Chapter 5

  Mineshaft

  The mineshaft was exactly as she'd left it, which was a relief. First because that meant no walking skeletons had gone in, and she had honestly been fearing that the damaged supports would fail.

  Thankfully they had not. Though, it begged the question of whether she should continue up the shaft, and risk them failing behind her.

  She...wasn't well versed in wood, but she was an engineer. She had only damaged one set of supports and, primitive or not, logic dictated redundancy, especially for this kind of work. Even at its most cold blooded 'who gives a crap about the employees' mindset, a cave-in could block a valuable vein of minerals for weeks, if not months, and this was the main shaft, bringing up the underground's bounty and serving as a hub for the ones that, in theory, should be following ore veins. Which meant it was especially important to safeguard it.

  Huh. Maybe only it had that special wood, and that was why it hadn't collapsed like the other. Something to keep in mind. She made a note to acquire samples from the one her mining drones were busy ignoring, both to make sure and, if it was normal wood, to use as a comparison to the anomalous one.

  She took a deep, and utterly useless, breath, and continued going up.

  The shaft was meandering, clearly winding upon itself in a blocky spiral. A very large spiral, but one nonetheless.

  This time she had her plasma gun at the ready. Technically it was a 'heavy modulated plasma carbine', as it had adjustable output, was remarkably compact for its incredible firepower and 'gun' was considered pedestrian by the Core World megacorp that had designed it, but it was too much of a mouthful.

  She froze as she received a ping.

  One from the sensors. And the report didn't stop. She quickly received one from Cia, but she dismissed it.

  Something was moving in one of the corridors. More erratically...aimlessly.

  Crap.

  She immediately ordered all of her drones to return to the pod and lock in, making her new mining bots -another had been constructing while the laser turret's crystal was being made- run to the far side of the room and wait. Push came to shove she could use them as makeshift melee combatants or ramming weapons, but she'd rather try her combat rover first.

  After a solid thirty seconds, the first layer of sensors lost contact, as the creature meandered past them.

  And a few, agonizing minutes afterwards, the second layer picked the -presumed- skeleton up.

  She could meet the thing there with the rover, but it wouldn't have that much space to maneuver, and right now mobility was probably on her side.

  She moved the rover in range of the opening, and waited. Just because she wanted to have the ability to dodge or use her mobility didn't mean she'd give up the advantage of denying it to the enemy, and keep whatever was coming penned up inside the corridor.

  It took another few minutes, but the rover finally picked something up.

  It was, indeed, another skeleton. Unlike the previous one, it seemed to have only the barest essentials, a belt for holding weaponry, and that was it. She hadn't had the time to really dwell upon it, but that had to be custom made. It was also weird in every possible way, resting on, and probably being anchored in some ways to, the sternum.

  She looked at the thing...and ordered the rover to open fire.

  She didn't have any compunctions about shooting first. The Federation had encountered corpses used for combat, human bodies reanimated via cybernetics and bioengineering to use as cheap, 'totally not a combat bot' cannon fodder. That wasn't even mentioning the horrors the Theocracy had unleashed upon the galaxy. The only favor she could do to whomever that thing had once been was to grant their remains eternal repose.

  The rover opened fire...and missed. Like most laser weapons, it fired a brief pulse of energy, instead of a continuous beam, requiring cycling between shots, to recharge the unstable 'ready' capacitors that could then discharge through the emitter.

  Sapphiria hissed as the weapon began recharging. Right. When most people heard 'combat drone' or 'combat bot' they imagined some supertech god weapon with pinpoint accuracy that couldn't possibly miss. That couldn't be farther from the truth. 'Aimbots' were only a thing in video games, where the environment was neatly programmed in perfect parameters. The real world was anything but.

  Even if you had amazing sensors, a perfectly accurate weapon and utterly stable firing platform, there was only so much processing power you could give a combat system. And even remote controlled drones handled by an AI had a throughput limit on their communication systems. Which was part of why she was frustrated, as she'd had to generate the firing solution for the rover.

  Plus, well, the gun was mounted on a mount meant for a floodlight, it wasn't exactly made for precision targeting. Besides, the same problems applied to those as well, you could only make a weapon mount so precise...and at some point it was more worth it to make two 'okay' ones rather than one high precision mount.

  She'd have to make sure to code in a combat program though. Nothing too complicated but at least have the rover be able to fight on its own.

  TO-DO LIST UPDATED

  Right.

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  The skeleton, as the previous one, immediately whirled around as it heard the hiss-crack of the missed shot, the energy pulse wandering off into the corridor to impact the far wall. Not with enough energy left over to do any real damage -that kind of 'self defense' laser pistol had notoriously horrible range, counterbalancing their cheap price-, but more than enough to create the distinctive sound of a laser 'impact'.

  She watched in fascination as the skeleton seemed to go through a checklist, like a primitive computer system, going for the louder sound first, scanning it, then turning back to the rover, deciding it was the threat, and moving to attack.

  By the time it had of course, she had the rover moving, and the laser pistol had cycled.

  The next bolt blew the skeleton's shoulder blade off, and her eyebrows rose as the arm immediately dropped to the ground. Not as one unit either, every pieces dropping individually.

  Okay, whatever was holding it together was flowing in from somewhere. Probably the head, though she personally would have gone for the torso to house a control/power core.

