Two cadets in military school graduated at the same time. Ten years later they meet on a street corner, one as a general, one as a captain.

“How did you make general so quickly?” The captain asked.

The general picked up a rock, listened to it, and handed it to the captain and asked, “Tell me what this rock says.”

The puzzled captain puts it to his ear and exclaims, “It says nothing!”

The general simply replied, “That is why you fail.”

-Old Soviet Joke

“And how did their capital ship get away, again second admiral?” Grand Admiral Vincentius spat, his overly smooth lips quivering as golden eyes bore into Agricous.

His left eye had started to itch. It always did in meetings, but he could never find time in them to top up its container. Vincentius always gave him death stares when he did so before speaking even at the best of times, and never seemed to appreciate the maintenance that came with his art. Not that he seemed to appreciate it in the first place even.

But who is one to refuse a meeting of the Directorate Admiralty. Especially not when it is called by Vincentius. The man was one of the most influential members of the void forces and commanded a level of begrudging respect, even from him. Though he could not condone his augments. Just really!? All of that filler and skin stretching to just remove those wrinkles and try to make a plastic illusion of youth from age. At least the black hair dye works…

Though his decor choices for the meeting room were better. Grand white and black marble all around, large banners of The Directorate’s emblem, and an impressive mural standing high by the rear of the room right behind the grand admiral. The depictions of angels of victory and officers of the fleet as bold as it was inspiring.

He swallowed lightly, his eyes flicking back, “Their capital ship, currently identified as part of the Delta Class, did manage to make an emergency hyperspace jump before it could be destroyed. However, it’s entire space wing was destroyed during the engagement along with the vessel itself taking heaving damage, with several of its batteries knocked out. You may also be pleased to note that the boarding torpedoes from the Order of New Age Knights were able impact the vessel and report a successful attachment.”

Vinventius huffed, “The Order are savages, I don’t care if their pet projects work or not, I care about the effectiveness of our warships and how many of the rebel vessels we managed to destroy.”

There’s with that venom again.

“We did manage to destroy two of their escorts,” Lie, “and all of their electronic warfare drones,” They mostly destroyed themselves, “so it is rest assured that they have taken a not insignificant loss.” His mouth opened for a moment, his brain thinking for a moment before pushing forward, “But rebels sir? I’m not sure if that is an accurate classification.”

“Of course, it’s an accurate classification, second admiral,” Vincentius growled, rising from his seat as let himself tower over the rest of the admirals, “They are just temporarily disillusioned and petulant remnants of the old order that need to be brought inline and filtered through. Same as this will not be a war, it will be an operation, as we will be operating on the fabric of humanity to remove its vestigial and cancerous excesses.”

Agricous slowly nodded, the man’s clean logic being hard to ignore, “Yes, Grand Admiral.”

“And what about our ship’s gunnery? In your report it states that it was “good”. But good gunnery usually results in more than a few escorts getting destroyed. Not to mention the embarrassment of losing one of our own in the process.”

“Well sir, while our regular crews have scored highly on their gunnery tests, we did have to take onboard a set of new clone ratings to replace the last set. I believe some of their poor skills might have caused the rails of the guns to warp and cause the poor hit rate we experience. I’d also like to ask if I can therefore promptly dispose those ratings and get fresh replacements.”

“Permission granted, dispose of them how you wish, replacements will be provided within two weeks.” He sighed, “I hate how we have to rely on those inferiors onboard our warships, but until The Director of Military Cadres assigns us the personnel, all of you just have to deal with it. Has anyone else been having issues with their clone ratings?”

“I have been grand admiral,” piped up the pasty faced third admiral Silucis, his right eye shifting to an alternative lens to focus on Vincentius, “They have started to be uncooperative, yet their chips are showing up as fully functional. I assume they are faulty, and I would like to send them to the fleet bio regulation cadre for them to be examined.”

Vincentius turned, his jaw tightening slightly as he made a few steps towards the admiral, “You have already been issued orders to start a probing action in sector beta next week. So, you request is denied. Find a way to bring them back in line for your patrol and you do not need my permission to use the more traditional techniques for that. When you succeed in your mission, I might re-consider your request. Anyone else?”

“No sir.” The room answered.

“Good. Now Agricous, once you have gotten your replacements you are to set out with all the ships that are void worthy and start a scouting mission into star system Lupercal. I know you should be well acquainted with it given your little, pirate hunt, a few months back. You will report back once you have found all of the rebels bases of operation within the system and report back to reunite with the rest of your forces. Is that understood?”

“Of course, grand admiral,” Agricous replied, “But, while we may be focusing on the rebels, if I may ask, do we have any plans for the Soviets? They could be crush by out fleets in-”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Silence second admiral!” Vincentius barked, saliva rippling from his plastic lips, “We will fight in the order the directors tell us to and right now this measly group of council republics are of no concern to us! Despite their name they are more unitary than the so called IFC and are far less degenerate, they directors will speak to them further and we shall not harm them at all until the orders come! Is that understood!?”

“Yes, grand admiral!” Agricous answered with the rest of the room, waiting for Vincentius’ eyes to move from him before he let himself grimace. A quick moment of fumbling later brought his eye bottle out. He uncrewed it and tipped his head back a little, taking a small cap off his eye capsule and squeezing some of the liquid in before caping everything back up.

“-Now it is important to note that our enemy are abnormalities, all of them. They have let them infect their society and their minds. They cannot be brought to see reason. It also makes them weak, unable to make the sacrifices and use the tools necessary for their victory along with rotting their minds. You can take advantage of this easily and you can be sure they won’t adapt our methods to counter it.

