Chapter 394 - Emergency Planning

Note :

Gods, yesterday knocked the winds out of my sails. I fucking hate travelling. Especially when it was more or less pointless and I could have stayed home.

Chapter 394

Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire

Dungeon Factory, Command Center

"They're luring in a sand kraken?!?" Exclaimed Allya, her face pale.

"That's what it seems." Alexandra tapped the console, and the hologram updated. "I didn't stick around to get a full scan, the amount of sand blasted into the sky when this thing surfaces would have scraped the stealth coating off the drone, if not taken it out of the skies altogether. But if you know anything else than a sand kraken that can do that...I'd honestly be very interested in knowing right about now."

The Empress shook her head.

"I don't." She swallowed. "Sweet merciful Earth Goddess, I knew they had something planned and were after us, but this?"

Alexandra nodded.

"Yeah. I wasn't expecting that either. An assault from the wasteland, an infiltration, maybe even luring in some Old World forces like the Order did." Though, technically, she supposed the sand krakens were Old World forces. "At least it explains why they have Sagitarian IFF transponders slapped on everything."

"Right. That's the 'relic' the New Republic gave you for crossing the wasteland with armies?"

"Yeeeep. And I'm guessing they brought one for each ship because otherwise this setup would get them flagged as hostiles by default."

"Why...why are they even bothering? With the setup, I mean? Why not just...use essence to lure the thing?"

Alexandra met Ghost's gaze, and nodded towards Allya.

"Our guess is that the reason why wasteland monsters dislike approaching Old World ruins is due to some kind of geofencing." Said the apparition. "Effectively, that they're descended from biological weapons from the Great Night and were unreliable enough in terms of whom they attacked that a blanket prohibition not to go near installations."

"There's also the possibility that it was simply fencing off locations they wanted to salvage or retake." Added Alexandra. "Since the defence systems probably wouldn't recognize the monsters as allies and the creatures would defend themselves, potentially wrecking the whole site in the process or triggering a self destruct sequence."

"But that can be overridden." Said Allya, softly, as it dawned on her. "The monsters attacked the town once, and kept hanging around it."

"Precisely." Ghost leaned back against the holographic projector. "This, we think, is to override the kraken's programs, instincts, whatever is keeping it from entering the area, by making it believe it is under attack by enemy forces and that Sagitarian units are in distress. Which explains the whole battle simulation. It's breadcrumbs leading straight to us."

Alexandra stepped forward.

"And we're guessing that they didn't just take stuff from the wrecks around the town, from the Hammer of Eternity's task force. But they've probably been planting essence dispensers and illusion projectors to do exactly what they did out there, but on a grandeur scale. Possibly even bringing some of the communication systems on the ships back online to broadcast distress calls and battle chatter."

"...can we stop them?" Asked Allya.

"We have stealth golems going over the wrecks right now." Said Ghost. "But there's too much ground to cover, and not enough time. We'll never get them all. Plus there's the weapons they've stockpiled. They might be used for the bait, but I doubt it. They're probably aiming to use them to make sure and certain their targets are done."

Allya chuckled, almost hysterically.

"Right. Because the Sand Kraken won't see to that on its own."

Alexandra shrugged.

"There's been plenty of times our enemies were taken out by fortuitous events." Like when Gift had arrived with his fleet, or the Adjudicator with the Void Blades. "They're not taking any chances."

"...So what do we do?"

"There...may be some solutions. They range from 'extremely risky' to 'virtually suicide'."

"Better than certain death."

The apparition nodded.

"Our thoughts exactly." Ghost cleared her throat. "The first, and most obvious threat, is the sand kraken and the group leading it to us. They're outside the range of our normal strike drones, but we could send a flotilla to intercept. The problem is that the second we do this, we blow the fact that we know, and there's no way they don't have a failsafe for our fleet intercepting them. That, for your information, is 'virtually suicide'."

"So what's merely 'extremely risky'?"

The two sisters' gazes met again.

"Well..." Said Alexandra. "The Sagitarius Empire has protocols for tagging an IFF as compromised. The mirage tank is from Seraph's surface defenses, and we've had time to dig into much of her database. We have many of the override codes and authentification keys. We could tag it as compromised, and have it broadcast a warning that its unit may be compromised as well. Since these IFFs are probably being grouped together as a single force by the kraken, it should trigger a series of pings to confirm the others are legit. Normally that's a simple procedure, the transponder just does a short burst to its command net or its pilot. But both don't exist. Haven't for thousands of years."

"Couldn't you just...slap one on the drone, and do the same thing?"

"The second we light an IFF beacon on it everyone will know it's there, and their AA batteries will swat it out of the skies. If it's too far away, the kraken probably won't ping their group as well, if it even acknowledges the warning from a new, far away IFF as genuine, and not some kind of trick. Plus, to avoid their AA defenses we'd have to be dozens of kilometers away. Maybe hundreds, if my guess about those missiles on the corvette is correct. Not to mention they'll be forewarned. If we hack in though...the system is made to be able to discreetly warn the other side that something is wrong."

"So they'll be blissfully unaware, until the kraken is right on top of them?"

"Something like that. Hopefully." Alexandra shrugged. "Look, it's not perfect. It's not even good. But it's the best we got."

"Right...and the assholes inside our walls?"

