Arascus stared at the piece of paper. Fer grinned widely. Kavaa shook her head. Helenna scratched hers. Iniri’s face went pale. Olephia gave two thumbs up. Neneria sighed reflexively. Only Kassandora grinned.

Fer finally spoke. “I’ll do it.”

“Mikhail has arrived.” Iliyal stood up and grabbed the latest report Kassandora had sent as Alee let in the man. It was a review of the Binturong Mark Two, and not a pleasant one at that. Mikhail could probably take it, he took her other replies and those used far more… colourful language.

Iliyal looked at the maid, without Arascus about, she had gotten far more unpleasant to deal with. Far more aggressive and intrusive, Iliyal had no idea what she liked about him. She stood there, dark eyes watching him and a terrible smile on her face. Arascus sighed and waved her away as Mikhail stepped in. “Wait!” He shouted. “Bring Fleur and Edmonton.” Alee’s smile dropped.

“And here I thought you wanted some rest.” Iliyal shooed her away with his hands and she disappeared behind the sliding door. Mikhail looked at her, then at Iliyal.

“She likes you.” He said. Iliyal shook his head and waved for Mikhail to sit on the other side of the desk.

“I know she does.” Iliyal said. “I don’t know why.”

“An elven general? Ever in his prime? Blessed by Kassandora?” Mikhail said idly. “It’s not hard to put two and two together on what’s going on in her mind.”

“You’re not here for gossip.” Iliyal shut him up and threw Kassandora report at him. “Here’s a reply to what to your SPG BM2. Kassandora wanted to rename it to SPA, self-propelled artillery.”

“Not hard to do.” Mikhail unbuttoned the top button of his white shirt. He had come in a suit, the man was travelling first class everywhere at this point, he had to look the part, although it was obvious he didn’t like the formal dress Sara had designed for him. His expression dropped when he opened the page. It was a printed copy of what he had written, with red text in Kassandora’s clean handwriting marking almost every page.

Binturong Mark Two. – This is a Binturong Mark 0.5

Armour: 15mm of Steel alloy – Why are we going heavier? This is a long range weapon, it doesn’t need to be armoured this much.

Speed: 24km/h – The M1 is slow enough at 40. Why have we made this slower?

Seven gears – The M1 already has enough trouble with four gears. You’ve made it slower and added even more gears and points of failure.

Range: 30 Kilometres – Good.

Fuel range: 180 Kilometres – I forgot we have a travelling gas station with us.

Autoloader: You’ve increased the minimum crew to five and yet still added whatever the fuck this is. The Binturong cannot keep up maximum rate of fire when it’s manually loaded. What is the point in this?

Thinner treads – Is there a reason for this? Why change what isn’t broken?

Glass driver’s window - The hardened plastic is good enough and it doesn’t shatter. Don’t use glass.

You’ve made something worse in every way, with more points of failure and complicated mechanisms that are prone to failure. You are to put a big gun on the back of a truck. That’s it. Searching years for a “perfect” is worse than having a “good enough” now.

“Kassandora likes it I see.” Mikhail said as he turned the page. Even more red here.

“She wants something simple, this is why I called you. She called me and told me to drill it into your head. A cannon on a truck. Lightly armoured and fast. It doesn’t need full rotation, we have ammunition trucks so it doesn’t need an internal storage. We need something that is fast.” Iliyal thought for a moment. The engineer needed to understand in a way that engineers understood.

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“So this is too specialized then?” Iliyal heard two swords clash in his head, they made a spark, and that spark turned on a lightbulb.

“Light artillery.” That was the language. Then he caught himself, they had light artillery in the past, he didn’t want mortars that had a range of a few kilometres. “The light version, of heavy artillery. Understood?”

“Not really.” Mikhail said.

“This is heavy artillery.” Iliyal tapped the diagram of the Binturong design. “We need a version of this that is lighter. Think about it like this, this is used for sieging Olympiada, now we need field artillery to be used to support battles. Things that can quickly duck in and out of cover, things that don’t matter if they’re destroyed because their replaceable.”

“So you don’t want a Binturong then?” Mikhail asked.

“Not a Binturong.”

Mikhail Alash leaned back and clapped his hands. “You should have said so earlier! We have several designs for new models. The only reason we tried this was because you said you wanted to redesign the Binturong.”

