35

The simulation chamber loomed above us like a colossal cathedral of steel, stone, and technology. It was a closed-off arena so immense that it could fit four football stadiums within its oval and dome-shaped structure. Situated on the southern breadth of Level 18, this was where the true magic happened, where my troops had been training for the past four weeks with the aid of the small dose of nanites I had provided them with.

Though the procedure was a success without any known fatalities, they were sent to the recovery ward for a few days to adjust to the effects of the nanites. The vast majority of the force had consented to their injection. Although it was still too early to determine their progress’s efficacy, many claimed that their senses, strength, and agility had been enhanced almost twofold on the battlefield. Approximately seventy-three percent of Legion Invictus had received the nanites.

Half an hour after my speech, I led the dignitaries and their entourage to the chamber’s observation deck, fixed ten stories high from the combat grounds where Dr. Jani Urho, a Finnish physicist I had recruited, led the half a dozen scientists waiting for us on the observation deck. I let them sit on the couches strewn around the room and ordered the servers to hand them some refreshments.

Steel walls and bare floors surrounded the arena, where the first and second cohorts of Legion Invictus were already standing from the side, decked in their armor and carrying their weapons. Joining them were three hundred or so naval officers from the Imperial Navy, joining in this exercise. But it is what lay within the chamber that genuinely captured the imagination. A vast, intricate network of sensors and processors, all carefully calibrated to simulate the world in perfect detail. The air hummed with the faint buzz of electricity, a reminder of the immense computational power that drove this behemoth.

At first, Chabert, Walker, and Carrasco appeared perplexed about what they were supposed to witness. I clapped my hands, and a holographic screen materialized on the western wall of the observation deck, projecting a feed of San Francisco and its desolate and decrepit topography. One could even see the rotting bodies strewn on the streets, the civilians killed by the quartz. The feed was aimed directly at Portola Drive near Merced Manor against the faint shimmering borders of the plasma dome.

But this was no ordinary feed of the city. It was a meticulously crafted simulation designed to replicate every nuance and detail of the real world.

In shock, Chabert brought her hand up to her mouth while Walker and Carrasco audibly gasped. President Seydoux remained steadfast, whereas the Swiss councilors averted their gaze from the screen, wanting nothing to do with it.

“Why are you showing us this?” Carrasco asked, looking offended.

I pointed into the arena. “That is what the troops currently see on the ground.”

They all looked at my troops waiting from the wings, but the entire arena lacked any crumbling buildings, bodies, and ruins. Just a bare floor and almost a thousand legionnaires standing on opposite sides.

“I don’t see anything,” Chabert said.

“It’s a simulation,” I said. “I’m feeding the images through my legion’s eyes, fed by the nanites in their bodies. Through the chamber’s advanced algorithms, researchers like me could manipulate every variable, from the weather to the traffic patterns, and even the personalities of the simulated individuals like the quartz.”

I nodded over to Dr. Urho and, using his datapad, added the quartz roaming the ruined city.

“Here, we could watch and observe the troops. Create scenarios on the battlefield without casualties and tweak their response to be applied to the real world. We can also improve the nanites based on how the legion responds and assimilate to them. We can also increase the difficulty of the simulation by adding obstacles and other challenges. Prime helps with creating these variables.”

“And this is what your troops had been training for?” Walker asked. “A siege on San Francisco?”

“That has always been the goal of the empire. To liberate San Francisco. I had made that position clear from the beginning.”

“And?” Walker asked eagerly.

“We have a forty-six percent success rate,” I answered truthfully.

“Just forty-six?” Carrasco blanched. He did not expect that number.

“Better than the survival rate of the American soldiers at two percent three weeks ago, Mr. President. And there’s a reason for that number. We’ve analyzed how the quartz fight is based on my physical run-in with them on my ship. We can extrapolate that behavior to, say, a platoon of the quartz. By then, it gets tricky. They’re melee combatants. They don’t use guns, or at least, they chose not to.”

“Chose not to?” President Seydoux asked.

“We believe the quartz to be a war-like species, who probably value honor above all else. Our conventional guns are ineffective against us, so they choose to fight us with swords instead. They probably think we’re too weak to fight anyway.” I walked over to Kyle and Alonso, knocking on their breastplate. “But I’ve countered their heat swords for resistant armors and have used their natural defensive capabilities like their carapace built into the suit, courtesy of the dead quartz we have acquired from San Francisco.”

Suddenly, I grabbed the pistol from Alonso’s holster and shot him point blank on the head. Chabert and Walker ducked behind the sofa. Carrasco jumped behind his secretary while their security detail grabbed their weapons and aimed them at me.

