Chapter 391 - Action, Reaction

Note : Chapter 392 has been written and added to the queue !

Only 6 or so chapters (12k words) left in this book ! So clooooose ! I can feel the urge to write more overtaking me ! It is a good pain !

I got some social event thingy tonight (I'm there for the conference and the food), but I'll probably get back to writing as soon as I arrive. I hunger for the words.

Chapter 391

Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire

Capital City of Rebirth

The first assembly of her Imperial Council. A grand occasion.

If the situation wasn't so screwed, of course.

Allya gestured, and everyone sat down.

"Thank you all for attending." Said the Empress as she took her own seat. It hadn't changed, save for one little detail, it now bore her heraldry. "We have received extremely concerning news. General Amelia?"

"Thank you, your majesty." The General, or at least her hologram, stood up. "I have received believable intelligence that the slave brands of Sunrise have been engineered by the Sapphire Kingdom."

There was a short silence.

"WHAT?!?"

Everyone flinched as Ellyana and the King of Asaria both roared simultaneously, their voices melding.

Both exchanged a somewhat startled glance, and the alchemist sat back down, but the King stayed up, through his magic mirror.

"Indeed." Continued Amelia. "It is unclear for what purpose, but the information indicates that the brands were commissioned by the council of archmages for their clone battalions." Everyone nodded. The Sapphirians were masters of magic, and that meant they had a mastery over biology than almost no one else could come close to. That, combined with their large numbers of mages and wealth of mana thanks to owning the only pillar of power on the continent, had allowed them to dabble in things most others wouldn't contemplate, like using military cloning. "Whether it was stolen by Sunrise or deliberately leaked is unclear."

"It doesn't matter." Said the King, as he gritted his teeth. "They said nothing. Did nothing. For everyone in my Kingdom, that will be enough."

"Agreed." Said Allya. "It will be seen as an admission of guilt." She leaned forward. "Which brings me to the crux of this problem: regardless of our own intentions and plans, war with the Sapphire Kingdom is now inevitable." She smiled, and it was by no means pleasant. "Our people will demand it. And no one north of Erakis will take 'no' or 'we need more information' for an answer."

"Nor will anyone here." Said the Hegemon, looking closer to a machine than a human on her life support seat, which the hologram faithfully reproduced. "What are your intentions, your majesty?"

If she found it odd to be calling someone by that title, she was too consummate a stateswoman to show it, though the Empress could have sworn there was the ghost of a smile at the corner of her lips.

Allya drummed her fingers on the tabletop.

"We will immediately begin mobilizing our forces for a push north." She nodded towards the King. "A significant amount will have to stay behind, to bring back stability to the east. But the core combat elements, those that have no use in peacekeeping missions, will form up and move north. I am hoping to be able to use Asaria as a staging ground."

"We have something of a housing problem, but that has lessened somewhat. There should be enough of Sunrise's siegeworks left to host your troops."

"We'll have them help with the reconstruction while we assemble for the march."

"That'd be appreciated."

Allya looked at Alexandra, in calculated nonchalance.

"How many troops can we send, lady general?"

"A great deal of the army remains in Myriu still. I believe we have five thousand golems and twenty thousand soldiers available." Plus cultist volunteers, but they didn't count as combat personnel. Out of the original ten thousand golems and sixty thousand soldiers the army had kept for its last stand, that was still a fair bit. "That includes the full artillery complement, all fifteen Mackies and the armored battalion."

Allya had to hold back a smirk as many around the table shifted uncomfortably as the Mackies were mentioned. Their legend was already made before they exterminated what remained of Sunrise's army, and no one wished to be on the wrong end of them now.

"Of course, we have reinforcements that have almost arrived. A total of forty four thousand soldiers or so. Some of them were slated for peacekeeping operations, so around nineteen thousand should be deployable north." Or, to be more accurate, about nineteen thousand were combat capable, which was fifteen thousand of Alexandra's new infantry, and the mercenaries and fully trained and modernized levies from Darthar. The rest were either surplus golems, another fifteen thousand, or Sarth's ten thousand levies, whose combat capabilities were, er...dubious. "As for the troops were have here at home...why, I believe we should have about five full divisions ready to move out, sixty thousand troops, with their armored and artillery complements, including twelve more Mackies."

