Notes : Chapter 136 has been written and added to the queue !
Apologies for the late chapter upload, I was hanging out with a friend and completely forgot.
Chapter 134
Starborn Mountains, Mount Nebula
Crash Site
Cia lifted a hologram of one of the salvaged spear tips, and squinted at the description of its properties, hovering over it.
"While their stated use is interesting, I am unsure as to how these are supposed to assist our endeavors, bar as raw materials. Not that this is not valuable as a source of resources, of course." Said the simulacrum, and Sapphiria smiled.
"First off, having all this means we have a better sample of imperial runes to work with. And though Gregor has no clue what the enchantments and their runes meant, he does know what the equipment was supposed to do."
"Ah. So with the damaged equipment..."
"We take the scan and interface data from the intact ones, the deep scans from the damaged ones, and we can reconstitute the enchantments. Or at the very least, expand our library of imperial runes."
"That is valuable data." Said the simulacrum as she nodded. "Of course there remains the question of how to use it. Shall we retrofit it into the combat units, like you did with the modified riotbots?"
"Shredders." Corrected the AI. "Plus, our current forces are hardly 'combat units', let's be fair. But no. I don't intend to do any of that."
The simulacrum blinked.
"Then why?"
"Because this." She tapped a shield. "Deflected high caliber bullets. And this." She tapped an arrow. "Turned into gobbets of flame on impact. I wonder what we could do if we applied them to our industrial facilities."
Cia paused.
"That is...a heady prospect. But a risky one."
"Everything we do is a risk."
"Not my point. Ma'am, mana crystals are a highly precious and limited resource. Acquiring more will require another expedition north. Using them for key engagements is a good use, but routine operations, when other means are available..."
Sapphiria nodded.
"I know. And I've been thinking about that. Because the squishies are using some, even if only for healing and some of their equipment. Even being careful, we will run out, and...well, you saw what it can do. It's too powerful not to use."
The simulacrum tilted her head.
"Are you thinking of undertaking more expeditions then?"
"More along the lines of finding a way to get more crystals." Sapphiria started to pace in the simulation. "Preferably without endangering squishies."
"There are unmanned Hazardous Environment Exploration Vehicles in the schematics database. Several of them are for mineral exploration and exploitation."
The AI nodded.
"I know. The problem is the aberrations. Without Ramina spotting them, we'd have been in serious trouble. And the monsters of course. We can solve the latter with firepower, but the former..." She shrugged. "The snowpiercer was a huge undertaking. But after we scale up...not so much. We can make an exploration vehicle. Get a long range antenna and communications tower up."
"The power systems will be complicated."
"Agreed. It'll be after we deploy those MOX fuel reactors you dug up. Once we have that, we'll have enough juice to power up our big guns. And we know we can take down those things with high tech firepower."
"It might be simpler to deploy a full base of operation in the Convergence, than launch long range mineral exploration missions.
Sapphiria had a brief flash of memory. That panther, the wriggling tentacles...
The wounds it already had.
Someone else had high tech weapons there. Someone she suspected had crushed the previous attempts to establish a foothold in the Convergence.
"I don't think it's a good idea." She said. "Not yet." She shook her head. "In any case, let's get these things scanned, and recycled. If there's some we can repair, it might be worth a shot as well, to turn them over to the squishies."
Cia nodded. Technically they could make use of them directly, but...
Well, the armor was obviously never going to fit the bots, as it was made to be put on skeletons. Too many adjustments and possibilities for the enchantments to fail, might as well make something from scratch.
The weapons didn't correspond to their doctrine. A bow wasn't beyond their capacity to make or for the bots to use, but it wouldn't mesh with the rest of the weapons.
Besides, was a fire arrow really worth giving up a machinegun or a carbine?
If they could adapt it to bullets, or stars protect the Bane, artillery shells...
Then all bets were off.
"Alright, warn the squishies I'm coming back up soon. And that I need to have a word with Kalia." Said the AI, and the simulacrum nodded, and seemingly twitched, like she was about to throw a salute but stopped herself. Was that something she'd done specifically to appear more human, or something...else?
"Right away."
*****
"Heya." Said Sapphiria as she disembarked from the snowpiercer, surprised not to find the mage-magistrate, but Malry waiting for you. "Didn't expect you to be the welcoming committee."
"Sorry. Kalia had an emergency to take care of. She'll join you in the main building." Malry politely coughed. "I also have something I wanted to talk to you about."
"Shoot."
"Well..." The alchemist hesitated. "I've had some issues. Some people have been refusing the pills you gave me."
"They...refused treatment?"
Sapphiria couldn't help it, she let her bewilderment out in both her expression and her voice.
"Yes. I was wondering if you could talk to them?"
"I can try." She said, dubiously.
Refusing treatment was just something she didn't have experience with. She knew it happened of course, squishies who didn't trust medicine for some arcane reason. But she'd never encountered it. She was Terran after all, and the birthplace of humanity still had bioweapons from the Terran Hegemony War pop up and reactivate with alarming regularity. Say what you will about the Theocracy and its bioweapons, at least theirs were made to burn themselves out quickly, and weren't designed to go dormant into the soil for literal centuries, permanently fucking up the planet's biosphere, let alone deploy it ON THEIR OWN HOMEWORLD. And, at the time, the only human habitable planet in the entire universe.
In any case. If you refused to take biodefense pills and a few vaccine injections before coming down from the orbital ring, you were simply banned from setting foot on Earth. No ifs, no buts, no exception either. Someone who didn't have the appropriate treatments wasn't just going to die horribly, you were going to become a virus bomb, quite literally and in ways too horrific for her to even think about, propagating the bioweapons everywhere around you as you expired.
Federation law applied one principle: your freedoms end where others' begin. If you want to put yourself in danger the AIs won't like it but they'll let you. Put others in danger and you were going to have problems.
