Chapter 134 - Adjudicator

Note : Chapter 137 has been written, and added to the queue !

I'm also going to enjoy you guys' reactions at the end of this chapter ;p

Chapter 134

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Command Center

"Any idea who these guys are?" Asked Alexandra as Emilia entered the command center, and gestured at the screen showing the surrounded trio. They hadn't moved from their position, but she'd ordered her golems to cease fire and form a cordon around them. She had not, however, extended the courtesy of talking to the people who had just waltzed into one of her highest security areas.

Emilia, who was panting slightly due to sprinting to the command center, looked up…and fainted.

Alexandra caught her a split second before Sarah could.

"Emi? Emi answer me!" Said Alexandra as she shook the vampire girl, and the advisor opened her eyes. "Holy shit, you scared the crap out of me! What happened?"

"I…" The vampire girl swallowed heavily. "That's an adjudicator Alexandra." Her eyes were desperate. But not for herself, Alexandra realized. For her dungeon core. "That's an angel of the God of Fire. Here to pass judgment."

Oh fuck.

*****

"Ah. Dungeon core. It is a pleasure to meet you, at long last." Said the adjudicator as Alexandra approached her.

If she had been disturbed by the rather energetic welcome, she wasn't showing it, although the two inquisitors flanking her definitely looked a bit unnerved. Thankfully Emilia had briefed her as they made their way to the entrance, so she wasn't going in completely blind.

"Greetings adjudicator. I would return the same compliment, unfortunately I was not made aware of your arrival." She gestured, and the golems fell into a three ranks deep honor guard, lining the path between them. "Otherwise I would have made sure that your welcome would have been less…violent."

"It was my intention to keep my presence as quiet as possible. And I cannot blame you for defending yourself. His Divinity would not have given you these tools had he not expected you to use them."

"True, I suppose. So, adjudicator, what brings you here?"

"Well, Alexandra Rousseau, I am here to…complete an inquiry."

Alexandra tilted her head. The adjudicator clearly knew who she was supposed to be -not a surprise, after all she'd told the vampires and they were supposed to be on at least speaking terms with these guys-, and since they hadn't offered their name, she wasn't going to risk offending them more by asking for it. Plus she looked like the type that thought their being started and ended with their job description anyway.

"Not adjudicate a matter or pass judgement?"

"No." The adjudicator gazed at her. "I came here to enquire about the state of your technology, and its provenance."

"Ah. Well, most of it is homegrown. A fair amount of it I have taken from the adventurers."

"I see. And?"

Alexandra licked her lips.

"And I have led negotiations and expeditions onto the surface to acquire some more."

"What, exactly, have you acquired from those?"

"Steel smelting processes and the associated materials and smelter schematics. And a sizeable shipment of Tarkian weapons, with revolvers, bolt action rifles, submachine guns. Those kind of things."

"That is not the kind of technology I am concerned about. What about…high technology?"

There it is.

"You mean the kind of technology I routinely used and designed back home?" Alexandra smiled, and for a split second the adjudicator looked taken aback, but she simply nodded as her expression smoothed back into polite attention. "I have acquired rather large quantities from the ruins below me, which, according to the data I was given, was acquired legally through the rules of the edicts."

"I will be the judge of that, dungeon core." Said the adjudicator.

"So you will. I assume you are here to conduct a physical inspection?"

"You are correct."

"I am obligated to point out that although the core of the facility was pacified, some subsystems appear to still be online, and a handful of security systems severed from the network are still operational and actively hostile."

"I am hardly defenseless. And if the core of the facility was pacified, this makes my job easier. Please, lead the way."

Alexandra could take the hint, and gestured for the three to follow her.

The inquisitors didn't seem particularly worried, but their unease clearly increased as they entered the tunnel, and saw the entire battalion of praetorian guard lining the walls…some of them holding anti magic rockets on their shoulders.

*****

The adjudicator had made a beeline for the seal embedded into the floor of the facility's command center, and knelt upon it.

"Where is the NLR core?"

Apparently the adjudicator hadn't needed to even open the heavily shielded compartment. That was concerning.

"I acquired it. It is currently inside my workshop. It was, I understood, not an illegal item."

"It is not. What about the facility's computer and artificial intelligence core?"

As soon as Alexandra had realized Seraph was contained inside of a core similar to hers, she'd shipped it to a secure area. Not inside her core fortress of course, but…secure. She had a feeling keeping the AI in their old command center was a bad idea, from a security standpoint of course, but the place gave her a bad feeling. Besides, it would be the first spot someone would look.

"It has been neutralized."

The adjudicator looked up at her sharply, but didn't comment. After all, Alexandra was being truthful.

She just wasn't offering the whole truth. She had a feeling outright lying would be suicide…but telling the adjudicator she'd outright hired the damned facility core was a bad idea. Plus, given the fact that the core's 'final protocols' would have blown the crystal, hopefully the adjudicator would assumed Seraph had simply self destroyed.

"So I had summarized." She stood up, and scanned the surrounding area, before seeming to come to a decision. "Be truthful with me. Have you seen…any anomalies lately? Related to people using high technology when they should not have had access to it."

"You mean besides the people that kidnapped me and turned me into this?" She gestured at her avatar.

That got a reaction from the adjudicator and the inquisitors. They wheeled around and stared at her.

"Yes. Like that. Please elaborate."

"You don't know about it? I figured you were the ones to rescue me."

Alexandra was completely fishing, but sometimes looking like you knew what was happening would yield far more than showing your ignorance.

