Chapter 267 - Flickerlight

Note : Chapter 269 and 270 have been written and added to the queue, completing book 7 ! Wew, it's been one hell of a ride, what with my small hiatus thanks to writer's block, but it's done !

Chapter 267

Red Sands Desert, Duchy of Sarth

City of Darthar

That was…reason reasserted itself in Alexandra's mind as she gazed at the vessel, her mouth wide open.

The Sagitarius Empire had a fetish for the EFSN and its stuff. Alright, so they'd replicated designs they had been aware of at the time. At least in looks.

That would, at least, explain why a Glimmer-class was here, the ship class she'd done her ensign cruise aboard. Even back then, that thing had been an old bucket of bolts rumbling on towards retirement. Hell, the ship's core design predated the Federation, the schematics originally put together by the European Space Defense Agency of the soon-to-be-nuked-dead European Union.

And it had to have been upgraded significantly, or just be a pure visual duplicate. Because the Glimmers could not survive atmospheric reentry.

She would know, she'd seen the debris field near Naples, when the first ship of the class had been trying to get as low as possible to shoot down the Terran Hegemony's nuclear and viral warheads with it's point defence lasers. They'd mostly succeeded, and helped save Europe from total annihilation, but paid with their lives in the process.

"Lady Crystal? Hey Crys!"

Alexandra blinked, and refocused as Allya waved her hand in front of her eyes.

"Yes? Right, sorry, just…holy crap."

"What is it?" Said Allya, concern clear on her face.

"That's not a shield generator." Simply said Alexandra, and the baroness tilted her head, confused. "It's a voidship. And it's functional."

Allya stared at her for a second, before rounding on the count, who simply nodded.

"It is. Welcome to the most well kept secret of Darthar." He gestured at the ship's side, jutting out of the rock. "The Flickerlight, voidship of the Old World, and defender of the city."

"Flickerlight?" Alexandra scanned the ship's hull quickly.

Seared by reentry. Less than it should have. Energy shields, maybe? Must have had some amazing inertial systems to have survived the crash, but given what she'd encountered on Alcheryos so far, that was hardly a surprise.

But still, even if the name had been painted on the hull, that was long gone, alongside the sensor absorption coating. You could see the bare armor plating. Though there was no sign of battle damage, that was no indication. She'd seen battleships killed by a handful of railgun hits, hits which only left holes the size of coffee mugs.

If they knew the name of the ship…they'd been inside.

But they weren't going to admit that.

"Yes. An odd name, isn't it?"

"That it is." Said Alexandra, neutrally.

She'd known the actual Flickerlight. European Federation Spaceborne Warship, hull number eight eight three dash six one zero. Which basically boiled down to 'light escort, patrol role, long range' and then it's serial number. One of her first tasks at the office of logistics when she'd returned from Alpha Centauri had been to oversee the parts pipeline for its overhaul. The captain had been an arsehole, and she'd met Arcadia when he was tearing her a new one and the AI fell on him like a ton of bricks.

Alexandra considered herself good at making threats, but Arcadia was outright inspiring.

"It has stood under the city for centuries. Its shields protect us."

At last, why the shield stopped sand started making sense. You could use radioactive chaff deployed by missiles to 'tag' enemy warships. Probably had something programmed in to intercept space dust as well, to minimize wear and tear on the sensor coating.

But it couldn't be that simple. Because if it was a ship….

Her airships had made it through the shields. But not some of the artillery projectiles Sunrise had been throwing at her. It couldn't be a question of pure velocity, let alone kinetic energy.

There was something in there filtering stuff through the shield.

"What else is online onboard?"

"We, ah, do not know."

He seemed sincere enough, but she didn't believe him for a single second. Actually, no, she did believe he might not know, personally, but someone sure as hell had pried an airlock open to learn the ship's name.

"Ah. It was not open?"

"No, and the edicts forbid us to force it open."

Had they wanted to try, well, good luck to them. The Glimmer-class actually had anti-boarding systems, born of an age where that was a realistic proposition without having to kill the ever living shit out of the ship first.

