Chapter 137

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

City of Rebirth

"Are you alright?" Said Raika as she sat down next to Alyssa.

"I'll live." Said the healer, bitterly, before giving her party leader a weak smile. "Seriously Raika. You don't need to hover constantly. I'll be fine."

The young woman sighed, and gave the healer a firm nod, with only a slight glance a her missing arm. The arm the healer lost trying to defend their extradimensional party member from their new 'masters'.

"Of course." She sat up, and gazed at the warehouse currently serving as their home. At least they had the courtesy of small cubicles with curtains for a semblance of privacy, which was a lot better than what they usually got.

Raika sighed, and sat up, walking onto the warehouse floor, and beelining to Fernand's little alchemical workbench.

Inevitably, he was there arguing with one of the mercenaries. As soon as their 'masters' had figured out he could make health potion, they'd put him to work right away. Since then, well, mercenaries being mercenaries, several of them had asked for…specialty items. A lot of the money they'd stashed away in preparation for an eventual escape came from manufacturing narcotics of various kinds, and they had gotten quite a few minor favors and upgrades to their living conditions thanks to some of the more powerful potions he'd brewed, like strength or dexterity enhancers.

"Hey! What's going on here?" Said Raika as she approached them, the hand on the pommel of her sword. The mercenary looked at her, snarling.

"Stay the hell out of this, slave. Your darling little alchemist here-"

The mercenary flew back at least three meters as Raika's fist smashed into his jaw, and the party leader dropped to the ground, screaming in agony as her slave tattoos and the magic contract exerted their influence, punition protocols taking hold.

The mercenary jumped back up, fury in his eyes…and stopped as one of his officers audibly racked her pistol.

"I think, private, that you have misunderstood the commander's instructions. When she said to stay civil, and not attack our…auxiliaries, that meant treating them as our…comrades."

"But, lieutenant-"

"Private, you have been in our company for less than a month, and this is already your third disciplinary issue. If I ever, and I mean ever, see you try to pull the same shit again, it will be the last one. Call them whatever you want in the privacy of your own head. But as far as everyone is concerned, especially the slaver hating psychotic maniac that owns the fucking town and rules it with an iron fist, they. Are. Our. Comrades. Is that understood?"

The mercenary swallowed, and saluted.

"Y-Yes lieutenant!"

"Good." The officer nodded at the door. "Dismissed."

Taking the hint, the soldier walked out, but threw Raika a few glances that left her with little doubt that this wasn't over.

"Thank…you…" Gasped out Raika as Fernand knelt by her and the officer walked over, gratefully taking her hand.

"Don't mention it. Sometimes the new guys need some hammering. Besides, we're 'comrads', right?"

The officer's voice was dripping with sarcasm, and Raika nodded. Her and the other 'auxiliaries' had been advised to keep their mouth shut for their stay in Rebirth. The commander had made it clear that they might manage to warn the town's government of what was going on...and if that happened none of them would survive. She'd even forced bracelets upon them that would seal their souls upon death to further make the point.

Had it been only her…She'd have done it in a heartbeat. But she wasn't going to doom her party.

So she nodded, and kept her feelings to herself, while burning fury went through her.

All in due time, as her old trainer would have told her.

All in due time…

*****

Alexandra sighed as she sat down in the command center, cradling her head.

Even with the communicators, trying to run her infiltration operations and the various day to day tasks she still had to handle, even with Seraph more or less taking over the dungeon, was a massive strain. Especially as the damned mercenaries had no documents indicating where these 'auxiliaries' were kept, and despite knowing the warehouse belonged to Sarth merchant combine…Well, she couldn't exactly ask to access the town's registry for the warehouses! Besides, it wasn't like they'd have the origin of the merchant house written on the registry either. So she'd been reduced to a broad sweep, and she only had the one true stealth golem so far. And after the Adjudicator's little visit…she wasn't going to take the risk of drawing attention to what she was doing by using her old infiltrators.

"Hey." Alexandra felt a hand fall on her shoulder, and looked up, smiling faintly as Emilia looked at her worriedly.

"Heya vampy. How are you doing?"

"Me? Fine. But you…" Emilia sighed as she sat in front of the dungeon core. "You're driving yourself mad."

"That would imply that I was sane from the get go. Besides, there's always more work to be done!"

Emilia snickered.

"You were always…eccentric, yes, but not crazy." The vampire girl shook her head. "And yes, there is. But you can't keep doing this."

"Doing what?"

"This!" Emilia gestured at the entire command center. "You're trying to do five thing at once, and your old team…it's eating away at you, I can see it. Quite frankly, I'm afraid that it's outright consuming you!"

Alexandra blinked. How did the vampire know-

The workshop. There was no way she'd have missed the new infiltrator under construction. And once it was gone from there…well, it didn't take much to put two and two together.

Alexandra sighed.

"Look, vampy, I-"

"No!" Alexandra recoiled as the vampire girl was suddenly in her face. "You.cannot.keep.doing this to yourself! CQ, our daughter, is worried about you! Everyone is! For the love of the Gods, Ella is worried! Ella! And she's a sociopath!" The advisor threw her hands up. "It's so strong we can feel it through our link!"

Alexandra swallowed, and sighed.

"Alright, alright! I get the point." Especially about CQ. She was already feeling guilty enough having her daughter be a killing machine. The least she could was be there for her and not make it worse! "I…I'm sorry. I just…I need to find them. They got crushed because of me."

"This…I can understand you feeling responsible, but this isn't normal." Said Emilia, worriedly. "You were with them for what? Three days? Four?"

Alexandra chuckled.

"Yeah. Figured being made into a dungeon core made me a bit overprotective. Which is fine when it comes to protecting you and CQ, but…"

"It has side effects."