Had the people around the table been from the 'cartoons' CQ had shown her, their eyes would have popped out of their sockets at that.

She'd remarked when Elkaryos had arrived that, by the end of the month, Alexandra would have more troops ready at home than she had deployed.

And she did.

By about twenty percent. And that was just the units she was willing to part with.

She had originally set out for Darthar, with an army that had four divisions and two battalions. Fifty thousand Standard Combat Units, with Templar-class spider tanks and howitzers.

The howitzers remained more or less the same. But every single one of those golems and tanks were upgraded variants, with mech support.

Alexandra had admitted that her original army were troops she'd been building up since before the Hammer of Eternity had hit Rebirth.

This new force she'd made in one month.

One.

Fucking.

MONTH.

"We..." The King coughed, trying to pick his metaphorical jaw off the floor. "We also have some troops in Asaria. Some five thousand knights and fifteen thousand heavy infantry. Plus levies and mercenaries." He had the tone of someone saying it out of duty rather than any real expectation of those troops being of any use.

Alexandra smiled.

"I believe your men have already gone far above the call of duty, your majesty." Including the mercenaries, who had sacrificed a great deal to fulfill their contract. They may have been paid to do it, but Alexandra and -especially- Allya respected the hell out of them for fulfilling their contract to the very end. "Though, given what we may be facing, I would not begrudge some of your mages to assist."

"You shall have them."

"E-Excuse me." Everyone turned to look at Dominique. "But are you just...not going to consider negotiating? At all? You're all acting like you are already at war!"

The King frowned, something flashing deep within his eyes. Allya had very little doubt that had Dominique not been part of Rebirth's city council and thus her Imperial court, he would be tearing her a new one right about now.

"If they gave Sunrise the means for their rebellion, then yes, we are at war. Have been since the rebels rose up."

"That's not-"

Allya raised her hand, stopping Dominique's retort.

"I think Guild Representative Dominique brings up a valid point, though obliquely." Smoothly said the Empress. "Given Sunrise's raids and depredations upon the people of the Sapphire Kingdom, how likely is it that their own would rise up with these news?"

The King leaned back, his expression thoughtful.

"I...do not know, your imperial majesty." Said the monarch. "The news will shake them a great deal. But how much, remains to be seen. Besides which, I suspect the council of Archmages will deny it."

"I would be amazed if they didn't." Replied Allya. "But it may give us an opening. If this can be solved with minimal bloodshed it will be attempted, but I doubt we will be so lucky." She gazed at the maps projected on the table, then at the various people around it. "Go. Spread the news to your people. Make official announcements. Get ahead of the rumors that are already spreading. We need to take control of this narrative, and bend it to our will, lest it control us." Not that it wasn't already. "In the meantime, the summit will continue."

The show must go on, after all.

And she needed to speak with Alexandra.

*****

"Well, this is going to be a lot easier said than done." Declared Alexandra as Allya flopped into one of the command center's seats.

"If anyone can, it's you. Besides, you have the resources of a continent at your fingertips."

"And a war on two fronts." Alexandra touched the hologram, causing it to zoom on Southmarch. "This part of it is going to suck though. The campaign against Sunrise was a fucking breeze compared to this. We were fighting an enemy who was in occupied territory, hated by the locals and ninety plus percent of their troops, massively overextended in terms of supply lines, with a timer hanging over their heads, no real training or weaponry to speak off for most of the army and spending a third of their manpower just holding onto what they had and fending off guerilla attacks. Here we'll be assaulting fortified positions inside rough terrain."

"Positions defended by people who are even more backwards technologically than Sunrise was."

