Chapter 204 - Hoist The Black Flag (Patreon)

Note : Made an edit, since there was some confusion about the holograms.

Chapter 204

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

In Flight

"Well." Alexandra lowered the binoculars. Well, they weren't 'truly' binoculars, more like a camera that was jacked directly into her golem's visual processors thanks to a handy wire, but they looked roughly the same. "That didn't take long at all."

"It's an army with, what? A hundred to three hundred thousand soldiers? That's a lot of supplies going around, especially in a wasteland." Crackled Sarah's voice on the radio. Everyone was gathered in the command center back home, and although they didn't have a direct video feed -yet, she was having trouble with the compression algorithms and noise for anything but the shortest range transmissions-, they had plenty of informations thanks to the holographic display. "Finding a convoy this quickly was a given."

Alexandra nodded, before realizing that the maid couldn't see her. She could order her avatar to do likewise, but most of her attention was devoted to the golem, and it was always a royal pain in the ass to shift it. One of the downsides of having something possessed outside of her influence that she could have done without. Usually she'd have had no problem maintaining two viewpoints, at least enough to switch between them relatively quickly, but her other self was taking up a lot of resources lately.

"I agree. Still, I was a bit nervous."

In fact she'd been a great deal more than that, pacing back and forth in the ship's bridge to such an extent you could actually see the marks on the floor. Yikes, metal on metal wasn't such a good idea, maybe she should make some kind of shoe sole for her golems. And not the metal mesh she'd used to sneak upon the Republic's camp, since that would get eaten up very quickly.

Sarah's chuckle over the radio told her the maid wasn't fooled for a single second by her understatement.

"Of course milady. Now, planning to attack immediately?"

"We're already moving on an interception course. I doubt they haven't sighted us yet." One of the problems she still had was her lack of 'over the horizon' sensors, so to speak, right now she could only spot something her sensors had a direct visual line to, and even that had its limits. "So let's give them a warm welcome to the Principality."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Said Emilia. "You say the escorts outnumber you."

"Four to three, yes." She would have been impressed at how heavily defended the convoy was, but this was a wasteland. Anything that didn't have some firepower behind it would never arrive at its destination. "But our ships are superior in every way. Let's not even talk about the crews or marines."

"If you say so…"

"Milady, it may also be worth considering some of the merchant vessels will be heavily armed as well. This is the wasteland after all." Interjected Ella.

"Oh, I know. But these are mainly requisitioned merchant shipping meant for normal travel, not wasteland expeditionary vessels. They, after all, ran out of ships to impress at Erakis, and all of the ships that didn't need a convoy to head back into the sands did, rather than be taken."

"Still, it may be prudent to assume at least some of the vessels will have more teeth than it seems."

Alexandra opened her mouth, then closed it. During her antipiracy cruise, a band from Saturn had attacked a seemingly innocuous European merchant vessel.

They realized only too late that it was a covert fleet tender carrying an entire battalion of special forces. Miraculously enough one of the pirate ships managed to cut and run and avoid being overrun.

They got just far enough away for the ship they'd 'boarded' to safely open fire with its weapons and blast them out of the proverbial skies.

She was fairly sure she would have spotted any heavily armed vessels in there, but she was new at this, and easy to make or not, she was no airships specialist.

"An excellent point, Ella, thank you. We'll try to steer clear of the merchant vessels while we handle the escorts, and handle the boardings with extreme caution." Alexandra raised the 'binoculars' once more. "It'll reduce our pickings, but I'd rather have a lower booty rather than a destroyed ship."

There was some chuckling at her wording on the other side, but it was put down with a few choice words from Emilia.

"Alright honey." Said the advisor. "By the way…isn't this convoy a bit too big for you?"

"Oh hell yes. We'll never take all the merchant ships before they scatter too far. But without their escorts, alone in the middle of the wasteland? They're dead."

"They might reach their people."

"They might. But there's a reason I decided to take enough time to go far beyond the army. Most of them won't, and if one of two do, then I suppose it'll be useful in striking fear in the hearts of our enemies."

"They'll know what's attacking them."

"Honey, they were going to know something is after them anyway. The goal of this is to force them to slow down to consolidate and secure their supply lines, long enough for me to build up enough…firepower-" she stopped herself just in time from saying 'low tech firepower'. This wasn't an open channel by any means, and it was encrypted to hell, but she didn't trust anyone with enough tech to not manage to crack through it. And if anyone had it, it would be the God of Fire's minions. "-to break them before they reach Rebirth. Plus, once that happens, every soldier they have guarding their supply lines won't be in the army camp when we begin harassing them."

