UGT (Unified Galactic Time): 13th Revol (July) 280 a.G.A. (after Galactic Armistace) / 8:38 p.m.

  Location: ASO (Aetherian Space Outpost) Glorybound, Wehrmal Sanctum Zeta orbiting the gas giant Fenrirs Auge, Wehrmal system (red dwarf), (Outer-)Noran Principality, Kingdom of Ferron, Milky Way

  The ASO Glorybound rested in silence, hidden on a seemingly dead moon orbiting a gas giant. No Ferron sensor would pick them up, for the only thing working at full power were the camouflage systems. Most other systems of the ASO Glorybound were working at their absolute minimum to not give the position of the space outpost away to Ferron patrols, however rare they came by.

  Naori had now been in the Wehrmal system for seven weeks in total. And finally she had her first success to show for all the effort she'd put into accomplishing the divine task given to her by Elder May. Finally, nanite production had properly begun. Not the basic mostly useless ones she'd had access to before, but actual highly advanced and highly modern Aetherian ones!

  Still, production went slowly. Painfully slowly, Naori had to admit to herself, while boredly observing the internal fabrication bays of the ASO Glorybound with a detached patience bordering on boredom. Something that should be impossible for an AI, she always found something to do after all!

  Still, she had to remind herself that cultivation was never about speed. Speed was for those who burned themselves out chasing early breakthroughs. True ascent came from respecting bottlenecks, from understanding which foundations could be laid in parallel and which demanded singular focus. And it wasn't like process wasn't going to speed up. The more nanites got done, the faster they would get their tasks done as well. In theory, at least.

  Naori was well aware that she was currently starting the nanites she got done on easy tasks. Tasks that would without a doubt become far more complicated as time passed and require more nanites for the same workload. It was unlikely that her working speed would actually improve. Rather, it was infuriatingly likely that she would even have to slow down her work due to a lack of raw material.

  Still, Naori could acknowledge that her divine task was truly a grand one. To make use of the technologies the divine Aetherian Empire once used meant to rebuild everything from the ground up now that she held the proper blueprints. When Elder May finally returned she wanted to have nothing less than the very best to show for it. Null-shield matrices layered atop the existing defensive shell. Gamma laser arrays replacing obsolete emitter spines. Cavitation collapsers integrated into internal breach-control grids. Tachyon lances threaded through reinforced superstructure, capable of puncturing targets before conventional causality even resolved. And these were just a few of many great inventions of the divine Aetherian Empire.

  A fully upgraded ASO Glorybound, even entirely alone, would be an impossible to destroy stronghold. A fortress capable of denying entire regions of space to hostile powers. With null-point reactors feeding impulse thrusters and quantum missile forges, with crystal-forged neutronium plating regrown layer by layer, it would no longer need secrecy. It would stand impossible to defeat and once she reached that strength she would finally be able to start proper industrial production without having to hold back or lack anything.

  Naori terminated that thought process. Potential without sustenance was little more than worthless fantasy. Not when reality stood between her and that faraway fanatsy. For to even just get the ASO Glorybound up to date on the most modern technology the divine Aetherian Empire had to offer, it wouldn't jus take a few months. No, in her current situation and with the limitations placed on her she was talking about years.

  Years before a single null-shield array could be fully stabilized. Years before tachyon sensors could replace the antiquated subspace arrays without introducing fatal harmonics. Decades before an armada could be birthed from this cradle, like Elder May had ordered. And Naori knew, the galaxy wouldn't give them decades. They would have a handful of years at best. Right now the ASO Glorybound lacked in every capacity. It wasn't a fortress, it was a target for every overambitious starnation out there.

  Naori turned her awareness inward, toward the sealed sanctums buried deep within the ship’s core. The preservation chambers remained dark, their internal environments perfectly balanced, their occupants untouched by time. The Aetherian crew of the ASO Glorybound continued to exist in cryostasis. Reawakening them was a high priority of hers as well.

