As the day dawned on the city of Kingsted it was a sea of blood. Countless mansions and warehouses had been turned into open centimetres, with countless deceased private soldiers litting all over the place without a single sign of a a.s.sailant to be found. There were even a single incident were a wife woke up to face her now headless husband in the bed right beside her. At 13 different plazas and town centers around the town bodies had been piled high, with a considerably more disturbing pile of contraband consisting of illegal drugs and banned magic tools, the most disturbing being the highly illegal slavery collars. Accompanying the piles of piles of copes and contraband was signs nailed to the floor, reading the exact same thing in the 3 most common languages of the Kingdom, being common, northern and demon tongue.TRAITORS OF THE KINGDOM GUILTY IN a.s.sOCIATION WITH THE INSURGENT ELEMENT THAT ATTACKED ITS NEW ALLY HAVE BEEN PURGED. REMAINING INSURGENTS WILL HAVE 1 WEEK TO HAND OVER ANY AND ALL CONTRABAND AND/OR SLAVES TO AVOID PUNISHMENT, IF NOT THEY WILL BE PURGED.
SIGNED: INTEGRATED COMBAT INTELLIGENCE, HAVE A NICE DAY.
GALACTIC EMPIRE, AI OPPERRATIONS.
"I can"t even.."
"Is he mocking us or is that a genuine response?"
"I think it might be genuine..."
Having gathered once more the council felt slightly deflated as what they had taught had happened, but in a way larger scale than they expected. The victims was above expectations, being in the low hundreds, with just counting the n.o.bles and higher ranked merchants.
"What about the merchants guild?"
"By them being not present we should a.s.sume the worst."
"Then let"s my daughters weger was worth it, summon Dax here immediately.. Let"s hope we can get something worthwhile out of this trade as we have pa.s.sed the threshold. Anyone is free to join me in the throne room."
The problem with the merchants guild not being present at the council meeting was that they do not represent a single nation. The merchants guild is a gathering of some 20 nations" merchants that created a union to stop individual merchants from being taken advantage of without consequences (say a single individual killing some 50 members overnight). In prior examples of merchants being exploited or taken advantage of would lead to the guild abandoning countries and trade embargoes that lead to several nations to ruin. Not even a hour after the council meeting Dax appeared at the castle in formal wear, complete with black suit and eyepatch that seemed to absorb the surrounding light with a bright red tie and insignia on the eyepatch. Terra mimicked his appearance with black shades that completely closed off her bright red eyes instead of a eyepatch.
"I am.. Somewhat more impressed."
"Yeah, this is huge.. But why am I here?"
Accompanied by Terra they both stared at the multiple spires, towers, castle walls and decorations they both saw for the first time up close.
"Training. Basic qiton combat techniques mainly applies mainly to combat it can also be used to understand diplomacy. Also Alice is visiting her parents so fill in stuff for me via coms."
"Okay.."
With reluctance Terra rolled her eyes as a guard meet them and they were let inside the castle.
"Hand over all weapons here."
After pa.s.sing countless halls and hallways the teacher and disciple pair were meet by a checkpoint with 6 people in red armor that released silent bloodl.u.s.t.
"Hand over my weapons? Now that"s a contradiction.."
"Dax just do it."
"You know what a qi-"
"Pleeeeease just do it."
"Fine."
As Terra had finished removing her pistol, 5 knifes and a bra.s.s knuckle she finally made Dax disarm.
"If I see a single scratch on my stuff I will personally tear this country apart with my bare hands."
With those words Dax removed his blazer jacket and took off pistol holster and then removed a bayonet from the jacket, then a knife from the jacket, then another knife from his boots, then a secondary pistol from his other boot. Slowly piling up weapons on the checkpoint table Dax made one of the guards sigh as Terra looked on and was looking more tired than ever. After a minute Dax had finally disarmed as the guards patted him down and he went through the checkpoint.
"All the weapons."
"..."
"Weapons are forbidden beyond this point!"
