Chapter 128 - Turning The Tides

Chapter 128

Province of Irakia, Sagitarius Empire.

Strategic Communications Site Seraph-4, Command Center.

The facility core ran some projections as its combat units ambushed the advancing enemies once more. The attrition rate of the enemy forces favored it, and their advance had slowed to a crawl, but they were still taking a toll. Thankfully however, only replaceable basic golems had been affected, and despite the fabricators being beyond repair it had enough spare parts to-

Every alert system on the combat units went off, and the facility core had a tenth of a second or so to process the fact that there was a giant energy spike through the wall before the railgun slug punched cleanly through its combat unit.

The other golems remained frozen, awaiting more orders, and a second one was taken out before the core shook itself out of its stupor, and ordered them to retreat.

So much for favorable attrition rates! Railguns. They had freaking railguns. Which was impossible. If they'd had that kind of technology before attacking, the facility would have been there already.

Unless…

It cursed itself violently. The combat units that had fallen during the first assault! They had to have been able to salvage one of the railguns. It ran a few numbers, and nodded mentally. The slug they had fired was slower than those its own combat units fired. They probably had cobbled together a few of the damaged railguns to get an operational one. That denoted a high level of savvy, and at least some baseline understanding of high technology. But, they could only have one, two at most. The third railgun left behind had been completely crushed by a cannonball after all!

It began drawing strategies to eliminate the weapon. It would be risky…but if it couldn't continue its current ambush tactics, it was toast. It needed to find a way to draw the weapon out, and annihilate it in a single strike. And just blasting through walls wouldn't cut it, the combat unit, at least in their current dilapidated state, couldn't be accurate enough to take out the gun, not just the wielder.

It accessed its entertainment library, and began drawing from it, once again cursing its creators. Their tactics and strategy packages for their automated systems were so pitiful the holovids the base's personnel had saved on the network had better tactical advice than they did!

It was starting to think it hadn't been supposed to succeed, just die a bit slower for its creators to intervene, or save themselves.

It was starting to resent that.

The AI refocused on the task at hand as it began getting lost into its own thoughts. There was no time to waste, especially not as the enemy would be advancing far faster into the facility now!

It could worry about its scumbag creators later.

*****

"They're pulling back in all sectors!" Sarah smiled fiercely. "At this rate, we'll have this entire place done by the end of the day!"

"Don't be too confident. They're regrouping. I doubt they won't go down without a fight." Cautioned Alexandra.

"Of course they are! But I have contingency plans in place for a potential counter attack."

"Are you sure they will be sufficient?"

"My lady, I defer to your greater expertise when it comes to dungeon building, advanced technology and anything to do with politics. But I've spent half my life fighting operations like this. Granted, I have more soldiers than usual, but clearing a facility staffed by fanatics armed with superior tech, room by room? Yeah, I've done that before."

"Fair point." Alexandra paused. "Wait, what do you mean you've done that before?"

"The Western Marches haven't always been at peace with the Eris Empire. Me and my fellow…maids, are the reason why the Empire has decided that attempting to incorporate the duchy was not a good idea."

Alexandra shivered. Having seen the maids' handiwork, she was starting to fear what an entire formation of them could do. Although to be fair, they had their weaknesses. There was a reason the praetorian guards accompanying Sarah had strict orders to keep her from going further than the green zones, the areas in the facility where the golems had combed every square centimeter of the surface to make sure there were no more surprises.

"I see. Well then, I'll leave this into your capable hands." Alexandra sighed. "Its not like I can remote control the golems once they're out of my influence anyway. And the surface is going to require a lot of attention."

"Oh yeah? How's Ella doing?"

"She has the surface people wrapped around her little finger, and she's come up with a seriously devious idea. I'm proud, actually."

"I'm not." Intervened Emilia. "You're being a bad influence on my maids! Now they're all about backstabbings and explosions!"

"Right, of course, and they haven't taken their penchant for enchanted everything from you?"

"Well, I…Uh…"

"See? We're all bad influences! Just like Ella has influenced me to get some poison armaments." Within certain limits. Given how she'd killed the traitors topside, she'd rather keep any true chemical weapon under the hood. No reason in having people start linking the dots just yet. But poison? Poison was fair game. The next person to taste a praetorian guard's blade was going to have a very bad day. "Or you, with getting me to put spellcasters, or finally start actually giving a damn what my dungeon looks like."

"Took you long enough." Muttered the vampire girl under her breath, before continuing at a more normal level. "But you said Ella had a devious idea?"

"Oh yeah. It's almost time for it to swing into action. Let me show you…"

*****

Amelia's eyes were wide open and she was halfway out of her bed, already starting to buckle her sword belt, before she'd even consciously processed what had woken her up.

Then she heard the sound of the alarm…and the gunfire of a fierce battle.

And most of it wasn't from her arquebusiers.

*****

Golems were hardly considered discrete soldiers. After all they were made out of metal, right? But one thing that people failed to consider was that with integrated armor, perfect control of their movement and literally no subconscious ticks like humans, golems could be absolutely silent if necessary. Especially if the ground they were stepping on was sandy.

It wouldn't have been good enough to allow them to swarm over the wall and take out the sentries.

But it was far more than sufficient to get into musket range.

The soldiers manning the palisade encircling the Republic camp were alert. Carefully gazing into the night and avoiding to look at the camp fires at their backs to preserve their night vision. But there was only so much you could so, especially with the bright beacon of light that was Rebirth. And the golems had perfect night vision.

