Even as we were still prosecuting an all-out war, we were building, conniving, and grabbing power.

------

“Duke Corunsun.” Duke Parablum carefully analyzed the Ducal Seal Briggs had allowed him to examine, and after long moments handed it off to his darker counterpart. He closed his eyes, waiting silently.

Duke Rimval shook his head, and handed it calmly back to Briggs. The Coronal Duke sighed.

“A Ducal Title that dates from before the Empire, and on the other side of the Rift. What have you discovered?”

“That any and all references to Corunsun anywhere are watched like a hawk by waiting Mekker datasifters. Going through anything resembling traditional channels will be noticed instantly. So, aside from the fact that he’s got a hereditary supercarrier-plus ship out there begging to be rebuilt, we’ve nothing,” I said promptly.

“Noble houses have been built on far less. Most new Houses approved by the Imperial Regents might get a cruiser equivalent, with perhaps a support ship or two. A pre-Empire Colony Ship...” Duke Parablum shook his head. “And you are certain the Mechanist Guild knows of it?”

“Yes. They must have found some wreckage from its planetfall, realized that it landed here, and made whatever excuses they could to set up shop here. I do not believe that they do not know that it is a corrupted Throne field Energizing the minerals here. They want to learn how it was done and replicate the effect, as well as grab the technology of the ship for themselves. The area the ship is in is effectively timelost, and its tech is pristine and functional despite all this time.”

The two Dukes looked at one another. “High treason,” Rimval murmured softly, sighing. “The Empire would have thrown unlimited manpower at the problem for the chance to retrieve an example of archaeotech in such perfect shape.”

“It’s a good thing they didn’t. We’re pretty sure that if they learn how to duplicate the effect, it will resonate with every Throne field on every ship in the galaxy, and open Warp Zones around all of them, and possibly the Beacons and Crystal Throne itself. I think you can imagine what would happen.”

“Humanity would be extinguished from the galaxy,” Duke Parablum stated softly. Everyone present nodded.

“What are you doing about it?” Duke Rimval asked keenly.

“I have gained control over the demon who was managing the modifications to the ship’s Throne, and have frozen the Warpzone. While its mutational effects are still in place, there are no new overlays with Warp battlezones going on. The inhabitants of the Warpzone are killing one another off with great speed. It is now possible to sterilize, sweep, and loot the Warpzone, before releasing it.

“Oh, and we’ve discovered at least fifty different incursion sites around the perimeter of the Warpzone. We think the Mekkers have made quite a few expeditions into the Zone trying to get to the middle, and failed utterly over the years.” Not being able to lay down a non-shifting corridor would effectively doom them, as having a large army only attracted larger forces to them endlessly, until they were overwhelmed.

“What are your intentions at this point?” Duke Rimval asked somberly.

“Well, what Briggs is intending to do is start up mass production and expansion of Rantha Tech, now that we’ve TL17 printing and fabbing available. The first machines that make production machines have already been made, and we are recruiting the workforce.

“The combination of retooling the system’s tech to Rantha Standards and rebuilding the Celestial Tribute is going to require massive amounts of material. A great deal we are going to get from inside the Warp Zone by looting it to the ground. Our mining requirements are going to explode.”

“You are going to require direct intervention of the Orders. The Mekkers have been waiting a long time for this... their logic engines will eventually realize something is amiss when the mining results do not match up with that produced and passed on, and there will naturally be incredible resistance to changing the technology,” Duke Parablum noted.

“I believe the holdings of Huldeiver will satisfy many of our initial requirements. We’ve not done any divinations, but I believe a cerevore is riding his meat, and has been for many years. Goldspire is probably totally dominated by cerevores and ready to explode, as are his facilities.”

“Are you ready to move on them? Some of them are quite valuable,” Duke Parablum observed, without batting an eye at the news.

“The operators have been taking out the self-destructs first. Initial probes were very positive in all the wrong ways. The mutant cerevores have been coming out of Huldeiver labs, and they’ve been funneling biomass down to the Xenos for decades,” I reported. “I know your Striker teams are busy with all manner of ops, but this might be one for the history books... and I’m pretty sure you’re going to have to hit Goldspire from orbit.”

The two older men looked at one other, saying volumes with just glances. “We’ll set that up to execute as soon as a Mentat metaconference can confirm the situation in Goldspire.”

Trying to take a fifteen-hundred-meter mountain of durasteel and laen was possible, but not without horrific losses, especially if the enemy already held it. The number of cerevores working out of it was probably not small.

All these things were something I could contribute to, but didn’t need to. Plenty of kids eager for major Karma, and major assets were going to be used one way or another. I didn’t need to be present for any of that.

“You have an odd look in your eye,” Duke Rimval noted.

