Chapter 238 - Assassination (Patreon)

Chapter 238

Lavalands of Last Point, Tark Hegemony

City of Tark

"Saratoga." Said Aria Esteris, Hegemon of the Tark Hegemony, cutting short her girlfriend's tirade. "I'm not going to attack the Republic."

"But-"

"High Commander, as much as I appreciate your input on strategic matters, the decision on whether or not to pursue a war is mine, and mine alone. Understood?"

Her chief of armed forces and lover fell into silence, and Aria sighed internally. She couldn't see the other women's expression through the communication crystal, but she could tell it had probably slipped into the 'military neutral' any officer who had dressed down a subordinate knew well.

"Yes ma'am. I understand. I apologize for my behavior."

"Thank you, High Commander." Said Aria, softly.

She was probably going to be sleeping on the metaphorical couch for a few days, but some things had needed to be straightened out. She hated the Republic, but…

She abhorred slavers. And the New Republic was not only promising to end the practice throughout their nation once they had taken it back, but they were also Rebirth's allies, and the baroness was fighting tooth and nails against Sunrise.

And the least she could was spare her people an unnecessary war, especially if taking territory would only lead them into another conflict with the New Republic. Why couldn't anyone else see that?

Well, no, she wasn't being entirely fair. They could see it, but most of her advisors thought that the only way the Republic would be acceptable was if it was a pile of ashes, not under the rule of their most charismatic general in the past three centuries. They thought the time to strike was now, before they faced a rejuvenated foe.

But they wouldn't have to comfort the grieving widows of fallen soldiers, killed for their aspirations. She would.

Aria sighed.

"Now, if you're truly worried about the border incidents, you may reinforce our forts and deploy more airships. Mintz' squadron has just resupplied from their previous sortie, and I'm sure he'll be more than happy to stop running security for the capital-"

Aria felt the armored car lurch as the fireball slammed into its shield.

Less than a tenth of a second later, the rest of the spells arrived, and she had a split second to hear Saratoga's panicked shout as the shield failed and the vehicle exploded around her.

Then there was only oblivion.

*****

Orzal whistled softly as he took in the ambush.

It was a perfectly executed attack. Nigh simultaneous spell bombardment in every direction, completely overwhelming even the Old World shield generator protecting the Hegemon's car, with similar, if slightly less overwhelming attacks slamming into the escorts.

But the Hegemon's Own, the personal guard of the Hegemony's ruler, were made of stern, stern stuff, and while the jeeps opening and closing the convoy were obliterated, only one of the APCs was destroyed. The other crashed into a building…and vomited its cargo of troops, as its turret pivoted and opened fire.

They also did not give a single shit about collateral damage, as Old World high yield shells exploded amongst the houses, sweeping for the Order's kill team, and Orzal dove for cover.

"Voldenvail, sir, our soul sealing artifacts did not register the Hegemon. She still lives."

Orzal swore, softly. He'd told them they should have mined the damned road as well, to make sure of a kill, and screw making it look like a rushed, panicked attack.

"Understood. Team one, team three, advance and engage."

Stern stuff or no, the Hegemon's Own couldn't stand against twice their own number in well trained, fanatical high rank mages.

The soldiers, which had immediately rushed to cover their ruler, died, even their vehicle being ripped apart under blades of force and arcs of energy. But they slowed down the advancing mages by a few seconds.

And a few seconds was all they needed.

Orzal blinked as he felt a shadow fall across his body, and he looked up.

His eyes went wide in horror as the airship descended upon them.

That was impossible. He'd accounted for the exact time the ships could respond. How did they get here so qui-

Then he realized that the ship wasn't slowing down. In fact, it just kept accelerating, it's hull completely devoid of the lit runes that would have countered gravity, and its balloon floating off into the distance.

It wasn't descending. It was crashing.

And Orzal learned that not just the Hegemon's Own were ready to lay down their lives for their leader.

*****

"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Shouted Rear admiral Spear Mintz.

One of his weaknesses as a flag officers was that he simply couldn't keep his hands clean. Standing back and watching the rest of his squadron do their work was beyond him.

Which was why his ship had been doing an impromptu, and utterly unscheduled -to the great anger of traffic control- patrol, when they'd seen the explosions.

The second he'd spotted just whose car had been attacked, he'd leapt into action.

It was a testament to his crew's trust in his leadership and him personally that they'd accepted his orders without question.

He closed his eyes, and braced himself.

A split second later, his ship crashed into the ground like a homesick meteor.

*****

Orzal coughed as he ran out of the obliterated street. These people were fucking insane!

The airship had just obliterated an entire city block just to drop itself between the Order and their Hegemon, and create enough chaos to buy time for other units to respond. Crap, instead of hunkering down, the surviving crew and marines were sallying out to join up with the shattered remnants of the Hegemon's Own!

But the Order's troops were no less fanatical. Just less numerous, and unlike the Hegemony's troops, there were only so many fatalities they could afford.

And from what he heard on the communications in his ears, their line of command was shattered, and it was threatening to turn into a free for all.

He could run. Disappear into the city. Vanished without a trace. Leave them all to rot.

…Just like he could have left all of his men to die.

Orzal sighed, and activated his communicator.

Time to take command.

*****

Alexandra flopped onto her bed, sighing like her very soul was trying to escape her body.

That battle…had been a fucking disaster.

