Chapter 120

Low Orbit over Alcheryos

Citadel of the Flames

When the God of Fire had come back and caused the Dawn of the Flames, he had been thorough. Very thorough. He had deployed countless sensor platforms, and began a systemic purge of every advanced power source of the planet, only sparing a handful of locations like Gorromar from his wrath. When he had left however, he had not taken those sensors with him.

Arcane systems beyond the understanding of mortals woke from their partial slumber as the massive mana spike was registered on the surface. Platforms swung about in space, sensor clusters were extended, and high powered scanners beyond even the height of Alcherosyan science activated.

It relayed the information to the massive battlestation hanging in orbit, a gigantic disc covered in batteries of hyperfield projectors, missile launchers and planetcracker cannons. The gigantic central computer cores processed it, relayed it, and waited patiently for orders.

A few minutes later, the station flashed with energy as its teleporter array came online.

*****

"Well, they seem rather excited." Said Alexandra as she gestured at the screen showing the adventurers assembling in front of the entrance for the opening of the steel steps.

"To be fair to them, I don't know of any dungeons that has made something similar. And your golems are valuable to them. The clay and iron steps have to be the most lucrative part of the dungeon for the towns, and now that they have their own section without having to share it with the lower ranks…"

"They're going crazy over it." She looked at the screen a bit more, then shrugged and went back to her prototype on the workbench. "Well, they don't seem interested in causing riots anymore. At least that's something."

"You could get some serious essence from such a riot."

"Unlikely. With those knights here they have actual riot police now. Gone are the days of them rushing the dungeon and me getting to kill them. They don't even execute anyone. So the only thing it would do would be to delay the opening and thus people actually having a chance of making a misstep and getting offed. Besides, given their rank the essence would be paltry anyway." Which for that matter, was true. She wasn't going to spit upon the essence, but the reason she'd devoted so much time and effort to the main dungeon and the third floor, despite it being bringing in less mana than the steps, was because most of her essence income came from the copper and occasionally silver ranked adventurers she offed. "Besides, even in terms of items they rarely have anything new anymore."

"True, true. I suppose my old instincts are just overstaying their welcome." She smiled. "It's odd to think that you're no longer a tiny, helpless dungeon who needed help making her first defender!"

Alexandra looked at her advisor, setting down her tools.

"Okay, first, my avatar was always taller than you. Second, my first defender was more or less a carbon copy of the golems I managed to salvage, I hardly 'made' it. Third, I would have figured it out eventually."

"Oh reaaaally? Because I remember someone needing help every singe time she wanted to navigate her interface. Mmmhhh, who could it be?"

Alexandra rolled her eyes, and went back to her work.

"Shut up."

She could just picture her advisor's smug expression. Sarah giggling in the background wasn't helping either.

"Well, how is it coming along?"

"Nearly done." Alexandra smiled. "Thanks for the help by the way. Really couldn't figure out what was wrong with the runes."

"My pleasure. Wards are tricky at the best of times."

"So it seems." She stood back from the cylinder she had been painstakingly modifying. "Is it looking good?"

Emilia leaned over her shoulder, and nodded.

"Yep. Just make sure to reinforce the runes. Otherwise the ward generator will be too fragile for sustained combat."

"Got it. That's going to cost a bitch and a half."

"Hey, you're the one who insisted on making it able to recharge."

"Yep. Bet that's going to be a nasty surprise for these bastards." She continued for a few minutes, then leaned back. "And…done." She quickly absorbed the generator, and duplicated it. "Alright, let's see about installing that bad boy."

She turned around, generator in hand and walked towards the other prototype taking most of the room. Well, the sectioned part of the workshop really, since it had gotten to be more a warehouse crossed with a laboratory at this point.

She carefully slotted the cylinder into its slot, and stepped back.

"System, activation sequence." She had no need to speak aloud, but she was getting more and more used to issuing voice commands, what with the need to operate outside of her influence.

