Chapter 188 - Shipyard

Note : Chapter 189 has been added to the queue !

Chapter 188

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

City of Rebirth

"Oww, my head…" Said Allya as she lifted herself from the bed. Damn it, she could hold her liquor, but this was bad. She hadn't gotten this drunk since she'd slept with Pyn…

Speaking of the devil, she felt her girlfriend hug her from behind, as the elf's bare chest pressed against her back.

"Yes, well, it's your fault for going head to head with a dungeon boss in drinking. What were you thinking honey?"

Allya froze as the memories of what had happened in the dungeon rushed back to her, before she forced her body to relax. It was done. She was alive. And now, with a greater and more insane ally than ever, it seems.

"I don’t think I was."

"No you weren't. I got you a potion, it's from Ellyana." Allya blinked as she vial as put next to her, and she quickly downed it. She winced as she drank the bitter liquid, but a few seconds later it kicked in. "Feeling better?" She nodded. "Good." Her girlfriend pulled back, rolling Allya onto her back, before straddling her waist, stretching languorously and showing off her body to considerable effect, augmented by the fact that she was wearing just enough to emphasize what she wasn't. "Because I'm afraid you just fell asleep immediately last night, utterly ignoring me in my best lingerie. So you're going to be a dear and make it up to me, mmmhhh?"

"My pleasure."

"Oh I'm sure it will be~."

*****

Cassissa looked at the thick enveloppe, thoroughly amazed. For Allya's reply to have arrived so quickly…Olivier, her butler, must have truly pulled all the stops in asking for favours from his old friends.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself, and sliced the envelope open.

The princess carefully extracted the letter…and frowned as she found the pendant. Weird. A gift, from Allya?

She shook her head, and flicked open the folded letter. If she got distracted now, it'd take her a whole day to gather her courage again!

And so she began reading.

It took her almost thirty minutes to stop sobbing and pull herself together. She took a deep breath, and looked at the pendant in amazement. A teleport talisman, truly? Those were rare. And if even half of what Allya, or at least that dungeon core Crystal, claimed about it was true…

She grabbed it, and hesitated. As much as she trusted Allya, and Olivier's assurance that the mail hadn't been tampered with, she'd rather be sure it wasn't some trap, her instinctive paranoia, well honed by generations of emperors and empresses, coming back at a gallop.

And it wasn't like she could just take it to the Imperial archmage or the artificers. She was still under house arrest and…

And her parents only sent potential matches to meet with her. Some of which were up and coming, powerful mages or skilled artificers in their own right.

Well, maybe she had exactly the people she needed to study that talisman after all.

*****

"Are you sure this was wise? Just sending her out there after all this?" Shouted Emilia, and Alexandra made a note to incorporate communication systems into their soundproofed headsets.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

"We couldn't just keep her! As much as CQ would have loved to, mind you." After going over her understandable queasiness over talking to someone she was so used to being Alexandra, Allya and CQ had hit it off. The boss found a surface dweller that wasn't trying to kill her or thought she was the dungeon core a great novelty, and had basically bombarded her with questions. "It just wasn't a practical option. Especially not while everything is so tense, and everyone looks to her for leadership! Besides, she hadn't sold us out yet! That's gotta be worth some trust!"

"True enough!" Emilia winced. "Can we head back into the observation room now? This noise is atrocious!"

Alexandra nodded, and they hastily retreated from the platform into the soundrpoofed observation room, taking off their ear protection with a sigh of relief.

"Damn, that place is loud." Continued Emilia, as Alexandra shrugged.

"Comes with the territory. And the fact that we're in an enclosed environment does not help." She looked through the windows, at the massive cavern beyond.

A cavern currently packed with metal scaffolding, golems scurrying about, not to mention a giant pile of industrial equipment.

And in the middle of it all, shrouded in all the ironmongery, vomiting sparks from welders, buffers and a multitude of other power tools, laid her fist airship.

Well, 'first'. Technically the glorified rowboat she'd tried to build as a demonstrator was the first. But her grasp of the niceties like 'seasoned timber' and 'diagonal planking' were feeble at best and it had ripped itself apart upon takeoff.

By some miracle, its engines hadn't exploded. Unfortunately, the prow of the ships, or more accurately the most intact looking forward facing piece of the hull, had crashed through the roof of a makeshift depot and into a pile of machinery that happened to include a lot of welding equipment, with their fuel tanks, and those most assuredly had exploded.

She'd taken ample measures to secure her testing grounds a lot more thoroughly after that. And decided that maybe something with at least a metal frame to take all that stress was a good idea. At least until Allya came through with some instructions on how to make proper wooden airships. Right now she was angling for a full metal ship, but had to make the hull light enough that her prototype systems could still generate enough power to lift it up into the sky. Which meant that it was, in more way than one, a glorified tin can, with about the same durability in front of enemy fire.

But still, it was heartening into see. In the formless way you get when coming home after stars knows how long. She'd spent most of her career in or near some form of Federation shipyard, either helping troubleshoot what they were building or poking at damaged vessels to learn what not to repeat in the next round of ship classes. Which had pretty much boiled down to 'DO NOT GET INTO A MISSILE DUEL WITH UIS DREADNOUGHTS' and 'Sweet stars, close to laser range but make sure all the cruisers are dead BEFORE you enter railgun range', the modifications to help with both having more or less boiled down to 'more lasers', point defence and anti-ship alike.

