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"Supposedly I'm the one with the highest rank in this damn Dominion army… so why the hell do I end up doing programmer work, configuring drones and writing code so this AI detects diseases and growth stages of corn?" I said while typing, fighting with a window full of errors that shouldn't exist.
"Because you're one of the few who knows code at your level." Mason replied, checking the diagnostics. "And the adjutants weren't delivering a decent system. I'd rather you fix it, since you know how Dominion electronics work."
"Let's see… corn… one-month stage…" Mason muttered while checking the drone's camera feed. "Looks fine. What about the flight patterns? You said you'd configure those later."
"That depends on the cruisers' sensors." I replied. "When Kurt finishes mapping the entire planet, I can start on that."
"Done." said Kurt's voice over the comm. "We have the planet fully scanned. We know the first terrain layers, mineral deposits, and optimal agricultural areas. In the southern hemisphere there's perfect land, but it's unpopulated."
"Good." I replied. "Then we can focus on large-scale agriculture without anyone interfering. What about the deposits?"
"According to the sensors, they're a few hundred kilometers from the local base." said Kurt. "They built everything backwards: where they should've put mines and industry they put farms, and where they should've put farms… nothing."
"Harlan, do you read me?"
"Loud and clear, regent." replied the commander of the Prometheus Company.
"I need you to head to the southern hemisphere and secure the area for agricultural operations. Eliminate dangerous fauna, clear forests, and register every plant useful for our work."
"Understood. Estimated arrival time twenty minutes." said Harlan, cutting his comm.
I went back to the monitor and finished adjusting the algorithm.
"Alright… I think that's it." I activated the drone and its camera feed appeared clean. The adjutant immediately began processing everything it saw.
"It works. It's already giving you a harvest summary — even if it's just the planter boxes for now." said Mason. "We'd need to replicate the code for the full fleet of five hundred drones."
"That's just a couple of…" I typed a few more lines. "Done. All of them configured. Now we're missing the agricultural machinery."
"The Sons of Korhal managed to set up a foundry using one of the generators." said Mason. "We already have steel and neostell. If we get the other minerals, we can manufacture all the parts you need. But for now they're busy with the mining exosuits; we want to start digging into those mountains of resources as soon as possible."
"True. I'm done here. I'm going to check the work and come back. And while I'm at it I'll help my operatives read minds to make sure there's no dissidence brewing." I said as I put on my helmet and lowered the visor.
"For Arcturus." Mason said, raising his fist without stopping his work on the schematics he was drawing himself.
I returned to my transport ship; my crew was already waiting the moment I stepped inside, and we departed to inspect the Dominion's new possessions.
New Khorhal, as I had renamed the first fortification we had taken, was still an absurd mixture of medieval castle and military base. We hadn't changed much of its structure: we needed heavy machinery to fortify it to Dominion standards, and right now we didn't have anything of that caliber.
Some five thousand men of the Royal Guard, from all its branches, were stationed there waiting for orders for any combat. For now they only acted as a local garrison. The other two captured castles shared the same fate: temporary bases while we produced the heavy machinery needed to demolish them and build fortresses capable of resisting a planetary siege.
The final goal was obvious: raise a planetary defense platform like Khorhal's Celestial Shield, something that would make this world practically unassailable. But that was a distant dream: we would have to dig up every damn mineral available before even thinking about building such a monster.
My next destination was the mines, primitive to the point of being pitiful. Thousands of workers using picks and shovels to extract mineral… minerals that were mostly stored in enormous warehouses, accumulated over decades of feudal tribute.
But change had arrived: besides a small Royal Guard garrison, we had delivered exosuits. Basically SCVs without the robotic housing but with the servos, only the frame itself. Even so, they multiplied a worker's strength tenfold. With an industrial drill attached and huge clamps, a few dozen men were doing work that used to take thousands… and in a fraction of the time.
The chunks ripped out by the drills were easily moved by the exosuits into transport carts, and from there straight to our foundries, where engineers and technicians worked without rest to rebuild the supply chain.
The last thing I had to do that day was fulfill one of the planet's feudal traditions: receiving the peasants' tribute to their lords. Apparently we had arrived right in the middle of harvest season, which meant we were owed the not-so-modest sum of 90 percent of total production.
An incredibly abusive tax… but fully backed by the local ecclesiarchy and by centuries of custom. No one complained. They accepted it as if it were divine law.
And of course, I wasn't going to change a tradition that benefited me.
For days I appeared among the locals receiving enormous quantities of grain, vegetables, roots, and everything they produced. But with the benefits came obligations: after reading the minds of the old bureaucracy, I understood they also expected me to provide in times of crisis.
It seemed the nobility had machines that processed food into nearly imperishable nutrient pastes. There were enormous reserves stored in the fortresses: emergency provisions for bad harvests.And now the population expected me to use those machines… and to distribute charity with the nutrient bars.
