Chapter 29 - Design Loops

Chapter 29

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Settlement of Astralis

"Holy hells. That was..."

"Impressive?" Completed Kalia, as she gazed at the former legionnaire.

Her council was assembled once more, arraigned around the table she'd debriefed the high elder and mage hunter.

"Something like that. Paul's not easily impressed, and he's clearly shaken by her."

"You sound admiring."

"Of who? Paul, or Sapphiria?"

"Both."

"One's a skilled warrior and an honorable man, even if he was a damned hunter." The skeleton shrugged. "As for Sapphiria...she's kicked more ass in a few days than I did during this entire damned conflict. What's not to admire?"

"I see. And you're not worried?"

"Of course I am worried. She's been feeding us half truths and hammering everything into submission. She's too good to be true. But she's also the only hope we've got."

"Perhaps some...contingencies are in order?" Said Malry. She shrugged as everyone turned towards her. "It is only natural, just in case."

"Indeed." Concurred Gregor. "I've already drawn up plans, worst comes to worst. Though I doubt they'll amount to much."

"Wait a minute!" Ramina almost bolted up from her chair. "You can't seriously be discussing just...just...betraying her! Betraying a honored high elder! Have you no shame you...you!"

"Calm down." Said Kalia, and the artificer slowly regained her seat under the mage-magistrate's gaze. "It's Gregor's job to make plans for things like such eventualities, however unlikely they may be. If nothing else, they're useful exercise."

"And what if it's moved beyond exercise?" Retorted the artificer, and Kalia drew her own chair back to sit down.

"That won't happen." She stared at each of the members of her council in turn. "The one thing certain to turn our dear elder against us is to plot against her. Which is why it won't happen. Am I understood?" Everybody nodded. "Good. Very good." She sighed. "I admit having my doubts as well, but so far she has been on our side, even if she's just been...terrifying while helping us. Both from her power and her recklessness."

"I wouldn't call her reckless." Said Gregor, thoughtfully. "Not truly. She reminds me...she reminds of some of the old legates."

"What do you mean?"

"There was a school of thought, in the old legions. To wield skirmishers as weapons, not reconnaissance. To dance around the enemy, constantly attacking. To use soulless as disposable forces to strike the enemy, always keeping them off balance. This seems...similar. But with golems."

Malry snorted.

"Golems aren't disposable."

"They are to her." Whispered Kalia. "She didn't seem to care the slightest bit that she almost lost half of those she came out with. And she gave two to us like they were nothing. Plus...she seemed sure she'd have more when she returned."

Ramina opened her mouth, then closed it, something clearly dawning on her.

"What is it?" Said the mage-magistrate, and the artificer cleared her throat.

"She...Sapphiria, when we talked, she implied that these new golems of her, they were a recent creation. I didn't think much of it at the time because, well, she, uh..." The artificer coughed. "She offered me a chance to help her upgrade them. But the way she said it...I think those golems didn't exist, a few days ago."

"You mean she built eight golems in a handful of days?"

"No, I mean that she designed, prototyped and deployed an entirely new type of golems in a handful of days."

The silence that followed was deafening.

"Can...can anyone do that?" Said Kalia in a horrified voice.

Malry cleared her throat.

"The Royal Institute of Artificing has designed and deployed the new magefire golems in a handful of months. But as I understand it that was based on existing technology, and very few were being built, before we lost...contact."

Kalia closed her eyes.

"And the Royal Institute is, what? Three, four hundred veteran artificers in the capital alone?"

"Closer to a thousand, really, depending on your definition of veteran. But yes."

"So what we have is a Hero amongst Heroes, who's extremely aggressive militarily speaking, and an artificer to boot. And to say I didn't believe in miracles."

"She could still turn out to be a curse." Cautionned Malry, and Kalia chuckled.

"And what if she is? The Bane were already killing us, even if they were doing it slow. I'd prefer to gamble it all on a chance at winning than dying slower. I mean hell, it's why I diverted us in this damned valley in the first place."

