Chapter 26 - Discoveries

Note : Due to Wizards of the Coast's changes to their license, and some general uncertainty surrounding that, I'll be removing any referrences to bags of holdings and replacing with spatial bags throughout the story.

Chapter 26

Salran Mountains, Starnor Imperial Border Territories

In Flight

"Smoke, five o'clock."

Airah nodded as she saw the black tendrils reaching into the air.

"I see it. Let's take a look."

She almost sighed in relief that something was happening. After their stint with the adventurers, Stellyra had suggested that since the bridge ran between the mountains, parallel to the range as a whole, their might be structures they could find if they followed the mountain range as well, maybe ones that wouldn’t fry them if they got too close.

And so far…nothing. There weren't many villages north of Warg Valley, and what little there was petered out pretty quickly. Which made sense, it was, after all, the heart of the region's economy, and all of the local villages pretty much depended on the old Imperial infrastructure to scratch out a living, and the engineers that had built the high roads had stopped once they'd met the giant wolves. Which was, overall, very sensible of them.

It also meant that for the past hours she'd done nothing but stare at mountains or trees, looking for an anomaly, while Stellyra recorded everything for post processing. Something to break the monotomy was welcome, especially if she got to kill some bandits. She wasn't usually bloodthirsty -at least this cycle, some of the stuff she'd read in her journals scared her-, but for those scumbags, she'd make an exception. Besides, their ill gotten gains made a nice tingling sound when she added them to her hoard.

It took only a handful of minutes to get closer and for the source to become clearer.

"That…is not a camp." Said Airah as she gazed at the pallissade and towers.

"Not one like we're used to anyway. This looks like some kind of fort."

"Or a fortified scouting outpost. The towers are too tall, they don't have arrow slits, and the stairs leading into them aren't protected."

"Uh. Fair enough. Hadn't noticed that."

"That's because I studied this stuff. Plus, look, while it is fortified, there is no central keep, or large warehouses. This place depends on supply lines and only has one layer of defenses. Every medieval fort has at least two layers, and enough storage to last a siege. That, after all, is the entire point."

"Right, fair enough. Not that anyone would be sieging them out here."

"Indeed. The big question is, who are 'them' ? Because according to Lenna's map, there's no one out there. This looks like a military installation, a permanent one, and it's not from the Empire."

"Ah. The Republic ?"

"Or that 'bandit lord'. I mean, I know having even an outpost seems far fetched, they're bandits not builders, but well, we do know some tricked a guild into building them a fortress, and these guys seem to have someone from the republic drawing them here and providing support."

"Fair enough. Should be take a closer look ?"

"Absolutely. But let's get some distance before landing, that tower is going to have one hell of a view, and the sentries might be alert enough to spot us."

"Right."

*****

"Definitely military." Said Airah as she looked at the guards. She was whispering to avoid anyone overhearing her, although that was highly unlikely given the distance and the noise coming from the outpost.

"Or bandits with a dress code." Retorted Stellyra as her avatar leaned her back against a nearby tree. "The bandit lord's forces were his personal army before he was banished, remember ? Or so we've been told."

Airah shook her head.

"I doubt this is them. The uniforms are too intact, and their weapons are all the same. This is standardized equipment, with supply lines to get some fresh replacements." Airah grimaced. "Stars know we have enough examples of how cobbled together things get when supply lines are cut in our diaries."

Stellyra nodded. Even with the Galactic Empire's fabricator technology, enabling capital ships to effectively rebuild themselves in the field if necessary if given enough time, there was still some stuff that just couldn't be made as efficient or powerful through a field fabricator rather than a full scale industrial installation.

And, well…they'd had something of a reputation for always being at the tip of the spear, and that meant they'd had to do a lot of that cobbling together over the war. Including building an orion drive to move their ship, literally detonating nukes against a giant slab of armor to get their devourer moving. Very ineffective, but fantastic point defense, good luck trying to get starfighters or missiles through a constant string of nuclear detonations !

"Point taken. Well then, since they weren't on the map I assume it’s the Republic getting a bit grabby."

"Probably." Airah sighed. "We know too little about this 'Republic'."

"We have the history books."

"Yes, the early version of history books, which are basically propaganda. They haven't invented 'historical objectivity' here. Moreover, all of those books are comissioned by individuals or academies beholden to governments, not independent institutions who are more interested in the truth rather than pleasing their patrons."

"Right. Well, we could always ask the traders."

"Planning on it, but I think the adventurers might be a better bet." Airah shrugged. "Or we could walk in and talk to our soldier friends over there."

"I…don't think that's a good idea."