That also meant that if she wanted to get inside, things would get…tricky. And that whoever had learned the name had also done so either with access codes or the ship's design philosophy didn't follow the EFSN's original thought, why she didn't believe for a second. Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to recognize the railgun or missiles in Seraph's bunker. Hell, they wouldn't have bothered replicating the Glimmer's fucking missile pods!

Wait. Missile pods.

Memories popped up to the surface…

"We will have to post more guards down there, and possibly fortify the area." There were only so many there, and they were positioned to repel an assault from the surface access, not the ship. The count looked terrified as the dungeon core said that, and she smiled. "Your people, ours, doesn't matter. But when my secondary core arrives and starts pouring in mana…"

He nodded.

"Right, I understand. It might awaken it, as you'd said. I will discuss it with my people."

"If you need backup on the surface so you can pull people off the streets, I can hand over my marines."

"Thank you. That would be much appreciated."

"No problem." It's not like she had any ships to carry them anyway, the Subtlety and Grehai were hauling ass back towards home, and the transport was never going to fly again. Just removing it from the wall breach was going to be a royal pain in the ass, though she'd already received proposals to have it dismantled for raw materials. Parts of the city needed rebuilding after all.

She was seriously considering it. The ship was broken in ways that couldn't be fixed, there was no point attempting to salvage it, and at least that way it would go towards helping people once more. Though they'd have to scrub some of the runes, or weird shit was going to happen if someone poured mana into them.

It would also be a nice gesture of goodwill.

"So, satisfied?" Asked the count.

Alexandra nodded as she pinged the stealth golem she had brought in with Allya's ship.

It pinged back, and she ordered it to move towards the missile pods.

"Very. Though you do realize this begs some questions."

"Of course. I'll be happy to answer them in a different setting however. Perhaps over refreshments?"

"Tea and biscuits?" Asked CQ, and the count smiled.

"I will have some prepared immediately."

Alexandra schooled her expression. Be open. This was her precious baby daughter, and just because the count liked her didn't mean he needed to be roasted with a plasma cannon.

It helped. Sort of. Allya shot her a bemused look, and the Earth-born simply rolled her eyes.

"I do hope you'll have some hot chocolate." She simply said.

"That can be arranged as well. Alongside bacon, eggs, and crepes with honey."

Allya and Pyn chuckled.

"Elkaryos has been talking about us, hasn't he?" Said the baroness.

"Perhaps. Perhaps. Now, please do follow me back up."

*****

"I have news!" Said Alexandra and Ghost, simultaneously, as the former appeared inside the simulation.

They stared at each other for a second, before laughing.

"Alright, you first." Said Alexandra, once she had recovered enough to breathe.

"I found out how the Republic knew where to teleport. I think. There was a program lifting data off of the dungeon mapping software."

"Ah. Makes sense. Keeping tabs on dungeons would be worthwhile, especially if you made on berserk and had to kill it the old fashioned way as a PR move. And why go through the trouble of making a separate system when you could just take from an existing one?"

"Exactly. I already have a fix lined up, and I'm scouring for more taps like that."

"Excellent. Implement it then." Not like the apparition needed her permission for that anyway.

"Sure. What about you, what did you find in the bowels of the earth? Err, Alcheryos."

"A crashed Glimmer-class."

Ghost froze.

"The…the light cruiser? What?"

"Turns out, the city's shield is a crashed warship."

"Damn, that…that begs a lot of questions."

"Which we'll hopefully have answered soon."

"Grilling the count?"

"Why reveal my hand, when I have other means? I've snuck a stealth golem near the ship. I'll wait for the excitement to die down there, maybe a shift change, then pop in."

"How? It has anti-boarding systems, you…" Ghost trailed off, and met Alexandra's gaze. "The maintenance airlocks?"

"Bingo. The ones for the aft missile pods."

"Oh." Ghost colored slightly. "Yeah, no one ever remembered those were there."

