Chapter 28 - Embers (Patreon)

Chapter 28

Salran Mountains, Starnor Imperial Border Territories

Airah's Cave

Eloise jumped down, trembling, as Airah quickly checked the cart for any damage, before turning back into her human form.

"Enjoyed the ride?"

"I think I'm going dance in joy, faint, throw up, and I'm not sure in what order." Answered the shaking engineer, and Airah laughed.

"Do try to avoid fainting before throwing up. You could suffocate."

"Oh thank you for that."

"You're welcome." Said Airah with a big, toothy smile, before stretching. "Alright. Let's get this stuff in position."

The installation was a fairly short affair. What could have taken hours for a normal human crew was done in minutes, with Airah simply picking up each section of the gate and holding them in place while the hinges were adjusted. Then it was a simple matter of testing to see if everything worked.

Thankfully, it did, and although Stellyra suggested throwing a boulder at it to see if it was as tough as advertised, Airah decided against it. After all the gate was effectively an alarm, a glorified tripwire, just like the Galactic Empire's naval outposts during the war, made to buy her time to turn back into dragon form and take out whatever was trying to get to her, as well as keeping out the smaller wildlife. She was under no illusion that a warg could punch through it for example, if given a few minutes, just like a Conclave fleet could have annihilated any minor Imperial naval station without the humongous Archer super-fortresses to protect it.

"Alright, done. Now, time for me to bring you home."

Eloise hesitated as they walked out.

"I, uh, I'm not sure if…" She trailed off, and Airah frowned, as she looked outside the cave.

She froze as she saw the massive smoke plume.

"Change of plans." She said, as Stellyra appeared and analysis of the smoke began popping up. "You get home ASAP on your own. Warn the baroness. Because this…this is nothing good."

"Yes milady, right away!" Eloise didn't argue, she acted, and took off into the forest with the tried and true infantryman's gait, which could eat up the kilometers like nothing else.

Airah on her end, turned into her dragon form, and took off.

It could just be a forest fire…But forest fires didn't make smoke plumes. They made a freaking wall of flames and destruction. She would known she'd set several off herself.

Unfortunately, it didn't take her long to find the origin of the smoke

She looked at the burning dots. Dots that she knew were houses, barns, farms…

Klareswasser was burning.

*****

Everything was silent as they walked into the burning village. The heat and flames were no threat to her body, and furthermore, by now it already getting down to embers anyway.

Most people would only have seen devastation all around them, but Stellyra was an AI, and Airah had too much burned forever into her memory by what she had witnessed. Charred skeletons with arrowheads showed where people had been killed attempting to flee. Tracks in front of houses showed others being dragged off.

The mountain of burning corpses was hard to miss. What would have gone over most however was the blood, rapidly boiling away as the buildings burned. The people in that pile had been executed, en masse, and methodically at that. Held down, probably as they were triaged, those worth dragging over taken, the others simply eliminated.

The embers that had been a pile of clothes said that the attackers had their fun with the 'undesirables' before they were culled.

Airah's eyes were twitching, an involuntary tick from her first cycle, when she'd been a commando fighting for the European Federation in the hellpit that had been Mars' underground, and then the newly terraformed Europa, before the Federation nuked it to hell, that millenia of memory wipes had failed to get rid of.

She focused and overcame the tic, before noting the signs of fighting.

"They tried holding them outside. The village militia, I mean." Said Stellyra. "But they couldn't. So they fell back here. Fought between the houses."

"Trying to negate the enemy's number advantage." Answered Airah, bitterly. That was something she'd been accustomed to, according to her journals and history lessons. Right up until the Imperial Navy turned the tables and suddenly the Conclave were the ones trying desperate gambit after desperate gambit to stem a seemingly endless onslaught. Just like what those bastards were going to try once she found them. "Didn't work."

"Agreed. Too much of a difference in skill, training and equipment."

"Those militias were no slouches. George might have gotten captured but he could actually hold his own. They had to have been military, or close to it, to overwhelm a group on the defensive, on their own terrain, fighting for their loved ones."

One thing she'd learned, even in her current memory wipe, was that even the meekest of civilians would stand their ground like a Devourer if they were fighting for their family.

"Agreed."

They looked around a bit in silence, before Airah turned towards where the large group of tracks had been heading.

"You do realize they'll almost certainly have set up an ambush, right?" Casually said Stellyra.

"Yes. I do so like it when my enemies come by themselves to die on my sword."

There was something colder than the stars themselves and older than the Galactic Empire in her voice. The voice of someone who had killed so many, and lost so much there wasn't really anything left but duty and destruction.

"Indeed. I'll prepare a battleplan."

Stellyra's voice was similarly cold, and flat, flat only like the voice of an AI made to kill could ever be.

In the end it only took a minute for the ambush to be sprung. Clearly the slavers had decided that intercepting anyone attempting to follow them before they made it into the woods and the direction they were going in became clear -with as many prisonners as they seemed to have, any complex maneuvers to try and change heading to confuse pursuers would be hell- was the optimal solution.