"Acknowledge." Said a pleasant contralto. "Activating. Please stand by." There was a whirr, and then the machine began to rise.

Massive mechanical legs moved, lifting a body encased in thick steel plating, emblazoned with myriad of runes. Eyes came online, cannons and primitive machineguns swung as it sat up fully.

Then finally, the runes hummed, and a bubble of energy materialized around it, as sequences emblazoned on it flashed one by one. Runes for leap, flames, and a myriad of other spells activated one after the other, not with enough mana to trigger them, but enough to determine if everything was working properly.

"Systems online. All diagonistics report full functionality. Spider tank, templar variant, ready for deployment."

Alexandra smiled. The Republic was never going to know what hit them.

*****

The guard didn't even look up as another person came in front of the booth. That was a bit odd, the last ship had finished disembarking over an hour ago, but there were always a couple of slow ones. He had no idea why some would take their sweet time getting out of the cramped airships that brought people to Rebirth, but he wasn't an adventurer or a merchant.

"Papers please." He said in a bored tone, before blinking as something metallic was dropped on the counter.

He raised his eyes, a harsh retort on his lips as he saw the trinket. He'd asked for papers not a pendant and-

His throughts came to a screeching halt as he recognized the symbol on the 'trinket'. An unbound flame, overlaid with a balance and crossed with a sword and scepter.

The badge of office of an Adjudicator of the Flame.

He looked up, and almost swallowed his tongue at the young woman standing in front of him, looking unnaturally calm…and flanked by two members of His Divinity's Most Holy Inquisition, their own badge of office, the scepter and sword replaced by crossed scythes, held clearly on display in their hands. All where dressed in simple, civilian clothing, but he had an eye for hidden armor, and the inquisitors were covered head to toe in what suspiciously looked like painted mythril.

The Adjudicator, of course, hadn't bothered with any armor. Only a madman would attack an angel of the God of Fire.

"Greeting guardsman." Said the angel, softly. "I completely understand if you call a mage to confirm my identity, but in the name of my patron, I hope that you and your colleagues could keep my arrival…discreet, if at all possible?" She smiled, and there was something unnerving about her face, as if the muscles didn't move quite right, like a face that was supposed to look human, but wasn't truly so. "I intend to make something of an investigation, and it wouldn't do for people to hide the evidence."

*****

"Milady!" Allya whirled around as the soldier burst through the door. Miraculously enough none of her guards killed him on the spot, although Valker had immediately put himself between them. "Priority message from captain Calder! Multiple military airships have been sighted, advancing in combat formation! Our vessels are scrambling, and the alarm is being triggered!"

"Shit! Valker, dispatch someone to the dungeon, immediately!" As she spoke, she could hear the warbling tone of the alarm starting throughout the city. "We need her to start deployments of her troops. And send an envoy to me so we can coordinate. Everyone else, with me! We're going to the operational command center!"

The operational command center was nothing more than a grandly named room in one of the artillery towers, but it was right in the middle of their largest and most vulnerable defensive zone, which just so happened to be facing towards the Republic. It was the most logical place to plop down something closer to the frontline, especially as Allya was in no rush to replicate the previous battle, with her and her guards standing next to her battle standard, and the mansion was simply too far to be practical, especially with all the traffic issues of messengers having to navigate out of the town.

It was in these moments she'd really wished for the Tarkians to not have just packed weaponry, but also some support equipment. She really could have used some radios, or hell, even simple field telephones!

"You heard our lady! Move it, go go go!" Yelled out Valker, before starting barking more orders as Allya exited the manor at a dead run.

*****

"What's the situation?" Said Allya as she entered the command center.

Philia looked up from the maps she was looking at, while Anders paced back and forth.

