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Villain Academy
027: Admiral Koenig

027: Admiral Koenig

According to what Humility told him, the Fourth German Reich wasn’t composed of stupid people.

Or, to be exact, they were mostly evil and fed with some freaky althistory that connected all past attempts at the same failed ideology into some sort of relay match of the same ideological torch, every subsequent iteration established by surviving members of the last one that went underground and prepared another attempt for decades or even centuries.

So, indoctrinated. But not stupid.

The on-board computer of the Reich’s scout armor had a proper firewall, passwords and computer security in general. And while they had a Transcendent Cybernetic Intelligence on their side, it was something of a limited usefulness.

Mostly because they couldn’t let Humility into the Ball Python’s mainframe, as the civilian technicians would have then noticed that it wasn’t what it claimed to be. As a result, Humility was forced to work at the speed of a transhuman programmer. So, fast, but not that fast.

Still, the mainframe meant a lot of processing power to use in the process of cracking the code.

Regretfully, the enemy still wasn’t an idiot, so they only managed to recover some of the files before the rest of it self-destructed.

There was no such problem with the stuff they got from the necrodrones (and the corpses encountered beforehand), but mostly because the goods they got were from the regular military. Not from some sort of special forces.

Besides, the Reich was technologically much more advanced than New Springfield, being a major ethnopolity with a much longer history.

The section of the computer concerning orders and miscellaneous chit-chat was mostly gone. The commplant in their brain was fried automatically on the user’s death, like most of the military models.

But they managed to get a partial recording from the positioning system. Humility managed to piece together the route that the scout took on their way to their eventual meeting with God (or at least someone that decided to arrange said meeting).

The result of Humility cross-referencing that with the map of the maze they established thus far was a long red line coming from the edge of scouted area deep into the uncharted zone. Line with a lot of branches and twists.

As expected from a scouting party.

There were two points of interest on the map.

“Judging from the timestamps of the movement…” Humility announces. “...the scouts stayed for several hours in one area, about one day away from our current position. There was some movement around the same area that feels a bit big for just the trio camping in a room.”

“Advance camp?” Revenant asks. Humility was kind enough to drop by his office. Apparently soon enough they’ll be capable of just sending each other's message through the ship’s network.

With Overhaul there, they won’t kick the bucket if using some of their individualities will make the implants in their brains explode. They’ll just be knocked unconscious for a day or two.

”Seems likely.” Humility replies. “There is a high chance that our friendly local knight is going to pay a visit to it. Meaning that we’ll at best find a pile of fresh corpses. This way or another, you should consider sending Virtue under her invisibility cloak to go and confirm it.”

That wasn’t a bad idea. If Virtue was told to proceed with maximum caution and retreat immediately if they noticed any living Wehrmacht troopers, they should be able to stay undetected.

The key word being ‘should be’. Then again… he trusts her skills.

“I’ll send her and Singularity.” Revenant decides. “Just in case the knight was still looming around. He might try to nab a single member of our group for questioning, especially if we move far away from our base.” Seeing two enemies with unknown (but certainly weird) powers?

It should give the knight a pause. Or at least let them repel their attack. If a single knight can beat up two SS-Rankers, the situation is going to go from bad to apocalyptically disastrous. At least in terms of how utterly outgunned they were by the world of the far future.

“Alright.” Humility replies. “It’s about six hours away from us. The other thing I wanted to talk about is the location of what I presume to be the source of the enemy forces. It’s about two days of travel away from our present position.”

With an endless maze that was surrounding them, it was a lengthy distance. Unless you had a map, finding the right way was almost impossible.

“How large is it?” Revenant asks. That was what interested him the most right now.

“Large.” Humility replies, Revenant gives it a tired look over the desk. “But big parts of the recorded movements of our scout throughout were distinctly… warship-shaped. I ran some size comparisons, and I believe that we’re dealing with a battlecruiser, most likely a Karl Hauser-class one. Judging from the history of the ships of that class, I’m almost certain that it’s Admiral Koenig.”

Karl Hauser-class? Centuries in the future, and he still needs to deal with people intellectually masturbating to the Butcher of Frankfurt. Mankind just doesn’t learn.

“Wait a moment.” Revenant actually needs to confirm something first. “Just how expansive your databases are for you to know that particular ship? You mentioned a million capital ships throughout the Human Space, there has to be way more ships of smaller classes. And while I can believe that you have some sort of incredibly potent hard drive, I can’t help but wonder if there wasn’t anything more useful to put in there.”

