Chapter 117

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Chemical Laboratory.

"You stabilized it?!?"

"Yep!" Ella smiled, leaning back into her wheelchair. "Wasn't easy, but using some of the stuff recovered from the airships, plus experimenting with some of the Tarkian stuff you stole, I was able to make a stable explosive compound." She gestured at the stick on the table. "Pretty similar to dynamite, if more stable but less powerful."

"That's great! Finally I'm going to be able to make shells that don't cost an arm and a…leg…" Alexandra looked at the maid's worried expression. "What?"

"When I said 'stable', I didn't mean 'shoot it out of a gun' stable."

"Ah."

"I mean, it's possible to do it, but you're going to have a lot of…accidents."

Alexandra winced. But then she brought up her interface.

"What did you need to make that explosive again?"

Ella listed the ingredients and quantities, and Alexandra began running a cost assessment. She'd already been good at this kind of stuff while she was in the navy -she hadn't gotten promoted so fast just because she got along well with Arcadia, and apparently became part of her!-, and becoming a dungeon core had only sharpened that talent.

"That's…still less than a third of the cost of the explosives I got from the first batch of core thieves. Well, second batch if you count Ally and Pyn's group. And that includes the infrastructure costs of building another lab, plus using the exact same, unoptimized process. Given the absurd cost of those explosives, it might just be worth it."

"You're going to lose a lot of guns."

Alexandra sighed…and then froze.

"...Only if I use artillery canons!"

Ella tilted her head, confused, and Emilia chimed in.

"The artillery rockets?"

"Bingo!"

"Wait, wait, we have katyushas?" Said Sarah.

Alexandra froze, and slowly turned towards the maid.

"What did you just say?"

"...wait, wait, we have katyushas?"

Alexandra opened her mouth…then closed it. She kept forgetting the degree of cultural contamination this world had gotten from Earth. Which shouldn't be the case, they were speaking english by the Gods!

"Sorry, just…not used to people using terms from my homeworld." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "But yeah, I've been working on prototypes for artillery rockets. Couldn't test them much, but they should be a lot easier to use than, well, shells. Especially since they use a kinesys launcher and the 'rocket' part is a bit toned down thanks to that. So it won't hammer the payload as hard."

"Why not just use a purely kinesys cannon then?"

"I've tried. Scaling it beyond a certain amount of acceleration or projectile mass just…breaks the damned thing, and I don't know why!" Alexandra sighed. "If I'd solved that issue I'd already be building pulsers, believe me, and not some half assed RPGs that, while still delivery their payload, effective destroys the launcher every time it's fired. And the golem firing it.. I'm still missing something as to how magic manipulates gravity, and it's preventing me from going forward."

The maids exchanged looks, then gazed at Emilia, and the vampire girl sighed.

"I know, I know! I could probably ask home for help. And no I won't do it. There are protocols for a reason. There's only so many spells I can just…hand over!"

"Ah. So there is a magic solution." Alexandra made a mental note of it. She'd been starting to wonder if it was simply impossible to do with magic, and the pulser turret she'd absorbed only worked thanks to a technological gravity generator, and the runes were only a boost. "And I'd ask for a hint but…" She shrugged. "I know the story by now."

"Right."

"Well, in any case, that." She tapped the stick of not-quite-dynamite. "Is fantastic news! Alongside the new weapons I'm developing, we can finally get to work building a real dungeon. And preparing defenses powerful enough to kick the ever living shit out of anyone who tried to steal my core again!"

The maids smiled wolfishly, and Alexandra grinned back.

Not to mention, they would enable her to make an army worthy of the name…with technology at least a century beyond the best the Republic could hope to field.

*****

"So, how are your men settling in captain?"

"As well as anyone could be, I suppose." The orc sat down as Allya gestured at his seat, with a nod of thanks. "The ships are functionally intact, but their design and specifics are very different from what my men were trained on. Still, we should be able to fly them, with some help. Sylvia's me,, for example. Her crew is very…adept at this kind of thing. So we will be able to begin basic maneuvers shortly."

"Excellent!" Allya smiled, and it wasn't a fake one either. The Republic's frigates being handed over by Mintz had been a gift from the Gods…problem was, they needed people to actually crew them. At which point she'd realized that captain Calder and his crew were without a vessel, and she'd asked him if he'd like to become commodore Calder. He'd politely declined her offer to enlist for the town's new airforce, but he had accepted trying to get the frigates up and running, and providing a framework of trained crewmen to train her troops, as well as commanding them until the Alberta II was ready for launch. Then she'd enlisted Sylvia, since 'taking over a foreign ship and making it work' was the single most basic part of a pirate's job description. "I know a lot of the men I sent were, well, recruited from the merchant ships, and thus hardly the best soldier, but we're not expecting you to cross the wasteland."

"Actually the crews have been satisfactory. They needed to be retrained, sure, but wasteland crossings aren't for the faint of heart, and they all at least had some combat experience from monster attacks. Some even from prior military service! And the high pay is motivating them to no end."

Allya chuckled. One of the good things about running a dungeon town with an absurd budget surplus was that she could afford to pay her soldiers very well. Not only did that help with retaining loyalty and avoiding bribery, but morale remained impressively high and hiring new people was fairly easy as well. The main problem was ensuring their loyalty, but a few magical contracts backed by the local WMC representative and some truth stones had helped sort them out. As a side effect, they had caught what appeared to be a couple of spies, and unless she was seriously mistaken one of them had to be Erisian. Which was terrifying, and did not help her paranoia any. What the fuck did the Empire want with her town? But that was a problem for later. She had more pressing issues right now.

