Chapter 19 - Hail of Lead

Note : Welp, I missclicked, enjoy the slightly early chapter XD

Chapter 19

Starborn Mountains

Mining Hub

Sapphiria licked her lips as she checked the carnage.

"I'm gonna need to set up some kind of relay node." She finally said. "If only to get pinged when something happens."

"That...would seem prudent." Said Cia. Exceptionally, The AI had allowed the simulacrum to manifest her hologram. Well, not hologram, since only she could see it, more of a mental projection. The simulacrum was currently trying to walk around and survey the devastation. "Especially since it appears reinforcements are being sent in."

The AI nodded. That they had.

"That...or a reconnaissance in force." She shrugged as the simulacrum turned towards her. "Think about it. We cleared out the main units a few days ago, and started cleaning up most of the recons. Turned half the tunnel complex into a black hole."

"In which case, shouldn't the unit sent be more survivable or elite than the one that had disappeared? There are no legionnaires among the fallen."

Sapphiria opened her mouth, then closed it, going over her scans.

Damn. The simulacrum was right.

The battlefield was a mess. According to the logs she'd lifted from the turrets, and her own reconstruction from the scans, the undead had swarmed out in a single, compact wave, and her turrets had reacted immediately.

High caliber bullets had streamed into the seething mass of bones, ripping the undead apart. For a second, it seemed as if it would be done then and there, but that was without counting two things. First, hitting a skeleton was impressively hard with bullets. Humans would have been shredded to the last man in a handful of seconds, but the undead had a fraction of the surface area to hit. Not to mention the fact that so long as you didn't hit the ribcage or skull, they kept fighting, immune to shock or blood loss that would have incapacitated squishies, human or alien alike.

She really needed to stop thinking of them as 'normal' combatants and start thinking of them as poorly armed combat bots. Which was...not a comfortable thought, as the Theocracy disdained any form of robotics, and the only people she would have ever faced with their own bots would have been fellow Federation AIs.

She shook her head. Regardless, the machineguns had proven their worth. Lower surface area to hit or no, when you put enough lead downrange you were bound to hit something, and the enemy's total lack of cover had guaranteed they'd be shredded. It also meant that the entrance to the tunnel they had come out of was a mess. Piled with bones, shattered weapons and chewed up rock, it looked like someone had thrown a seismic bomb in an old cemetery and then let loose a whole pack of feral megahounds. Trails snaked away from them, spikes almost, with less and less bones as the undead surged for whatever gun they perceived as a threat and got mowed down.

And not a single one of them had the distinct armor of the legionnaires. Armor whose remnants she'd passed through her lab scanners, and which were definitely magical. In more ways than one too. The scales had been inscribed with runes on their interior faces, and though she had very little to work with in terms of the under layer, what with it having been vaporized by the heat, she was almost certain it had something similar to Ramina's little sample. Which, incidentally, was eerily reminiscent of kinetic gel, just instead of compressing to absorb the force it spread it out over more of the armor. The fact that it was a kind of processed plywood made it all the weirder, but it was something someone could have made back home, given enough expertise in bioengineering.

"So not a recon in force." Besides, if it had been one, they'd probably have had scouts ahead, just to feel out an ambush. "But I'm going to have a guess that someone is going to be expecting something back from this one, and they'll get antsy when they don't."

"Shall I put more turrets on the schedule?"

Sapphiria nodded, before freezing.

"Put the assembly, but not the guns on the schedule." She said as she pulled up schematics. "We're going to make some hardware."

"Ma'am?"

The AI smiled as she gestured, and the schematics she had been looking at popped into the air, as projections both of them could 'see'.

"Our main problem right now is hitting them with bullets. Machineguns are great, but not perfect, and since we're at short range anyway..." She gestured, and the three dimensional schematics of the shotgun began to spin. "We might as well. Just need to give it the rate of fire to match."

*****

It was, of course, easier said than done. Until now she'd used weapons meant for squishies and slapped them on robotic arms or rovers, but there was no machineshotgun or whatever this abomination should be called in her database. Because...why would there be? Shotguns were in it at all because they could serve a remarkably wide variety of purposes on a colony, but a colonist didn't need to stop an infantry charge.

At least it gave her something to occupy her mind while Cia supervised the construction of the mineral crusher and the material separator. Though the simulacrum did keep glancing at her as she cursed and tinkered with the gun. To avoid constantly having to refabricate the weapon, and for the sake of tidiness and general utility, she'd built a genuine workbench and expanded her toolkit with some basic machinery, allowing her to perform field repairs and adjustments on her own.

Thankfully, she didn't need some of that time to design a relay system. She already had plenty of schematics for that, keeping into contact with squishies being pretty high up the lists of priorities for a new colony, and she had simply ordered built a series of data relay spikes. Kind of like the sensors she had used to ring up her perimeter, those were cheap amalgams of metal and circuitry she could jam into walls. Their range was short, and their throughput pathetic, but they could relay simple alerts or janky audio feeds, which was precisely their purpose. It was a shame she couldn't just control the turrets directly, but that would mean building a full scale meson relay, something that was very out of her reach, or making an expensive and fragile high throughput data cable and getting it all the way up there.

