Chapter 2

  Crash Site

  Well, 'body' was generous. It seemed to have been there for a long, long time, decayed to the point of being scraps of whatever bacteria couldn't digest on a skeleton.

  Sapphiria raised her rifle, and began to hug the far wall, peering down the hole.

  It lead into another tunnel. No, not tunnel, a mineshaft. With wooden support beams instead of...whatever the hell was keeping the corridor she was in together.

  She cautiously stepped to the body, swearing sotto vocce about the fact that she hadn't opted in for those shoulder mounted guns real force recon units had, forcing her to keep her weapon up as she went close to the body, examining it.

  She had seen her fair share of dead biologicals, some by her own actions, but it still unnerved her slightly, like digging up a smashed AI core from a wrecked Federation vessel. There'd been someone inside that thing once, and now it was just...an object.

  "Cia, can you...Can you tell me anything?"

  The simulacrum's voice sounded into her ears. Not a metaphor either, as the armor's internal speakers actually turned on. Technically Cia could project a full avatar of herself into the AI's vision, but Sapphiria had disabled that feature. It made her look crazy when no holographic systems were nearby to allow other people to see the assistant.

  Not to mention the fact that it felt a little bit like being part of a hivemind, minus being actually able to feel the other members' emotions and thoughts. Which just creeped her out.

  "Scans indicate human."

  Sapphiria sighed, closing her eyes. Simulacrums.

  "I can see that."

  "Date and cause of termination unclear. Presence of only non degradable clothing in this environment indicates several years." The simulacrum hesitated. "No synthetic materials have been detected."

  Sapphiria blinked, and looked again.

  That...was true. What was left were scraps of what had to be treated leather, or at least something that looked like it, and metal. Buckles and such. No synthetic materials that, by and large, would probably last longer than the metal. Humanity had spent centuries mastering textiles, particularly for clothing, culminating in the now ubiquitous standard worksuit, a resilient, remarkably comfortable piece of clothing that allowed one to work in many environments and was dirt cheap to mass produce. Literally, in fact, as most were made out of the remains of mined out asteroids, effectively industrial refuse.

  "Okay." She looked at the mining shaft.

  A mining shaft whose support beams were wooden. Wooden.

  "That's...concerning." Completed the AI.

  She'd been on luddite worlds before. To say that they tended not to be fond of AIs or their de facto lordship over the Federation and most of humanity was a considerable understatement. Even AD Leonis-3, a stars damned Core World sixteen light years from Sol, had a population and officials who were, at best, icily polite to her. And she was basically Federation royalty. More distant planets were closer to the 'lynch mob' part of the spectrum.

  "The drones have deployed and are awaiting instructions." Said the simulacrum, and Sapphiria nodded.

  "Get them gathering some of the debris. Not the rockfall, just what we threw around when landing."

  "That source of materials will not be sustainable."

  "I know." Was the simulacrum sassing her? It was impossible to tell with it. At least not without cranking her settings up, and that just creeped her the hell out. "I need to clear an area to mine, first. Besides, we have some stockpiled materials."

  Not necessarily that much of it, but it was there. More a buffer than any real storage, really. The idea was that the refinery would replenish most of it as the initial fabrication runs were done, but that meant feeding it something to begin with.

  "Acknowledged."

  Sapphiria walked into the mineshaft, making sure to fully scan each segment before continuing. It was going downwards, which gave her hope it had been dug from the surface...before she came in front of a cave in.

  She gazed at the pile of rocks and less recognizable remains. It didn't take a genius, or much of her engineering expertise for that matter, to realize it had been intentional.

  What confused her was that it didn't seem to have been caused by an explosion. Whatever had brought the tunnel down seemed to have just...crushed the entire shaft.

  She turned around, and went back into the main corridor. She was considerably faster this time, but it was still an impressive distance. Which was...interesting. Most luddite societies didn't have that many mines, and those they did have weren't long or deep. Of course that depended on their particular flavor of technological regression, but those that stuck to more or less medieval means didn't really have the capabilities to excavate a lot.

  The corridor was exactly as she left it, same for the skeleton, and she moved her way down.

  This time the cave-in was a lot more spectacular. And was definitely intentional.

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  The problem was that the ground had the distinct look of having been superheated and then rapidly cooled. Three things could do that without outright turning everything into glass: infrared bombs, battle lasers and plasma warheads.

  All of which would be the furthest thing to expect on a luddite world.

  "Where the hell are we..." Whispered the AI, before shaking her android's head. "Nevermind. Cia?"

  "Yes ma'am?"

  "This corridor is sealed. Once the drones are done mopping up our crash site, get them to work here." She gazed at the cave-in. "Make sure they stay the hell away from wherever those tunnels lead. I'm in no hurry to open another path. And...get me their programs for reinforcing tunnels."

  "Right away ma'am."

  Sapphiria set her android to return to the escape pod, and plunged into the drones' options, quickly changing some parameters.

  Intentional or not, there was no telling if those cave-ins had fragilized the entire area. She doubled the frequency of supports the drones would make as they dug. Just in case.

  She took a look around as the android walked back into the chamber she had crashed into. Not much had changed, besides the cracked pieces of stone scattered around having been gathered into a big pile, while one of the mining drones was busy feeding into the refinery.

  The drones looked like a large, metal brick, with six thin, metallic legs propelling them around the place and a 'face' composed of some manipulator claws and their pulse drill system. Not the height of aesthetic grace, but that wasn't their purpose. The construction drone was similar, with the notable exception of having more manipulators and some tools strew about the front end instead of the drill.

