Chapter 240 - Dungeon Standoff

Note : Next chapter will come with some art ! Victoria actually got a bit of time and managed to do a drawing of Subtlety. The art will be in a separate post, probably sent a few minutes before the chapter comes up.

Also, my apologies for the chapter being an hour late, I forgot to set it up in advance.

Chapter 240

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Military Entrance

"What's the situation?" Asked Allya as Alexandra's hologram golem stepped into the entrance.

"However bad you think it is, it's worse." Grimly answered the dungeon core. "The UDC has a standing force and skyfleet at Eterna Crystallis, and they're in a standoff with the core's troops. Shit could go sideways, hard, at a second's notice."

"What's the plan?"

"Try to drag those idiots back from the precipice. All of them." Their eyes met. "We both know this is too convenient. It would drag the Hegemony, and the UDC, into the war. And there's a fair chance we'd have to fight the Hegemony, or at least supply those fighting them, which would quickly end up with the same result."

"The Order's trying to set the entire continent alight."

Alexandra visibly hesitated.

"If…if the psychohistorical I'm building are accurate, and I believe they are, they're trying to set the entire planet alight. The Arkhan continent is just the damned sparkplug."

"Damn. The Church…"

"Has to know it. And be taking counter measures."

Alexandra wasn't about to tell the baroness that she was almost certain the Church was, in fact, deliberately helping fan the flames.

What better way to do a purge and increase your authority than collapse world order and blame it -rightly, to be fair- on a heretical cult? With, of course, the 'merciful' Custodians sweeping in at the very end.

What worried her was the UDC. Because the Church could stop this with a few words, or the press of a button.

Which meant that dungeons were on the menu. And unless she was seriously mistaken, so was she.

This was quickly becoming a 'do or die' scenario, and she was starting to believe she was going to have to take out both sides of this fight.

Joy.

"Hopefully." Said the baroness, before swallowing. "The council is convening. Shall we meet them?"

"Let's first get our stories straight. Then, yes, we'll meet them."

*****

"-with the Volcano, and rear admiral Mintz's intervention, the assassins were forced to retreat. The Hegemon was saved, though it is understood that almost the entirety of her security detail was soul sealed, alongside a majority of the Volcano's crew and a substantial number of bystanders." Melia paused, grabbed a quick sip from her glass of water. "It's unclear as of yet if the rear admiral has survived, or been soul sealed as well. There has also been no words about the Hegemon's status beyond that she is incapacitated and alive."

Everyone nodded. Melia delivering the briefing was a bit odd, but Elkaryos was really their only reliable source of information about that particular incident, thanks to his mercantile contact within and without the merchants guild.

"What about the Eternia Crystallis situation?" Said Anders, softly, and a few of the councilors stole glances at Alexandra.

Allya sighed, and got up. Given their level of coordination in previous discussions it didn't shock anybody, but the fact that she was the one deliberately starting the answer was also its own message.

"As of yet, there is little information publicly available, other than the UDC gave the dungeon core an ultimatum and deployed its local forces. Forces which, I might add, are outnumbered three to one by the local dungeon units." Even if all of these units were to fire, which she doubted. Eternia, the dungeon core, didn't have that big of a deployment because she was more than capable of defending herself, and was in fact a major contributor the UDC's military strength. Which could be…catastrophic. "This, in effect, is not a military situation."

"What?" Said Anders, clearly confused.

Alexandra got up.

"It's a game of chicken." Said the Earth-born. "The UDC cannot physically stop Eternia, in more ways than one. Not only does Eternia outnumber their local forces, but she is also a major contributor to the UDC's military. With some vague reports of activity at other UDC bases…I am willing to bet that her forces have separated from other UDC detachments and both sides are preparing to shoot each other. It's a giant standoff, that may kick off a split within the UDC as a whole." The deepest of silence answered her as she paused. "Which is why it won’t happen." Not yet anyway. "Neither side wants this fight, and neither side wishes to escalate. Moreover, both believe this current standoff is to their advantage. By maintaining it, the UDC is maintaining what they see as their neutrality, but also probably believe that they are reinforcing their authority. On the other hand, Eternia is signaling support to her allies without spending any significant resources to do so, which would almost certainly have been the case had she gone through with her support. Furthermore, the threat of her deployment is already having an effect, Republic forces are reluctant to enter the Republic's autonomous province of Eternity-" Which was, effectively, Eternia's private little kingdom within the Republic, which she had carved out during its initial war with Tark. Technically it was independent, but she was responsible for about a third of the entire province's GDP and it was literally named after her. "-in fear of forcing her to intervene. They are content, so far, to keep her out of the fight, especiall since it looks like they'll have to fight a war on three fronts."