Humility stays quiet for a few seconds, before clearly coming to a decision.

“Unethical human experiments…” The AI replies. “... were pretty much my job and my calling. But I think that I have a right to have a hobby.”

“Your hobby is spaceships?” Revenant asks, still trying to wrap his mind around the concept of genocidal rogue AI having a hobby.

“Unexplained disappearances.” Humility corrects him. “Superstitions. Mysterious murders. Scary stories. This sort of thing. It’s almost disappointing how often the answer is painfully mundane, like ‘space pirates’ or something equally boring.”

Yeah, no. Revenant isn’t even trying to unpack this.

“Alright.” He decides to move over to something more constructive. “Admiral Koenig?”

“Flagship of the 88th Battlecruiser Squadron participating in the Battle of Neu Hamburg as a part of the Kriegsmarine’s 5th Fleet.” Humility replies. “Pretty famous battle. Two ethnopolities, one from the Res Publica Christiana and one from the Conservative Bloc, decided to engage the Fourth German Reich in a prolonged battle of attrition over that particular star system, in hopes of exhausting their economy.”

“Horrible idea.” Revenant comments. “Does anyone still remembers the American fuck-up in Vietnam? The totalitarian regimes don’t care about casualties. They can lose ten times more soldiers than a democracy, and it’ll be the democracy that will break first.”

“Thankfully none of the countries involved in that battle were a democracy.” Humility replies, prompting Revenant to groan loudly. “Space battles nowadays tend to be prolonged. Lots of skirmishes followed by ships retreating to resupply, and then everything happening again. Rather than describing up to several dozen of those skirmishes happening on orbits of various celestial bodies as separate battles, it’s easier to summarize the whole thing as one big battle, starting when the attacker enters the system and ending when there is only side left through either retreat or total annihilation. Sometimes this might last months.”

“And Neu Hamburg?” Revenant asks. He’s both interested and almost certain that he doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Twelve years, seven months and twenty-three days.” Humility replies. Yeah, this is incredibly stupid. “More than three thousand separate engagements, with a total number of lost warships approaching twenty thousand, including nearly five hundred capital ships. Massive waste of human life that ended up leading practically nowhere, as while the Reich was put on its knees and lost Neu Hamburg, the two attackers exhausted themselves so much that they failed to push any further.” The Humility stays quiet for a moment. “New Springfield’s entire Navy was composed of forty-nine warships, including one capital ship, for a scale comparison.”

Revenant against himself, whistles loudly. That certainly puts things in perspective.

“That’s a large difference in sizes.” He admits. “New Springfield really was a Third World country, right?”

“Subsectors are like this.” Humility replies. Revenant gives it The Look. “Alright, so a very quick explanation of how it works. You remember when I told you that with the modern Hyperspace Drive it takes about two weeks to get from Sol to Alpha Centauri?”

“Yep.” Revenant nods. “Felt really slow, especially for a species that has up to one hundred trillion citizens. Without a megastructure or two to put them all in.”

“Correct.” Humility agrees. “It’s extremely slow. That’s why there is little point in spreading too far. It’ll simply make the whole area of space impossible to govern. As a result, the inhabited zone around the Solar System is only about three hundred light years in diameter. Beyond that, nothing.”

“That’s…” Revenant blinks at it. “... can’t be all.” Humility confirms his suspicions and nods.

“That’s because within those three hundred light years diameter, Mankind found two hyperlanes.” Humility replies. “Long-distance ‘tunnels’ in Hyperspace that allow for incredibly fast travel between two distant points. Say, five minutes to move from point A to point B, several thousand light years apart.”

Oh.

“Now I get it.” Revenant decides. “Once getting to the other end of it, the whole process started anew. Few hundred light years, top, of the area around the hyperlane exit. One or more new hyperlane entrances found. And so on.”

“Precisely.” Humility confirms it. “The nearest habitable world to the hyperlane exit was typically made into a hub of the Solar Commonwealth’s presence, fleet anchorage, army garrison, administrative center and so on. Each of such sectors, following some preparations, could be more or less self-sufficient in case of local problems arising. With the sizes of the sectors, you could expect the Commonwealth’s forces to arrive to assist you in a few weeks, maybe a few months, rather than in a few years, as would happen if a sector kept expanding endlessly. With the way hyperlanes work, if the local garrison starts failing, you can expect help from the bordering sectors to arrive quickly and in force.”

