Chapter 242 - Unforeseen Consequence

Note : Before anything else, I forgot to put it as a note last chapter but chapter 243 has been written and has been added to the queue, so have no fear. There will be the follow up tomorrow.

I am saying that because, in my opinion and that of my Keepers over on discord, this chapter has the single meanest cliff I have EVER written. You have been warned.

I am, honestly, awaiting your reaction with trepidation. And/or cackling maniacally.

Enjoy !

Chapter 242

Red Sands Desert, Duchy of Sarth

City of Darthar

It started with drums.

Throughout history, both on Alcheryos and Earth, communicating with one's troops had always been key to victory, and musical instruments had always been a popular choice for a variety of reasons. When directing an army of slaves that couldn't disobey you, but also hated you with every fiber of their being, communication was even more important. The new brands solved some of the issues associated with that, but…not all of them.

Sunrise's army began advancing, the first ranks brandishing a variety of shields. They walked forward…and passed through the shields, the slaves clearly destabilized as the dust and sand vanished from their bodies. No one had ever figured out how the shield that protected Darthar truly worked, or why it still did, but its quirks had helped the city a great deal over its long history.

The slaves continued advancing in total silence except for the sound of their feet hitting the ground, tension ratcheting up with every passing second as the defenders just…stared at them from on top of their mighty walls.

Then there was the sound of wood and metal groaning, as the trebuchets and mangonels opened fire.

Artillery was problematical in Darthar, but it wasn't useless. Just…limited.

The slaves stopped, and raised their shields. It would have been pointless against boulders and other normal siege projectiles, but their officers were hardly fools. They knew Darthar wouldn't use them, those projectiles would be almost pointless against an infantry assault.

They guessed correctly. Almost.

Projectiles fell down, bouncing off of shields…but most of them rained down in front of the infantry.

And the slaves looked on in horror at the caltrops that had just fallen from the skies.

Deployed like this, Sunrise hadn't had the time to make or distribute counter measures. The smart move would have been to withdraw, and prepare, but…

That would be the smart move if they had time to burn.

The drums sounded again, and the slaves moved forward.

Even for the defenders, standing to defend their homes and families against a similar fate, it was hard to watch. Slaves, some who had been innocents from cities very much like Darthar farther east, walked into the quasi-minefield, forced by their brands to obey, screams of pain abruptly curtailed as they fell down and were crushed to a pulp by their own comrades, the caltrops achieving disproportionate amounts of fatalities to their actual damage thanks to Sunrise's unrelenting and callous advance.

Another second passed, and then the city's defenders opened fire.

The metallic halos, that Sunrise's officers had no doubt thought were shield or ward projectors of some kind, opened fire. Salvaged from Alexandra's second floor boss, the fireball launchers spat incandescent, explosive hatred at Sunrise's forces, the artifacts expending their reserves in a few seconds before going dormant as they fell into their recharge cycles.

There weren't enough of them to truly have an effect on the giant mass…with one exception.

They took the front ranks, the shield bearers, down.

And then the infantry on the wall opened up.

Salvos of arrows, crossbow bolts and musket balls slammed into Sunrise's force with remarkable coordination, each interval between them just long enough to let the corpses fall down and clear the way for the next.

But the slaves kept advancing. Despite the caltrops, despite the unrelenting fire, they kept coming.

And before long, they were at the foot of the walls.

Ladders went up, and down, as some defenders leapt into action, pushing them back. But more and more kept being pulled up, hooks deploying to keep them put, as slaves began climbing.

Inevitably, some made it, and the fire from the walls began dying down as the archers and musketeers pulled back, and their more close combat minded comrads unsheathed their swords.

It was time for the battle of Darthar to begin.

*****

"Greetings milady."

"Greetings, master artificer." Said Allya as the deceptively frail man stepped into her office. 'Deceptively', in this case, because she knew he didn't need muscles to be threatening. He was a master artificer of the Omega Consortium, and he was probably more than half cybernetics by body mass. He also looked old enough to have been her grandfather, though he moved with an energy that belied his apparent age. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

She offered her hand, and the man took it.