Briggs looked over at me, and rolled his pale violet gaze. I grinned. “I thought I’d go for a swim.”

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

The Spiked Plains weren’t actually plains. They were the result of the massive amounts of alkalines which had drowned the water on this world.

Hundreds of feet of salts covered the seas of Janus III. Water was leeched out of the sea below, dried out, and formed great jagged forests of lethal, razor-sharp, poisonous, and corrosive crystals over more than half the surface area of the planet.

Some of the crystals Energized over time, if they built up big enough or were hit by enough Warp discharges over time. Finding such things was both a huge payday for the lucky, and often an early grave, as lots of nasty things gathered around such hills of deadly crystals, eager for some fresh and not at all deadly walking waterbags to munch on.

Somewhere down underneath this combined bonanza and unending mass of death by windstorms, shrieking crystals, weird creatures, and energy discharges that could turn hundreds of square miles into death traps, were the long-lost oceans of the world; bitter expanses of buried waters and what remained of the warped sea-life of Janus III, as mutated and formidable as its land creatures.

The water wasn’t quite as corrosive as the deserts, but only just. Super-saturated water dominated the surface layers, where the salts both dissolved and reformed, and occasionally heavy boulders fell in a constant rain of corrosive crystals, washed away in the motion of the water, falling to the seabeds far below, scattering into crystal rains that rarely made it all the way... but enough did to coat the bottom in a layer of insoluble crystals only the hardiest of creatures could survive in, a desert at the bottom of the sea.

This was where I was going swimming.

Plenty of the kids could fight in the air, the streets, the tunnels, in space. But those who could take on the ocean and what lived there? Well, it was a waste of their time, really.

Me? The main aspect of my time was all mental. I was doing design work and logistics actions, coordinating massive movements of people and material, working strategy with Anatolia and the new Strategos Circle she had put together, coordinating combat venues all over the planet.

I didn’t actually need to be physically there for anything, and while I wouldn’t mind physically contributing to anything, I was making Karma just defying the current order with the new technology that was unfolding.

Our Printer had already punched out the first production module that could make modules that could make Harmonic Drives. We were just arranging for some of the materials, and the first Harmonic Drives would be ready inside three days. Another week, and the support modules would be getting spit out as well.

With the Briggs Brothers in basically total control of the main smelters, forge facilities, and furnaces, getting proper supplies was basically a done deal.

Of course, the amount of repair work being done up in orbit was demanding the full attention of the Mechanists, who couldn’t spare much attention for the machinations we were putting into place. Indeed, the scaling-up of our mining was now looked at as a timely blessing.

So, fully able to do all of that with three-quarters of my brain, doing something physical was cool enough, but I didn’t need to be fighting. The Karma-hungry kids and all their Weapons were basically handling that.

No, Sama was gonna help run the war effort by doing deep penetration.

A Vajra is a very useful tool. A basic ki/Essence Vajra, the most basic one, lets you keep out wind pressure, and forms the foundation for your Vajra Resistance, where you simply don’t let unwanted energies interact with your physical form.

Once you get a Diamond Vajra, you can keep out water, not just clean it off yourself. So, you can jump into a lake, and there’ll be a 1-4 inch aura around you where the water won’t enter.

The really odd thing about this is that you can vary the pressure on your Vajra from frictionless to full. While the ‘natural’ thing about being surrounded in a bubble of air is that you should bounce to the surface, it isn’t the air keeping the water away, it’s your Vajra. You can transfer the force of the water pressing on you to the opposite side, rendering you absolutely pressure-neutral in the water, or, say, you can have it press on one side, and be frictionless on the other.

Naturally, once you do that, you start moving. The more pressure you apply in one direction, the faster you can go.

A Vajra is inherently frictionless, so all you have to do is have enough pressure to get the water out of the way... and the water behind you supplies it. Streamline your Vajra to help the water move around you, and someone with a strong enough Vajra can really, really move underwater... and do it with almost none of the wave-ripples that proper physics says should happen, as they get neutralized and channeled back against one another behind us as we move.

The more pressure, the faster we can go. So, the deeper we went, the faster we went.

Air wasn’t a problem at this point. I could effectively hold my breath forever, recycling as I went. Vacuum wouldn’t stop me, so being underwater wouldn’t, either. Water pressure meant nothing to a Vajra... the water stopped, that was it. Pressure was immaterial. It only worked for inches around me, but inside those inches, it was pretty absolute.

There was no light down here, save the twinkling, falling stars of some Energized materials falling to the ocean floor. Bioluminescence was in the ultraviolet range, meaning the smaller creatures that survived were in some pretty weird colors, and only flashed intermittently, unwilling to wave eat-me signs around.

My objective was pretty clear: I was going to find at least one of the invaders’ submerged cities, and then we were going to blow them apart.