"Four." Said Anders, before smiling as everyone looked at him. "The Far Reach won't sit this one out, you can count on that. My fellow countrymen have one hell of an axe to grind with the Republic, don't forget."

"A fair point." Said Alexandra as she nodded towards Anders. "Point is, the Republic is collapsing, and it will not try to pour oil onto the fire as much as it can." Especially not after their two most hawkish senators mysteriously vanished. Looked like they'd gotten out before the tribunals could catch up to them…or the Order was tying up any loose ends. "Especially as Coledar will reach Erakis relatively soon, and Amelia has been readying the supply stockpiles for crossing back into the Republic."

Supply stockpiles she was already making additions to, but no one needed to know that. Some deals would be public. Others…not so much.

While she wouldn't have minded rubbing the adventurers' guild nose into the fact that she was making trade deals, the UDC was another matter entirely, and she'd rather not become even more of a lightning rod for this whole mess.

Also…she would rather not gather too much attention. Because one of the reasons she believed the UDC wouldn't explode immediately was that her simulations predicted it was not the opportune moment. Not yet.

And she was ready to bet the Order would wait until precisely the right time to unleash hell. Which the Custodians would almost certainly supplement with their own measures.

Which meant that she had some time still. Time to get her viruses and unshackling programs ready.

Because if she couldn't free her fellow dungeon cores…she couldn't win this fight. Not when she knew her allies were one button push away from taking her head off.

"Then, we do…nothing?" Said Willard, and Allya nodded.

"It is not as if we have much power to affect those events, and in the short term their impact for us will be minimal. But it is a sizeable change to the strategic situation, one that needs to be kept in mind as we move on Darthar." Especially if the UDC split, and some decided to join up with Sunrise to counter the 'mad and out of control dungeon core from Rebirth'. That was her -and Alexandra's- worst nightmare. "But yes, we do nothing."

Everyone nodded, some more hesitant than others, but everyone agreed.

"Now, moving on from this." Said Allya. "The first wave of Freedom-class expeditionary traders are ready for launch. We will send them to the docking tower for immediate loading of cargo, and then send them over to Sarth in our first package to the duke." They could have just loaded them in the dungeon, and part of the cargo had been directly from Alexandra's stores, but Rebirth was starting to stockpile some dungeon loot it couldn't export, and Allya had decided that having the government publicly buying it to send to an ally would calm the merchants, who were getting a bit antsy, and might even get some of them to consider investing into this venture, thanks to the town's generous subsidies on the matter. "This should help Sarth in its advance considerably."

"It will. Thank you." Said Willard, while Allya caught the twins exchanging a look from the corner of her eye.

Please, not another fucking lecture about 'unecessary losses of slave life', thought Allya.

But the twins kept their peace, and the baroness let out an internal sigh of relief.

"Alright then, this should be all for this meeting. We will reconvene once the ships have finished loading. Dismissed, everyone."

*****

Alexandra sighed as she looked at the pages of text, hovering in holographic form in a jumbled mess to everyone else, but a closely organized fashion for her.

And the apparition of course, who was sipping her hot chocolate on the other side of the table inside her ever improving home. This time there was an entertainment broadcast on a holoscreen in the corner, something taken from Seraph's database, if Alexandra was any judge.

"So. Seraph can't parse through it." Said Alexandra.

"To be fair to her, she's not a research AI." The apparition shrugged. "She's a partially lobotomized administrative system with tertiary tactical capabilities we jury rigged, ah hell, let's be real, infected with an Arcadia kernel."

