Chapter 126

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

"Damn it, this place is a freaking maze!" Grated out Alexandra as she slammed her avatar's fist against the console.

"That's not surprising." Answered Sarah as she stood in front of the hologram depicting the three dimensional hellscape that was the facility below. "It is a fortified installation of the Old World, after all."

"I know, I know!" Alexandra threw her hands up. "I've been in PDCs, shit, I was trained in one! But this is on another level entirely. This isn't just a command bunker, it's something else entirely. Doesn't have the orderly ammunition feeds and armored reactors of a PDC. No vast, reinforced warehouses of an arsenal. And there's no vast living areas, hydroponics and environmental plants that would denote a bunker meant to house people for a long time, to ride out the war. It's a rats warren of equipment, most of it wrecked, with maintenance conduits, shafts, and only the Gods know what else. It feels like vesta station's industrial sections except there is no industry. I have no clue what all the stuff those tunnels are supposed to service does but something obviously wrecked them -some of them were litteral dust-, and it has no output. The machines take in energy, instructions, and that's it."

Sarah blinked.

"How does that matter? And what's a 'PDC'?"

Alexandra opened her mouth, but Emilia beat her to the punch.

"It means Planetary Defence Center. Giant fortresses from Earth, serving as giant castles with weapons capable of reaching space. Alexandra knew them because they were recycled as training centers, and she spent several years in one." She smiled as the Earth-born turned toward her. "So you don't go onto another tangent it'll take half an hour to pull out from."

Alexandra chuckled.

"Thank you vampy. And it matters because I can't predict where we'll end up or where are the maintenance tunnels. Whatever is commanding the defensive units clearly grew a brain since our last encounter, and they've deployed guerilla tactics, hit and run with those big bastard shielded golems. And their railguns can punch through the walls. I have total numerical superiority, but they have better tech and know the terrain. We're taking so many casualties I'm having to reduce the pace of advance and I'm losing golems faster than I can make them."

"Ah. That is, indeed, very problematical. Numbers can only carry us so far."

"Indeed. So, what I intend to do is to have you take command for a few hours, while Ella goes to the surface and serves as my liaison to the town. CQ will accompany you, and Jared will go to the bertha."

"The bertha?"

"I needed a name for the railway gun and its as good as any. After all it's not large enough to be the 'big' bertha yet, although I suppose we'll get there someday." Alexandra sighed. "With that repartition we'll have our bases covered, I think."

"Covered for what?"

"For me and Emilia to buckle down and try to get the hardware we looted running. Primarily the damaged railguns. We simply aren't going to make it without them. Think you two can run things without us looking over your shoulders?"

"We should. But Ella is still bound to her chair."

"I'll make her a spider tank with a seat to take her around. Given how arrogant some of these idiots are, they'll take it as a throne. And I'll have some golems to carry her seat if necessary. A palanquin, so to speak."

"Oh, so she gets the royal treatment, wining and dining the big wigs, while I toil in the underground fighting guerilla ninja golems from hell? I see how it is."

"Would you rather handle the politicians? Dealing with their bullshit knowing you can't just punch them in the face, and having to be diplomatic and not tell them how much of a shitstain these scumbags are to their faces?"

Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it with a snap as Ella giggled. Alexandra made an idle note that it was one of the few times she'd ever heard the maid giggle.

"On second thoughts, the dark, dusty, murderbot-haunted tunnels sound very inviting. When do I start?"

"Immediately. CQ is waiting for you downstairs. Same for you Ella, the spider tank is being put together in the primary forges. It's a modification of the templar prototype, so push comes to shove it can kick some ass and get you back safely. I'll also hand over command of all surface forces, and give you a detachment of praetorian guards to serve as your bodyguards."

"Got it." Said the other maid.

"Good. And as for you, Emilia, ready for some quick and dirty science, and learn the secrets of engineering, namely banging stuff together until they work?"

"Am I ever!"

"Alright then, let's get moving!"

*****

They came quietly in the night, with only a whisper of displaced air to betray them.

Most nations had a form of airborne commandos. Technologically advanced polities like Gorromar or the Eris Empire had jetpacks. More magically minded ones like the Saphire Kingdom used enchanted belts of levitation, or other artifacts granting the ability of flight.