"And they're made to be opened without compromising the ship's sensor deflection. It's tucked under the pod. They won't see a thing."

"What about sound?"

"Either it won't make any, or it won't open at all. Won't open if pressure isn't equalized, and the doors are magnetic sliders."

"Right. Pains in the arse."

"Well, for once, our old maintenance woes might help us."

"Let's hope. There's no guarantee they didn't change the tech."

"True, but push comes to shove, they won't be able to see what happened."

"They'll ask questions."

"Of course, and it'll look suspicious, but sometime you have to take risks."

"Don't want to have a potential backdoor?"

"Yeah. Especially not when we know the God of Fire has hacked into old Sagitarian systems. I really don't want to find out they still have a line to the missile magazines the hard way."

"Point taken. Good luck then."

"Do you want to hang out once it's over? There'll be cake!"

"Sure. Wait." Ghost narrowed her eyes. "Only the both of us?"

"Of course not. Emilia, Jared and the maids will be there. No takebacks!"

Alexandra vanished from the simulation before the apparition could retort or back out.

"Oh, fuck you Alex." Finally let out her other self, as she stared at the place the dungeon core's simulated body had been a second ago.

Ghost sighed. Well, there was no escaping that now. She had to have told Emilia by now.

Looked like she had no option to but to, ugh, socialize again.

They were both too sneaky for their own good.

*****

The stealth golem awakened.

Well, it had not truly been sleeping to begin with. Just on low power stand by.

Alexandra smiled as she piloted it. It was nice to be able to do that without having to possess it through her dungeon powers.

The golem moved over to the ship, and began climbing it. It had the systems made for that, though originally she'd envisioned buildings, not crashed starships.

It took a bit for it to scuttle up the ship. The Glimmer-class was three hundred meters long, and thirty wide. Like most ships designed before the invention of artificial gravity and reactionless propulsion, it looked like a giant rocket, and built like it too. The entire thing was a mess of ladders and other vertical access points, all oriented so that the engines would provide the gravity needed.

The golem made its way to the missile pod, and vanished inside of a recess tucked under it. It was discreet, and meant to be so. Semi-external missile pods like this were outdated pieces of crap made back when humanity was still feeling its way towards true space naval doctrine, and admirals who still thought of spaceships as boats really high up in the air rather than in the water ran the show.

They also allowed the Glimmers to put the mother of all missile barrage into an unprepared pirate ship. You might only have a tenth of the total missile capacity a more advanced warship would have in a sustained engagement -you might have the magazines, but there was no way to reload the pods in combat-, but what you had you could ram down your enemy's throat very quickly. Not quickly enough to overwhelm a capital ship's point defence, even with its equivalent in tonnage in Glimmers, but…quickly.

That, and the railguns added with newer versions, had made it a ship to be feared during the interplanetary wars, capable of shredding an incoming bomber strike like no one else. Unfortunately, they'd simply been too old to be worth upgrading with hyperdrives, just refitted one last time to hold the Federation's assets in the outer solar system together while the real cream of the fleet was sent to die at Alpha Centauri.

She couldn't see the railguns or point defence guns on the ship's hull, retracted inside the armor belt before reentry, but she could see the hatches. Though the ones for the railguns looked…off. The shape was too different.

But enough lollygagging. She had the golem move deeper into the recess, until it arrived at a maintenance airlock.

It looked…so much like the one she was used to it almost hurt.

She had the golem tap a certain section, and lo, an armored panel slid out, revealing the access panel and its keypad.

Right. Not just a manual release. Definitely had followed the philosophy of anti-boarding measures.

She could try the emergency access numbers, but that might trigger an alert.

Otherwise…

She typed the original Flickerlight's hull number, minus one on every number, looping back to nine if it went into a negative.

The panel flashed, and the airlock smoothly, and silently slide aside.

Alexandra breathed a sigh of relief. Looked like they really followed the EFSN's own doctrine and traditions to the letter.

Alright. Time to see who was home.