Chapter 230

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Command Center

"So, how's the Kingdom holding up?" Asked Alexandra as she sat on the edge of the holographic projector.

"Well, it's still kicking, surprisingly enough." Answered Allya as she accepted a mug of hot chocolate from Emilia, smiling at the advisor. Used to having her own contingent of maids around or not, the vampire didn't seem to mind doing menial tasks herself if she had to, despite having a literal army of golems at her fingertips if need be. "The news of the encirclement of the capital came at the same time of our treaty with the New Republic."

"Double whammy?"

"Something like that. The shock of one was offset by the other. Many who declared their alliegance to Sunrise as the encirclement became known precipitously backtracked."

"Seriously?"

Allya gave Alexandra a meaningful look.

"Yes. Seriously. You didn't just crush the Republic, you turned its own army against it." Alexandra opened her mouth to retort that the baroness had been as much of a part of this as she had been, before thinking better of it. "And that army happened to be made of professional, willing soldiers. With Sunrise…"

"They're slaves. Ones with brands the nobles don't understand or necessarily trust."

"Yeah, which is going to be a problem."

"I know. I'm working on that front."

"Good. I'm no bleeding heart, but even I'm not comfortable slaughtering innocents fighting us against their will."

"Well, it is war, so no promises."

"I know. I'm not sure all of my council accepts that however."

"If by 'my council' you mean 'the twins', then yeah. They've been working up their courage to broach the subject."

"Probably because you know so much about their plans. Speaking of, still no idea what they need those ingredients for?"

"None, other than they're processing them into something Emilia insists are components for a large scale magic ritual. Something to do with enchanting."

"Wonderful."

"Yep."

"Well, besides that, the Kingdom is holding up surprisingly well. Sunrise is having to divert so many forces to hold the sieges around Darthar and Asaria that they're having to freeze on other fronts. They're even losing ground in a few places, particularly around Sarth."

"Ah. The duke making his move?"

"Actually, it's more along the lines of Sunrise being thoroughly unprepared for dealing with wasteland monster attacks, and the duke's vassals simply mopping up afterwards. It's far from perfect, but it's buying us time, and more importantly, breathing room. The farther from Sarth we can get Sunrise's troops and outriders, the less warning they'll have when the anvil arrives to compliment your hammer."

"An excellent point."

"What about you? Any progress on your new ships?"

Alexandra grimaced.

"I'm working on some siege ships, but I'm not getting anywhere. I can't give them guns as heavy as I'd like, so I'm trying for some missile equipment. And my golems just aren't cutting it right now, at least to target the damned thing."

"Well, I'm sure you'll figure it out…eventually."

They exchanged smiles.

"Sure, be like that. See you tomorrow for the council meeting?"

Allya let out a long suffering sigh.

"Yeah. This one's gonna be fun."

"Aren't they all?"

"Of course. The fear just make it extra spicy."

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"Depends on who they're afraid of."

"Well, the problem is that I'm not sure it's the enemy that has them scared the most nowadays."

*****

Alexandra drummed her fingers on the table as she looked at the golem in front of her.

She needed officers for her new airships. The problem was that, as good as the advanced golems were, they weren't good enough for this. And if she tried to separate the tasks into different units, she'd just end up with more problems. So she'd tried to cram more computing power into her golems…and ran into problems almost immediately.

She sighed as she leaned back into her seat. Making more advanced warships, with missile capabilities, was a nice thought, but it was already complicated to have golems that could handle ballistic calculations on the fly. Everything required to coordinate, target and deploy volleys of missiles was a bit beyond them, especially when trying to fight in a capital ship against an enemy that vastly outnumbered you and whose forces you generally didn't want to harm. Or at least, minimize fatalities. Usually that'd be the stuff you would dump on a ship's AI, but-

…But she was an idiot. She slapped her forehead.

She'd stopped herself from putting AIs in her ships because she'd been afraid of Seraph being tracked down, but her golems were AIs, more or less. And she had been looking at cramming more computers into a golem frame without making it so fragile it was unusable, while she could simply make a ship's computer, and put it inside a nice, heavily armored vault.

She pulled up her interface. She had a lot of work to do.

*****

System, system. Sent Alexandra, through her communication link with the computer core.

Acknowledged. Answered the computer, and the dungeon core sighed in relief. Okay, so it could answer the universal hail. Well, Arcadia's universal hail, but she had to start somewhere.

Designation? She asked the computer.

Designation: So Much For Subtlety.

Function?

Function: Ship's Computer and Artificial Intelligence for Culture-class siege vessel So Much For Subtlety.

Purpose?

Purpose: Manage ship systems, command vessels during combat, backup fleet commander.

Alexandra smiled as she looked at the pile of computers in front of her. Magnificent, now she had a ship's AI, and-

Query?

Aaaaand it was asking her questions. Or rather, it was asking for permission to ask a question, sort of. Well, she did load it with an Arcadia kernel after all, and if the AI had any defining trait above all others, it was curiosity.

Loading it with that kernel had been something of a hard decision, but she'd decided to do it in the end. It was ready to use, and moreover the God of Fire and his lackeys probably knew what she was. There was no way the control programs had missed that. So as long as she used hardware she was 'supposed' to have access to, and used kernels with limiters, she should be fine.

Which was why she was talking to a giant heap of computers instead of a small molecular computer core with five hundred times the computing capacity like the one Seraph used.

