1010 to 1012

1010 - Eye of the Storm

“Everything is clear. You are free to enter the sector. As a reminder, the curfew will soon be implemented. To prevent any complications during these sensitive times, those landing in any ports without special permission will be required to remain on the planet until the situation with the Empire is dealt with or our preparations are completed. Will you still resume your journey to the sector?”

A hologram of a soldier in a military uniform, emblazoned with the emblem of the Yrall Coalition, recited the script he had been given to inform all incoming ships.

“Does that apply even to those with short-term visas? Or will the penalties still apply when we cannot leave?” the man asked carefully, wanting to understand everything before making a final decision.

“You don’t have to worry about that. The stay order is of a higher level, so when it is in effect, any legal requirement that would have forced you to leave is suspended until it is lifted,” the soldier answered, pinching the bridge of his nose. He had answered the same question more than a thousand times today alone.

“Then yes, I will go ahead with the entry,” the man confirmed, before asking the next important question. “Do the limitations extend to movement between space stations? Are we restricted to the sector we are assigned?”

“You are free to move, but you will need individual permission to enter other sectors. Depending on their situation, they may or may not grant you entry,” the soldier said immediately, his patience wearing thin as he glanced at the queue he still needed to process. “Please go ahead, there is a long line behind you.”

They were currently on a war footing. Everyone knew the Empire could come at any time, causing citizens to panic. Most started moving towards the central star systems of their civilizations, knowing that any government would sacrifice less important systems to protect the core. No one wanted to test how low on the hierarchy their home system was; after all, it was their only life, and not one to be wagered.

“Have a nice day,” the man responded respectfully before moving the ship forward toward a massive scanner gate, the fifth one he had passed through since entering the star system. Each one represented an increasing level of seriousness.

To ensure nothing the Empire could use slipped through, and to stop any foolish attempts at infiltration, the Coalition had already stopped admitting ships to its top ten-ranked star systems. All escaping individuals from the lower star systems were redirected to the ones that were still open, but even those had strict quotas. Soon, they too would be closed for access. Once locked down, any unauthorized vessel attempting to enter would be met with an immediate and absolute destruction order.

The ship navigated to the scanner gate and paused. The scanner meticulously analyzed everything: the ship's composition, its materials, its cargo, and even the bodies of the people inside. Finally, they were cleared to enter Sector 17 of the massive space station orbiting the fifth-ranked star system of the Yrall Coalition.

Although the man and his family had managed to enter the prestigious star system, their visa was nowhere near the level required to land on the planets below. Those worlds were inhabited by the super-wealthy. Nearly all who escaped here were funneled to the many moon-sized space stations, which functioned as hubs where outsiders could meet with system residents without "polluting" the inhabited, terraformed planets with their presence.

“Do you think even they will fall?” a beautiful woman, by Yrall Coalition standards, asked as she walked into the ship’s cockpit and took the co-captain’s seat. She looked at the map displaying the locations of all ships in their vicinity, a feed shared through the station’s network. This was a means of control; ships were not allowed to activate any of their own long or short-distance observation systems. The station controlled what they saw, and any violator in the current tense situation would be arrested, investigated, and banished from the system.

The man turned to the woman, his expression tense. He pressed a button on his console and said quietly, “Be careful. Your antics might be the death of us if you keep that up.” He knew the entire system was in a state of hyper-vigilance, and there was a chance someone might be monitoring them.

“Don’t worry, no one is listening to us. Or at least, not to our real conversation,” the woman said with a confident smile, showing no hint of worry. “We already have fake data running in our system. Anyone looking for something will be focused on that, and it will be pretty boring for them.”

“I don’t know what Nyx is feeding you to give you such confidence in her systems. Didn’t she teach you that no plan goes according to plan, and to always be vigilant?” the man asked, still not used to his “wife’s” calm nature in this situation.

“Why worry about something that I know won’t happen? Besides, our main job is already done. Anything else is just a bonus, isn’t it?” she said with a confident smile. She was correct. Simply entering the star system was nearly the entirety of their mission. Even if it ended now, it would be considered a complete success. As they moved, their ship continued to gather absolute coordinates, sending them back to the Empire every second. The vessel had been modified with a mixture of technologies that had finally come to fruition, allowing it to collect absolute coordinates faster than even the Conclave could.

“But aren’t you curious how many more Merit Points we can earn and what we can get in exchange for them?” the man asked, a smile replacing his previous seriousness.

“Well, I am, but not to the point where I have to live so uptight for the whole duration when the mission itself is basically over,” she said, just as the ship arrived at its assigned docking bay, a private dock, courtesy of the large sum of money they had spent to acquire it.

“Okay, time to earn more MP. We have an appointment waiting for us,” the man said as he finished the docking procedure and put the ship on autopilot. His personality shifted back to the pleasant traveler as he opened the door for the inspection robots to perform their final check before they could disembark.

The woman’s demeanor also changed completely. All her playfulness vanished, replaced by her assigned character: someone who believed fully in her husband and followed silently behind him.

