Chapter 341

  Alcheryos High Orbit

  Citadel of the Flames

  "My lord." Said the Adjudicator as she entered the council room.

  "Adjudicator." The Custodian greeted her, before sharply gesturing towards a chair, which she promptly took.

  If anything, the profoundly...human gesture troubled her. He was a Custodian of the Flame. He was supposed to be above that.

  "You wished to see me my lord?"

  "I did. The loss of your unit has been...problematical."

  The Adjudicator nodded. Seven dead seraphims. Six by the enemy's ambush, and the seventh by the nuclear warhead, as the Custodian had only been able to take two of them out. The seraphim he'd rescued alongside her was still being healed, the weapons that had been used on him calibrated precisely to deal maximum damage to an angel.

  At least the Custodian seemed entirely unphased by the fact he'd devoured an entire chunk of his own being to get them to safety, and seemed healthy enough. In so far as 'healthy' had any meaning at all for a being such as he.

  "It has. We can ill afford such losses."

  "That and more. The implications are also profound."

  "The Order knows they can no longer hide." The Custodian shifted to meet her gaze, and she swallowed. "...or they believe they may be able to win?"

  "A combination, is what we expect." Answered the Custodian, softly.

  "So they court a fight to the finish."

  "They do. And we have to anticipate further attacks. Which is why you will proceed back to the surface today."

  "Will I join another unit?"

  "No. You will form a new one. We have too few we can trust. We must remedy that."

  The Adjudicator's blood ran cold.

  "You wish me to preserve a larger part of the Inquisition." The Custodian nodded. "My lord, they've always been purged for good reason."

  "We are perfectly aware of that, but there is no choice."

  The Adjudicator closed her eyes.

  "My lord...are trusting me with this because of the fallen seraphim?"

  "Yes. In part. Of all our Adjudicators, you now are one of the most experienced fighting the Order, face to face."

  That sent a shiver down her spine. But he was right. The Order...they'd known it had survived, at least in some capacity. They'd simply never realized how powerful they'd become, and they had become so paranoid that pinning them down had proven impossible. And given the certainty of the punishments, none would denounce them either.

  And Adjudicators weren't meant to be soldiers. They were the interface between the Custodians and the surface as well as its people. They were the face of the Citadel, and for all but the most powerful, the manifestation of the God of Fire's will.

  They were also smoke and mirrors, meant to keep the Custodians in the shadows.

  "I thank you for your confidence."

  The Custodian nodded.

  "Good luck, Adjudicator. Glory be His Name."

  "And Glory be His Pyre." Said the Adjudicator as she got up, before leaving the room.

  She felt like she was walking towards the gallows, incapable of silencing her doubts. Doubts about...everything, now.

  The Inquisition...there was nothing worse or more dangerous that a true believer who had their faith broken.

  As the fallen Seraphim had amply demonstrated when she had slaughtered her unit.

  The Adjudicator shivered, and shook herself. She had a job to do. One she, at least, knew she would excel at.

  She would start with the inquisitor she had used for her deployment to Rebirth. A hardened core to build up her people.

  *****

  "Alex, wake up!"

  Alex opened her eyes. For a split second her vision swam, she saw...sandstone and equipment, a madman's crossing of a fantasy cosplayer's workshop and a maintenance bay, all inside a great pyramid. Then her eyes focused on the face in front of her.

  "...Five more minutes." Sleepily said the cadet, and her sister laughed.

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  "Come on Alex, you've already overslept. Any longer and you're gonna miss that ceremony." Said Leah, before sliding a mug of coffee across her desk, coming to bump against the cadet's cheek, her head still firmly on her desk.

  Alex groaned, and lifted her face up, groggily picking up the mug and downing its contents in one go.

  "Why do I have to care? They'll just give us a pin, fancy hats, and send us off to die gloriously in the name of the Federation."

  "Alex."

  The cadet blinked away the fogs of sleep, and grimaced as her sister stared at her.

  "Fine, fine...Sorry, I was just..."

  "Being your usual, cynical self." Leah put a hand on her sister's shoulder, and knelt. "But you're about to swear an oath, Alex. An actual oath. It has to mean something."

  Alex looked away, and sighed.

  "It will." She faced her sister once again. "It will. I promise."

  "Good." Leah smiled as she got back up. "And hey, sis, you'll get to see Arcadia! In person, too."

  "She'll be there?"

  "You'll have to find you for yourself!"

  Alex hurriedly got up herself, almost making her chair fall over in the process. Her apartment, for what it was, at least allowed her that much. It was, actually, more spacious than what she'd had in highschool. Even the academy's food was leagues better.

  "Don't tease me!"

  Leah smiled. Her sister knew the cadet had a fascination with AIs, even more with the most powerful one in the Federation.

  "One of her androids will be observing the ceremony."

  "Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!" Alex looked at her alarm, and rushed towards her closet, tossing out everything in the way of her dress uniform. "Why didn't you wake me earlier? Sis!"

  The older woman simply chuckled and watched her trying to find her uniform and all the attendant bits and pieces of finery that went with it, sitting down on the bed and just raising an eyebrow from across the two room appartment.

  Alex stopped, and sighed.

  "Right." Said the cadet. "Never panic." She went on at a more leisurely pace, despite her words Leah had woken her up with time to spare, while sneaking glances at her sibling. Tall and slim like a Belter, she had the hallmarks of the same kind of genetic engineering that had birthed Alex and Emile. She also had the honey blonde hair Alex would have killed for before she was put in the meatgrinder that was the academy. They also looked nothing alike. But that didn't matter to them. They may be only 'related' because she was her brother's wife, but they might as well be blood sisters. "So, will mom and dad make it?"

