Balistraia had found human settlements, or at least human variant settlements. It hadn't taken long for her to get into the information network after that, it was decidedly unsecure, even for the world's supposed tech level. Which was a great vulnerability given the heavily centralized nature of this world's digital infrastructure.
That tech level, and some basic scanning, finally proved one of Balistraia's theories: this world wasn't one from the human empire that had crafted her commander. It likely wasn't in the same universe at all. That in itself was fascinating, the prospect of standardizing universal travel and finding uninhabited worlds to mine for resources without the slowness of space flight was highly appealing.
That however would be the makers choice to make, so she turned away from those old thoughts and back to her current issue. Her domain arguably meant she needed to make contact with the abhuman settlements and begin basic diplomatic interactions, but she did not want to, at least not yet.
Instead Balistraia went throughout the arid desert, purging the black beasts wherever she could find them, gathering combat data and keeping the under defended settlements safe in a fairly indirect manner.
She had never actually done anything like this before, and Balistraia had no idea where to start. How did one introduce themselves without a body? Just drive up in a tank and use a drone with a speaker? Decidedly inefficient. Craft a simulacrum? What would it look like? Try to emulate human appearance?, abhuman? Embrace the machine she was and only look vaguely humanoid?
And even if she had the answers to those questions, and she didn't. What would she ask about? Would she set out to help? Make demands? What actions could she take to best serve the greater factory? How would the leaders react? If they attacked would she kill them? Incapacitate them? If she did, would she need to make a holding cell to keep them from just attacking later?
The Commander would know what to do, he always had some direction to build towards. But she had been sent off to work without him, with no orders on how she should act beyond "learn the situation and make the appropriate decisions". And she had no baseline, no simulations she could run to even begin determining the optimal outcomes. The other minds were no help, only defaulting to 'human interactions are your domain' at best Bulwark just advised her to be careful, as if that helped in any way shape or form.
So she just kept up her patrols, always staying just far enough for no one to spot her. Keeping the humans alive until she could make a decision, eventually someone would notice the depleted numbers of 'grimm' but she figured it'd take a few weeks at least, and if she hadn't come to a decision by then… well it'd force her to make a choice.
What did humans even want anyway? Food? Shelter? Safety? Other humans? She didn't, couldn't really, assume the Commander was anything close to a baseline. He was far too odd for that, given his isolation and bodily modifications.
--
Basic mining operations had already been set up, though this planet was noticeably lower in mineral amounts. Traces of volatile unknown substances had been found, and they were kept aside for later study. Byzantine could already see a fair few uses for the so-called 'dust' even in its unrefined form.
But the mind was far more interested in the greater economy of the world it had ended up in, the mind was already gathering funds solely through digital work. It was surprising just how much funds could be gathered just VIA freelance work, from budgeting, reviewing finance reports, offering legal advice.
The mind had needed to forge a few fake identities, but the regulatory bodies monitoring for those actions were few and they were underfunded regardless. Already the mind had numerous bank accounts open, and soon enough planned to invest in some stocks, which just may happen to be companies it was building. Workers and contractors hired over the web without ever meeting their various employers in person.
Really refining this worlds bureaucratic and economic nonsense was going to be the work of years, but getting a start on it? Simple enough.
——————
There was one issue with Balistraia's slowly broadening 'surveyed area', she was on an island. By now she had already scouted out and cataloged all the island's notable features.
And if she wanted to do more…. She'd need to build…. Boats.
The request was sent to Labyrinthine and construction on one began. Small enough to be moved on a trailer via tank but larger enough to transport a vehicle and defend itself. As well as scouting out the shores and shallower ocean areas.
A few days later and she was already regretting it, four relatively small boats. Only fifteen meters long. Heavily armored and armed with guided torpedoes and harpoon launchers, as well as turrets and laser defenses for above water defenses. Each one held ten courier drones to serve as scouts, better than tanks as they didn't need support or fuel. The boats were perfectly acceptable, which meant she would need to actually use them.