"In theory, yes. But that's not going to last long once the UDC throws its hat into the ring." Not that the Senate hadn't been supplying Sunrise with stuff. Surprisingly few firearms, all things considered, though a handful of arquebusier formations and bombards had made their way there, but all of them had been left behind to hold the siege Asaria when the Duchess had made her way south. Not like they'd have brought any advantage against her own stuff. But there had been a substantial amount of aid, mostly metals and other military materials to help with the loss of Sunrise's workforce. "They don't have Erisian tech, thank the stars, but they've got firearms or magical equivalents by the truckload. They have the mana to. And let's not forget that what they don't have in tech, the Sapphirians can make up for with magic." She leaned forward. "I'm wondering..."

"Oh boy. When you say things like that and have that expression, you're either going to spout off some genius terran super strategy or say something profoundly stupid."

Alexandra colored slightly.

"I was wondering if we had to attack Southmarch at all."

Allya blinked, and looked at the map.

"I don't know. Those are the barrier mountains, Alex. Their name is well earned. The Asarians have tried to punch through them for a thousand years."

"Didn't they succeed? I distinctly remember Sunrise doing slave raids."

"Well yeah, but there's a difference between sneaking a platoon strength raiding party through a goat trail and trying to jam an entire battalion, let alone an army, down them. The council of Archmages, and their monarchs before they took over, weren't fools. Okay, they were fools to some extent for allowing the whole continent to fall apart, but not brain dead. I'm guessing it didn't exist on Terra but there's something called invasion routes here. There's only so many places you can jam an army through."

"I am aware of that." It was a fascinating subject, especially as it had dictated troop movements well into even the twentieth century. Then traditional geography started to take a backseat as high energy munitions became widely available and more and more liberally used for various purposes. If you could nuke a mountain out of the way, a lot of traditional terrain features became a lot less problematical to navigate around. "But we have ways around it. I can make tunnellers, and chew through the mountains. It'll take some time, but it can be done." Especially with some magic to speed things up.

"The Sapphirians have geomancers. Hell, the Asarians too. They've tried that. Every invasion route, everything that approaches a mountain pass, has a fortress jammed into them. The only really open place through is Southmarch, and they built a wall from one mount to another. Ever wonder why Sunrise came to be? Why the Sapphirians built that city? It was the main port to bypass the bottleneck that was the barrier mountains. And it was so bad even ships couldn't fully meet the demand, so they built a damned cargo teleporter there."

"That bad?"

"Well, it also opened up the east of the continent for exploitation and there was a newborn dungeon core there, but yeah. It grew so big, so quickly, that they had an entire department dedicated to enticing immigrants to move in to fill labor shortages for the expansion. That's why they became slavers, after the Wars of Shattering the Sapphirian Royal Navy started harrying the ships coming there, turning them around or flat out redirecting them to Sapphire City. Their solution to make up the worsening shortage was enslaving the Sapphirian prisoners of war to work the mines, and it went downhill from there."

Alexandra's face twisted.

"This kind of shit is exactly why I asked you to put clear term lengths on labor for our own prisoners."

The Empress' expression softened.

"I know. But yeah, going up Southmarch isn't going to be easy. And neither will bypassing it. Don't get me wrong, airships can do it, but you also have limits in crossing points. They have a flight ceiling, after all. It should be a lot more free, thanks to the Asarians never having much of an airforce to begin with. But...well, you said it yourself. The UDC isn't going to sit this one out."

"And their own airfleet will try to interdict those points and try to bottle us in." It was a harsh lesson she'd taught them with her air raids during the retreat South. If her airfleet wasn't tied down by something else, she would kill them by a thousand cuts. And Glarvistar was no one's fool.

"Probably." Allya sighed. "What the fuck were the council of archmages thinking, making those brands?"

"That's simple. Nothing." Alexandra met Allya's curious gaze. "Because they didn't."

Allya opened her mouth, then closed it.

"...You know who made those brands, don't you?"

"Yes. I do."

"And you knew it this whole time?"

"No. I only figured it out after they were broken." Alexandra sighed. "Look, I've always been upfront about the fact that I wouldn't tell you everything. That I can't. But here it is simply too important for you not to know. And I trust you. So, let me read you in on some little investigations we've been doing..."