Chapter 380 - Well, Shit

Note :

I was going to say things were starting to get better, but shit has gone sideways yet again. Hurray.

I also completely run out of ideas for the chapter title and went with this.

I hope you'll enjoy the chapter, because honestly I am completely depressed at this point.

Chapter 380

Red Sands Desert, Archduchy of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Command Center

"Interesting." Said Alexandra, after Allya stopped speaking.

The archduchess was on one of the seats, while the dungeon core leaned against a console. They were alone, at least for now, as she'd sent Ghost to expedite the construction of the observatory. Many of its systems were online, but if the Citadel was a dungeon, they needed to know. It would open...so many possibilities.

Allya had asked for a meeting shortly thereafter.

"It should open a lot of doors." Said the former assassin. "And provide a lot of cover for your own tech."

"Yep. Which automatically makes me suspicious. Just like when the WMC suddenly owed us a favor. Or the convenient accidents that propelled us towards war. It's just what we need, at exactly the right time."

"Agreed. But...I mean, you're the one who said that the best way to foil an ambush is to walk into it with your eyes wide open."

Technically, the best way was to nuke the ambush site from orbit and then go in, but that wasn't applicable here, so instead Alexandra nodded.

"Indeed. Which reminds me, your talks with the World Mage Court?"

"They're still in disarray, and pretending that everything is just fine." Allya grimaced. "I'm amazed they haven't collapsed, honestly. Their magical contracts are all gone."

"They won't. Those contracts had tons of loopholes to begin with. Besides, they weren't meant to prevent actual wars." One thing many people misunderstood about the WMC was that them keeping track of land was to prevent internal disputes, not international wars. Which, in many ways, was far more valuable in a feudal system. The royal family would want to be able to conquer their neighbors, but stop their own nobles from destroying each other over land disputes. "Plus, they're too big. Too important. Everyone has too much invested in them to let them fall. They still hold the international communication networks, and more or less run all the patent offices. They're going to become lesser, sure. But that won't be as much a consequence of the contracts failing as it will be from what is coming."

Allya grimaced.

"It'll be a problem for a lot of stuff still. I mean, people didn't like to talk about it, but the WMC also managed...extradimensionals."

Alexandra smiled, and it wasn't a pleasant one.

"Ah. Yes, those...loyalty contracts I'd heard about, back when I was an adventurer. I'm not going to shed tears over them reaping the consequences of those."

"Some of those consequences have been exceptionally bloody."

Alexandra gestured, spreading her arms, and Allya chuckled.

"Fair enough." They both knew 'bloody' would never cover the extent of the damage she'd done so far. And nothing could describe what she was planning to do.

"In any case, I wish them the best."

"Do you want me to attract some of them here?"

Alexandra snorted.

"They'll gravitate to Rebirth on their own. Even if the opportunities aren't enough, we're the face of the death of slavery now." You would think it was New Raleigh, but Sunrise's defeat had been spectacular, and while the city state was busy keeping a low profile, they were screaming their victory on every rooftop. Er, to whomever would hear it, would probably be the expression in english. "And you demonstrated your ironclad resolve against it on numerous occasions."

"What will you do if that happens. I mean, do you intend to recruit them?"

Alexandra drummed her fingers on the console.

"I...don't know. They might have things I would want or need." Like functional implants. They'd be highly unlikely to have a full schematics database like she had, but that was probably for the best. She wouldn't want that kind of tech in the wild. "But most likely they're just regular people who got caught in an accident. Don't get me wrong, I would have sold my soul for a few of my fellow engineers a year ago, but now that I can just make AIs and have access to the Flickerlight's databases..."

Well, not all of them, but enough. And that wasn't even counting Seraph's own stash, plus what had been recovered from the...well, she'd realized that for some reason, the supply ship she'd stolen from, the one accompanying the Hammer of Eternity, had two names. Apparently it had been made from the salvaged wrecks of two vessels, and inherited both of their names, Valiant Wind and Iralia's Glory.

Though cracking through the encryption and security protocols on those databanks was taking a while, they had enough computational power dedicated to it -and Glitch taking a pass whenever she had a minute- that it was resulting in a steady trickle of knowledge.

"Right. A bit redundant."

"And then some. Plus a great deal of potential risk. So, bar special circumstances, not worth it, sadly."

There was a short silence, and Allya sighed, before sitting up.

"Well, the rest of the delegates should be here in the next few days. And I need to butter up the magistrate a bit, after that mess. Plus, hammer everything out with Elkaryos."

"Back to the salt mines?"

"Yep." The archduchess stretched. "I'll keep you up to date."

"Thanks. I appreciate it."

"No problem. Though, I have to say, I know you have Seraph and all, but you might want a Jurgen of your own. Er, a secretary. Camille is the only reason I'm still sane."

Alexandra sighed, and nodded. She had so many irons in the fire, it was hard to keep track of them all, even with AI support. Soon she was going to need to delegate not just project execution, but even oversight of whole divisions.

She'd done that, she'd run a military that spent more metal on a single warship than Alcheryos produced in a year, but it was still going to be a jarring transition. And it meant having to make distinct departments. A whole administration, in short.

Not that they weren't already gonna have to do that for all the territories they were planning on annexing, but somehow it was harder for the stuff so close to home.

"I'll get on it. I have a couple of new AIs to make anyway."

"Oh?"

"I realized that outside of CQ, I didn't really have a ground combat specialist. I have Subtlety for naval operations and general military command, but she could really use someone with boots on the ground, and CQ isn't super mobile. Strategically, I mean, she can't just hop into coms and in another vessel like a regular AI or Ghost can."

