Chapter 35 - Defensive Posture

Chapter 35

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Starfire Pass

Click click click click, stop.

The Hand stared at the coin, as they stopped the knuckle roll.

The Emperor on it looked regal, eternal. As if their legacy would echo forever.

Not just washed aside by their heirs descending into madness and bringing the Empire to ruin. Allowing the provinces to seccede, to shrug off the mantle that they had once worn so proudly.

Provinces that even now rejected the glory that had been their birthright. The eternal service of unlife, and the timeless wisdom of those that came before them. Rejecting it in favor of machines, pale imitations of the human form in all its glory.

That...thing inside the mines could pretend all it wished. But there was even less life, less soul in it than there was in the legionnaires currently guarding the pass.

And that was saying nothing of the other automata it used.

Click click click clik, stop. Repeat.

The Hand stared as the coin rolled between its knuckles. A Hand was far more than a mere title. It was a promise. Sealed in sacrifice, gifts, and service.

They had sworn eternal service to their Emperor, and the Dominion that dispensed the Throne's will. And they had meant it.

And so they would rebuild the Empire. Brick by brick if they had to.

The tent flap parted, and the Hand looked up, as a centurion walked in, and knelt.

The Hand had to stop themselves from sneering. The centurions...their shields and armor of iron were useful, but they did not come close to the sanctity of bronze of the legionnaires, the hastati and the principes of his age.

"Do they approach?"

The centurion nodded. It was soulless, but not utterly devoid of intelligence. There was that, at least.

"Good." The Hand stood up. "Recall all of our patrols. Have them join the first and second maniple to man the defensive works. And prepare the fourth maniple for departure. It is high time we put these rebels down."

The centurion nodded, and stood up, before saluting by smashing a skeletal fist against its armored chest and leaving.

The Hand watched it leave, before turning towards one of their bodyguards.

"Assemble the best from the first and second maniple. Principes if possible, hastati otherwise. Prepare to march into the mines at my command." The legionnaire saluted, and left.

The coin continued clicking on the Hand's bony fingers, as they stared into the distance.

Now there was nothing to do but to wait. How did that pompous Legate used to put it? Ah, yes, 'the die is cast'.

As if she didn't cheat and weighted every single one of her dices.

*****

"Well that's concerning." Said Sapphiria as she read the message. Good thing about being up in the hub to set up the charges was that she didn't have to wait for the transport port to download it down the crappy relays. "The Banes are withdrawing their patrols."

Cia looked over from her seat on the cargo bot.

"Gathering for an attack?"

The AI grimaced.

"Most likely. Alright, we need to expedite. I have about a half a dozen charges left to go." She nodded towards the simulacrum as she opened her toolkit. "Grab everything we've got that's ready to fight and get it topside."

"Is that not premature?"

"By the time the scouts spot an advance, and word gets back to us, they might already be past the ambush site and marching on Astralis. Are the mines ready?"

"Not as many as you had wished, but as per your instructions I have prioritized the claymores."

"Good. They're the most important ones. Alright, divert all of our cargo bots from mineral duty and start getting them to Tramistres immediately. Be certain that the detonators are shipped separately. I'd rather not have the time to assemble them than have one accidentally trigger and turn a squishie into mist while they're transporting them."

"Yes ma'am."

"Good. I'm relying on you."

She picked up the tools she needed, clamped the last few mining charges onto her armor, and moved into the tunnel. She'd bulldozed the remains of the Bane's assaults out of the way, both to triage for the equipment -even if she wasn't able to learn much from it, metal was metal for her refinery- and just generally get the debris from underfoot. She'd done the same with the half burnt crates, though set them in a side tunnel, as she didn't want them catching fire again.

As she moved into the gallery, she kept her scanners on high alert, constantly sweeping. There hadn't been any activity before, but there were almost certainly undead on the other end. And sound could carry deceptively far underground.

She'd started by mining the far side, so that if push came to shove she could retreat and blow it without risking being on the wrong side. But it had been nerve wracking. She wasn't crazy enough to start near the surface, or really all that far down into the old mine shaft, but she wasn't willing to take risks, and had put the charges a solid hundred meters from the hub to avoid as much collateral damage as possible.

The fact that she had a hundred meters to give to begin with had started to really bring home the scale of this place. A hundred meters of mining was absolutely nothing for her. Hell, it was probably not that big of a deal for Kalia and her people, since they most likely had mining explosives like dynamite.

But for the people who'd made this? So far as she understood, the Empire had been, what, in the medieval ages when they'd started digging up the place? A hundred meters' worth of tunnels was a massive amount of effort for that level of tech. Granted, they most likely had undead labor, necromancy having been -and still being, if in a different way- a bedrock of the Empire, at least given how Kalia had put it, and no doubt had some magical means as well, but once you factored in the entire hub, all of the tunnels that branched out from it...

All that to reach the place she'd crashlanded in. A derelict, never completed planetary defence center.

It made her think. And she didn't like any of the options she could come up with.

At least, one small solace was that whatever they'd been looking for, that information hadn't carried to...whatever commanded the Bane. Or at least not to the Hand, since they'd clearly been only interested in keeping control of the upper levels.

Of course, the fact that they seemed interested in the minerals meant they needed them for someone else. It's not like the skeletons could just hammer ore into swords. And that someone else might get...miffed about the lack of return on their investment. Wasn't that gonna be fun.

But first, she had to make sure that Hand didn't kill her squishies. She could worry about their bosses later.

It didn't take her long to set the charges. She followed the instructions and safety protocols to the letter, and slapped a couple more of her sensor spikes and relays around. Redundancy was a wonderful thing, especially when it came to demolitions. And destroying your enemies.

