Chapter 5: I Never Asked for an Underground Base, but I Won't Say No to One
The Machine Lifeform began whirring its axes. I shot it in the head, and that was that.
As relayed by the androids, these things could get pretty dangerous, but the ones I'd seen so far weren't very impressive. They were supposed to be highly adaptive and fast to transform through 'magic', but I wasn't seeing anything like that.
A few hours ago, after Anemone's uncomfortably sentimental offer, I picked up one of the requests on the request board. A whole new market open to me, with none of the currency required to buy anything? Now that certainly wouldn't do.
Ordinarily I might have just sold a few weapons, but anything technological would have raised too many questions. New universe and all that. The rest of what I might have considered sellable—rugs, trinkets and the like—were now, due to my being stranded in another dimension, much more valuable than whatever I might get for them.
I was usually reluctant to sell off my trinkets and collectibles, regardless. Knowing that they were now, most likely, irreplaceable did nothing to encourage pawning them off. You hear that, Yuya? That 'ugly Ostron poncho' is basically a priceless artefact now.
But I digress. Money, or the lack thereof, was the reason I was now raiding this sandy ruin for 'red thornroot'. According to one of the moody, outcast redheads—the moodier one of the two, if you were wondering—this desert region used to be full of the stuff, at least until the androids realised they contained readily fermentable sugars and started digging them up as alcohol starters.
On the whole, it seemed to be an awfully primitive way to obtain alcohol, but I had chalked it up to red tape getting in the way of obtaining any of the ethanol produced by official suppliers. After all, they were at war. It was only natural that everyone would be watching very closely where resources were being used. I, myself, had been a victim to the very same problem, back in the Empire.
That impression of inefficient ethanol production lasted until I saw one of the androids eating a sandwich on the way to the desert. A little subtle probing revealed to me that the humans of this dimension had built their servitors with the ability to eat and drink. If it was just that much, I might have stopped thinking about it. Most of this planet was controlled by enemy forces, so I could see the logic behind building an army capable of prolonged fighting without a stable supply line.
However, the people in charge had deigned to turn an advantage into a disadvantage by limiting acceptable intake to only what was digestible by real humans. What's more, through mechanisms yet unknown to me, and for reasons beyond my comprehension, these androids were designed to become intoxicated upon ingesting ethanol.
Yes, that's right. I was out here foraging for plant roots so that some robot could get drunk. It would be a lie to say that I had never done something more banal for a paycheck, but having the illusion of serving a grander purpose swiftly ripped away by the revelation left me in a rather poor mood.
No wonder the Army of Humanity was losing this darned war.
"AtTaCk! AtTaCk!"
Another Machine Lifeform had spotted me through a ruined window.
I shot this one in the head too.
The Machines in the desert were a lot less docile than their city ruin counterparts, but as mentioned, none had amounted to anything much thus far. It affected my appreciation for how hard the Army of Humanity was trying to lose. The whole point of combat servitors was to do things that humans couldn't do, whether due to cost constraints or physical constraints. The idea of building staggeringly complex androids—more complex than anything anybody had bothered to build at home—specifically in the image of humans, down to our pathetic limitations, was arrogance on par with the Orokin.
It was fitting, then, that their human creators also lived on Lua.
Anyhow, with the area clear for now, I began the process of harvesting the roots. Yuya's ridiculous tool was broken, so instead I started digging into the parched earth with Big Stick No. 1. Something about this odd little pocket of land, sandwiched between the desert and the forest, made it perfect for the plants I was after. Before long I had… I want to say that I had dug up the root, but the digging turned out a little too much for my delicate arms, so Nagi, my helpful little Sentinel, had taken over instead.
"You were using the excavator wrong," Yuya commented, a little distractedly. I ignored her and simply watched my Sentinel work.
Eventually, it was about time to head back. Around the time my pouch was full, there was another uneventful scuffle with a few Machine Lifeforms, and then I was off to the rendezvous point. With my Orbiter a little grounded right now, and with my Warframe currently in repair, I had been a little poor in transport options. Of course, I could have headed there personally, but that many Void dashes was going to be tiring.
