Chapter 288

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Alesian Fortress Line

"Targets locked in." Said Subtlety. "All launchers ready. All ships report ready. Orders?"

Alexandra gazed at the wasteland, standing on the deck with the AI and the Count. At last the name of the desert made sense, as she looked at the characteristic crimson dunes. Pretty. And it would hide the blood sure to soak it very well.

"Fire in thirty seconds. Half cycle speed, metronome sequence."

The AI nodded.

"Aye aye ma'am. Thirty seconds, half cycle, metronome firing sequence."

Alexandra nodded, to confirm the order, and the AI saluted, and departed for the bridge.

It wasn't strictly necessary, in many ways the AI was the ship, but she was a stickler for protocol.

"Quite the impressive sight, milady." Said the Count, as he gazed at the vista before them.

"I know." Alexandra smiled as she looked at her fleet.

Which, at last, it was one worth calling such. Not a squadron, not a wing, a fleet. One capital ship with the So Much For Subtlety, four Freedom-class transports, three converted into marine transports and one into a mobile ammunition depot, not quite a fleet collier but close, two Corsair-class frigates and twelve Raider-class corvettes, half of which were her old raiding squadron, the ships she'd used to attack the Republic's supply convoys and eventually rescue general Amelia with. That meant that six were fully modern, three were retrofitted and more or less fully capable, just with a few quirks, and the last three were what she'd call useless if they weren't overwhelmingly superior to everything the enemy could possibly hope to throw at them.

And last but not the least, the first trio of Tetsudo-class escort cruisers, the class Ghost had dreamed up. About the size of a Freedom, they couldn't be more different. Those ships bristled with armor and short ranged weapons. They weren't made to punch above their weight class, like the Corsair or the Raiders, instead uncompromisingly designed to take on swarms of lighter vessels, and hold off larger ones through sheer survivability while the vessel they were screening annihilated them. A Corsair could actually take one down, but they could shred squadron after squadron of Asarian 'monster hunter' ships without blinking. Hell, with their short range missile batteries they'd even be able to take on actual planes and strikecrafts.

But that wasn't their greatest feature. With their recharging, interlocking and combinable shields, they could become an impenetrable barrier to anything short of a totally overwhelming attack. Was it costly? Yes, absolutely. But as long as she had the mana to burn, they could stand up to anything short of an archmage.

She'd hesitated to try them out against the fortresses, but decided against it.

There would come a day to reveal their full might. Today was not that day. That rear guard was not worth her best.

Alexandra heard the alarms, and tapped the Count on his shoulder.

"Time to clear the deck." They didn't technically have to, since the missiles would be ejected beyond their thrusters' ability to damage the deck, thanks to the missile launchers, not to mention thrown outside of the ship's wards, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

"Of course."

He followed her back into the bridge, and sighed as he carefully sat down into his chair.

Alexandra gave him a glance, but didn't comment. The poor bastard had gotten bored and asked CQ if she had anything to keep him occupied.

The problem is he hadn't quite realized that CQ had two occupations: designing cute stuff and murder, or the preparation thereof. And they were onboard a warship. She'd put him through the boot camp from hell and outer space. Relentless physical training, merciless sparing, constant action drills...She'd even arranged the spare parts depot into an obstacle course and had him climb disassembled missile launchers or crawl under propellers.

The hilarious part was not only that the Count had kept doing it, but seemed to be getting better too. He almost seemed to relish the change of pace, and while CQ was a relentless taskmistress, she was also effusive with her praise and assessment of his increasing combat capabilities. Yes, they ranked somewhere between 'hopeless' and 'wet noodle' compared to her or even Pyn, but he was improving. Now he could probably take on an actual slave soldier in combat. A few more days and he might actually make a decent conscript.

"Beginning launch sequence in three...two...one." Said Subtlety, and the ship shook. Except that this time it wasn't a single, great shake as all the launchers spoke, but intermittent tremors hitting every two seconds. At half their maximum rate of fire, the missile launchers cycled every twelve seconds. And under the metronome pattern, they fired in sequence, for a continuous bombardment. Not very effective against point defence, but they weren't expecting any. They'd already decimated the army's mages, the chances of them leaving any formation large enough to make for effective point defence was close to zero. "Launch successful. Impact in one minute, twelve seconds…mark."

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Alexandra nodded as she gazed at the hologram in the center of the room. On one side was the ship's status screen, with the holograms of the launchers steadily flashing as they launched and reloaded.

On the other was the fortress, with recon images and targeting data from the Raiders. The enemy had seen them, and they knew what it meant.

They were preparing for the bombardment to come. Good.

It wouldn't save them.

She flicked a glance at the Count. He was tense, and getting tenser by the second.

They both knew what was going to happen after all.

"You don't have to watch, you know." She said softly, and he shook his head.

"I do. Those people...they would have burned my city to the ground. And those slaves would have been forced to do it against their will. The least I can do is bear witness."

The dungeon core nodded.

"So be it."

*****

Sunrise actually had sent a fair few siege engineers with their southern army. Most originated from Lorenz, but the effort was vital enough that some were spared from the main force and its push towards the capital. They weren't there for Darthar, the fortresses shielding the city had been seen as inconsequential, and the city itself and its shield made traditional siege weaponry worthless. No, they had been intended for the mighty fortress-city of Sarth, whose citadel was reputed impregnable, and its walls unconquered in over a millennia.

