A woman with long light brown hair walked through the hallway, heading to the Palace’s dungeon. After an eventful night, everyone in the Palace was still restless. However, this woman did not.
She approached the dungeon entrance. The entrance was guarded by two people.
“Morning,” greeted the woman with a warm smile.
“Will you be going inside, ma’am?” one of the guards asked.
“Yes.”
“Let us accompany you.”
“No need.”
Both guards were visibly worried. They knew what was inside the dungeon.
“Are you sure, ma’am?”
“Of course! That thing has died, it can’t harm anyone anymore.” The woman assured the guards.
“Very well. If something happens, just shout, we’ll run inside.”
“Thank you!”
The woman then walked down the stairs leading to the dungeon below the Palace. When she arrived at the dungeon, she saw multiple jail cells. The jail cells were empty, except for one cell. Inside that cell, someone would mistake the thing lying in there as a scrap of metal trash. But, it was the body of the Devil—or a robot in the understanding of the Galactic Empire.
The woman rummaged through her pocket to find the key and opened the cell’s door.
She looked at the body with a curious gaze.
“Are you sure this thing has shut down or died?” The woman said to the empty room.
{Yes, Lieutenant Lucy,} a voice spoke inside her, {when he got shot by the bullets, it must have struck its power core.}
{….}
Lucy looked at the holes near the robot’s power core.
“I guess you’re right, Lyra,” Lucy said to the empty room again.
{Lieutenant, please refrain from speaking when you are alone. Just {talk} inside your mind, like I taught you.}
Lucy sighed, “It’s no fun.”
{What if someone walked into the dungeon and heard you talking by yourself? If the crew heard about it, they would think you’re crazy.}
{Well, I’m an android. I can just make an excuse,} Lucy said in her mind.
{Sure, Lieutenant, sure.}
Lucy chuckled. {So what should I do here? I can’t do anything without any equipment.}
{We can’t extract any information from inside the robot’s memory without the help of any equipment.}
Lucy touched the robot’s face, {Where is the memory chip located?}
{Should be in his head.}
{I guess we can just bash the head open.}
{The head was made from titanium and there is a chance that the memory chip will get damaged if you do that.}
Lucy grumbled. She had been crouched down near the body for a while.
{So, we should take it back to the ship?}
{Yes, possibly. Or we can bring this body to the secret base Commodore Lucas found.}
Lucy stood up and stretched her arms. {Oh right, they did find a secret base. They must have tools to get this thing open.}
Lucy leaned on the cell’s wall, her gaze was focused on the robot’s body.
She was thinking about how to locate and infiltrate the robots’ hideout.
{Lyra, how come these robots were able to fly?} Lucy asked.
{Magic?}
Lucy sighed. {Don’t joke}
{I’m sorry, Lieutenant… Could you take a look at the robot’s feet?}
Lucy crouched down again and looked at the robot’s feet. {Hmmm?}
{Look at the sole.}
{Lyra, I don’t know what I’m looking for…}
{Don’t worry. Look there. That’s the reason why they could fly. Thrusters.”
Lucy was flustered. {What? Thrusters?}
On the robot’s feet, there were small thrusters. The thrusters were small, but they had a powerful thrust to allow the robots to fly.
{What the hell? This is cool,} Lucy said with excitement, {Can we add this to my body?}
{I do not know about that, Lieutenant. The researchers who made you might know.}
Lucy was disappointed. {Figures.}
Since there was nothing she could do. Lucy walked out of the jail cell, She locked the jail’s door and walked outside the dungeon.
Lyra said to her, {Commodore Lucas is in the southern part of the city. We should report our findings}
{Alright, Let’s go to my brother!} Lucy said gleefully.
The destruction caused by the Night Devils could be seen clearly on the day. Almost half of the city was affected by the Living Deads and Night Devils rampage. The southern part of the city was the most severe area since it was the suspected place where the outbreak began.
Along her way to her brother’s, Lucy—inside the body of the android known by others as Lyra—saw the aftermath of the outbreak. Rubbles strewn the streets and damaged buildings decorated the southern part of the city that day.
Civilians were seen clearing the rubble from in front of their houses. Soldiers were dispatched to help clear the rubble.