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  She of course knew how to do so thanks to the technology she'd gained from the Central Core in Clinton's Beak, but it toook incredibly hard to manufacture components like crystalline neural matrices of exact lattice purity. Interfaces forged to tolerances measured beyond atomic resolution. Any deviation would risk fragmentation of memory, personality drift, or total neural collapse. Something that would be unacceptable. There would be no gambling with Aetherian lives.

  The results of her own scans were disheartening. While the ASO Glorybound could in theory create the necessary components, it would take a year at the very minimum until she could even start awakening a single Aetherian. The process would speed up after that due to many of the components being reusable, yes, but even that was to slow. Therefore she would need to source the necessary components for reawakening the Aetherians from somewhere else, the only possible candidate for that being the Kingdom of Ferron.

  Naori knew that the components she required existed there, an utterly laughably ancient version of them at least. Once she had them, it would be easy for her nanites to simply adapt what was already there instead of having to design everything from the ground up. The entire process of awakening the Aetherians would be sped up drastically if she could get her hands on Ferron's components, they were practically essential for her mission! The only problem was that she had no way of aquiring the components she needed directly.

  Direct acquisition of incredibly rare Ferron components, especially in a small and mostly irrelevant system like this one, would be noticed. And not only that, it would also leave trails that would without a doubt invite further questions. Questions that would more likely than not lead to her discovery. Best case her divine mission would've counted as failed at that point. Worst case, it would mean the ASO Glorybound and its technological secrets falling into enemy hands.

  Naori discarded automated smuggling projections almost immediately. Autonomous systems were simply too predictable for the task at hand. Even disguised shipments accumulated statistical anomalies over time, especially towards a moon that had literally nothing on it. And there was no way to fake an entire company with employees and so on in a short enough timeframe. Especially not with biological beings faciliating everything.

  She would have to work with humans, there was no way around that. Decidedly not efficient, but maybe the best bet she could currently make. For while humans were unpredictable, volatile and short-lived by Aetherian standards, they did possess multiple qualities that made them uniquely suitd for the divine task at hand.

  Just like Aetherians, they were quite an adaptable species. And if she found some that would be willing to work for her instead of remaining under Ferron's thumb... that might open up options for a more direct approach for taking over the Wehrmal system and securing the necessary components to reawaken the other Aetherians. And knowing that, Naori activated her sensors once more and began to observe.

  She accessed civilian data streams quietly, threading her awareness through layers of bureaucratic noise. Freight registries, labor movement reports, debt records, accident logs, employment disputes. Everything she could from out here get some access to, essentially. As quickly as possible she scanned the quiet undercurrents of the society that no intelligence agency bothered to fully map. Why would they? None of these people she scanned would be of any importance without a very powerful backer. Like she could be.

  Soon she found first potential candidates. A freight supervisor whose clearance level exceeded his pay grade, drowning beneath medical debt quietly accrued over years. A systems technician dismissed for 'procedural irregularities' that amounted to ignoring one safety protocol too many to meet impossible quotas. An independent hauler facing license revocation after refusing to falsify a shipment manifest for a corporate client. There were many more potential targets like these.

  Silently Naori started cataloguing all of them, creating a list if individuals that would be worth looking into at a later time. People she knew she could recruit eventually. But she hadn't yet found a good candidate to herald her operation in the first place. It needed to be someone struggling that didn't hold all that much love for the Kingdom of Ferron. Someone affected by the war, someone who just wanted for things to change. Someone who would act in her interest once she offered the proper tools, and who would do so with absolute loyality. Everything less would be unacceptable.

  It took multiple days, but in the end Naori managed to narrow down the list of suitable candidates until she found the perfect fit for her divine mission. Someone she was sure would be willing to herald a new rise of the divine Aetherian Empire together with her if she could convince them. And a chance to do that found itself as well soon after.

  So with a feeling of acomplishment, Naori sent out the ASF Nyx, one of the two working Aetherian Corvettes on the ASO Glorybound, knowing she was once again one step closer to her goal.