  "It's your big day, so yes. They had to call in some markers, but they'll be there."

  "Great. As if I needed more pressure."

  "Rather find out when they appeared through the crowd?"

  Alex grimaced.

  "No. Big bro?"

  "He's still in Alpha Centauri. Sorry sis..."

  "It's okay. I know that he'll be there in spirit. At least I won't have to deal with you two being joined at the hip."

  "He is my husband."

  "Yeah, but if mom and dad are there they'll keep asking about grandkids. Alright." Alex doubled checked all of her items. "Everything's here. I'll hop into a shower and-"

  Alexandra jerked up as her interface pinged her.

  "What..." She blinked, looking at the room. She was...she was in her workshop. The dungeon core let out a long, drawn out sigh as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "This is getting out of hand..."

  She took a few seconds to center herself, before pulling the ping up.

  Huh. First fabricator built unit was ready. She grimaced as she saw the numbers however.

  Trading one problem for another...

  Though she wouldn't admit so to her allies, well, the ones outside her inner circles, the troops she had sent up North were obsolete. Thoroughly obsolete. They were, in essence, remnants of the units she had used to battle the Hammer of Eternity and the army she had built to duke it out with Coledar's troops, had she not managed to stop them dead in their tracks and then caused him to turn on the senate.

  Those she was building now...were nothing like them.

  She had upgraded her Standard Combat Units into three variants, evolutions on the prototypes CQ had fashioned from her tests in boomtown, the now ragged testing grounds originally made to replicate the Alesian fortresses. Those variants were the Rifle Combat Unit, the Heavy Combat Unit and the Advanced Combat Unit.

  RCUs were her new 'standard' infantry. Improved, streamlined composite armor that wasn't actually tougher than that of the SCUs, but vastly slimmer and lighter, allowing them greater mobility. Every single one had an assault rifle, and depending on specialty a secondary weapon such as a shotgun or a submachine gun, hell, even an extra large bag of grenades, all intended for assault purposes or getting close and dirty, a requirement when essence and magic made close in melee fights a mainstay of warfare on Alcheryos.

  HCUs were just that, heavy. Instead of giving them greater mobility with the new armor, she'd simply stacked more of it, and improved some of their load bearing systems to boot. They had the problem of requiring some lengthy fabricator time for their 'muscles', which made them slow to manufacture, at least if she wanted them to be cheap, but they were basically walking pillboxes and machinegun teams, a form of proto power armor in a way.

  And last but not the least, the ACUs. Those were the cream of the crop. Full, composite mythril plating with multiple energy dispersion layers and improved damned near everything, these things didn't quite come to the level of her ambassador golems but they were close. Very close. They were effectively the perfect marriage of the RCU's mobility and the HCU's toughness and strength. Their biggest problem was their production time, as making a single one of these with a fabricator took as long as building ten HCUs, though she was working on getting that down -or rather, had before she'd started hallucinating- and their individual material cost was actually closer to three or so HCUs. And the HCUs were slow to make compared to the RCUs. They were also so prohibitively expensive without using a fabricator they weren't worth discussing, she might as well make praetorian guards instead. They were, however, a medium tech unit that could take on essence enhanced human one on one and win, which made them perfect special forces.

  For the first time...ever now, she'd traded the problem of having expensive to make soldiers for having expensive infrastructure. It was a net benefit, to be sure, but it also meant that she had to actually worry about production throughput in terms of what her infrastructure could make as a major concern, and not just a minor setback.

  At least she had enough production to set some fabricators aside to build more, which she would then ship in priority to her branch offices. It seemed counterintuitive, but because of their higher prices they were actually more beneficial there than in her command center. Plus, push comes to shove she could commandeer them to shorten her supply lines, though it wouldn't be cost effective.

  Damn it, when had her life become spreadsheets and cost to benefit analysis again? It felt like yesterday she was making spike traps and bladed pendulums, not throwing armies around and deciding the fate of millions by counting beans. Err, mana.

  Well, at least she was her own boss, she didn't have to answer to the council or, Gods save her, the dipshits from parliament. At least the council had some experience besides having a silver tongue and buttering up voters, even if they were withered old paranoids or complete sociopaths. She'd lost count of the amount of times she'd prayed for someone, anyone, to just nuke the assembly halls.

  She blinked as an alert popped up. Allya at the entrance? That was unusual. Nowadays she sent somebody to warn ahead, or just picked up a radio.

  She sent a few orders to the golem before stretching and getting up. If the baroness was going to meet with her in person, she might as well return the favor. Especially after that little fiasco at the party. How could she have known Emilia and Pyn had planned to swap some notebooks?

  The dungeon core came to a halt as she exited the workshop, briefly seeing her own reflection in the shimmering armor plating of one of the praetorians.

  ...She'd never really questioned her armor. At the start she simply hadn't had the resources to change it, besides which it felt more like an extension of herself, which it technically was. By the time she could have swapped it, it was just...her look.

  The...hallucination? Dream? Memory? Whatever she'd just had still echoed in her mind, and she decided she might try something else, just for today.

  Besides, it would weird the archduchess out, and messing with Allya was a well established hobby of hers by now.

  She began to chuckle as she did an about face and went back into the workshop. Where was that clothing station they'd used to make CQ's uniforms again...

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