Chapter 217 - Bring Your Daughter To Work Day (Patreon)

Note : Chapter 221 has been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 217

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

In Flight

"Report." Said Alexandra, as the golem stepped back from the console it had been plugged into.

"Readings confirmed by all ships. Hostile convoy, heading due North, azimut three hundred and ten. Reading eight vessels."

"Only eight? How many escorts?"

"Affirmative. Tentative estimates is five escort vessels. Three frigates, two corvettes."

Alexandra whistled softly.

That was a lot of firepower for three ships.

"And the escortees?"

"Two medium sized freighters, roughly cruiser displacement. One super-heavy freighter, capital ship displacement."

"Damn." A capital ship sized freighter? That explained the escorts. And if they had a ship this large, it was definitely armed. No one built something this big in the wasteland without putting guns on it. And that was speaking from her, admittedly tenuous, experience hunting pirates in Sol's asteroid belt. "Very well. Realy the information to CQ, tell her to prep for boarding the large freighter. She'll probably want to head the attack personally."

Attacking a ship that big was one hell of a baptism by fire, but she should do fine. Push came to shove, Alexandra could just pound the ship into wreckage. It was probably armed, but not stuffed to the gills with firepower, not if they wanted to have any useful carrying capacity.

Besides, were it a Q-ship, there wouldn't be any escorts. As the Dusk Blade had demonstrated, capital ships could take care of their own, even across the worst the Red Sands had to offer.

Well, at least now that they'd blasted the Hammer of Eternity's little army into scrap. And as long as the sand krakens remained happily snoozing away the eons under the sands.

"It shall be done."

"Thank you." The golem saluted, and left, stepping out of the bridge.

Alexandra looked around the room. The place had undergone significant upgrades, most of it derived from hard earned experience.

The first of which was that every golem, including the one she was possessing, had a seat bolted down to the floor so securely that the ship's deck would fail before it did, and all of these seats had plenty of handholds and integrated crash harnesses. This should avoid a repeat of last battle's mayhem, even though she didn't plan on getting boarded again. Or rammed, for that matter.

The worst part about this upgrade was, she should have known better. She'd served on ships where it was still mandatory to strap in during combat, before advanced inertial compensators -and high acceleration drives- made it redundant. Not because the compensators couldn't fail, but because if they did, the ship's acceleration would pretty much kill you instantly regardless, so why waste the mass on crash harnesses? And as long as the compensators worked, nothing would shake the people inside of the ship, at least not badly, any inertia above a certain threshold just bled away by the wonders of terran technology. Well, it was a lot more complicated than that of course, but it was the gist of it.

The rest of the upgrades to the bridge were relatively minor. New, better screens and holographic projectors, to make the information clearer, direct plug in interfaces for the golems, which made them all look a bit funny, with wires dangling from their wrists, as well as upgraded consoles. Which would seem odd since she'd just made them obsolete, but she was planning on handing over some of those ships to a living crew, and honestly she just wanted to be able to use them herself if there was a problem. Being outside of her dungeon's influence for so long, where there was no chance of her getting the ship back into it in any kind of hurry made her feel naked. Amazing how thoroughly she'd come to trust and rely on her dungeon powers. Had she not been used to being this 'helpless' before, she'd probably be halfway to panicking. She was starting to understand why dungeon cores seldom built armies to fight outside the depths of their domain, and why it had taken so much abuse for the UDC to rise up.

That, and maybe a touch of the God of Fire's control programs? Hmmm, she'd have to talk to the apparition about that.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Alexandra didn't even blink as a golem entered the bridge.

"CQ reports that the marines are ready."

"Excellent. Let's have a look then."

Alexandra stepped out onto the deck…and smiled as she saw her daughter.

She was in her newly made naval armored uniform, and she looked both dashing and utterly terrifying. It was obviously armor, but there was still some elements of style to it, with an officer's cap, a commander's rank tabs, not to mention a fair bit of the dungeon's iconography. It was a variation on her (well, technically Alexandra's) original armor, but this time Alexandra's hadn't left it to mana to sort out.

She couldn't use her high tech for it. Unfortunately. But she'd gone all out otherwise. It was enchanted, head to toe, covered in runes and made out of a thin mythril plate, with some added layers for kinetic energy dispersal. It wasn't, quite, the monomolecular armor and ballistic gel that had made Earth's body armor invulnerable to firearms in the twenty-second century, but it was damned close. With the armor and her 'natural' resilience alone, CQ could tank machinegun rounds. With the enchantments, and her boss powers?

She could get hit with a tank shell and walk away from it. Well, limp, most likely, but point was anything short of an artillery barrage wasn't going to take her out. Shit, she could take a direct hit from a Republic cannonball, fall of the ship and crash into the desert below, and still be okay-ish. Though, admittedly, that would be thanks to the featherfall enchantments in her equipment, but still.

The armor was also set to teleport away for recovery if necessary, but Alexandra wasn't exactly keen on stripping her daughter defenceless -much less leaving her in her undersuit-, so she hadn't gone too hard on it, and would only trigger the recall protocol if she was absolutely certain CQ was down for the count.

The troops arrayed behind her were a sight to behold as well. Ranks upon ranks of marines, armed to the teeth with automatic shotguns, submachine guns and other implements of war. They even carried grenades this time.

Of course the effect was a bit ruined by the bright pink stickers they wore squarely on their forehead.

