“We’ll have to bring her in eventually.”

  “Yes.” Ghost smiled. “Look at you, all grown up and ready to trust people, instead of the constant paranoia of keeping everyone in the dark!”

  “I learned some harsh lessons. Both ways.”

  The apparition’s eyes and tone softened.

  “I know.” She placed a hand on the dungeon core’s shoulder, squeezing it softly. “But you’re here. You made it.”

  “Yeah...” The dungeon core sighed. “Any updates on the guild situation?”

  “Glitch has started looking into Darthar’s and Erakis’ records, which made me feel pretty stupid for not thinking about it.” Alexandra tilted her head, and the apparition shrugged. “Why would they bother making illegal expeditions? Too high a risk of being discovered and tipping us off. So they probably filed the proper paperwork for proper wasteland expeditions, and launched them from the closest cities to boot.”

  “That...makes a lot of sense. And makes me feel like an idiot for not thinking of it.”

  “I know, right? Anyway. She’s been digging into it, but they use paper, and it’s going to take a bit to dig it up discreetly, not to mention scan and digest all of it. On my end, I can confirm that the weapons aren’t being stored in the wrecks. They’re being temporarily held there until they’re smuggled out, usually by attendants and trusted adventurers. The problem is that I can’t track down where they go from there as they move through the guild hall, and that place is locked too tightly, even for the stealth golems.”

  “Attendants? Is...”

  “No. Dominique seems clean. I think. It’s hard to say for sure, but they seem to be keeping her completely in the dark about this.” They had her under constant surveillance. Not to spy on her, but to protect her. Raika and the rest of Alexandra’s old party had insisted. “Probably so she doesn’t have to lie. She is on the council after all.”

  “When she does attend.” Which she was doing less and less.

  “I think she realizes relations aren’t going well and hopes that keeping a low profile will help with mending them.”

  “It would have if the guild wasn’t so dead set on killing me. All we want is for them to stay out of the damned way.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Did Raika and the others get anything useful?”

  “They’re all doing it as discreetly as possible in their own way. Generally, not much, except for Fernand. For some reason, people seem to be a lot more open with alchemists. Though in this case, it’s probably because it has to do with his business, and some don’t realize he’s an adventurer too. Potions haven’t gone up in price, but they’re always low on stock in the whole city, despite new alchemists arriving constantly and production increasing.”

  “Interesting. I’m assuming they’re buying just below the threshold at which Allya would be told there’s a shortage.” Alexandra frowned. “Which means they’re getting desperate and in a hurry. They wouldn’t need to buy up to the point people would notice if they had time.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Well, I’d love to shove a tracker in Fernand’s potions and see where they’re going, but I don’t want to put him in undue danger. Plus, let’s be real, they’re probably avoiding buying from him.” Which, in turn, might be sending clients to him who couldn’t get their large potion stacks for resupplies from other shops, hence the complaining.

  “Yeah. Anyway, with Glitch’s record delving, we might have some rough vectors or at least directions to where we can find those expeditions. Even if it’s just to confirm they’re at their normal, scheduled position or not, it beats having to send the recon crafts you’re making at random in the wasteland and hoping for the best.”

  “It wouldn’t be at random. I can come up with a search pattern. But you’re right. Plus, since we’ll know where they left, we might be able to track them.”

  “Track them?”

  “Yeah, with...I don’t know...residual heat signatures?”

  “Residual heat signatures. In the desert.”

  “You know what I mean! They might leave trash, and other stuff like that.”

  Ghost snickered.

  “Eh. Tracking via snack wrappings.”

  “Perhaps. I mean, they’re certainly not going to store all of their waste.” That was actually becoming a problem on the trade route. With everyone dumping their stuff as they went, and the ever-increasing density of trade, things were starting to get messy. Allya’s people had already designated waste dump sites, and there was actual talk of having some of the patrols, who’d run out of monsters to keep at bay, start enforcing more benign regulations. They were still technically at war, had declared the birth of the single largest Empire on Alcheryos in a millennium, and there were discussions of using military airships to track down and reduce littering in a wasteland. Man, governments were weird. “It’ll be better than a search pattern, and a good place to run some tests.”

  “Fair enough. Can’t really argue with that.”

  There was a brief commotion, and Alexandra glanced at Emilia as the vampire came towards them, dragging Glitch behind. She had a sudden flash. That...wasn’t something Emilia did. Or herself.

  That was something Arcadia did.

  “Found something already?” the dungeon core asked, trying to shake off the sense of unease that had briefly filled her.

  “I did.” Emilia gestured at some of the holograms, and then glared at her girlfriend, who blushed and brought them forward after the system failed to comply. Right, she needed to do some adjustments. And probably get Emilia some interfacing with the dungeon systems. They’d been talking about it, as the vampires wouldn’t need implants. They were more or less augmented to begin with and already jacked into the network.

  The vampire started pointing at the data.

