Chapter 168

Fallen Province of Irakia, Sagitarius Empire.

Hammer of Eternity, Command Center

Three strikecraft losses. Two damaged. Target shot down. Successful bombardment of hostile fortress. Low tech static defenses, but access to high tech strikecrafts.

Possibly a remnant from an adversary, cut off from the command bunkers and fabricator arrays. Identity irrelevant, they would be exterminated.

The system looked at its resources…and ordered its main units to stop movement and rearrange themselves.

Many other combat automata were beyond its control, and thus not worth preserving. Their combat value was also limited. But it could use them for force reconnaissance, let them to rush forward and attack the enemy first to gather data and allow it to conserve its strength for the true push.

Observe. Document. Adapt. Exterminate.

*****

The apparition hummed as she worked. She had a fair few projects on her hands now, but none were more important than deciphering the insane hell maze that was the 'dungeon core', or at least its magic and programs.

Because if there was one thing she was sure of, it was that this…thing had never been meant as a dungeon core, the center of a fortress. It seemed to be more some kind of colonial administration AI crossed with a terraformer and a fabricator. And the protections around it…unless she was seriously mistaken, you could literally fire it out of a missile tube at a planet, and it would crash into and eventually terraform the entire damned thing. At least that's what the original intention seemed to have been, as someone had clearly tinkered with the base code. The way the code was made was…different. More elegant, for the lack of a better word. Less brutal, bare efficiency and more military finesse. If she had to guess, that was from the God of Fire or his lackeys, molding whatever the dungeon cores were originally meant to be into what he needed.

The problem was that this thing was so unbelievably complex it was going to take forever to track down everything. The mental control programs she'd found easily because they were active and touched her other self's thought patterns. Besides, they'd never been meant to be stealthy. And she'd dug deep enough to find what appeared to be some kind of audit protocol, effectively making a full inventory of the dungeon's knowledge, schematics, and minions and uploading it somewhere. That one would now report what she wanted it to, but finding it had been more through its pervasiveness than anything. Finding an inactive program was-

"Well hello beautiful." Said the apparition as she stopped at a particular program. Parts of it were similar to the mind control program, which was why her sniffers had found it. It was…

Oh.

*****

"Shit." Said Alexandra as she looked at the code, shown on a holographic window hovering in the air, sitting down in the apparition's little made up lounge.

"Indeed. At least we now know their preferred solution to deal with unruly dungeon."

"Yeah." Said Alexandra, her voice filled with disgust. "I'd always wondered why 'genocidal dungeons' existed, and why the Custodians had to go and put them down. After all, couldn't they have just triggered a remote shutdown, or implemented safeguards in the mind control program?" She shook her head. "Fucking hell, that's vicious."

The apparition nodded, as she looked at the code. Code that would turn a dungeon core into a rabid genocidal maniac at the push of a button.

"You have to admire the elegance of it though. They don't just destroy a potential liability, they also create a threat they get credit for destroying as well. It's still a win for them."

"Except for the massive loss of life."

"Except for that, yeah. But if they didn't allow the dungeon to start stacking bodies, well then the 'magnanimous Custodians' coming to the rescue wouldn't have much impact, now would it?"

Alexandra nodded, before pinching the bridge of her nose.

"And it puts into perspective why one of those large empires was destroyed by several genocidal dungeons. You know the one, the main rival of the Eris Empire early on?"

"The Xykon Republic? Yeah. Saw it in our…mutual memory banks."

A wonderful euphemism for the fact that the apparition technically could read Alexandra's memories like a damn book.

"Always found it awfully convenient for the Custodians, like the other 'catastrophies'." She gestured at the code. "This answers that mystery. They simply flipped the switch on the biggest dungeons and bam. Everyone dies, and they get bonus points for saving what little remained, conveniently with most of that problematic knowledge and technology lost in the fight and purge afterwards."

The apparition nodded.

"Wouldn't have put it past them to beef up the dungeons as well, or make sure scholars didn't make it out in time. As I said, it's elegant. It gives them a PR boost, and serves as an incredibly effective coverup."

"Yeah…Any progress on a more conventional self destruct?"

"Not much, but with this, I can virtually guarantee you there is one. Not sure what form it'll take however."

