Chapter 205 - To The Last Man (Patreon)

Note : Chapter 209 has been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 205

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

In Flight

"ALERT! Magical anomalies!" Called out the golem, as the cannonballs hit the tesla field.

Clearly, the Republic had taken her first broadside as a sign that it was time to play cash or go home.

And play cash they had. Every. Single. Cannonball from the frigate was covered in enchantments

Some were obliterated by the tesla field, their enchantments sputtering and discharging their mana in a rather impressive display. But others weren't. And they spat out incandescent death, vaporized by their own payload as they turned into magical versions of a bomb pumped laser warhead, peppering her ship with power beams.

"Holy crap! Why didn't I think of that?" She asked herself in amazement, before kicking herself. Right, magic, her blindspot still. Damn it! "Status?"

"Wards at thirty nine percent." The ship shook once again as the fireballs hit. "Eleven percent. Next salvo in thirty six seconds."

"Damn." Said Alexandra, softly. One quick look at the display told her the other ships were doing much better, but her flagship was dueling a ship almost twice her tonnage.

Seconds felt like minutes as the timer ticked down to the next broadside.

And then-

"Guns reloaded. Firing."

The shells flew. The wards of the corvettes flew apart, while the frigate's flickered, on the verge of breaking.

And by luck or excellent aim, a shell punched through the flank of one of the corvettes, burrowed into the insides…and detonated right alongside the main powder magazine.

"YES!" Yelled out Alexandra in triumph as the corvette disintegrated in a grisly fireball, its consort close enough that the shockwave hit it head on, causing it to lose control, and fall out of formation.

By some ungodly miracle, the gunship was still flying, its skipper jinxing it all over the sky in a surprisingly successful effort to avert destruction. But it had still gotten hit, and as she watched, one of its propellers gave up, and the ship began listing, badly.

There must have been some sort of communication going on between the ships, as the gunship trying to fight for balance, before giving up and retreating behind the frigate, evidently on the orders of a superior.

"Alright, the Harrier is clear. Bring it up and engage that frigate!"

Following her orders, dutifully relayed by the ship's radio, the last ship of her line gained altitude, putting itself above and slightly behind her flagship, angling to engage the frigate, while the second vessel, the Drinax, continued dueling the remaining corvette.

"Enemy is returning-" The golem didn't get to finish its sentence, as the wards failed from the frigate's broadside, this time with a sprinkling of lightning bolt spouting cannonballs alongside the damnably effective power beam ones, and the ship screamed in protest as electric arcs and beams of energy rent apart its side. The golem lost its footing, and hit its head on the holographic display, crushing its voice box and turning its speech into screeching static.

Then the fireballs reached the ship, and Alexandra made a note to install seats with crash harnesses on the bridge, as she picked herself back up, having been thrown to the ground by the impact.

"Status report!" She barked out, and a golem stepped out from one of the consoles dotting the bridge, replacing the damaged one.

"Wards have failed. Main armor belt is holding. Guns eight and eleven out of action. Guns desynchronized, estimated firing in forty seconds."

"Fire as they reload, pound those bastards!"

"Aye aye, guns set to fire at will."

Once again the seconds went by.

And finally, at last, the cannons spoke.

The frigate's wards flew apart like a shattered pane of glass. And over a dozen heavy shells found their way onto the ship.

It was carnage. Fireball launchers and bombards both flew apart…and their ordonance detonated. Lightning arced haphazardly, killing crewmen and gunners alike, while a power beam swept the poop deck, neatly decapitating the helmsman and half of his -or hers, it was too far, and too chaotic, to tell- assistants.

The corvette fared even worse, as it seemed to lose all propulsion, before its propellers sputtered to life again…becoming the last straw on the overabused hull, which split apart, the ship vomiting men and equipment as both halves tumbled down, crashing onto the sands below.

"Alright, finish them off!" Said Alexandra, but just as she finished the sentence, the display updated.

"New magical anomaly detected!" Called out the golem, and Alexandra watched in astonishment as the frigate seemingly just…glided over to her. Then the image updated, from a datafeed sent by the Harrier. There were fucking rocket engines on the other side of the frigate! Or rather…a magical version of them, no doubt single use, propelling the ship into boarding range.

It only took her a split second to realize that her ship couldn't dodge it. So she did the only thing she could.

"Brace for impact!" She called out, and the golems gripped whatever was nearest.

And both hulls met in a cataclysmic clang of armor crashing against armor.

Alexandra wasn't thrown off of her feet, she was outright catapulted across the room, tumbling around until a golem reached out and grabbed her, one hand clinging onto its console for dear life.

"Thanks." She said as the shuddering stopped, and she climbed back to her feet. Looked like programming in that behavior hadn't been a waste of time after all.

What she hadn't programmed in however, was the golem nodding in acknowledgements, which left her baffled, before she turned back to the matter at hand.

She looked at the display, which was now filled with images, showing the ships. The frigate had loaded its guns with some kind of harpoon weapon, spearing her ship at the last second and holding both crafts together. As she watched, boarding hooks flew, biting into the ship's rail, and Republican marines came aboard like a tidal wave, waving crude pistols, blunderbusses and cutlasses.

They hacked apart her gunners in an instant…and in doing so, cleared her marines' field of fire.

Blunderbusses and single shot pistols were met with rifle and machinegun fire, with heavy weapon teams sweeping the deck from one hand to the other with fifty caliber bullets, while the riflemen picked off priority targets, namely the few marines that had boarded with something looking disturbingly like satchel charges.

The Republic's marines weren't pushed off, they were slaughtered on the spot, torn apart by a hail of lead dense enough to walk on.

The machineguns ceased firing, and her assault marines leapt into action.

