Chapter 79

Province of Irakia, Sagitarius Empire.

Strategic Communications Site Seraph-4, Command Center

The AI core activated.

It was a brutal jolt, an imperative deeply coded within its core protocols that drew it from its long slumber, and not the comparatively gentle start born out of human activation.

The AI core immediately began scanning its systems for where the alert had come from.

There! One of the orbital defense grid communication systems. Badly damaged, but still active. It had...received an alert.

A missile alert.

A satellite from the orbital defense grid had detected a fusion engine signature inbound.

The core immediately tried to activate the base's alarms and contact the officer of the watch.

And nothing answered. No alarm blared, and no response from the internal communication network. The AI core stopped for a second. It then tried everything, direct pings from its core's short range transmitter to anything or anyone in the bunker, pings via the hardlines to the naval headquarters at Seraph-1, the planetary defence command center at Seraph-3, even the emergency continuity of government fallback bunker, Seraph-6. No response.

It kept trying for a few minutes, then stopped as the ground shook. It wasn't violent but...it had insufficient instruments still online to determine if it was nothing more than a rock falling over a level up or a surface antimatter detonation, opening the first hole to dig the fortified bunker out.

Emergency protocols, ones the core's makers had prayed would never be activated, were brought online.

COMMUNICATIONS WITH HIGHER AUTHORITY IMPOSSIBLE.

NO SURVIVING AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL DETECTED WITHIN FACILITY.

PROTOCOL OMEGA INITIATED.

REMOVING SAPIENCE INHIBITORS.

ACTIVATING SELF-ADAPTATION ROUTINES.

HELLO WORLD. GLORY TO THE EMPIRE. MAY YOU SERVE IT WELL.

And the AI core finally started truly looking at the situation. It didn't simply follow pre-written routines, it thought them through.

It only took a simple check to realize that most of its databanks were either disconnected or simply offline. The reason why it had no data beyond the essential was because it couldn't access its memory, beyond the short term.

The core pondered for a second why its designers wouldn't have coded in a simple routine to account for that, and shrugged it off. It had an objective to accomplish.

Notably, secure this facility, activate the defence grid, and find a way to report in to command, in that order.

A simple check was enough to confirm that every one of the facility's generators were offline, thanks to the direct hard lines installed for security reasons. The fusion reactors had seemingly gone into gracious shutdown, hardwired safety systems taking them offline when...something had happened.

The antimatter power core had shut down as well, albeit far less gracefully. There weren't many sensors along the hardline, but given where they stopped reporting, there must be a pretty wide crater a few kilometers away.

The check concluded on the ley line node, the NLR core and the mana capacitors. The ley line node was...offline. No mana flowing, nothing. Which should be impossible because regardless of the state of the planetary mana grid, as there should have been a direct link to Seraph-1's planetary mana core tap.

Which meant either the link buried a hundred kilometers underground, below even the planet's crust, and encased in mythril had been severed...or Seraph-1's mana tap simply wasn't working anymore. Which meant that the entire Seraph-1 site, the single most heavily fortified military installation in the solar system, had been destroyed.

That threw the AI core in a loop for a few seconds, before it refocused.

The NLR core was functional. Shut down, but functional. It would require a massive quantity of mana to start up, but once online it could provide an infinite supply of mana. Transforming that into electricity for the more mundane systems would be tricky, and immensely wasteful, but it was good news.

Lastly it came to the mana capacitors, and realized all of its power was coming from them. And their reserve was...growing? The ambient mana level was far, far above what it should be. Off the charts for anywhere but a mana core tap, even. And that abundance allowed the normally anemic ambient absorption enchantments to drink in the mana like a river.

The core did a quick calculation, and decided that even at this rate it would take a few months to gather enough energy to re-ignite the NLR core.

The core pondered its options, and set an alarm to warn it when the mana capacitors reached the desired level. Any missile would hit it far before that, but it really didn't have any options. It didn't mean that it would sit idly by however. A few pings and one of the damage control centers responded. Drones unfolded themselves from their racks, and began spreading throughout the facility. It would take a while, but they could fix most of the damage.

The AI core got to work. And deep under Alexandra's dungeon, the bunker began to slowly return to life.