"Yes and that went well, didn't it?" Everyone openly stared at the diviner, who shrank back in her seat. "I'm sorry, I didn't meant to..."

"I understand." Said the mage-magistrate. "But if it was this bad getting here...we would have never made it through the frontlines." She sighed. "Either way, what is done is done. I just wish we'd know more about her ultimate intentions. I trust that she wants to help, or at least kick the damned Bane off of her lawn. But what of afterwards?"

"Why don't you ask her?" Said Ramina. "She seems to value honesty. Being forthright would help."

"You should probably be the one asking her about information."

"She seems more...open towards you." Said the artificer, diplomatically, speaking quickly as Malry opened her mouth. Knowing the diviner, she was about to blurt out something forthright, honest, and thoroughly stupid. "Besides which, I'd just get distracted by whatever new marvels she'd brought to reveal."

The mage-magistrate laughed.

"I suppose that's fair enough. Well, I'll see if I can squeeze something out of her."

"I'm sure she won't mind." Said Malry, before yelping and recoiling from Ramina.

"Are you okay?" Asked the mage-magistrate. Had the artificer just...elbowed her?

"Yes, yes, I'm fine." The diviner made a shooing motion as the mage-magistrate moved to stand up. "Really, I am."

"If you say so." Kalia looked at her dubiously, before sighing. "Well, I guess there's nothing to do but wait and see then."

"If the Hand responds, we'll see it coming." Promised Gregor. "Our scouts will see it coming."

"What of Mytran?"

"Someone swept the battlefield before my people were out there. I'm going to guess one of the patrols guarding it. No reinforcements or replacements yet, but most of the tools have disappeared."

Kalia tilted her head.

"The tools are gone? Not the weapons? Are you sure?"

"Certain."

"Well...there may be something to Sapphiria's hunch. Though I wonder what they're even going to do with any ore they mine. It's not like there's much of a road left here, or leading to the valley for that matter. And there aren't any forges here either."

Gregor shrugged.

"I suspect the Hand will worry about that once they have the ore to move to begin with. Which for now, means lady Sapphiria out of the mines. I'm curious to see how they react to what that, ah, reconnaissance in force of hers."

"Please don't use that euphemism."

"I mean, it was reconnaissance done through force." Said Ramina. "So it's technically correct?"

Kalia chuckled.

"Reconnaissance implies discretion, stealth. If she didn't have that invisibility enchantment on her armor, I wouldn't think Sapphiria even understood the concept of subtlety."

"Well..." Gregor shrugged. "Stealth and making ourselves unnoticed didn't get us anywhere. Maybe it's time for another approach."

"Maybe...maybe. I guess we'll have to see." The mage-magistrate got up. "Alright, I believe I've had enough speculation for one day. Let's get back to our duties people. But first let's grab some lunch. I'm starving."

"Can we get something other than nutrigel?" Asked Ramina, hopefully.

"No. We eat the same as everyone else. We already talked about this."

Gregor opened his mouth.

"If you say something else about being glad for lacking taste buds, I will paint your bones pink. I'll cook up pink paint just so I can do it." Said Malry.

The skeleton's jaw snapped closed.

"It's not that bad!" Kalia raised her hands as everyone stared at her, incredulously. "I mean, it's not great, but, you know..."

"Dear Ancestors, she's starting to like it." Said the diviner, horror clear in her voice. "She likes the fucking nutrigel."

"I'm just saying, it's not as terrible as it could be."

"Just...stop talking, please." Malry slowly shook her head. "While we can still bear to look you in the eyes."

Kalia rolled her eyes.

"You're all drama queens. Alright, let's grab some chow before the cooks start dousing the fires. And hey! Maybe there'll be some good stuff left to add for all you nancies needing the fancy stuff on top of perfectly serviceable food."

*****

Sapphiria whistled softly as she looked at the prototype.

"Even more impressive in the flesh than in simulations. So to speak of course." She said.

"Diagnostics read fully functional. Shall I start production on the other units?"