This is giving Revenant some strong ‘empire sprawl in Stellaris’ flashbacks. But it makes sense in the context.

“Today most of the Human Space is composed of about a hundred sectors, spread from the Outer Arm of the Galaxy to the Scutum-Centaurus Arm.” Humility continues. “Which sounds as if we control most of the Galaxy, except it’s a network of dots too small to be noticed on the map. But the biggest thing is how incredibly dense those sectors are.”

“I can certainly agree…” Revenant comments dryly. “... that humans nowadays are dense, at least in my opinion.” Hey, he can make a joke too.

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“Very funny.” Humility responds. As expressionlessly as ever. It’s actually almost hilarious. “Mankind seized a very cool exotech right at the beginning, pretty much a factory for self-replicating nanomachines that could terraform planets and moons rather quickly and at nearly no cost. It was destroyed during the fall of the Solar Commonwealth, when the defeated democrats decided to finish the Third Succession War by slamming several ore freighters into the Commonwealth’s headquarters on Titan. But before that happened, it was used. To a somewhat crazy degree.”

Uh-oh. Is it another field on which humans ended up getting a bit of a power trip?

“How crazy are we talking?” Revenant decides to ask.

“By now, close to thirty celestial bodies in the Solar System alone have a breathable atmosphere.” Humility replies. Oh, well, that’s very crazy. “It’s similar in the remaining sectors. Habitable planets and moons are numberless. Of course, for every Earth, Mars or Venus you get three to five Europa’s and ten to twenty Oberons.”

“That being…”

“Three to five more or less decently livable worlds that can’t maintain more than twenty or thirty million of pops, due to their size or due to low gravity meaning fragile atmosphere.“ Humility replies. “Ten to twenty worlds that are so far from their star that they are in a state of endless night, lacking light to grow something more advanced than fluorescent mosses, maybe grass. Not to mention having atmospheres so fragile that trying to put more than ten thousand people in one community would generate enough heat to cause upward air current with the strength to pierce the upper layer of atmosphere and start venting your precious air into space. And you still need to replace air from time to time, as the atmosphere would vanish on its own in a few centuries otherwise.”

He thinks it over for a moment, Humility being nice enough to let him digest that.

“I originally wanted to complain that Mankind was too enthusiastic with that technology…” He decides. “... but now that I thought about this, those planets sound like the sort of place that are perfect to use as penal colonies. Or as places to have your soldiers train surviving in a rough environment, where to put your research facilities that can accidentally unleash something horrible, or simply as a place where people who want to live away from civilization can move.”

Humility nods.

“It’s pretty common for those worlds to be used like that.” It admits. “Population centers in the goldilock zone, then more specialized worlds outside of it. Worlds like Europa are often used to house the heaviest form of industry, and especially the one that’s most likely to pollute or contaminate everything around it. They even have lower gravity due to being smaller, which means easier and cheaper transportation off-world. You can imagine the sheer amount of population density throughout the sectors as a result of this, am I correct?”

He can. There are around a thousand stars within 50 light years distance from Earth. Even if planets in the goldilocks zone were relatively rare, the ability to terraform each and every one in a short period of time meant a staggering number of Earth-like worlds. So, he nods.

“As a result, even smaller ethnopolities within the sectors tend to have multiple Earth-like worlds, each with a population counted in billions.” Humility continues. “A handful of them came close to maintaining control over entire sectors. Which also means securing your flanks, as the hyperlane exits are perfect chokepoints. Sectors are where the big politics happens, it’s also where the Reich is located.”

“I assume…” He finally realizes where it’s coming. “... that subsectors, like where the New Springfield was located, aren’t just smaller administrative divisions beneath sectors.”

“Correct.” Humility nods. “Subsectors, numbered in thousands by now, are basically sectors. Except accessible through hyperspace conduits, which are pretty much hyperlanes but much fainter. We figured out how to travel through those much later, and long after the terraforming technology was lost. They are colonized, naturally, but the population density is massively lower. By the standards of the subsectors, New Springfield is basically a highly developed superpower, with an Earth-like world and a sizeable Navy.”

“None of the sectoral powers just… annex those?” Revenant asks.

“They are all protectorates under the Confederation of Mankind.” Humility replies. “Funding your ethnoalliances colonies there is fine. Seeing your colony conquer the colony of your competitors is fine. Direct military intervention is very much not fine. It’s written into the Founding Charter, so if you do it, you get exiled from the Confederation automatically and we all know what it means.”