Emilia nodded, and Alexandra didn't mention the fact that said protectiveness, at the least the artificial part, had been shut down. But her other self still had no clue what the hell made her so attached to her party.

"Yeah. Yeah it does." Alexandra took a deep breath. "Alright, I'll try to…take a step back. And take my minds off of things for a bit." It chaffed, but she had time. For now, at least.

"Good." Emilia pulled out her notebook, and Alexandra winced. "Then how about we go and do the second floor boss? After all CQ will move to the third floor once it's done!"

Alexandra blinked. Emilia must have really been worried if she wasn't going for design work, and instead steering her towards engineering.

"Sure! Let's see what we can come up with to ruin some silver ranks' day!"

Emilia giggled.

"That's the spirit! Come on, let's go!"

*****

"What do you mean it isn't possible?" Asked Charles, fighting to keep his tone and expression in check.

"I mean it is not possible. At all." Colonel Orzal Vek, of the Republican Erisian Army, sighed. "The only result of such a maneuver would be certain death."

"Because they are too incompetent to pull it off!"

"No, because they'd wake up a sand kraken and get eaten! For the love of the Gods sir, you fucking know this as well as I do! It's the damned reason why the Asarians never invaded after they took Darthar and you know it! Sending an entire army through this wasteland is a death sentence."

Charles leaned back in his seat, furious, and took a deep breath, reminding himself mentally that not only was the colonel right, but the man also wasn't aware of how precarious their position was. Or perhaps he knew perfectly well, and was so certain in his belief that he was entirely unwilling to throw someone under the bus even to save himself.

It sure as hell wasn't out of a sense of integrity at any rate!

"A good point. My…apologies, colonel, but those are trying times. Then, if a direct action, at least for now, is not an option, what is?"

"Treachery."

"Trying to overthrow the government? We have tried that already."

"Yes, and it did not end well. But, that is because we were doing it with commandos, and outside forces."

Charles leaned forward slightly.

"What are you implying?"

"I am implying that I have made contact with representatives of the duchy of Sunrise, and they would be interested in…a mutual partnership."

"Sunrise?" Charles looked at him, stunned for a second, before laughing out loud. "These snakes would never ally themselves with us! Not truly anyway. They'd just slice our throat as soon as we were done and take the town for themselves!"

"That would have been true…had the dungeon town not been a massive bastion of anti slavery power for the monarchy, and the source of the golems that is currently swamping the market with them and making their stranglehold on power thanks to their cheap, disposable labor more tenuous by the minute."

Charles straightened up, suddenly taking the offer seriously.

"Elaborate."

"Simply put, their offer is thusly: We take Rebirth. If we manage to get to Darthar, we can keep it too. To help us do that, Sunrise will agitate for a removal of the current monarchs and establish a puppet in their own territory, claiming them as the 'true' king. When the loyalists -and their majesties- inevitably rebel, they start a civil war, and take over, which will start a conflict inside Rebirth itself that'll weaken the defenses. Might even enable us to take over without a fight." If nothing else once Sunrise started the atrocities they were bound to commit, and took over the kingdom, he'd be able to spin the Republic as the preferable option. Package that with some generous terms, and he could slide it to the baroness and the dungeon. Hopefully. Because he didn't truly expect any internal rebellion to succeed, and even cut off from royal support…Well, Rebirth's main threat was the dungeon at this point, the royal troops barely even registered! It wasn't a good plan, but it was the best he could come up with under the circumstances. It would, if nothing else, at least give them a shot at it that might succeed instead of being absolute suicide. "Then, once we are in control, we, as dastardly republican bastards, completely cut off the dungeon town commercially from Asaria, stopping the golems from flowing into the kingdom, and instead appropriate them for our own uses. And they not only give us one hell of a level of support and a distraction, but they also let us keep the damned place as long as we keep our end of the bargain and prevent the golems for threatening their supremacy."

"That sounds...almost acceptable. What's the catch?"

"They need weapons. A lot of weapons. They have more warm bodies than they know what to do with, but Sunrise simply doesn't have the industry to arm them. Slaves make for great laborers, but poor technicians and mechanics. They have all the raw material extraction that they need, but they simply do not have the skilled -and trusted- labor necessary to turn all of that ore into weaponry. Furthermore, the companies that could…well, they wouldn't touch a slaver hub with a ten foot pole. They'll buy the ore from them no problem, but setting up in the duchy and risk losing access to their main markets in Asaria, Gorromar and Tark? No way, no how."

"Ah." Charles frowned. "I do not know if we have enough weapons available…but I might be able to ask our dear corporate friends to help. As long as the payment is right. And if Sunrise is willing to sweeten the deal, if only for them, a little."

"They pretty much figured that you'd need help, and offered some…sweeteners indeed."

The colonel's tone set off alarm bells inside the senator's head.

"What kind?"

"The young, beautiful, enslaved kind."

Charles grimaced, but nodded. Sex slaves, wonderful. This just kept getting better and better…

"Even if they accept, that's going to take a lot of security to get through."

Which was the understatement of the century. Especially if the slaves were a bit too on the young side. The Eris Empire tolerated slavery with one exception. Enslave children, and die, no exception. The First Empress had engraved it into the constitution with the blood of her own nobles who had dared defy that edict, and it was one the military actually enforced. And most of the world had followed suit, even the Republic.

And it was something sensitive enough -every sane human being could relate to protecting kids- that if he was caught breaking it that damned senate enquiry would happen, especially given the currently highly sensitive context.

"Yes. Yes it will."

Charles winced internally at the colonel's tone, but dismissed it. Even if he was disgusted, appalled even, the man would do his job.

After all, if they failed, both of their heads would roll.