Chapter 30 - Only Needs One

Note :

Heya ! It's been a while since I've touched this story. There were a lot of reasons for it, but in the end a combination of burnout, not being in the right mindspace and problems with the setting's underlying mechanics and the direction the story would eventually head in just broke my willingness to continue writing it.

I've overcome some of that, by remaking how mana behaves, fixing some of the economic issues I couldn't work my way around (edits were made in chapter 23 to that end), and I've also switched how long I intended book 1 to be and what story I was going to tell. The key problem is that I don't really write fantasy adventure. Like, at all. I do take some dips into it, and did extensively in book 1 and 2 of The Fallen World, but making an entire story around it was...a problem.

So, this story will gradually transition into strategy with dragon related shenanigans as time goes on. AKA it won't just be Airah and Stellyra gallivanting around the world, stealing shit for the hoard and going on adventures. I will tie them more closely to their current location (and the dear baroness).

This all combined meant that I've pretty much thrown all my old story plans out the window and am starting from square one, with just some of the ideas I previously had still in my stew, so to speak. So, we'll see how it goes !

Chapter 30

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The Devourer shuddered, its drives failing as the hull shattered and missiles descended upon the massive ship, before being torn apart by internal explosions as three of its sister ships poured antimatter and tachyon fire into its carcass.

They didn't stop. Not until nothing was left but superheated gas and radioactive debris.

The political and military leadership of the rebellion was no more. Their last attempt to run failing as the Imperial Navy tracked them down, the Empress at the helm.

And with them went admiral Gomarez. The man who had made it possible, the one who, through sheer ability, had risen into the ranks of the navy like a meteor and given the rebels access to resources they would not have dreamed of before. The man who had ordered the campaign of planetary bombardments.

A man that some may say arrived from nowhere, a nobody from a forgotten border world. An exceptional man...at the right place and at the right time.

G dismissed the hologram. A new window of opportunity to contact her new asset on Halcyon would open soon. Or should she say assets? They may share one body, and their minds linked through means even she found intricate, but the dragon and her AI were two after all.

So many things rode on them. She despised having to send them in almost blind, but the opportunity had been too good. They would never have gotten another one like it. Not in ten thousand years.

And she would know, because she had been waiting for even longer. Slowly and carefully preparing the way.

Now she was making her final move. One last piece onto the board. She was as terrified as she was excited.

When one rolled the dice with Gods themselves, for the fates of so many, it could be no other way.

One exceptional individual could change everything...everything.

*****

Airah didn't even blink as she let go of the body, its face frozen in a mask of abject terror.

Count? She asked, through the mindlink as she scanned the area for more foes.

Fifteen. All hostiles accounted for. Answered Stellyra, her hologram pacing among the corpses.

Good.

"Stand down! We got them all." She said aloud.

The militias relaxed. They were now looking definitely worse for wear, but Airah had made certain to take most of the heat.

Funny how people had a tendency to focus on a screaming berserker throwing firebolts at them, rather than the archers turning them into pincushions. Kind of like the Conclave focused on the Devourer making all the noise instead of the battleships coming to nuke their shipyards.

In both cases they were the most dangerous by far, you just had no hope of killing them.

"Wonder why they were here." Said one of the volunteers.

"They were trying to muddy and erase the tracks." Said Airah, and Emma nodded.

"Yeah. And make some false ones. They were expecting pursuit, just...not this quickly."

"Well, pursuit's here." Airah nudged one of the bodies with her feet, resisting the urge to kick it into the forest. Or, more likely, punch her foot through its ribcage. "I wonder why they didn't try to clear them sooner? "

"No idea. Maybe they were afraid whoever was sent after them would know it well enough to pick it back up? " The hunter grimaced. "Even I don't wander this far, and it's my damned job. We're almost at the foot of the mountain now."

Airah nodded.

"Must be the point." She ventured. "They would need to pass their slaves over into Republic territory, once they're on the other side of the mountains they'd be clear. But if they have some kind of tunnel or pass, they wouldn't want their bandit minions to be able to blabber about it to anyone they got captured by."

