Chapter 282
Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth
Alesian Fortress Line
The Brigadier stared at the report in horror.
The dungeon's army was on its way?!?
He'd barely believed it when he'd received word of the army's arrival in Darthar, it had seemed like a trick. The speed of their crossing alone was ridiculous. But he'd erred on the side of caution and decided he may as well plan as if it was there.
But it had left, days ago if this was to be believed, just...vanished into the desert. Some fucking spies, if they couldn't keep track of an army tens of thousands strong!
He took a deep, calming breath. There...there might still be a way to salvage this. The fortresses weren't ready. Not yet. But...but with the news from Asaria, which the duchess had no doubt forwarded to try to keep him in line, there might be a way.
If he took the army east, immediately, and left a sizeable sacrificial rear guard, he could force the dungeon core to choose. Either go after him, or save the capital. She wouldn't be able to do both. And as long as he kept running and didn't do anything monumentally stupid like attacking her supply lines, she'd probably leave him alone, as a problem for later, while he reconstituted his forces.
After all, if she could crush the duchess, he wouldn't be much of an obstacle. But maybe, just maybe, the duchess would put enough of a dent into the dungeon core she'd be willing to negotiate, especially if he offered the freedom and lives of all the slaves under him.
It was almost grasping at straws, but at this point, it was all he had.
He got up, and opened the tent flap. He had orders to give.
Because if they wanted to have a chance, they had to leave now.
*****
"Well well well. Maybe our foes have some brains after all." Said Alexandra as she looked at the departing army.
Having surplus mana was a blessing. At last she could afford some decent recon flights.
"To be fair to them, they have surprised you a fair few times." Said Allya through her hologram in the dungeon core's command center, and Alexandra chuckled.
"Fair enough. Alright then. It looks like they're leaving some people behind. Probably to buy them some time." Alexandra licked her lips. "We can either simply rush them with the main army, or wait for the new missiles to make their way there."
"Your troops can take them, right?"
"Easily. The problem is I'll lose a lot of assault units. Normally, I don't care about losses, but..." Alexandra shrugged, her hologram reproducing the gesture all the way over in the Dusk Blade's cabin. "I'm still moving to restart production of the SCUs. This army? It's pretty much it. Plus, they'll have to halt for any reinforcements."
"Longer than it would take the siege ship to get the new ammo?"
"Way longer." Alexandra sighed. "Right, when it's put like that, it's obvious. We're in a race against the clock after all." Many, many clocks actually, but she didn't need to say that. Besides which, despite the unbelievable levels of security she'd put into her transmitters, she didn't fully trust them just yet. "I'll keep the army marching and order them to set up around the fortresses, make it look like we're going to do a good old siege. Then once Subtlety arrives, we'll do a good old shock and awe."
"Do you think they'll break?"
"The officers have to know this is a suicide mission. We'll resurrect the slaves over them, we made a big show of that in Darthar. So they'll either break immediately, try to surrender, or fight to the death. I'm prepared to accommodate all three."
"If they hold their ground, you might still have to launch an assault to clear the fortresses."
"Not really, no." Allya gave the dungeon core a confused look, and she returned a wolfish smile. "Three things. First, once I take out the artillery and destroy most of their forces, I simply no longer care about them. What are they going to do, harass my army?" Alexandra shrugged. "Oh, I know they could be a pain to our commerce, and be something of a threat to our supply lines, but if we take out their siege weapons they can't interfere with the air convoys, and the land caravans are heavily protected, or they'd never make it this far. Plus, if they retreat into their fortresses we can just deploy some seismic charges and demolitions."
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"Bury them?"
"Precisely. And last but not the least, the Dresden lesson. A...military concept from Earth. Named after a city that was destroyed in an old war. Thermal energy is transmitted to the ground, if your goal is to penetrate underground buildings, it is possible to cook the entire complex by heating the whole area." Or, in the case of the Terran Hegemony, using fissile material to penetrate it and use both radiation and heat to destroy fortified complexes. "The missiles might do that on their own, but we could also just pour in incendiary compounds, then seal the entrances. Suffocation and turn the entire place into an oven."
Pyn looked positively ill, and even Allya was uneasy. Actually, out of everyone there, which was pretty much everybody on her metaphorical payroll, only Ella looked enthusiastic.
"But let's hope it doesn't come to that." Added Alexandra. "Push comes to shove, we can send an envoy, and make an offer for their surrender. If it's hopeless, they'll probably give up if we guarantee their lives."
The baroness and the elf looked relieved, and everyone relaxed.
"Let's hope." Said the baroness. "Let's hope."
*****
Alexandra stared at the spear, as it slowly floated in the anti gravity field.
Over a week of examination, and they'd learned basically nothing.
Well, that wasn't quite fair. First and foremost, they'd confirmed the spear was divine tech. That was something. It proved that the Church had probably something to do with this mess.