Some of those engineers had died in Alexandra's attacks, whether her surprise ground assault on the siege fortifications surrounding Darthar or the subsequent missile bombardment. Even more had fallen during the final assault on the trade city, desperately trying to keep their makeshift explosive rams from breaking down and being reduced to cinders alongside their creations when they detonated.

But enough had survived to go to work on the fortresses they had, mere months before, been tasked with destroying. They had learned a lot from their conquest, including many of their weaknesses, and learned even more from the dungeon core's harsh lessons in humility when it came to artillery at Darthar.

Their solutions had been brutally simple. They could not face the dungeon core's army in an open field battle. Nor did they want to. Their only goal was to make the fortresses' last stand as costly and slowing as possible. On the one hand, to buy the army time, but on the other to give those tasked with defending them bargaining power. They were not mad, the officers left there, not fanatical enough to choose certain death. If they were made into enough of a thorn in the dungeon core's side, they could negotiate a surrender, just like their Brigadier was planning on doing once he had retreated to Kaidan.

So, they dug pits and trenches. Made bunkers and pillboxes, stuffed them full or ballistas and other implements of war. And then they borrowed into the cellars of the shattered fortresses, cellars they had taken by the sword when they finally fell, swarming with slave soldiers as the remnants of the garrison fought to the last man and woman.

Strategically placed spotters saw the booster flares of the missiles, and alarms were rung. Well drilled slave soldiers rushed into dugouts and hunkered down.

The missiles arched up...and came back down.

Thin metal casing exploded, and well placed charges dispersed the payload over a wide area as igniters set the entire misty cloud alight.

For the observers, still in their fortified posts, it looked as if the entire sky had caught on fire.

Then the cloud of fire hit the ground...and the screaming started.

The dugouts were a good idea. Excellent, even. Against traditional bombardment they were amazing defensive features and allowed soldiers to quickly get back into the trench lines after an artillery barrage, to prevent a rush attack behind a curtail of fire.

But they hadn't been made for this. They were dug into the side of the trenches...and lower, to allow for greater protection.

Gravity was a harsh, harsh mistress. And the dugouts had armored doors...but not waterproof ones.

The burning fuel drained into the overcrowded dugouts, and their occupants screamed. Some died within, others tried to evacuate.

The lucky ones were in the earliest dug artillery emplacements, when the army was still taking its time for its best siege weapons. There were multiple exits, including one into the fortress itself, and they escaped, more or less unscathed.

The rest simply stumbled into hell on Alcheryos, an inferno filled with their own screams, living torches wailing in agony as the brands futilely tried to force them to execute their last received orders, to evacuate.

And by the time the screaming in one section had stopped, three more missiles had landed.

Section by section, the defensive works caught fire.

And as they did, the golem army marched forward. There was no choice, no matter how much Alexandra would have preferred to advance only after resistance on the surface had been neutralized, golems still had to move on the ground, and that meant having them within artillery range if they wished to move quickly enough to pin the foe within their own fortifications.

Observers noticed it, and orders came out. Troops in certain sections leapt out of their dugouts to man their heavy siege weapons. Over half of them only did so to receive a rain of flames and death. But others successfully swung the artillery pieces around, and fired, having drilled mercilessly so that the dungeon core's coup of capturing their own siege weapons unfired by a ground assault wouldn't repeat.

Enchanted projectiles, simple boulders and even a handful of oil jars, flew towards the advancing army, aided by magic to gain ranges that would have otherwise been undreamt of, allowing them to duel even cannon armed airships.

The golem army halted. The projectiles came back down...and crashed into Republican formation wards. The very same Amelia's army had used during its attack on Rebirth.

The very same that Alexandra had exchanged for howitzers and machineguns with the New Republic.

The golems halted, and unlimbered their own heavy artillery. Then, they returned fire.

The howitzers weren't actually that effective against such dug in fortifications. Their precision left a lot to be desired at such distances, and the enemy had prepared for them. Still, if one fired enough shells in an area they were bound to hit something, and Alexandra had brought over a thousand howitzers to find out.

Aided by the Raiders for precise targeting data, they began a methodical counterbattery of the longer ranged trebuchets, coordinating with Subtlety to avoid targeting the same area twice.

For the weight of fire they threw, their effectiveness was remarkably pathetic. But they kept the enemy's head down enough that the siege ship completed its bombardment, and allowed the army to get closer still.

Then the guns switched targets, and began suppressing the entrances of any dugouts or bunker they could find, while the So Much For Subtlety annihilated the primary entrances to the fortress.

It wasn't perfect. If nothing else, many of the dugouts for the premium artillery pieces did have access to the fortress and Sunrise's officers, who were no one's fools at this point, made use of them. But the throughput of soldiers was too low, and too many had perished from the fiendishly effective incendiary weapons.

Slave soldiers did get back into the trenches, but only to be pushed back by flamethrowers and grenades. Once again, the golems weren't looking to actually take them on, simply keep them out of the way, as shock troops swarmed over the fortifications, leaping across trench lines as they sprinted towards the surviving access points.

Suddenly, the slaves in the trenches found themselves cut off, as shock troopers tossed satchel charges down staircases and ramps, slamming the doors shut, and setting up machinegun positions to shred anyone who had the temerity of trying to rip them open again.

Some of those slaves had their officers with them, who seeing the writing on the wall, ordered an immediate surrender.

Others were not so lucky, and were simply massacred as the golems stood back, and let the slaves come to them.

And then silence, only broken by the crackles of flames still burning recently ignited corpses or particularly slow burning fortifications, descended upon the desert once more.

Alexandra was victorious.