"That's...a lot of foresight and planning."

"You don't move hundreds of anything, let alone city criminals, deserters and highwaymen, into the deep wilderness without a lot both."

"...This isn't...The Republic did this, didn't they? "

The dragon shrugged.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Someone who has plenty of resources sure is. Why, I don't know." If nothing else, the Republic's outpost didn't strike her as being ready to support an expansion, let alone one into an area infested with bandits. Which meant this wasn't softening the place for conquest, they were after something else.

Like something in the mountains, nominally within the Empire's borders? Offered Stellyra, and the dragon mentally winced.

Crap. The ruins?

Or some resource deposits. Star knows wars have been fought over less.

Right.

"Well, that's for the baroness to worry about." Said Emma, with some relief in her voice.

"That it is." Airah looked at the tracks. "How close? "

"Hard to tell." The hunter crouched. "There's not just fresh ones."

Airah smiled wolfishly.

"Meaning they were getting onto a well used trail. That's what they were trying to hide." She rolled her shoulders. Though her body behaved in ways she was still far from understanding, parts of it still seemed to follow some principles she was familiar with. "Alright, let's move."

They moved through the undergrowth, almost like ghosts. The militia had gone from having a great regard for her to almost being terrified of her, at least for some of them.

To be fair, she would be as well.

She'd just exterminated an entire squad in a minute, without even touching her dragon form. Though, those had been barebone goons, effectively the most disposable and useless members of that little expedition, basically city gangsters, with knives and already torn clothes ill suited for this kind of expedition. The only two that had been worth something were more concerned with keeping the others from slacking off than holding guard, telling her there most likely would be no more ambushes, that the group with the professionals she's wiped out was probably the last layer.

That was good, because while intermittent fusing with Stellyra had turned her from a passable rogue to death incarnate in the shadows, at least compared to the bandits, it was something she'd rather not overuse unless strictly necessary. The risks involved were...potent. Notably that a human and an AI that acted in unison for too long could fuse into one being, eventually.

Once you went that way, there were two solutions. Either you eventually went insane, like any AI without a human linked to them.

Or you kept linking new humans, and absorbing them.

Like the Empress had.

There were...reasons some had wished for her to be replaced as the leader of humanity.

Some, she had to admit, were far more valid than others.

Though, at least most of the more extreme criticisms in that case were unfounded. Despite persistent rumors of dissidents or intellectuals being dragged screaming into the empress' core, that had never happened. Firstly because the former would almost certainly try to kill her from the inside out, secondly because even Earth alone had more willing volunteers every year than the Empress could absorb in a decade, and that was one planet in humanity's capital system, to say nothing of the rest of the Empire.

There were so many volunteers they had to set up an entire system for them. There were contests, lotteries, everything. Those that didn't make the cut usually became part of the Empire's central administration, since the primary criterias were loyalty and integrity.

Time flew away as they passed through the forest, until Stellyra let out a ping, and Airah raised her fist, stopping everyone dead in their tracks.

The dragon squinted, and sighed as her vision updated with data points and targeting info.

"What is it? " Whispered Emma.

"Outpost. Screening the main camp, I think." Unfortunately, the slavers did seem to have someone who knew what they were doing. "And unless they're staggeringly incompetent, they'll be expecting word from their covering teams...and they'll most likely spot the baroness' force before we arrives."

"So...what do we do? "

Airah smiled wolfishly.

"We take it out, of course."

*****

Obviously, that was easier said than done.

As furious as she was, her tactical analysis hadn't died alongside her mercy. Logic dictated such an outpost would have runners to warn the main camp of something approaching or happening to them.

And even if she took them out, anyone who ran would go straight for the camp anyway. There were two options, a coordinated attack wiping out everyone simultaneously, or placing something between the outpost and the main camp.

She didn't have enough forces to attempt the former. Even if she did, it was hardly a guarantee. A combination of both would have been better, but it wasn't an option.