Thankfully a couple of the androids from the camp had been heading this way, for… exactly the same reason that I was.
"Hey, new girl! How was your haul?" Rebutia waved at me. She was the driver.
"Probably better than yours," I said.
"Oh yeah?" She ruffled my head. Hey. Was that how she treated her elders? Of course, I wasn't sure if I was actually older than her, but that was my cover identity.
"You should treat your elders with more respect."
She shrugged. "They shouldn't have built you like a little kid."
"C'mon, stop messing with dinosaur and get the truck going already," complained one of the others. Was Yuya's translation software faulty? What was a 'dinosaur'?
"I'm driving, I'm driving. Geez."
I watched as the designated driver clambered over to the cockpit and activated the vehicle with a turn of the tiny plug-in lever that she kept in her pocket for whatever reason. Yet another strange, strange design choice.
By the time we got back, the sun was… still bright in the sky, actually. Somehow they'd artificially stopped the rotation of the planet without turning it into a hellscape.
It was a nice ride back. It was hardly my first time seeing a desert, or even a desert on Earth. Obviously. It was just a little easier to appreciate the beauty of it this time, since I was neither half comatose in a pod beneath Lua, nor distracted by a time-sensitive mission.
It was just me, a lot of time, and a bunch of rowdy androids on a truck.
My feelings were hard to describe, but it was something appreciative and melancholy, perhaps. Just sun, the same as it had been for millions of years, shining across the sandy ruins of long dead civilisations as the wind whispered stories of bygone lives. Wow, I should really write that down.
Despite all the sand, this region had been a major metropolitan centre once, or so the androids told me.
Anyhow, the return to the camp was uneventful. The truck hadn't taken us all the way there, stopping near a minor outpost. That was fine though, as the Machine Lifeforms in the City Ruins had been as non-threatening as ever.
The rest of the way back was a leisurely stroll. Not something I had too much practice in, given my career as a Tenno, but since I was effectively retired now I could get used to simply walking to places.
I strolled into the camp, yawning a little, and looked for my target. Once I had my money, I could finally buy one of Carver's lovely little wooden carvings.
I found the grumpy redhead a little ways away in a storeroom. She perked up a little at the sight of me. Considering how when we last parted she was scowling like the world owed her money, it was quite a sight.
"Did you find some?" she asked, trying to sound cool but failing miserably.
I patted the pouch she'd given me, then tossed it over to her. "Catch."
It flew about half the distance then landed flaccidly between us.
We both looked at the pouch. My face burned. Yuya was laughing in my comms.
I cleared my throat.
"It's filled to the brim. Check the contents."
She trotted over and picked the pouch up off the ground, not even bothering to dust it off. When she looked inside her eyes lit up in an impressively human manner.
"Perfect! This is just what I needed! You have no idea how much this means."
She was a lot prettier when she wasn't frowning, I noticed.
I brushed some sand off my shoulders.
"I do have a certain propensity for being incredibly capable," I said.
"Here, some Gs as promised." She digitally transferred some of it over. G was the currency used around the camp. Considering it stood for 'gold', I would have preferred something tangible, but I could save my collection hobby for whatever I used these Gs to buy.
"And what grand plans do you have for those things?" I asked more out of politeness than genuine interest.
She looked around for a moment before making up her mind about something.
"It's been a while since my sister or I have had a drink. I was thinking of surprising her."
I chuckled. How cute. "A secret? Very well. She will never hear it from me."
Still, sisterly robots. I wonder if they considered their whole batch at the factory their siblings.
Before I could say anything else, Yuya's voice interrupted through my Oculus. "Operator, I've found something. It's big, right beneath where the Orbiter crashed."
"Ah, please excuse me," I said to the android. I stepped back out of the camp, waving at one of the guards on the way.
"What is it, Yuya?"
She didn't answer for a while, which was rare.
"You should probably just come back quickly and have a look yourself." After a pause, she added, "And get in your Nyx first."
Oh, being mysterious now, were we? Fine then.
Stepping into the shadows of the city ruins where I'd be unnoticed, I slipped back into the Void and began making my way back with due haste. What secrets did this underground cavern hold? I mused over the possibilities, each more grandiose than the last.