The Republic however, was neither. So it improvised. With the mixture of ingenuity, corruption and theft that characterized so much of their so called 'procurement'. Their commandos were outfitted with personal gliders. Small, pitch black, and aside from some gravity runes to allow them to carry a decent amount of equipment, cheap.

Their very simplicity made them nigh undetectable however. They did not have enough runes to register on anything but the most advanced or sensitive sensor, and the latter would constantly throw up false positives. They weren't large enough to be discernable by occulting the stars, and they were utterly silent. The only true way to detect them was night vision or lighting up the sky. Which was one of the reasons why every Tarkian military installation had spotlights scanning the sky constantly at night.

The commando's leader, Nalria, held her breath as they came near the gigantic gun, only lit by the city's lights, giving it a most ominous aura, like a titan of death emerging from the shadows.

They were almost there-

Nalria flinched as the night briefly flashed into day, and one of her commandos screamed, tumbling down to the ground as the bullet hit him. She gritted her teeth. The golems had to have some kind of night vision! And those damned muskets-

Then she heard the alarms go off…and faintly among them, the unmistakable cranking sound of a gatling gun revving up.

*****

Jared's mind was…almost alien, if not outright unknowable. A true form of AI, unlike CQ which had a great deal of intelligence to begin with, and whose base program had taken bits of pieces of Alexandra's matrix, and thus accidentally, Arcadia's, which explained her rather powerful intelligence and adaptability, he had evolved from observing the dungeon core and shadowing her during most of her work. He'd learned through experience and sheer brute force of power from being exposed to the dungeon core's presence for so long.

But he had interacted a lot with Alexandra and Emilia, as well as their maids, and while the inner working of his mind would have driven most cyberneticists mad, he had learned to process and shape thoughts as they did, to some extent.

So he was indeed, mildly annoyed when he received the alert from the golems, and almost leaped up the ladder as he arrived onto the roof of the cart, where the handful of guards were busy firing as fast as their muskets allowed them to. Which wasn't very much. Fortunately the gatling gun he'd taken from the armory with him when Alexandra had ordered him to guard the cart was faring much better, and he nodded in satisfaction as the hail of bullets reaped a rich harvest in the flock of intruders.

Several golems scrambled up the ladder behind him, brandishing revolvers, and he stopped them with a raised hand. As powerful as those pistols were, they were the old models, which had to be manually refilled with gunpowder and charged with a bullet, not his own cartridge based weapon. And even for his, he had limited ammunition at best. The golems waited, slowly tracking the incoming enemies…

At the last second, right as the foes changed their angle, pointing their gliders up as to arrest their momentum forward, he lowered his hand, and his golems let loose.

Nalria barely had the time to realize what was happening, wholly focused on the gatling as she was, when a bullet smashed into her forehead, splitting apart her helmet and killing her instantly.

Her troops faired little better. With such a slow reloading time, the close quarters of the dungeon they'd been designed for, and the fact that the golems had very sturdy arms capable of absorbing a potent amount of recoil, Alexandra had made the pistols to be of a particularly heavy caliber. They weren't quite 12.7 mm, as the Earth-born had still been restricted to iron when she had designed them, but they were close, and heavy caliber bullets slammed through breastplates and steel armor.

But those were commandos. Their flesh had acquired inhuman resilience from their essence, and while many fell, others did not, their armor taking the brunt of the impacts, and allowing them to live at least long enough to land, and establish a foothold on the cart.

The golems, combat routines setting in, threw away their bulky pistols once the ammunition ran dry, and unsheathed their swords, forming a defensive ring around him.

If Jared had the facial features to smile, he would have, as his gunslinger skill allowed him to reload with a speed that would have made an old fashion terran cowboy green with envy.

The first rank of enemies quickly dispatched the golems holding their bulky muskets, even bayonets being woefully inadequate against crack assault troops with hand crossbows and swords.

Jared finished reloading, and opened fire once again as the soldiers charged his line of troops. Steel clashed on steel, golems and men alike falling down. He quickly calculated that holding the upper deck was suicide. More enemies were landing every second, and the gatling gun was a level down, hidden behind thick armor plating, and could not sweep the deck in a fashion that might have enabled them to hold the line. Although had it been, the divers would have no doubt pounced on it from above and destroyed it in short order.