So instead, she placed the militia in a blocking position. And then she just strolled into the outpost.

She didn't know if it was her confidence or the fact that no one expected a singular intruder to just...walk in, but she strode in unchallenged. It was only when she arrived at the heart of the outpost that what had to be the commander looked up from a boot he was inspecting, clearly doing a double take as he failed to recognize her.

"Hey! Who the fuck are you? "

Everyone stopped, and stared at her.

"I'm Airah Starfire." Said the dragon as she simply went up to the man. She didn't swagger, she didn't stalk, but the way she moved exhuded danger nonetheless. She saw from the corner of her vision several of the bandits either reach for their weapons or take a step back as their fight or flight reflexes kicked in. "And you are? "

Rule one of these kind of situations: keep them unbalanced. She wasn't sure why she was doing this and not just murdering them, but something primordial in her brain delighted at watching them squirm before her.

That was odd. She'd never been the gloating type.

"Glomar. Glomar Heistein." The commander clearly answered that more or less automatically, before reason reasserted itself and he frowned under his voluminous mustache. "But I'm the one asking the questions, who the fuck are you? Answer me or I'll have my men carve your lungs ou-"

His sentence ended in a terrified scream as she ripped his head off.

There was just horrified silence as gazed at the severred body part, before tossing it aside.

"Anyone else here feel like threatening me? " A few frantically shook their heads while scrambling backwards, as others unsheathed their weapons. "I'd advise you get your toothpicks back in their scabbards kids. Or I'm going to feed them to you through both ends."

That actually gave them pause. But a verbal threat wouldn't be enough to cow them when ripping their commander apart hadn't.

A few of the less brave ones had slipped off, and everyone was too distracted to notice the sudden scuffle in the undergrowth as the militia eliminated them. That was good. A little bit at a time was far better than a full rout, which was likely to overwhelm her helpers.

The bandits finally gathered their courage, and belowed warcries as they charged her.

It was like they walked into a blender.

She dodged the wild sword swing of the first, and simply punched him in the stomach, crumpling him instantly. The next one wore a breatsplate, so she appropriated the now discarded sword and decapitated her, cutting straight through the shaft of her spear as if it was mere butter.

The next few bandits hesitated as Airah ducked as a couple of them opened fire with crossbows, and charged.

Mental alarm bells rang as, instead of panicking, the bandits closed ranks. Clearly, they were starting to find their footing...and may be a lot more dangerous than what she had bargained for.

Fortunately, she wasn't out of tricks either. At the last possible second she ducked forward into a roll.

She took a few hits doing so, but the blades only left shallow cuts as she came back up behind them.

The bandit in the middle was the first to die, a firebolt exploding through her neck, splitting the formation. They tried to reorganize, but she didn't let them.

She collected another series of cuts as she barelled into the group on the right, using sheer brute strength to scatter them, throwing one into the other cluster, collapsing them into a confused pile of limbs and swearing, before finishing off the few around her with a handful of well aimed punches.

However quick that was, it gave enough time for the others to come back up, and-

Airah flinched as the alert popped up, turning a direct hit into a glancing one as the crossbow bolt hit her head.

She froze for a split second, before slowly turning towards the couple of crossbowmen, blood dripping down her brow.

They threw down their weapons and ran.

She turned back towards the last remaining knot of bandits, everyone else having ran for it already, and given their expressions they wished they'd made that choice as well.

And to her amazement, they threw down their weapons, and raised their hands.

Her smile turned vicious, and she took a step forward-

STOP.

It wasn't a scream, not exactly, but Stellyra's voice carried an absolute imperative, and the dragon froze, dead in her tracks.

They're monsters, I-

We don't kill surrendering enemies. Said the AI. Not when they're humans. Even less when they're useful.

The dragon blinked as reason reasserted itself. Airah was right. What...the hell had come over her?

She shook her head, and spat on the ground, before gesturing for the bandits to kick their weapons over to her.

"Alright you bastards. Today's your lucky day. But I hope you're better with your tongues than your swords, for your sake."