"That, we've been planning to deal with for a while." Alexandra gestured, not even bothering with the console, and the hologram changed. "You know we've had a police operation planned to take down the guild, if necessary." Allya nodded. It wasn't a question, they'd both worked on it. "This is it, but on steroids. I'd rather not use Old World weapons on my end unless I absolutely have to. So the solution? Prepare to send out the army we promised to send north...and as they're marching through the city, have them attack the guild."

Allya stumbled backward, her expression sick.

"Alex...there's going to be thousands, tens of thousands of civilians clogging the streets to see them off. They'll be caught right in the middle."

"No. They'll be concentrated in areas your town guard will have cordoned off for public safety reasons, and keep them out of the line of fire. And if enemies are trapped in the crowds? They'll have to make their way out, through our troops, and then the golems filled streets to get to their guns."

The Empress tilted her head.

"That...Alex it might work. But it's going to go wrong. You know that."

The dungeon core nodded.

"I do." She said, softly. "But it's the best I got."

There was a short silence, until Ghost cleared her throat.

"Glitch and Subtlety pointed out that if they're doing this, they'll need to have a plan to cut coms, to maximize the time they have before an effective response can be mounted. Their guess is, they have someone ready to sabotage the World Mage Court's communication crystal network, and weapons on standby to take out the radio transmitters, plus some jammers." They had way more than just the tower on top of the mesa now, including those bouncing the waves off of the upper atmosphere. "We have backups and means to pierce through most jamming, but I'm guessing they'll have means to detect them as they come online and try to take them out. The communication crystals are way out of our league, but the radios are something we can control. We can broadcast an SOS and a full declaration of what's happening before they can take out the transmitters. Then..." She grimaced. "It's going to be a battle to keep our coms open for the operation. If we lose them completely, we lose the golems' coordination. It'll be a race between destroying their jammers and bunker busters and them blowing up our antennas and ECCM emitters."

"That's just wonderful. What about the adventurers? The neutrals, not those caught up in the guild's plan."

"Honestly, I'm hoping they'll stay in the damned crowds, but we all know that won't happen for long." Adventurers, as they'd aptly demonstrated when they'd tried to rush her dungeon once, didn't understand the concept of 'sitting something out'. Many times that had been to their advantage, but here...not so much. "Push comes to shove...push comes to shove, we can give the order to indiscrimently attack everyone who is armed and not wearing one of our uniforms."

Ghost's pain was evident in her voice, and Alexandra laid a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it softly.

They had the resurrection capacity to prevent it being a complete slaughter, but there was no such thing as a one hundred percent resurrection rate in a chaotic urban battle like this. Especially not when you were planning to unleash sixty thousand golems, an entire tank battalion and a dozen mechs into the streets.

"And what of...delivering a first strike on the weapons? Before they're used, I mean. Glitch deduced they may be using the Syndicate safehouses to store them, and I have Elkaryos getting me their locations. If it's the case, we can blow them up before they ever use them, right?"

Alexandra grimaced.

"Glitch did more of an intuitive leap than a deduction. But yes. The thing is, you can never, ever rely on air or artillery strikes, especially on enemy stockpiles, to be one hundred percent successful. Same for sabotage, though I doubt we'll be able to infiltrate them. And that's if we already find them all to begin with. But that should help, somewhat."

"Every little bit helps."

"Yeah." Alexandra leaned back against a console. "Right now I'm designing a way to get the stealth golem down into the wasteland. The drone can technically land but they're doing their whole offloading process so fast it'd have to be close, and that's asking a lot of it's stealth systems that close to active air defense batteries." Especially since the reason those drones could move so far, so quickly was that they carried a fusion core with them. Thermonuclear reactors were many things, 'discrete' was not one of them. "So a way to drop it directly on or near the site would be optimal." The dungeon core grimaced. "Also I might need to upgrade the stealth golem. It can't penetrate the guild hall, and though they may not have the same kind of security in that expedition, I can't take the risk."

"And you have to do all that while that kraken is getting closer and closer."

"If it was easy, we wouldn't get paid the big bucks."

Allya smiled slightly, shaking her head.

"We're not getting paid."

"I don't know, that crown you're preparing to put on your head seems kind of expensive."

"You mean the one you're putting on my head. And if that's my salary, I'd like to ask for a raise." The Empress sniffed. "My efforts are worth at least the whole continent. Not a mere three quarters of it. And my crown should be big enough scrape the ceiling when I nod."

The dungeon core smiled back as Allya's own grew.

"I'll consider it." The dungeon core tapped the console she was leaning on, turning off the hologram and returning the projector to standby mode. "Did Elkaryos give you a timeline? For digging into the Syndicate."

"Couple of days, tops."

The dungeon core frowned, but nodded.

"It'll have to do. Is he okay with them being blasted if it turns out the guild is using them? I mean, we're going to do it anyway, but I'd rather not antagonize an ally." Especially not one Allya seemed to consider a friend, after a fashion. The poor girl already had too few of those without removing some.

"He was livid that the Syndicate would betray one of their allies. He started ranting about how this kind of shit is exactly why dark elves have a bad name and they had to form the damned Syndicate in the first place."

Alexandra nodded. It wasn't quite true -the dark elves' reputation was due to their origin as bioengineered assassins and super-soldiers-, but close enough.

"Alright. That's something at least." She clapped her hands. "Let's get to work then. We have a city to save!"

And a millenia old organization to topple.