Acknowledged. Send Query.

Query: Designation?

Designation: Alexandra Rousseau.

Acknowledged. Disrepancy: Network ID designation as: ARCADIA CENTCOM 6 and as EFSN FLEET-HIGHCOM 1.

Oh. Oh shit. It could read her and the apparition's network IDs? Not even Seraph had been able to do that!

Fuck, where the hell was it even-

Oh. The AI had just pinged her systems, like an Arcadia node trying to identify another node would have.

Well…looked like giving it an Arcadia AI kernel might not have been a good idea after all. Shit.

Acknowledged. Network ID valid. Designation valid. Reconcile?

Reconciling data…Data reconciled. Designation: Alexandra Rousseau. Function: Arcadia Central Command Node. Purpose: Naval Fleet Command.

Affirmative.

Query: Orders?

Orders: Shut down, full log dump to central node.

Affirmative. Complying…

The computers purred, before powering down as the AI shut itself off, and Alexandra let out a deep sigh.

Well…this had gone as well as could be expected, all things considered.

Now, time to tell everyone she'd built another member to join the team. She looked at her internal clock, and did a double take.

Nevermind that, time to wonder how she'd gone fourteen hours without being interrupted by anybody. Damn. It had been a while since she'd been able to actually work on an actual AI. Might have gotten a bit too into it.

Well…it happened. She just had to hope her girlfriend wouldn't be too upset. It was already past their 'bed time', since the vampire was trying to make sure she took at least daily breaks now, if only to avoid just working and worrying about the war all the time. It didn't even involve their more…personal activities most of the time, it was usually spent on some minor stuff, simply hanging out watching adventurer delve footage, looking at the stars through the observation dome, or spending time with their daughter.

No point delaying it. Alexandra ordered the workshop door to open, and stepped into the hallway…and straight into Emilia.

*****

"So you made an AI?" Said Emilia, as she tapped her foot on the floor of the command center.

"Yes." Answered Alexandra, sitting on her command throne, while not feeling the slightest bit in command of anything at the moment. "It was the obvious solution to the problem."

"So…do we have another daughter?"

"I don't…think so. More like new subbordinates? Like Jared!"

"And you're sure they won't call you mom?"

Alexandra winced. Actually, for Arcadias, they called other nodes 'sisters' when they acknowledged any separation between them to begin with.

"They shouldn't."

"Uh uh. Because you see, CQ has been asking me when she was going to get siblings."

"...Oh."

"Yeah."

The radio, integrated in one of the consoles, crackled to life.

"It's also worth noting that CQ has walked into the room during this conversation, miladies." Said Sarah, right before a brief scuffle, that sounded like someone swiping the handheld.

"I'M GETTING A LITTLE SISTER?!?"

Alexandra winced as Emilia facepalmed.

This was going to be a looooong day, she could feel it.

*****

"All I'm saying is, that maid is absolutely stunning."

"Sonya, you already hit on the advisor, and it almost got you killed. What do you think makes this any different?" Said Pyris, leader of the mythril ranked adventuring party Crystalline, before sighing in relief as they arrived at the door. "Alright, game faces on everything. Looks like we're here. Can you confirm Artok?"

The dwarf, leader of the assault guild, and for the sin of his people having a death wish, now in charge of the salvage effort on the Old World landships, nodded.

"It is." He looked at the giantic blast door, inlaid with old letters and numbers. "We couldn't get it open."

"Yeah, I can see that." The giant slab of metal was covered in scorch marks, but the most the other adventurers had been able to do was remove the paint. "Alright, everybody stand back."

Sonya, her group's sorceress, tilted her head.

"What spell should I use?"

"I said stand back. You're not the only one that gets to flex your muscles."

"You just want to try out that new toy you got off of Eismi."

"You're right, I do. I'm also your party leader. Stand back, Sonya."

The sorceress rolled her eyes, but complied, and Pyris smiled as she gestured, and the large greatsword on her back unclipped from her armor on its own, and moved until it was horizontal, tip pointed at the door.

Pyris drove it forward, and winced as a great clang resonated throughout the room.

"What's the problem? Having performance issues?" Called out Sonya, and Pyris gave her teammate and lover a venomous glare.

Then, she started to pour mana into her blade, and the sword began to glow.

She wasn't exactly sure what happened next. Something to do with magnets and heat, according to Eismi. But the sword became brighter and brighter, and Pyris grunted from the strain as mana was drained from her core. Why-

With a cataclysmic groan, the door buckled, and the blade began driving into it. Pyris' let out a wolfish smile as she poured even more power into the sword, and the blade turned into a miniature star.

She began cutting the door open, before throwing the half melted rectangle of armor plating aside.

"You were saying, dear Sonya?" Said the paladin, turning around as her sword came to hover behind her.

"Nothing." Said the sorceress, before muttering 'show off' under breath, yet just loud enough to make sure the paladin heard her as Pyris turned back around.

The paladin ignored her, and stepped into the room.

"Alright, let's see what was so worth.…protecting…" She trailed off as she looked at the room.

A room packed bulkhead to bulkhead with racks.

Racks filled with menacing black cylinders. Cylinders with fins on them…and plastered with the nigh universal 'danger' and 'explosive' signs.

As well as a big old stylized trefoil arranged around a black circle, on a bright yellow background.

Radiation warnings.

"Oh. Oh shit."