Collection 31 (Patreon)

Collection

Chapter 31

-VB-

Duchess Catherine Humphreys

Claybrooke, Free Worlds League

3003 September

When she disembarked from the shuttle, she found herself at the heart of some kind of a living space. It was wide open with signs and directions. There was even an interactable map panel. But the entire ship was … rustic. It was made with practicality in mind and nothing else. No paint except where it would be practical to have them, no lights at places where one could easily be illuminated by another light, and so on. 

It spoke of many things but in her mind, it spoke of how different it was compared to images, videos, and descriptions of warships that she grew up seeing and reading. A warship was as much a source of national power as it was a show. And it had to be a good show, and so, even though they were expensive, many parts of it, especially for living quarters, weren’t spared any amenities within limits. 

Unless one was Terran Hegemony, then there was no rational limits. 

And with how much automation she already saw (the shuttle had no driver), she suspected that the “dropships” outside, those “Glimmers,” might not even have pilots. 

If true, then it made Edward Arlaoskas perhaps the most dangerous man in the entire Inner Sphere. 

All power was derived from manpower and how efficiently productive one can make that manpower. But if Arlaoskas automated things to such a degree that he rivaled the old Terran Hegemony, then he right now had the most efficient, most productive, and most powerful manpower in the Inner Sphere’s history. 

She must get him on her side.

And therein laid the problem.

She could already tell that she might have wasted her time coming all this way. There was nothing here she could provide that might persuade him.

Nothing except for a few someones.

She took a deep breath in and -.

“Duchess. Look.”

She looked to Timothy, a man in his fifties who has been her guard for half of his life. She followed his eyesight and saw -.

Her froze up.

Walking toward them was a lone robot. Not like a battlemech but a spindly thing that mirrored the entire ship’s need for practicality. But what caught her by surprise was the baleful red light that seemed to be boring into her and everyone else around her. 

The boxy and spindly machine came to a stop some ten meters from her and her guards. 

“Greetings,” it spoke in a slightly scratchy voice and bowed. “And welcome to The Maw. My creator will be here shortly.”

“... What are you?” she asked, unable to hide her curiosity. 

The machine, which had been about to step aside, paused and looked back at her. 

“I am a robot.”

Factual. 

“Are you a program?”

“Yes, I am a program.”

“Then you are not alive?”

The robot stiffened. “Not in a biological sense, no. However, my creator insists that I am an ‘artificial intelligence’ and thus a living being in my own way.” A pause. “As he insisted, I had, instead of circuits of blood, circuits of electricity.”

Catherine felt a chill run up her spine. 

‘He doesn’t need to hire anyone,’ she thought with horror. ‘He can make his own manpower.’ No, it was worse. This artificial intelligence wouldn’t even need regular maintenance like what regular people needed. 

Could… Could Arlaoskas mass manufacture these robots? 

Then she heard footsteps. 

She looked away from the robot and towards the sound and saw a trio walking toward them as some kind of silent anti-gravity tram sped off into the distance…

And then it was only then that she also realized something.

Gravity. 

There was gravity on this ship.

Gravity on a flat ship that wasn’t using centrifugal force to generate gravity. 

Arlaoskas had figured out a way to generate gravity…!

She felt only colder. She only felt more regret. 

Though she was getting in on her years, she realized that she wasn’t out here to meet a genius. No, she’d come out to meet a monster without knowing it. 

If he wanted her and everyone here dead, then there was absolutely nothing they could do to stop him.

Then a panel in a wall opened up as the trio walked closer to her, and a robot stepped out. This robot was not spindly and boxy. It was big, armed, and armored. It looked like what a supersoldier in a power armor might look like.

(But a robot without any meat could use all of those space for something else…)

They’re in the walls.

‘They’re in the goddamn walls…!’ she thought. She was surrounded without knowing she had been.

The more details registered in her mind, the more this looked like a trap. 

Her eyes finally settled on the trio.

The one in the lead looked like any other man. Tall and athletic but no different than any of the Andurien military officers she met before. Actually, he didn’t even have that air of military pride that most officers had. He felt normal at a glance. 

But she’d seen that face on papers and debriefs from her officers. 

That was Edward Arlaoskas.

The man to the side looked even more out of place, but there was a familiarity between him and the man in the lead. 

The woman…

‘That’s a spymaster if I ever saw one.’

Cold, calculating, and callous. Her eyes had already dissected them and determined who needed to be capture so that they can be pumped for information. And that woman’s eyes lingered on her, drifting away only when she saw her bodyguards moving.

Then the trio came to a stop right next to the robot, which looked down with a slight bow as if it was deferential to the trio.