By the time I reached the crash site, my daydreams had evolved into 'ancient human mausoleum with lots of treasure'.
While I'd been on my root-gathering excursion, Yuya had done a more than passable job of dressing up the gaping maw left behind by my Orbiter's landing. The damage to the surrounding concrete structures had been disguised to look less recent, while the hole in the ground was nowhere to be seen.
At a glance the grassy clearing looked like any of the others in these city ruins, but digging a few metres down would find you broken bedrock held together by beams of high tensile alloy. The grass that looked like all the rest was in fact newly seeded and growth accelerated.
More careful now than before, given that our crash had been quite eye-catching, I made my way to a specific room in a nearby ruin without surfacing from the Void. I slung myself through a hairline crack that hadn't been there before our arrival and found myself in a dark antechamber that was similarly new. Another sling through a small, sloped slit on the opposite side and I was finally in the caverns below.
The scaffolds were faintly lit, allowing me easy passage to the ground.
The familiar silhouette of my Orbiter loomed over me in the dark, a tragic yet stately figure. Though damaged, its sleek and imposing form still carried an air of defiant grace, testament to the dignified, exceptional, and indomitable spirit of all its crew—me.
I boarded my beloved vessel and donned my Nyx.
Stretching, I appreciated the familiar body. Even with the low energy reserves, it was nice to be back inside her.
Following the marked directions through the caverns, I found myself going deeper and deeper. Honestly, how far down did this network go? It was a little suffocating, honestly.
This descent had taken almost as long as the trip back from the camp.
A squad of MOAs clattered behind me, their sensors turned up to maximum sensitivity. It was Yuya's idea, since she was the only one who even knew what I was heading towards.
Her voice interrupted my thoughts. "The entrance to the structure is thirty metres north-north west from your current position. It's obscured by a hanging rock face."
Obscured was a strong word. I found the hole in question easily enough just by following the markers in my HUD. I wonder why she found the need to even say that.
I hopped into the yawning hole and landed amongst a few MOAs, stationed as a guard. More were up ahead.
The labyrinth of tunnels and natural corridors eventually led to a set of ancient stone stairs.
"Are these what you wanted to show me?" I asked.
"No, it's further ahead."
So she'd already uncovered whatever secrets lay here, without me? It made sense, considering how dramatic she was being, but still. That was a little unfair of her!
I followed them up into a cavern where a very out of place door stood. Metallic, weathered, but undamaged. The design was unlike anything I'd ever seen, Grineer, Corpus, or Orokin.
"I'm going to continue forward."
"I've already sent another squad of MOAs ahead to scout," she replied, dampening my sense of adventure a little.
The doors slid apart in three segments, disappearing into the walls. Beyond them lay a second staircase. It was totally unlike the earlier crude stone staircase, this time made of the same material as the door.
Unconcerned, since my ship Cephalon had apparently already explored ahead, I jogged up the stairs towards the next door.
These opened up into a small antechamber, at the end of which stood another door. When those slid open too upon my approach, a bridge was revealed to me.
"Remarkable," I whispered. The footsteps of a few dozen MOAs echoed softly in the vast, empty chamber, as they patrolled.
The walkway was lined on both sides with small prisms from which a fluttering, ephemeral field of some sort was being emitted. A shield of some sort, if I had to hazard a guess. It cast an eerie glow on the expansive chamber beyond it, where unlike the metallic surfaces where I stood, it seemed to be made of a material that hungrily absorbed the light.
Yuya's voice was a grounding presence in my ear. "Keep your eyes open, Operator. Nothing has happened yet, but we don't know what might be lurking in here."
I scoffed lightly. "Please, Yuya, I'm an elite. I'm the very embodiment of vigilance."
As I ventured across the bridge into the circular platform at the centre of this grand chamber, I noticed that it was surrounded with pods of some sort.
Oh. This was a communications centre of some sort, or perhaps a command bridge. There were funny mummified creatures still sitting in them.
"What… are those things?" I asked.