“The factories in Arika are going to be building this chassis.” Iliyal said.

“Then it’s the factories or the design. Something has to be changed.” Iliyal sighed. He got a bottle of whiskey out from underneath the desk and poured the two of them a drink. It was as much a pleasant gesture as it was for later. Iliyal always needed a drink when writing a report to Kassandora recently, she back as the Goddess of War, and War demanded and took and burned whatever it touched.

“I’ll contact Kassandora then.” Iliyal said. “But that’s for later, you can submit the designs, but we have a change of plans.”

“Oh?”

“It’s more up your alley. We need guns.”

“We have a new version of the Alash. Better, we used the Binturong design, it’s rapid fire.”

“Guns for beastmen. I’ve sent a team to Kira already you can use for testing, but they have to travel on foot.” There was no reason to explain why, the beastmen were being kept secret. They couldn’t just ride a plane. “There’ll be there a few days after you return.”

“Guns for beastmen?”

“Go fucking crazy with them.” Iliyal said.

“Excuse me?” Iliyal raised his and Mikhail clinked his. He took a small sip.

“Whatever you want, consider these prototypes for a human army. I’m going to send elves in a month, I want long-range weaponry for them.”

“Guns are long range.”

“I meant sniper rifles.”

“I see.” Iliyal smiled “And the beastmen?”

“Anything and everything, they’ll talk with you there. Beastmen prefer things easy to use that can be used as clubs too. But go crazy, fuck, make a napalm gun if you can.”

“We already have a design for a flamethrower.”

“Then stick it on a minotaur. Mikhail, we’re outfitting a warherd that will make the world shake in fear. Anything and everything you can think of, do it.” Mikhail smiled and took another sip.

“That’s wonderful news.”

“I have some bad news too.”

“Oh?”

“Arascus requested half your engineers. Not the gunsmiths, choose ones that work with engines and so on. You’re on permanent gun duty.” Mikhail’s smile got only wider.

“I thought you just said you had bad news.”

“Well it’s news in either way.”

“I’m a weapon designer, not a mechanic, this is excellent news.”

“Well at least one of us are happy then.” Iliyal replied and then looked at Mikhail again. He was grinning wide, smiling with the thought that he was allowed to do anything he wished to do as long as it armed the beastmen. “They’ll need armour too.”

“Oh?”

“Not steel, something more… I don’t know. I just thought of it. But if you can, it’d be grand.”

“Armour isn’t my domain.” Mikhail said.

“I’ll look around then.” Iliyal said. Honestly, he preferred this answer. It was better to simply deny than to make a mess and then have Iliyal clean up after.

“That’s everything, you’re free to go.”

“Short meeting.”

“There was little to say, take the reports.” Mikhail nodded to the paper on the table.

“I’ll send the prototype designs, pick one, I’ll think of a name too.” Iliyal rolled his eyes. It would be something terrible again. What sort of name was Binturong anyway? Mikhail stood up, tapped the papers on the table to get them into one block and saluted. Iliyal dismissed him with his own salute and the man left. Alee was already outside. With Fleur and Edmonton there.

Alee was wearing her black maid dress. Fleur was in vicious purple, Edmonton in a black and white suit that made him look ready for a business meeting. Alee led them in, saw the unfinished glass of whiskey and picked it up. “That’s Alash’s” Her smirk dropped, she put it down, picked up Iliyal’s and drank his. “That’s an executable offence.” Iliyal said flatly.

“I bet you’d love to execute me.”

“I fucking would.”

“Oh really?” She raised an eyebrow, her tone low and sultry. “You want to-“

Edmonton interrupted her with a cough. Fleur crossed her arms and spoke. “Alright lovebirds, what do you want?”

“I wanted you two, privately.” Iliyal narrowed his eyes at Alee. The maid rolled her eyes and left.

“Classic.” Edmonton said.

“You should just sleep with her already.” Fleur added her own smart comment. Iliyal felt a vein pop in his neck.

“If I wanted relationship advice, I have access to the Goddess of Love thank you very much.” Iliyal said. “Now, I brought you in to tell you what you two are going to be doing.”

“And that is?”

“I’m sending you back to Arcadia.”