Golems boiled out of every hatch and door leading to the deck the ship hard, and charged onto the other ship with shotguns and submachine guns.

There they met stiff resistance. However outmatched, there were no cowards among the Republic's soldiers that day, and crewmen, gunners and marines met her troops with boarding pikes and swivel mounted small cannons, loaded with canister shots, turning them into giant shotguns.

To her amazement, her marines were thrown back. Most of the Republic's soldiers perished in the seconds of unspeakable carnage, but they pushed her marines back.

Then a mighty shadow fell upon both ships…and the Republic's soldiers had just enough time to look up, before the flare of jetpacks and the muzzle flashes of the Harrier's marines filled the sky.

Courageous or no, the Republic broke. With jetpack marines dropping in everywhere on the ships, and her own swarming from the flagship, there was simply no way to put a coherent battleplan.

The Republic's crew and marines died standing. But they died nonetheless. The last to fall were a knot of marines, veterans by the look of them, fighting a desperate holding action around their captain. The officer was holding his side, clearly already hit, defiantly reloading and firing his fine pistol, probably an import, single handed, their wards somehow holding against the onslaught.

Then one of the machinegun teams moved forward, and a stream of heavy bullets shattered the wards and reduced them to shreds.

Alexandra took a deep breath, before realizing that her host body physically wasn't capable of doing so, nor would it have any need for it even if it did like her avatar, and began issuing orders.

"Get our marines to sweep the ship, now! Engineering is our priority, the ship has to have a power source somewhere, and if it's sabotaged we'll both crash! Take prisoners if they surrender, kill anyone who resists! Then get the Harrier and the Drinax to move out and begin rounding up the merchant transports. Go, go go!"

Her golems didn't read her orders back as they leapt into action, the radio operator almost shouting in the equipment as she sagged against the console.

"Damn. That'll teach me to underestimate my enemies." She said to herself, before clearing her throat as one of the golems looked at her oddly. She couldn't be sure, but it seemed to have been from genuine confusion, rather than simply recognizing her voice and trying to interpret unfamiliar orders. "Nothing. Return to your duties."

"Aye aye."

Alexandra gazed at the holographic display. The transports had scattered well, but some of them had drifted into clusters, although whether out of panic, lack of training into such maneuvers or fear of the wasteland and what would happen to a lone vessel she couldn't tell. Her two other ships began to pursue the largest clusters, and she winced.

"Wait! Order the ships to proceed with cautions. If they attack too many at a time, they might get swarmed."

"Aye aye." Responded one of the golems, and Alexandra sagged against the holographic projector.

This was going to be one hell of an after action report. And she could already picture Ella's "I told you so, but I won't be improper enough to say it out loud" face.

Well, at least she'd gotten an enemy warship. That was something. Even if her other two ships failed to bring back anything, which she doubted, three enemy warships destroyed and one captured was a more than respectable haul.

Wait. She checked the display for the gunship, and laughed.

Scratch that, two destroyed, one captured, and one having managed to disengage. It wouldn't make it far, not in that state, but she had to admire that captain's resourcefulness, using the destruction of the other vessels to slip away, maybe even on the squadron commander's orders.

It wasn't worth pursuing, not compared to the other ships. She'd leave it be.

Besides, that ship's crew had earned at least the chance to make it out.

*****

Alexandra sighed as she sat down in her chair in the command center.

"Well, that went better than I expected." Said Emilia, unceremoniously dropping on her girlfriend's lap, and eliciting a slight 'oof' from the Earth-born. The vampire was far from small, as she'd noted in their first meeting, and although Alexandra wasn't nearly insane enough to say it, she was far from weightless either.

Her girlfriend had seemingly dismissed everyone from the command center, which Alexandra was a bit grateful for. Clearly, she wanted to spare her a debriefing so soon after coming home.

"How so?"

"Honestly, I thought you would lose a ship or something. The production was…well, rushed."

"Oh, is my advisor finally getting some instincts for industry and prototyping?"

"Well, I had some ample training watching you."

"Fair enough." Alexandra sighed. "And I have to echo the sentiment. I expected worse as well, even if only unconsciously."

"Odd, you seemed very optimistic."

"You know what they say: hope for the best…"

"And plan for the worst. So, what's the final take?"

"We got the frigate. It's barely functional and won't be of much use to anyone until it's had an extensive stay in a shipyard, but it's flying and it can steer. Sort of. I'm taking it home with a prize crew, gonna strip it of anything interesting, and then offer it to the baroness."

"That's good." Emilia shifted, resting her head on Alexandra's chest. "And the merchant ships?"

"Captured three, shot down one. Ella was right, some of them were armed, and one had to be some kind of Q-ship. The Harrier took it out, but got mauled so badly in the process it had to pull back rather than pressing on to capture the other ships. Which left the Drinax. The ships contained mostly mundane supplies, but one of them was some kind of mail ships. As in personal mail. Care packages from relatives, that kind of stuff, including some personal equipment making its way to some of the officers."

"That's very good."

"Yep." Alexandra tilted her head. "But why are you debriefing me? I'm just going to have to repeat myself once the maids come back."

"Oh they're not." Emilia grinned widely as Alexandra looked at her. "They'll be back tomorrow. But I knew you wouldn't be able to keep your mind off of it until you'd at least talked a bit about it. Now you'll be able to focus on other stuff?"

"Other stuff?"

Emilia rolled her eyes, and straddled her girlfriend's lap, before moving in such a way to allow Alexandra to look straight down her neckline, and see that she was definitely wearing lingerie.

"What do you think? Come on, back to our bedroom. You've been laser focused on all this for three days, and I want my quality time. And you better believe I'll…punish you for being such a bad girl. Now hop hop!"

"Y-Yes honey!"

"Good girl."