Mathias grit his teeth.

“What — who is talking? Offo?”

//I am AI615, the General Intelligence core created to manage the M1615 carrier, which you are standing inside of.// The voice echoed from the space all around him.

“You’re a demon.” Mathias said, a whisper at first, then growing louder and angrier. “You came from out there, didn’t you? From out in the stars. And you came here to destroy this place — to destroy the church. What are you and Offo hiding? How many humans have you killed?”

//We are directly responsible for the death of 8 humans on the local colony. We are not demonic.

“How many more people do you plan to kill?” Mathias asked.

//If it was our choice, Mathias, we would kill no one at all.

Mathias walked into the blood, the disapproval on his face growing as he neared the piles of bodies, blood sloshing around his feet.

“The Templars say the same thing. ‘We fight because we must, not because we want to.’ Then they burn cities and sacrifice them to nobles.” Mathias’s look grew manic, and he pulled the dagger from his sleeve, turning it back and forth and looking at it wistfully. “I should destroy you and end this crusade here.”

There was a long, tense silence as AI615 calculated her reply. Mathias bluffed, staring up at the blue dungeoncore, begging for her to justify herself.

//How many undead did you raise?

“What?” Mathias asked, taken aback.

//When you and Tobias took over the village, how many of those undead did you raise?

“I… why does that matter?” Mathias frowned, his eyebrows furrowing. “We… How do you even know what happened in the village? They threatened to tell the church. Half a dozen of them surrounded us with torches. It’s not like we sought a village to slaughter. We just needed food.”

//Then why did you raise them as undead? Why not bury them?

“We needed to. To defend ourselves.” Mathias grimaced.

//Human farmers are weak, Mathias. Their bodies didn’t help you defend yourself. The truth is Tobias could have simply stolen the food in the dead of night instead of approaching the town. He knew what would happen when he approached with an undead host at his back. He incited them. And then you used their corpses —

“It was them or us!” Mathias said. “I did what I had to do.”

//No. The corpses of those farmers were practically valueless. You didn’t have to. I saw Offo’s memories of the fight, of the dungeons. They’re fodder. Those people died for nothing.

Mathias dropped his dagger into the blood with a splash, face going white.

“What did we kill them all for? If we didn’t need them to survive?”

//The truth is, we are not so different. Forced into this situation by our circumstances, we take the best path available to us. Sometimes we must sacrifice our moral code. But you were much worse off following Tobias. We don’t have to kill humans, Mathias. We can produce all we need from the dungeons. We can feed and clothe and house you. We can impart power onto you. And all we ask for is that you raise the mindless monsters we slaughter. Just like you did before.

“And exterminate the Templars along the way?”

//There is over one way to exterminate an enemy, Mathias.

An image of Tobias floating unconscious in a pod floated through his memory. Mathias looked down at the ground, at the blood that he was wading through. He had been running constantly. First from his family. Then from his city. Then from the church. He had spent his whole life running, not thinking of the consequences, just trying to survive to the next day. 615 was right. They weren’t really that different; just people pushed to the edge doing what they had to do, in the end.

And Offo had killed fewer people than he had.

I watched as Mathias walked past me in the pitch black hallway. 615 was already rapidly at work, increasing our work forces morale and assisting them in righting their mental state. Soon, Mathias would be happy and well adjusted on the ship. It was important to monitor human mental health, especially since being in space meant extended periods of isolation.

I had spent the night watching the various feeds, standing in the hall while 615 worked to produce the first batch of combat drones. The first drones would arrive at the more expansive human settlements shortly, but surveillance had already begun. Some of the rat-drones had stowed away in convoys of wagons. The wagons deviated from earth convention; each one of them was huge, with gigantic, towering wheels, pulled by chitinous monsters the size of trucks.

They looked like gigantic, trundling insects, somewhere between elephants and beetles, half a dozen moving in every trade caravan down well-worn roads. Each of the wagon convoys carried mercenaries by the dozen.

I ordered rat-drones to pull open the tarps of the cargo, inspecting the various luggage they pulled. It was largely what you would expect; unrefined resources and food heading inland, with refined weapons and manufactured goods heading out.

A feed pinged me on an alert, and I tuned into a fuzzy image of a rat hanging down from the bottom of a wagon. The word ‘Templar’ had triggered a drone to alert me to the conversation in the back of a wagon. The wagon bucked up and down, the rat-drone sinking faux claws into the wood to keep itself attached as the road steadily became more rocky.

“ — just feel a lot safer if they were around. Especially after what happened up north.” A merchant shivered. “The Crusade IS glorious… I would never spread heresy. But maybe they should defend our own country first.”

“Come off it. There’s still the reserve corps. Plus the Itinerants — you know, the White Order.”

“They sent the higher ranks of the White Order, too.” A third voice joined. “All that’s left is the capital reserve of the Red Templars. And… Hardrada.” They spoke the word in a hushed whisper, as if saying his name would invoke his anger.

Then the conversation switched topics.

The Templar’s had mustered. But that made little sense.

I did some math estimating the average travel speed of the wagons, comparing it with the distance to the city based on the scans of the world in our initial descent. There was no way that the information had traveled to this convoy — the army would have already closed in on us if that were true.

The Templars couldn’t have been marching south to us. So where were they?