"No. Not yet. Let's do a full battery of tests first." Sapphiria smiled. "We already have a huge advantage in our design loop. No need to cut corners yet."

Most people -especially squishies, but AIs weren't lacking in ignorance on that subject sadly- didn't realize it, but the reason why the Federation had won the war for supremacy over the galaxy with the Theocracy hadn't been the human spirit, or superior technology. When the conflict had started the Federation had inferior tech on almost every front, it was only now that they had pulled ahead in most areas.

No, what had won the war was industrial might and design loops. Or, in short, AIs.

The Theocracy didn't use AIs. Not proper ones anyway. They tried to use squishies for everything. And industry ate up squishy labor like nobody's business. The Theocracy could roll up to a system, send a colonization fleet and it would become an industrial hub in a century or so.

The Federation had done it, repeatedly, in three years. Granted, that was with constantly shipping expert AIs in but still. Biologicals took forever to scale up, AIs were just faster to produce and better at it in every measurable way except creativity, if you didn't use Arcadia's descendents at least.

And then the design loop...the Theocracy had been an empire in decline when it was encountered, but it's civil war had forced it to innovate. Pump out new ship classes and stations for new challenges, instead of using the 'venerable', aka 'worthless' ships of old. Much like squishies back on Earth during the late 21st and early 22nd century, that meant a design and deployment loop of, what? A decade to half a century? To get a full ship design cleared out, prototyped, and then into mass production.

An AI, all alone in the darkness of the outer territories, could do it in a year, so long as they had a decent shipyard to work with. The office of naval ship design around Earth and Mars could design and deploy a battleship prototype from the ground up in three weeks. They had fabricators that could churn out entire capital ships just to rapidly make and iterate on prototypes. Yes, it was ridiculously expensive, but it meant that even fighting halfway across the galaxy, the Federation could think up and deploy a new ship class before squishies had even settled on what its hull should be.

She'd been part of those same design groups. Granted, she didn't have the help of her colleagues, just Cia...but it did mean her own loop was far tighter than anything else she was likely to encounter.

Which meant she could afford to go full length on the tests and ferret out problems and mistakes before they bit her in the ass and caused a squishie to get killed. She didn't want one of her charges to die because of her failure to tick a damned checkbox.

"Understood ma'am. I shall continue the repair operations while you do so."

Sapphiria nodded. A fabricator was, in many ways, the ultimate repair tool. The pod had been designed so that most things that broke down could either be fed to the fabricator and sent back out good as new, or just chopped up and shoved into the refinery to be reused.

Some of the parts and scrap she'd recovered from the damaged and fallen junkbots were still awaiting analysis in the lab, but a fair few had already been cleared. She didn't need molecular level scans on the damage, so it was going pretty quickly.

So far, the conclusion seems to be that the enemy used a combination of thermal emissions and a kind of unnatural sharpening to pierce armor. Which boiled down to 'their tricks makes their weapons hot or extra pointy'. She had no idea how they did either beyond 'maaaagic', but she could make countermeasures for the physical effects. First was pulling out some materials for ceramics out of her pile of superfluous materials, and make a basic composite armor plating with a thermal barrier.

It was pretty basic, but it'd prevent a fucking sling stone from burning its way to a junkbot's core. Again.

She was already working on other, more complicated solutions, but they quickly became too expensive to be worth slapping on junkbots. Still, it may be worth it for the 'rolling fortress'. She might even ask Ramina if she had anything to counter these kind of attacks, actually. The artificer probably hadn't thought of it, given how she hadn't realized her armor plating would break off under basic kinetic attack, but she probably knew some stuff that would mitigate it. Maybe she could even have a word with Kalia while she was at it...

"Ma'am?"

Sapphiria shook her head. Damn it, she was getting too distracted whenever she thought about the squishies.

"Sorry, you were saying?"

"I had asked how you intended to do the combat testing?"

The AI smiled.

"Oh, that? It's simple." She rolled her shoulders. "We're gonna do a little sparing."