"We have confirmed a full squadron of light cruisers are inbound.. Definitely Elkisian, no one else uses bronze bombards for their naval ships on the continent. Not that it was much in doubt, they're flying their colours, but confirmation is always nice." There was something detached about the knight commander's tone of voice, and Allya's mental alarms triggered. "Our ready vessel did manage to get close enough to see what those ships were screening for however, before they were forced to turn back when the cruisers tried to intercept them."

"What did they see?"

Philia met Allya's eyes.

"An army. Ten, twelve thousand soldiers, at a minimum. At least nine battalion sized formations, and a metric ton and a half of artillery. Latest count is at least a hundred siege bombards. And a capital ship, probably a battlecruiser given the size, flying low."

Allya almost started panting. Twelve thousand soldiers? A hundred bombards? A fucking capital ship?!?

Had it been only her forces, they would have been so fucked.

Fortunately, they had a card up their sleeve.

Or rather, an entire deck made entirely of aces. As they said, if you aren't cheating, you aren't trying hard enough.

"How about our forces? And Crystal's?"

"Our ships are scrambling for takeoff, but it's taking a bit. We reserved the docking tower for critical transports, but we'll probably have to change that." Allya nodded. The tower had become partially operational in the last few days, and while that meant that it could only handle a few ships at a time, well…it could unload and load them somewhere around ten times as fast as they could on the airfield. Which was very important as those 'critical transports' included further reinforcements and the imported food the town depended on for survival. "Our infantry is moving out of the barracks to man the walls, and our artillery is reporting ready, for what little there is of it. As for Crystal, we've started seeing columns of golems exiting the military entrance to the dungeon, and she has warned us that she has her boss on the way to act as an envoy. The artillery she has emplaced is fully armed and reports ready, so even if they rush us with the cruisers we'll give them hell. I'm more worried about the capital ship however, we don't have anything that can pierce that kind of armor and-"

The yells were loud enough to pierce through the thick door of the command center. They all exchanged a look, and rushed out of the room.

For a split second, Allya didn't understand what the fuss was about when she stepped out of the tower. Then she saw it.

The mesa the dungeon was in was dissolving. Actually, that wasn't quite right, it was more like a band was being dug on the side. Then tracks began appearing in it.

And then a gigantic cart, like something pulled out of the nightmare of a siege engineer, appeared. It looked more like a bunker on wheels than anything, except for the gigantic bracing legs on the sides. And lastly, the cannon.

A gigantic gun, so big it would have probably ripped apart a wooden airship had it tried to fire it, appeared. And Allya smiled.

"You were saying, knight-commander?"

*****

"Ma'am, we need to shut down our operations, now."

Sylvia blinked, and turned to look at her executive officer as Maria grabbed her arm, belatedly realizing that the woman had triggered the privacy field as her executive officer dragged her away from the spot she'd been supervising her ship's takeoff sequence.

"What? Why?"

"I just received a message from command! The Citadel has activated its teleporter. They managed to track the destination…" She shook her head. "Ma'am they're here! I don't know if it’s a damned custodian, an adjudicator or a seraphim strike force but we have to go dark, now."

"Right. Fuck. Alright, shut down our plan B for dealing with that mercenary bitch. Damn it, if they get a hold of her…"

"We're all dead. Which is why we can't draw attention to her either."

"I know. I'll go warn Serabor immediately. Put all of our gear on deep cover mode, and arm the self destructs. Push comes to shove, we can vaporize the whole ship and enable Lesly to continue on without us."

"That would compromise the entire operation!"

"Knowing Joachim, there's a backup somewhere, I'm certain. And it's far better than the alternative."

Maria sighed.

"Probably, yes. Alright, I'll be going. And we need to act normal. If its an adjudicator, we're about to be ass deep in inquisitors, and they didn't earn that name for being afraid to dig deep."

"Agreed. Go! I'll handle the battle."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

Maria saluted, and left at a nervous, but controlled trut, and Sylvia turned back towards her crew, smiling and keeping every appearance of being assured.

While wondering if she was going to have to kill all of them to protect the Order.