And for space, well...
Simply put, a squishie who didn't use cybernetic enhancements or took regular supplements and some cellular regeneration meds simply wasn't going to last long. The Federation's radiation shielding was good, very good, but nothing was perfect against high energy particles. If there was a perfect armor against them, it would be all over naval warships and the Federation wouldn't be investing so much in making particle guns. Plus, squishies had never evolved for space and issues cropped up no matter what you did. Even 'elves' like they called them here, belters genetically engineered for space still had issues.
As for the colonies, well, anything beyond Massilia, where her aunt had turned the tide and allowed the Federation to advance, had either experienced the Theocracy's bioweapons firsthand or been under serious threat of it at one point or another.
"It's all I ask." Said Malry.
*****
Sapphiria realized she hadn't actually been in Astralis' infirmary before. She'd scanned it at a distance, and knew where it was, but never had the need to go inside.
It was a well proportioned stone building, part of the original outpost. If she had to take a guess, it had been some kind of barracks for the scouts stationed there. Since there seemed to have been relatively few of them, each got their own individual chambers.
It made sense to put those ill or wounded here. Separate the sick from other, potentially healthy patients. Since they weren't facing bioweapons, they were unlikely to contaminate anyone beyond their immediate vicinity.
As she stepped through the door, what hit her was the smell. It was...clean. But not in the way she was used to. In the Federation, you either had colonial clinics, that smelled like antiseptics, or high tech medical centers and starship infirmaries, that had that odd absence of smell that squishie neural pathways somehow identified as a smell of its own, due to the air scrubbers removing every last particle.
Here, the infirmary smelled like herbs. The floral scent was vaguely disturbing. It was pleasant, no doubts about it, but it was an article of faith for the Federation's AIs that squishies trusted medical facilities more if they felt just a slightly bit off and unpleasant. Just like how foul tasting medicine was sometimes better accepted than pleasantly flavored ones. It also prevented children from eating it like candy, but the Federation had generally gotten pretty good at keeping stuff like that away from the small squishies.
"This way." Said Malry, and Sapphiria followed her in.
They passed by a locked door that was almost certainly her workspace. There wasn't a nameplate on it, but there was an odd symbol that she took to be the equivalent of the Bowl of Hygeia here, crudely carved into the wood.
Granted, a goblet with a snake wrapped around it wouldn't signify 'pharmacy' to anyone without the historical and cultural context of it. And she supposed the round potion bottle with leaves and berries in it was a much more fitting one for a world with actual alchemy and magic.
Also, her sensors were indicating there was a sizeable concentration of chemicals, plants, and other compounds, as well as what seemed to be roughly two thirds of the pills she'd gifted the alchemist. The rest, she had in a pouch on her belt.
Before long they ended up in front of a door, and Malry extended a hand, preventing Sapphiria from coming forward. She knocked on the door, and a faint voice told her to come on in.
The person inside was a middle aged man. She didn't have the experience to do a diagnosis, but his vitals looked abnormal, in so far as she could measure them from outside the room.
"Hey there, Lukas." Said Malry, as she stuck her head in. "Do you mind if I come in for a minute? There's someone who wants to talk with you."
"Of course." Said the man, and Malry gestured towards the AI.
Taking that as her queue, Sapphiria followed the alchemist in.
The man gazed at her in what was, for a second, stunned incomprehension, his brain most likely flatly refusing what he was seeing.
Then it finally hit him that it wasn't an illusion, and Malry had to stop him from getting up from his sickbed.
"You need to rest Lukas!" Said the alchemist.
"I know! But it isn't...damn it, why did you call-"
"Enough."
Sapphiria didn't even raise her voice, but the effect was immediate. Both of them shut up, her voice, carrying the command authority of an admiral used to ordering entire squadrons around, stopping them dead.
"I was told you did not wish to take your medicine." Said the AI as she walked over to the bed. She hesitated to kneel by it, but given her avatar's height...instead, she took a stool, and sat down on it. "Why?"
"Because it's not necessary!"
Sapphiria blinked. What?
"I beg your pardon?"
"I'm fine." The man wilted under Malry's gaze. "I will be fine." He corrected. "I don't want to waste medicine on a little thing. I'll be up in no time, and your gifts can go to someone else. Someone who actually needs it."
Oh.
She'd assumed the problem was taking her medicine because of a lack of trust.
It was the opposite.
She had to suppress a bout of laughter with a supreme effort of will, and instead shook her head.
"I'm sure you'd be fine." Actually, her medical sensors were more or less agreeing with him. Whatever had gotten him down hadn't affected him too badly, at least not yet. She couldn't do a formal diagnostic without some blood samples, but he would probably recover. "But it would take time. These pills aren't unique. I can make more. I will make more. And you taking them means you can be up and running that much faster, that much more safely, and you'll free a bed for someone else who might need it."
That last part struck true, as she knew it would. She knew these types of squishies. Really keen on not being a burden.
Ironically, they tended to be more annoying to manage than the ones fine with being one.
"Oh. I hadn't...I didn't think..."
She put her hand on his shoulder.
"It's fine. Now take the pill."
He nodded, and under Malry and Sapphiria's watchful eyes, downed the medicine with a glass of water. The AI stood up, smiling.
"We'll have you up and about in no time."
"Thank you. You didn't need to come though, I'm sorry for taking your time..."
Malry sighed, and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Yes she did. You wouldn't listen to me Lukas, and-"
The alert ping pierced through everything, its priority overriding the routine status reports moving up and down her network.
ASTRALIS PERIMETER DEFENSE NET - MULTIPLE CONTACTS, ENGAGING
Sapphiria was out the door, her plasma gun in hand, before the turrets had fired the first shot.