“Good morning!” the man in the lead suddenly smiled. Not a “full of teeth” smile but a cordial one. “You must be Duchess Catherine Humphreys?”

“Yes,” her mouth moved before her mind did. “I am Duchess Catherine Humphreys of the Duchy of Andurien. Thank you for having me here.”

“I would say it is my pleasure… but people who come to me these days seem to have something in mind that I don’t like. So let’s get this done with. What are you here for, duchess?” he asked bluntly, though not rudely. 

She knew she had zero chance of it happening after everything she saw, but she tried anyway. “I would like to hire you for the sake of the Duchy of Andurien. I would give you an entire world as your fief and authority that befits… all of this.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, but I’ll have to pass,” he replied. “I can’t stay in one place for too long.”

She almost nodded after hearing the first part but then the second part caught her off guard. 

“Why not?” she asked. 

“Because ComStar is after me. Sooner or later, they will send their warships.”

“ComStar doesn’t have warships,” one of her advisors spoke up incredulously. 

“There are no warships in the Inner Sphere,” Arlaoskas nodded before gesturing to his ship all around them. “And I built this by myself in under four months.”

Catherine shivered. Some might reject reality, but she knew better. This man wasn’t lying. No changes to his body language, no changes to his microexpression. 

He wasn’t lying.

He truly believed he built it. 

And if he really did… It would explain how he was able to bring out eight dropships out of nowhere that no one could track the origin of. 

Edward Arlaoskas truly did built a warship by himself in the span of four months. 

She opened her mouth and closed it repeatedly before stopping. 

“What would you want in exchange for helping me retake all of Duchy of Andurien’s former worlds?”

The man looked at her for a second before shaking his head. “I’m not interested at all.”

And that… that’s what it was. 

“Then what would you want in exchange for not attacking my duchy as long as we don’t attack you?” she asked again.

“That’s easy,” he smiled. “I do not attack anyone not engaging in raids and piracy. There is no other price I accept.”

-VB-

Janos Marik

Atreus, Free Worlds League

3003 October

“A bonafide warship?” Janos asked incredulously as he leaned forward to better read the report in front of him. 

The report from SAFE detailed a meeting between Duchess Humphreys and the “Fleetmaster” Edward Arlaoskas. Janos still remembered the cautionary advice he gave, and he had followed through as he had been advised. 

A conversation with his brother after the demotion of the general, who was his friend, led Janos to the conclusion that, yes, his brother really might have become his enemy if he executed the general for the same thing he didn’t execute his own friend for. 

“Yes, captain-general,” SAFE Vice Director Jaime Cornejo replied with a nod. “We have confirmed multiple times from our agents on Claybrooke and Andurien that these pictures are legitimate.”

Across from him was SAFE Director Senna Auswalth, who looked at her own copy of the report with a grimace. 

“Your thoughts, Director Auswalth?” he asked.

The gray-haired woman without any wrinkles looked up, showing him the heart-shaped face that reminded him too much of his late wife. “For the Free Worlds League, this is a mix-bag.”

“Elaborate.”

“I am sure you are well aware of the situation right now. Politically, we are extremely volatile with the latest defeat against the Lyrans. I will be shocked if the duchess doesn’t bring up the warship as a topic.”

“Page 19 may be relevant to why she hasn’t,” the vice director sighed. 

Both Janos and Senna quickly flipped to the page, wanting to know what could have kept the passive-aggressive duchess at bay. 

And then Janos read it.

And read it again. 

And again. 

He leaned back.

“He replicated AI…?” 

“That is the claim,” Cornejo nodded. “Unfortunately, we can’t verify it. However, I believe the duchess is keenly aware what kind of situation would arise if that particular tech was to get into anyone’s hands.”

AI was the realm of the Terran Hegemony, and one that the Inner Sphere failed to replicate with success. 

Oh, there were black sites across the League, some of which did research AI. However, there were always problems, bottlenecks, and other issues that kept AI from anything more than theoretical with their current technology. 

And Arlaoskas overcame what billions of C-Bills and almost a million programmers and engineers could not. 

“... We need to get our hands on his warship.”

“It would be impossible. Page 20.”

They turned. 

“... How many fighters?”

“More than the number of aerospace fighters ten of our average regiments would carry. More than that, it’s a warship. With how many fighters it carries and all of which are also probably AIs, even a sustained nuclear barrage won’t be enough to take it out.”

“Then what can we do?” Janos asked. “I want solutions, not defeatism!” Arlaoskas might have helped him and the League, but he needed to help more.

Unfortunately, they didn’t have anything else to work with.

So as it was, they would just have to keep track of the Fleetmaster.

And Janos would get more white hair when he learned weeks later that the only known warship in all of the Inner Sphere disappeared along with all of its occupants.