Chapter 163

Fallen Province of Irakia, Sagitarius Empire

Hammer of Eternity, Command Center

The artificial construct waited patiently for reports as the strike craft assembled for another attack run, a silent computer core in an empty command center, long empty of any of its human supervisors. It was not intelligent enough to truly know impatience regardless, but it was still programmed to know efficiency. Its foe had proven amazingly resilient, all things considered, and-

Alerts flashed. Automated systems sprang to life, and before the central system core had even had time to send an acknowledgment, it was already over.

Three strike crafts came spiraling down, crashing onto the dunes below, and two dropped into emergency evasive maneuvers, heavily damaged.

That got the core's attention. Sensors from the entire division, greatly diminished, yes, but still the three hundred and first autonomous combat division of the Sagitarius Empire, swiveled.

There! A stealth combat drone. Class unknown, but clearly a Nolkor design of some sort.

The core retasked its strike crafts as the drone turned away and fled, straight towards the objective. Towards site Seraph four.

Looked like the enemy had decided to come out to play.

Hatches opened, and cruise missiles were cycled into the launchers.

And it was time to answer in kind.

*****

"Are you sure those aren't…overkill?" Said Emilia.

Alexandra looked up from the 'gift basket' she was assembling, and smiled.

"When it comes to your safety honey, nothing is overkill. Besides, they're way less powerful than the praetorians."

"Yeah, but the praetorians aren't going to be made in the thousands. This…feels different. You do realize even Tarkian infantry doesn't come close, right?"

Alexandra sighed, and stood back from the workshop table she'd been picking stuff from, full turning to face her girlfriend.

And the golem she was inspecting.

Her 'Standard Combat Unit', or SCU, the result of countless cost to efficiency analysis, test runs, and some serious engineering.

Full reinforced steel plate armor from top to bottom, backed up with layers of thermal dispersion materials and kinetic absorption fabric. It wasn't as good as proper bulletproof armor of the 21st century…but it was damned close, and it was relatively cheap and produceable en masse by her forge.

Add a fully metal submachine gun, one seriously badass bolt action rifle, and you had an all rounder infantry capable of kicking every kind of ass as cost efficiently as possible. And bonus point, it didn't use a single ounce of the tech Alexandra wasn't supposed to have, like, say, railguns, shield generators or those insane armor tiles Seraph's combat units had been clad in.

Seraph had been rather offended that such a golem be given the title of 'Combat Unit', but Alexandra had convinced her that it was fitting. Yes, a 'true' combat unit would have wiped the floor with an entire company, but she could produce entire battalions of them for the cost of a 'true' combat unit. Well, assuming she could truly build one, because so far half the systems were beyond her reach, simply because they'd been utterly destroyed on Seraph's units.

Which reminded her that she really needed to figure out what the hell had taken out the bunker's primary systems.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

"I do realize that. And it's part of the message they're there to send as well."

"Right…Still planning that invasion?"

"We don't really have a choice. You know they're planning a major offensive, sand krakens or not. And I'm not going to give them the luxury of finishing their preparations. As they say, a good defense-"

"Is a good offense." Finished Emilia, wondering how many people would consider attacking an army ten times your size a good idea. But then again, those people wouldn't know what she did. Notably, that the newest generation of artillery guns Alexandra was busy making looked suspiciously compact…and had recoil control systems tailored made for fixed mounts, such as those on fortresses.

Or airships.

"Exactly. Now," Alexandra nodded towards the screens showing the baroness' dungeon delve. "I believe our guests were about to throw in the towel. So let's give them a parting gift they'll remember."

*****

"Allya, you need to stop grinning like a lunatic, you're scaring the others." Said Pyn, as she not-so-discreetly elbowed her girlfriend in the ribs.

"Ow! What?" Said the baroness, before smoothing her face into polite neutrality. "Right, sorry." She smiled sheepishly at the rest of the group. "Sorry, got carried away. It was a while since I'd had…this kind of weaponry." She said, catching herself from saying 'proper weapons' at the last second. It wouldn't be polite to imply that most of their stuff was so much refuse by Erisian standards.

"Right." Said Raika, while she goggled at the devastation, and Allya cringed.

She might have gone a bit overboard, she acknowledged internally as she looked at the carnage. Five cobras, eight normal golems, and one of those 'royal cobras', all reduced to junk and spare parts as she'd dumped three full magazines into them. Thankfully the shotgun had come with several fully loaded drum mags, and a few boxes of ammo to boot, so she hadn't exactly been burning through the entirety of her resources there.

"I think it's a good time to call it honestly." Said Dominique as she looked up. "We've made it a fair way up the third floor, and we'll enter uncharted territory soon. Impressive how far we went however."

Allya shrugged.

"I mean, Pyn and I are technically steel rank, but with all our gear, our increase in power…"

"You would qualify for silver, easily. Maybe even gold. I'm gold, and with the boost Raika and Alyssa got, they should be silver as well. Still, this is no easy feat. Silver teams did get wrecked trying to get there."

Allya stole a glance towards Alyssa and Raika, but stayed silent.

She had, after all, a fairly good idea as to why they had such an easy time.

And it had very little to do with their combat prowess.

"Indeed. So, let's backtrack?"

One of the somewhat discreet logistics door slid open, and Allya had her gun trailed on it before she'd even processed the sound, before lowering it as Alexandra -Crystal, damn it!- stepped through. Well, her boss, but the dungeon core used her so often it was basically becoming synonymous for Allya at that point.

"That won't be necessary." Said the dungeon core as she smiled at them. "I realized you were about to leave, so I prepared a parting gift for you."

