Chapter 4

  Mineshaft

  Sapphiria froze.

  The skeleton was happily, and impossibly, wandering aimlessly in the mineshaft, away from her. She realized with a start that it was also clutching a spear, and clad in tattered garments that almost looked like armor of some kind.

  She gave it a full scan, wanting to make sure she wasn't hallucinating.

  Either her scanners were as crazy as she was or neither were nuts. Moreover, according to her sweep the bones had a heat signature and emitting a remarkably wide range of exotic particles.

  "Holy crap." She finally said as she finally got out of her stupor.

  It was when the skeleton whirled around and began marching towards her, its previous aimless movements vanished without a trace and replaced with single minded purpose, that she realized she had spoken aloud, and that her suit's speakers were on by default.

  She aimed her gun and spoke up.

  "Stay where you are, and drop your weapon!" No response. Damn it. She began cycling through her language banks as she repeated the warnings, backing off all the while to keep it at a constant distance.

  Suddenly, the skeleton raised its spear, and threw it at her.

  She may not be trained in this kind of combat, but she knew a spear throw when she saw one. She tried to dodge...and failed, the spear grazing her armor's shoulder pad.

  Sapphiria almost jumped as the weapon discharged something, and her armor barked out an alert.

  "Alright, fuck this." Said the AI as she pulled the trigger.

  Her gauss rifle was a marvel of Federation technology. In a remarkably compact format it could fire small, twenty gram tungsten flechettes at over ten times the speed of sound, resulting in a projectile packing three times the kinetic energy of a pre-starflight twenty millimeter round, all concentrated on the minuscule tip of the flechette.

  It could pierce military grade armor plating, damage power armor, and even damage armored vehicles, if used properly.

  It was also utterly useless against targets not packing that level of armor, as the round went straight through the skeleton, punching a neat hole in its skull, and embedding itself in the wall.

  "...Shit." She hadn't been trained all that much in personal combat -she was naval officers by the stars, and even then an engineering one! She had marines and combat bots to do the dirty work for her-, but even she should have anticipated that.

  Thankfully, she had an alternative. One she, to be perfectly honest, had packed into the pod as her secondary weapon against the recommendation of more or less everybody.

  She came to a halt, moving her gauss rifle to her back, where it automatically locked onto the armor, and pulled out the plasma gun, dialing it up to maximum as she brought it to bear.

  The skeleton leapt at her, grabbing some kind of shortsword from its belt, which she hadn't noticed out of the sheer absurdity of tailoring anything resembling a belt to a skeleton, and she caught him mid flight.

  The entire mineshaft, that until then hadn't been lit for stars knew how long was illuminated by the power of the sun.

  The skeleton wasn't staggered, or damaged. Its entire upper half was simply reduced to its component atoms as the lower one exploded under the thermal shock, utterly annihilating all of its equipment.

  Then the bolt of incandescent matter continued its course, hitting the ceiling full force.

  Rock shattered, melted, and a set of the mineshaft beams instantly caught fire.

  Sapphiria immediately leapt back, cursing wildly as she did...before watching in amazement as the fire flickered off, and died.

  Okay....what?

  She stayed there, scanning and gazing at the beams.

  She'd definitely damaged them. Thermal shock spared nothing, not to mention a fair amount of material had simply been vaporized, but the fire itself...

  It had gone out. And she realized that she'd seen it before. The entrance to this section, it had the same kind of plasma weaponry used there. She hadn't fully realized it but the supports were blackened there as well, when they should have been, by any rights, consumed utterly.

  "Ma'am. I have been notified of weapons fire. Status?" Asked Cia, and Sapphiria realized that upon entering combat mode, she'd shut down all inputs and more or less shut out the simulacrum. Something she might have to correct.

  "Undamaged." She gazed at her shoulder, with a brand new scorch mark. "...Mostly. I'm going to be bringing in some samples, prepare the minilab."

  "Affirmative. Analysis of the rock samples is still ongoing."

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  "We'll swap out if necessary." Sapphiria knelt by the spear, that had clattered to the ground. Yep, definitely had a heat signature, and though not exactly the same as the skeleton, it had some strange particle emissions too. The wooden supports however, didn't. Fascinating. "I've found a few things that ought to prove a lot more interesting."

  *****

  Sapphiria patted the combat rover as she passed by it, before making a beeline for the pod.

  The robot arm was currently happily filling the refinery's hopper, while the construction drone was moving off into the distance, having just dumped another load. She should really be activating all of her other drones but even with the rover, she just didn't feel safe. Especially not with what had just happened.

  At least the fabricator was done with the perimeter sensors, who were piled up by the pod. They were simple, cheap, and reliable, which was exactly what she needed. They weren't going to pierce through stealth or even basic camouflage, but honestly it wasn't like her rover would be able to do much against something with that. And if she was being hit by spec ops with active camouflage, she was beyond fucked anyway.

  She took the samples she'd grabbed, which was the spear, the body, and slivers she'd taken off of some of the wooden support beams with the armor's integrated monomolecular blade, and set them by the minilab's side. She noted that the rock samples had already been pulled out, and watched as the robotic arm extended further than she'd expected, and hovered over the items. Uh. Cia showing some initiative.

