[MFR] Chapter 44 - Cool Rocks

Chapter 44

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Crash Site

"Well. This'll do nicely." Said Sapphiria as she hefted the steel ingot, still warm to the touch. "It should be able to handle all standard alloys, right?"

"As well as most basic metals." Cia gazed at the large smelter. "I would like to log an anomaly."

"Shoot."

"Overall temperature of the chamber has not increased."

Sapphiria froze, and checked her sensors.

Cia...was absolutely right. Well, not utterly, but mostly. There was some temperature change, but it was focused around the smelter itself, and even then it was a fraction of what all the accumulated heat should have been. Yeah the smelter was extremely well insulated and a marvel of technology in its own right, but entropy was a bitch.

"You're right." She looked at the smelter. "We should be sweltering, but we're not. This entire place is being cooled. And dried." She looked around. "It's not via air, there's no current powerful enough to do this. So no convection. Conduction? Something inside the rock itself?"

"Possible. But there was no previous activity."

"Well we weren't making enough heat, I don't think." She looked around the chamber. "I think it's worth doing another pass, don't you?"

"I do."

"Good. Got the fabricator going?"

"Half of the parts are complete, and I am ready to being assembly of the primary structural systems."

"Good. Go ahead." In the end they'd settled on a simpler metal fabricator. Something that might have been distantly recognizable to someone from the late twenty first century. It couldn't make anything truly complex like nanocircuitry, but it could fabricate an assault rifle or a metal casing perfectly fine. And ninety percent of the snowpiercer's mass was going to be basic components. Hull, wheels, drive train, electric motor, etc. Freeing her fabricator from having to handle most of that was huge. "I'll get my butt over to the chamber walls. Prepare to fire up the smelter again, in case I can't find anything."

"Affirmative."

Moving to the chamber's wall was an easy affair. She was so used to sprinting around at this point she basically had footpaths around and the bots were programmed to avoid getting in her way, at least as much as they could.

She arrived in front of the wall, and she frowned as she took in the readings. She frowned.

No change in temperature from before.

She extended her hand, and touched it. Her armor sensors saw no change.

On a whim, she took off the gauntlet, disconnecting it, and using her bare hand.

For the first time, she felt it under her bare hand. When was the last time she'd stripped more than her head out of her armor? Not on this world, that was for certain.

It felt weird. It felt...right.

She wished she'd thought of touching something else. Truly touching it. Wood, leaves, maybe even Kal-

Her thoughts came to a screeching halt as the armor's sensors pinged her as the stone began to heat up.

Before immediately cooling down.

She jerked her hand back.

"What. The. Fuck."

*****

Sapphiria set down the nuclear heater, and took notes.

She wasn't much of a scientist herself, but her mom had discovered hyperspace. Moreover, every engineer knew what to do when an unexpected phenomenon happened:

Test it. Change parameters, test it again. Record everything. Even stuff where nothing changes, record. it.

Then, depending on your temperament, you either fixed the problem, gave it to a scientist to figure the causes, or put it in the edge cases of the owner's manual and washed your hands of it.

And like all of her mother's siblings and descendants, she was nothing if not curious.

All around her were the scattered equipment and remnants of the tests she'd performed.

So far, she'd figured out a few things:

The rock removed any heat energy transferred to it. It did not do the same to any object with physical contact beyond normal convection. The object lost energy as expected, by the heat transferring to the colder material. The property was not intrinsic to the rock, if it was removed from the wall and suspended in the air it started accumulating and shedding heat as expected. It was only when it was put back into contact with the rest of the mountain that it began leeching heat again.

Interestingly enough, the rate of energy removal was greatly decreased if the removed stone was put back in. Probably due to air gaps and the lack of molecular cohesion with the rest, but it was fascinating that it kept working nonetheless.

There was some exotic radiation, but it was faint. If she had to take a guess...the effect was magical of some sort, but the rock itself wasn't its origin. It was affected by it, not causing it. Just like when Malry had healed people, she'd glowed with exotic radiation, but the wound that had done so to a much less degree.

She'd also been able to measure the energy transfer direction.

It was down. Not straight down, but down.

...According to her files, Planetary Defence Centers had extremely high capacity heatsinks and cooling systems, dumping excess heat back into the planet, usually by spreading a gigantic network of heat exchange wires in all directions. The sinks themselves were to absorb the extreme burst of heat from the PDC going into full combat mode and firing everything it got. That meant dozens of surface to void railguns, plasma cannons and missile launchers firing in every direction, while point defence tried to keep the PDC from taking too many hits. It was a long time before the Federation developed its modern heat dispersion systems, so it was rather primitive -some of the heatsinks were literal blocks of ice with wires in them-, but it could still handle an enormous amount of energy.

There was a very real chance that's what she was looking at here. The fortress' heat management systems, installed in the depth of the installation, alongside possibly some environmental systems to keep humidity to a minimum.

Those kind of heat management systems could be passive, but she was worried that it wasn't the case here. If nothing else, if it was arcane, it probably had to use mana. Besides which, passive systems wouldn't be as effective as an active one, and while it could have been installed later with the actual guns and, well, everything else this place was missing, she sure as shit would have pushed to do it with the passive system installation rather than to have to worry about it later.

And if it was active, it meant there was something fueling it and commanding it. It could be a simple logic circuit, but...

The first thing you installed in a PDC, to manage its construction and operations was the AI. Sapient or no, didn't matter, even deeper and better protected than the command center where the squishies argued with each other or were bored to tears from nothing ever happening was a giant computer running the whole facility.

So if there was anything at all active down there, chances were there was the brain controlling it as well.

Shit. Crap crap crap crap. What was the solution here? She couldn't not make heat. Especially not if she wanted to help the squishies.