Allya blinked.

"A parting gift?"

"Of course! You wouldn't think I would let you leave without a…small token of my appreciation, don't you?"

Allya almost retorted 'you gave me a fucking assault shotgun, how is that small?!?' before biting it back.

"What sort of token?"

The dungeon core snapped her fingers.

Allya tilted her head as nothing happened.

Then she heard it. A rythmic stomping, accompanied by splashes of water.

And she realized what the dungeon meant. She couldn't be insane enough to-

The tought died within her mind as the spider tank rounded the corner, and came to a halt, lowering its front half and effectively bowing to her.

Allya looked at the heavily armored walker, covered in guns, with cannons poking over it's 'head', and what looked like some kind of wrapped gift basket strapped securely atop it.

And then she realized that the water, which was moving impressively quickly this close to the top of the structure and its waterfall, wasn't flowing normally around the tank.

Because it was bouncing off of its ward.

The baroness fainted.

*****

"See? Told you that would happen." Said Emilia as she gazed at the screen showing the party exiting the dungeon, spider tank in tow, with Pyn and Alyssa hovering by Allya's side, who was trying to fend off their constant fussing, with little success.

"You said she would faint if I showed her the grenade launcher. It wasn't even included in the basket!"

"She fainted from a gift. Still counts."

Alexandra sighed, and shook her head, before frowning as her eyes fell on Alyssa's missing arm.

"Still feeling guilty about that?"

"Yeah. She'd never have gotten that injury if not for me. And if we can't regenerate it…" She tapped her fingers on her command chair's armrest. "Well, I have an idea."

"Usually when you say that a lot of people end up dying. Mainly bad guys, but still."

"Oh don't worry, this should be fairly minor. We need to pull out the stealth golem. And prepare a message. There's a certain cyborg I need to make a deal with."

Emilia opened her mouth, then closed it. It was foolhardy…but it was clear there was no way she was going to be able to dissuade the dungeon core. Beside which, she was already feeling guilty about the fact that she couldn't share the regeneration spell she did know, and her mother had flat out refused to lift the restriction on the secrets she couldn't share.

And she was worried. Very worried. Her mother was becoming more and more uneasy, and she'd privately shared that it was because of Alexandra's historical prediction. They were proving accurate. Far too accurate, and the more she dug into it the more horrifying it became.

Because it was starting to become a real question of if the Western Marches would survive the Empire's collapse.

There were contingency plans of course, but given the scale of the catastrophe…would they be enough?

She shook her head. She'd better not dwell on it. And push came to shove, she was sure she could convince Alexandra to come to the rescue, even if at a price.

"Sure. Just…be careful, alright?"

"Careful's my middle name!"

"I thought it was Océane?"

"Yes, but…sush!"

Emilia chuckled and Alexandra smiled, before starting to laugh as well.

"Alright, I'll hand you that one." Admitted the dungeon core. "But regardless, I think the delve went well."

"Maybe for you. I think the baroness is going to have nightmares."

"I hope not. I was just…"

"Scaring her into submission?"

"Nothing as crude as that. But providing incentive and threat."

"Right. So you just gave her a giant carrot while pointing out you could beat her to death with it."

"In short? Yes."

"Well, let's hope she gets the message."

*****

Allya sat down heavily behind her desk, before putting her head in her hands.

"That bad?" Said Trira as she took a seat.

"Yeah. That bad. And I suppose once you get done processing this." She grabbed the scanner from her hidden pocket, and set it down on the desktop. "It'll get even worse."

"Probably." Said the assassin, almost nonchalantly, before smiling. "Oh, by the way, I have some good news and some bad news from when you were gone."

"Hit me."

"Good news is, your men's training paid off! Bad news, your domestic opposition is probably still up and running."

Allya blinked, and looked up at the assassin.

"What?"

"Someone had apparently thought that the best time to slide a dagger between your ribs was when you'd be returning from a dungeon delve, exhausted and defenseless. So they attempted to sneak in an assassin while you were gone. Despite the invisibility spell your men detected them -thanks to the training me and the rest of the sect provided I might add-, and tried to arrest them."

"I assume they didn't take them alive?"

"Oh hell no. But they didn't manage to escape either."

"Why do you keep saying 'they'?"

"There, uh, wasn't enough left of them to identify anything beyond the fact that they were humanoid and had skin. Probably not a dwarf too, given the height."

"...What?"

"Yes, you really should remember than when you rearmed your personal guard you did give them hand grenades. Including incendiary ones."

"Oh. Right." Allya pinched the bridge of her nose. "Alright, so someone wants me dead. Not really surprising news. But they are getting bold enough to send assassins."

"Yep. And if they're sending killers…"

"They have a follow up planned." Because killing her wouldn't change anything. Hell, even killing her and Pyn wouldn't change much in the short term beyond some morale loss, they had protocols in place for that, even if it wasn't a proper line of succession yet. "I need to send a message to Elkaryos, if they're targeting me, they're going to go after him too."

"Good call. And to be fair, he probably has enough enemies he won't even notice."

"True. Now, I want you to get working on the scanner's results ASAP."

"Sure thing. I'll bring it to you first thing in the morning." Trira looked the ragged baroness up and down. "Actually, better make it early afternoon."

"It wasn't that bad."

"Perhaps not, but I did run into Pyn on the way here, so I can assure you you're not going to spend a lot of the next few hours sleeping, even if you retire to your bedchambers immediately."

Allya had the good grace to blush.

"Alright, early afternoon then. See you tomorrow!"