However, as she went deeper into the southern part of the city, she saw only a few civilians taking care of their houses; or what was left of their houses.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Is this what’s left, she thought.
Lucas’s suspicion about the southern part of the city as the starting point of the outbreak made more sense to her. If he were correct, then the population of the southern city would decrease dramatically—Which it did.
However, she wondered how all of this happened and how the robots were able to revive and "control" the dead.
She arrived at the place where Lucas had been since the morning. She saw a group of men surrounding him and were discussing something with him.
Lucy got down from the horse and decided to wait until he had done discussing with them.
A short while later, she saw him walking towards her. She bowed at him.
“So what did you find?” Lucas asked her straight to the business.
“From my preliminary investigation, the robots seemed to be of human’s creation. I’ve found out it had similarities with the early models of non-android robots the Galactic Imperium currently have. The robot itself has only skeletal metal structure resembling a human’s body.”
Lucas nodded. “So it could not be an alien civilisation’s creation then.”
“We could assume like that… Unless the alien civilisation studied the human race and created the robots according to a human’s structure,” Lucy said with a grin.
“I don’t believe that… is what I would say before reading an entry on the secret base.”
“Oh, so you believe my theory?”
“Not completely, but there is a chance… Does the robot have any memory chip?”
Lucy fidgeted. “About that… we don’t have equipment at hand to extract it.”
“Really?” Lucas was surprised.
He had thought the ship was equipped with the necessary equipment to repair an android like Lyra.
“I mean, we do have equipment on the ship,” Lucy said.
Lucas sighed a relief. “Oh, of course. But, you knew I don’t want to have the ship frequently enter the planet’s atmosphere…”
Lucy nodded with a smile.
Lucas went silent, deep in thought for a while, then said, “Go to the secret base. That place probably has anything you need.”
“Understood.”
“Take a few men with you and report to Max when you are there.”
Lucy was curious about how far Lucas’s investigation toward the outbreak and the Night Devil’s attack was. The discussion he had before looked serious.
She was hesitant to take a few men with her to the secret base if those men were needed to take care of the Night Devils.
“Are you sure? Don’t you need these men here?” Lucy asked.
Lucas agreed with her, he needed all hands he could have to bring down the Devil which had been a threat to the city.
“Agreed, but it would be nice to have more men to be trained in there,” Lucas said.
Currently, there were only 80 soldiers being trained in the secret base—2 soldiers were sent back as messengers when they captured the base.
Lucy understood Lucas’s intention.
“I’ll do as you say. Then how far is the investigation?” Lucy said.
“Well… It was rather bizarre. Here is a riddle, how do you resurrect a dead person?”
Lucy scoffed and said, “Huh? Are you crazy...? Oh, are you thinking of magic?”
“That was my first naive conclusion. Magic.”
Lucas let out a long sigh. He could not believe he just said that.
Lucy looked at him with a face full of question and disbelief. She could not believe that Lucas would even consider magic as the reason.
“Have you lost your mind?” Lucy said nonchalantly.
“Perhaps,”
Lucas had his arms crossed and Lucy noticed his right hand’s index finger was tapping his left arm.
Lucy knew Lucas’s habit like the back of her hand; right now what he was doing meant he was deep in thought to think of the solution to a hard problem.
As unbelievable as it was, the possibility of magic that could resurrect and control someone was not zero. After all, to the whole crew of HMGS Falcon 1 this newly discovered power was still a mystery and they were taught in the Academy to consider all possibilities.
If they want to approach the outbreak through the lens of known knowledge, then they could look at the fungi ‘Cordyceps’; A well-known parasitoid fungi that could take over its host body and fully control it.
An experiment done by the researchers of the Imperial Research Institute shows that ‘Cordyceps’ was able to take over the human body within 2 weeks after they were infected by the fungi. It required the infected human to bite on an uninfected or for the uninfected to be exposed to the spores excreted by the fungi long enough; the duration varied between 12 to 24 hours.
“If we are talking about the known knowledge. It couldn’t be the Cordyceps,” said Lucas.
Lucy perked her ears. “Why?”
“First, the incubation period. The fungi need 2 weeks to completely take over the human body and a week for the symptoms to show, such as fever, difficulty breathing, restricted movement and visible change to the skin. But, none of them were present.”
