Chapter 164 - Airstrike

Chapter 164

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

City of Rebirth

"So?" Asked Allya as Trira stepped into her office, much more rested and feeling almost human again. Her night with Pyn had also helped immensely with her stress.

"So," Answered the assassin sect leader as the door closed and the soundproofing and security enchantments came back online. "I had the results processed and analyzed. Luckily one of my own is capable of doing so. Those are the results."

She set down a holographic projector on the table, and activated it, materializing a 3D map of the interior of the mesa.

Immediately Allya saw what was wrong. The adventurers guild had compiled a similar map of the dungeon. It showed the steps, the floors, and even some of the elevators and logistics tunnels, as well as the prison where the Void Blades were kept, albeit only on restricted maps.

What was missing was what appeared to be two thirds of the first floor, a gigantic maze of tunnels and what looked like elevators, several massive rooms and an entire two full floors.

"Shit." Said Allya.

"Yeah."

"Alright." The baroness sighed. "Analysis?"

"According to the scans, this-" The assassin highlighted a sizeable section of the first floor, Allya idly wondering how many people would have been surprised at the sect leader's ease with technology, ignoring her past as an Erisian soldier. "-is some kind of production area. Forges, smelters, everything. And one section definitely looks like it houses assembly lines of some kind. The rest of the floor appears to be one gigantic set of warehouses."

Allya swallowed. Assembly lines ? She shouldn't be surprised, given the core's extradimensional status, but still… And put together, those forges represented more industrial capability than an entire Asarian duchy. And the warehouses…

"How full are the warehouses?"

"That's harder to tell, since there's no active power sources or anything in any warehouse that would be filled. But thankfully I can tell you which ones had activity." A section of them highlighted. A section that was about four fifth through the entire mass of storage. "So, either they're eighty percent empty…"

"Or eighty percent full." Said the baroness, softly. There was enough storage room for an army. One to put what Alexandra had shown during the battle with the Republict to shame. "Continue, please."

"Alright. Most of the tunnels appear to be logistics of some kind, with elevators and what look like a minecart network. There are several, fully separate networks however. One appear to service the dungeon's normal operations, replacing golems, ect. Another is much larger and fit to accommodate full scale military formations. The last one is small, and seems to be some kind of express transport network, to ferry small cargoes."

"That's…expected." In fact it was a bit less than she had envisioned. Had she been the dungeon she'd have had extra exits out of the mesa, but there didn't appear to be any…besides a handful of hatches that had to be how the dungeon core had gotten her infiltrator golems out originally. Not that she needed to anymore, with the giant fortress encompassing the top of the mesa.

"So you had briefed me. But what wasn't were the other floors." She highlighted the fourth floor. "This one appears to be a regular dungeon floor, it has the same tunnel infrastructure as them anyway. But this one…" She highlighted the fifth. "That, quite simply, is a giant fucking fortress. Gun emplacements everywhere and what seems like a ton and a half of active golems. My guess would be that is where the dungeon core is."

"Your guess? I thought the sensors would have found it."

"Well…that's the issue. The mana concentration is insane there…but it's also completely uniform. And the sensors didn't find jack shit in terms of the dungeon core. Which should be impossible."

"She's hidden it in some way."

"Obviously. I'd put my money on it being somewhere inside, but the sensors couldn't narrow it down further. The rooms here and there…I frankly don't know what they are. All of them have active power signatures from golems and machinery, but they don't have the logistic infrastructure to be production centers. I have no clue."

Allya looked at the image, then it hit her.

"They're laboratories."

"What?"

"The dungeon's weaponry and such don't come from nowhere. Even just repurposing stuff she absorbed can't possibly account for her whole arsenal, not by a long shot. Those are laboratories, workshops, testing rooms…They're fucking R&D facilities."

"That's…dungeons don't do that Allya."

"This one does." Allya blinked as she looked at several symbols on the map. They were right next to where she'd met with the dungeon core's boss and advisor, in the third floor's supply tunnels. "What are those?"