She checked the explosives, with her sensors and diagnostics on their remote detonators, and nodded.

Alright. Time to head to the surface. She had squishies to protect.

*****

To her surprise, Tramistres wasn't waiting for her at the entrance to the tunnel. Instead a man in a tattered uniform, bearing the sigil of a gem overlaid on a crossed wand and scepter, on a background of a golden scale, with the words 'Magistracy Gendarmerie' barely visible at the bottom, greeted her.

"Hail, lady Sapphiria!" He saluted, his fist smashing against his breastplate. "The mage-magistrate awaits you in the council room."

"Greetings, uh..."

"Lieutenant Varghan. Of the Magistracy Gendarmerie. In another life, I was the man that kept the men that upheld the law fed and armed."

"Ah. A quartermaster?"

"Something like that. With everything happening, the mage-magistrate believed it best if someone with my expertise came here. Copson would have been even better, but he is needed far too badly in Astralis itself."

"I see." Copson was the bureaucrat Kalia had dragged her to the last time she'd asked for some wood in exchange for her help. It felt like a lifetime ago already. Fucking hell. "I'll be grateful for your help. The crates of equipment you're about to receive have special handling instructions, make sure to follow them."

Lasering the instructions hadn't taken much time. The crates, however, had been a bit more annoying to make, though thankfully 'cheap, durable crates' was something she had in abundance in her schematics database. She could have just shipped them in a pile, the mere thought of handling mines like a pile of coal had immediately given her flashbacks to that chewed up ceiling in her testing room.

"It won't our first time handling hazardous cargo milady."

"There's no need for titles. And I will still insist on special care. It's not just about your safety. If they malfunction in the heat of battle..."

The gendarme nodded, his face grim.

"Of course. Every bullet that does not fire is one more Bane others have to kill. We will handle them with the outmost care."

"Thank you lieutenant. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

"Do you require an escort?"

She shook her head.

"I'll find my way. Just make sure you're ready to start moving the crates as soon as they arrive."

"Will do. Good hunting mi...ma'am."

She nodded, and took off into the woods. It looked like her guess about Tramistres and her people had been right on the money. Well, at least she knew those squishies could get the hell out of dodge if necessary.

She just hoped her guesses on the Bane had proven equally accurate.

*****

She entered the council room to find Kalia nervously pacing back and forth, while Gregor was muttering to himself, studying some tokens arranged on the maps strewn about the table, with Ramina eating what looked like some kind of ration bar, and Malry toying with...was that a tablet? Made of crystal?

She didn't have time to wonder, as the mage-magistrate immediately stopped pacing as she entered the room, and made a beeline for her, a huge smile on her face.

"Sapphiria! You made it!" The young woman grabbed her shoulder, clearly on the verge of hugging her, before stopping. "Sorry. Just glad to see you. I've just been a bit nervous."

Sweet stars, kiss me now.

Wait, what?

Sapphiria shook herself mentally. Nope. Nope nope nope. Not the time. Later...maybe. But not now.

"I can see that." She glanced at the table. "Playing wargames?"

"No. The scouts..." Kalia sighed. "Were scouts. Instead of immediately pulling back, they sent some of their own forward. Tailed the patrols, and eventually made it to the pass. We just received their reports."

"Ah. Positioned the enemy accordingly."

"Yeah. Take a look." The mage-magistrate let go of her, and the AI had to stifle a twinge of disappointment.

She stepped forward, and looked at the map. It was clearly handmade, and fairly recent at that. Not by a professional, but methodical nonetheless. The terrain.

"Is that the pass?"

"Yep." Answered Gregor. "Had it made when we arrived. Figured it would come in handy."

"You were right." Sapphiria scanned it, and the tokens arranged on it. "Unit scale?"

"Each token is roughly a hundred undead. Red are organized maniples, blue are just hordes of mish mash."

The AI nodded, as she tried to stop herself from shivering.

Three more maniples. And at least five hundred more of various undead. That was...a lot, and yet far less than she had expected. It was especially interesting that there were so few 'loose' undead. It looked like the other side was running low. Which might explain a few things.

"So, let's round it up to a thousand. Two of their maniples are in defensive positions, while another is preparing to move out." She frowned as she saw its position. "Is it falling back?"

Gregor looked like he would have licked his lips if he could have.

"No." He tapped the side the defensive formations were facing. "This is outer end of the pass."

It took a second for it to full percolate into Sapphiria's mind.

"Their positions are facing outward?"

"Exactly." Said Kalia. "I just don't know if it's a good thing or not."

"Wouldn't that mean your, ah, Kingdom might be pushing them back?" Asked the AI, and saw only grim expressions answering her. "I mean, it's the only solution, right?"

Malry cleared her throat, and spoke up.

"The Kingdom...I love my country, but there's no way our armies would be pushing the Bane back. Especially not when Exacor was already cut off." Sapphiria blinked, and the diviner grimaced. "Sorry. Exacor was the city we were trying to run to. It's a fortress city the Magistracy maintained on its border. When it was cut off and encircled, Kalia took the decision to veer north, into the valley."

"I see. So they'd be too busy trying to hold on?"

"Essentially. Try to keep the Bane from crossing the Iceborne river, whose crossings Exacor was built to cover. An advance...I'm not a military woman, but it would have to be suicide."

"I concur." Said Gregor. "And I have an immense respect for the Kingdom's military." He coughed as Kalia and Malry looked at him. "Despite their overreliance on their technology."

"Right." Malry turned back towards Sapphiria. "Which rules out my people. So if they're positioned like that..."

"Who the hell are they afraid of?" Completed the AI.