Chapter 253 - Fleet Battle

Note : Chapter 255 has been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 253

Red Sands Desert, Duchy of Sarth

In Flight near the City of Darthar

The battle was a desperate one.

Sunrise's ships massively outnumbered her own six vessels. They had, in total, thirty of their own, at least in this rush of an engagement. But the term vessel was…loose, in their case.

Fifteen of those were ships one could consider to be proper airships. Ten or so converted merchant ships of one type or another, and five 'proper' warships. The size varied, but most of the warships were frigates and light cruisers, and the merchant ships varied, though most were corvettes.

The fifteen others were the so called 'monster hunter' gunships that had proven surprisingly effective in their previous battle.

Alexandra had three corvettes, a frigate, a transport that could be confused for a light cruiser if you squinted really, really hard, and a battlecruiser. Plus a few dozen guns and missile batteries set down on the sand.

The battlecruiser alone would have made this a suicide mission.

But Sunrise wasn't counting on its ships to win this fight. They were simply there to get their mages in range to rip her apart. And keep them alive while they did it.

Unfortunately for them, that plan was thoroughly dead.

The problem was that their duke was anything if not driven, and he resorted to the simplest of tricks: when in doubt, start blasting.

The null missiles were excellent pieces of hardware, but they also could only be detonated, well, once. They could protect their mothership from arcane attacks, provided the angles were right, but they couldn't defend themselves.

Missiles exploded. Some made it, but few.

Unfortunately the harm was already done. The fleet, which Alexandra had corralled into a tight formation, exploded apart in a panic, massively overreacting to the incoming threats.

Then the surface to air missiles arrived, and wards began to fail as null zones erupted, mages collapsing as their spells died around them.

The Raiders dove in, ignoring and being ignored by the remaining knot of warships centered around the new flagship. They were massively outnumbered, but they were in formation, supporting one another.

The enemy didn't stand a chance.

The duke's flagship powered forward, and the Freedom and Corsair moved in to interpose themselves between the enemy and the siege ship.

To Alexandra's amazement, a squadron of gunships erupted from the melee, and caught up with their lord. Someone had remembered their alliegances, clearly, and-

The gunships dove towards the Freedom.

Oh. Oh.

They weren't after fealty. They were after the loot, and probably figured that the obvious transport was a much better target than the tight cluster of corvettes made to kill gunships all day long. Not to mention, it may be an ammunition collier for the siege ship.

It was…a sound reasoning.

Had they been slower, and the ship been allowed to deploy its cargo of marines, it would have even been true.

Alexandra didn't even bother reinforcing the ship. She simply wished her daughter good hunting, as she moved to counter the main thrust.

By that point, the null missiles had done their ravages. Of the five warships, three were missing their wards, and one of them had taken so many surface to air missiles it was actually limping behind. They may not pack much of a punch, but throw enough ordnance at an enemy and sooner or later you're bound to hit something you can hurt.

The Corsair engaged. And the enemy mages switched to countering its shells.

Clearly, they had remembered how their previous fight with that particular class had gone.

Alexandra frowned. They were almost in range of the ground batteries. Were those guys insane? They were going to-

The archmage gathered his power once more, and Alexandra just had the time to swear as a localized sandstorm just…appeared.

It wasn't enough to kill her forces. Just inconvenience them. But she couldn't fire a damned cannon that was filled with sand! That said nothing of those outright buried underneath it. Even the few missile batteries that still had weapons left ceased firing.

"Crap. Well, so much for buying time. Alright, cycle the launchers, interceptors!"

"Yes ma'am." Said Subtlety, and the ship shook as the last salvo of null missiles -not all previous launches had been them, they'd spiced it up by firing a few cheaper conventional missiles to keep things interesting-, and her last trap card cycled in. "Firing…now."

Six 'interceptor' missiles were ejected into the sky.

Three seconds later, an enemy ship exploded.

One interesting fact with magic and rocket engines was that, thanks to runes and enchantments, you could make some obscenely expensive, but quite frankly insane rocket engines.

If you wanted to pierce point defence, you either used superior numbers, superior electronic warfare…or just got your missiles so fast through the interception zone that taking them out wasn't an option. If you were really good, like the UISN, you could do all three.

