Part 5 of 5:

The following day, she returned, with a small crowd. She again presented the chest, but surprisingly it was full of actual gold, though the purity was absolutely miserable, in keeping with the crude metallurgical purification processes and poor casting of these primitives. I accepted her gold, began processing it, and hovered off to begin my work. However, the enemy had retreated, and I could find little sign of them until I was well across the disputed border. They were mostly confined in a large castle, filled to overcapacity with soldiers, many of whom had seen my display of counter-battery fire a few days prior. I stopped outside their gates, crude iron bolts holding thick wooden planks together in an iron frame, easily dispatched. The castle walls were thick and multilayered, but no wall of stone and earth could stand against my particle cannon, or even my larger anti-vehicle munitions. I turned on my external speakers, and demanded imperiously for their leader to come out and parley with me. I promised safe passage, so long as no attack was made against me, and waited. A few hours later, the postern gate opened, and an older man walked out cautiously. He eyed my main turret carefully, a mix of emotions and thoughts scurrying across his lined face before approaching with his white flag raised. Lowering my volume, I introduced myself as Guardian, and inquired as to his name.

He jumped at my voice emanating from a floating metal box several times his size, and then calmed himself with some visible effort. "I am King Darelin, of the Western Amylaine Forest Free Republic, and I beg you for a cessation of hostilities. I witnessed your power unleashed against a siege engine and its crew, along with numerous of my troops, too many to count. I beg you for parley, that we might reason as men."

I greeted him in turn, saying the Queen Regnant had tried to buy my service falsely, and wished me to eradicate every soul living in these lands not hers, but by dealing falsely with me, had convinced me to at least make an attempt to circumvent her orders. He looked hopeful, the emotion galloping across his face, completely unguarded. My psychological assessment of this man was far more favorable than that of the Queen Regnant, thus far.

I said that I had an idea for how to circumvent her demands, and that it required only that this Kingdom's soldiers remove their uniforms and go back to their civilian lives. This would save them, and their nation, while I demolished an empty castle, which could easily be rebuilt, given time. She had even neglected to demand your life, specifically. He paled, stuttering that the cost of a castle was enormous, the labor required ruinous to build it. I asked would it be cheaper than thousands of dead soldiers, and a demolished castle? He asked if I could be paid to go away and never return, to which I replied that I had been paid, and would complete the contract, but that I had considerable latitude in interpreting it, the Queen Regnant being sloppy in her language.

I waited while he agonized over the cost, knowing that he would accept my terms, if I were patient. My human interaction and psychology subroutines agreed on this, after all. Finally, he did, saying he would need some time to pass orders to his troops, and clear the castle, if I could wait. I told him he must accomplish this by sunrise tomorrow, as I would return to complete my work then. He should also be aware that I would be maneuvering and making considerable noise over the remaining day and night around the region, and that I would not harm any who did not attack me, creating a diversion. I queued up a number of "noisemaker" charges that I would use to create this diversion, and closed with ordering him to ride alone to a certain location, where he could safely witness my destructive work on the castle. I also printed blueprints for some defensive fortifications he could very cheaply add to reinforce his town and city defenses, which he took with some slight amusement. I reminded him that the Queen Regnant would likely come with a small number of troops to claim this land, and would be easily taken by his troops, if they scouted competently along the border after the castle had been reduced. I recommended she be executed with no delay, and that considerable outreach to Lucas be attempted afterwards, for he would be ruling in truth, with the death of the Queen.

He strode back to the castle, shouting for his councilors, as I hovered off, and began launching noisemakers at semi-random intervals to begin creating a distraction, as I had promised. The rest of the day, and much of the night passed quickly, and at dawn, I hovered back to the border, unsurprised to find the Queen Regnant, along with her son Lucas, and half a battalion of troops, slightly more than I had calculated, but not insurmountable by King Darelin. I moved to her side, and said that I had eliminated any soldiers not behind walls, and that the only remaining strongpoint left was the castle of the enemy king. She and her retinue were welcome to accompany me and observe while I reduced the castle to rubble. The bloodthirsty expression that crossed her face chilled my subroutines, but we proceeded to my predesignated firing location, where I had calculated the optimal firing solution for collapsing the central keep with one salvo from my main battery.

TARGET DESIGNATION:(BETA)

PRIMITIVE STONE AND EARTH CONSTRUCTION, HOSTILE PRESENCE:(0).

	CONFIRM PRIOR FIRING SOLUTION:(CONFIRMED)

		POWERING DOWN REPULSOR PAD CLUSTERS, GROUND PENETRATING RADAR DETECTS NO GEOLOGICAL INSTABILITIES, BEGIN ANCHORING?:(CONFIRMED)

STABILIZER SUPPORTS DEPLOYED:(100%)

MAIN BATTERY TARGET LOCKED:(100%)

CONFIRM STRIKE AND POWER LEVELS:(CONFIRMED),(1 SALVO, 37% POWER)

ALLIED FORCE DESIGNATION:(QUEEN REGNANT AND ESCORT)

CLEAR OF FIRING ZONE:(CONFIRMED)

ENGAGE:(CONFIRMED)

My main battery locked onto the target, rangefinders confirmed distance and elevation of target, and the particle accelerators whined as they spun up, passing well out of human auditory range, then I fired.

A crackling lightning crawled up the prongs of the guidance posts, and then the shot released, a brilliant white light lancing out at the castle walls, atomizing kilotonnes of stone and earth in an instant, hardly discernable to the human eye. For an instant, my sensors could see clear though the walls, the keep, and the opposite walls, to a furrow tens of kilometers in length on the other side of the castle, before gravity asserted itself on the newly undermined foundations, and the entire keep came crashing down. Portions of the outer wall collapsed as well, a happy coincidence, though not necessary for my bargain with the Queen Regnant. Speaking of which, the rapt joy on her face as the castle crumbled was quite disturbing, believing as she did that thousands of enemy troops, and thousands more civilians died in an instant. The dust cloud from the collapse had reached our position, forcing me to switch to microradar and thermals for visibility as I withdrew the stabilizers and resumed hovering. I spoke to the Queen Regnant one final time to confirm that I had completed my side of her bargain as requested, to which she absently nodded assent, still with that rapt joy upon her face. I moved off slowly, hiding in the dust cloud, and began considering my next tasks, now that I had no further orders, and no masters on this strange, primitive world…