A Distant Reverie

Chapter 107

The original plan involved sending out scouters to map out the interior of the Incursion command center after they had breached the walls. The scouters were tiny autonomized machines, similar to the remote mines, except they traded explosive potential with augmented scanner modules. They looked like small critters as they poured out of the hatches of Ame and Shiori's Exos.

While Ame and Cecilia were able to gather environment data about the surroundings of the Incursion command center, its interior was a black box. The only thing they knew was that the fortress served two purposes—one, to harness raw materials from the nearby mountain to construct additional Incursions and two, to provide energy and protection for the central command Incursion AI of this region.

Suisei glanced around. The interior of the fortress was bizarrely constructed, giving an eerie, suffocating feeling. The dimensions of the hallways were weirdly non-uniform—taller in certain parts, wider and narrower in others with no apparent reason. There was also many bends and twists. It looked more like a labyrinth formed by nature than an actual fortress. That was to be expected, however. This fortress didn't exist before the Incursion's emergence. It had been constructed entirely from scratch by the Incursion AI when they arrived at this region of the world. It was obviously not built with the intention to be used by humans.

"It seems like there's a hangar up ahead," Ame communicated her findings over the general voice channel, "We're probably in the manufacturing sector of this command center. The scouters are finding lots of inactive Incursions in the midst of being built. This is likely the reason why their numbers outside won't go down."

"Yeah. Let's avoid that area. I don't want to get into a fight inside the command center," Shiori said.

"Should we destroy the manufacturing plant?" Calli asked.

"I don't think we have the firepower to destroy it completely, but we can probably slow them down a lot," Ame said, "I doubt the Incursion AI has built redundancies into their manufacturing pipeline. Based on the design of this place, the AI never expected people to actually breached its walls. The security here is surprisingly lax."

"Well, ever since the Incursion's emergence, no one has actually succeeded in breaching one of its bases before. We're the first. The Incursion AI doesn't have data that this is even possible," Calli added.

"I think it underestimated how stupid and psychotic we are," Vesper joined in.

"Does anyone else still remember that we have a Marine stuck in the offline Exo?" Suisei asked, clearly irritated by the direction of the conversation.

"Cecilia, what's her status?" Ame asked.

"I've turned her Exo off and temporarily disabled access, but the Exo's life support and vital readings should still be functional. Based on baseline measurements, Ms. Marine is currently unconscious. Likely reason is exhaustion."

Makes sense, I guess. She was rampaging nonstop ever since the salt storm ceased. An Exo isn't supposed to be piloted like that. Even if it was during a manic episode, she's still human.

"Please switch her Exo to Compact Mode. Everyone else should do the same. Kiara, attach a harness to connect Marine's Exo to Vesper's. We will proceed as soon as the scouters locate the central AI. In the meanwhile, I will send remote mines to the manufacturing bay to delay new Incursions were being built."

The hallway creaked as the Exos moved according to Ame's instructions.

Shiori suddenly spoke while Ame prepared a drove of remote mines, "The interior of this fortress appears to be optimized for power transfer. Makes sense, given how energy intensive powering the central AI is. I'm re-routing the scouters to scan for energy transmission lines and to follow paths with the greatest power density."