"I think… we might be looking at the alien species that invaded," she said softly.
My non-existent heart beat faster. I hurried down the staircase at the end and descended from the platform.
Aliens. I prodded one of the funny cadavers to some screeching from Yuya.
To think I'd be the first Tenno, no, the first human from my timeline to interact with extraterrestrial life. Well, the interaction was poking it, and the extraterrestrial life wasn't actually alive, but the point still stuck.
"Do you think they truly are extraterrestrial? Not the result of some mad Archimedean's project?"
Yuya hesitated.
"I've only done a few non-invasive scans, but I think they're using a completely novel genetic encoding system. Silicon based chains with magnetically responsive components, and the mechanism of duplication seems to be magnetised component parts aligning along the chain."
"Which means?" I pressed.
"If something this complex was created artificially rather than across hundreds of millions of years of iteration under evolutionary pressures, then its creator was one hell of an Archimedean." She paused. "And also that it was wasted on creating one of the least impressive species I've ever seen."
"I don't know about that. These octopus fellows look rather impressive to me." It was desiccated now, but it must have been physically imposing in its life. Probably very tall and muscular. "Do you know what this facility is?"
"Not yet. With your permission, I'd like to try prodding around."
Ah. "Is that dangerous?"
"I don't know," she said honestly. That was concerning. I couldn't risk my poor ship Cephalon over— wait.
"I don't mean in a general sense, or in the sense that we may alert somebody. Is it personally dangerous to you to interface with it?"
"Ah. You mean hacking? Then, no. It's alien technology. Even if they've been fighting for thousands of years, do you really think it's going to be interoperable with our hardware?"
"You have simply got to stop trying to confuse me with technology talk. It's very rude."
She ignored me and pressed on. "From what limited scans I've done so far, the technology seems too rudimentary to interact with the Cephalon Weave. It's primitive in general, to be blunt."
Well that was a little disappointing. "Didn't these little guys conquer the planet?" I prodded another one in the next pod over.
"I said limited scans. And besides, looking at how this has been abandoned here, it might be old technology from millennia ago. At any rate, the Grineer rank and file don't use fancy tech either, but you've seen how dangerous they are. Your own weapons are pretty primitive compared to what the Orokin used to field in war, too."
She did have a point. Wait, that reminded me, my point!
"Wait, so it isn't likely to be personally dangerous, correct? You won't suddenly be taken over or subverted while hacking it or the like?"
If anybody else had been in this chamber, they would have been able to hear the laughter leaking from my Oculus. All right, message received.
"If that's the case, then get a move on, already. I want to know what this thing is, and what we can salvage from it."
"If you're sure, Operator."
"Oh, and it appears that our landing spot is more important than we realised. I authorise you to use our resources as you see fit in fortifying the Orbiter's surroundings."
"Finally." I had been loath to use my resources in such a manner, but that was before I'd realised that I had travelled to a new universe and landed on an alien command centre.
With that out of the way, I brought my attention back to the corpse in front of me. Some of the MOAs were already taking away the others. Since I'd given her the go ahead to risk alerting anybody who might still be monitoring this facility, Yuya had decided to stop holding back.
This was incredible. The discovery of the millennium. I was just like Captain Meer Qocho in the Star Citadel trilogy, braving the ruins of ancient aliens. This was what I wanted to be doing. Something meaningful, something groundbreaking …and yet I would have given it up in a heartbeat to return to my universe where I was needed.
Mara.
Going home wasn't an option, though.
I had given it thought on the truck ride back, and tried to make peace with the hand I'd been dealt. If I couldn't change my circumstances, then it was better to forget about what-ifs and live to the fullest in the present.
I would just have to trust that the others would be fine without me. As amazing as I was, I was still only one Tenno.
And besides, that girl had grown up. Maybe she didn't need me any more.
I returned my attention to my surroundings, rubbing my Nyx's hands together.
Aliens.
Ancient aliens.
Actual aliens, that probably weren't secretly the result of an Orokin experiment.
I knelt closer. After a moment, I peered inside its mouth. Oh, these aliens had teeth.