Oh, so that’s the game everyone’s playing. Subsectors are basically underdeveloped backwaters not worth the time… but what if Mankind - or, even better, your ethnoalliance - rediscovered the terraforming technology?

Then every secured starsector would be elevated into a new sector. Hundreds of millions of population blooming into high billions or trillions.

“I get it.” Revenant nods. “Let’s return to the earlier subject.”

“During the course of the battle, Admiral Koenig’s squadron was nearly cornered by their enemies and forced to retreat into Hyperspace, in hopes of rejoining their fleet by going around the Neu Hamburg system before translating back into Reality.” Humility has no issue remembering what they were at. “As you can imagine from the context that we’re all living in, they never arrived. Since no ships of the Holy Roman Empire and the Kaiserreich involved in that theatre reported engaging them in combat, the situation spawned a lot of speculation. Ranging from the ships deserting and going pirate, through…”

“I really get the feeling that you should have a whiteboard right now.” Revenant decides to cut in. “One filled with pictures and other fragments of your theories that you could point at while giving me this lecture.”

Humility actually stands there, quietly, for several long seconds. Eventually, it speaks.

“Do you think…” The AI says. “... that I ever had anyone to show such a whiteboard to?”

Oof. Big oof. Is it normal that he actually feels kind of bad for it? It suddenly sounded as if it was just… lonely.

“I’m fairly sure that Clockmaker will gladly listen to you talking about your theories.” Revenant replies. And now… now he is trying to emotionally console a rogue AI with ‘Slaughterer of Billions’ in its list of titles because no one wanted to see its conspiracy board. This is… not how he imagined his afterlife. “Me too, if it’s related to something that’s actually important right now.”

“I see.” Humility says. No actual indication if it’s planning to do it or not. “Anyways, I have quite a lot of data concerning that particular mystery. I have the ships’ manifests, list of armaments, a lot of intel about the major officers of that fleet, last orders they received… among other things. Does that count as useful?”

Revenant looks back at it. Then starts giggling. Moments later giggling changes into cackling (Humility actually tilts its head a little in what might be confusion). Eventually, he composes himself and calmly asks for details.

He might have just gotten a beautiful idea, although it’s something that depends on way too many external factors to be able to call it a plan. But… It was one of the ideas of the sort that won him the war.

***

Virtue and Singularity flew towards the Reich’s advance camp, using their individualities to speed themselves up, all while Virtue managed to multitask enough to make sure that they were more or less invisible.

Naturally, sounds were still there, and once they got a bit closer they also had to be on guard against wider spectrum optical sensors and traps. This made them arrive at the camp slightly later than they should have.

The knight was there first. It’s made immediately obvious by the sight of a black-armored soldier that had his head slammed into the wall right outside of the advance camp. He probably tried to escape, but the knight caught up to him.

Virtue jumps off her platform, Singularity following suit. They have to approach cautiously, and be ready for an attack. Virtue needs all of her individuality at her disposal.

She pushes the door into the room that the Nazis picked up for their camp while covered in her hardlight armor. It’s a perfect place to put some improvised explosives in and they don’t have the time to call for a bomb expert (especially as their list of those is limited to Clockmaker, Revenant and, maybe, Palmer or Humility).

Nothing explodes.

But someone clearly did a number on the Nazis.

The advance camp looked like an average checkpoint/command post of the US Army they remembered. Some tables, some crates of supplies, a series of bedrolls by the wall. Some of the tables were covered with military equipment, others with food. Maps and computers were clearly a thing of the past.

There were a lot of blood splatters and bullet holes on pretty much everything. Six corpses, three of them wearing Reich’s armor, the others clearly surprised off-duty - their corpses were scattered around the bedrolls to begin with.

Nasty.

Virtue enters the room cautiously, Singularity right behind her. This is a whole room of loot that they need to look through. Decide what might be the most useful for Revenant to figure out the size of the enemy forces. This sort of thing.

All while making sure that they aren’t surprised by the enemy. And yet, they are surprised.

Virtue barely has the time to conjure a Golden Bulwark when someone falls from the ceiling and lands right next to her, swinging a sword at the villain. The bulwark slows it down enough for her to jump back, the enemy not immediately rushing after her.