*Sigh*
Going back to the checkpoint Dax removed his eyepatch.
"Disconnect main 4 and after that port 1a."
[AUTHENTICATION REQUIRED.]
"Registration 044587356420"
[DISCONNECTING MAIN SENSOR LINK..]
With a click Dax"s artificial eye popped out and he placed it on the table before covering up his eye once more with the eyepatch, to the great surprise of the guards.
"And main 4 please."
With a following click Dax pulled out his artificial arm and placed it on the table before pulling off the sleeve as the suit seamlessly modified itself and closed up.
"Don"t touch my stuff."
"Come on leeets goooo."
"Not. A. Single. Scratch."
Leaving with a final warning, Dax and Terra were finally guided past more halls before reaching a grand reinforced double door on the scale of the one at the central church.
"Announcing Dax Alpha 4 and Terra Williams!"
With the giant doors opening the pair of visitors were greated to the main throne room of the castle.
In one word: Huge.
The marble roof that had been painstakingly hand painted in a world without flying drones sat some 10 meters above them supported by gigantic marble pillars and showed the history of the Kingdom with a enormous magical crystal chandelier in the center. The walls were covered in ma.s.sive paintings of former kings and queens and epic battles, and the smoothly polished marble floor had a bright red carpet going down the center about 10 meters before leading to a series of stairs that then lead to the trones. The trones, all 4 of them were all elaborate masterpieces that had properly been made over several generations, had the king in the central, with his daughter to the side and the other chairs being empty. At each side of the trones long tables in solid wood had been placed and they were all lined with n.o.bles and the nations elite as council members that all observed Dax. Walking to the beginning of the staircase Terra suddenly bowed down and took a knee while Dax remained standing, promoting an awkward silence.
"Dax."
"What?"
"Bow down now."
"Why?"
"Just do it."
"Nah."
"Come on!"
"Nah.."
"Dax!"
"Don"t feel like it."
"What the h.e.l.l are they talking about?"
"Why is he not bowing?"
"SILENCE!"
After a minute or so of awkward silence the council also started speaking the king finally cut in and took control.
"I welcome you, reprasenitive of the Galactic Empire. I see you bought someone along."
"I accept your welcome, Henrik Vi Gruffydd VII. 19th ruler of the central kingdom, glad to see your daughter is in good health."
"That will be the last time you mention my daughter after what you did."
(Please don"t kill us please don"t kill us please don"t kill us please don"t kill us-)
From the first sentence leaving Dex"s mouth Terra heard the king"s heartrate and blood pressure spike she silently started praying for no signature qiton violence.
"I apologize. Your daughter has a great future ahead of her after remaining conscious 2 times after exposing her to my greetings."
"What did you just say!?"
Doing exactly what the king said he souldn"t do a second after the warning, the king was understandably outraged and royal guards closed in around Dax and Terra.
"Here we go…"
Mumbling silently to herself Terra prepared for the worst as she started working on a escape plan.
"You will respect us as equals!"
"Please understand that this in no way treatents me."
"GUAR!-"
"SI-RA NA ZA RI!!"
As the king was about to do something he would come to regret, Dax shouted so loud he made everyone unable to think and gave them a second to calm down before taking a deep breath and calmed down his overwhelming bloodl.u.s.t.
"I feel like we got off on the wrong foot because of our different culture. Greetings, I am Dax of the Alpha 4 clan and leader of the 125th combined ops...o...b..tal drop troopers. I am aware that a recent upset with the merchants guild you stand to lose a large part of your gross domestic product trough loss of taxes and net export balance. I understand that I and the Empire are partly responsible for that and am prepared to compensate for the ongoing and future but temporary issues with the merchants guild and have prepared several plans to rectify that."
"Gross domestic product?"
After Dax"s "reset" and speak of improving the king"s mood by mentioning growth of the economy and unknown words.
"A monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced over a year in this case. Basically what the nation "earns" in a year, to improve that I have several suggestions-"
"Wait a second."