A MOA walked by me, but waited patiently for me to finish my examination. When I was satisfied, it hurried over with two companions and began hauling the cadaver away for… whatever Yuya planned to do with it.
I continued poking around the chamber some more, but to be honest it was rather plain and empty. I couldn't find any terminals, and wasn't sure how these pods were supposed to function. There weren't any other doors, either, so this was really it until Yuya found something.
As always, I would leave the busywork up to her while I conserved my mental energy for the complicated, difficult decisions that only a commander could make. Hopefully the fortifications she built would be enough to secure the alien facility. It was mine, now, after all.
On the way back up, I could see Yuya was already at work through the proxy of MOAs and Ospreys. They moved about tirelessly, carving through stone in places and affixing support beams in others. I was on the way to transforming this crash site into a stronghold—my stronghold. My first terrestrial holding.
Here, in the depths of a foreign world, I was carving out a hidden lair for myself. Honestly, I could barely contain my excitement.
By the time I'd left the caverns, it had been hours since I'd left the camp. My Nyx was back in storage now, continuing to be repaired. According to the time standard used by the Army of Humanity, my first day was almost over now. Today was the first day of my week's grace period but I wondered if I was expected to just hang around the camp.
What did actual unearthed androids do when they first re-entered the fold?
Technically the Android Resistance was a military operation, right? How did such things usually operate? I knew a little from how Dax behaved, but with the benefit of hindsight as well as a lot of modern novels, I was pretty sure they had been something of an irregular military force.
At the very least, the Orokin never fielded them unless whatever problem couldn't be erased from high orbit, nor by waves of servitors. This Army of Humanity probably functioned more like a very large mercenary group, like the Grineer, or perhaps like a corporate security force. All three of those demanded fairly rigorous schedules, but no such schedule or expectation had ever been communicated to me by Anemone.
I returned to Anemone's camp anyway, since I had unfinished business, and now I finally had some money.
Nobody seemed to have cared about me stepping out. …I hoped there wasn't some sort of unspoken rule that all androids simply knew by virtue of being androids. Nobody had accosted me for any wrongdoing either, so I was doing fine for the moment.
I chuckled, causing a few of the androids outside the camp to look my way curiously.
My crash site was barely an hour's run away. It was almost comical how oblivious they had been. An abandoned enemy facility was buried just a few kilometres from one of their local centres of operations.
Ah well. Finders keepers. It was mine now. A fine addition to my collection.
I walked past the same pair of guards from earlier and re-entered the camp.
"What do you mean he's asleep?"
What? Just how far were these stupid cousin humans going to go in the name of their hubris?!
Who built servitors that required—ah, wait, 'sleep' must have actually been processes for maintenance and the like. I felt a little silly for my outburst now.
The dark-haired android grimaced at me.
"Look, I don't know how it was in your day, but you've got to learn to chill out a little. The war effort is a marathon, not a sprint. All the failures since you were last awake should be ample proof of that."
What in blazes was he—
Oh, he didn't realise I was looking for Carver because I had the money to buy one of his Pivisee statuettes.
I scratched my head and looked up at him apologetically.
"Ah, please excuse my manners. I'm an amnesiac," I said, laying it on a little thickly, "I'm running on mostly instinct at the moment, and don't have much common sense. I urge you to bear with me."
He placed his human-looking hands on his dusty hips and gave a human-sounding sigh.
"Yeah, sorry. I don't mean to be harsh. I don't envy your circumstances. It's gotta be tough."
He looked at me with a very human-looking expression of empathy.
"Thank you," I said a little guiltily. I squashed the feelings. Harden your heart, Hari! You're an infiltrator now! Until you know what their human masters are like, you don't have a choice! "I'll speak with him later then."
"It'll be easier once you start getting a sense of everyone's schedules."
Well, at least the other stalls were open. I had no money with which to buy anything though—my earnings had already been earmarked for Carver's goods.
Gah.
I headed back over to the request board.
A/N: I was meant to write the story that I started while procrastinating on the story that I started while procrastinating on the story that that I started while procrastinating on my comatose Code Vein fic, but instead I procrastinated and updated this one instead.
Edits might come later.