Chapter 237 - Archmage (Patreon)

Chapter 237

Red Sands Desert, Duchy of Sarth

In Flight near the City of Darthar

Alexandra smiled widely as she looked at the carnage.

She couldn't do an artillery duel with the fortresses, even with an entire squadron of Corsairs, they were simply too fragile for that, even with their range. But bombarding a destroyed and untoothed one with long range fire? Piece of cake.

And if the enemy was stupid enough to send a freaking command team -with banners of heraldry no less!-, to inspect it out in the open, well, she was more than happy to oblige them.

She saw the armored form rising back to its feet, from the circle of what looked like knights. Whoever had tackled him had far better reflexes, and idea of what they were facing, than the rest of these idiots. And apparently paid the price for that, as the healers rushed in on their immobile form.

She focused the long range binoculars, and snorted.

Well, at least she didn't have to guess at the gender of the guy getting back up thanks to that armor. Seriously, how could he walk around with that? She'd known some people back on Earth had done the exact same, but still, this was ridiculous, did he seriously expect to be able to fight in that-

All thoughts about his armor came to a screeching halt as he lifted up in the air, and a circle of burning runes appeared around him.

And another.

And another.

She hadn't seen that level of magical power with her own eyes, unless you counted Starvak, who was pretty much magic given solid form, but he didn't cast spells.

Thankfully, she had spent a lot of time with Emilia, and she knew what a fucking archmage on the warpath looked like.

And there was only one target worthy of that kind of power out there.

"ALL SHIPS! TAKE EVASIVE ACTION!" She bellowed, before reaching for the nearest strap as the helmsman obeyed immediately.

"Evasive action, aye!" Barked out one of the officer golems.

It took a second or so to relay the order through the radio. Which meant that the Krond, the raider on her left flank, had just the time to fill the space where her flagship had been before the archmage unleashed his power.

A line of pure something slashed through the air, and Alexandra watched in horror as the raider-class broke in two perfectly cut halves, tumbling towards the ground in the mesmerizing lightshow of its collapsing ward.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope NOPE.

"Helm, get us out of here! Full retreat!"

"Full retreat, aye!"

Her ship shuddered again as it altered its heading once more, and she closed her eyes. There were radio reports coming in, units reporting in from the crashed ship.

Golems she couldn't recover.

She sighed.

"And order the Krond to activate its Omega protocols. Then bomb the wreckage." She would have loved to turn the airship into a trap, but whoever the fuck was out there could probably fry every golem in that ship with a snap of their fingers, and she simply couldn't afford to let them have that close a look at one of her ships, let alone one so intact.

"Aye aye." Said the officer golem. "Retargeting weapons. Omega protocol activated. Firing…now."

Compared to the Krond's entire magazine detonating, the shells from the three surviving ships were almost superfluous. But right now, Alexandra couldn't give less of a shit about overkill.

She just needed to get the hell out of there and away from whoever the fuck that was.

*****

The duke fumed as he looked at the quickly disappearing dots. He's seen the other set of flashes, and interrupted his second spell to weave a shield around his retinue, one that would deflect even the dungeon's mightiest weapons, but it had been superfluous. From the distant boom and plume of smoke, he was guessing that they'd bombed their own fallen ship.

He felt a distant twinge of respect for the dungeon core. Golems or no, that hadn't have to have been an easy decision to make.

But it was quickly gone as he looked over his destroyed retinue. The ships were already almost below the horizon, they would be out of his sight, and out of his reach, before he could put together another attack.

Though he wasn't sure he wanted to. A reality blade spell at this range was wasteful. Very wasteful. And even he had only so much mana to spare.

Then he felt the air rush against his shield, as the flagship of what passed for his own fleet lowered itself next to him and his gleaming dome of power.

"My lord!" Called out the admiral through a set of magical speakers. "Are you alright?!?"

In lieu of a response, the duke allowed the shield to collapse, as he snapped his fingers.

The admiral threw herself back as he just appeared out of thin air in front of her, her marines drawing weapons before belatedly realizing that it was their suzerain.

"Admiral!" He shouted, as he pointed at the retreating dots. "Get me closer to those ships! Now!"

*****

Alexandra had done a lot of scary things in her life, but running from a pissed off archmage had to rank as one of the weirdest, and one of the most terrifying.

Because she was running like hell from a flotilla of ships her flagship alone could have taken single handedly, had she been able to dance her way around boarding range.

Except that squadron had a single man aboard that had cut one of her ships in half with a single spell.

Oh, and that man was swatting the shells she was throwing at his ships with her pursuit armaments with almost contemptuous ease, surrounding his entire fucking fleet in a glimmering barrier of energy.

Just who the hell had she just attacked?

Alexandra looked at the ships, still in pursuit, and quickly did the math.

The enemy's ships were actually faster than hers, that much was clear. Lower tech they may be, but these were recon vessels, designed and built from the ground up for celerity. Say what you will about Sunrise's pathetic airfleet, they were more than aware of their own limitations. Most of the time, anyway.

