Chapter 21 - Analysis

Note : Chapters 22 and 23 have been written and added to the queue !

Also, I just re-read the entirety of the murderbot diaries, so it may have seeped into my writing a little bit.

Chapter 21

Starborn Mountains, Starfire Valley

Settlement of Astralis

"The mines?" Kalia blinked as she looked at Sapphiria from across the table. Given the situation, she'd decided that inviting her to join her ad-hoc council for a session was for the best. It was a sign of trust and, more importantly, they needed to plan some things together and not vaguely inform each other of what they were doing. "Why would they want the mines?"

"Because they need the ore. Every undead I've encountered so far, outside of the legionnaires, only had the bare minimum. A weapon, something to store it in, maybe a backup, and that was pretty much it. They don't even have armor!"

"But....that..." Kalia shook her head. "That doesn't make any sense! They have plenty of mines in the places they conquered. Why come all the way here?"

"No. No they don't." Said Ramina, with the look of someone who just had something dawn on them. "The artificer order...we collapsed the mineshafts when we retreated."

"Couldn't they just dig them back up?"

Sapphiria shook her head.

"That's a lot easier said than done. With the materials closer to the surface gone, it could take months or even years to get back to the vein that were being mined. And that's if the collapse hasn't fragilized the entire area. Which it most likely did. It would be easier to open a whole new site than try to reactivate one that was purposefully destroyed. That's not even mentioning the fact that it might be booby trapped or have other hazards."

"So they're...desperate for raw resources?"

Sapphiria shrugged.

"It's what makes sense." And what her analysis had turned up. Which was the AI's equivalent of an educated guess, except you could express the variables. "Especially since they weren't attacking you but had a small horde down here."

"But they're attacking us now. Why? Why not send more undead down to you?"

The AI opened her android's mouth, then closed it.

Fuck.

Kalia frowned at the lack of response, before Gregor spoke up.

"They think we're the ones who did it." The skeleton shrugged as the mage-magistrate looked at him. "Would the first option the Hand leap to be that a mysterious hero was disturbed by their minions and came out to kick ass? Of course not. They think we're the ones doing it. That we've taken over the mines. So they're sending troops to try to draw our forces away. Defend the logging expeditions and the settlement instead of the underground."

"Gregor's right." Said Sapphiria, horror clear in her voice. "I...I caused this. The hub I set up my defenses would be extremely hard to retake by force. It's too good of a defensive position for a frontal assault. So the most cost effective method...is to take you out. It won't change anything-" Actually, it would change everything. Defending squishies was a lot different than avenging them. There was a reason the Theocracy didn't exist anymore as anything but a hundred fighting successor states cowering in the shadow of the Federation. "-but it's the logical solution from the other side."

There was a long silence.

"Fuck." Said Kalia. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK. Alright, okay. So what do we do now?"

"I reinforce you. Help fix my fuckup." Answered the AI. "I can get you some b- golems." She saw the others blink as she almost said 'bots', and chided herself. This was no time to be losing it! "With my weapons they should be able to give you a hand."

"Your weapons?" Kalia gave a not so subtle glance at the plasma rifle, clearly remembering that last she'd seen it in action it had vaporized an entire platoon of undead in a matter of seconds. "That would be very useful. But golems aren't easy to make. We should focus on equipping my people first. We're short on weapons and ammo. You may be able to help on that front?"

Sapphiria stopped herself a split second before blurting out 'I'm not about to arm you squishies, are you nuts?!?', and instead coughed.

"I would...I mean, your people aren't trained in using my weapons...They could risk misusing them or harming themselves."

"That is..." Another glance at her plasma gun, and a shiver. "A fair point. But I don't know if even you'll be enough."

"Especially since you'll have to keep defending the underground." Gregor shrugged as Sapphiria looked at him. "They'll keep sending probing attacks down there. If their goal is indeed to force us to pull back forces."

"I can handle them." Probably. Maybe. She was crunching the numbers on what would happen if a squad of those legionnaires attacked her turrets and the results weren't great. She had some remnants of their armor in her lab, and even damaged and half vaporized by her plasma blasts -not to mention their power supply having presumably failed with the 'death' of the skeleton wearing them- they could take a lot of punishment. Machineguns were all well and good but they didn't even come close to her plasma gun in terms of firepower. Her new shotgun turrets would be utterly useless against those as well, though they'd be useful to take out the chaff certain to be accompanying them.

She needed better turrets. Something with great single target damage. Which generally meant an energy weapons.

Or explosives.

Mmmmhhh...

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

The notification snapped her out of her thoughts, and she quickly rewinded the conversation to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Kalia was still speaking, at least.

"I am sure you can, but if we end up spread too thin, things will get out of hand. Furthermore, as they fail to retake the mines, they'll step up their attacks on us. Could we...could we concede the mines? To buy ourselves time?"

Sapphiria shook her head vehemently, and she had the distinct impression that if Gregor had a face to have expressions with still, he would be grimacing.

"No. What Gregor said about it being an excellent defensive position goes for us as well. Just because we retook it once doesn't mean we can again. They'll be ready next time. Plus, they might simply step up their attacks once they don't have to worry about retaking the mines. To prevent losing them again."