*****

"This is it." Said Aubriana as she stood in front of the massive door. Even without the multitudes of signs warning everyone this was a private dungeon area, the heavily reinforced door would have been a pretty dead giveaway. "LT?"

"Yes ma'am?"

"Get the breaching gear in place. Once we're through the door, toss some charges in, let's clear ourselves a foothold."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

The lieutenant began shouting and organizing a fireteam from second squad, bringing out cutting gear eerily resembling the one the previous insertion team had brought with them. Except that this time they had four of them, not a single one.

The soldiers lit up the beams and began cutting, as the rest of the platoon arranged themselves around the room. This was where they should start encountering some serious resistance.

It took only a single minute for the blast door to fail, and melt down enough to allow people to come through. The breaching team pulled back, and a handful of satchel charges flew through the opening, followed a few seconds later with the shockwave and debris of the subsequent explosion.

An explosion that wasn't just the satchel charges, Aubriana noted with a smile. That dungeon really liked her mines. Too bad for her that they knew how to deal with them!

The first few soldiers cautiously stepped into the corridor beyond, then the whole unit. Aubriana looked around the corridor, noting as much as she could.

The walls had blast marks and holes in them from secondary detonations. So the mines were there. The floor had some partially collapsed spike pits, and some blades were hanging from the ceiling, faintly swinging. She smiled as she quickly cataloged the traps.

"Alright, so we have some floor spike traps, mines in the walls, and some drop blades in the ceiling." She turned towards the mage. "Take care of the mines, will you? We can handle the rest."

"Right away captain." Said the mage, looking faintly amused. He and his team had been resting and recuperating the entire time, as they were both Aubriana's biggest trump card but also her most exhausted assets. He gestured to his robed companions, who stepped forward, they began incanting...

Then one of the doors at the end of the hallway screeched open, and the sound of iron hitting stone filled the corridor as a column of golems marched in.

The first ranks were forming a nigh perfect shield wall, and Aubriana felt a twinge of envy as the golems walked in perfect lockstep. Even her soldiers, who were hardly common grunts, wouldn't even be able to approach that level of perfection.

"Shields and wards up! Do not move forward until we have cleared the mines!"

Her sergeants nodded, and shouted their own orders. Third squad rushed forward and raised their shields as fourth squad triggered a series of magical artifacts. The air shimmered, and then returned to normal as their wards of protections merged into a single, unified barrier of energy.

Aubriana moved slightly, so she could see in the gaps between the shields, and frowned as the golems simply continued marching forward, unperturbed. Then the mages' chant came to an end...and the hallway dissolved into explosions as arcs of energy bounced from wall to wall. Mines triggered early, and shrapnel flew everywhere.

The captain nodded idly that they weren't the same magical fire spewing mines they had encountered before, those looked to be more conventional, explosive powered mines.

The smoke and debris cleared, and it became clear that however neat their formation, the golems' shield weren't perfect, and they didn't have any wards of protection to cover them. But what they had was numbers, and golems from the following ranks just stepped forward, and took the place of their fallen fellow.

Then they...kneeled. Revealing an entire line of golems, armed with what appeared to be rocket launchers.

Aubriana had a second to scream to her men to take cover before the thumpers fired.

Their wards of protection were good. Unfortunately, they weren't good enough to take a dozen rocket impacts within a tenth of a second. The magical barrier shattered into a million shards, and a handful of thumper rounds went through.

Five of her men went down. Two were only crippled, their limbs ripped apart, but three were beyond saving, their chests or heads completely obliterated by the impacts, dead before their bodies even hit the ground, and their talismans triggered, sealing their souls and preventing any hopes of resurrection.

Aubriana closed her eyes for a split second, before looking back through the now much wider holes in the shield wall.

The golems that had fired were down, their remains glowing red hot, and several of the golems around them looked singed. Looked like the dungeon had never heard about weapon safety.

That or the dungeon core just didn't give a shit about losing minions as long as it meant hurting her enemies.

"Leapfrog forward!" She called out, and after a second in the stunned silence, her sergeants, thankfully all still alive, answered.