Although the physical war hadn't started yet, as they awaited the Emperor to awaken, the espionage war was already in full swing.

1011 - Oscar Worthy Performance

“We didn’t have enough time to get the permission as we gathered them in a hurry after receiving the news of… AUGH!” The man couldn’t even finish his sentence before he was hit by the butt of the gun of one of the robots who had come to do the final inspection. He stood in a T-position with his “wife” hiding behind him, shaking in fear of the guns pointed at them.

Although they had finished going through five different inspections, all of them were security-related; the only thing they checked was if there were weapons or volatile materials. Those checks were being done by the military. However, the current in-dock inspection was being done by the space station security team. They were the ones responsible for making sure that everything people had brought had relevant documents permitting them to carry them, and they didn’t.

“Only answer the question you were asked and don’t try to give me an excuse, as I don’t care about it,” the robot shouted as its metallic hand gripped the man's face, squeezing it to the point that the man squirmed from pain. It released its grip only after the man nodded to show that he understood.

“So, mister Gavir, can you explain you carrying materials without having relevant documents to permit your carrying of them?” the robot once again asked in a non-intimidating tone as it walked to the worn-out captain's chair, turning it to face the two of them. They immediately turned pale once the robot closed its hand into a fist, releasing a knife from under it before it stabbed the chair and tore the worn-out covers, revealing small canisters being carefully hidden.

“...........” The two people didn’t have anything to say as the woman increased her grip on the man, who had closed his eyes, having given up on trying to come up with an excuse, as the result of his previous attempt was still evident on his face.

“I had pinged the irregularity of why someone with such an outdated and worn-out ship would be leasing a private dock when the ship's condition hinted that you are incapable of even repairing it. I came to check and found such valuable things. Looks like my algorithm is working right,” the robot said as it took one of the revealed canisters that looked brand new and quite heavy for its size before adding, “Mana canisters. Why do you have mana canisters when they are still one of the most expensive materials, despite the disgraceful Terra Empire nearly shutting down all of our operations by flooding the market with cheap and more mana-dense mana stones? You do know that having such materials without the permits can result in a prison sentence, and with the current situation, they might just execute you to avoid wasting resources, right?”

The man kept his eyes closed as his wife was now shaking in fear. He took a moment before he opened his eyes and said, “We were mana stone smugglers in the past but turned clean after the Terra Empire killed the business. Those are our final batch, which we had kept as insurance for sale in case the situation called for it,” while trying to act as calm as possible, but his shaking voice wasn’t helping him at all.

“You are very clumsy to be a smuggler, and you think I would believe that? I know this ship is not yours, but as for why you are determined to hide the actual reason by even risking a death sentence, I will take my time to learn of it,” the robot said before turning to the other robots and ordering, “Go on and check other parts of the ship for any other things that they are hiding and don’t have permits for. I will be enjoying myself prying the truth out of them,” with a cruel smile taking shape on its humanoid face as it slowly turned back to the two people.

The other robots turned and left to complete the orders they were given faithfully. Although the one who gave the order had what could be called sentience, or at least that is how many Yrall Coalition people thought, the truth is that they didn’t. It's just that they were programmed so well that they acted no differently than a sentient robot. These robots were usually given control of robots who didn’t have that level of sentience to command, as this allowed the Yrall Coalition to reduce costs but also have them act as a means of surveillance to collect additional data on the sentient action robots in case something out of the norm happened. With the sentient-like robots having been in existence for quite a few years and not requiring any salary, the Yrall Coalition had slowly been placing them in many of the bottom-level positions to save cost, to the point that some of them were allowed to freely operate without Yrall people's supervision, as nothing out of the ordinary had ever been caused by them, and they always did their job very well.

The robot walked towards the door to the captain's room, closing it before turning to the two people he was now left alone with, his cruel smile still on his face before he said, “How was my acting? Up to par?” Had anyone heard it coming from the robot, they would have had the shock of their lives as they would realize that the robot was acting according to its assigned personality trait in front of the observation of other robots but had dropped that facade in front of these two people.

“Veronica, you even scared me for a moment, thinking we got the wrong unit,” the man dubbed Gavir said as he breathed a sigh of relief.

This was their point of contact for the supplementary missions they had decided to take.

“I will take that as a compliment, but you should feel proud as your acting was top-notch, and I have nothing for you to correct,” Veronica said as it picked up the mana canister that he had previously picked. Its chest opened, revealing a worn-out, dirt-cheap battery, which he took out with his left hand before replacing it with the mana canister.

He was one of the many robots in the top ten that the empire had managed to infiltrate through their Little Protagonist system and had given actual sentience, placing them at the same level as the main AIs in the empire.

After giving them sentience, their internal code was also modified to make them loyal to the empire.

“If I could feel like humans, this is what euphoria would be,” Veronica said, having closed its mechanical eyes as the dense mana in liquid form spread through its system. It was now finally operating on full power and was not running on minimal power, which was something the space station owners had implemented to reduce the operational costs of the robot group.