"Oh...I was thinking, maybe we could move you up to the surface, and concentrate all of our force in one place?"

Everyone looked at her expectantly, and Sapphiria leaned back, as if she was thinking about it.

Fuck fuck fuck. Even if she was willing to show them her escape pod, which she wasn't, there was no way she was getting it up there. Not just as a transportation problem, it was bigger than most of the tunnels. Even the ones that could accommodate vehicles in the lower levels would have trouble fitting it. And that's not even mentioning whatever would have to get it moving. The pod wasn't self mobile. Well, it wasn't in any kind of gravity field. It had some cold thrusters to avoid breaking stealth and allow it to coast through a system, but that was it. Initial propulsion was the pod launcher on the ship and a disposable thrusting package that would separate in flight to prevent detection.

In desperation, she defaulted to the truth.

"I wouldn't be able to move my things up there. And I don't think you want me separated from my means of production or prototypes." Then she had a flash of brilliance. "Let alone the possibility of the Bane getting their hands on them."

That gave everyone pause. Given their expressions, that last bit was extremely unpalatable.

"No. We don't. So much for that thought." The mage-magistrate smiled sadly. "Can't blame me for thinking of it though."

"Of course not. It's your job to think of all the possibilities to keep your people safe." Which she was thankful for. The squishies were easier to protect if they protected themselves. Well, usually. "So, that means I need to reinforce you. Any...parameters in particular I should keep in mind?"

"They're not going to attack Astralis itself. At least at first." Said Gregor. "So they'll probably harass our logging and gathering parties in the valley."

"Why wouldn't they?"

"Our...previous assumption was that they didn't have the forces to spare." Kalia grimaced as Sapphiria raised an eyebrow. "I know, I know! But otherwise, why not destroy us anyway?"

"Kalia's right. They'd have annihilated us if they could." Said Ramina as the artificer leapt to support her leader. "Ancestors know they haven't hesitated elsewhere."

"I see. So...raids and distractions? I can make something to help the logging parties, but I don't think it'll be long before they realize we're protecting them, and they strike somewhere else." She knew it was raiding one-oh-one. Attack somewhere until the other side diverted too much towards it, then strike somewhere else. Which is what they were attempting to do, just they'd strike somewhere else so long as the mine wasn't the place being stripped of forces. "So I'll need to deploy some broader measures."

"Yeah. But at least it'll only be raids."

"That's not going to stay that way." Gregor leaned forward. "If they really need that mine...they'll try to scrape up forces to take us out."

Sapphiria nodded. She'd do that too.

"Then we need to control the pass before that happens."

Everyone stared at her.

"You want to...attack?" Finally said Malry, the diviner speaking up for the first time.

"Yes." It's what her aunt would do. Don't let them dictate the tempo. Don't just react to the enemy. When on the defensive, lash out, attack. Regain the initiative. Keep changing directions, don't let them predict you.

It was why her aunt had won the war against the UIS over Alpha Centauri.

It was also why she'd won the war against her mom, and humanity hadn't been completely fused into the hivemind.

"That's..." The diviner laughed. "That's insane!"

"Is it? Is Astralis in a defensible position? Can it withstand a siege?" The silence was all the answer she needed, and the AI leaned back into her chair. "So, we retake the pass. If we have it, I can hold against whatever they throw at us."

And then some, depending on how long she had to build up. If given a chokepoint, especially in the open air...

She could whip up some hardware. Deploy minefields, covered by machinegun nests and artillery.

Given enough time she could scale that up beyond anything they could deploy to pierce it. At least from what she'd seen so far. If they gave her a few months she would able to stop a determined assault by a Federation marine battalion.

A few years and she'd be able to stop an entire army group with orbital fire support and tactical nuclear warheads.

The advantage of exponential growth is that things could get out of hand quickly. Though even that had its limits.

But she was unlikely to get anywhere near that long. She already made some mental notes for equipment she'd need.

"Be that as it may...how shall we retake the pass?"

"With that carriage Ramina is armoring up. This 'rolling fortress'." Sapphiria gestured, and a port in her armor opened up, revealing a holographic projector. Schematics popped into the air, and everyone recoiled. Oh. Right. "I can shut it down if you'd like."

"Sorry, just...unexpected." Slowly said Kalia. Clearly she recognized what it was. Interesting. Maybe something they did with magic? "I can't make much sense of them though. Ramina?"

The artificer's eyes were basically sparkling as she leaned forward to look into the schematics, before rounding on the AI.

"You have autocannons?!? I get autocannons?!?"

Sapphiria held her hands up as the artificer practically climbed on the table, only to be grabbed by Malry so she didn't crawl onto the AI.

"Yes! Probably." Maybe. She had the schematics for them, for some reason. There was...a lot of weird crap in her databanks, but that was the purpose. Hide all the juicy bits she'd snuck inside her library core that totally absolutely did not have all the equations and engineering knowledge required to eventually bypass the intentional limiters on her schematics databanks. As in 'this extremely detailed documentary on Project Manhattan is purely for educational purposes, I swear'. But getting them on a vehicle and all the systems to operate them effectively was gonna be a problem. "But first things first, we need to protect your logging parties. I think I have a few ideas..."