But, be aware that they will not shy away from underhanded tricks either, ambushing us in dust clouds, debris belts and anywhere where they can hide like rats. Anything they can do to get the advantage on us they will do, which is why you must all be alert and extra judicious in destroying their fleets. For if we leave enough scraps, it may be the cause of our doom. Got it?”

“Yes, grand admiral!”

“I also want everyone to be aware that the Department for Internal Security will also be for some miserable, self-serving reason decided to deploy its own warships. They will try to take any glory from recovering enemy vessels and do not fucking let them. The Department for Research will be the ones giving us the praise for securing vital material, not them!” Vincentius’ jaw tightened even further, his mouth completely locked shut as he looked over all of them, “Promotions are at risk here.”

An opportunity to smooth some things over… “If you want some good news them grand admiral, my report has some sections that cover the excellent performance of the two Iris class auxiliary cruisers that participated in the attack.”

“I’ve read the part of the report second admiral like the rest of it, what about it?”

“While the range on the system was not as optimal as hoped, the performance of the system when it was in range went beyond our best expectations and almost completely blacked out their RADAR and communications. Not to mention the performance of our bio-electronic drone fighters against the rebel fighter complement. I believe, this might be a valuable… Booster to The Department for Research to know that two of their major military projects have had such a good field debut.”

The grand admiral’s jaw loosened, his face settling a little as he started to nod, “I want all the data you have on its performance and make sure it’s good and clean, I also don’t need any data on the potential range issues. If you do, I’ll make sure the new ratings have been given all the enhancements they need.”

Agricous had to resist the urge to smile, “Yes, grand admiral.”

----------------------------------------

“Greetings second admiral Agricous. Have you had a good meeting?”

Agricous chuckled as he turned to look at his aide. It was a plain looking clone with no discernible sex, it’s mouth and jaw replaced with an enhanced apparatus. A smoothed metal box containing air ports, speakers and nutrient injectors. With it the thing could change its voice to anything required or directly transmit messages over the net, all without moving or saying a word. A perfect companion that could be perfectly silent while he was trying to work.

Some officers were wary of cloned servants, especially with letting them into their offices like he did. Though as far as he was concerned, a rebellion over a hundred years ago, back before the proper introduction of chips and the refinement of their genetic code, was no reason to shun them now. Especially since the ones that did rebel lacked the proper mental conditioning that they should have had.

He sighed, “The meeting went as planned.”

“Event result, logged.”

“If only the main fleet hadn’t had a drive failure…” he muttered through gritted teeth.

The force he’d brought to bare against that pitiful IFC fleet was only the vanguard squadron of the 13th Battlefleet. The sharp tip of the spear, but yet-

Fucking drive failures!

He’d taken a close hit aboard the heavy cruiser Unsheathed Wrath while his force of eight destroyers, two more auxiliary cruisers, two heavy cruisers, a battleship and a light carrier had all sat hundreds of thousands of kilometres way. Their expected flanking attack via hyperspace jump arriving ten minutes late and two minutes after the enemy had left!

He'd needed to make an entire story about wanting to deny the enemy intelligence on their full strength to cover up for that failure. Though it didn’t save him from the humiliation and dressing down he had just received. To think he was only one measly slip up away from dealing the first blow against the enemy…

He pulled his bottle from his pocket and replenished his eye again, refreshing himself slightly as he pulled himself up from his seat.

His office wasn’t that bad. A grand polished wooden desk sat near the rear of the room. The dark panelled walls that surrounded it furnished with bookcases that reached up high to the ceiling which hung so high above. A nice study unless one knew about the grand, marble and fresco lined neo-classical palace of the grand admiral’s office.

He shook his head. The grand admiral was the perfect loyal fanatic of the Directors and knew how to present news to them, however he didn’t always know what truths to twist to get that news. Good luck for him that he was good at using his authority to get other people to do that, even if he had gotten blunter with age. A weakness for him, leaving his back open to those who were better at sweet talking to slip a dagger in.

“Weak…”

“Do you want me to start a new log admiral?” The aide asked.

“Negative, stay silent and don’t alert me unless a message comes through.”

It stopped, standing dead still as Agricous moved to his large office window. One of the few things that he could say was superior to Vincentius’.

He could see the marble finish of the fleet headquarters rush down the sides of the monolithic building, all the way down to its conical concrete base. The windows and columns slowly disappearing as the façade got closer to that base. The massive fortress like tower standing in one of the five points of a monstrous star fortress that stood firm inside the administrative district. The lights of the city twinkling in the twilight.

Across the rest of the district, other monolithic creations of concrete, marble, gold and steel rose out of the earth and dominated the landscape. Massive new pyramidal office blocks made of concrete and glass with landing pads on their wide roofs pushing against the intricate monuments to government.

But the two greatest was the Temple to Government and The Tomb of the Humanity’s Saviour. The crown jewels of Helios Prime.

The Temple sat upon a grand stone and concrete plinth that towered at two hundred meters above the ground bellow, each corner guarded by sub buildings. Upon it sat the grand plaza with all its gardens and fountains and the building itself. A circular building made up of columns and windowless walls that grew another two hundred and fifty meters up before capping off with a bronze dome. The stories of the hundreds of tons harvested meteorites required to complete the building being a fond memory that Agricous could still remember from his time in school.

Bu the Tomb, oh it was beautiful. A massive white skyscraper that consisted of multiple column and portico lined layers, stacked up upon each other as the building grew thinner and thinner. The top of every layer was lined with brilliant fires that burned no matter the time of day, always burning and illuminating each layer. All until the final one, upon which there was no fire, only the solemn statue of the first director, the creator of them all, eighty metres tall and holding the world in his hand.

The IFC had nothing like this. They had no pride, no true ambition. All the pictures that had survived of their cities were portraits of bland, miniscule, and uninspired landscapes. They could not show the glory of humanity. They are weak.