It’s the knight. Seriously, there is no doubt about it. Seven feet tall giant wearing armor, clearly stylized after plate armors at least on the surface, except white rather than metallic gray. Looked thicker at the front (especially around the chest area, in the mostly androgynous way similar to what Humility had going), looked much thinner on the sides. Parts of it on the side were clearly stylized to look as if there was chainmail there instead.

Great helmet. Like a stereotypical crusader helmet. Also a large kite shield, decorated with what looks like a crest. Sword, dove and a raven. Weird combination.

How the fuck did Virtue miss a seven feet tall space knight in heavy armor? Well, that becomes apparent almost immediately. The ceiling in the room was uneven (not an uncommon site throughout this maze). The knight hid in a crevice. How did he cover the entrance to it? A hologram?

The irony of someone surprising Virtue of all people with an illusion of this sort is palpable.

“Look, we aren’t here to fight you, alright?” Virtue decides to try a diplomatic solution. “We’re here…”

Knight rushes forward, way faster than Virtue’s comfortable with. His shield bash clashes with her own shield, except her hardlight shield partially cracks and she understands immediately that if she tries to repeat that a few times, her bones will be at risk of suffering the same fate.

She conjures her own sword, expecting the knight to try to stab her with his own blade. She realizes the mistake when the knight chuckles loudly (there is something electronic to it, like one of those voice scramblers that make voices unrecognizable).

She is unceremoniously disarmed with a single movement of the knight’s sword, her shield pushed to the side with his own, and then she is sent flying by a kick to her abdomen.

Yeah. She is more of a ‘jack of all, master of none’ when her combat skills are involved. Too many weapons to master, she prefers to surprise people with sudden switches between them. The knight was really a master swordsman. Bad idea.

At least she manages to stop herself from impacting the wall with her individuality. She still flew through some of the tables. She stands up just in time to see Singularity swipe her hand down, the other villain finally gets into range.

The knight jumps to the side a moment before the Heavy Gravity move has him pinned down. Singularity’s entire achievement is a loud scratching noise as something in the floor protests against being exposed to gravity five times the one of Earth. How the fuck did he…

Virtue has no time to think about it, instead she jumps towards the knight while conjuring Blade of Midsummer above his head.

The bastard dodges it. Despite not even glancing in its direction. Then they finally get a good hit in, Hammer of Dawn striking the knight’s shield and exploding, pushing them back and covering some of the crest with soot.

The knight beats Virtue in technique. She should default to power, instead.

The enemy, regretfully, understands that. Instead of engaging her in melee again, he dashes towards Singularity, Virtue lunging after him just as the gravity villain tries to blast him with Heavy Gravity.

Four blasts, all of them miss due to the knight dodging to the side at the last moment. Virtue is almost at his back when he suddenly does the pirouette, his blade going for her throat. And it goes through it, except it was just one of her copies.

She has maybe three seconds to be happy about her success before the knight sees through the illusion and slams his elbow into her face. That, most certainly, broke her nose. She also might have a slight concussion.

Singularity could tear the whole room into shreds if she went all out, but Virtue is there. She would most likely die. Instead, she decides to go into melee too, lunging at the knight’s back. If she as much as touches him with a finger…

She doesn’t. The knight takes advantage of Virtue being knocked out of the fight for maybe three or four seconds. He dodges Singularity’s lunge to the side, before counterattacking. By the time Virtue’s daze is over, Singularity is standing in a rather awkward position, her hand still extended forward, the knight standing right next to her, his sword on the back of her neck.

Singularity did the wise thing and froze. He was a bit too far from her body to significantly injure him with her individuality, she might have tear his sword out of his hand, but…

“Surrender, or she dies.” The knight says calmly. Virtue considers her option for maybe five seconds. It’s not like he’s one of the Nazis, right?

“Alright, fine.” Virtue announces, straightening up and raising her hands up in the universal gesture of surrender. “Just let her go.” Singularity might be brainwashed, but she refuses to let her allies die. There is enough of a hero left in her.

The knight is staring at her for a few seconds. That’s not the reaction to surrender that she expected. But then, something even more unexpected happened.

“You passed.” Knight announces. Virtue has enough time to blink at him before he kicks Singularity towards her, while dashing through the door and vanishing.

She feels down about losing a fight 2:1 against the knight for about five minutes afterwards before she realizes something. The most logical explanation of what just happened was that the knight dodged attacks before they happened because he knew them beforehand.

Revenant is going to be overjoyed when he hears that the knight might have read their comics.