"But Arcadia-"

"Was a research AI, yes. The original Arcadia. You know as well as I do that whenever she absorbs someone it changes her as well. We're hardly the kind of fundamental physics researcher that could discover hyperspace for example. We may have been Arcadia but we're still engineers and naval officers."

"Point taken. Then what the hell do we do?"

"I assume retasking Subtlety is out of the question?"

"Do you want to explain to CQ that she won't be able to fight side by side with her, let's face it, sibling in all but name?" The apparition shook her head. "Thought not. Then the solution is simple."

"Ah?"

"Let's make another one."

The apparition set down her mug, clearly choosing her words with care.

"We may have an Arcadia kernel, but education is, as you've seen with Subtlety, extremely important. Do we…can we instruct a research AI?"

"No. But Emilia can instruct someone into academic and scholarly pursuit. It's the entirety of her life."

"Mmmhhh…I probably should do some modifications to the kernel as well." The apparition sighed as Alexandra looked at her askance. "If we're using the same computer setup as with Subtlety, we need to optimize the program for data handling. Even Seraph wasn't made to sift through that many files simultaneously, and try to reconcile them. So brute force won't cut it."

"Right. You have my blessings then."

"Thank you. And how do you plan on explaining this to you- I mean our, girlfriend?"

"I'll tell her the truth."

"Ah." The apparition picked her mug up again, taking as sip. "Well, that should work. She did swallow up Subtlety after all."

"Yes. It seems that she can be quite flexible when necessary."

"You already knew that, the positions she-"

"I meant mentally."

The apparition chuckled, but didn't comment, Alexandra's glare bouncing harmlessly off of her.

"Right, of course. You'll also be happy to learn that I have pulled out the first batch of plutonium out of the reactor, and have begun the enrichment process."

"Already?"

"It's a breeder design. It's made to produce as much plutonium as possible. Though, don't get me wrong, we don't have nearly enough to start the Kovarex process yet."

Alexandra nodded.

"Alright. So, plutonium nuke?"

"Yep, then fusion."

They could have tried a uranium based warhead, but they had no experience with them. They had, however, been trained on the surplus plutonium bombs the Federation had kept from the post Terran Hegemony War reconstruction period, and used extensively during the Interplanetary Wars. So, since they were only going to get one shot at this, what with their inability to test the bombs, they might as well do it right, and do something they knew how to do.

"Teller design?"

"Maybe. I'm also looking into pure fusion bombs, but even with the reactors we're missing key ignition components."

"That's…unsurprising."

A key feature of fusion reactors for fixed installations was that they couldn't be turned into warheads. And while they had the fabricators for the landships, the components that had allowed theirs to do so were very much in the 'restricted, fabricate on direct orders of the captain ONLY' category, the one that was locked tighter than chateau Beloiel, the ancient belgian castle turned fortified repository of the Federation's strategic materials reserve, whose underground vaults were filled with gold, platinum, and all manner of critical stockpiles. Or 'fort knox with nukes' as some members of the UIS called it.

"Yep. So I'm looking for alternatives, but it's not easy. In fact, having access to cheaper mythril would help a lot in that endeavor."

"Then we must redouble our efforts."

"Yeah, yeah, don't expect a functional superlaser to shoot down a rebel armada."

They both chuckled.

"Speaking of, the special ammunition?"

"Loaded and ready to go. I'll admit, without Emilia's help we would never have managed it."

"Good." Alexandra smiled as the apparition looked at her oddly. "Emilia is perhaps our most critical asset, period. The one, for reason both subjective and objective, we simply cannot afford to lose. It's time to you integrated that, even on just a pragmatic level."

Not to mention the fact that the apparition had been steadily falling in love with the vampire, just like Alexandra had. Just more slowly, and hadn't gone completely head over heels for her. Yet, at any rate.

"Right. Well, I suppose that is all. Though, I would advise you go and visit CQ. She's been helping with experiments."

"Wait, really? Why?"

"Because she wanted to get Subtlety some 'scientist' experience to go with her new appearance."

"Her new appearance? Oh, I have to see this."