Alonso Ruiz did not flinch from the shot. He grinned like an idiot.

Shields deflected the bullet, splitting in half mere inches from Alonso’s cheek.

I raised the pistol high for everyone to see. “This is a SIG Sauer P320-M17. A standard-issued firearm to the troops of the US Military.” I shot Alonso again three times. The shields deflected it.

Alonso pretended to yawn. “Uh, what’s up?”

I stifled my chuckle. “As you can see, I’ve built a miniaturized version of my ship’s shield for one that is fit for a humanoid. This is also built against the quartz. Let’s say the quartz have guns after all, and they fire the same energy beams as their vessels; a legionnaire can theoretically survive a miniaturized burst of the same weapon if it was a gun, say, a rifle.”

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“For how long?” Chabert stood up and smoothed the creases of her dress suit.

“Two or three shots before the shields are down. Plenty of time for my soldiers to duck and take cover and wait for their shields to replenish.”

I turned to the MI6 agents behind Chabert, still holding their pistols. “You can try shooting me with those guns, but it won’t do anything. It’ll merely tickle.”

“You still issue your men to carry those kinds of weapons?” Walker pointed at the Sig Sauer.

“Oh, no. This is just for the demonstration. Now, this—” I pulled a gun from my holster, hidden by my cloak, and I extended it into the size of a rifle. “—is a gun.”

At first glance, the collapsable rifle looked like an M4 carbine. Still, it had been heavily modified with a fatter bolt carrier on a brick-like upper receiver, almost like it swallowed both the barrel and the muzzle. The magazine well was missing entirely. It looked heavy but surprisingly light, barely weighing three-and-a-half pounds.

“Where’s the magazine?” Carrasco asked, looking more interested.

“It doesn’t need them. The weapon shaved off a five hundred-gram cube of tungsten alloy into the size of a twenty-five-milligram rice grain and suspended it in a ferromagnetic core. Theoretically, you can have twenty thousand bullets per cube.”

“You made unlimited bullets?”

“Well, I wouldn’t use the word unlimited. In the heat of battle, then yes. We’d still need to replace it after the metal’s gone. Every hundredth shot or so, the gun overheats, and there would be a six-second delay for the coolant inside to counteract the calefaction.”

I turned it around here and there, feeling its weight.

“How does it work?” Chabert asked.

“A tiny tungsten metal is put into a Higgs field resistor and a gravity suppressor to dampen its mass. So, when you pull the trigger, an electromagnetic current creates a force and pushes that rice grain to extreme velocity after leaving a zero-g chamber about the size of my pinky finger.”

“Let me get this straight: you built a tiny electromagnetic and an anti-gravity generator inside this thing instead of gunpowder to fire this gun?” Chabert asked.

I nodded. “And also made the hand grip only to recognize a legionnaire. That way, it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands.” I smiled confidently. “I did say I was going to revolutionize the military industry, prime minister. I’m going to show you how.”

Prime, keep the drone stationary, I thought.

This is a waste of resources, forerunner, Prime said in my head.

Just do it.

The drone crawled out of a duct and hovered about fifteen feet away when I pulled the trigger. A slight jolt as the rifle kicked back, not too heavy as it maintained its sight on the drone’s center of mass and reduced the sound by half, acting like I’d placed a silencer on the muzzle. The little ammo, glowing in translucent red-orange with a bluish trail caused by the gravity generator, blew a wide hole through the drone, which fell into a heap.

The dignitaries all stepped back, gawking at the ruined drone at the center of the room.

“We’ve tested it on the quartz’s carapace. The bullets will go through,” I reassured them. “And it doesn’t; well, we have these.” On my other hip, I pulled out a short sword.

Carrasco narrowed his gaze. “A sword?”

I shrugged. “A normal short sword made out of tungsten carbide, but turn the handle, and it becomes a heated blade. We have to thank the quartz for giving us the idea. This is hot enough to cut through any material via a ceramic fiber coating like silicon. Hopefully, we could use this in melee range against the quartz’s armor and their shields.” A second drone approached with a metal rebar, and I demonstrated how the sword cut it in half with ease like butter.

“Now, I know these are all neat toys, but you may be wondering how effective it is on the field, which is why I’ve brought you here.” I gestured to the simulation chamber behind me. “Dr. Urho, is everyone ready?”

“Yes, your grace,” Urho said.

Dr. Urho tapped on the datapad and opened the observation deck’s windows. I walked over there and gave a small wave to Chabert and Carrasco before I jumped out of the window ten stories from the ground.

