Dark Fate, Chapter 98 (Patreon)

Chapter 98 – Surprise

Normally, the process of arranging a royal visit to a foreign country would be full of all kinds of negotiations and arrangements that could take months. Security concerns, travel routes, itineraries, and so on. Not to mention making sure that the guards who come with a head of state play nicely with the country they’re visiting’s forces. Really, a lot of hard work, by a lot of people, goes into making royal visits happen.

Fortunately, I didn’t give a shit about any of that nonsense. I was not going to be making any kind of official visit. In fact, people weren’t going to know I was there until after I left. And I certainly wasn’t going to be cooperating with the local government. Hell, I wasn’t even filing a flight plan with them before violating their airspace.

“So, what’s the plan, Master?”

I looked up from the shuttle controls to see my pets gathered around. Talia, Hibari, and Rachel were there, of course, equipped with their typical arms and armor, but Zoe and Ezraekiel had also joined me for this hunt, both armed and armored with gear that they had managed to win from the dungeon beneath my Atlanta residence. That made for a slightly over-sized party, but that was fine. We weren’t going to be playing fair, after all.

“Well, we’re on approach for the camp that our new friend discovered.”

Once I got the idea for this little trip, I made a point of looking for anyone who might have the resources to find me a legitimate target. That search led me to CAIN, which stood for Cloud-based Artificial Intelligence Network. CAIN was the brainchild of researchers in Israel, hoping to make a heuristic learning program based entirely in the cloud, and they’d had limited success.

Then the System happened, and changed CAIN from a glorified search program with heuristic algorithms to sentient code. Technically, he (and CAIN definitely identified as male) was a Digital Sentience, according to the System, and while he could live on the cloud, that was like saying humans could live on bread and water. While true, it wasn’t healthy, or enjoyable.

So, when I heard about him, I offered him a chance to join up, with the promise of a server room that would make him the most powerful computer in the solar system. Actually, the server room ended up being eight superdreadnought computer cores networked together with quantum links. I didn’t understand half the science involved, and it wasn’t cheap, but CAIN was in love the moment he heard the specs. Ever since then, he’d set about becoming a master hacker, exploring everywhere that his digital claws could get into.

“CAIN, can you tell us about the camp?”

“Yes, Boss. This camp went live just a week before the Apocalypse. It was temporarily evacuated, possibly due to monster spawns, but, since then, it has returned to use. Intelligence reports I’ve managed to crack suggest that the terrorist organizations using it are calling it the ‘Iahab Allah’ camp. They appear to be using it to increase their System-based skills somehow.

“Current estimates have between eighty to one hundred and fifty fighters in the camp, making it one of the larger ones in the region. Satellite imagery has been unreliable since about three months after the Apocalypse. Apparently, the terrorists found some way to ward against overhead sensors. Even infrared at night shows a simple haze. Intelligence agencies don’t know how they’re doing it.”

“Well, there are a few ways that I can think of, off the top of my head, starting with the same kind of wards and protections that we have on our Atlanta properties. Not something as all-encompassing as the Ceres wards, though, since they still get the blur, instead of just empty desert. Probably went for the much cheaper option.”

“Either way, satellite reports have been inconclusive, so the population is an estimate based on reports from nearby settlements. But there’s some confusion in the reports, since they are not bringing in any food, water, or fuel to support the camp, just giving trainees the equivalent of ‘shore leave’ in the nearby settlements to blow off steam. The locals are getting restless, since they had supplemented their income with the supplies going to the camp, which is probably why the reports have been getting out like they have.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. If you have the funds, you can use the System to provide those things. Or, you can use magic to do the same thing. Either way, this rift between the people at the camp and the locals can only be considered a good thing. Do we have any information on local monster spawns?”

“That’s where things get strange. We have reports of avian monsters from the locals, and satellite images show signs of monster inhabitation in the desert, but no one who has gone into the deep desert on the ground has returned. There are rumors of monsters in the desert, but no one knows what they might be.”

“But the camp isn’t in the deep desert, so we should be fine.” Looking back at my console, I said, “We’re descending into Libyan airspace as we speak, under full stealth. The target camp is near Tazirbu. Estimated time of arrival is in six minutes. By the time we land, it will be just after midnight, local time.

“The plan is to sweep through the camp, killing everyone as quickly and silently as possible. If we have to go loud, then just kill everyone. There are no innocents, or any noncombatants at this camp. If it moves, and isn’t one of us, it dies. Any questions?”

Zoe raised a hand, in her human form. “Do I have to keep hidden? Or can I go all out?”

“Oh, go all out, my dear. Lamia form and all. If you’re hungry, feel free to grab a snack or two. Just make sure that they don’t have any explosives or the like first, because I’ve heard they can give you indigestion.”

