Chapter 180

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Outskirts of the City of Rebirth

Golems rushed towards the reactor core, Alexandra pushing her capabilities to the limit as she coordinated them.

She didn't know that particular type of reactor, but not only did the Sagitarius Empire's almost fetishistic attachment to the Federation seemed to hold true in terms of designs and standards, but she also spoke fluent warship.

Her golems ripped out power conduits, fuel intake pipes, not even bothering with the emergency shut offs, knowing the self destruct would have overridden them. It wouldn't stop the overload, but it would slow it down. Hopefully.

Which was why most of her attention was devoted to the golem that rushed the console.

She didn't bother with the screen. It barely had the time to power up, alerted to her presence by some sensor or another, before she ripped out and threw it aside, diving into the console's innards.

She knew starship design, but more importantly she knew what engineers and especially chiefs of engineering were like. If there was a self destruct, it was almost certain there was a manual override, either built into the system or jury rigged by the engineering crew.

After all, it wouldn't be the first time some gung ho idiot of a captain, put there by political connections more than good sense or competence, decided to scuttle the ship with everyone in it rather than surrender.

She would know. She knew the Dawnstar's crew had put her into that very category. And instead of punishing the chief of engineering when she found out about their little work around, she'd handed him a copy of the self destruct codes, against every possible regulation in the book.

That demonstration of trust had ensured that if she pushed the button, the ship would indeed go down.

She ignored everything around her as she focused on her task…and swore as her golem flew back, a deep laceration scored on its armor plates.

She whirled around, and said something utterly unprintable as she registered that her golems weren't the only ones in engineering.

Hazmat spacesuits, the mummified heads of the engineering crew still visible through the faceplates charged at them, holding plasma cutters, pistols, and even the odd wrench.

Half of her golems peeled away from the machinery they were ripping apart, and engaged, while she leapt back to the console, and kept digging.

Come on, there had to be- There! A box, wired into half of the cables leaving the console, clearly a makeshift addition after the ship's construction.

And on it, a simple, red button. Called it. Just in case the captain locked the consoles, the engineers had made a simple, analog backup.

She pressed it…and the alarms stopped, as the reactor core's humming, which had steadily begun to turn into a roar, calmed.

Alexandra breathed a sigh of relief.

Then she received an alert.

ALERT: SHUTTLES REPORT INCOMING FRIENDLY CONTACTS

Friendly? What?

She pulled up the feed of the shuttles' guards…and her blood ran cold as she saw the dozen adventurers landing on the ship's pads.

Shit.

*****

"When I get my hands on her, I'm killing her." Said Rogard in an almost conversional tone.

"You'll have to wait in line." Replied Valker as he took a pot shot at a turret, before dropping back down behind their makeshift cover, some kind of machinery dotting the warship's hull. Stars knows what it was, but it was withstanding the energy beams from the turrets trying to sweep the boarders off the hull, and that's all that mattered.

"Let's focus on that after we're out of this mess." Said Allya, a bit testily as she glanced above their cover, before diving back as a flurry of laser bolts struck it. "Pyn, can you take it out?"

"Right away." Said the elf as she finished preparing her bow. They exchanged a look, and nodded.

Allya popped up and dove to the side, drawing the turret's fire, as Pyn stood up, and fired.

The arrow was true, and the turret vanished behind a flurry of sparks and finally flame, as the pierced energy conduits misfired and discharged their energy inside the delicate mechanisms of the gun.

"Nice shot." Said Allya, short on breath and trying to push down her panic

The last few shots had struck her shield. She was absolutely sure that without Eismi's artifices, she would have been cut in half.

"Thanks. Where to next?"

Allya looked around the ship, where similar turrets were either destroyed or in the process of being such, with corpses of luckless adventurers dotted her and there, before gesturing towards the sound of laser fire on the other side of the ship's dorsal spine.

"This way! Let's clear all the turrets first, so we have a clear beach head for reinforcements and retreat!"

The former was a bit more important right now. As absolutely fucking insane Sonya had proven to be by virtue of having thrown her, she was at least sending a steady stream of troops to each ship, even sending some people over to what had to be the carrier they were initially expecting, hiding behind the siege walker, which she could only see glimpses of.

They could just retreat of course, most of her people had Crystal's teleport talismans…but it would mean leaving some of them behind, and Allya was trapped by her reputation. If she fled at the height of the battle, onboard an enemy ship no less, her carefully constructed reputation with the adventurers would collapse. Not to mention her aura of threat, something she was bitterly sure was the only thing preventing a Sunrise sponsored uprising currently.

"Sounds good to me!" Replied her girlfriend, and they moved out, her guards in tow.

Hopefully things were going better elsewhere.

*****

The adventurers were good. They had the element of surprise, were expecting a welcoming comittee and they were of relatively high rank.

It didn't matter. They weren't fighting decayed automata whose programming had been crippled by fearful creators. They were facing advanced golems built by one of the most brilliant minds the European Federation had to offer, a shard of Earth's most dangerous AI.

Spells, arrows and even the odd musketball flew towards the golems.

Who promptly dived into cover. That was the first clue that something was deeply wrong.

The second one was when the adventurers noticed the wrecked turrets.

The third one was when the grenades flew over the golems' cover, and the praetorian guard rushed them.

To their credit, they put up a valiant fight, even penetrating the shields of some of the praetorians. But even magic was no match for this level of magitech, not when it was being used to its maximum effect, and their attacks bounced off of the composite mythril plating covering the golems head to toe.

