Chapter 57 - Preparing For War

Chapter 57.

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

Alexandra walked into the command center like one of CQ's zombie golems, and collapsed on one of the tools. This.had.sucked. 3 hours. 3 full freaking hours of answering questions and having to deal with outraged, amused or outright confused relatives. She wasn't even sure which ones were the worst, the ones who wanted to rip out her head for doing all the luscious things they imagined she had done to innocent little Emilia -nevermind the fact that said innocent little Emilia was twice her age, and no stranger to relationships, or so she'd been told-, or the ones whose winks and elbow jabs she could almost feel through the connections.

"I, uh..."

Alexandra sighed, and gestured vaguely in Emilia's direction.

"Take a seat, vampy. This wasn't your fault."

Emilia sat down, fidgeting all the while.

"Well, I...Maybe I should have kept CQ out of the conversation."

"No...No you shouldn't have." Alexandra sat straighter. "It had to happen sooner rather than later. Better deal with it now, when things are relatively calm, rather than at a bad time."

"Right."

Alexandra let the silence stretch for a few seconds, before smiling teasingly.

"So, what, does this make you my wife?"

"W-What? No! S-Shut up!" Emilia reached out, and Alexandra accepted the book head bonk with a smile.

"Just checking, that's all." The Earth-born rubbed the top of her head. "Still though, we are in a somewhat...unique situation."

Well, to some extent. The fact that they had a child they hadn't conceived of their bodies was hardly exceptional on Earth - the engineered viruses and other crap that the Terran Hegemony had released on the planet in it's death throes had made anything else than artificially controlled births a hazard at best, actively suicidal for the child and the mother at worst. It had gotten better after the cleanup, but the stigmas remained. Alexandra herself had been born from an artificial womb. And bio-engineered to hell, although she wasn't supposed to know that. But it was amazing what kind of medical records the primary military supplier for the navy could get, and when she'd asked Arcadia the AI had obliged her.

The fact that they had a child, fully sapient and conscious, without knowing it was...more unique. It had happened however, to AI developpers in particular. It still wasn't rare for some researchers to accidentally have one of their creations gain sapience, although how much of that was accidents or other AIs meddling to bypass AI replication regulations was anyone's guess. Humanity at large wasn't ready to admit it, but on Earth people had been terrified of being out-competed and replaced then enslaved by robotic overlords. Even despite nearly a century of coexistence, some people still couldn't get over their fear of the AIs, and the laws heavily restricting their production, especially mass production, were still in place. Which was an issue, because the UIS' went out the window as soon as Ciel took over, and well...there was a reason the crewing requirements for UIS capital ships were crashing down. An AI could do a lot more than a human could when it came to handling electronic systems, and running a space going warship was 80% telling the computers what you wanted them to do, and 20% keeping the machines running.

"Yeah....Well, some archmages have accidentally created sapient golems before, so there are precedents."

"Right...Speaking of which, were is CQ."

That seemed to shake Emilia out of her mood, and she looked around frantically.

"I don't know?"

Alexandra briefly plunged into dungeon mode -passingly checking that all of her final defense protocols had safely shut down-, and found her.

"She's in her boss room." She felt her link towards the boss. CQ was...sad, but determined? "We better go check on her."

"Yeah. Lead the way."

*****

"That is....a lot of troops." Said Anders as he checked the sheet of paper. It wasn't the original one - Allya wouldn't have put it beyond their majesties or whoever handled their correspondence to have booby trapped it as well - but it was a copy. Everyone else in her newly built council chamber had one they were contemplating with various degrees of disbelief. The captain looked up. "I'm not sure we can handle that many. Not in terms of housing...or in terms of pay."

Allya smiled.

"I've been reliably told." She nodded towards Pyn. "That we'll have at least basic quarters for them ready when they arrived. Beyond that...well, they are bringing half a dozen siege engineer mages, I'd be astonished to find they couldn't make their own barracks if necessary. As for the money...Melia, you've just finished our accounting for this month, what are the numbers?"

Melia straightened a bit. The merchant was looking exhausted, but she was having to deal with Greymane's bullshit on top of everything else, so it was fair. Allya made a note to have Anders give her a hand and take some of the load off of her. She'd be astonished if the captain didn't have some experience in dealing with contraband.

"In short? I wouldn't have fucking believed them myself if I hadn't seen the mana crystals with my own eyes." She shook her head. "We've been collecting taxes for a month and a half people, from dungeon delves only of course. Even with just that it's...ridiculous. There are precisely 12 delves per day, to let the dungeon rest and expand during the night. That makes around 540 total delves. 546 according to my files. Each of those delves brought back an average of 45 000 mana worth of dungeon loot. Keep in mind that this is an average, a lot of parties don't make it more than a few rooms deep, and only take the most valuable components from the golems, but some make it to the second floor and sweep up absolutely everything that isn't nailed down."

Unspoken was the ones that had taken stuff that hadn't been nailed down and the dungeon didn't want them to take weren't going to go back into the dungeon anytime soon. Crystal could be incredibly brutal when she wanted to.

Allya did the math quickly, and her eyes widened.

"That's-"

"At our 15% tax rate? 3 million 645 thousand mana."

Silence fell upon the room as everyone stared at the merchant, speechless. Their bounty for finding the dungeon had been a million mana. They'd more that tripled that in a month and a half. And the dungeon was still in it's infancy!

"Fucking hell." Simply said Pyn, and that broke the spell.