The first volley killed every single sentry. Of course, there were backups, a handful of soldiers next to the alarms meant to trigger them if any of the sentries gave the signal, who saw them come down. Not that it was that important, no one would have missed the rolling thunder of the musket volley.

Ready squads jumped out of the tents or scrambled up from their camp fires, and rushed to the palisade. Arquebusiers slotted their bulky weapons on the preplaced emplacements, and scanned for the enemies that had to be there.

And that was when the golems swarmed out of the night, behind a curtail of grenades.

*****

Amelia saw the gleam of reflected firelight on the smooth spheres sailing through the air, and barely had the time to react before her bodyguard slammed her to the ground.

She gasped as she was slammed onto the ground, her breath knocked out of her lungs by the heavily armored soldier hitting her like a missile. But it definitely saved her life, as shrapnel scramed through the air, reaping a rich harvest as they tore through tents and people alike. It looked like her decision to position her tent near the palisade wasn't such a good idea after all!

The general coughed as she gasped for air, slightly dazed, and took the hand proffered by her bodyguard after he went back up.

She took it gratefully, and looked around, taking stock of the situation.

The ready troops for this section of the palisade had been decimated. At least fifty soldiers laid on the ground, dead or dying. But the groups from other sectors were responding, and sentinels who had line of sight were pouring fire into the enemy. Soldiers were rushing everywhere, but not in panic, as troops rushed out of their tents, half clothed or some outright naked beyond their armor and weaponry, and leapt into action.

Then the first golem came over the palisade, and the general gritted her teeth as she saw the light reflect off of the smooth metal of the automata. Then three arquebusiers fired as one, and the golem went flying back, its head obliterated.

But another came up. And another. And another.

Amelia unsheathed her sword, and began getting to the grim task of rallying her troops even as they died before her. In these kind of night fights, panic and disorganization was their greatest foe, and she could do a lot more good hammering a semblance of order into her troops than adding one more sword to the front line. Not to mention the fact that she had little doubt the golems would focus all of their fire on her if she was stupid enough to join the frontline!

*****

"Maybe we should have done a full scale sortie after all." Said Allya, softly, as she gazed at the battle.

Her binoculars were good, but at this distance everything was muddled, at best. She had to get at the top of the tower to see anything at all, and most of it was flashes of light that briefly illuminated a teeming mass of metal crashing against the palisade surrounding the camp.

Then the night really came into day as the golem sappers finished their work, and a chunk of the palisade dissolved into a hail of shards, and golems swarmed into the breach.

"That would have been impossible. Two companies was about as much as we could sneak in without their airships noticing something." Retorted Alexandra as she gazed at the carnage. "And believe me, if they'd expected us…they would have massacred us."

"Well, they don't seem to have expected that at least. Sloppy." Said Pyn with a satisfied tone. The elf looked particularly happy, even before the battle had begun, and Alexandra was too polite to mention the fact that her armor didn't fully hide the hickey on her shoulder.

"Hardly. I think it is just a case of cognitive dissonance."

"What do you mean?"

"They know my golems are part of this fight, but they haven't integrated it yet. They're still considering them as just…low grade normal troops. They don't seem to have understood that they are utterly disposable in a way normal soldiers simply aren't." The fact that soldiers could be resurrected, and that high rank ones took forever to level up and train added onto that. Outside of feudal levies troops on this world were surprisingly high grade, and from what she'd learned most armies were loathe to send them on suicide missions except when absolutely necessary. Which made the fact that they'd wasted some of those on taking out her distraction Bertha all the sweeter. "So they expected maybe a small commando. Couple platoons at most, in which case their setup would have crushed them. Not nearly four hundred soldiers!"

"That's a fair point." Allya squinted. "What are those small detonations?"

"Grenades." Allya gave her a curious glance, and the dungeon core shrugged. Well, she made the boss' body shrug, but at that point the baroness had decided to just assume the core 'was' whichever of her minion she was possessing. It avoided giving her headaches. "I started building them recently. I had something of a breakthrough."

Allya nodded…and didn't mention the fact that she knew exactly where the dungeon had gotten that 'breakthrough' of hers. She was saving that particular card for later.

"I see. Any more surprises you have in stock?" Like her having deployed machineguns. Nothing else could have fired that quickly from the Bertha when the commandos had attacked.

"A few." Said the dungeon core, noncommittally, and Allya sighed internally. It was probably the best she was going to get out of her.

"Well, hopefully they'll be pleasant ones." Allya frowned as another series of flashes appeared, and she realized that Republic troops had sortied from the gates of their little camp, and were starting to pour some serious arquebusier fire into the flanks of the golems, apparently heedless of hitting their own comrades on the other side. "Well, it looks like this fight isn't going to last much longer."

"It was never going to. Let's give our friends the time to process the implications…then we'll hit them again, just to drive the point home." Alexandra smiled, and it was by no means a pleasant one. "I think our dear general will reconsider her options then."

"That or she'll order a desperate attack."

"If she does, then it'll be her funeral." There was a finality in the dungeon core's tone that gave the baroness shivers. This wasn't confidence, it was certainty, absolute and total.

And it terrified her.

"Lets hope it is. Lets hope it is…" She replied, doing her best to keep her voice level as she contemplated the distant battle.

Just what the hell had she actually allied herself with?