"The pleasure is all mine, milady."

"Hardly. I was told you're the best the Consortium has to offer."

"Eh. Nice of them to say so." The artificer shrugged as the baroness gazed at him. "Okay, maybe I am. I'm the person they call up when something really unusual needs to be done."

"Ah. I suppose Rebirth indeed qualifies as a source of unusual things."

"Quite. I was originally sent here to find a way repair damaged muskets on an industrial scale. That's…not something you see every day. Especially not for a permanent installation."

"Ah?"

"Yes. For most nations equipped with such weapons, if it cannot be repaired in the field, it's simply not worth it to bring them back for repairs. They're simply salvaged, and brand new ones are issued."

"Ah, but what about those that import them?"

The artificer shrugged.

"Those that import them do not have the capabilities to repair them beyond a certain point of damage anyway, and have to send them back to a nation that, once again, would find it cheaper to have them salvaged and issue new stock." He coughed. "Not to mention the, ah, incentive to continue running the already existing factories for new products, instead of diverting business from them."

"Right. Of course. Forgive me, I don't believe I caught your name?"

"Oh, my apologies! I'm Albert. Albert Doshington. But most people call me Dosh." He shrugged as she tilted her head curiously. "It's a very long story. One that involves very hostile wasteland wildlife, trying to pull valuable resources out of the ocean's depths, and a brief, if aborted, trip to the void."

"You have only made me more curious, master Dosh."

"Just…Dosh, please. And I realize, but I also know that your time is highly valuable, and current events are only driving up said value through the roof."

"Quite. So, your superiors told me you would be able to help with the missiles I recently acquired?"

"The Old World salvage? Yes. I'll need to do a thorough inspection, and talk to your own people about some custom jobs, if you want to use them on airships that is."

"I'll have Crystal contact you."

"Cryst-the dungeon core?!?" Dosh swallowed, heavily. "Milady, the adventurers guild…"

"Does not get a say in this matter. This is not their business, and we are at war, master artificer. A war we currently appear to be losing." Emphasis on appear. Alexandra was going to eat Sunrise for breakfast, the only question was how many people would die along the way. But the artificer didn't need to know that "If anyone attempts to interfere, the proper response to sabotaging the defense of their majesties' realm and my domain is a firing squad."

Dosh nodded, slowly.

"Very well, milady. Am I…are you handing over the missiles to the dungeon? So I know if I have to brief her."

"No, but brief her regardless. She will be doing the installation after all, and she is my close confident and ally." Against many foes, including her own knight, when she conspired with Alexandra's advisor. "Hold nothing back. Obey her commands as if they were my own."

"Even if they contradict yours?"

"Especially if they contradict mine. I know little of the art of engineering and artificing, she has built an entire fleet of airships and a vast army on her own."

"Very well milady. It shall be done."

"Good. Then allow me to accompany you to the storage site, and let's get started."

*****

"So, any progress?" Said Alexandra as she paced back and forth in the apparition's living room. This time she was simply too nervous and worked up to sit down.

The crisis with the UDC had stabilized…Mainly because she'd been asked for orders, fucking orders, by half a dozen dungeon cores that had been willing to launch a pre-emptive strike on the UDC.

Obviously, she'd advised them to stand down and keep the preparations quiet. But…This was going to get bad. VERY bad. So far everyone was trying to figure out where the others were standing, but this wasn't going to last forever.

And it seemed that, like it or not, she was going to become the core of the rebel movement.

She just wished she thought it was even remotely a good thing.

"Yes and no." Answered the apparition.

"Can you elaborate?"

"Sure." The apparition, still in her damned High Admiral uniform, gestured, and dozen of holographic windows popped up. "Yes, in that I can delete the control programs and other remote activated systems. No, in that I don't have the slightest clue on how to get that package inside the dungeon core's matrix to begin with."

"It's possible. We had to have gotten inside somehow after all."

"Yes, and we're actively fighting those that did that. Or who we presume did it anyway."

"And there wasn't much left of them when we woke up."

"Indeed."

