336: Protocols and Plans (Patreon)

Mordecai's guided tour through the Trionean encampment was somewhat enlightening, though in many ways, that was from confirming a few things.

The layout, materials, organization, and so on were pretty much what one would expect of a long-term, but ultimately temporary, military encampment of this size. There were some details that were specific to culture and to account for the terrain and weather, but nothing that stood out as particularly unusual. He did notice that there were a few areas that he was carefully guided around, but he did not attempt to push his way to them. Every military had its secrets, and he was acting as even more of a spy than they might expect him to be — he had activated his earring as soon as he approached the camp, so the cores were receiving every sound within hearing range, along with his running subvocal commentary.

The lack of surprises was, well, disappointing really. One of the cultural specifics was reflected in that fewer than one in ten of the military personnel were women. In contrast, from what he'd read and from what he had seen with the small contingent stationed at Azeria Nexus, Kuiccihan had between a third and a half of its forces comprised of women.

There were some trends that seemed innate between the genders, but people seem to frequently get confused about what those trends mean. Yes, women were less inclined toward the regimentation of the military, but this meant that there were still many women who were quite happy with it. This also did not mean that women were less aggressive overall; there was a large difference between enjoying military regimentation and being aggressive or enjoying combat.

Trionea's culture then led to another predictable thing. Outside of the official encampment was another, mostly unofficial one, occupied mostly by women. Mordecai had no doubt there were at least a few devotees of Sakiya and Diasthian there. Sakiya's priests were often skilled in dealing with various needs that women in these professions had, and Diasthian had made herself into a goddess of protection when she had risen to divinity, long before Mordecai had first awakened in this world. He had always liked her followers, and had even more appreciation for her now that three of her einherjar were helping to guard his territory.

Admittedly, comparing this large encampment to the small force in Azeria might be a touch unfair, but it matched what he had learned from studying. Kuiccihan's forces needed a lot less in the way of unofficial support like this, given that it was easier to find a willing partner to match one's preferences without leaving camp. Also, as Kuiccihan had a smaller army overall, and was substantially wealthier on a per-person basis, its military had notably better food for the soldiers. This lowered the demand on some of the secondary services of the unofficial camps; there was more than one sort of comfort to be found there.

There was one stand-out feature of course. The defenses around the entrance to Deidre's nexus. The mana ward was the outermost layer for two reasons. The first was simply that if it was a larger ring, the full shape of the ward could be closer to a sphere, and they were trying to encompass an entire nexus. It was much smaller than Mordecai had been when he'd been sealed, and this ward was being actively maintained, so it was not nearly as elaborate.

The second was that inside of the ward is where the physical defenses were. This meant that the physical defenses had to be overcome for any nexus inhabitants to get at the ward. Though this also meant crossing only at designated locations to man the defenses inside.

Three rings of physical walls had been built around the nexus entrance, which looked deceptively like the entrance to an underground storage facility. The outside wall was the tallest and leaned inward as part of supporting a latticework of walkways and defensive positions over the entrance.

The point of this was to create a killing zone, and matched his general advice on how to contain potential dungeon breaks. There were archers, crossbowmen, gunmen, spellcasters, and ballistae along all three walls, and the lattice work had several vertical layers. The bottom layer held vats containing everything from boiling oil to high potency acid and other corrosives. This layer was visited only for maintenance, and the vats could be readily triggered from above.

The layers above that had everything the walls did, other than ballistae. Those were too heavy and bulky to suspend on a lattice in addition to the vats, and would be a little awkward for aiming directly down anyway.

Based on the state of the ground, those defenses had been used at least once, but not in a while.

Mordecai needed to make sure those defenses were taken care of before the operation began, which he had accounted for in his planning. But first, the meeting.

The pavilion tent was filled with various officers and minor nobles, which were often the same thing, but Mordecai had used his best judgment during his escorted tour to invite a selection of senior sergeants who seemed competent. He had no doubt that this irritated some portion of the officers, but officers of that type were why Mordecai wanted these sergeants involved. The ones who were irritated were the ones most likely to mess things up, the ones who were not irritated were the ones most likely to be talking to senior sergeants later anyway.

His low opinion of most of the noble officers in the Trionean army was further reinforced by the number of senior officers who had young people accompanying them who were most assuredly not their spouses. In a less conservative culture, it might not be so hypocritical, depending upon the marital arrangements. But here, it told him how little they cared for either their spouses or the norms of their society.

Mordecai was glad to see that Baron Emmanuel Demidov did not suffer from this flaw. The woman by his side was his wife, and she was watching with a carefully neutral expression. Well, he was holding her son hostage at the moment; he supposed that was the best he could expect.

That meeting was brief before Mordecai was introduced to the group at large.

"Thank you for meeting with me," he began. "I wish to start by ensuring that we are all working with the same plan by going over the outline of what I previously sent you, and after that, I am willing to answer any relevant questions." He waited for nods of acknowledgment before continuing.