Well, in this case 'shipyard' was being very generous. More like a makeshift drydock with a lot of production systems. Still, Emilia had said it was a testament to her abilities that she was even making progress with such a setup, let alone in the process of building an actual warship.

"Well, I suppose leaving the roof open wasn't really an option." Said Emilia, her voice dripping with sarcasm, and Alexandra nodded. She was trying to keep her building program under wraps for as long as she could. Not out of dire need, but more general paranoia…and to give Allya time to put her plan into motion to finally collapse Starvak's authority. Luckily the dwarf -archon? Could something that was more energy than flesh that even be considered a dwarf still?- had done a stellar job of laying the groundwork, and the proverbial jenga tower of his reputation had some giant holes in it.

That, combined with people asking some really embarrassing questions about why the guild had stationed an archon into the Kingdom's borders without going through the niceties of, you know, warning their majesties that there now was a walking WMD around, had also made them go on the defensive. Especially as a lot of nations were now questioning whether it was the case with their own guildmasters, and that whole mess made it so the guild was in no position to defend Starvak, let alone pressure Rebirth into anything.

"No it wasn't. Alright, so, the construction is going along well. Next step, installing and test firing the artillery."

"Ten hours of design time it's going to blow up."

"I…will not take that bet."

"Aw, don't have faith in your inventions?" Said Emilia, sweetly, and Alexandra shook her head.

"No, because of the stuff you have me designing." Notably the vampire advisor had decided it was time to design their personal quarters, and their bedroom had grown into a comfortable suite, and she was sure that if she didn't put a hold on it soon, a significant portion of the core fortress would be eaten up by a miniature palace. She'd also requested more 'equipment', and she realized that failing to find something she wanted from that 'lingerie' shop, the vampire was more than happy to spend time designing and building it themselves. "Besides, it is a ship prototype, and ships are notoriously finicky."

"Uh uh. Well, I suppose we'll see how it goes then."

*****

"Technically they haven't exploded." Said Alexandra as she looked at the debris field, impressed in spite of herself at the devastation.

"Doesn't change the end result."

"True, to some level, but the methods of achieving an end are sometimes as important as the objective."

"Honey, the entire port side is gone."

Alexandra winced, but she couldn't argue with that.

Turns out, the guns hadn't exploded. They hadn't even failed.

The mountings they were on had.

But not failed as in the guns went flying off, failed as in they failed to spread the force as they were supposed to, and the brand new recoil compensators turned out to be less than reliable. As such the guns had indeed flown off, but with a decent chunck of the deck beneath them, wrecking the recoil systems underneath, that caught on fire.

Then the guns had tumbled on the other side of the ship, hit the supports holding it upright, and the entire vessel had rolled onto the side, crushing half the scaffoldings and causing the rest to collapse on top of it.

All while happily burning.

She had firefighting golems rushing in to control the blaze. Not only because it would be really expensive to just absorb everything and rebuild from scratch, but also because she'd like to have a look at the ship's internals to see how it had held up. This was, all in all, a very good approximation of being hit by a broadside and having a soft-ish crash landing, and she'd love to see with her own (for some values of 'own') eyes the extent of the damage.

"Well, the port side may be gone, but it still hasn't exploded."

One day. One days she would learn to shut up.

Because as she finished her sentence, the flames found the magazine.

Fortunately, she wasn't insane, so the test ship had only be loaded with a few rounds per gun, to enable a few tests, and she'd locked up all the rest of the ammo in armored magazines. Unfortunately, to save money, those were made using their homemade gunpowder and pseudo-dynamite. So they were…less than stable.

A corner of her mind idly wondered if it was the ship crashing on its side or the flames heating the magazine that had triggered the reaction, although it probably was a combination of both, as she tackled Emilia to the ground.

It wasn't really necessary. She might have had to skimp out on the armor for the main hull, but the magazine was small and she was really paranoid. The armor absorbed most of the blast, and despite a lot of superheated air and one hell of a shockwave, the ship held up remarkably well. In fact most of the flying pieces she could see were crew or firefighting golems. Or at least they used to be.

A few harmlessly bounced off of the heavily armored glass she'd found in the missile silo's command room, and Alexandra got up, helping her advisor back up.

She could tell by the vampire's expression that she was hesitating between teasing her girlfriend about pouncing on her, or be smug and sarcastic. Smugness won out.

"You were saying?" She asked, and Alexandra rolled her eyes.

"Well, clearly we have some refinements to go through before its fully ready."

"Of course. After all, the explosions need to happen inside the enemy ships, not ours. Still, at least there are explosions, it's a step in the right direction!"

"Shush."

"Make me."

"Well, if you don't want to, I'm sure we could discuss some of the stories your maids told me about."

"...You win. This time."

Alexandra smiled, before shaking her head.

"Alright, jokes aside, what's next on the list?"

Emilia pulled out, and then opened her notebook with a practiced flick of the wrist, and whistled softly.

"The, uh, 'stage one in hacking the database and reverse-engineering the fabricators', with a lot of red underlines."

Alexandra winced.

"Yeah, that's going to be interesting." She sighed. "Alright then, let's get to it."