  "Which one first ma'am?" Asked the simulacrum, and Sapphiria drummed her fingers on her knees as she thought about it.

  The bones were alarming but the skeleton itself had been no threat. Similarly whatever the hell was going on with the wooden mineshaft supports wasn't a problem. Hell, it was even beneficial to her.

  The spear however...

  No primitive weapon should have been able to even remotely threaten her armor. True, the damage had mostly been superficial, and the armor was self repairing, but it was damage nonetheless.

  It was the equivalent of having a battleship be hurt by a chemically propelled missile.

  "Let's start with the spear."

  "Very well." The robot arm grabbed the weapon, and slotted it into the minilab. It was, thankfully, large enough to actually contain it. "We are nearing the end of the fabrication schedule. I am awaiting the design for the laser turret."

  Sapphiria grimaced.

  "I'll take a crack at it while installing the sensors. Just make some mining drones in the meantime. Actually, no. We have colonial mining bots, right? The thread powered kind?"

  "We have schematics for several types of colonial mining robots, of varying sizes."

  Sapphiria winced at the simulacrum's tone. Right, the database might be pruned, but 'colonial' went from 'let's make sure we don't starve' to 'let's level that mountain over there, we need a road to the sea'. Some of the schematics, especially for mining or industry, could get big.

  "Make the ones the closest in size to our current drones."

  It would probably be more cost effective to make bigger ones, but then there would be no guarantee they would fit in her current mining corridor. Not to mention it might be large enough to require final assembly outside of the fabricator.

  "Affirmative."

  "Good. Alright, I'll be back in a bit."

  She didn't really need to say that, and it wasn't strictly true either, 'she' was in the escape pod, and so was the simulacrum, but it was already hard not to think of her android as 'herself'. It's not like she had a capital ship to anchor her being anymore, and she refused to think of herself as a beaten up escape pod.

  She picked up the sensor spikes, effectively small cylinders on, well, metal spikes, intended to be driven into most materials and went off.

  She swept every corridor that lead to her pod's chamber, and drop a couple of spikes into the walls a few hundred meters out. Thankfully with the armor there wasn't really a need for a hammer, not that it would have been very difficult to do.

  It took long enough that the first mining bot was out, and the task was simultaneously stressful and mindless, forcing her to keep an eye on it while she tried to work on the turret.

  In the end she ended up with something that was 'good enough'. The main problem was the weapon. Fabricator or not, emitter crystals for even civilian laser weapons were a royal pain in the ass to make. The time and effort it took to make them with a fabricator rose exponentially with the weapon's power too. Her projections were so alarming that she was seriously considering making firearms, at least if she needed them in any quantity or at higher power levels.

  For now she only needed one however, and she could set the crystal to be made on the side as other things were constructed.

  Once she was done, she took the leftover sensors and did another pass, this time halfway between the first sensor net and the crash site.

  Redundancy was always nice, but if you had sensor platforms usually the enemy was smart enough to take them out. If you had one layer it only told you 'danger'. If you had two however, you got the enemy's speed and their vector.

  Vector wasn't too important in this case, as it would be 'down the tunnel', but speed might be critical.

  She strode back into the crash site, and gazed at the area.

  It didn't look like much, but it seemed like it was going to be her home for a while.

  She hesitated.

  Prudence would dictate sitting down and building herself up, but she couldn't shake the impression that the more she knew, the better off she was.

  The analysis of the spear so far was...just baffling. As far as the minilab could tell it was perfectly normal, except for a series of runes that just seemed to emit exotic particles for no discernible reason.

  Particle emissions that were diminishing rather quickly as well. Whatever had been powering it, it was gone. And she had a sneaking suspicion it had to do with that skeleton.

  She ordered the spear swapped for the bones. She could do the wood last. Though, she made sure to take an exquisitely detailed scan of the entire weapon, and its runes, before removing it.

  She had a feeling it would come in useful.

  As she prepared to head out, she came to a halt, remembering the corpse in the mineshaft.

  She went there, accompanying the construction drone on its way to get another load, and gathered up the remains, before moving them as respectfully as possible into the chamber she'd crashed into.

  There, she set aside a few bones, namely from the lower body, to possibly serve as a control group for the scans on the...well, undead ones. There was really no better words.

  She was trying very hard not to think about it. Because the word that kept coming to mind was 'magic' and that was...madness.

  But then again...so was teleportation. Or the weapons used against her.

  She pushed it to the back of her mind. Later. First, safety, get her bearings. Hopefully, break the surface. She could start going down that rabbit hole either then or once she had hard data.

  She took a deep breath, and focusing back on the here and now, played the Federation's commendation to the dead on the suit's speakers, saluted the body...and blasted the rest of the bones to atoms.

  Better safe than sorry. And if nothing else, cremation was almost certainly a preferable outcome to rising back from the dead, or being left to rot in a tunnel.

  She turned around, and marched into the corridor she had done her little expedition in.

  Her lab would get her some answers, hopefully.

  And, if that failed, she was going to find a way out even if she had to dig her way out and ask what the ever living fuck was going on here to that planet's colonists.

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