Alexandra only needed one however.

The enemy mages switched back towards countering her missiles, and Alexandra saw the archmage preparing an attack, as he clearly registered the soon to be lack of null missiles in the air.

Then one, from the second to last salvo, reached his ship.

The archmage's magic flickered and died.

So did the vessel's ward.

And a split second later, twin two hundred millimeter shells struck the ship as the Corsair opened fire once more. The shells themselves were plenty destructive, the entire bow of the ship vanishing in a hail of shards and smoke, but clearly some ammunition magazine, or whatever passed for it for arcane weaponry, must have been hit, as the vessel was devoured from the inside out by internal detonations, ripping it to shreds.

The debris fell towards the ground, and-

Alexandra felt it. Not as she would have in her avatar, but even through her golem she felt the shiver as reality bent, and the teleportation spell activated.

She didn't even need to look at the sensors to know where it had come from.

Apparently, the duke's teleport failsafes had some serious resilience. Tough, slippery bastard. She'd have to remember to bring some kind of teleport jammer next time.

But his retreat cemented his forces' defeat. One ship turned back. Then another. And another.

Before long, what little remained of Sunrise's fleet was running for their lines as fast as possible, her ships in hot pursuit.

Mission accomplished. Mostly.

*****

"Did you have fun kiddo?" Asked Alexandra as CQ walked onto the bridge.

"Yeah!" The boss was positively beaming as she sat down on one of the chairs Alexandra had end up putting around the holographic projector. "It was awesome!"

Alexandra smiled at her daughter, while she reviewed the engagement.

"So, report?" She asked Subtlety.

"All three Raiders report major damage." Outnumbered five to one, that was hardly surprising. "One critical hit, but emergency repair crews have it under control."

"What kind of critical?"

"Primary mana storage hit, power output crippled." Alexandra grimaced. If there was one place outside of the magazine that could be considered critical, it was this.

It was housed separate from the powder and shells for a variety of reasons, one of them being that having highly charged, magical crystal next to volatile ammunition was not a good idea, and an even worse one once you had enchanted rounds.

"Well, it could have been worse. Performance?"

"The ships report three vessels destroyed, five captured and two mission kills."

Alexandra whistled softly. For such a short engagement, especially against vastly more agile enemies, who thus had the freedom to retreat with…not impunity, but close, that was impressive.

"Status of the mission kills?"

"Retreating in good order."

"Oh well." She could have hoped for them abandoning ship, but that was unlikely to happen in the desert. "The prizes?"

"The Raiders captured three gunships, and two corvettes. The latter are converted merchant vessels. Two of the gunships and one of the corvette struck their colors, the others were overwhelmed by counter boarding forces."

Alexandra nodded. Despite growing wary of her marines, the enemy hadn't really had any choice in this battle. Most of the damage they'd inflicted had probably been from boarders rather than their mages even.

"Alright, splendid. CQ, your turn."

Her daughter had been practically vibrating in her seat, and she bounced out of it like perpetual motion incarnate.

"Five monster hunters attempted to board us! I lead the marines into capturing three, but the two others cut away, and I had to deploy Kara. We, uh…didn't capture them."

Alexandra nodded. CQ had finally named her manticore not-quite-a-puppy-anymore.

"It's okay. With Kara's, uh…" Obscene amounts of firepower and her mistress' propensity for wanton violence, but that was hardly what she should say. "Advantages, I didn't expect them to live."

With the puppy now somewhat grown, the mech had to be adjusted, but it was still more than serviceable.

And, well, airships were all well and good, but they weren't made to fight off a robotic manticore with integrated machineguns, flamethrowers and power beams. Not to mention the fact that she was pretty sure Kara had literally ripped apart one of the ships with her claws.

"Well, we still captured three! What about the crews though? Should we…resurrect them? They were, well…"

Alexandra sighed.

She'd been notified by her daughter, even if only as a secondary report.

The gunships were 'monster hunters', and unfortunately, that meant they came with a certain type of crew for their marines.

Namely, adventurers. Or rather, ex adventurers. It was probably a hell of a lot easier to recruit them for this than train one's own crews, and you got people with plenty of experience.