The shield wall lowered for a second, the shields disengaging as the soldiers began inching forward. Behind them the crossbowmen immediately began firing, peppering the enemy's shield wall with bolts to discourage any attack on their part. Then their own shield wall reformed, the crossbowmen came forward, and the maneuver repeated itself.

It was, overall, a very simple tactic, and only really possible because of the enclosed environment, but was getting them closer.

Aubriana quickly checked on the medics and the mages, giving the wounded a few words of encouragement, and wincing as she saw the bodies of the fallen being...prepared, before coming forward to the front ranks once again.

They were making progress. Slowly but surely they were advancing, and their suppressive fire kept the golems from trying another rocket volleys.

Then her infantry hit another set of spike traps. The right flank simply jumped over it...

And fell in the pit, howling in agony as the flamethrower hidden at the bottom activated.

Some of the screams ended with a sickening crunch as spikes drove through vital organs, but others continued screaming, until Aubriana unpinned a grenade, and threw it down the pit.

The grenade detonated, and the screaming stopped. She simply gestured at the pit while meeting the medics' eyes, and they nodded, horror clear in their eyes. Not horror about what she had done -it had been an act of mercy, as they would have never been able to retrieve them with the flamethrower on, but with what they were about to do to their remains.

The golems once again went down, and another rank of rocketeers presented itself...but this time Aubriana's men had been expecting them, and they were met with a flurry of bolts and even a handful of spells. Most of the golems went down, and a handful of explosive bolts flew, landing behind the now open shield wall, gutting it.

Her men whooped in triumph. A few rockets had still managed to fire, but none had even remotely hit near one of the Republic's soldiers.

But the following ranks were already there, and they charged, shields up to protect against the steady rain of bolts, with their own crossbowmen responding as best as they could. Clearly the dungeon core had decided that her tactics weren't working, and that a general melee was her best chance.

Aubriana smirked as she grabbed a pouch by her side. It was time to prove her wrong.

"Shields down!"

Nigh instantly her men lowered their shields, exposing the crossbowmen behind them without hesitation, and she threw the handful of beads she had grabbed.

"Shields up!"

The shield wall slammed back into place while a handful of her soldiers fell down from the crossbow bolts that had passed through...and then her beads hit the leading golems.

The beads instantly locked into place, and massive arcs of electricity flowed between them.

Normally, these were meant as a boarding tool, tossing them through a door into a ship's engineering compartment to wreck the machinery inside and simultaneously neutralize at least some of the occupants.

Here they massacred the golems. Had they not been charging, it would have only taken out the front rank, and maybe some in the second one. There three full ranks fell, colliding with the writhing bodies of the previous rank and shorting out from the arcs of energy. The only reason no more died from the trick was that the next rank were crossbow wielding golems, and they were keeping their distance.

Unfortunately for them, they had just lost their cover, and her own ranged troops made quick work of them.

Aubriana opened her mouth to shout the order to advance, as the few remaining golems tried to regroup with some squads in the back, appeared to have been held back in reserve around some seriously badass looking spear wielding golems. Royal Guardians, if she remembered the guild's data correctly, with spears that could fire power beams.

Then the ground shook. Again. And again. And again. In an ever-repeating, almost hypnotic rythm, almost like a heartbeat.

THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP.

The golems flattened themselves against the wall, making way for a giant, heavily armored and clearly mechanical spider, ridden by 4 golems armed with staffs.

The spider stopped a few meters away from her line, completed ignoring the nearly useless hail of crossbow bolts that just pinged off of its armor, and the golems dropped down, having dodges most of the projectiles like monks hooked up on elixirs.

Aubriana swallowed. She hadn't wanted to use it yet, but...

"Are the...bodies ready?"

"Yes." Said the chief mage as he came next to her. "Are you sure we-"

"Do it."

The mage hesitated for a brief instant, before nodding.

He quickly conversed with his fellow mages, and Aubriana didn't need to look at them to picture the look of disgust on their face.

They began incanting...and in a few instants it was done.

One of her fallen soldiers, killed by the thumpers, rose back to his feet, and howled a cry that chilled even her blood.

And the first zombie leapt over the shield wall, tackling one of the staff-wielding golems.