The way they'd proven it was a simple case of enchantments. This thing's were written exactly like the modifications the God of Fire had put into dungeon cores. It was almost eerie, in fact. Were the same programmers responsible, or was there something else at play here? Usually you expected some difference, like how the programming...style, for the lack of a better word, differed between a naval computer and the missile it was firing. Here in this case they were borderline identical.
Which heavily implied it was the same team. Weapons technicians having done the dungeon core modifications...would actually explain a lot. Such as how they could miss something as obvious as a trojan horse attack, like Ghost or what they were planning to do to other dungeon cores. It's not like the enemy was going to try or be able to upload viruses to your sword.
They'd also determined some other things. Most of the spear was made of some strange metal that was reminiscent of mana constructs. It was physical, not pure energy, but it appeared to be half actual material and half solid energy. Then there was the tip. They...had no fucking clue what the hell it was, beyond 'dense enough to approach neutronium'. That material made no fucking sense to her, or to Emilia. Why it was on a spear also begged a lot of questions. High density materials were all fine and dandy for railguns and kinetic projectiles, but if the rest of a melee weapon could follow it up, those weaker links would break against sufficiently tough armor.
That...or the spear haft, with its half mana construct property, couldn't break unless it ran out of juice, like an archon couldn't be killed without running out of mana first. Uh. Something to explore.
Still, why the tip? Why such a difference in density? That material looked like it belonged in a railgun, not-
She froze. Why was she even wondering about this? She was an idiot.
Ghost needed a material to fire out of a surface to void railgun. Well, she had it.
The question was, could she replicate it, and if she did absorb it, would it take out the spear? Make it non functional?
She sighed. This was just like the Flickerlight. She was still making progress with the crashed ship, but it was slow, cautious progress.
She had managed to worm her way into some of the communication systems. Good news, the ship had no contact with any command structures nor other vessels within its squadron.
Bad news, it was still exchanging covert pings with something. Unfortunately, since they were under some kind of stealth recon mode, she couldn't find out what. They were probably some kind of sensor platform or drone, either left in orbit or launched by the ship itself.
But she wouldn't put it above the God of Fire of coding that kind of thing in.
There was...another possibility. A riskier one. She could order the ship to open its airlocks, publicly, when her secondary dungeon core finished its journey to Darthar she set up her branch office. Maybe even engineer some kind of attack? Effectively make it 'safe' to explore under the edicts.
But then...then there was no telling how the count would react. It would be under Allya's privileges as overlord to take over responsibility for the ship, but its shield was vital to Darthar's existence. Even just the risk of shutting it down might cause sandstorms to shut down the airfield, maybe even make it fully unusable.
That wasn't a risk anyone was willing to take, and that meant their new ally would fight them on it. Not to mention Starvak and the adventurers guild would probably try to stick their noses in as well.
Alexandra rubbed her forehead. Wouldn't that be a joy.
At least Subtlety had the high tech missiles, Allya's 'gift', and she'd acquired the components she wanted from them. The missiles themselves weren't bad, but they certainly weren't something she'd build right now. Their shield penetration systems intrigued her however, though that was another one of the many, many projects Ghost and Seraph had on their plates.
She really needed to get them some kind of vacation, though Ghost had made her own it seemed, with that little dungeon of her own. Eh, maybe she should call her other self 'apprentice dungeon core' to mess with her, that-
Alexandra threw herself back from the workshop table and the spear as alarm filled her interface. What? Wait-
Those weren't the alarms for the dungeon entrance or the mesa fortress. They were for the cabin on the Dusk Blade.
And Allya's panic button.
No. No no no NO!
*****
Allya wasn't even fully awake by the time she hit the floor, and yet she already had three daggers in the air, and a fourth in one hand, while the other slammed on the panic button.
Pyn didn't have her reflexes, but she'd learned a lot since they'd started their little adventure, and she was already drawing her bow, arrow notched.
"I like her already." Said one of the intruders, apparently utterly uncaring of the trio of daggers embedded into his flesh.
"Lady Aubétoile, Lady Windwrath, please, there is no need for violence." The second intruder took off his hat, and Alexandra saw the glint of a cybernetic arm.
She waited for a second, before moving her hand from the panic button to the light switch, one of the many implements replaced by Alexandra in her bid to ensure the entire cabin was one hundred percent secure.
She flicked it, and her heart almost stopped.
A man, clad in an ancient duster jacket and holding a wide brim black hat, smiled at her. She knew those clothes. She knew that cybernetic arm, the appendage that had inspired Eismi's own augmentation. And she knew the massive sword on his back, Falling Sun.
Rook the Sunderer pressed his hat to his chest, and bowed.
"It's a pleasure to meet you at last. I have been following your progress with quite some time."
There was a pause as Allya stared at him in shock, before she managed to swallow.
"I...had surmised that. I assume you're here about the twins?"
"Quite. And their cargo. Please, let us have a civilized discussion, I have no wish to harm you or your fiancée, you are everything New Raleigh stands for, and there is no need for violence between us."
Of course, the moment he finished was the moment the breaching charge blew the door off of its hinges, and the golems swarmed into the room, firing as they came.