The plan was good. Or at least, as good as it could have been, under the circumstances.

But it had still gone to hell.

She had split up her ships, after transferring her command golem and the prisoners to the Lenat, and sent the Vallis to distract the enemy archmage.

It had worked. The archmage had homed in on it like a missile.

And then rest of the fleet had rushed down her raiders.

Which was when the plan went sideways. Because the enemy had simply refused a fight to the finish. The lighter and faster ships had simply buzzed around both ships, constantly harassing them and wearing them down with a thousand cuts, using their mages to take as much pressure off the wards as possible with their own shields and other invocations, something she simply couldn't do. All the while tempting her to break formation so they could swarm her ships, but individually, making the plan to sweep the other ship's deck pointless.

So she'd boarded them. The Ogleby, her sacrificial raider, might have had zero marines remaining, but it was amazing what one could do with crew golems and shells if you were desperate. Then as the enemy had started evading, she'd overridden the safeties on the tesla point defence for the Lenat, and used it to rush down the more dangerous of the enemy vessels. With them desperately maneuvering to avoid what they saw as another suicide attack, they'd only managed to keep themselves into tesla range for longer, and she'd managed to fry two corvettes beyond any hope of combat effectiveness before they'd caught on.

By then the ships had stopped their attack runs, and were in the process of shooting the Ogleby out of the sky.

So she'd decided to oblige them, and dropped the balloon. She landed the damned ship, and began using it as a makeshift fort, where taking it out would literally mean pounding it into scrap.

It had surprised them, and they'd no doubt started wondering what the hell she was doing, as they simply had to go around it to render that ineffective.

And while they'd all been focusing on that, they'd missed the Vallis retargeting from its, thus far, one sided duel with the enemy flagship.

Turns out, two hundred milimeter shells were more than enough to destroy the Kingdom's pathetic excuse for a patrol ship in a single shot. One salvo had taken out two more vessels, and prompted the entire squadron to scatter like frightened birds.

Of course, as soon as she'd stopped attacking the flagship, the archmage onboard had gone on the offensive -had he been unable to unleash his full offensive might with his shield up? Or just saving resources? She'd have to ask Emilia-, and finished off the already critically damaged Vallis with a single spell, one more of those…blade things, like the one that had destroyed the Krond.

But by that time the damage was already done. The enemy ships had been demoralized, hit with surprise after surprise, and hopelessly disorganized, not to mention separated from their flagship and thus leaving their admiral unable to restore order. The Lenat had run for it (limped, really), and made it out while they tried to pepper the crashed Ogleby instead of leaving the stationary wreck to rot in the wasteland, or at least letting their archmage deal with it. With their nerves broken by the Vallis' effortless annihilation of their own, they'd clearly decided to let someone else try first to rush the ship that had almost obliterated two ships with just its point defence.

They might try to pursue her ship further, but she found it unlikely. They probably hadn't even realized she'd taken prisoners, and might not care even if they did.

Not to mention, she might have spooked the archmage. Even hopelessly outmatched, she'd still taken down half her squadron's tonnage before being forced to concede. And said archmage had probably realized that by sending his fleet away he had withdrawn the protection of his magic from them, and allowed the Vallis to inflict as much carnage as it had.

So by the time they'd finished reorganizing and pondering this mess, she'd be long gone.

With nothing to show for it but a catastrophically damaged corvette and a pile of bodies in the hold. Yay.

Her first Pyrrhic victory on Alcheryos. At least in naval combat. You could definitely make some arguments for the time she blew up her own dungeon, but arguably she had achieved all of her objectives there.

Alexandra blinked, as she felt the bed shift, and looked as Emilia sat down next to her.

"Are you okay honey?"

The Earth-born sighed.

"So so. I don't take to defeat well."

"It wasn't a defeat, just a costly victory."

"There is such a concept as a victory so costly, defeat is a preferably alternative."

"I know, Pyhric victory, right?"

"Yeah."

Emilia gazed at her girlfriend for a second, before patting her lap.

Before long Alexandra had her head firmly on it, looking up at the vampire. She had dressed for playtime, but clearly that was no longer on her mind. Not that Alexandra was complaining, her girlfriend's corset left very little, if anything, to the imagination.

"You can't always win you know."

"I know. Sometimes I'll lose, and sometimes I'll lose badly. It's just that…"

"Everything had gone so well with the Republic, you expected more of the same?"

Alexandra nodded.

"Yeah. Despite everything I didn't even lose a single ship. I got most of them damaged, but I didn't lose any. And, well, I turned the Republic's army against their nation, and I thought…well, that Sunrise would be easier, since they have even less technology."

"Not to put down your own achievement, but the Republic's army was already set against their nation. And they were effectively locked into a power struggle and quasi civil war for years. That's combined with an intensely incompetent and corrupt leadership. Sunrise has none of those, well, okay, maybe the corruption, but their people aren't incompetent, they're just scumbags."

"Right." Alexandra sighed. "That's a good point. We live and we learn, right?"

"Yep. As long as you come back swinging."

"Oh trust me, we're definitely going to do that." Alexandra straightened up, stretching. "So…how about we go into the Jaccuzi then? I think I've spent enough time self wallowing for today." She smiled as she saw her girlfriend hesitate, as she no doubt remembered the ambush. "I'll be gentle~."

"Oh shush. Do your worst."

"Your funeral vampy!"