Alexandra frowned as she looked at the code.

"I…think I have an idea."

"Let's hear it then."

"The only things connected to the network are dungeon defenders, bosses…and advisors. And  we know that the system wasn't built to anticipate encoded systems on biological hardware. Just like you came out of left field for it."

The apparition took in a deep breath.

"You…you want to use the vampires as trojan horses? That's…"

"Audacious?"

"More pragmatic than I expected of you. You do realize that the only way to do that is to digitalize them and reinscribe them, right?"

"Not if we hijack their regeneration tech."

The apparition's eyes went wide.

"...fuck. Reprogram a neutralizer, and instead of forcing the regen to kill them…"

"You implant the pattern for the virus into the initial brain reconstruction."

Alexandra was positively grinning at this point. She hated the neutralizers that had almost killed Emilia and her maids, but trying to come up with countermeasures when she had time had also given her a fair idea of their capabilities, with Emilia -and her family's- enthusiastic assistance no less!

"That…implies assassination attempts on the advisors."

"If we must. But really, we just need to get the neutralizers close enough. And, well, we've had so many false flag attacks against us, I think it's our turn to use that particular trick."

"You're going to blame it on the UDC? That's crazy. You know those false flag attacks didn't work out so well for those that tried them on us."

"Who said anything about the UDC?" Alexandra smiled wolfishly. "I'm going to blame them on the Order. Who else would have Old World tech for their commandos after all?"

"That's…crazy enough it just might work."

"Who dares, win."

"There's a difference between 'daring' and 'so crazy no one saw it coming'."

"Perhaps, but if Arcadia wasn't willing to be completely crazy, we wouldn't have had hyperspace. Speaking of, the research kernel?"

"Worked on it a fair bit. It should, mind you, should, be ready to launch. But, well, it's going to be close to the original Arcadia. Ready to meet your ex?"

"I'm happy with Emilia. Besides, I was never truly with her, when you think about it. If anything, it's you who should be worried. Shall we flip the switch?"

"Your funeral."

"Fairly sure we already had that."

"Ah ah."

A few minutes later, they stood, Alexandra in her avatar, and the apparition in her hologram, in front of a pile of computers similar, but not quite identical, to Subtlety's 'brain'.

The key difference was the molecular computer core crystal sitting atop of it all.

"Interfaces?" Asked Alexandra as she looked at the rest of the systems. Technically, the crystal had more computing capacity than all the rest combined, several hundred times over.

"And subsystems, yeah. Seraph has a lot of inbuilt stuff we simply can't replicate yet. The molecular cores we get out of the fabricators are just that, blocks of computing power, they were made to be slotted into a bigger system. Not sure why Seraph has all the supporting infrastructure crammed in. Or how."

"Probably some kind of universal support AI they could use everywhere. The Hammer of Eternity probably had some variation of that." At least if they believed Starvak's description of the siege walker's bridge.

"Well, we don't have it."

"I'll let you do the honors, you built her."

"Sure." The apparition gestured, and the computers began to hum.

Alexandra tilted her head as the noise reached a crescendo, and-

CENTRAL CORE-SUBBORDINATE NODE SYNCHRONIZATION IN PROGRESS

Alexandra screamed as she suddenly was in two places at the same time. But not like when she possessed two bodies, like if she had two minds trying to synchronize into one, but the first mind simply couldn't, as protocols meant for a computer core the size of a capital ship clashed with magitech and programs meant to run on meatware.

Security barriers, both hers and the apparition's came down, and the avatar dropped to the ground.

CATASTROPHIC SOFTWARE ERROR - KERNEL SYSTEM CRASH

The apparition's hologram rushed to the avatar's side as she felt in her mind for Alexandra, and found nothing.

"No. No no no NO!" She cried out.

And then she heard the footsteps crashing into the hallway as people rushed towards the testing room.

"Alex? ALEX?!?" Called out Emilia from the hallway.

The apparition looked around, flailing in her matrix, trying to get Alexandra back online, but to no avail.

She had no choice.

She touched the avatar.

And took control.