Chapter 3

  Crash Site

  Sapphiria sighed as she got the notification. Almost done.

  At last. She would have been content to just wait, leafing through her various books, but...

  Well, things just kept cropping up. She was starting to seriously doubt the efficiency of the escape pod package, and had, in fact, begun compiling a list of suggested changes. If she ever got to hand it in, she was going to ram it through the entire admiralty, even if she had to use her connections to do it.

  The key problem was logistics. The mining drones were remarkably quick when it came to ripping rocks apart. Remarkably because, as with most systems, efficiency seemed to trend upwards when sized was increased, at least for modern technology. Which was part of the reason why capital ships were preferred in interstellar warfare. A fusion power core twice the volume and cost might produce three times the amount of energy. It was a gross oversimplification, but it was how her mother had taught it to her.

  The problem was that with her current setup they would spend most of their time scuttling back and forth to her pod, to bring back their haul and get back to their mining site.

  As tempting as it was to simply have them dig closer, she wasn't willing to risk damaging the chamber housing the pod further.

  Thankfully, she was an engineering specialist. And she was her mother's daughter all the way. Which meant extensive expertise in mass production, logistics and automation.

  As well as a certified degree in kludged together solutions. In this particular case, grabbing the construction drone, and quickly fabricating it a series of mineral buckets. It was made to carry heavy loads, but not bulk materials like a pile of rocks. Thankfully it had its own hull attachment points, so she'd just snapped the buckets on those.

  Since she didn't want to bother the mining drones with loading it either, or pause them as it was doing a trip, she'd given it a bucket it could hold in its manipulator arms, scraping up whatever materials they'd piled up, before showering itself in them.

  It was...not that effective, but thankfully the drones had been made to operate in and around asteroids, being covered in dust or hit with rocks was a design parameter.

  She was looking into running a power line all the way there for a robotic arm, but for now she was saving her fabricator time. Especially since it wasn't strictly necessary.

  Sapphiria had also started going through her options as the combat rover, the item she was waiting for, was being produced.

  She had six drones, half of which were still inside the pod, but she was saving them until she was feeling safe. Just in case. Plus a fabricator, the advanced materials refinery, and a quite frankly amazing power core.

  If she wanted to go further, and she most likely would need to, absent having miraculously landed on a Federation world, she'd have to start expanding her capabilities.

  More drones was an obvious thing to do, but it wouldn't be hard to increase their numbers to the point the refinery and fabricator were the bottleneck.

  Which was...an issue. The fabricator she could have self replicate. She wouldn't be able to make one that was as good, but she could make one. The problem was that fabricators just...weren't very good.

  Their key advantages were that they were unbelievably mass and volume effective, and they could build a wide variety of things.

  However, they were extremely wasteful in terms of energy, materials for production, not to mention their own cost compared to their outputs. There was a reason assembly lines still existed, and the fabled 'ship fabricators' that could make entire starships were urban legends. It just wasn't even remotely practical.

  They were amazing for starships far away from their industrial base or naval depots, as instead of packing ton after ton of spare parts and specialized equipment for every eventuality, they could grab some compact fabricators and a pile of raw materials. But that wasn't a viable way to make an industrial base.

  Still, it wasn't like she had anything that could possibly justify manufacturing them on the scale at which regular industry was justifiable.

  So, more fabricators. Sure, she had the space and she had the juice. She could even use the less compact models, trading volume and mass efficiency, neither of which bothered her right now, for lesser costs and more fabrication effectiveness.

  The refinery however...

  The 'Advanced Materials Refinery, Mark 8' was a wonder of Federation engineering. Input almost damned near anything, and you got fully refined materials out, ready to be used. It was, in effect, a compact brick of technology she didn't even pretend to start to understand that could enable her to process damned near anything.

  The problem was that 'technology' was the kind that her fabricators couldn't make. Not in that she didn't have the schematics, in that, like hyperdrives, it required exotic materials and processes that required industrial installations the size of cities to make. Cutting edge industries, too.

  So that wasn't an option. Which meant the regular processing.

  Unfortunately, most of her schematics were useless. They required zero-g, as well as spaceborne mirrors, the former for separating the materials -or rather enabling the process that did- and the latter for providing cheap heating.

  So...colonial foundries. Big, bulky, old fashioned ore crushers, separators and smelters.

  And energy hungry as all hell. Not to mention far less effective at drawing out useful materials out of what was effectively normal rock. But she could use them for pre-processing, at least at first, drawing out what she could before feeding what was left to the refinery.

  But that was for later, as another notification popped up. She smiled as her systems pinged her, and another input was added to the list, as the combat rover rolled out of the fabricator.

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  She took a few minutes to familiarize herself with it. Okay, 'combat rover' was a big name for essentially a park ranger drone rover with a basic laser pistol slapped on it, but it could shoot and it could move. The pistol wasn't going to set records nor, like most laser weapons, have much in terms of armor piercing capabilities, but fired at a chunk of rock it shattered it quite satisfyingly. Ah, explosive energy transfers.

  "Magnifique. Cia?"

  "Yes ma'am?" Said the simulacrum as she appeared in the home simulation.

  "Get our little drone rolling down...corridor six." It was the one she'd labeled as most promising. It was heading up, looked to have been made to shift large amounts of cargo, and had probably been intended to link to the facility's surface access. She hoped. "Make it stop as soon as we start to experience significant signal loss."