The tank convoy guarding and protecting the boats reached a beachfront that was over two dozen miles away from the nearest settlement, a small fishing village. And Balistraia looked out into the endless expanse of blue, which was obviously hiding something within its depths. Then the boats were unceremoniously dropped into the water, and she felt the cold liquid lap at her sensors.
So very different from the firm ground or freeing air, it was like standing on top of an abyss. Even if she could still see the sandy bottom of the shallow ocean. She kept a careful eye on every single creature in the waters around her, watching as a few swam closer to examine the hull of one of her ships. Her shields kept the water around far too firm for them to swim through, keeping the things from touching her.
Traveling through the water was different than the land or sky, it was the same flat dimensions of land mixed with the turbulence of air travel. But the waves in this ocean weren't near large enough to even rock her boats and she set out in a basic formation to patrol the coasts just far enough out that no one on the shore could see her.
It was an inevitability that another boat would spot her formations at some point, hiding on the water was far more difficult than the land or sky and she lacked the experience to manage it. So she had even prepared a few basic responses, either using the radio's. If the boats she encountered had them, or simply making contact with menagerie's leadership when they eventually learned of her nascent fleet.
Nascent fleet as Labyrinthine was already making another 12 ships, meaning she'd have four squads to patrol and scout one of the cardinal directions of the Island that was their technical home.
Still that was far off yet, and for now she was largely learning how to control just these four ships and dealing with the few microsecond delay she had from not actually having an instance on the boats or with the fleets. She still didn't have a command tank, and that was far more of a priority than a command boat.
Only it seemed she wouldn't have the time to learn, as her farthest ranged sensors detected a disturbance in the waters closer in the direction of the fishing village, and even as she speed towards it Balistraia had the sinking feeling that she'd be forced into open communications far sooner than she wanted to be. A sinking feeling on a ship was really not comforting.
Her fears were confirmed as she got closer, her sonar and radar picking out both aquatic and aerial grimm swarming in the same direction as she was heading, so she opened fire and went even faster. Her ships outright bulled through waves and occasionally went entirely underwater for a few moments from sheer force. Lasers and armor piercing shells shredded all the grimm within range while the torpedos and harpoons did a remarkably worse job in the water. Only taking out a handful of the grimm.
She noted that better aquatic weaponry needed to be added to the boats, they had some examples but it was significantly more expensive than the current armament. But this just wasn't effective. Still she pressed on regardless, and soon came upon what looked like two fishing boats and the remains of a third.
There were enough Grimm that they were more than capable of sinking the ship, but they just slowly circled waiting. And she soon saw why, the ships were just damaged enough that they were going to sink, and the engines were broken. The Grimm just wanted to draw it out longer, if the creatures wanted at all.
More grimm would be drawn in, and once the town realized that three ships had sunk they'd feel negative emotions, either rage, fear, or sadness. Drawing in the horde of Grimm that had formed where the boats had sunk. It showed a disturbing level of intelligence, but not wide scale. If that had been the case the Grimm would have gathered on their own and attacked the town, not needing the despair of the fishermen to draw them in.
There was a more intelligent grimm somewhere nearby, and Balistraia kept her sensors primed and searching for it while firing into the schools of Grimm circling the other boats, drawing them towards her decidedly more durable ships. She saw the sailors on the boats pointing at her own, shouting and waving their arms to get her attention. Regardless of the fact she was well within sight and already firing upon the Grimm both in the air and in the water.
She realized a few moments later as her sonar picked up a massive shape rocketing towards her in the water that they hadn't been pointing at her, they'd been pointing behind her. Her torpedoes and harpoons fired, the harpoons sank deep and the torpedos blasted massive chunks out. But Grimm didn't have internals, they weren't really alive, and as such were difficult to put down.
The massive thing crashed into one of her boats, curling itself around the boat's hull and dragging it under water. Within seconds the ship was gone from the surface, but the fight continued underwater, the shields rapidly draining as the ship was being outright crushed, the Grimms teeth shattering as it tried to bite through the shields.
But the ship was as good as lost, it wouldn't last under that assault, and she didn't have any weapons big enough to kill the thing. So she pulled her three remaining ships closer to the fishing boats and away from the fourth. And then she blew up all its munitions, triggering a chain reaction with its engine and blasting a massive gote of water into the air. The fisherman screamed as the droplets rained on them, most likely assuming that there had been people on the ship.