"Well, that's excellent, and-" Allya looked up as someone knocked on the door, and the head of one of the knights serving as her bodyguards -Jeremy, if she remembered well- poked through the gap he opened. "Yes?"

"Milady, commodore Spear Mintz requests an audience." Allya's face went to a perfect neutral by reflex. To say that the Tarkian officer had been furious was a considerable understatement. When he'd learned some of his men had sold weapons to people who were planning to overthrow Allya, he'd gone ballistic. The baroness implying that said people might have been Republic-backed hadn't helped. He'd basically arrested all of his quartermasters and gone through his own logistics department with a comb. A very fine comb.

Last news Allya had gotten, he'd straight up executed half a dozen of his own men for treason, and had another three in the brig who, while unaware of who exactly they were working for, were going to have a loooong stay in a Tarkian military prison. She would have kept them for interrogation back home, but he seemed to be more worried about making examples and proving to her that this would never happen again rather than collecting intelligence.

That had, however, thrown a rather massive wrench in the unloading process of his ships, and she'd had to pull in some of her people to help. And even then, it was still going frustratingly slowly. Which meant that even after several days, they were still not finished, although only nearly. At least the trainers had been cleared of suspicion pretty quickly, and immediately began drilling her men on the new hardware.

"Show him in please."

"Right away milady!"

The guard closed the door, and Allya looked at Calder, who just shrugged. They did not have long to wait, as less than thirty second later, the door opened once more, and Spear walked in.

"Greetings commodore."

"Greetings milady. Captain." He bowed towards both of them. "I came here to apologize…and bearing ill news."

Allya's alarm must have slipped through her self control, as Spear visibly reacted.

"What…kind of ill news, commodore?"

"There has been an incident. Republic arquebusier troops, possibly a lost patrol, have opened fire on a Tarkian outpost, and the fight escalated. It is not war, at least not yet, but me and my ships are being recalled post-haste. We'll have to expedite the unloading process, and then me and my ships will be on our way."

Allya winced internally. She'd been afraid of something like that. She'd known internally that the Tarkians probably wouldn't be able to stay until the Republic made their move, but it was still a pain in the ass.

"That is problematical, but I fully understand. Please, if there is anything we can do to help, you only need to ask."

"That won't be necessary milady. My ships have resupplied and my troops got some shore leave. Which leads me to my apology. I was sent here as a commercial envoy, but also to assist you in resisting the Republic's ruthless and mad aggression." He shook his head. "It is my great shame that, if not for your own guard forces and investigators, we would have helped our foe rather than hindered them. In the name of the Hegemony and its airfleet, I formally apologize."

Allya opened her mouth to brush it off as unnecessary…then closed it. She could see in his eyes that he wasn't the type you could say that to.

"Thank you commodore. Your apology is accepted. It is unfortunate that the rot of the Republic's corruption can run so deep among our ranks, but it is essential that we root it out in purge it whenever possible. To this end, I would like to thank you. Undeniably, the traitors that were uncovered thanks to this event would have tried to arm themselves through another avenue, and it is only through your mission that this was possible, for surely they would not have been so bold or careless had the prize of your weaponry been so great. So while yes, your mission could have ended in disaster, in the end it has made us stronger, and helped us root out the corrupted within the ranks of both of our militaries. We will both come out ever stronger from this, and so will the friendship between Rebirth and the Hegemony."

The commodore's shoulders visibly straightened, and he nodded firmly. Allya sighed internally in relief.

Still got it, she thought to herself.

"Thank you, milady. Now, if you will excuse me, I will personally supervise the end of the offloading process, so that it is as smooth as possible."

"Of course commodore. And I wish you a safe journey back to the Hegemony!"

*****

Alexandra whistled as she worked on her new prototype. The new weaponry was nice and all, but it didn't cover all the bases she wished her Praetorian guard to, and she'd be damned if she left them under-equipped ever again! Besides, that kind of gear could-

"Alex?" Alexandra blinked, and looked up as Emilia stepped into the workshop.

"Vampy! What's up? I thought you were talking to your family."

"I was. And they had a message to pass along. Another one from my aunt."

Alexandra nodded. If it was from the vampire girl's aunt, it was pretty much guaranteed to be from Laria, the dungeon core from the Golden Gates dungeon. The one who'd arranged the delivery of the manuals and schematics of the influence stabilizers, among other things. Her contact to the, well, 'rebel' faction within the UDC, so to speak.

"Sure, hand it over!"

Emilia extended the sheet of paper, and Alexandra quickly absorbed the decryption key at the end, and went through the document.

Her hand tightened suddenly, and Emilia took a step forward, alarmed, but Alexandra inhaled deeply, and set the sheet down onto the workshop's table.

"Well, shit."

"What is it?"

"Apparently, elements within the UDC have kind of spying network in place, because they're very sure that the military forces being massed 'defensively' in Erakis have moved out. One guess as to where they're going."

Emilia's face darkened.

"They're coming to finish the job."

"Yep. Alright, fuck all current projects. I want both maids on military hardware. Main dungeon expansion is frozen, it's simply too time consuming and not profitable enough. We need to finish up our work on the steel step, even if we have to rush it, since we'll need the extra mana. And vampy?"

"Yes?"

"This time I promise you, we'll be sending them back either with their tail between their legs or in body bags long before they even get near you or your maids."