Chapter 125

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Rebirth Command Tower

"Yeah!" Yelled out Pyn, pumping her fist into the air as the air was filled with the detonation of the gargantuan shell, and the prow of the battlecruiser came apart. "Excellent shot!"

"Thank you." Replied Crystal, before frowning. "Unfortunately, it's their turn now."

"What-oh." Pyn's face fell, and Allya sighed. "How is that thing still flying?"

"Airships, especially capital ships, are extremely resilient. Will your cannon be able to reload?" Said the baroness.

"While under an artillery bombardment? No way, no how. Fortunately, I have a few tricks up my sleeves."

"What tr-" Allya's jaw dropped as the cannon vanished behind a wall of power beams. "Holy hells! What? How?"

"Resources, forethought, and a lot of spare spears and bracelets, originally intended for the royal guardians."

"The royal guardians? Oh, you mean the boss' juggernauts? That's what you call them?"

"Yes. And juggernauts? Seriously?"

"Have you seen what you've built?"

Alexandra briefly reviewed the schematics for the guardians, and chuckled.

"Okay, I guess you do have a point. I might have gone a bit heavy on the armor. Regardless, now that I've done you the courtesy of at least partially neutralizing the capital ship, I believe it is time to move on to phase two of your contingency plan."

"Of course!" She turned towards the signalman right next to them. "Corporal! Our ally was kind enough to start a party. Be so kind as to send our own ships their invitation!"

"Yes milady! One big can of ass kicking, coming right up!" The signalman grinned, and shouldered the flare rifle.

*****

The captain of the Magnificence coughed as he straightened on his command chair, wiping the blood from his eyes. It was only from a minor scalp wound, but even small injuries to the head bled profusely.

At least he was among the lucky ones. He swore as he saw the lifeless body of the helmswoman on the floor, a piece of shrapnel clearly embedded into her skull, and the positively shredded corpse of the sensor officer.

If he ever got a hold of the scumbag who'd done the procurement for the so called 'state of the art' consoles and sensor systems, he would rip their heads right off their shoulders and shove it up their ass! What kind of crappy, second rate piece of shit exploded when the devices it was linked to were destroyed?

Well, so much for having advanced sensors.

"Status report!" He coughed out.

"Sir!" Yelled out the artificer at the damage control station, one ear stuck to the voice pipe leading to the rest of the ship. "All forward sections are either gone or unresponsive. We've also lost all forward pursuit armaments, and a third of our broadside weapons. Some of the beams were also inaccurate enough to hit the propellers, but they're effectively intact." The captain grabbed his seat's armrests as the ship violently shook in response to a new wave of howitzer shells, and the artificer winced. "Belay that, propellers 1 and 3 have taken damage, and gone into emergency shut down!"

"Damn it! Helm!" The assistant helmsman stood up from his officer's body. "Finish bringing us about, and get us the hell out of here! One broadside on this thing then climb as high and fast as possible! And communications?"

"Yes sir?"

"Order the cruisers to cover our retreat." He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "As much as I hate to say it, their ships are far more expendable than mine, and we're the heaviest concentration of firepower the general is like to have for a while. Not to mention the only thing capable of holding the line should they get reinforcements."

"Aye aye sir! They'll…they'll understand sir."

They exchanged a look, and the officer looked away.

They both knew he'd just ordered at least several ships and thousands of skiers to their certain deaths.

Well, in that case, he better make their sacrifices worth it. And he was going to start a downpayment on that.

"All guns, fire as you bear on that damned gun!"

*****

The bombards lining the flanks of the airship were primitive, bronze things, even less advanced as artillery pieces than Alexandra's admittedly crude field guns.

But bronze had an interesting property. It was surprisingly soft and elastic. And while that meant that it made for absolutely atrocious material for rifled guns…it also meant that it could handle far more powerful propellant charges than iron or even low grade steel guns.

The Republic had embraced standardization for its military, and particularly its artillery. More because the big bombard foundries were all property of a one of the most powerful senate dynasties than because of any sensible military doctrine, but still. So all of the battlecruiser's remaining eighty broadside cannons threw the same, 11 kilogram projectile -a 24 pounder, by old Earth's naval nomenclature-, at over twice the speed of sound.

Said projectiles, who were solid iron cannonballs, hurtled towards the cart with the energy equivalent to 1.5 kilograms of TNT each.

Unfortunately, Alexandra hadn't wanted a flashy distraction that would fold over like a wet paper bag. And the cannonballs exploded in a hail of shards and flashes of energy as they hit the wards protecting the cart. They weren't necessarily good, efficient, or particularly advanced, but Alexandra was a dungeon core, she had a lot of mana to throw at the problem. They overloaded, of course, they weren't up to taking such a level of energy in such a short amount of time. But only a handful of cannonballs went past them to strike the thick, resilient armor.

The cruisers moved in to cover their retreating flagship. One of them even moved into an attack position on the artillery gun. It was their objective after all.

Except that it suddenly found itself almost hull to hull with the Sakura as the hastily repaired light cruiser interposed itself, and the squadron of ships suddenly had much more pressing issues than a single lonely gun which would take forever to reload as Rebirth's airships swarmed among them, and the ground side artillery unleashed its wrath upon them.

*****

"Well, they seem to have taken the lesson to heart." Said Allya as the Republic forces hastily retreated in the distance.

The ground forces, which had moved in to threaten the town, were now running for their lives as Crystal's siege gun peppered them with the occasional shell. Their airships limping back like wounded animals probably hadn't helped.