“How do you know that? Have you asked the surviving residents of the southern part of the city?”
Lucas pointed at a group of civilians not far from them. “I ask those people, they lived in here and have friends who died due to the outbreak. They went out of the city a week ago and yet, they weren’t infected. I asked them about the symptoms, but they had never experienced it.”
“Then, it must have been an unknown pathogen.”
“Yes. Because the Imperial Research Institute was able to weaponize Cordyceps and the symptoms don't match up with the known data.”
“What? A biological weapon?”
“Yes. The Cordyceps have been approved as a biological weapon by the Imperial Navy. But, it has never been used, fortunately. Probably due to the hassle of cleaning up the post-infection period, the Imperial Navy High Command saw them as ineffective and useless and have never used them on the battlefield.”
Lucy had an expression of someone who was surprised and disgusted.
“Wh-what? A biological weapon and the Empire approved the use of it?” Lucy said.
Lucas was weirded out by her reaction. He had never encountered androids or AI who openly disproved any Empire’s decision—especially AI used by the Imperial Guard.
Her range of emotions was unheard too, it was as if the android had a soul. However, Lucas paid no heed, he had thought the advancement of AI was far ahead that the AI was able to voice its opinion—he barely followed any news regarding the advancement of AI.
“Umm… Yes. Aren’t you an AI, Lyra? You should have known better than me,” Lucas said.
Lucy was startled, she forgot that Lucas knew her as Lyra—the ship’s AI.
{Lieutenant Lucy, please mind your manners. You didn’t want him to know who you were, right?} Lyra told Lucy.
{Sorry, I got carried away. I didn’t know that the Empire would resort to legalise biological weapons.}
{The biological weapons were legalised in response to the rebellion of the Terzein Brotherhood. When they were backed to the corner, they resorted to guerilla warfare. The war then shifted to their advantage and the Imperial forces suffered considerable casualties. The Imperial Council, wanting a quick resolution to the rebellion, opted to heed Admiral Russel’s suggestion; that is the use of Bio-weapons. 6 months later, the rebellion was crushed without leaving anyone alive to capture.}
{Lyra…}
{Yes?}
{Do I have to tell him all of that?}
{It’s up to you, Lieutenant. I was merely helping you to get out of your own predicament.}
{Wow, thank you, Lyra,} Lucy said in a monotone voice.
{Are you going to speak something, Lieutenant? Commodore Lucas is waiting for your answer,} Lyra mocked Lucy.
Lucy was annoyed by Lyra. She could not hide her displeased in her face.
Lucas took notice of her expression.
“Are you alright?” Lucas said.
Lucy was startled. To Lucas, Lucy had been silent for a while before she showed her annoyed expression.
“Umm…” Lucy said.
“Are you tired? Overheating maybe?” Lucas said with concerned eyes.
Lucy was dumbfounded. “Overheating?”
“Well…” Lucas shrugged. “It took you a long time to reply to me.”
Ah, I messed up, Lucy thought.
“My deepest apology, Commodore. I was trying to scan my memory about the Bio-weapons,” Lucy said with a firm apologetic tone.
“Alright… I guess when you are not connected with the Imperial Guard’s mainframe you have a hard time remembering,” Lucas said.
“You’re correct,” Lucy said.
She was relieved that Lucas bought her lie.
“Then, go prepare for tomorrow. Make sure the robot is safely transported to the secret base. I’m going to finish my investigation in here.”
“Yes, My Lord.”
Lucas left Lucy to talk with the investigators who were investigating the outbreak. A feeling of sadness swelled up inside her.
I have to be away from him again, Lucy thought.
Lucy shook her head. “No, you were given an important mission. As long as I can help him, I’ll do everything, even if I need to go to the end of the universe!” Lucy muttered to herself.
As she was about to leave the area, she noticed someone was watching Lucas from afar—as if they were spying on him. She looked at the person, it was a woman, who was helping the effort to clean the rubble.
“Interesting,” Lucy said with an intense gaze towards her.
The woman did not notice Lucy’s gaze as Lucy left the area with a suspicion. Lucy looked up to the sky.
Hmm… It’s better safe than sorry, she thought.