And well… for the moment we were extremely vulnerable to any rebellion. We needed absolutely everything this planet produced, and if we had to kill all the local labor force, it would be like shooting ourselves in the foot.Every rebellion had to be treated with maximum seriousness, using every institution we could improvise. And if that meant working with the local ecclesiarchy, then so be it: as long as they preached that everything we delivered was a gift from me, and therefore from the God-Emperor, the population stayed calm… and that was vital.
That's why a large part of the received tax had to be used in forced charity, at least until the next harvest. By then I expected to have a system of industrial, semi-autonomous agriculture supported by agricultural drones and exosuits, allowing us to stop depending so much on local labor.
Thus, every day I worked like a condemned man to pull the brightest members of the Royal Guard out of active service and push them into administration. We were raising a state from scratch, and I couldn't do it alone with just threats and violence. We started with the basics:
a primitive administrative system capable of paying salaries, registering productive zones, keeping inventory, and allocating resources.
We paid soldiers with credits while trying to calibrate the economy, even knowing they would soon notice their salary was worthless, because there was nothing to buy. The locals also wouldn't accept fake terran credits while they still operated under barter, so I had to work fast.We needed an economy, even a minimal one.
For that reason I had to tap every branch of the Dominion to pull personnel: logistics operators, military accountants, supply-chain experts, tactical analysts, civilian organizers…
Together we managed to move about ten thousand active-service members into the newly improvised administration offices, and even then it was not enough.There was too much to do, and practically nothing to do it with.
We started by initiating a census, now that the local-language translator was finally completed. With that we could communicate without as much improvisation, and with the Ghosts reading minds to learn the language in minutes, the work progressed faster than expected.
For two months I dedicated myself almost entirely to building planetary administration from scratch. The census showed there weren't fourteen million inhabitants, but eighteen, so the margin of error we had been operating with was far greater than I thought. That forced a restructuring of every quota, work plan, and production estimate.
We also began the massive injection of medical nanobots into the population. With them, doctors could run full checkups in seconds, and we obtained all the biological information we needed without having to build enormous clinics.
At the same time the construction of the first farms in the southern hemisphere began, where we started moving newly manufactured machinery from the workshops we had improvised. Millions of working-age people were transferred there to handle heavy labor while we suffered from the lack of actual machinery. It was that or allow the project to stagnate.
In the areas less suited for crops, however, we found a very useful alternative: a species of reptilian animal that replaced cows. They called them grox. Tender meat, high in protein, apparently a local delicacy. Only nobles could afford to eat it; every head of livestock was their exclusive property, and civilians didn't have access even to the bones.
Additionally, the beast could eat almost anything to survive, so we quickly set up a large ranch and began selective breeding for more passive grox. Their aggression levels were absurd, and that remained the primary problem for handling them without unnecessary casualties.
We were already beginning to build a small industry in the northern hemisphere, capable of producing basic machinery, clothes, food, and essential goods. At the same time we attempted to impose the Dominion credit system, forcing the abandonment of barter so we could gain full control over the local economy.
Mass electrification of the planet was also underway. With all the improvised power stations using generators salvaged from recycled cruisers, we had energy to spare. But the wooden houses were a massive fire hazard, so we electrified entire zones only after reinforcing structures. One mistake and half a district could be reduced to ashes.
If everything continued at this pace, soon we would be able to start manufacturing our own military equipment and, eventually, assemble new battlecruisers once the scientists finished analyzing the compounds obtained from the Knights. That armor was far too good to ignore… imagining it applied to the White Star was almost tempting.
"Ghost reporting."I heard the raspy voice of one of my operatives through the communications channel reserved for truly important matters.
"Copy that. Report." I replied.
"We've been following a group from the upper class. We detected a strange pattern: all of them, without exception, went to the same forest. A hidden place between the mountains, almost impossible to track without our sensors. Too coordinated to be coincidence."
"Good… Alpha, Beta, and Charlie squads: you're authorized to continue surveillance. You are not authorized to execute anyone until you confirm what they're doing. If you're discovered, you fall back immediately. No heroes." I closed the channel while reviewing the reports from the program I had assigned to the Cerberus scientists.
Not even ten minutes passed before the priority channel activated again.
"Reporting again…" The ghost's voice trembled, something rare for someone like him."The upper-class members are… committing cannibalistic acts. They're eating a group of people alive. They smile while doing it—both the ones eating and the ones being eaten. They drink their blood as if it were wine… and they laugh."
I froze for a second. "Shit…"
"Maintain positions. Identify everyone. I'm on my way." I cut the transmission.
"A cult… of course. I knew we were missing some bastards. Rats hiding." I put on my helmet, activated the visor and took my psi-blade.
This was going to be a problem.
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If there are spelling mistakes, please let me know.
Leave a comment; support is always appreciated.
I remind you to leave your ideas or what you would like to see.
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