"Those were detected when the core went to speak to you. Those were only registered at close range, because the sensors weren't calibrated to look for them at a distance. Those…those are Old World weapons Allya."

The baroness felt like the ground had fell off from under her, as she stared at the hologram in complete horror.

*****

"These things still frustrate the ever living crap out of me." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the destroyed fabricator. They'd hauled the machine all the way to her workshop, and she was equally part amazed and disgusted at how advanced it was. Because it meant that it was an amazing prize…and one she simply didn't have the knowledge to fix.

"As you say milady." Said Seraph, and the Earth-born sighed.

"I don't hold it against you. It's not your fault they were too fragile to survive. Alright, so-"

Alexandra stopped mid-sentence as she received a stream of priority alerts.

ALERT: FORTRESS_COMMAND REPORTS: ANOMALY

ALERT: FORTRESS_COMMAND REPORTS: MULTIPLE MEDIUM FLYING OBJECTS ON INTERCEPT COURSE

ALERT: FORTRESS_COMMAND REPORTS: HIGH TECH WEAPONS FIRE

ALERT: FORTRESS_COMMAND REPORTS: INCOMING OBJECT

ALERT: FORTRESS_COMMAND UNRESPONSIVE

"BATTLE STATIONS!" Yelled out Alexandra as she felt the mesa shake ever so slightly, alarms beginning to blare throughout the dungeon, followed shortly after by the resounding clang of the emergency blast doors coming down.

*****

Rebirth's defenders never even saw them coming. Their only inkling that something was wrong was when the stealth drone came screaming over heard, and the missed energy blasts from the pursuing aircrafts began peppering the walls.

Alarms rang out and soldiers screamed as the drone flew in the canyons separating the mesas, barely going over the fortifications blocking them, before raising itself to crash into the dungeon's fortress atop the mesa.

For a split second, it stopped dodging.

A split second was all it took.

The combined fire of twelve Sagitarius strike crafts slammed into its shields. The drone broke off, jinxing wildly and breaking target lock, its shields collapsing as it hit the reinforced wall and crashed inside the fortress…

Which was when two dozen air superiority missiles slammed home. Most of them missed, losing their target and locking onto the artillery emplacements instead, and the mesa shook from the plasma warheads, and then the secondary explosions as the superheated plasma detonated the ready ammunition for some of the fortress guns.

But some of the missiles hit home, and the drone flew apart, one last line of text in its onboard computer's 'mind'.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

*****

"Status report!" Barked Alexandra as she stormed into the command center.

"We've lost communications with fortress command, as well as batteries one, three and eight. Batteries four and seven report significant damage." Said Seraph as the hologram at the center of the room highlighted the different sections as they talked. "The others report minor damage. All batteries are attempting to engage the enemy."

"Any success?" Said the Earth-born as she gazed at the screen, showing the aircrafts circling around the mesa. They were…exceedingly slow moving, all things considered. They weren't as slow as the airships were, but they definitely didn't come close to the hypersonic stratospheric interceptors the EFSN had used. They were more like heavily armed gunships.

"Some." An aircraft briefly vanished in an explosion on one of the screens, before emerging, clad in a scintillating bubble of energy. "But they are heavily shielded, as expected."

"Where the hell did they come from?"

"Unclear. I do not recognize their unit markings, but they are clearly Imperial units of some kind."

Alexandra opened her mouth, then closed with a snap. The distress signal.

"Shit."

"Affirmative."

"How many?"

"Twelve engaging, one hanging back. Standard squadron sizes are six vessels per squadrons, so probably three partial squadrons from combat losses."

"Fourteen total, with the one that crashed?"

"Negative. The aircraft that hit the command center appears to have been pursued and under attack by the others. In fact the damage sustained in the initial attack appeared to have been aimed at the downed craft, and targeted the fortress by mistake."

"That's…odd."

"Agreed. I recommend immediate recovery of the craft."

Alexandra closed her eyes, and jumped into dungeon mode.