"Just do what you can." Alexandra sighed. "I need to go, scouts have spotted the vanguard of the automata. This is going to be a bloodbath."

"Let's hope not. The only ones with blood in them are on our side."

"Yeah."

*****

"They don't look too tough." Mused Pyn as the assembled war council watched the first vehicles speeding towards the mesa, and Allya winced.

"Looks can be deceiving." Replied Willard, his tone grim, before smiling as the elf gave him a questioning glance. "My uncle's duchy has been on the border with the wasteland for centuries. We've had our fair share of encounters with its denizens. Outside of sand krakens, remnants from the Old World are by far the worst. They look ramshackle, but inside those machines is the malice and madness of those that destroyed our world. These are the weapons that they used. Remember that the example of their power is all around us, in these blasted wastes."

"Poetic. But very accurate I suppose." Answered Crystal as she stepped up to the crenellation lining the tower, the baroness redirecting her attention towards her. "Still, this is but the vanguard. The fastest vehicles to make it. Scouts, most probably."

"You think there is something intelligent out there to send for recon?" Said Allya.

"Possibly. But even if there wasn't, the scout vehicles would get ahead. Speed is key to their mission after all." The dungeon sighed. "No, let's face it, there is definitely something intelligent out there. Or at least something with a minimal of tactics. The aircrafts weren't sent back. If there is indeed a carrier, they would have had more than enough time to rearm and launch them again. I mean, it took you less time to do so for full sized airships, and I for one will not bet on Old World technology being less effective than your people. No offense."

"None taken." And Sylvia had said that cruiser had been screening for something. Not that she was inclined to believe anything the pirate would say. She already had Trira digging into that merchant who had oh so conveniently offered that mission to send the pirate into the hornet's nest. At least the good captain seemed genuinely shell shocked, and her ship wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, so they had some time to dig.

If they survived long enough to do so of course.

"It should give us a good opportunity to blood our troops. The adventurers, especially." Said Philia, the Knight-Commander observing the incoming vehicles through a spyglass.

"They are hardly new to combat." Retorted Starvak.

"But they are new to battle. This isn't a predictable encounter down a clean dungeon corridor guild master. You know as well as I do that there is a great deal of difference between a warrior and a soldier."

"Indeed. Apologies, I did not mean to sound so…tort." The dwarf rubbed his chin. "Well, I could take care of those very handily, but you are most definitely correct. It would be better for my people to handle them, try to get them used to this mess as gently as possible. Push comes to shove, victory in this skirmish is assured, so we will be able to resurrect the fallen."

"Provided there's anything left to resurrect." Said Crystal, grimly, before grimacing. "Old World weaponry can be…destructive. Once again, my golems didn't come gift wrapped."

"Ah. Well, unfortunate that we do not have those weapons on our side now."

"Yeah."

Allya looked away, not trusting her expression to remain neutral. She was still grappling with the results from the scans, and the implications were just…horrifying.

She took a deep breath. One problem at a time.

"Are you okay Allya?" Said Pyn.

"Yes. Just bracing myself." The baroness grimaced as she turned back towards the rest of her council. "Guaranteed victory or not, this is not going to be pretty."

"No, no it won't be." Said Crystal. "But no battle ever is. Let's see how ugly this one is."

*****

Alexandra sighed as she sat down in the empty command center.

They'd won. Not that it had been a surprise, but it had been a victory.

But if that was the level of tactical acumen the adventurers guild was capable of…well, she'd worried that they would cause the AI on the other side -there had to be some level of AI, even if at the simplest level- to react like Seraph and begin adapting and learning by showcasing how terrifyingly inadequate its 'tactics' were. Those worries were now very safely laid to rest.

They'd charged. Dear sweet stars they had a fortified defensive position against an enemy with more range, mobility and technology and they charged. They didn't lay in ambush, prepare hidden foxholes with teams to take the enemy from behind, or dug tunnels in the ample time they'd had since the last war council. They'd just…sortied from the outermost redoubts and charged.

To be fair to them they hadn't been completely insane. The adventurers did need to get a taste of what was coming, and there had been organization. Mages had been pulled into teams, weaving wards around their designated units to try to absorb as much damage as possible, while squads of rangers and rogues ran interference, doing hit and run and trying to be as much as an annoyance as possible until the heavy hitters could make contact.