She couldn't escape by simply outrunning them. And if that archmage could throw a shield that size, and keep it up, he wouldn't have a single problem shining a giant light through the night sky to track her ships, so night time evasion was a no go either.

Which meant that either way, her entire squadron was dead, it was just a question of when, and how.

Fuck.

She took in a deep breath. Well, if she was going to lose the ships, might as well take the fight to the enemy, and try to do as much damage as she could.

But first, she needed to call home. So to speak.

*****

"This is suicide." Said Allya as she looked at the holographic display, and the maids nodded in agreement.

"Perhaps, but there's not really any other choice." Said the dungeon core, and Allya mentally twitched. As far as she knew, this was the first time she'd seen the Earth-born truly off balance, with her practically clinging onto her advisor, which appeared to be a welcome, if surprising, change of pace for the vampire.

Not that Emilia could look her in the eyes anymore, after Allya and Alexandra's perfectly executed ambush upon their girlfriends.

"Is there not?" Asked the baroness. "They only have one ship that's truly dangerous, the one with the archmage. If you force him to chose between two groups of ships…"

"The problem with that is the Raiders. The archmage is almost certain to pursue the Vallis, the corsair." Allya nodded. "Except that he can detach his ships to overwhelm the Raiders."

"How? I thought they outranged and out everything them."

Alexandra grimaced, but it was one of the maids, the tall one, that spoke up.

"It's because of the marines. Most of them are gone. Sunrise's ships don't need to get into a ship fight."

"They just need to move close enough." Completed Alexandra, grimly. "And I can't use my tesla point defence to take them all out, even if I overrode the safeties."

Allya frowned, then snapped her fingers.

"That's not true." Everyone looked at her. "You're right, you can't, because they can hide behind their hulls and wards, but what if they couldn't?"

"What are you saying?"

"If you concentrated all of your remaining marines, and the prisonners you took, in one of the two remaining Raiders, you could use the other as bait. Let them board, then sweep its deck with the tesla weapon of the other ship as they attack."

"That's…risky."

"Riskier than charging an archmage and hoping for the best?"

"Point taken." It would sacrifice two of her ships to save to the third, but that was better than just losing everything in a futile blaze of glory. Alexandra frowned. "The timing on this is going to be fucking impossible."

"Impossible is what you do best."

Alexandra looked at the holograms, showing the inexorably closing ships, the golem she was posessing only a distant pang of awareness as she only held onto it by the thinnest thread, to conserve her mental capacities.

"Let's hope so. Let's really hope so."

*****

Orzal Vek, formally of the Elkis Republican Army, looked at the street below.

Despite himself, he was impressed. He'd never visited the Hegemony in person, let alone Tark itself, and it amazed him how technology was embedded into their way of life, despite its relative youth here. The Hegemony had only started truly pulling ahead of the Republic two centuries ago after all, and for Alcheryos, that was the blink of an eye.

The streets were neat, most were paved, but a few had this black covering, turning them unnaturally smooth. And all had gas lit, wrought iron lamps lining them, each produced en masse from a factory, not a delicate work of art from a master blacksmith, but not a single bit less effective from that. And at least they didn't require mana crystals like the Republic's own public lighting.

And despite the abundance of horse or magically drawn carriages still, there were many cars and other more modern personal vehicles moving around.

"Target is inbound. Three minutes." Said a voice in his ear, and Orzal tensed up.

When the Order had originally 'recruited' him, they'd asked him to reassemble his team for this mission.

He'd told them to go fuck themselves. He had promised his men that it was over, and ordered them to go to ground. He simply refused to pull them back out again, especially not for what could be a suicide mission, even if it cost him his life.

Apparently, it had been a test of some kind. Happy that he stuck by his word, they'd loosened his leash by the tiniest bit, and the other Order agents had started treating him like something approaching a human being and not a disposable tool.

Not that he was under any illusions about his importance to his new employers. He was here to help make this look like a Republic attack after all.

And start a war that would reduce his homeland to rubble. Maybe even doom Amelia's revolution, though he was hopeful she would be able to turn it to her advantage, no matter what the Order said. He knew enough about their operations to realize that they weren't omniscient, and even they were being overwhelmed by the current events.

They reaped what they sowed.

He looked at the streets, the minutes passing by in tense silence.

Then-

"Target in sight! Entering the killzone in three." Said the same voice in his ear.

"Hold your fire until they're in the middle." Answered another, agent 'Voldenvail' if he remembered well.

The colonel tensed up even more, as the first vehicle roared into the street.

It was a jeep, quick and agile, a reconnaissance vehicle and probably a Gorromarian import. What came after most definitely was not, the massive steam powered armored personnel carrier rumbling down the street.

Then came the armored car. One that bore the flag of the hegemony, overlaid with a crossed key and musket.

The heraldry of the Hegemon, the supreme leader of the Hegemony.

"Open fire!" Barked out the voice in his ear, and everything descended into hell.