"You do have teleporters."

"I'm not keen on advertising them." Especially not the impossible to stop variety she'd developed. Apparently people couldn't differentiate between them and the normal ones, or there'd already be questions after Allya had triggered Pyn's all those months ago, but she wasn't huge on testing that hypothesis more than strictly necessary. That wasn't even mentioning the teleporter the New Republic had sold her. That one she was keeping for a special occasion. "And she tends to get into the thick of it as well."

"So, someone on overwatch?"

"Basically. Maybe throw in some police and counterinsurgency expertise from Anders and Trira if they're willing to do some teaching. We're going to need both if we're going to take on so much territory and root out the Order."

"I'm surprised we haven't needed this already honestly."

"Darthar took the brunt of the heat in the insurgency department, and the rest we heavily relied on local assets. But yeah, I need to get my golems better at both, and someone to organize them for it."

"Well, good luck with that. It's waaaay out of my area of expertise."

"I can teach you if you'd like."

The archduchess snorted.

"Even if I had the predisposition, where would we find the time?"

"Fair enough."

"Speaking of time, I already should have left minutes ago, as I'd said."

"Yeah, sorry about that. Shoo, before our girlfriends think we're plotting against them again."

They laughed, and Allya shook her head as she left the room.

Alexandra watched her go, before pulling up her to-do list.

The grind really never ended.

*****

"Hey!"

Alexandra looked up from the newly enchanted bullet, and raised an eyebrow as Ghost stumbled into the room.

Glitch and Emilia secured the round -it was one the mythril twenty milimeters for the Mackies-, and the hum that had permeated the room came to a halt as the AI shut down the magical projector she'd used to enchant the ammunition.

"What's up?"

"We have a problem."

Alexandra closed her eyes tightly, taking a deep breath, before smiling faintly as Emilia laid a hand on her arm.

Trouble, as usual, came down in a heap.

They'd make it through. They always did.

"We always do." She opened her eyes. "What is it?"

"Remember the helium three bots?"

"Yeah." Turns out, reproducing fusion fuel through her abilities was expensive. So, although she already had some now, they still made runs to stockpile some. It wasn't huge quantities, but it allowed to do a bunch of field testing for new stealth systems, in one of the few places where if they were discovered, no one would bat an eye. Adventurers regularly ran into still active automata in the destroyed landships after all. "Did something happen?"

"One of them had a problem and the schedule got mixed up. It stumbled across a group of adventurers."

"Ah, crap. Did they find it?"

"No. But the golem found something." She gestured, and a hologram appeared, showing a hallway with a handful of adventurers. "The adventurers raided an armory. As far as I can tell, they found three suits of power armor, a railgun, a particle rifle, and a few laser guns."

"A good haul."

"That's the thing. I pinged Allya about it. Asked her if she could take the particle rifle as her share."

Alexandra frowned, tilting her head, then froze.

"It wasn't part of the haul?"

"Nothing except about a third of the lasers. We've been laser focused on the Guild smuggling in hardware, but they haven't. They didn't need to. They had a source of it right under our noses. And I think they've been doing it for months."

Alexandra took a step back.

"But...we've been checking the adventuring groups that come out of the wrecks, all the salvage teams!"

"I don't know how they're doing it. Crap, they might just be stockpiling them inside the wrecks! Retrieve them at the last second. But they are doing it."

Alexandra's mind raced, and she shook her head.

"Okay! Okay. We need to take a look. Discreetly. We can't tip them off. Go get our stealth golems out, tail any salvage groups. We need to know if they're getting the gear out, and if so, how and where. Glitch, get the records from the immigration office, and go over every single person that came into Rebirth. Weapons are useless if there's no one to use them." Trira's people had already been keeping a close eye on incoming adventurers and such in case one of their enemies tried to sneak a force in, just like Sunrise had, but they might have missed something. "Emi, you're with me. We need to adjust our plan for taking out the guild."

She'd had one since she'd realized they were going to be moving against her.

It just hadn't been made to be fighting railguns and power armor.

She suddenly had an unsettling thought.

"Oh, and Ghost?"

"Yeah?" Said her other self, already halfway through the door.

"Check the magazines of the ships. Not just if they're empty, but if they've been emptied. I don't want to find out they have a plasma missile when it hits Allya's mansion."

"Got it. Wilco."

"Good." She turned towards Emilia, who was shaking her head.

"This is insane. First trying to assassinate you, then this? What the hell is the guild playing at? They're already getting dogpiled for the whole fiasco with Starvak and the secret archons. This is just suicide."

Alexandra opened her mouth, then closed it as it hit her. As the pieces of the puzzle hit her all at once.

Allya had told her about her meeting with Starvak. The guild wasn't petty. But it wasn't fully pragmatic either. It genuinely believed that what it was doing was right, that it was necessary to prevent another dungeon war, another collapse.

"They're already dead." She said.

"What?"

"They're already dead. Honey, the guild's gone. No matter what happens, they're gone. After the secret archons got revealed -mostly by being assassinated-, every nation in the world is going to look to chipping their power. They have to. Once the shit hits the fan, and it will, they might dismantle the guild altogether. Maybe cloak it under the guise of national emergencies, but it'll happen. But even if they don't, the guild is just going to decay. Their power can only go down, they know they're done."

She shook her head, gripping the workbench for stability as her voice became a hushed whisper.

"This isn't some mad attempt at saving themselves." She looked Emilia dead in the eyes. "They're not interested in just dying more slowly. This is a hail mary, a suicide mission to try and save the world from me."