"Crap." Said Alexandra as she looked through her golems' eyes. "Seraph, status report."

The AI popped up, taking over one of the golems.

"The battle is turning. Adventurers have successfully boarded most of the vessels, and are in the process of destroying them from the inside out. Though some are having more luck than others. And-" Alexandra almost jumped as a massive explosion rocked the siege walker. She saw it stagger, but it recovered. "And the so called guildmaster seems to be well on his way to finishing his foe. I recommend accelerating operations."

"Agreed." Alexandra looked at the adventurers and hesitated. "They saw too much."

"They are not the main problem to this endeavor right now." Said Seraph, before gesturing towards the shuttles.

Alexandra whirled around, and swore.

The adventurers had gone down, yes, but they had also come in blasting anything in sight with area of effect spells…and two of her shuttles had run afoul of that.

They weren't armored against the slightest attack. After all, they were just modified versions of the 'escape pods' Seraph had cooked up for evacuation, should things go sideways, and they relied uncompromisingly on stealth. If someone saw them, everything was already lost.

"Damn it!" She did some quick calculations. "Crap, we don't have enough charges to destroy them all completely. Not if we need to destroy the bodies of the fallen praetorians." And want to haul anything significant out of this mess, since she'd just lost half of her damn transports!

"Affirmative."

Alexandra's eyes flicked to the hatches leading deeper into the ship, and she sighed.

"I have an idea. But it's not going to be pretty." She looked over at the adventurers, and had the golem had a face, it would have hardened. "And even with it, I can't take any risks." She gestured, and a handful of praetorian guards pulled out soul sealing artifacts.

She had prayed they wouldn't be used…but she had known that if she needed them, she would need them badly.

Simultaneously, she ordered the fireteam of golems she'd left in engineering to go for the ripped apart reactor console.

The captain would get his wish after all.

*****

"Well, it was a solid idea." Said Pyn as she ducked behind the half torn and thoroughly bent plate of armor they were currently hiding behind.

"Yeah. Until they started counter-attacking." Said Allya, acidly, darting to look over their cover, before ducking back down, swearing under her breath.

Taking out the turrets had proven relatively easy, especially when they were engaged against someone else.

So of course golems had erupted from concealed hatches and attacked them as they were fighting the last ones.

At least they weren't encircled…yet. But the turret was forcing them to keep their heads down, and the damned golems were getting closer every second!

"We need to attempt a breakout my lady." Said Anders. "I'll go out, draw their fire, and you-"

"Damn it Anders, I'm not using you as a disposable decoy!"

"Do you have a better idea my lady?" Said the commander a bit testily.

Allya opened her mouth, but never had a chance to say anything as a shadow passed over them, and she looked up.

She caught a glimpse of a mass of armor plating and legs, a split second before the spider tank landed.

The enemy seemed as surprised as she had been -in as much as they could feel surprise-, and hesitated for a second, their programming clearly not accounting for this kind of possibility.

That instant was all the spider tank needed, as it fired both cannons into the turret.

The first shell bounced on the gun's battered armor, and screamed off into the distance. But the second hit it dead on, hitting one of the spots Pyn had pierced with her arrows dead on, and tore the gun clean off.

The golems retargeted, but already the tank's machineguns were sweeping among them…And Allya's men were opening fire.

Caught in the merciless crossfire, the Old World automata were crushed.

Allya took a deep breath, and looked up at the tank.

"Well, not the kind of support I was expecting, but I'll take it." She chuckled. "I guess Sonya ran out of adventurers. Or…" She looked at the tank, and realized it was the one Crystal had gifted to her. "Or something else happened." There was some scoring on the tank, as if it had been in a fight. Given that it had been given to protect her, she could take a guess at how it had reacted to her sudden disappearance. "Well. I suppose her constructs take after their creator."

"Perplexing, half mad and intervening at the most opportune and inopportune moments?" Said Pyn, and Allya coughed, glaring at her girlfriend.

"Full of surprises." Simply said the baroness, before turning towards the still open hatches the golems had come from. "Alright, let's move in. Hopefully we can link up with the adventurers already inside and take this damned thing out! For Rebirth!"

"For Rebirth!"

*****

Alexandra looked at the tactical holographic display in the command center, gripping the edge of the console so hard the metal was beginning to bend.

She looked as the icons of her three surviving shuttles slowly inched forward…before finally disappearing behind the mesas, out of reach of both the blast and the flash of the self destruct.

She sighed, and gave the order.

A praetorian guard, one of the entire squad she had to leave behind in the engineering section to make room for the loot, walked to the dismantled console, and pushed the button.

Alarms blared back up, and the reactor's humming grew louder again.

As it did, she ordered her golem to walk to the bridge, and had it stop in front of the captain's chair, where the resplendent uniform still clung to the man's mummified corpse.

She looked for a second, and gave the body a picture perfect EFSN salute.

"Hail captain. Know that your fight isn't over yet." She hesitated, and decided that the EFSN's unofficial motto was about as appropriate as it could get here. "Ad astra."

She sighed…and did a double take as she saw the praetorian guards in the engineering section reproduce the salute, before turning towards the golem with the video feed, and giving her a warrior's salute.

She was halfway to opening her mouth when the containment field failed.

And for the second time, a mushroom cloud rose above Rebirth, as the ship vanished in a sphere of nuclear hellfire.