The adjudicator looked like she was chewing on something extremely unpalatable for a second, before her expression returned to normal. Her facial movements looked…off. Almost like an imitation of the human face than the real deal.

"We…were not. Another deity took it upon themselves to respond to your distress call."

"I see. Well, when I arrived onto this world I became an adventurer. Shortly afterwards I was attacked by progressively better equipped mercenaries, culminating in an assault backed by soldiers in power armor."

"Did they have any distinctive symbols or heraldry?"

Alexandra shook her head.

"No. I just know they had light power armor and modern weaponry. They might have also had some kind of shuttles, I found the traces of something like that landing near this location."

The adjudicator slowly nodded.

"I see." Her tone was much more conciliatory all of a sudden, instead of the barely friendly tone of someone giving orders to somebody they knew they had authority over. "Thank you, dungeon core. You have been most helpful." The adjudicator visibly hesitated. "I will continue my inquiry in this area for a bit, but be aware that you are cleared of any suspicion. If you encounter anything strange, do not hesitate to contact me." She gestured at one of her inquisitors, who extended a small card, which looked like something any twenty first century terran businessman would have carried around. "This contains the details to do so."

Alexandra took the card gratefully. She didn't trust the God of Fire or his lackeys a single bit, after their mind control bullshit, but she wasn't going to discard such a huge potential help. They were clearly interested in those who had sacrificed her, and she might be able to use the adjudicator as an ally, or at least a distraction when she went after them.

After she had rescued her team, of course. Which reminded her that Seraph had notified her about some materials and systems that would help with her infiltration golems earlier today.

"Thank you adjudicator."

"No thanks are necessary." The adjudicator nodded towards her. "I thank you for your cooperation, dungeon core."

Then she vanished, alongside her bodyguards, and Alexandra gritted her teeth.

"I hate it when people do that."

She needed some kind of teleportation defense. Badly.

Actually…given the treasure trove they'd just found, and the fact that the facility's owners hadn't worried about people just teleporting a bomb inside the command center and be done with it, that might be on the table.

She needed to make a note of it.

TO DO LIST UPDATED

Surprisingly enough, that program still worked. Some things never changed, apparently.

"That..went well." Said Emilia as she stepped into the command center. Alexandra had insisted she wait outside 'for her own security', but in truth she didn't trust the vampire girl to keep her facial expression in check if Alexandra had to…massage the truth a little bit.

"I hope so." Said the dungeon core, making a mental checknote. Whatever Emilia may be, a political officer or just an advisor, she had been genuinely terrified of the adjudicator and hadn't reported everything to her. So, while she might not be completely trustworthy, it looked like she could trust the vampire girl with a lot. "Well…that at least answered some questions of mine. And begged a hell of a lot more."

"Like what?"

"Like what the hell is actually going on on this planet."

*****

"What even brought it to your attention?" Asked Alexandra as she looked at the maintenance door. It was the exact same standard model as the hundreds scattered throughout the facility, but something felt…off about it, somehow.

After the shock of meeting that adjudicator, and how intent she'd been about that facility, it wasn't a welcome feeling. Despite Seraph professing this was just a strategic communications site, she was starting to wonder what the hell the surface installation had been equipped with…and why a glorified telecom station had to have an NLR core and a fucking antimatter reactor.

"At first? It was just a small anomaly. The plans of the facility didn't have any data on what was beyond this door. Given how fucked the databanks were, that was unsurprising. So I pulled up the full specifications from the core's memory." Said the apparition's holograms. Well, it wasn't technically a hologram, she simply inserted an avatar in Alexandra's sensory datafeed, but it had the same effect.

"And?"

"Nothing. And not just 'incomplete data', a complete void and several programs to make sure the AI didn't investigate, wonder about or even come near the place."

"Shit."

"Yeah. And once I sent golems to check it out, well, I came upon this."

The apparition gestured at the door, and Alexandra frowned…before slowly nodding.

"That's not one of their maintenance doors. It's one of their blast doors. Just…disguised."

"Precisely. I was wondering why they'd bother, and…I think it's better if you see it for yourself."

Alexandra gave her other self a sharp look, and then sighed. Despite their…differences, they were very close in how they thought. If her other self insisted on it, there had to be a good reason for it.

She gestured at the golem, who promptly opened the door. Thankfully all of the doors in the facility had a manual override,  and once they'd taken the time to lift the emergency lockdown they had proven more than sufficient for getting around.

The door ground open, and Alexandra stepped through, her praetorian guards at her heels.

The tunnel was…odd. And not at all like the others. Clean, efficient, and almost crude. Whereas the other tunnels had the patina of long use, and very distinct ducts carrying cables and other systems, this one was bare rock, with bare cables crudely bolted onto the walls.

She stepped forward, and ran her hand against the wall.

"These tunnels…they're newer than the rest of the facility. Built right before it was destroyed." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the cables and the clear cut wall, clearly smoothed and dug with lasers of some kind.

"Yeah. They never had the time to finish them. And given how they were made…something tells me they weren't expecting to have the time to do it properly."

"Why?"

The apparition wordlessly nodded towards the end of the tunnel, and Alexandra took the hint.

It only took a minute or so to make their way to the end, and Alexandra stepped into what had to be some kind of control room. Cables snaked in between haphazardly installed consoles, and it had the hallmarks of a rushed, but still efficient job. The oddity however, was the window. There was a giant armored window overlooking an even larger space at the back of the control center.

She made her way forward, carefully stepping around the cabling, and gazed through the window.

For a second, what she was seeing didn't quite register. Then…

"MOTHERFUCKER! Communication site my fucking ass! Those are missile silos!"