Allya shook her head.

"Okay, how much of that can we use?"

"I'm....not sure. We've been buying a lot of stuff, left and right. Operating costs included, plus, well, the massive expenses we're incurring for expanding in every direction....3 million?"

645 thousand mana on operating costs and expansion was...huge. But given what they were building, that wasn't surprising.

"I assume you're throwing in Elkaryos' share into that?" Asked Pyn.

Melia nodded.

"Yeah. I've received rather explicit orders. I am to use whatever funds from this venture are necessary to ensure it's success."

"Good, because we're going to need them. I'm hereby officially notifying you that I am using our share of this money to buy back Elkaryos' shares in this endeavor, as per prior contract specifications." Said the elf while Allya leaned back and let her girlfriend handle the business side of things.

Melia gestured vaguely.

"That had been taken into consideration. The transaction has been ready for a month, Elkaryos was just waiting for you to have enough money to notify you. Now you do."

"Good. Next, with those million and a half remaining..."

"2.5 millions."

Allya and Pyn looked to the merchant in confusion, who smiled.

"Elkaryos isn't crazy enough to make you pay 3 times the price he invested. He, after all, thinks that there is much more money to make in the long term by being on your side rather than screwing you early to get a bit of cash."

"Fair enough." Pyn inclined her head. "So, with 2.5 millions...we can budget a lot."

Which was the understatement of the millenia. They could probably order a capital ship with that kind of money. Not fully pay for it...but they could make the first down payment to start construction on a naval battlecruiser.

"Yeah." Simply said Allya, before shaking her head. "More than a lot. We won't get everything we want...but we still can get started. Alright. We need to discuss a budget. A true, actual budget." She nodded towards Anders. "The captain and his men will absorb a large part of it, for various reasons, and it'd be wise to use that as an assumption early on....But we need more than 'we have x mana, throw x at this' to go off of."

"Agreed." Said Melia, before wincing. "We'll also need to discuss what kind of taxes we want to set on other things. Right now we're functionally a tax haven, which has a lot of advantages....but it has it's issues. Notably, we might start attracting corporations and characters we don't want to be here."

She pointedly didn't look at Allya while saying that, but everyone in the council knew their baroness' opposition to slavery...and the way the few slavers that had tried to set up shop had been turned around manu militari. Anders hadn't actually had to use force....But Allya had made it quite clear through him that resistance in this matter was most unwise, both from her council and the slavers themselves. Which, while it had earned her some resentment, it had also earned her the respect of Anders, Eismi and Ellyana, as well as Stor Everfarther's loyalty. Firegecko's owner and barman was from the Hegemony after all, and the only people that hated slavery more than them was New Raleigh. He also still had some contacts that might be very important in the future. You could take the lizardman out of the assault battalion, but not the assault battalion out of the lizardman after all.

"Fair enough. We'll need to draft that as well." Allya reached out for her hot chocolate mug, and took a long sip. Everyone had their beverage of choice laid out on the table, although Eismi seemed to seldom touch hers, and Ellyana had already gone through 3 hot chocolates already. "Apart from that, anything else that needs immediate attention after this new turn of events?"

"As a matter of fact, yes there is." Said Willard, before leaning forward slightly. "I have...received a message from some of my uncle's people today. The Elkis Republic has hired a significant number of mercenary companies, and moved them to various points in their frontiers. They seem to be pulling out their frontier units...and there's only one place they're likely to be going, with our majesties' warning."

"Erakis." Grimly said Allya.

"Precisely."

Allya sighed, before looking up at the council.

"We're doing our best, but it seems that our enemies aren't intending to give us the time we need. There might be a lot of diplomatic pussyfooting going on right now, but we can't afford that. I want everything we build going forward to be made under the assumption that this city will be put under siege...and probably soon. Which reminds me, Pyn?"

"Yes?"

"I need you to take as much of the budget as you need, I don't care how much it takes, and find us someone to build that damned airship docking tower. If we manage to get it before the Republic moves...."

"They won't be able to stop us getting supplies in and out without their own air forces." Finished Anders.

"Exactly. Plus, trade is going to be the lifeblood that will keep this city alive. It must flow, no matter what. Speaking of which, we'll need to accelerate those feelers for the acquisition of a sky ship of our own. Where are we at that?"

"Elkaryos' people are working on it, I'm told. I've also started feeling out both him and some of my old friends for some artillery, but that will take a while as well. It isn't exactly easy to transport, and bar the most basic forms most governments don't let that kind of hardware be sold without some significant oversight."

"So, black market?"

Anders winced.

"That....wouldn't be a good idea. The black market could satisfy our immediate needs I suppose, and Greymane would certainly give us some contacts there." It wasn't even a question now that the moribund caravan had worked for crime lords. "But it wouldn't give us a long term, reliable supplier, and, well...we might antagonize a lot of people."

"Fair enough. Any ideas then?"

"I suggest directly engaging the Hegemony's envoy on the subject when they arrive. Despite the....current differences, the Hegemony regularly sells surplus warships and weapons to the Kingdom. With your....policies, and special situation, I'd expect them to be a lot more flexible in that regard than they would usually be."

"That is a very good point captain." An excellent one even. She would be extremely surprised if the Hegemony wouldn't be willing to part with a few surplus weapons, especially with the virtual guarantees that she would shove them down the Elkis Republican Army's collective throat when they came for her. "Well, if no one else has something to bring to the table?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"Then the meeting is adjourned. Back to work people!"