"The assault begins shortly after dawn tomorrow, to give us as much time as possible until the next reset. My party goes in first to make reassurances, which will prevent Dimitri Igorek from being able to force the nexus into a full break. After that, the first of the troops follow us in and begin the assault. They will be following the training that I gave in Azeria, and will be occupying the whole of the nexus, room by room and zone by zone. As their groups will be holding whichever room they clear, the least experienced troops will be first, and the strongest troops will be in the final groups. This continues until I say otherwise; I will be able to tell when we are within two zones of the core, and my party will take care of those two zones without support from your troops. Assuming nothing deviates significantly from our plans, this is also when the troops in the first zone can initiate an orderly evacuation process. We should be done with those last two zones before even half your troops have left the nexus. Once we have taken care of Dimitri, we will be spending an unknown period of time ensuring that the nexus has as much residual influence removed as possible."

The first question asked was, "If you can clear the last two zones yourselves, why do you need our troops for the rest?"

Mordecai smiled politely and said, "To ensure that we are relatively well-rested when we reach the bottom floors, and to ensure that we are not overwhelmed with waves of enemies coming at our backs. Which was part of what Azeria did when we were invaded." He added that last sentence to drive his point home.

More questions followed, and several discussions were had over the next few hours, but none of it changed the basic plan, even if the process made some people feel better by letting them think that they had more input in the final outcome than they actually did.

During this, his attention was strangely drawn toward a particular young woman accompanying a general. She was a platinum blonde of dubious age, but something about her just seemed a touch off. Mordecai split his attention to focus his hearing on her location, that part of his mind filtering out sound that did not involve her location.

When he had fine-tuned his hearing enough to be able to make out what she was saying to the general, he immediately caught the slightest hitch in her voice as she changed what she was saying, and she glanced his way with a bare flicker of irritation before her attention was seemingly all on the general again.

Hmm.

At a guess, she had rather smoothly modified what she'd been about to say to a technical truth, because the moment that he was paying attention to what she was saying, she couldn't lie. That meant that she was skilled and experienced enough to catch and react to a faerie noble's aura that swiftly, and given her glance at him, was very well aware that he was the source of such, while not being afraid of him, nor afraid of letting him know she was irritated with him.

Which also meant that she was not worried that he was going to do something that would blow her cover as an escort for the general.

Amused, Mordecai withdrew his attention from her to make her job easier. He had no doubt that he'd be hearing from her one way or another before long. This had to be a preexisting identity for her, as Mordecai couldn't imagine how she'd have arrived swiftly enough to establish a new one that would get her this close to a general.

After the meeting was over, Baron Demidov approached and formally introduced his wife, Vivienne, to Mordecai. After the pleasantries, he said, "Vivienne has a favor to ask, and I hope you will be able to grant her request."

"Lord Mordecai," she said softly, "your operation will take some time to complete, and I sincerely hope it will succeed completely. In that hope, I would like to travel to Azeria now with an airship, so that I might be able to take my son home immediately. Also, in the event that anything goes wrong, I wish to be at least able to spend some time with him, and give him my personal promise to visit as frequently as I can."

That was a reasonable request, and one that he didn't mind granting freely. But it also opened up a convenient opportunity. "Baroness," Mordecai said, "I will gladly grant your request if, in turn, you grant a similar one for me. Assuming all goes well, I would like it if our guest was able to return home on that same airship, along with her escort of course." Getting Deidre home faster seemed like a good idea.

"Your guest? Ah, I see." She smiled briefly, though it looked strained. "Yes, that is reasonable, and I think I would like to meet her. Which brings me to another point." Vivienne turned to her husband, and her tone hardened a bit. "My love, we had a particular discussion shortly after your return from Azeria. I would like you to reiterate the oath you swore to me at the end of that conversation."

Emmanuel looked pained briefly, but recovered with a slight smile that was both understanding and a little sad. "Vivienne, I swear that all that I revealed to you that night about my involvement with the Puritasi and the limitations of my knowledge of and my interactions with the nexus is true, and is effectively complete, ignoring endless minutiae."

The baroness immediately relaxed and leaned forward to rest her body against her husband's briefly. "Thank you, and I am sorry for needing to do that. Just, with everything, I had to be absolutely sure." She kissed Emmanuel's cheek briefly before straightening back up into more formal body language, but not quite as stiff as before. "Thank you as well, Lord Mordecai, and I hope you do not object to how I used you just then."

"No, I don't object in this scenario, though I must advise you to be careful. Aside from the normal risks of dealing with the aura of a faerie noble, mine is modified because I am a high priest of Ozuran. This makes the magic somewhat more unpredictable, and sometimes stricter." Though Mordecai felt the need to give that advice, he had decided that he liked her for being that bold, while still being able to publicly show that much softness afterward.

Which gave him another idea.

"If you have the chance, I would appreciate it if you could also try to make friends with our guest. She has well-earned trust issues, but I think it would be good for her to get a broader perspective."

"Do you?" she asked thoughtfully, then inclined her head. "I promise nothing, but I will see if she and I can get along."

Mordecai rather hoped that the two would become friends; it would make things much easier if events turned out the way he anticipated.