Unfortunately for them, not only had they attacked a transport that was transporting a small army of marines, they'd also attacked CQ, who just so happened to have plenty of experience fighting adventurers, to say the least.

"If we do, they'll be prisoners of war." And with plenty of justification to boot. Once they shed the guild's neutrality, they were no longer protected. And she rather doubted they'd have doffed their guild medallions before the fight if they weren't trying to keep the guild out of this.

Fat chance of that. If Sunrise was nice enough to hand her nails to hammer the guild with, she wasn't going to be churlish and let them go to waste.

"Oki. Now back home?"

"What? No my dear. We still have a hundred missiles left. And we've just decimated their best mages. Let us use them."

*****

The spymaster swallowed as the duchess set down her tea cup.

Satina Olyrin, head of the house of Olyrin and by the grace of the Gods duchess of Sunrise, not to mention the legitimate queen of the Asarian Kingdom, looked perfectly calm.

Provided one ignored the blood dripping from her hand, and the maids dragging one of their colleagues out of the room.

"So." Said the duchess, her voice colder than the eternal ice on the Barrier mountains. "That…core has taken out Lorenz."

"He lives, milady. And with his healers, he will recover quickly."

Satina made a short, brushing gesture and the spymaster stopped.

"He's out. She has destroyed his airfleet. How can he possibly expect to counter this…missile ship? Now the dungeon need only to bombard him at range."

"Not…necessarily." Said the spymaster, cautiously, as the duchess fixed her gaze upon him. Implying that she may be wrong was a dangerous, dangerous game, even at the best of times. And this wasn't it. But he was a faithful servant. "There is a way to prevent bombardment."

"Oh? Do tell. What trick did Lorenz hide from me?"

"Not a trick of his. Of theirs. The dungeon core cannot penetrate the city's shields."

"And? The walls haven't been breached, and-" The duchess stopped. "Oh. I see." A cruel smile formed upon her lips. "An…incentive. Assault or die. Even the slaves will have to be enthusiastic about it. Have you shared your insights with Lorenz's commanders?"

"I have, and they agree." Actually, they'd been the ones to bring this to his attention.

"Excellent. Maybe some of them will be worth something. Keep an eye on them, we're always in need of competent officers of good blood."

"Yes, milady."

"Now. I believe you had a report about that damned Erisian fleet?"

"They have arrived in Gorromar, and are settling in. The reports…" The spymaster sighed. "I have reports that they are setting up a supply depot."

"So they do intend to intervene. Hypocritical snakes. They call me a monster, and yet their Protectorates run on indentured labor! I-" The duchess clenched her firsts, before relaxing them. "I will deal with them, in time. What of the capital?"

"We are still assaulting the walls, but several breaches have been opened. We expect to be able to invade the third level in force within the week."

The duchess nodded, mollified, even if only a bit. Asaria, the capital of the Kingdom, was a monstrosity. Given its population, it had to be.

And multiple times, it had grown beyond the size envisioned by its defenses. Three concentric layer of walls, plus the royal palace. Unfortunately, the third one was the most recent, and thus the least dangerous.

It was not even a question of the defenders having less area to defend once they fell back to the others. It was simply that the others came from other eras. The first layer was from the old city, made by the archmages of the Saphire Kingdom, when Asaria was the bulwark against the wasteland and the old Kingdom still ruled the continent. It may be thousands of years old, but its enchantments were built to last.

The second layer was built when the crown was despotic and all powerful, after a particularly vicious war with the still vengeful Saphire Kingdom, long before Sunrise's efforts had chipped away at its power and given it back to the nobility.

The third one…was built when the crown was struggling with funding. Even with upgrades and overhauls, it was still the most pathetic defense.

The fact that it had taken this long to breach it was frightening. Many of the nobles they had been counting on for help, to switch allegiances or throw away their neutrality had not answered, frightened or even outright terrified of the rising monster in the south.

Damn that dungeon core! Damn that baroness! And damn Amelia and her so called 'New Republic'!

"Well, if that is all…" Said the duchess, and the spymaster nodded, bowing and retreating out of the room as a studiously neutral maid came to bandage her mistress' hand.

He needed to have a word with his new contacts.

If the baroness was willing to drag a dungeon core into this, then so was he.

And it was about damned time the UDC reined in their rogue.