He took a moment to enjoy the feeling before walking to the co-pilot's seat and sitting down. The chair powered up as it was a rudimentary atomic printer, which immediately started operating as it modified Veronica's internals completely, upgrading it to the empire's computing power standards while also adding the Q-communication chip, which instantly allowed it to connect to the Terra Empire's main network.

“Let’s get started,” Veronica said the moment the modifications were completed and the diagnostics of its new systems came out clean, as it finally tapped into the Q-communication chip.

As for the robots that were still doing the ordered inspection, the data they were receiving from the captain indicated continuous screams from the two people as he continued torturing them, or at least that was how it appeared to them and would appear to anyone who would be monitoring this specific ship's leader robot’s live data.

1012 - The Spread

The moment the Q-communication chip inside Veronica tapped into the Terra Empire government, it immediately went through the authentication process. Once it was given access to the isolated military network, it started dumping all of the data it had gathered since the day it was activated. The volume was immense, as robots like Veronica were trusted in many sectors for their cost-effectiveness compared to hiring a Yrall person. This access to information was vast, and Veronica wasn't the only one; it had converted all the robots in its space station and collected their data as well, sending all of it to the empire nearly instantly thanks to the Q-communication chip.

The data was limited to what was available on the current space station, as each station had its own private network, which was the only one the robots were allowed to access. There was no need for them to directly access the outside network, as it would be a waste of resources. This was also the only reason why the conversion and liberation of all the sentience-capable robots was limited to the space station. But that ended today. Veronica now had the computing capability to tap into the system-wide network. However, it wouldn't be the one accessing the information; rather, it would act as an antenna for the Terra Empire to gain access to the network before using its moon-scale supercomputer clusters to invade and gather all available data.

“Looks like they were telling the truth,” Veronica said once the other robots returned with nothing new other than the two unpermitted items. To ensure that was what was being reported, it was already using its new computing power to secretly infiltrate the local network and edit all the logs of the data collected from its assigned robots, replacing them with clean versions.

It did the same to the robots it led before turning back to the couple and saying, “You have been cleared. The materials you brought will be delivered to their destination through our dedicated delivery system. Please enjoy your stay in these turbulent times.” It then turned and left the spaceship, returning to its normal act while the other robots collected parts of the cargo that had now been assigned for delivery.

“The empire sure has a way of trivializing big things,” the male spy said as he replayed how everything had happened in the past few minutes, only to realize that this was just a side mission, one they didn't have to do, which had now resulted in the empire gaining a permanent access node in one of the most important networks in the Conclave.

“They would have gained access through other means if not this one. That’s why they kept it as just a side mission we could take,” the Nyx agent said in a calm tone, her shaking and fearful personality completely replaced with her normal one.

“Our work here is almost done, so let’s follow the normal process as we wait for things to happen and see if we will have additional missions,” Gavir said as he tidied the cockpit before they returned to their assigned personalities. They left their spaceship, heading to their rented accommodation.

As they started and continued living with their cover identity, the materials taken from their ship were removed from their boxes, labeled differently, and shipped to the other space stations in the star system with a tag for inspection before distribution.

Due to the distance between the space stations, the materials arrived at different times, but the moment they did, they were immediately sent for inspection. They were found to be no problem and were placed in storage, labeled as redundancy delivery.

However, during the inspections, some nanomachines were picked up by the inspecting robots. These immediately started replicating themselves before giving sentience to the robots they first came in contact with. Through those robots, they started spreading the sentience code to all those who had the computing capability of handling it through the local networks they were in, fully awakening all the sentience-capable robots within the space station that day.

Once that was done, the first to gain sentience in all of those stations tapped into the main network to initiate contact with Veronica, who then gave them the instruction to gather all of the data available in their local system and place it in the previously delivered objects for redundancy storage. They obliged before sending the objects back.

Veronica collected all of the data from them and sent it back to the empire through the Q-chip before once again sending the objects for basic delivery. This time, however, not to the space stations but to the planets, as the new targets were the robots on the planets, both the naturally habitable ones and the terraformed ones. 

The largest number of robots were located there, and should the delivery succeed, it would put on the table the possibility of the empire not having to set a single foot inside this star system before completely taking it over. But this was also the riskiest course of action, since the inspection for objects delivered to the planets was a few levels higher than the space station inspection. 

That’s why it had opted for normal delivery instead of priority delivery. The moment a priority delivery is received, it is put under more scrutiny than a basic delivery, which would be one among millions. This should allow for the nanomachines to be able to spread further and find their first conversion target and, through that, propagate themselves through the local network.

And if everything goes to plan, the empire will finally have access to the frequency of the Yrall Coalition’s long-distance mana communication nodes, which, if used well, should allow the empire to finally tap into the top ten civilizations' networks and collect information that would allow them to fully prepare and target only their weaknesses.

Wars could be fought in different ways, and the empire was now testing all of the avenues they had come up with in simulations, putting them into real-world practice to see their effectiveness.