She sighed.

It was possible that expanding her industry would trigger an alert but...honestly, if there was any to trigger, her escape pod slamming into the place at orbital velocities would already have tripped them all.

She just needed to keep an eye out. And maybe look into expanding her sensor perimeter. She was a long way away from being able to get her escape pod anywhere, but it was a worthy objective in the long term.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Right. Well, now that she had confirmation that there was something down there, she should probably take precautions.

"Cia. I'm going to need a new batch of relays and sensor spikes. It's high time we expanded our perimeter."

*****

Kalia sighed as she sat down at the table, leaning back into her chair. Her 'council', for what it was, was arrayed before her. Ramina, Malry, Gregor.

"So?" She said, looking at Ramina.

The artificer grimaced.

"Well, I've shut down what I could, we're now running on the absolute minimum mana consumption. No autocarts, no saws, nothing." She sighed. "That's going to hurt, in a lot of places, but at least we'll preserve what little we have."

"Good. Did you get to take a look at Sapphiria's new heaters?"

"I did. They're..." She licked her lips, and Kalia, despite her worry, let her take her time. She had been willing to break the taboo of delving into the work of another artificer without permission again, the least the mage-magistrate could do was not press her. "They're really just a modified version of her batteries. Simply with some of the sections made easier to remove or put back in. Remember when I said that some of the energy it made was thermal?" Everyone nodded. "Well, it was being converted into electricity. What her heaters do is just allow you to strip out that part. I think it also modifies some of the other mechanisms within to create more heat? I can't be certain though, that would require opening the core and I'm not willing to do that. Not when there's so many warnings on it."

"Of course. But it's really what she promised?"

"Well, you warmed yourself with one of them didn't you? Yeah, I think they work. I have no idea for how long they'll work, but I think it'll basically be forever, just like the batteries. It really is just a stripped down version of them." She took a deep breath. "Which brings us to another problem, doesn't it?"

"What?"

Malry cleared her throat.

"I think Ramina is suggesting that since they're modified batteries for this specific purpose...it's likely that she made them on the spot rather than they were existing hardware."

"Ah. Confirming her abilities to create new equipment?"

"Yes. I think." Ramina licked her lips. "It's also that she was able to retool how she made the batteries this quickly. Or able to retrofit them into those new versions. Designing something new is one thing. Producing it is another one entirely. I wonder..." She trailed off.

Everyone waited for a few seconds, until Malry unceremoniously poked her friend in the arm.

"Yes? You wonder?"

"Ah! Sorry. I wonder if she's so liberal with golems because it's what's enabling her production. Think about it, millenia in isolation, making golems that then make more golems..."

"That's not economically viable." Said Kalia. "There's a reason why we have factories, and why we turned to industry and not golems once the Bane appeared and we had to get rid of the undead as a labor force."

"Economically viable doesn't matter if you're in isolation from everyone else. Golems weren't great because for most labor you could just use people but what if you couldn't?"

"Plus they required a lot of mana to function, which could instead be used for spells, or anything really." Said Malry. "And she seems to have solved that. Her golems just need to be plugged into her batteries and bam! Juiced up and ready to go."

"So you think she has just an army of golems making stuff for her down there?" Kalia leaned back into her seat. "It sounds almost insane but..."

"It makes sense, doesn't it?" Ramina smiled. "Her total disregard for the value of golems, and the amount of stuff she's been able to make."

"Yes. Yes it does. And her...well, rather laissez-faire attitude towards lack of mana makes sense if she's using those batteries to power everything. Heroes always needed more for their stuff, it's how we knew they were there, but if you didn't..."

"You could just bury yourself in a mountain range and get forgotten, not to mention have zero disturbance." Said Malry, nodding slowly at first, then faster and faster. "It kind of makes the pieces fall together doesn't it?"

"Yeah!" Ramina smiled excitedly. "Do you think we could ask her for more golems? Like we've tried to avoid pushing her as much as possible, especially since, y'know..."

"We don't have that much to offer her." Said Kalia. "And while she may like us she isn't going to bend over for us, even if we ask nicely."

Ramina and Malry exchanged a look.

"What?"

"Nothing." Malry coughed. "So, what now?"

"We do what we promised. Clear the trail, and the area near the tunnel." The mage-magistrate looked at Ramina. "Get the new heaters distributed. And Gregor?"

"Yes?" Said the old skeleton.

"I want you to start some aggressive reconnaissance near the pass. Sapphiria seems really intent on going there and I don't want a repeat of Myrtran. We need to know what's out there, not just make sure they stay in the pass."

"Will do. I'll take a few walks."

Kalia opened her mouth, then closed it. She would prefer he used someone else, but...who was there to do it? Tramistres and her people were down, and the scouts they already had out there were focused on the pass itself, not the surrounding area. And that was from afar, not on the ground, hands on reconnaissance.

"Just don't get yourself killed."

"I'm afraid I failed that mission already, mage-magistrate."

Kalia rolled her eyes.

"Well don't fail it harder. Now let's get to work. And grab some lunch. For your delicate palates, we'll have some herbs for the nutrigel."

The chorus of groans that answered her came from the soul.

"I swear, next time, I'm asking her if she has something that can make this stuff taste better. I don't care what she wants in exchange." Said Malry. "At this point I'd trade a kingdom for it."

Kalia simply smiled, shaking her head as she stood up.

As long as they were complaining about the taste of the food, and not the lack of food at all, she was happy about it.

Besides, nutrigel wasn't that bad. She might actually start to like it.

Deep beneath the mountain, Sapphiria shuddered, as if there had been a deep, dark disturbance within the fabric of the universe.