“Armor on,” I said.

My voice imprint triggered instantly from a small palm-sized box clipped onto the back of my belt. Armor enveloped me. When it detected I was falling, it prioritized creating booster boots around my feet and legs, slowing my fall by releasing a slight discharge from a small portable reactor. I floated gently to the ground, surrounded by the First Cohort, who saluted me and took their positions. The Praetorian Knights followed suit, jumping out of the observation deck, and since they already wore armor, they merely gave their boots a charge, gently putting them on the ground behind me.

Alonso shook his head. “For a second, I thought I would see a meat bag splat on the floor.”

I laughed. “You can’t get rid of me that easily.”

Smitty nodded up to the observation deck. “You gave almost half of them a heart attack, sir.”

I connected to the comms. “Dr. Urho, we’re down.”

“Copy. I’m gearing up the simulation now.”

The observation windows closed. I couldn’t see the other dignitaries since the windows were opaque from this side of the arena.

The ground shook beneath us, and our platform lifted off the floor. However, it broke into two, separating the First Cohort from the naval officers, which quickly took their positions around me. The nanites projected the hologram, transforming the platform as if we were inside one of the frigate’s flight decks, more significant than the ones on a corvette operated by twenty officers. Out of the window was San Francisco, surrounded by forerunner frigates and corvettes, and I watched for five minutes as they reigned fire on the quartz’s shields, slowly depleting its power.

We’ve done this exercise many, many times. In this scenario, however, a small contingency of Imperial Marines managed to sneak in behind enemy lines, using the tunnels the Americans had used previously in their initial (failed) siege. However, I did not want the foreign dignitaries to witness that because it was the only part of the mission that I was uncertain of success.

Of the sixty-four tests we’ve run through the tunnels, only six versions succeeded, but with a high casualty rate.

So, I dropped that exercise for the sake of what we’re about to do. In this scenario, the Imperial Marines successfully disabled the plasma dome from inside the quartz ship.

And now we’re here, ready to kick some fucking ass.

Captain Dane Abbott strode from behind and told me the Marines were already secured in the dropship. I nodded and turned to my knights. “Let’s give them a show, shall we?”

Smitty, Alonso, and Kyle shared a grin. The other knights did as well.

“Remember, the purpose of this exercise is to show those skeptics up there our firepower. So, let’s give them hell.”

“Oorah!” The knights shouted in unison.

I marched with the knights toward the spherical dropship secured by mechanical arms, which could seat twenty-four people. We secured ourselves on the cramped seats, waiting for the drop.

I couldn’t help but feel like a fraud. Although I’ve told Prime to make this exercise harder, it didn’t sit well with me that I am hiding information about the siege from the foreign dignitaries, which hinged on the success of the Marines who were doomed to enter the tunnels. More than half of them would die.

Alonso leaned forward. “Hey, you okay, man?” He whispered out of earshot, worried.

I nodded. “I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”

Alonso didn’t look like he believed me, but he dropped the subject.

I projected a feed on the bottom right corner of my vision, displaying the First and Second Cohorts advancing into the city, already displaying the weapon’s firepower against a platoon of the quartz blockading Portola Drive. Prime had found it the weakest point of the quartz’s defenses and suggested we put pressure around the area. Once we penetrated through their vanguard, we could quickly flank the rest of the quartz. In theory.

“10 seconds until the drop,” Prime’s voice echoed across the dropship and started counting down.

The dropship lurched as the bulkhead doors below opened. Even though the frigate shook occasionally, the knights’ faces were much calmer. They knew this wasn’t real, but it felt real enough that if they did get shot on the ground, It’d stung like hell.

We all experienced Prime’s simulations of a gunshot to the head, the chest, and the groin. Hell, I’ve “died” three times by getting blown apart, which the suit sent electric signals where the pain should be for two seconds, and then rendered that legionnaire unconscious for the duration of the exercise. However, once I got killed, the exercise was an automatic failure.

But this was no regular exercise. Important people were watching, and I didn’t want to get blown apart again.

Suddenly, my stomach jumped up my throat as the dropship simulated its descent toward San Francisco, landing in the middle of Mission District. Heavy artillery fire echoed outside the hull. It shook again as it touched down, and we all stood up and readied our rifles.

“Knights!” Kyle shouted. “They might not be real, but they sure stung as fuck. Remember last time? So eyes peeled and weapons locked.” He then turned to me. “On your word, emperor.”

I paused, nodding. “Open the door.”