronym popped up in her memory. Carrier Integrated Assistant, 2138 Kilo Variant, Youthful Personality Protocol, serial number 116.

"Yeah I'm not calling you that. I could call you one one six, but that's not much better." Sapphiria sighed. "Tell you what, we can worry about any other Cia when the Federation comes." Which was worrying, because in the few months she'd already spent here, she'd made very little progress. It seemed like an eternity and nothing at all simultaneously. Like, she knew, intellectually, that she'd spent considerably less time here than she had going to the border worlds from Sol, and yet it felt like you could write an entire novel in what had happened during that time. Maybe two. One and a third, roughly. "Until then, that'll be your name. If that's okay with you?"

"I'm fine with it. I was programmed to."

The simulacrum was smiling. Was that a joke?

Sapphiria rolled her eyes, finding that she was smiling despite herself.

Cia really was growing on her.

"Alright, fine." She sighed. "Back to work though. Workshop should be quick to make. We have the plans and the bots were made to build these kind of buildings."

"Affirmative. I have begun widening the tunnels as ordered."

"Any issues?"

"No. There are extremely thorough protocols on doing so safely. It will, however, monopolize those mining bots for a sizeable amount of time. Thankfully, evacuating the produce of their digging is supremely easy thanks to the minecart lines."

"That's something. Could we make a tunneller instead?"

"Tunnel Boring Machine." Corrected the simulacrum. "And their cost is significant. I also have very few recorded instances of them being used for mining operations."

"Meaning it'd be sitting useless afterwards. Alright. Guess I'll have to suck it up then. Let's keep where we are in terms of bots assigned to mining ore, and divert any new constructions to the tunnel." Sapphiria blinked. "By the way, our little hole behind the escape pod?"

"Still digging. There has been some shifting and I have had to shift the pattern for safety reasons. I am regularly pulsing the area with the survey scanners to find out how well it is holding up, and so far so good."

"Excellent. I'd propose to put the scanners up in the mining up for a bit, to sweep the Bane tunnel, but we wouldn't be able to power it."

"Affirmative. How did the machineguns work?"

"Didn't get a chance to use them, but the armor's balance system adapted to them." After a bit of tweaking, but still. "I hope I won't have to use them in anger, but let's be real, it probably won't even take a week."

"That would fit current patterns, yes. I have prepared the cost estimates for surrounding Astralis with a double layer sensor spike perimeter and sentry guns." She coughed. "I must note that they will have to purely be under local control."

"I know. But with the monsters having fucking sensors, I'm not keen on building a relay here, nor stringing smaller ones along, and until we find a copper deposit or make an optic fiber spinner we don't have the mass to spare on a cable that size, if it didn't risk getting damaged out in the open anyway."

"Understood. What if something comes up? What if they fail?"

"Overlapping fields of fire, the other sentries pick up the slack. If that fails, then the bots will back them up. Plus the squishies aren't idiots. They have a lot more experience fighting these things than I do. They won't stand idly by."

"So you are relying on them...saving themselves."

Sapphiria glared at the simulacrum, before sighing.

"Helping themselves. And yes, I'm relying on them being able to fight if it comes down to it and everything else fails. They desperately need this 'mana' before the Bane regain their footing. I only have some many resources, I have to make sacrifices somewhere. At one point, you have to take potential danger now to avoid certain doom later."

"Understood."

"Once we don't have to make the damned snowpiercer, we can start assembling towers and some kind of...barrier to close off the valley. Hold off the damned things."

"Could we not do the same thing for Astralis."

"Too small. The cost of building the pylons isn't worth it compared to more turrets. Plus it reduces the number of guns we can afford to have fail without crippling the defense grid." Cia looked surprised, and Sapphiria smiled. "I do run simulations in my spare time."

"And worry a lot about the humans."

"That too." She licked her lips. "Can I be honest with you?"

"Always. I am here for you. You are, when it all comes down, my ultimate authority."

That...that was not how simulacrums were supposed to be.

Auntie, what did you do to her?

"Thank you. I feel like I'm failing them by not doing enough, and simultaneously failing them by doing too much. Like...like I'm coddling them and let leaving them dangerously exposed."

"That's because you are." Sapphiria winced, but Cia continued. "But that's not your fault. You are correct, we cannot just implement one of the uplift protocols as they are. And we cannot just fall back and leave them to their own devices. There is no just middle ground, there is no good solution."

Sapphiria nodded. Psychological assistance function indeed.

"Thank you."

"It is my pleasure."

The AI smiled, before taking a deep breath, and letting it out, slapping her knees.

"Alright! Enough feeling sorry for myself. What's on the list?"

"I believe the recon drones and asking our surface friends about the Bane."

"We can get the drones done and tested during the night, pop up in the morning. Let's get to work!"