"I guess. Just…be careful, okay?"

Alexandra chuckled.

"Don't worry, careful is my middle name!"

"Honey, we've already been over this. I know it's Océane. Alright, take care then, and good luck!"

"You don't say good luck." Said Alexandra and both maids simultaneously.

"What?"

Alexandra closed her mouth, let the maids have the moment.

"The thing you say…" Began Sarah.

"Is 'good hunting'." Finished Ella.

Alexandra could almost feel their toothy, wolfish smiles over the radio.

"Yeah. The Republic's previous army felt what it was like to be prey. Let's educate the new guys. Helm? Full speed ahead!"

The golem nodded, and the airships began picking up pace. Time to draw first blood.

*****

Outnumbering her or not, the Republic's captains were professionals, Alexandra would give them that.

The convoy escorts had disentangled themselves from their charges, and formed a screen between her and them. But they'd made sure to climb up so they would be able to quickly descend and put themselves between any second force and the convoy, in case her advance was a diversion. It wasn't quite the space 'high guard' position, where capital ships put themselves in high orbit while the tankers refueled from a gas giant, but it was close enough.

Maybe she should have packed some missiles after all. She'd been working on an excocet style missile with incendiary warheads, but it hadn't been ready on time, and she'd decided against using her current missiles, which were meant to take down strike crafts, not shoot a ship out of the skies. Had she taken some, she could have struck the supply ships before the escort would have been able to interpose themselves, as she doubted they had any form of point defence.

Then again…The Republic could still prove full of surprises.

Alexandra focused back to the vista in front of her as one of her golems emitted an alarm sound. She could be in the bridge, and in fact would be before long, preserving her golem beyond heavy armor plate, but until they engaged, she'd rather stay on the deck, watching the maneuvers unfold with her 'own' eyes, protected from snipers or mishaps by the vessel's wards.

She looked at the enemy ships, and nodded. She was getting close, and the enemy captains had clearly decided that even if this was a distraction, they simply couldn't afford the chance that it wasn't, and their ships began to lose altitude, coming level with hers and the rest of the convoy, interposing themselves.

"Stand by to bring us about, and fire full broadsides."

"Standing by to bring the ships about, and fire full broadsides, aye." Repeated the golem in a monotone, electronic voice. Loading them with a full language database hadn't been simple, and had taken a fair bit of time as well as a pile of dictionaries, but now her golems could actually put thought into words. Of a sort, at least.

That, with a significant expansion to her standardized, oral orders, and she felt like she actually had some officers backing her up, and not moving piles of metal.

Alexandra waited, the enemy ships growing ever closer.

It was a guessing game now. Which side would lose their nerve first and open fire. The first broadside was always the most devastating, and that meant wasting it could cost her dearly, technological superiority or not.

Well, 'lost their nerve'…Not exactly. It was a complex equation. In her case, her guns were longer ranged, but the farther away she engaged, the more time the convoy would have to scatter once they realized their escort didn't stand a chance. Not to mention the fact that it gave her a good shot at boarding the enemy warships and maybe even capturing one. One the other hand, doing so would guarantee some damage on her ships. Not to mention betray her provenance. Pirates wouldn't endanger themselves so when they had a chance of keeping the escorts at arm's length, before taking their pick of the convoy, unless they were desperate or the convoy was particularly rich. Only commerce raiders would risk damage, and thus costs, for this.

And as much as she liked to be aggressive, and losses were far less material for her than the enemy…she didn't know nearly enough about the Republic's airfleet. Especially as they'd started bringing in some of their more esoteric ships in. Better to play it safe, especially with ships that had not yet stood up to the real fury of combat.

"Now!" She shouted as she walked into the bridge, the heavily armored door slamming behind her, turning her eyes to the holographic display.

The golems obeyed instantly, and her ships swung aside as one, in a maneuver that would have had any admiral worth their salt seething with envy.

Her trio of vessels turned from a squadron into a single line of ships, paralleling the Republic's ships, and for a split second, nothing happened.

Then her vessels fired.