  Mmmmh. Not efficient. We aren't in zero-G, we don't need something near the collection point to gather it back if it scattered. Thought Sapphiria.

  "Cia?"

  "Yes ma'am?"

  "Schedule a field robotic arm for assembly and construction. Plus cables of course. Set it near the refinery to feed it materials. Actually, make half a dozen of them, do the same for the fabricator, the minilab, and keep the others in reserve."

  "Right away."

  She could have done it herself, but right now she had other things on her mind. Notably, the fact that the body didn't appear to have been trying to get through the different cave ins, and the way that it had died...

  It had no impact damage on its skeleton from being shot or hit with a melee weapon but there were ways to avoid that. Outside of more esoteric weaponry, it was perfectly possible to puncture someone's heart with a particle rifle and not hit any of the bones.

  She had a feeling it hadn't been that complicated, but she had an even stronger hunch that that poor bastard hadn't died of natural causes.

  She flicked open her schematics databanks, and hissed in frustration.

  Right. Limited schematics. She...understood why it had been done, both the security and data reasons, there was only so much space after all, but it was still annoying to find herself with but a fraction of what her carrier had been capable of making.

  Fortunately...she had her libary core. It didn't contain schematics, Command would have never allowed that.

  It just contained the entire physical and engineering underpinnings of those schematics. As well as a few design and management programs from her mother's corporation, the kind used for field expeditions and to handle some facilities.

  She did have some samples of 'security drones' from her original package but they were either rovers with electrical prods to drive away wildlife (or intoxicated humans from the wildlife), or basically a mobile ID scanner to prevent unauthorized personnel from entering a facility. There was no space security because the only way to drive away a ship was to use weapons whose power source alone would outmass any drone her fabricator could build by something approaching an order of magnitude.

  That or nuke them.

  There also wasn't a truly autonomous version, all requiring some variant of direct input, even if only by a simulacrum, for anything besides navigation. Automated -ie not sapient controlled- policing had been a...touchy subject in the Federation. People were already uncomfortable as all hell with having AIs run a good chunk of law enforcement, and it had probably seemed like a small concession to make when the Federation was founded.

  That didn't stop people from trying to come up with police bots but the level of complexity required would necessitate a lot of investments for something that was deeply unpopular to begin with and viewed with suspicion at best.

  Besides, push came to shove the Federation could still declare martial law and deploy combat bots with stun weapons. If you were far enough gone you needed a legion of automated law enforcement, it was time for them to come in anyway.

  She pulled up the schematics for the rover, and began fiddling with them. She removed some of the loudspeakers and all the bells and whistles on top supposed to blare 'this is a police drone you idiot' / 'go away critter', and replaced the articulated spotlight with a laser pistol.

  Thank the stars that even if she didn't have that many prebuilt military drones and bots, she did have a full array of squishie weaponry. Bonus points for her ambassador too, since it could wield them as well.

  It was unfortunate that Cia wouldn't really have the capacity to handle this kind of redesign on the fly, but it was second nature to her. Rule one of cruiser command, taught to her when she'd become the onboard AI and executive officer of the human staffed Madrigal, a Myth-class heavy cruiser: shit always breaks, and the schematics you have will never be enough for what you need to do in the field.

  As much as she'd been annoyed at having squishies in the line of fire, the crew had taught her a lot. They hadn't been proven wrong yet either.

  It also applied to commanding a carrier group. There were a lot of situations you stumbled into that the people back home hadn't expected or given you specialist equipment for. Which was alright, you could never predict every eventuality. That was the entire point of outfitting ships with fabricators, so you didn't have to pack their holds full of specialist equipment they'd probably never use. Among other things.

  She ran a few simulated tests on the new combat rover, and nodded in appreciation. Everything checked out, at least as far as her software could tell, and she packaged it for the fabricator, scheduling it behind the robotic arms, while she moved her android towards the other entrances.

  Her scanners weren't exactly made for this environment, but a few tweaks let her set up some alerts. She also made a note to fabricate some perimeter sensor fences. They were cheap, and should give her warning without having to put a drone inside every tunnel.

  Of course there was no telling how far the signal would go before it would start having problem. Her avatar had a meson transmitter, that laughed off all material obstructions, and so did the pod, but even just the receiver to get orders from either...

  That wasn't something you could fabricate. This kind of tech, just like hyperdrives, needed full scale industry to build.

  Fortunately, her android could serve as a relay. One advantage of the marine armor was that it was made to integrate with combat drones and use them as support and meatless shields. But that was a stopgap measure at best.

  Well...only way to figure it out was to test it, and that meant sending a drone out. And there was no way she was sacrificing one of her essentials.

  She set her avatar to patrol the mouths of the different entrances, and weighed her options. She could send her avatar out, but as much as her pod was effectively invulnerable to anything it would be able to stop anyway, she could still lose some drones if something went in.

  Sapphiria sighed, and simply set herself to wait, keeping an eye through the android, while she dipped into the library core, pulling out a novel as her holographic avatar appeared into her home simulation, straight into a comfortable armchair by a fireplace whose real, physical counterpart she hadn't actually lit in over a decade. She hesitated, and set it down on a table by her armchair, instead opting to grab an engineering book. One about colonial systems on uncharted worlds, and specifically hellworlds, requiring extensive subterranean development to be even remotely inhabitable.

  She had a feeling she was going to need it.

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