"I know. Their reputation for corruption is not exactly encouraging, and what with their Republic using slaves as enthusiastically as Athenes ever did, I'd rather not be 'disappeared' and sold off. Especially if there's enough troops to take us out even when in dragon form."

"Well..what then ?"

Airah sighed.

"We'll go back. I'm fairly sure the Republic wouldn't allow the bandits to operate in their territory, they can't be stupid enough to believe the scumbags wouldn't be tempted to simply attack the nearest persons, whoever they belong to. So this is as good of a search limit as we're going to get."

"That makes sense. Besides, the sun is getting low, and you need your rest. We'll already arrive back in the middle of the night."

"Yep. Alright let's get back to the landing site, and get the hell out of here."

*****

They had been flying for almost an hour when Stellyra's avatar suddenly went rigid.

"I've got an anomaly !" Called out the AI.

"What kind ?"

"I…An artificial structure ?" The AI gestured at the mountain range, and a small section of a mountain peak became highlighted. "I was doing a small scan when I picked it up."

"Why didn't we see it on the way in ?" Asked Airah as she banked towards the highlighted section.

"Because its only on this side of the peak. I think." The AI frowned. "I'm trying to scan in more details, but this thing is barely even registering as there."

"Right. Let's take a look."

It only took a few minutes to get close enough to land. Thankfully there was a rocky plateau near the anomaly. In fact…

"Hey, does this look too…regular for you ?" Asked Airah as she looked at the plateau.

"What ? Oh." Stellyra blinked. "You're correct. That's part of the anomaly. This isn't natural."

Airah turned into her human form, and knelt on the ground, slowly rubbing the stone. It had seen better days, clearly, but the way it looked…

"The surface's too smooth. It's taken a beating from the elements, but it looks like the mountain's been cut cleanly. Lasers ?"

"Or magic. But yeah. This isn't a plateau, it's some kind of landing pad." The AI nodded towards a set of marks in the stone. "Used a fair bit, there are marks of repeated landings. But it seems the last customer was in a hurry."

Airah winced as the AI pulled up a holographic window with the analysis of the landing marks. She didn't really need them, she'd seen the aftermath of an emergency landing by a marine assault shuttle from her memoirs' video archives. Something a few hundred tons had landed there…at something approaching half the speed of sound.

"Well, if nothing else they had good landing gear."

"Or a crash field."

"That's high tech." Well, relatively so. Humanity had discovered how Conclave assault shuttles survived planetfall without bothering to decelerate a third of the way through the war, and taken another millenia to fully replicate it. The answer had been simply the same kind of internial compensators humanity had on starships, used to prevent the crew being turned to liquid by the acceleration. Except that the Conclave had made a single use variant that could take absurd amounts of energy, by exploiting some extremely weird quirks of gravitational physics. "Very high tech, advanced gravity manipulation and some serious capacitors or power core to take the energy load."

"Once again, magic. It's a one use inertia canceling field, and the uses are pretty clear. We already know magic can manipulate gravity from the files, it wouldn't take much to make something like that."

"Fair enough." Airah looked around, and gestured at the doorway carved into the mountain. "I suppose we should get inside."

"Just make sure the frame isn't going to disintegrate you or anything. I live in your head, remember ? I'd rather not have my ride be turned to ashes."

"Your overwhelming concern for my safety and wellbeing flatters me, as always."

The AI snorted, and Airah smiled. They joked about it, but Airah knew the AI would -hell, almost had !- sacrifice herself for her human companion in a heartbeat. And vice versa.

But the warning was very much serious, and Airah carefully inspected the frame. No telltale glow, or any anomaly to speak of. It was just…a door frame. Simple, rough, and utilitarian.

She slowly stepped inside, and began making her way through the tunnel.

The tunnel was bland. But the interesting kind of bland.

"Completely smooth stone." Said Airah as she looked at the wall. "Too smooth. Laser cutters ?"

"Or magic. But yeah, this is weird." The AI shook her head. "I thought this world was, what ? Industrial revolution level of tech ?"

"G did say they were clawing their way back from a cataclysm."

"A cataclysm big enough to end civilization ?"

"We came close enough to that. Once we started jumping around the solar system a single large asteroid, which might I remind you were moved daily into Earth or Mars' orbits for smelting, could have smashed into a world and sent it back to the stone age."

"And if memory serves me right even the United Interstellar States and the Pan Asian Confederacy managed to put their differences aside to build a planetary defence grid to prevent just that. Still, I get your point. And it looks like we're arriving."

Airah nodded as she stepped into the room…and froze.

"Okay, what the fuck ?"