Well, that wasn't quite fair. The battlecruiser was heavily damaged, true, but she was grimly certain that it would be back in operation soon. That seemed ridiculous, but…well, capital ships were built for this kind of punishment. And most of them were heavily compartmentalized to allow them to continue fighting even as most of the vessel flew apart.

The light cruisers were another matter. All of them had their ward taken out, but only about half of the remaining ships had taken serious damage. But that was mainly because three of their own had gone down in a blaze of glory, fighting a defiant rear action, holding off the entirety of Rebirth's airships as the others fled, when it became clear that standing their ground was suicide.

Overall, it was an overwhelming victory. Not one without losses -The Republic had ended up firing on whatever the hell they could see, and dug in or not Crystal's field guns were hardly invulnerable-, or its fair share of ass kicking, but still a victory.

Unfortunately the battlecruiser was still up, the cart had taken some damage, and unlike the ships, its ward was apparently completely down until it could be fully rebuilt, and the dungeon core had made it quite clear she wasn't diverting resources for that. They probably wouldn't try a plan this brazenly stupid again, but they were going to be sure to be attempting something. Still, they seemed to have had their fill for the day at least.

"Quite so." Said Willard. "Hopefully they would have also taken the whole course, and beat an equally hasty retreat back to Erakis. Unfortunately I do not believe that is likely to happen."

"Likewise." Allya sighed. And Crystal immediately leaving upon the battle's completion worried her as well. Something was going on, clearly. Adventurers had reported sizeable explosions and gunfire in the mesa, and the dungeon core had told her straight up that there'd been a small 'supply issue' and that she'd need to recall the golems that were supposed to be their reserve. Supply issue her ass, was the dungeon core fighting another war? Why?

And against who?

*****

The blast door slammed onto the floor with a resounding crash, and immediately grenades flew through the opening.

They were met with a hail of laser bolts as the gatling laser turrets opened fire.

Unfortunately for them, those weren't normal grenades. In fact, they weren't really grenades at all. Just repurposed bouncing betty mine warheads with handles. The magical kind.

The hallway was consumed in a solid wave of flames, and the turrets fell silent.

Alexandra stepped forward, possessing one of her golems, and winced as she saw the carnage, but ordered her troops forward regardless. She was loath to damage the potentially salvageable tech, but she needed a foothold inside, and in her experience the first checkpoint would be the most heavily fortified.

Golems flooded around her with the literally inhuman fluidity of robots that could perfectly coordinate their movements, and she shook her head. She'd diverted her entire output of modern hardware to this force, effectively stopping the rearmament of her praetorian guard, and she'd even earmarked a detachment of the latter for the final push. And still she was having to pull stuff out of long term storage and retrofit it for an assault. She'd expected to be the one defending a fortified to hell bunker, not busting it!

She grimaced as gunfire and the crack of laser weaponry began to fill the corridor once more as her troops rounded the corner. This was going to be a long day.

*****

"This is a disaster." Said Amelia, bitterly, as she gazed through the entrance of the tent at the damaged battlecruiser.

"They were waiting for us." Simply answered Malcom as he leaned back into his chair. "The whole damned time. This was…I'm not sure if this was purely a trap to begin with, but they knew what we were going to hit, and how we were going to do it."

"Agreed." Grated out the general, before sighing and walking back to behind her field desk, and dropping into her seat, cradling her head between her hands. "This is a fucking nightmare. The town with the Tarkian gear would have been bad enough." They'd had some first hand reports that the town clearly had Tarkian weaponry. In what numbers was unclear, but one of the ships had taken machinegun and repeating carbine fire, when attempting to go at minimum altitude and suppress the gun emplacements at point blank range. "But with the dungeon?"

"Yeah." The brigadier glanced at the tent's entrance and the ships huddled together up in the air. "So, what's our next move ma'am?"

"We need to take out that gun. It's the one thing preventing us from organizing a full scale assault properly."

"If the dungeon made it…she could just build another one."

"If she could, the damned mesa would be covered in them. No, for whatever reason she'd unwilling or unable to make more. And we need to exploit that."

"Well, air assault is out of the question. And that gun outranges any artillery we have. In fact, we can't even hit it without basically having taken the city. Magic?"

"We would need to bring all of our war mages together for that, and they'd make a perfect target for bombardment."

"Bring them in under the cover of night? The cannon is lit up by the lights of the city. Our mages could be undetected until the very last moment."

"They'd be undetected only if they have a small escort. Do you want to bet that if that's the case their airships will immediately sortier and reduce them to mince meat? Besides, they could just send their infantry out and they'd stand a decent chance at catching them before we could intervene. There's only so many troops were can ferry in proximity to the town before we're detected, night or day."

"Point taken. We could…use a suicide ship. Ram it into the mesa."

"Unacceptable. None of the cruisers would survive the gauntlets, it would take the Magnificence. And even if we sent the whole cruiser squadron, none of them would make it back. At that point we'd have completely lost our air superiority, and that's suicide. Right now we're holding them bottled up with the threat of our superior airships, but if we don't they'll be free to send lighter ships out to harass our supply convoys."

"Right…" The brigadier stared at the desktop, furiously thinking, when Amelia snapped her fingers. "General?"

"I'm an idiot. Nalria, the glider commando, is her unit still intact?"

"We were intending to use them only once we had pierced the first layer of defenses, so yes. Hadn't seen any reasons to have them board the cruisers and get in the way."

"Excellent. Tell her to ask for some volunteers."

"Volunteers for what ma'am?"

"A suicide mission."