  “When you said it was smaller than it should be, the first thing that came to mind was a simple distortion spell. It’s something that was used for airships a lot, especially for pirates. Making them appear smaller and thus further away than they were. But divination and sensors see right through it, creating a discrepancy. It’s why military crafts don’t use it. There’s no real point since anything they’d need this against would most likely be scanning in every direction anyway.”

  Alexandra nodded. That made sense. Even the Asarian Kingdom, for whom a steam engine was basically an eldritch terror, used magic-based sensors for target detection on their airships, and didn’t rely on some guy with Mark 1 eyeballs in a crow’s nest on top of the balloon. And on Alcheryos, the eyeballs might be considerably more advanced than usual sometimes.

  “I see. So, since it’s not that, then what did your dazzling intellect uncover?”

  “Well, I started wondering what could do this. You know, appearing smaller, but when you actually take measurements through divination, it looks normal? And I remembered my mom ranting about some vaults and Erisian bases. And that’s when I remembered!” She gestured at a schematic. Was that...the magazines for the Mackies Mk 2?

  Alexandra blinked, opened her mouth, then froze for a second.

  “Oh,” she finally said. “They’re using...spatial manipulation?”

  “Exactly! The Citadel is like in a spatial bag. I don’t know...why it’s like that or what benefits it would offer, but they are.”

  Alexandra looked at Ghost.

  They both could come up with a lot of them. Smaller target if you wished to hit them with direct-fire weapons, and depending on how you did it and if the other side knew, it probably would confuse the ever-loving shit out of enemy guidance systems for missiles and other smart munitions.

  Hell, it might be a part of how that station moved around. Whatever it was doing, it sure as shit wasn’t through hyperspace. So no teleportation or more conventional jumps. Though weirdly enough, Alexandra could swear it felt like the station was singing when it moved.

  It also explained why the station was divided into quadrants, seemingly made to fire in sequence. Why not shoot everything at once in a broadside? Because exiting the bubble might cause your ordnance to clump up and hit each other. Or at least interfere. And with guns that size, you really didn’t need to worry about the enemy having shields and overwhelming them with a massed volley; you’d literally hammer the bubble into the planet’s crust if it survived the hit. So it was purposely designed for it.

  “Gah! Stop doing that.”

  Alexandra blinked and smiled as she looked at Emilia.

  “Doing what?”

  “This! Having a whole silent conversation just looking at each other! It’s worse than twins!”

  “I mean...” Alexandra’s smile got wider.

  “Yes, yes. You’re copies of each other. Technically better than twins. I get it.” Alexandra could swear she heard a whispered “You’d think it was a two-in-one package in the bedroom, too,” but she decided to ignore it, though she failed to hide her blush. She didn’t even need to look at Ghost to know she had the same reaction; she could feel it through their link. “It is still infuriating.”

  “Alright, alright!” Alexandra held her hands up. “We can lay it out for you.”

  “That would be appreciated.” Emilia sniffed haughtily, and the dungeon core smiled.

  “Understood. It would help defending against attack, is the simplest and most obvious one. Because, if it’s compressed space, you’re still technically a smaller target, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m wondering how they’re doing it, though. I know it’s possible to do spatial magic within an enclosed space, even one with an opening. But I’ve never heard of it just done around something.”

  “If the Gods created magic, I highly doubt they wouldn’t know more than we do. Even before the Great Night, they probably kept a lot of tricks up their sleeves.”

  “I know...I just hope we can learn what they did before you destroy it.”

  Alexandra couldn’t help it. She melted. The vampire’s faith in her and that she would eventually be victorious was just...too much.

  She picked up her girlfriend and hugged her.

  “Awww! Don’t worry, I’ll store some bits for you. But first, we have to figure out how to blast it. And, you know, survive the retaliation.”

  Because if there was one thing she knew, it was that you didn’t make a battle fortress like that without a “go to hell” plan. Also known as “Launch everything we have and blast this general direction.” The kind that automatically launched if the core systems failed.

  Generally, that was made as a last resort retaliation. She knew Mars had one, as a deterrent. The problem was that on these plans, you didn’t really target specific installations; you just blasted anything you could reach.

  In Sol, that most likely would have thoroughly fucked a lot of the inner system infrastructure and shipping.

  Here, there was only one target. Alcheryos itself.

  And those guns could probably crack the planet’s crust.

  Wasn’t that going to be fun?

  THIRTY

  Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire

  Capital City of Rebirth

  Normally, in these summits, all the real deals got made in hallways by aides and secretaries. The kind of trusted flunkies you could nonetheless dump in a hurry if things got heated.

  Allya didn’t operate like that.

  She pushed the cups towards Malcom and Nira. If the representatives of the New Republic and the Tark Hegemony felt it was strange to have the—now—Empress of half the continent serving them drinks, they kept it to themselves.

  “So,” Allya said. “As we have covered during the meetings, I have no designs upon member nations’ territories or autonomy besides some understandable red lines.”

  “Red lines the Hegemony wholeheartedly supports,” Nira said, and Malcom nodded.

  “The New Republic as well, but that goes without saying.”

  Given that those red lines were things like “no slavery, no discrimination, and equality before the law,” that wasn’t surprising. Those were things the Kingdom would have had issues with before she blasted the slavers into oblivion and had the very privileged aristocracy kneeling before her in awe and terror.