  The skeleton was only holding a blade this time, not a spear, and it attempted to close with her rover with remarkable speed.

  Fortunately, even a 'slow' rover like this was a lot faster than a person, especially in ideal terrain. She fired, again, trying to compensate for everything, from the movement to the limitations of her weapon and its mount.

  Amazingly enough, she hit her intended target, and the skeleton dropped as its skull exploded from the energy transfer. Lasers didn't burn neat, cauterized holes like in old or particularly fanciful holofilms. It blew things up. Usually because plasma intercepted most forms of light. And since the laser bolt would just turn the surface layer of the target into just that, plasma, it effectively created a 'shield' of superheated material that then proceeded to absorb the rest of the energy pulse, and restitute it, usually as heat and kinetic force.

  Which basically made it into a small thermal bomb. A surface thermal bomb, which was why most lasers sucked at penetrating armor and had fallen out of favor for personal scale weaponry centuries ago, though they remained a favorite in space combat thanks to, well, having their pulse move at the speed of light.

  The skeleton kept going for a few paces, before collapsing, spasming as if it was having a seizure, before flashing with a brief burst of light, and laying still, it's bones falling off from the invisible frame holding them together.

  Sapphiria waited, but nothing happened.

  "Resume mining operations." She said, cautiously, as she finally opened a channel to Cia.

  "Affirmative." Answered the simulacrum, and the drones returned to their posts, giving the fallen skeleton a wide berth. Well, at least she had some initiative.

  Sapphiria had to remind herself that however uncomfortable she was with using simulacrums, they were far more clever than she usually gave them credit for. She was probably underutilizing Cia, but it's not like there was much to use her for right now.

  The skeleton seemed unperturbed by the resuming of activity around it, and the AI sighed.

  She could take it for samples...or she could be safe.

  Risk versus reward, the eternal question.

  Except it was right next to her pod, the risk wasn't acceptable.

  She began firing with the rover, methodically blowing the skeleton apart, before a thought occurred to her, and she ordered the rover to begin moving, using it as a way to calibrate the shots, starting to write a primitive combat program, and testing it on the bones, as close to a dummy target as she had right now.

  Before long all that was left were a few intact ones, which she had a mining drone scoop up, alongside some of the debris, particularly for the upper body, for analysis.

  The minilab was already working on the rest, but so far the surface results were painfully normal. Something told her that the shattered bones from the first skeleton were too damaged to do her much good. Maybe fresher, and more importantly intact ones, would be better.

  She tripled checked that everything was working normally, -as well as making sure the turret and its installation was marked as top priority- and returned the rover to its original position.

  She sighed, and focused on her android again.

  Finding the first skeleton meant she'd been ready for this one. Who knew what else was out there? The temptation to bring it back was strong, but she had to find out.

  She started walking again. Just going up, and up, and up...

  Finally however, she arrived in a large cavern.

  It clearly had some natural origins, but it clearly also had been fitted out for human purposes. There was a pile of minecarts, spare rails, unloading stations, stacks of support beams, even crates of what was probably equipment and other necessities.

  There was also movement. A lot of movement. Her scanners indicated skeletons were aimlessly wandering around the place.

  Wait, no, not entirely aimlessly...

  They were corralled, in a way. Constantly drifting in and out of it through a particular tunnel. A sizeable one heading upwards, probably the surface access. None of them went even near the other shafts leading down.

  Interestingly enough, the surface access one didn't have minecarts. There were tracks on the ground instead. Vehicles. She was no expert but tires left different traces. If she had to take a guess, it'd be carts of some kind, the ones drawn by animals.

  That was...odd. She'd studied early human history. It was a fun topic and being a 'born' Terran with old history was a good way to make conversation, and score some dates. Minecarts had appeared during the Renaissance, true, though they were associated mainly with the industrial revolution, but why stop here, partway to the surface?

  Though...a cart drawn by oxen was probably a lot more effective at bringing raw ore up than some poor bastards pushing a minecart. That meant that vehicle size corridor probably went all the way up, which was excellent news.

  The only problem was the bone club between her and it.

  She fiddled with her gun. The skeletons didn't seem to register her. Either her active camouflage was working, -thank the stars it was built into the armor, and thus couldn't be discarded to save on mass and make her library core bigger, or she'd probably have done it, like the shoulder mounted guns- or like the rover they just weren't registering her as a threat until something happened.

  She could blast her way through. She had the firepower. But at the same time, she could try to walk among them.

  The issue was that even if that worked, if something happened they most likely would surround her and she'd be in a much more problematical position. And she hadn't been able to find what the hell was going on with that spear. The damage was fixed already, but it worried her. Who knew what other surprises they had.

  So her real choices were to blast her way through, or go somewhere else.

  If she engaged, she probably would have to do so from another shaft, so any tactical retreat didn't lead them into the one leading back to her pod. Especially not when most were seemingly ignoring it.

  So that meant some sneaking, and more exploration, as well as possibly cornering herself.

  Choices, choices...

  She was still pondering her option when the decision was made for her as she heard someone scream in alarm, and every skeleton turned as one towards it source, as sounds of battle and even what she recognized as gunfire echoed throughout the room.

  The voice had been human.

  She had sworn her life and existence to serve and protect humanity. And she would be damned if she betrayed those oaths, now or ever.

  She shouldered her plasma gun, and went in.

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