Each of her ships had thirty guns. Twelve on each broadside, four in front, two behind as chase armaments. Originally only the broadside armaments had been present, but she'd added the others following the baroness' advice. Thirty six cannons spoke in a single rolling broadside.

To her amazement, the Republic fired back before the shells had even reached them.

Bombards fired…accompanied a split second later by a stream of fireballs, faithfully tracked and tagged on the hologram and even the screens spread around the room.

They weren't as good as the ones in her command center back home, but it was impressive what one could do with a little programing and an ass load of runes in replicating this kind of stuff. The screens she'd figured out a long time ago, but getting a purely magical hologram to interface with her electronics, those she'd derived from her original golems, had been a royal pain in the ass.

Still, it worked. And it didn't betray any of the technology she'd gotten off of Seraph. Although she supposed she might be getting a bit paranoid. After all, holograms were hardly exclusive to military technology, and the control programs didn't seem to mind the ones she'd made from Seraph's stuff, but she wasn't willing to take the risk when there was a relatively good alternative available.

"Well well well. Stand by point defense!" She shouted as she walked around the bridge, circling the holographic display at the center of it.

Her shells hit first. The display updated, showing small windows with images of the cascade of explosions showering the enemy ships. Their wards held. For now.

Then their own ordnance arrived.

The enemy ships weren't of a single, uniform class. Hell, they weren't even the same size, as there seemed to be two corvettes, some kind of light gunship, and a frigate. But they seemed to be using bombards all, with the notable exception of the frigate, which had fireball launchers.

Fifty cannonballs came in. And the ship's tesla fields sprang to life.

Arcs of energy licked out, and the primitive spheres of metal flew apart, torn by the energy discharge.

Thirty cannonballs came through, some little more than vague blobs molten metal, but still they came.

And the wards shrugged them aside like so much refuse.

The fireballs took a split second more to hit. There were only ten of them, and to her amazements the tesla field intercepted two. But the eight remaining one delivered a punch to rival her own shells, and the ship shook.

"Status report!"

"Wards at eighty-six percent integrity. Reloading main guns. Next salvo in forty-eight seconds." Alexandra nodded. A minute per salvo wasn't bad, especially when working with guns that had to be optimized for space and mass efficiency rather than reload speed. But to her surprise, the golem kept going. "Enemy adjusting course. Moving in to intercept. The convoy is scattering."

"Uh. I guess our broadside must have scared them." Which was unsurprising, only the Hegemony and Gorromar were supposed to have that kind of tech, and if she had to guess, their repeated wars with the Hegemony had left the Republic's skyfleet in no doubt of who would come out on top in a proacted artillery duel. "Alright, we can't just chicken out and allow everyone to run off, caution or no. Keep current heading, brace for evasive maneuvers if they try to ram. Oh, and prepare to repel boarders."

"Aye aye. Keep current heading, prepare evasive maneuvers, deploying marines to intercept boarders."

Alexandra smiled briefly at the golem, before going back to the display. The distance between the two squadrons was falling away rather quickly. The Republic's ships were surprisingly fast, all things considered, although she doubted they could sustain that speed forever.

Seconds elapsed in what felt like forever, but Alexandra just felt…calm. And an odd sensation. One of familiarity, and even fun. It had been far too long since she'd fought a battle like this. This was no space engagement, but it was enough to get her blood pumping again.

"Guns reloaded. Firing." Said the golem.

Alexandra could easily imagine the horror and surprise on the other side, as her guns spoke again, faster than should have been possible. It was truly amazing what one could do with golems that did not fear the gun's heat, moved with literal mechanical precision, not to mention a lot of mechanized systems and ammo feeds leading directly to the ready magazines.

The shells crashed into the enemy vessels, and her eyebrows rose as the gunship's wards collapsed. A handful of shells made it through, and the ship precipitously dipped, although from damage or evasive maneuvers she honestly couldn't tell. What was clear is that there had at least been one hit, with a clear hole in the ship's side, right below where one of the bombards had been.

"Light armor. Good. The ship shouldn't survive the next broadside." There was no point in ordering guns to retarget, they simply didn't have enough of a field of fire to hit anything but the ship opposite them at any rate, unless they were tightly packed together, but only the corvettes were that way, probably because the captains were more familiar with each other and willing to risk a tighter spacing.

"Affirmative." Answered the golem. "Enemy is returning fire."

Alexandra's eyes flicked to the display…and widened as the hologram went crazy.