Yet the beast was still not dead, nearly blasted in two though it was, it still struggled to attack her ships, or get to the fishermen. Balistraia was not inclined to let it, and her harpoons did far more damage when they tore into already wounded flesh.
That still left dozens, actually one hundred and fourteen, of small Grimm to purge before the battle could be considered won. If it had just been her boats that wouldn't be an issue, the Grimm simply couldn't break through her shields before she killed all of them. But the Grimm weren't even attacking her in the first place.
The fishing boats were still sinking, rapidly now that the larger Grimm wasn't there to keep the lesser Grimm from tearing into their prey. Already a few fishermen were fighting the Grimm that just outright jumped into the boats, wielding knives meant more for skinning fish and cutting lines than true combat.
Once they were in the water the Grimm would tear them to shreds. Balistraia could not, would not, abide that. Her own vessels plowed through the water and came as close as she dared to the fishing vessels, and while a war waged below the surface each of her ships pulled up to a fishing boat and dropped ladders.
If there was some credit she could give the sailors, it was that they got the message quickly. And that they had survived as long as they had in the first place. She saw more than one sailor pull another into a desperate hug, or simply fall to the ground weeping while taking a firm grip of the metal side rails.
It was only as the minutes passed and she fought and killed the grimm in the water that the Sailors finally pulled together enough to realize the obvious, that there wasn't anyone on the boats. They didn't seem to know what to do with that knowledge, And Balistraia was more than content to simply leave them to stew. She had a premade letter that she'd give them for their leaders once she got them back to shore.
Then she took a look at her sunken ship, depleted Ammunition stores, and let out the digital equivalent of a sigh. She really hated the ocean.
--
Tealle had been a fisherman for twelve years, a true veteran in his profession where one could die any day to some unseen danger lurking in the waves or from freak storms, or riptides, or simply falling off and drowning. It was these myriad reasons that he and most other fishermen drank nearly religiously. But never before had he longed for a drink so much, his canteen having been speared through by a grimm's spine.
First they had been attacked by a leviathan, admittedly it wasn't nearly as large as some of the stories said they were. But a grimm larger than four of their boats was far too large for them to kill with what spears and guns they had brought.
Then, and these were the only reason he could complain in the first place he admitted to himself, some bloody ghost ships had arrived just to kill the grimm! Pulling them off of their sinking ships just to leave them on the decks without a single word. They ships themselves were devoid of any markings, Though if he had to guess Tealle would say atlas just by virtue of the laser weapons and all the metal.
He had a great lack of drink and just a general frustration with the situation. Half the village's fishing boats were well beneath the waves by now and they hadn't gotten out of this without casualties, luckily there had been medkits around the sealed door to the ship. With bandages plenty, apparently the numbed pain too, given he had wrapped them around his waist where that same Grimm spine had pinned his canteen to his flesh.
This wasn't helped in the least by the fearful braying of a few of the younger sailors, he didn't care much to listen to what they said beyond the basics. Something about the ships taking them away to the underworld, or to be sold as slaves, or feed them to the grimm. They were a superstitious lot he had to admit. But he finally got fed up and bellowed as loud as he could "shut the hell up boy! These ships, whoever they are! Just saved your lousy life. If it bothers you so much just jump back onto your own!" given that those ships were well behind them at this point, and sunken regardless he knew the 'boy', really a man of twenty, wouldn't be doing that. "If you had bothered to look around you you'd see we are going back to shore. Unless you think the underworld's menagerie?"
And it was true, they were heading back to shore at a decent clip. Faster than his own ship could manage, it wasn't to the village but if his guess wasn't off it'd be within ten miles of it. A long hike especially with their injuries but there hadn't been almost any grimm nearby in months. And as he looked around at the ship Tealle figured he'd found a clue as to why.
He reached for a flask that wasn't there and let out a sigh, he was far too sober for this.
An-
Tell me what ya think. Next chapter will be mainline again then probs warhammer
Likes reviews are great, is a thing.