  "Right away ma'am."

  The rover began rolling on the floor, first bouncing a bit on the damaged area near the crash site, before moving smoothly on the unnaturally even stone, and vanishing in one of the tunnels, powering up its headlights as it did.

  Sapphiria grimaced. Right, it had light gathering optics, also called night vision, but they didn't work in absolute, pitch black darkness. Nor would thermal sensors be of much use. Her android and civilian drones were made to operate inside asteroid, they had the sensors. But not this thing. She made a note to change that.

  TO-DO LIST UPDATED

  The AI almost jumped. Right, sweet stars, she forgot that program still existed. Her...aunt? How the hell did you call someone who had been part of Arcadia's hivemind and then separated from it? Argh, aunt was as good as any. Her aunt had written it centuries ago. It was a testament to its design that it kept working, and was passed down the generations to this day.

  That, and one didn't refuse a gift from the Federation's former high admiral and its most decorated officer ever.

  Besides, she had the craziest war stories, from slugging it out in the half terraformed hell of Alpha Centauri to the battle of Trappist, and it was always best to ask for one after accepting a present from her.

  Though, of course, one had to be careful what to ask. The liberation of Europa still troubled her, especially with what was found in the Ascendancy's plans. Had they been able to fulfill their designs...

  Her aunt insisted the only solution would have been to destroy the planet. When she did, it was considered wise not to ask if she'd have done it.

  Sapphiria had learned that the hard way. There were some Ghosts one should not awaken.

  The drone pinged the network, and she shook herself out of her thoughts.

  "Anomaly detected." Said Cia. "Intersection."

  Sapphiria blinked, and pulled up the data.

  The drone had, indeed, arrived at an intersection. It was already almost a hundred meters away, which at least said good things about its mobility, though this terrain was the best possible one.

  She looked at the visual. The intersection was clearly designed for both corridors to be able to exchange smoothly, and the other tunnel appeared to be tilted as well. Maybe another way to the surface...but she would rather stick to her guns for now.

  "Continue forward. Note every new intersection, and maintain heading."

  "Affirmative."

  The drone didn't have a high top speed, it wasn't meant to run people down, just shoo them away, but it was still eating away distance extremely quickly.

  "Alright, stop." Said Sapphiria, and the drone slowed to a halt.

  "Ma'am?"

  "The packet loss hasn't gotten too bad, but we're definitely nearing the edge of our range. The number of transmission errors has risen sharply over the last hundred meters or so and it seems to be increasing exponentially. I'd rather not lose it. Bring it back. We can set it on guard duty, that'll free my android to go exploring."

  "Yes ma'am. Question?"

  "Yes?" That was...unusual for the simulacrum to ask questions unprompted.

  "Are you certain this is wise? The ambassador android is currently irrepleceable."

  "So is half of our equipment. More importantly...it's what you don't know that kills you, and right now we don't know anything. Put some sensor spikes on the fabricator schedules. We'll be able to get some early warning that way. And...let's see if we can't make a turret too, and put it on top of the pod." It would save on cabling, and give it a good position to shoot across the room. "I'll design it as I explore."

  "Yes ma'am." The simulacrum seemed disapproving, even despite her lack of expressions, but Sapphiria shrugged.

  "Alright. Let's go exploring."

  Her android waited for the drone to return, before setting out. She took the same corridor, reasoning she might as well continue on her hunch, and began going through it. Thankfully, her android did move faster than the drone. The wonders of untiring legs and power armor. Not that the ambassador itself wasn't capable of great feats but there were limits, when one was trying to ape a human body.

  She walked.

  And walked.

  And walked.

  The more she went the stranger it got. There weren't that many intersections she encountered, but the place had clearly been huge and...distributed, was the best word she could find.

  Most underground installations were compact, simply because it was cheaper. This wasn't it. It reminded her of something...something about her aunt...

  She was still trying to remember when the sensors pinged her, and she stopped.

  Debris on the floor. Uneven opening in the wall.

  Another mineshaft.

  This time she had a lot more room to maneuver, and she checked it out, comfortably hugging the far wall.

  Anything trying to pounce out of the dark tunnel would have a lot of ground to clear before reaching her.

  The mineshaft was empty, thankfully. She advanced into it, her scanners pulsing everything around her.

  And before long she found herself at the end of it. No cave-ins, nothing.

  She advanced cautiously, and stopped as she arrived in the new shaft.

  That one had clearly been some kind of main hub for the mineshaft. There were rails on the ground, probably for minecarts.

  Not that they would be much use now. Someone had blasted the entire area to hell. Given the damage, maybe with the same weapons that had collapsed the corridor where her drones were mining.

  This time however, it hadn't been enough.

  There wasn't more obvious battle damage in either direction, which told her that either there hadn't been a running battle, or the traces had been erased by time. That or neither her or her programs were noticing them, which was a real possibility.

  She hesitated. This shaft would definitely lead to the surface, but there was no telling if there was another cave-in up it.

  Still, at least she'd know. And there would perhaps be more clues of where she was. Sure told her more than featureless stone.

  She began walking.

  Only a few minutes passed before she turned a bend, and came upon another body.

  The problem was that the skeleton was upright this time.

  And it was moving.

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