It looked like a cistern. A big water cistern. Complete with the big old pipes at the bottom, and…something that looked like some kind of upside down fountain stuck on the ceiling.

The problem was the fact that the place was trashed.

"Well, someone was angry." Simply said the AI. "I'm making it…kinetic projectiles, medium velocity, so chemical propulsion, for the vast majority of impacts. But this." She gestured at one of the pipes, which was overflowing with singed rubble. "Was a flamethrower, hot one too. And there are several marks left by plasma weapons." Several spots in the wall and on the fountain, where they had literally been melted, became highlighted in Airah's vision.

"Well, that's a story all on its own." Especially since there were a lot of steps between 'firearms' and 'plasma guns', most of which made the former so thoroughly obselete as to be considered antiques at best. "They were focusing fire on that collapsed pipe. Trying to pin something down ?"

"Or keep something in. The marks on the walls all trail from there, so I'm guessing some stuff made it out and they tried to track them while shooting. Horrendous fire discipline."

"Agreed." Airah knelt by the pile of rocks, and shook her head. "This wasn't a side effect of their gunfire either. They must have set explosives."

"Well, look at who can get all analytical."

"Hey, spending my days hanging out with a smartass toaster like you, you pick up a thing or two."

"T-Toaster ? I'll have you know I'm the product of the finest minds of the Empire !"

"I know. Still, I like them crispy."

"I will acquire an android just so I can strangle you !"

Airah chuckled, before blinking as she looked up at the fountain, tilting her head.

"Hey….do you hear that ?"

"Hear what ? Audio pickups are clear."

"There's…music."

"What ? Wait." The AI blinked. "No, I don't hear anything. But your brain patterns are definitely synchronising to a melody. What the fuck ?"

"I think it's coming from there." Said Airah, pointing at the fountain. "I'll check it out."

"Be careful. Running scans…"

The dragon nodded, before crouching, and jumping.

It was still a surprise to her just how high she could jump if she put her strength into it. She leapt into the air and grabbed the edge of the fountain, hauling her body up without breaking a sweat. She might have kept part of her dragon form's strength, but none of its weight ! Which was useful, otherwise she'd probably just sink into the dirt most of the time.

She now had a good look into the…whatever the hell that thing was supposed to be. It looked like a cross between a fountain and a madman's idea of a church's organ, well at least before the plasma weapon was done with it. But there was what looked like a service panel, and after carefully checking it, she opened it.

Inside rested a cube, and her eyes were almost hypnotically drawn to it. The song was definitely coming from it. She reached out her hand…And almost blacked out as she touched it.

For a second it felt like she was sinking in an ocean of music, before she snapped back to reality.

She blinked in confusion, before realizing she was in her mindspace with Stellyra forcibly dragging her back.

"Airy ! Snap out of it ! Snap out damn you !" Yelled out the AI as she dragged her friend back from…whatever the hell was in their shared mind now.

"I'm fine ! I'm fine !" Yelled out Airah, disentangling her avatar from the AI's, looking at the sphere of energy in their mindspace. "What…What the fuck happened ?"

"You touched…whatever the hell that was, and suddenly this thing happened !" The AI gestured at the sphere of energy hovering in the air. "It's registering as every possible kind of error on my systems. Tried to isolate you from it but I couldn't, not with the traditional methods anyway."

"Shit. Our body ?"

"Stuck in place, it seemed to just freeze, but just in case I locked all motor functions."

"Think it's some kind of mind control device."

"No, I don't think so." The AI shook her head. "It seemed more like some kind of data download. Couldn't prevent it, but there was definitely a file transfer. I'm scanning but whatever it is, it was embedded seemlessly into your memories !"

Airah frowned, then shook her head.

"Water."

"What ?"

"Water, this…thing, whatever it is, has something to do with water. Creating it, I think. But it's wrong, damaged."

"Yeah that's probably because one of the plasma bolts went through it, given the analysis I made of the fountain." The AI looked at her, worriedly. "Look, just think of the memories, and I'll start a quarantine and scan protocol for trojan horses."

"Right." Airah focused…and realized that the memories became hazy, as if seen through a body of water. "Done ?"

"Done. Locked tight. I'm going to go through every single datapoint with a fucking comb, you can be sure of that." The AI sighed. "In the mean time, please take our hand off of whatever the hell that is."

"Right." Airah popped out of their mindspace, and looked at the innocuous looking cube under her palm. It looked like an art project, covered in iconography, but certainly not like something that would…spontaneously generate water, from what she'd learned.

She withdrew her hand, and the song she was hearing in the back of her head faded to a murmur once more.

"Well…one more mystery on this planet to solve."