As Dax was about to go into full corporate mode the king had summoned multiple scipes to record it all he realized something was wrong.
"Yeah?"
"You said current and future issues with the guild."
"Ah that. A raid is currently underway at the harbor, I am in direct control. It will be short lived with minimum disturbance to the populace so don"t worry."
In the warehouse district of Kingsted leading out to the large river of Pri, business was as daily with large amounts for cargo being moved in and out of the city. Dock Workers and logistic and inventory management had the constant issue of working out what was going where, when and in what quant.i.ties and movement of goods between warehouses was constant. But there were something wrong. Since the emergency council meeting were the Galactic Empire"s intent to clear out "insurgent" elements form Kingsted more goods had been going to a single warehouse than normal. It was of course being done in a way not to alert anyone, but when you can see all and do advanced pattern recognition and identify cell"s in a criminal organization as old as the Kingdom nothing is impossible, and the countless eyes in the sky saw it. A single warehouse was gathering goods that not once left their containers, and some of the larger wooden boxes had air holes.
"Come on move it! We leave now!"
The one organizing the effort was a highly ranked merchant and member of the council, currently in the progress of leaving the nation via the river Pri. The people he bossed around were not mare dockworkers, but private guards that was put to work outside their immediate knowledge, stating the current rush to leave the Kingdom.
"No not that crate! Get this one instead, abandon the rest!"
Having loaded the last horse cart the guards gathered up around it as they set off to the harbor were a state of the art cargo s.h.i.+ps waited. Transport by sea had been the new hot thing the last 50 years as new technology had produced steam propelled s.h.i.+ps that were vastly less expensive than one powered by monster cores, and faster than normal sailing s.h.i.+ps. After hurriedly loading the 3 s.h.i.+ps they set off and hurriedly set off from the coast.
"I can"t believe we made it.. f.u.c.king monsters"
The evacuation had been started about 20 hours earlier when the merchants guilds secret slave operation had been targeted with deadly precision.
["You honestly believe you could escape?"]
"WHA!-"
The second the merchant started relaxing he suddenly heard a strange voice behind him. Turing around the last thing he saw was his private guard being slaughtered by some sort of strange golems before he himself were grabbed by one and his vision turned dark.
["Thanks for gathering all your a.s.sets in one pile that"s easily to move."]
[RAW CEREBRAL DATA EXTRACTED.]
["Let"s clean up then.. All Reapers in operational area switch to behavior pattern black, execute area purge."]
[ALL REX-DETA 165-A25S REAPERS IN AO NOW SWITCHING TO BEHAVIOR PATTERN BLACK, AREA PURGE AND RECOVERY OF VIP"S IN EFFECT.]
REX-Delta model 165-A25S Reaper.
Developed doing the Iron race containment war, the model 165 is the only 5th generation modular a.s.sault drone on the open market. Standing at a height of 2 meters the model 165 is the largest and most powerful drone platform made by the Rex drone division (If you don"t count the absurd REX-86MK:XVII-t.i.tAN) And the most modular ever made, being able to switch out every part of the platform to produce a tailor made ma.s.s production drone that fits any role. As a result almost all prior common drone platforms from Rex were abandoned and a plethora of configurations of the model 165 were developed by Rex themselves and 3rd party developers. It didn"t last long before the 125th combined ops...o...b..tal drop troops requested their own configuration of the model 165, and after a few months Rex industries made completed the model 165 a.s.sault veriant 25 special. The a.s.sault veriant 25 special that later became known as simply as the Reaper is a model made to fight in s.p.a.ce and on land, and even orbital incursion, being able to survive planetfall unaided with ablative heat s.h.i.+elding in the form of tiles mounted on the outer armor. Only a week after the adoption and use by the 125th combined ops...o...b..tal drop troops they became known as Reapers of the Galactic Empire, a nickname by Iron forces that were lucky enough to survive facing them on the battlefield.
[OPERATION BLUELIGHT COMPLETED: ALL INSURGENT ELEMENTS WIPED OUT.]