She had better things to spend her resources on. Speaking of, she really should ask the squishies what was next on their list of priorities. She was going to guess it was either housing or heating, both of which she could solve with some help, though truth be told they kind of came hand in hand. The problem was logistics for the building parts. She could make a metaconcrete plant easy enough, but getting the premade blocks of the stuff all the way to them was going to be a royal pain in the ass.

Though...metaconcrete was, effectively, the cheapest building material anyone had ever made. It generally used asteroid slag, and was in many ways a more primitive version of the fibers used for standard worksuits, but in truth it could just be fed rocks and it would churn out cement powder and blocks of concrete. So she could install one of the surface...

Issue was, unlike the nutrigel vat, the metaconcrete plant was energy hungry as all hell. She'd definitely need a dedicated power core for it. Which once again, meant scaling up her industry.

"How are we doing on the crusher?" Asked the AI as she looked into the breech of the gun.

"Finishing assembly of primary systems now." Answered the simulacrum.

"Truly?" Sapphiria looked up from her workbench, amazed at how much she'd missed as she just realized the crusher was but a dozen meters away. It wasn't exactly towering, but it did require a small conveyor belt to bring stuff up.

Well, not towering to most people. It definitely was to her diminutive avatar, which she was reminded of as she came next to it. Damn it.

"Truly." Said Cia, deadpan, and Sapphiria smiled.

"Sorry, sorry! Just...lost track of time, that's all."

"Of course." The simulacrum relaxed. "Time flies when you're having fun."

"That it does, that it does..." Sapphiria contemplated the machine, and shook herself. "Alright, let's wrap it up, and take it for a test run! I've done enough tinkering for one day."

*****

"We're cutting them down as fast as we can, but..." Copson shrugged, and Kalia nodded. The man had always looked every bit the faintly absurd bureaucrat, with his now torn robes and hunched posture, but he was the mind that had allowed them to get this far. Yes, Kalia had lead the charge and allowed them to dodge the ambushes and raiding parties that had dotted the way here, but he had been the one to manage their supplies. Keeping so many refugees fed and hydrated while on the run from a horde of undead had taken its toll on the man, but he'd never complained.

He'd spent days pouring over maps with her, pointing out places where they could get supplies, diving into logbooks and trading charts to find targets that would keep them going even just a bit longer.

And now he had the impossible task of trying to keep everything flowing smoothly as they tried to get everything in order to survive the winter.

"We don't have enough equipment." She finished.

The bureaucrat cleared his throat.

"Among many other things, my lady."

Kalia rolled her eyes. He had taken the honorific imposed by the kingdom in stride, despite having served many mage-magistrates before her. And insisted to use it if at all possible. He was no stickler to protocol, but he was diligent and meant every word of his oaths. He'd taken one to the Kingdom, and so it would be upheld, period.

"And not enough people, and not enough...anything, I know. We were able to redirect many of the foraging teams, right?"

Copson nodded.

"We have, and it has helped a lot." He pulled out a little notebook. "Gathering wood is more effective in terms of weight acquired per man hour used than most other forms of foraging, but we've had...issues." He gestured at the guards standing around. As usual, Kalia had insisted to be where the work was being done, instead of standing from afar, and there was a loose circle of soldiers and militias, covering the logging teams.

Gregor hadn't even protested, he'd just strong armed her into taking a security detail that happened to include him.

"Right, the attacks."

The bureaucrat grimaced.

"They have been increasing in scope and frequency."

"But it's still the right way."

It wasn't a question.

"It still is. I still have some foraging parties around, and most of them have room to pick up whatever they can for the vats, but taking down trees is still the best way. A single man logging for a day is worth a week of foraging by an entire party. We're also drawing a lot more water than we used to, we may need to dig more wells."

"Set aside some people for that."

"That will slow down our construction efforts."

"We...should have some leeway." Kalia sighed at Copson's reproachful gaze. "I know, I know! Safety margins, if we have an early winter...well, at least we won't starve now. I'll ask Sapphiria if I have the chance, see if she can contribute anything on that front."

"Some golems would be much appreciated, if nothing else."

Kalia smiled.

"They always are." The ones the Hero had left for them were pulling their weight and then some, carrying logs like they weighed nothing and tending to the vats, day and night, pausing only to recharge whatever mechanisms kept them operating. "I'll see what I can wriggle out of her."

"I'd like to meet her someday. She seems...interesting." The bureaucrat coughed. "Also I believe that trading her wood may not be sustainable."

"That's okay. We'll figure something out. Well, everything seems well in hand. I'll see about getting more axes and saws made. Maybe Sapphiria can spare some scrap."

"And if she could spare some of her weaponry..."

"I doubt she'll be that generous, but I'll see what I can do. Besides, we should be fine. So long as we keep enough troops on site, we can repel any assault with minimal losses."

She'd barely finished her sentence when one of the sentries screamed, and all hell broke loose.