Yuna stiffly ignored her partner. Her blood temperature rose a few degrees, but she kept her calm.
"I forgot," she said to Tama, "that we have some other place to be. I'm sure the Taii has us on our way already."
* * * Two days, six hours later — SAINT Deep Space Observation Post, Ull, Heimdall * * *
The observation post was little more than a FOB on the surface, though it had an energy shield around it and a large sensor facility at its core and a starport large enough for a shuttle. The base was upgraded with the production of the
Type 33 POM.
Which made it seem very innocent to any passersby who ever saw it.
Beneath was a
Spire that featured few people — perhaps a large battalion's worth; SAINT never was clear about it — and many, many sensor and communication arrays, including one very powerful transceiver constructed through the center.
Most people worked at the spire's root, many kilometers below the surface. There, nested at the bottom of the transceiver, rested the entity Tamamo and her caretakers needed to see.
SOLOMN — Single-Origin, Loyal Omniscient MachiNe
The ride down to the root took surprisingly little time — mostly because they flew down themselves, Yuna holding the healed but still-considered-recovering Tamamo on the way down through the center of the spire. They passed by any number of doors, leading to who knew what else. Nothing Yuna wanted to know about. More spooky shit, she wagered.
Minders met them at the bottom, dressed in black panels and with equally black hair. The ranks gave Yuna pause — a Shosa was the least ranked, a Shôshô the highest. The Shôshô introduced herself as Ooura Anna. She had a Taisa with her, a
Takomi Rin.
The Taii hadn't been allowed to come with them. Weird, that.
"How are you feeling, Tamamo-san?" the Shôshô asked, her voice echoing across the empty, flat walls of the spire's "base". Yuna wondered exactly where they were going to go from there, and why on a planet as cold as Ull that the spire was so warm inside. She tugged at the collar of her black-paneled Type 22 uniform.