  Technically, she needn’t have bothered, but outlining them set the stage and, more importantly, showed that her letting the Kingdom keep Sunrise wasn’t just theater. It wasn’t some gesture; it was implied to have been negotiations in exchange for concessions and not just her being magnanimous. Paradoxically, that was better than just being generous. People in positions of power usually didn’t trust charity. For them, pragmatism was the name of the game. Showing the “price” she had taken from the Kingdom in exchange for that “concession” made them think she could be negotiated with.

  “Good. So, I have brought you here today for an obvious reason: the war against the senate.” She looked at Nira. “Let me reiterate, before anything goes forward, that my position has not changed. Allow me to state it clearly and with no ambivalence: if the Hegemony annexes a single meter of Republic, and thus Imperial, territory, there will not be a Hegemony once this is over.”

  Nira had flinched when she’d effectively declared that before the assembly. Now she didn’t even blink.

  “It has been understood and processed. The Hegemony understands your position.”

  “Excellent. Then, there are a few things to settle. First and foremost, is Eternity.”

  There was a flicker of surprise in the neonite’s eyes.

  “Eternity?”

  Clearly, she hadn’t expected that. And why should she? That province was effectively being puppeteered by Eternia, the dungeon core.

  A dungeon core that was one of the most prominent interventionists...straight under Alexandra’s leadership, who, as far as most people were concerned, was either puppeteering her or so deep into bed with her, making a difference between them was academic at best.

  The latter was a bit more literal than most would probably expect, but that was another story entirely. As well as Pyn’s and Emilia’s fault.

  “Indeed. The Autonomous Province of Eternity is at something of a crossroads. They have, of course, assured the New Republic of their full support and loyalty.” They had literally invited an entire army group to camp out in their territory to threaten and pin down the senate’s army groups on the Tarkian border. You couldn’t exactly go much further than that in actions, though their commitment had been lacking in words, at least on the public side. “But they have also been negotiating about their status. Though it remains, ultimately, their and the New Republic’s decision, the Empire has, of course, been kept apprised and part of the negotiations.”

  She was generous with the level of autonomy she was giving the nations under her. Or, more accurately, Alexandra had outlined why that level of autonomy was something they absolutely needed in the short term to pull this thing together to begin with and have it survive the collapse of...well, fucking everything at this point.

  But she wasn’t “Let parts of your, and thus my, territory break away without involving me” generous.

  “Of course.”

  “I am prepared to let the Province join the Empire as a full member. So is the New Republic. However, I am given to understand that the Hegemony has a significant stake and influence within Eternity.”

  “We do.” The ambassador’s face was unreadable, but she was probably fuming. Tark had sunk a lot of money, troops, and political capital into getting Eternity autonomous, unlocking the trade routes to Gorromar and the rest of the continent beyond. The fact that they’d done this without telling them was a huge blow. Yet another one, after the Far Reach showed up with a dragon.

  That was the Hegemony’s greatest problem. They misunderstood what ‘allies” meant. They were a military dictatorship, and for them, “allied forces” was effectively subordinates you could order around.

  That made them dangerous. Because they entered those negotiations thinking they held all the cards, only to find out they just had odds and ends, while she’d scooped up all the aces. They couldn’t form a united front with the Far Reach, nor could they leverage Eternity as a bargaining chip. Which pretty much swept their entire gameplan from underneath them.

  Needless to say, having a jingoistic, expansionist military dictatorship who’d sunk all of their resources into a massive rearmament campaign be scrambling to find a new plan while on your border and on the verge of war was not a good thing.

  Fortunately, what made them so prone to misunderstanding that ally relationship made them perfectly primed for entering the Empire. Being a subordinate to the Empire, that they understood, no problem.

  “Thus, I would like to propose a...joint custody. In time, Eternity will stand on its own two feet, but it must learn nationhood, and too many things are in motion for the luxury of doing them on their own. With the assistance of the New Republic, the Hegemony and, of course, the Empire, they can reach their full potential and bloom despite the otherwise challenging climate currently befalling our world.”

  Nira met her gaze.

  “Even if the Hegemony does not join the Empire?”

  Allya nodded.

  “Why?” the ambassador asked.

  “Because when we were at our most desperate, you sent us light. You sent us weapons, artillery...” They probably guessed that Alex had gotten a lot of her weaponry from them. That wasn’t true; she had even gotten gunpowder from the Republic, but she had learned a fair bit from the Tarkian weapons she’d, ah, “liberated.” Man, that felt like a long time ago. You could have written five or six novels in what had happened since. “I do not forget my debts. Ever. We owe you that much.”

  Nira simply stared, searching her eyes, before sighing.

  “And if we join the Empire? Let us stop dancing around. You’ve extended an olive branch. You know that you’re letting us partially have Eternity, or at least influence on them, to satisfy our ambitions. What is the carrot?”

  Allya had to stop a surprised look. This was unlike the ambassador, at least the experience she had of her. So what⁠—