But thankfully, he had something that could do the same thing. It hadn't been built for that, but he had learned a lot from his creator, and her craftiness. She hadn't strictly authorized him to do it, but if she hadn't trusted him to make his own decision, she would have never put him in command in the first place. He pulled back, firing as he went, until he had his back to the ladder. Then, as the commandos overwhelmed his feeble line of defense, he gave the signal, and jumped down the ladder hole.

Above, the commandos rushed towards the crew of the gun, who had picked up their own weapons to fight, although they were only simple iron swords. Except for a handful, who were busying themselves behind the gun.

The commandos barely even slowed down as they slew the crew. But 'barely' was all the time the golems needed, as they rolled something out from behind the gun.

The commandos were trained in naval warfare. They were boarding troops, they had to be. But it took them a second to recognize what was put in front of them.

It was a full gun load of canister shot. Hundreds of small steel spheres, each effectively the pellet of a gigantic shotgun. And the gunpowder propulsion charge behind it.

One of the commandos had a split second to scream as one of the golems touched off the charge of powder with an enchanted flame spear.

*****

Jared quickly reloaded his revolvers as he stepped away from the ladder, golems scrambling around him, getting into defensive positions as the cart shook with the detonation of the makeshift claymore mine upstairs, the armor visibly denting in several places. Some of the gliders clearly had enchanted climbing gear of some kind, as many of them had landed on the walls of the cart, and were busy shooting hand crossbows through the firing slit, or trying to toss primitive, sputtering grenades in. Unfortunately this was the perfect situation to use bayoneted muskets in, and commandos screamed as golems stabbed out or fired their guns, many losing their grips and falling to their deaths.

Grenades flew in, and many were tossed back, but there only so many golems and the enemy had clearly identified the greater threat, as no less than eight grenades were tossed at the gatling gun.

Six were thrown back.

Two weren't.

Jared staggered forward as the shrapnel hit his back, but he cared little. He was a boss, and his mistress' gifts protected him. Not only his sheer power made him resilient, but she had outfitted him in the most powerful armor plating she could make, accompanied with prototype runes. It was unfortunate that she had not completed the praetorian personal ward of protection generators she had been working on so he could have one, but he would do with what he had.

And what he had was a revolver, a single predictable avenue of approach, and half a platoon of golems with firearms. Which was when the Republic demonstrated that despite their endemic corruption, their army was made of professionals.

The ceiling flashed with energy as the magical breaching charges activated, and perfectly cut discs of armor plating fell down, crushing golems and equipment, quickly followed by the commandos.

The fight descended into pandemonium. Golems fired wildly at anything that did not register as a friendly, and commandos landed in a storm of powder smoke and death. Any coordinated battle plan either side had was moot, as it devolved into vicious, hand to hand fighting.

Jared idly wondered why they had not simply tossed hand grenades down the holes, to destroy everyone inside, then he saw the pitiful handful of soldiers that followed the first wave down the holes. They must have decimated their troops with the canister charge, and they probably couldn't have afforded to have some of the grenades thrown back at them.

Then three soldiers jumped down as one, in the holes closest to the ladder leading down to the magazine, and Jared realized that the real reason was them.

As they were wearing bags that had the distinct style of satchel charges.

He reloaded faster than he ever had before, and opened fire. One of them fell down, dead before he'd even landed. Another screamed as a bullet slammed into his back, before the second silenced him for good. But the third ran on, her comrades interposing themselves between Jared and his target, sacrificing themselves to accomplish their mission.

He dropped to the ground, using his rock steady aim to shoot the sapper in the leg right before he hit the floor.

The sapper dropped, screaming. But instead of clutching her leg, she armed the satchel, and as Jared's second shot tore through the length of her body, ripping out her intestines and lungs, tossed it down the hatch in a last act of defiance.

The magazine had been heavily armored. But it still needed to have a door that could be relatively quickly opened for ammunition to be brought up on deck. The gun was slow firing, but it still needed a constant ammo supply.

So Alexandra had done her best to maximize armor while allowing the ammo to pass through quickly.

Her best wasn't enough, as the enchanted armor piercing satchel charge, more reminescent of a plasma bomb than anything equivalent on Earth, detonated.

And the entire magazine exploded alongside it.

Everyone in the town, woken up by the alarms and the gunfire, flinched or dropped to the ground as the night turned into day, and the side of the mesa flew apart into a hail of shards.