Chapter 336

  Qualen Woods, Archduchy of Rebirth

  Darthar-Asaria Trade Route

  Alexandra sighed as she looked at the map and strategic projection of the retreat, before focusing back on preparing her breakfast.

  They were going to start running out of ground to give, eventually. Or rather, run out of vegetation and terrain.

  Right now the only thing saving them was that Sunrise's army was too huge to be able to move as quickly as it could, and that it wasn't able to separate into smaller forces for a quicker march or even flanking maneuvers, without inviting defeat in detail.

  But when they entered the Ytakan scrublands that would start to lessen, and vanish altogether when approaching the border of the wasteland. Which meant that their only choice would be to veer west rather than south, towards Sarth, leaving Darthar wide open.

  Though, 'wide open' was a relative term. With her branch office there...one thing she was certain of, it was that Sunrise would not take the city.

  They probably knew it too, and would only blockade the city as best they could or simply leave it up to their UDC 'allies', while they pursued the army into Sarth.

  The problem was that it would cut their supply lines, especially for their ammo and golem reinforcements. They technically could use the expeditionary traders, but the UDC fleet would be in the perfect position to generate an intercept.

  If they got to that point, it would be do or die in a single massive battle, and she wanted to avoid that at all costs. First, because she'd rather have some room to maneuver, but also because she neither could nor wanted to annihilated Sunrise's entire army. The murder of over a million slaves...she wouldn't be able to resurrect any significant portion of that. Worst come to worst, better to kill them bit by bit so she could bring back as many as possible.

  And if it bought some time for Rook to do whatever the hell he was planning or perhaps even give the other side the opportunity to do a change in leadership and surrender, well that was just an added bonus.

  Plus, annihilating a large force was hard as hell. They'd probably break and regroup at least once. Just like the air cavalry she'd fought.

  "Alex!" Yelled out Ghost as she entered the command center.

  Alexandra sighed, looking up from the croissant she'd been preparing to eat. Despite having no biological need to do so, she'd found herself some epicurean tendencies, and it was one of the pleasures she could partake in without taking too much time.

  "You really need to stop doing that." Said the dungeon core, before taking a bite of her pastry. At least she could have that much." What's up?"

  "I found what detected our blackbirds!"

  Alexandra set down her pastry.

  "Show me."

  The apparition gestured, and the command center's hologram switched to showing the giant pile of data that was, at it's base, the take from a blackbird's sensors.

  "I'm going to be honest, I expected an image." Said Alexandra, as she chuckled.

  "I wish it was that easy." Ghost started manipulating the data, and Alexandra followed her changes, with some interest. There was no need to explain anything, they thought too closely to need any explanation. Besides which, they had the same methodology for this.

  And a pattern started to emerge.

  "Wow. Is that...holy shit, that's stealth, isn't it?"

  Ghost nodded.

  "It occurred to me that, despite not expecting a high tech solution, we might as well run programs for it."

  "So they have Old World tech?"

  Ghost shook her head.

  "No. They have...I don't know what the hell they have, but if this doesn't come out as what samples we have of Old World tech, or anything we know of technological stealth. It's more of an...imitation."

  The dungeon core leaned back into her chair.

  "Replicating the tech with magic." It wasn't a question. They'd seen many such examples.

  "That's my guess, but it's just that, a guess."

  "We could leave them there, show them what we want to show them, but that's too much of a risk, especially against unknown recon capabilities. I'd love to turn them to our advantage, but I don't think we'll be able to, not without unveiling too much of our own abilities in the process. And we can't afford that right now, not when we still haven't even finished our industrial setup, let alone setting the stage for our comeback."

  "So, what do we do?" Asked Ghost, and Alexandra grinned.

  "We do it Federation style. 'Coup de poing' operation. Hit the stealth recon hard, hit them fast, and gather up whatever remains."

  Ghost returned her grin.

  "I can get behind that." Her grin vanished. "A lot of good people died because of those bastards."

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  "Indeed. Let's give them a taste of their own fucking medicine then."

  *****

  "Alright. I'm relieving you, get some chow." Said the rogue as he tapped his fellow's shoulder.

  The young woman smiled, and hopped out of her hiding spot, scurrying off towards the main camp, as he sighed.

  Some days it felt like he was the only true professional here. Most of his fellows had been scooped up from villages and other areas, and qualified more as forest rangers than rogues really, able to hide from both monsters and the duchy's patrols trying to catch them poaching.

  He sat down in the small, camouflaged space that served as one of the lookout posts for their camp, and gazed at the night sky.

  In the distance, he could faintly see the light of the loyalists' fires reflected into the skies. And the occasional flash of a patrolling drone.

  The dungeon core wasn't letting up a single second, and he had begrudging respect for that kind of paranoia. She wasn't about to let one pull one over her...at least not easily.

  Her bleeding heart, taking all the civilians in, would be her undoing however.

  As it had been many of the loyalists', how many 'escaped slaves' had been Sunrise operatives, greeted into strongholds with open arms, allowed to 'build their lives' in the positions that allowed them to light their targets from the inside out like a glorified tinderbox?

  He had his doubts about his cause, but he'd sworn an oath, and that meant something. His household had served the Olyrins, dukes and duchesses of Sunrise, for over a thousand years, since before the Wars of Shattering, and Gods willing, would serve them a thousand more.