It had worked…sort of. The automata seemingly had some very basic tactical protocols embedded in them or they had a semblance of a battle plan. At a set distance the recon vehicles had opened fire with their main and anti infantry weaponry. Light autocannons -where did they get the ammo for those anyway?-, laser machineguns, the usual. The heaviest gun in the whole assembly had been some kind of twenty millimeter pulser with dispersion flechettes. The pulser equivalent of a giant shotgun. Nasty son of a bitch. But most of the vehicles had been what you'd expect recon vehicles to be. Fast platforms, some things that look like converted civilian grav cars, which was consistent with the Sagitarius Empire using off the shelf pseudo-military systems, as with the standard golems in Seraph's bunker, others were various levels of very lightly armored vehicles, and a handful were quasi-tanks.

The latter should have lit up some alarms earlier. They looked so much like those old US Bradleys she'd openly wondered if they were some. The Infantry Fighting Vehicle was a museum piece but some more modern UIS hardware had taken clear inspiration from the design.

Unfortunately the Empire had taken far more than just aesthetic design from it, as part of the turret had swung open, and single use anti tank missile launchers popped out.

The wards had, amazingly enough, mostly held up under the onslaught. Mostly because the enemy didn't seem to understand the concept of massing their fire despite clearly having the range to do so, and had spread their attacks more or less evenly.

Then a plasma anti tank missile demonstrated that anything that wanted to be able to kill a magitech battle tank had to be able to deal with shields. She wasn't sure how they'd done it -it hadn't been anti magical in nature, a lot of other spells in the area hadn't failed-, but the missile had hit the ward, and it had broken like a pane of glass. And then the missile had detonated. Straight in the middle of the mages.

The only saving grace was that it was a focused blast meant to pierce armor plating. The terrifying part was that even just the side effects of that had killed the entire team of mage and half of their charges.

The autocannons and machineguns had made quick work of the rest.

But then the adventurers had finally found their range, and opened up. Arrows from longbows flew, fireballs, lightning bolts…

Some of the vehicles weren't even armored, let alone shielded. They didn't stand a chance. But the pseudo tanks? They'd come to halt, attacks pinging off of their shields and armor plating, and their rear hatches came down.

Entire squads of golems disembarked. A fair few had been the basic variant Alexandra was familiar with, but most were of a type she'd never seen. They seemed…blockier, more brutal. If she was to guess, those were purpose built cannon fodders optimized for cost effectiveness.

Which meant that she really needed to get her hands on one.

But regardless, they had deployed and engaged the adventurers.

It had been a bloodbath. The adventurers outnumbered them ten to one, but the golems had laser rifles, machine guns, rocket launchers, shit, they had mortars. Mortars! They had freaking portable artillery and they had deployed it close enough for the enemy to be shooting bows at them.

Surprisingly, the adventurers powered through and made it to hand to hand combat. Fighters stabbed enchanted swords into tanks, arcane blades cutting through the decayed armor plating, rogues sliced golems apart, and most amazing of all the golems just stood their ground. They didn't even step back, keeping the distance open, they just…stood there and kept firing.

Same for the remaining vehicles. The adventurers weren't completely brain dead, if nothing else a good deal of them had fought her spider tanks and learned the hard way to get on top or get crushed, but they might as well not have bothered. Once they'd dropped off the infantry the armored vehicles had stopped, formed a firing line and refused to budge even as adventurers ripped off the hatches and tosses vials of explosive chemicals down them.

Which brought her to the weirdest thing about all this. These vehicles weren't drones. They weren't a solid block of metal with machinery and maintenance hatches, they had driver seats, steering wheels…sweet Gods, they looked like human vehicles someone had slapped a combat autopilot on!

At least it had been over fairly quickly after that. And it seemed that the enemy had decided against simply bombing them into submission as well. The vehicles clearly had the gear to guide cruise missile strikes in, so it the other side probably had a hard limit on its ordonance, which was reassuring. The guild had magnanimously allowed her to study the enemy's remnants, but unsurprisingly completely and utterly refused to hand over some samples. Those stubborn bastards were still willing to fuck her over, even under the threat of annihilation! These fucking-

Alexandra blinked, interruped in her internal monologue as she got a notification from the labs.

An intruder alert.