That got a laugh from everyone. As that died down, Hibari asked, “What do you want us to do, after the occupants are all killed? Do we just leave the camp?”

“Once the occupants are dead, we take whatever intel we can, and destroy everything else. If there’s something that we can’t take with the shuttle’s weapons? Well, I have Renegade 1 and two fighters from Rogue Squadron standing by, under stealth. They’ll glass the desert if we can’t destroy everything ourselves.”

That brought a low whistle from Ezraekiel. “That’s definitely going to grab attention, Master. Are you sure that you want to go so far? I can’t imagine that the different governments will be too happy about that.”

I chuckled. “I could care less what the Libyan government thinks. As for the other world governments, we’ll just release the plans that the terrorists were making to the press, and pass ourselves off as the good guys. And tie it all into our PR stuff as we try and get more immigration from Earth. Whatever hit we take will be balanced by the fact that we were stopping terrorist attacks that could have killed many more times that number.”

With no further questions, I dropped us down low, well outside the camp. While we did have stealth systems on, there was a… ripple at the edges of the effect, where the light-bending property if the cloak was struggling with the rapid change in perspective. If we got between an observer and the moon, then there was always an outside chance we could be spotted, and have an alarm raised. The chances of that were about like the odds of winning the lottery, but why take chances if we didn’t have to?

Coming in at fifty feet in the air (high enough that we didn’t kick up sand with our passage, and low enough that observers would have a hard time spotting us against the night sky), we all prepared for action in our own way. Everyone knew their job. Zoe and Ezraekiel would be key for this, since their supernatural senses would ensure that no one could escape them, even if they tried to play dead, or run off into the desert. And the rest of us—

You   have entered the Iahab Allah dungeon.

On seeing that notification, I quickly backed the shuttle off, and landed it just outside the dungeon’s influence. “Well, shit. Looks like we found out why the terrorists ran away from here for a while. Their little training camp became a dungeon. And a dungeon would be able to shield itself from outside observation, too.”

“That must be why they returned, as well. The dungeon would allow their fighters to grow in strength. If they used items like capture balls, which they could have the dungeon produce, then they might even be able to take dungeon monsters out, and use them in their attacks. Monsters showing up in the middle of ‘safe’ cities would cause chaos.”

“Exactly, CAIN. And even if they didn’t use capture balls, they could still farm the dungeon for XP and resources, which will help finance their damn religious wars.” I shook my head, and said, “And that means blasting the site with a Renegade could be dangerous, depending on what kind of monsters it has. If it didn’t destroy the dungeon completely, then it would cause a Broken Dungeon, that constantly spawned creatures, that could then roam around.”

“Still,” Hibari interjected, “a Broken Dungeon would be preferable to letting these types go around endangering innocent people, right?”

“Yes,” I nodded, “that would be better, especially depending on what kind of weapons they’re finding in this pit. We can easily explain it away like that. Hopefully the monsters aren’t something that will be more of a plague than the jihadis, like undead that are capable of ‘converting’ the living. That would win us no favors, I promise you.”

Rachel frowned. “We can’t just leave the shuttle here, though. If they are in a dungeon, they could sneak out and we wouldn’t be able to tell before they took our ride, and all the weapons on it.”

“You’re right.” That was a definite concern, and one I was taking seriously. “I’m calling in our backup. They’ll all stay stealthed, for now, but CAIN, I’d like you to take over flying the shuttle by remote, and stick with the Renegade, while the Rogues orbit the area, looking for any escape attempts. There can be no survivors of this camp. I don’t want the idea of using dungeons as terrorist bases to catch on elsewhere in the world.”

“Understood, Boss.”

“Master, I have a thought.”

“Yes, Talia?”

“Well, since we’re already planning on destroying the dungeon, do we really need to go and take on everyone in the camp? We could just bomb the place, and be done with it, right?”

I smiled at her, and said, “Tactically, you’re not far wrong. We would have to, at the very least, get inside the dungeon far enough to determine what kind of creatures the dungeon uses, and finding any intelligence that the terrorists left lying around would be great, too, since it could lead to future targets when I need to let off steam.

“Of course,” I continued, “blowing it up without ever going inside invalidates one of the main reasons why we’re here. Namely, my need to work off some frustration on a bunch of assholes who can make me look good for wiping them off the face of the Earth. We’d need to find a whole new crop of assholes, if we did that!”

We chuckled, and then I said, “But, I don’t think we’ll need to go in past the first floor of the dungeon. That’ll tell us everything we need to know. As long as the dungeon monsters aren’t anything too terrible, then we can safely pull back, glass the site, and call it a win.”

We stepped off the shuttle, and turned to face the hazy blur that denoted the edge of the dungeon’s influence. “CAIN, take it up. We’ll call when we’re ready for pickup. Everyone else? Let’s have some fun.”