  Even as he thought his eyes kept scanning. Right to left, always, going against the pattern his eyes were instinctively trying to do, forcing his brain to focus on oddities rather than overwrite them...and he froze.

  There. Movement. It was coming from directly south. The dungeon's army was to the east, and the duchess' troops north.

  So from neither force...unless someone was trying to be sneaky and hit them were they weren't expecting it, without risking the detection and time of going entirely around.

  He grabbed his whistle, and whirled around as he heard the softest of noises.

  He found himself face to face with a knight of some kind, her piercing crimson eyes fixed on him, her invisibility spell collapsing as he stabbed at her, instinctively going for the gaps in the armor.

  His dagger punched through flesh, and his eyes went wide as he saw not blood, but motes of light escape from the wound.

  "That's a shame. I was so close too. I need to practice more." Said the...thing, conversationally, and he tried to reach out for another dagger and bring his whistle to his lips.

  Only to realize that his muscles weren't responding...and the creature was holding some kind of tube. A tube he was worldly enough to recognize as a kind of autoinjector. In the adrenaline rush, he hadn't even noticed her using it on him.

  He fell to the ground, twitching, his vision swimming as the creature stepped over his body.

  "It's okay." She said. "It should be over soon. And hey! I won't soul seal you. Mom won't be happy about you, but if you answer her questions, you'll be okay, alright?" The thing looked up, withdrawing his dagger from her flesh and playing with it as the wound sealed. "Okay, Kara's here, Time to go! See you later!"

  She vanished, and a vast winged shadow flew across his vision, as things made out of metal flowed out of the woods around him, moving impossibly silently for what had to be heavy infantry, their armor simply refusing to clang into the cacophony he expected. His brain was trying to tell him about something. Something about metal creatures...creatures whose armor was fused into them rather than worn...

  Then the screaming started. First in alarm, then in shock and terror as a great roar filled the air.

  There was a sound, a sound he'd heard once, when he had visited the slave pits of Lorenz. The sound of a dozen people being set alight and left to burn alive.

  His vision began to fade, as the screams ended as suddenly as they had begun, and blessed oblivion took him.

  *****

  "Jessamine." Said the rogue as he slipped into the tent, and the person trying very hard to not look like one of Sunrise's professional killers gestured him in.

  "Hello old friend. What brings you here?"

  "Daud and Corvo are dead. The shinies have overrun the nest."

  The older woman froze.

  She had no idea who had found the code names for this operation, except that it came from some obscure book written by an extradimensional, something related to their homeworld. But Daud and Corvo were her two fellows in charge of the 'nest', their base camp out in the forest.

  "Shit." She whispered. "What happened?"

  "No clue. Dungeon boss vanished, then came back with bodies. If they ain't soul sealed..."

  "They're about to be interrogated." She closed her eyes. "Alright, fuck. We need to start. Now."

  "Now? We're not-"

  "We're not ready and we'll be less ready hanging by a noose." 'Not ready' was a considerably euphemism, as the camp was supposed to provide the metaphorical floor to their anvil, all to prepare the way for the duchess' hammer. "Send the signal to her Grace. We're out of time." She took a deep breath. "Let's hope what we've been able to set up was...good enough."

  Her subordinate's gaze told her everything she needed to know about his opinion on the subject. He nodded, and left.

  He would obey. Her other people however...

  The problem with rogues and operatives, was that they always had the option and skills to slip away. She just hoped enough of her people didn't.

  *****

  "So, they were definitely up to something." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the holograms on the bridge, a mix of images taken from the camp and sensor analysis from the take of various drones and blackbirds.

  "The only thing we can tell right now is that they had activity between their camp and both of the armies." Said Ghost. "Not much to go off of."

  "Plenty enough. They brought something from their people to ours. Assassins?"

  "The rogues should be able to do that themselves. No, it had to be something they hadn't been issued with when they left, a capability no one had thought to give them, or they wouldn't have bothered."

  "True, then-"

  Alarms rang.

  "Alert, multiple detonations detected!" Said Subtlety through the bridge's audio system as the holographic projector dissolved into static, and updated with the tactical map.

  "...They brought saboteurs." Said Alexandra as she gazed at the map. "And explosives. They must have hit the ammunition depots. Tried to neutralize our armored units maybe?"

  Alexandra's eyes went wide as the display updated with red icons, spreading like the pox.

  "No, they're...attacking the civvies?" Said Ghost. "Why would they..."

  They exchanged a look.

  "Oh fuck." They said simultaneously.

  They didn't need to say it. They had the same conclusion. The civilians were the slowest part of the army and the one and only section they would refuse to leave behind.

  The bombs were there to plunge them into chaos, create a stampede of panicked civilians scattering in every direction, preventing the army from maneuvering.

  "CQ!" Yelled out the dungeon core, and the boss burst in through the door.

  "Mom? What-"

  "Get your troops, riot control, now!" Said Alexandra as she stabbed her finger at the hologram. "I want those civvies moved back, I don't care how many skulls you have to crack! Everyone else, man your stations and get our army into battle formation for one hell of a fighting retreat! We're about to have company!"

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