Because of course they did.

Alexandra shook her head at her daughter's antics.

"Looking fine kid. Now let's take the fight to them! Are you ready?"

"Yes mom!" She saluted, and all of the golems followed suit with almost perfect synchronicity. "Theev Company, Rebirth Marine Corps, reporting for duty, admiral!"

Alexandra smiled, and returned the salute.

"Make us proud commander."

There wasn't really need for all this ceremony -hell, she'd explicitly programmed most of her golems on the ships to use no titles-, but her daughter's enthusiasm was infectious. Besides, she was almost certain Seraph had shown her some of the entertainment series in her database, and there had to be some stuff themed after Earth in there, because CQ's uniform was far too reminiscent of the EFSN's star commandos' dress uniform.

But she could accommodate some shenanigans. After all, how bad could this get?

*****

The escorts were easy meat. She formed her ships into two lines. The three second generation raiders in front, the three more vulnerably originals behind. She had no other ships, as the captured vessels were still being retrofitted as the fleet had left. By the time they arrived, the flimsier raiders should be escorting the prizes back, and the Q-ships would take their role.

The enemy wasn't stupid, they immediately realized the ships in the back were more vulnerable. But shooting them meant exposing their shots to the new raiders' point defence the whole way, and that simply outweighed any benefit the lesser armor might have given them.

So they'd pretty quickly retargeted their fire.

As expected, the new armor and casemates had shrugged off the attacks. Mostly. Only one of the frigates had packed magical ammunition for its cannons this time, and the fact that it appeared to be of the same class of the Aegis, the one she'd captured, was probably no coincidence. But the other two frigates compensated by having more fully magical weaponry, notably some kind of energy ballista, that hurled bolts of…she wasn't exactly sure what the hell those were. They hit like a truck though.

But eventually, her firepower advantage began to tell, and the enemy escorts were either swatted out of the sky, or they struck their colors and surrendered. Which had initially surprised her, but she wasn't about to shoot surrendering enemies.

"Alright." She said, looking up from the bridge tactical display, meeting CQ's eyes. "We got the escorts, and the Drinax as well as the Harrier will take care of those that surrendered. Let's board the merchant ships and wrap this up."

"Yes mom. Shouldn't we have let the frigate board us though? And tried to take it over?"

Alexandra shrugged. The frigate like the Aegis had used its boarding thrusters just like its sister ship. Unfortunately, this time Alexandra had six ships…and all of them had shifted to focus their fire on it.

The frigate had been obliterated.

"Honestly? Not really worth it. Especially not if it meant having to send one of the new ships back home for repairs. We already have one of those types of frigates, we don't really need more right now."

"Oki. Well, I'll take command of the boarding party."

"Be careful."

"I won't be, it's your middle name, remember?"

Alexandra giggled, before laughing outright.

"You got me there. Now go, shoo, shoo!"

CQ stuck out her tongue at her, and Alexandra smiled, shaking her head as the boss left the bridge.

"Alright, let's do this right." She said to her golems. "Get ready to match velocity with the freighter. Be careful, they might try to ram into us."

The golems nodded, and Alexandra watched as it unfolded.

And the more it went off without a hitch, the more anxious and tense she became.

As they approached, the enemy unloaded and stowed what few cannons they had. Something wasn't right. The fact that they were surrendering made sense, so had the lightly armed ships last battle, but something about the ship kept bugging her.

The ships matched velocities, and lines flew across.

"We're secure. I'm going to cross onto the other ship." Said CQ over the radio, probably by using the handeld of one of the backpack models from a golem.

"Roger that. Be careful. Something doesn't feel right."

"Yes mom."

"I'm serious."

There was a pause.

"I'll send the marines in, and cross after the first platoon."

"Thank you."

The radio clicked as the boss hanged up, and Alexandra stared anxiously at the screens, some of them depicting the ship.

She saw the marines cross in a single leap, their guns aimed at the crew all the way. Crewmembers that were keeping far away from any weapon, their hands in the air.

Something still bugged her. The ship…something…

CQ crossed over, and began talking to the ship's captain.

Alexandra shifted to look at one of the screens with a better angle…and her eyes came over the feed from one of the other ships. And it clicked.

The hatches. She'd barely noticed them before, after making sure they weren't gunports. But they were everywhere. At every level. And not ones meant for cargo handling, nor to let light in.

They were there to let air in. And there was only one type of cargo sent to the army that would need to breathe.

The ship wasn't cargo freighter. It was a fucking troop transport!

She moved so fast her eyes filled with alerts about motor overload, as she smacked the button on the console for emergency all channels radio transmission.

"CQ IT'S A TRAP! GET BA-"

She never got to finish her sentence, as the deck hatches leading into the bowels of the ship exploded outwards, and Republic soldiers poured out of them.

Soldiers that wielded no weapons…except for the satchel charges strapped all over their bodies.

Alexandra saw CQ leap away, and time seemed to slow down as she felt her daughter concentrate for a teleport-

The deck of the enemy ship vanished in a wall of fire as a suicide bomber triggered their payload, and all the others went up in a sympathetic detonation, alongside the ammo that she now realized hadn't been unloaded onto the deck so much as carefully deployed.

Alchemical gunpowder and enchanted cannonballs went off, and the explosion doubled in size as the spells added to the chaos.

And Alexandra's link with her daughter went dead.