The group of bandits stepped out of the bushes, weapons at the ready. The first one, probably their leader, opened her mouth. Given how he was staring at Airah's chest, it was a forlorn conclusion what she was going to say. It seemed slavers didn't discriminate, as long as you were willing to serve for them they'd take anyone, no matter who or what they were into.

The bandit inhaled…And barely had the time to scream as Airah leapt forward.

The scream ended in a thunderclap as the dragon's fist met the bandit's face…and her head exploded like an overripe melon, hit with the power of a cannonball.

The bandits recoiled as blood and bits of brain and bone showered upon them. They lost a second trying to regain their footing.

A second they didn't have.

The first two were dead before they'd even realized Airah was after them. The last three had the time to realize how screwed they were before the dragon tossed the corpses of their comrades at them.

They went down in a heap, cursing, and Airah simply walked to them…and stomped.

The last bandit held his hands up, desperately pleading for mercy.

He was still begging when Airah's boot stove his skull in and reduced his head to a greasy stain on the ground.

"Airah? Is that you?" Called out a voice from deeper into the woods, and Airah's head locked onto its source like a point defence turret on a missile.

A militawoman stepped out of the wood, and Airah realized with a start that it was Emma. Apparently the hunter had decided to enroll after being rescued.

"It's me." The dragon withdrew her boot from the bandit's skull. "What the fuck happened here?"

"I…don't really know. I came back from patrol, and just found these assholes overlooking the village." The huntress looked at the burning husks, her face filled with horror. "Did…"

"They took prisonners. But they killed many." Airah twitched as Airah tagged the only structure in the village that wasn't on fire. Probably because it couldn't be. It was some kind of stone building. A temple, maybe? "Movement." Airah made an abrupt gesture. "Follow me, but stay back. I need space to fight."

It was more polite than saying that the hunter would be completely useless at best, and collateral damage at worst.

Airah walked back into the village, Stellyra still analyzing everything they came across, but focusing on the stone building. It was remarkably sturdy, but not a fortress.

She didn't bother hiding, she simply walked up to the entrance, noting the signs of a fight. Someone had barricaded the damned place, and held off what looked like repeated, determined assaults.

She stared into the gloomy interior of the building, Airah tagging five or so potential targets, trying to stay hidden behind various pieces of furniture, possibly attempting to draw her in for an ambush, as well as twice that number of dead bodies, some in what passed for a uniform for the militia.

"I am Airah Starfire. You have about thirty seconds to identify yourselves before I rip my way through the walls and make you eat your own barricade."

That got a reaction.

A handful of militiamen, all of them wounded in some way or another, stepped out from behind overturned furniture, and looked at her like…well, like how Alytra's defenders had reacted when she had taken command, in the battle that had ended in her 'death'. An intense mix of awe and palpable relief.

"Airah!" Called out another voice inside, and the dragon simply leapttover the barricade, leaving Emma to scramble far less graciously behind her. It only took the dragon a second to find George, laying against one of the walls, out of view of the door, right new to a trapdoor.

The dragon knelt by the militiaman's side as he held his flank, clearly wounded.

"I'm sorry Airah, we couldn't….I couldn't stop them."

Airah laid a hand on his shoulder, and shook her head as she looked at the trapdoor. There was noise coming from it…voices.

It didn't take a genius to realize what had happened. This was some sort of reinforced storehouse. When they were overrun, or about to be, the militia pulled back with as many people as they could here, and herded them down into the cellar, while they barricaded the place. Honestly, given that it was the only place that couldn't simply be set on fire to smoke them out, it was a very smart play.

It also meant that the slavers were afraid of retaliation, and had run off instead of finishing the job. They were trying to get as much distance in before the response from Kaisersgrenze arrived.

Unfortunately for them, it was going to arrive a lot earlier than in their worst nightmares.

"You saved those you could. You did your duty. Now it's time to do mine."

"Don't…don't count me out just yet." Said George as he tried to get back up.

Airah forestalled him by increasing the pressure on his shoulder, pushing him back down.

"No. I'm not. But I don't need you as a warrior." She bared her teeth as he opened his mouth to protest, old military instincts rising back up to the surface, as she automatically slotted into the role of a superior officer. "Believe me when I tell you that I'll have enough firepower to crush them on my own. And even if I didn't, the baroness will bring plenty. What I need to know is where they went. I'm no tracker, and you, Emma, and the rest of your men know these woods, I don't. Find them for me. Give me a direction so I can crush them. Be my eyes, so I can be the hammer. Can you do that for me?"

She could do that on her own…but she wasn't lying when she said she wasn't a tracker, and getting someone started on it would save her some time.

"Yes." He nodded, slowly at first, then faster and faster. "Yes, we can do that. Can't we boys? Let's find those bastards' trail so lady Starfire here can get their heads on fucking pikes!"

His men, including Emma, let out a warcry. It wasn't mighty, it wasn't fearless, but it was a warcry nonetheless. The militia was battered and bloodied, but not broken yet.

"Good. Then I'll go as fast as I can to get help. And then…then I'll be going hunting."