"Done. Uh." She looked at the notification for new materials. That was always nice. "And it was decked out. Regardless, we need to drive them off."

"So far the fortress' guns lack the accuracy and tracking for effective damage. The enemy appear to be running high rudimentary systems however. They do dodge, but predictably so. I have been compensating for their evasion patterns. They also are spreading their fire onto the the entire town's fortifications, not just our own. They seem to simply fire on whatever is closest and appears to be military in nature."

"That's…." Something she wasn't surprised would happen, given the Sagitarius Empire's mistrust of AI. Those aircrafts were probably running on extremely basic combat protocols, and even if they had a governing intelligence guiding them behind the scenes, it was probably as incompetent as Seraph was. "Not surprising. Your creators really didn't seem to give their AIs much."

"Indeed. And- Wait, the town's defenses are engaging them."

Alexandra blinked. The town's defenses? They had catapults and a handful of cannons, what could they possibly-

Then she remembered with a start that the town indeed had something else, as the tesla tower, Willard's gift to Rebirth, opened fire. Lightning crossed the skies, and locked onto an aircraft. It dodged and jinxed of course, but nothing seemed to be able to break the lock the weapon had.

The aircrafts fired back of course, but whatever they appear to be firing just bounced off the wards protecting the tower. Then suddenly, in perfect synchronicity, they began to climb, and departed, not without taking a fair bit of fire as they did, but still.

Alexandra shook her head as she looked at them, making a mental note to create some longer ranged anti air, and some sort of pursuit force. It wouldn't do if the enemy just learned to get in, bomb them and get out instead of trying to get into a slugging match with an interceptor's popgun against a literal fortress.

"Ooookay. So definitely some kind of central command, or swarm intelligence, but I doubt the empire would have allowed the latter."

"Agreed. Their technology also appears…low grade."

"Low grade?"

"The shields of the unit targeted by the tesla tower were beginning to flicker. Their weapons were inaccurate and short ranged. They are nothing like the gunships and starfighters my databanks contain."

Alexandra slowly nodded as she looked at the rapidly receding dots.

"They're not from the start of the war."

"Pardon?"

"The Great Night lasted for a thousand years, or so Emilia told me. With the level of devastation, they must have lost some industrial and technological capacity. Wartime gear is very different from peacetime stuff. So they must have downgraded for cost efficiency, then as their resources and tech started to diminish…"

"Technology loss is…not impossible, but hard on such a scale milady. Especially given the empire's level of redundant backups."

"Says the one with damaged tech databases?"

"...Point taken milady."

"Someone clearly had a very good idea of the empire's contingency plans and facilities. And that someone also must have conducted a devastating first strike, if they took you out before you even knew the war was on." Not to mention the fact that not a single one of the interceptor missiles in the silos had launched, although the fact that they were here might have made Seraph one of, if not the earliest target hit. "And in any kind of high tech war, data infrastructure and industrial facilities are priority targets."

"If so, the losses must have been staggering. These aircrafts are incredibly ineffective compared to what they should be."

"Well, they've also probably been sitting out in a radioactive wasteland for several thousand years. That wouldn't have helped." Alexandra sighed. "I'm going to have to meet with Allya. Maybe I shouldn't have scared her shitless after-"

The door to the command center slid open and the dungeon's resident vampires skiddled to a halt.

"Alexandra! What's happening?" Yelled out Emilia.

"We got attacked. By Old World constructs, but its over now, they're retreating."

"Correction, the primary attack squadrons are retreating, the observer is staying in position." Said Seraph.

Alexandra blinked. Something bugged her about that aircraft, now that she looked at it. Why was it hovering like this, outside of range? Was it scouting? She could understand the need to keep an eye on the enemy, but surely it would have a better view at a higher altitude, especially with the mesas. It was akmost like…almost like it was spotting for something, being just high enough to designate the target, but low enough to bogey once the strike hit.

"Evacuate the fortress! Do it now! Everyone brace for incoming ordonance!"