The Hungry Fortress Wants to Build a Battleship in Another World – World of Sandbox

“They’ve put in a request to hold talks on the Kingdom of Lepuitari’s side as well.”

“Oh? Are we finally going ashore?”
Though we still hadn’t concluded a treaty and were in the middle of hashing out various conditions, there was at least a proposal that we go ashore for a meeting—strengthen ties, exchange information on both sides.
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. The local Strategic AI has accepted. In a closed-room meeting aboard ship, practical matters can proceed, but formal agreement seems difficult. We also need conversation with ground-side practitioners, and it is preferable to conduct the ceremonial friendship treaty in an open venue.”

“Makes sense. The more people involved, the bigger the headache…”
That said, on the Paraiso side we were basically prepared to honor requests so long as they stayed within a certain line. We weren’t intending predatory contact; if the other party had no hostile intent, we were not averse to engaging.
The local Strategic AI had the judgment to accommodate flexibly on that front as well.

“Three days from now they’ll gather the principal figures of state and hold a party. Since Paraiso has come in the posture of a warship, we intend to prepare ceremonial uniforms.”
“Oh-ho. What’s the look?”
Ringo answered Commander Eve’s anticipation by projecting a hologram of the Android Communicators slated to attend.

The ceremonial uniform was white as a base: culottes and tights below, with a long coat over the top.
A slit in the coat set off the tail to clear emphasis, and their stately fox ears were left unobstructed by the cap to assert their presence.
“Oh, that’s nice. Properly easy to move in, and they’re armed.”
A large handgun and knife hung at the left hip, a sabre on the right—individual combat capability secured. The design stressed both a soldier’s crisp bearing and femininity while also presenting the features of a fox beastfolk to good effect.

“And here are the escort troops we’ll attach. Armament is standardized on the System Weapon in Assault Rifle form, and the uniforms will be gray. A visible stratification by rank.”
The escorts wore gray long-sleeves and long trousers, cinched at key points with black belts as accents. The Assault Rifle slung from the shoulder; a large knife mounted on the left thigh. A head-mounted display mimicking sunglasses covered the eyes, cutting their line of gaze.
“From the neck down they’ll wear a tights-type assist suit of artificial-muscle fibers to raise strength and protection. We estimate one individual can subdue on the order of ten ordinary soldiers.”

“Well now—that’s rolling out the luxury gear.”
Artificial-muscle fiber was, for The Tree at present, ultra-high-end equipment manufactured with copious amounts of so-called minor-element rare metals.

We were only recovering them from seawater or collecting the minute traces included in mining tailings; naturally, both recovery and refinement were extremely costly.

“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. We must avoid, at all costs, the loss of a trained Brain Unit. Even if restored from backup, at the end of the day it becomes only a near—but different—individual.”
The Brain Unit used pseudo-biological cells for its main computation element. Because neuron layout and synapse generation/connection were governed by chemical reactions, external disturbance had very large effects.
Accordingly, however many backups you took, it was technically difficult to manufacture a Brain Unit that was exactly the same.

Backups themselves were a technology that sampled and quantized from neuron and synapse positional data down to binding forces for preservation.
Acquiring the total information of a Brain Unit in an instant was, for practical purposes, impossible.
Strictly speaking, to take a snapshot of the entire unit you had to observe every cell’s state with zero time lag.

And once you embedded sensors for observation, the unit’s capacity swelled by an order of magnitude.
Therefore, the identity of the backup itself could not be guaranteed.
A Brain Unit restored from such a backup would be, in capability and memory, no different from the original; but in reality, the consensus was that it constituted another individual.

For that reason, both Commander Eve and Ringo held the stance that damage to or loss of a Brain Unit was basically unacceptable.
“Well, make it watertight on that front. Security won’t be an issue, right?”
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. We plan to keep attack drones on standby for Electromagnetic Catapult launch. We can deploy over the venue within one minute.”
In other words, even if something happened, if we held out just one minute we could bring the venue under control.

Combined with the data gathered by the spy-bot net, we could likely detect dangerous persons and bombs in advance as well.
The party venue had been decided yesterday, and preparations were proceeding at a rapid clip; but spy-bots had already infiltrated, so there was no worry about pre-planting by the other side.
“Additionally, we should watch for long-range attacks. However, so far our intelligence net has detected no trace of such assassination plans. Allegories disguised as everyday conversation might slip through, but the underworld shows no notable movement; a planned crime is unlikely.”

“Okay. I get that we’ll be going in fully prepared. I suppose I’ll just be an observer on the day…”
Ringo always anticipated various possibilities and addressed them. We lagged behind against magic fantasy, but with advice from Asahi our responsiveness was gradually improving.
The current headache was Asahi’s constant “Let me go to Telek Port City” call. We knew there was effectively no worst-case, but the reason dispatch hadn’t been approved—fretting over the smallest possibility—was that Ringo feared losing Asahi.

Even if they ranked below the Commander Ma’am in priority, Asahi and the other Androids were precious family to Ringo. If possible, she didn’t want to send them out from the safety of The Tree.

Even so, if confinement itself would cause needless stress, then—though reluctant—she would have to allow it.
“Even if some hostile act does occur, it will serve as a local-response model case. In the worst case, so long as we can recover the Brain Unit, it won’t be a loss.”

If no planned, organized problem was found, the last thing to guard against was a personal flare-up, or an attack by a lone perpetrator.
If a lone perpetrator slipped in among the security soldiers provided by the Kingdom of Lepuitari, there was a possibility we wouldn’t catch them with audio/visual collection alone.
“We continue ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) analysis, but it seems there do exist individuals who conduct assassinations with magic as their main axis. There were rumors of such a person in hiding even in the capital Moar, but we have not run them to ground. This is Asahi’s conjecture, but if magic also includes arts akin to espionage and detection, a target that evades those could likewise escape the spy-bot net.”

“I see. That said, unlike magic, our strength is the violence of numbers. You are increasing the spy-bots, yes?”
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. We are repeating mass production and transport. Bots have service lives, so eventually we’ll hit a ceiling, but at present the numbers are increasing.”
Bots at end-of-life either moved under their own power to a recovery point, or were recovered by other bots. As bases increased, the chance of exposure rose; as travel distance lengthened, operating time shortened. No matter how many you added, there was a point at which the balance of deployment and recovery hit its limit.

For now, there was no problem.
“Couldn’t we build an intelligence net that doesn’t rely on spy-bots? You know—embed in electrified appliances. Use streetlamps, that sort of thing.”
“Let us examine it.”

◇◇◇◇
At the party venue, preparations were proceeding at a rapid clip.
“Don’t leave dust on the chandeliers. Headcount on response?”

“Five. One is assigned to stick in place for people-flow control.”
“Excellent. Your training shows.”
Failure was absolutely unacceptable. Unwilling to trust outside contractors, the navy’s upper echelon had taken personal command on the ground to control the preparatory work.

It was site control in the navy’s systematic mold.
Put excellent personnel on command and you get a commensurate result.
It was a perfect personnel-management art that factored in even the indolence of line workers.

In an ordinary site you would rarely see it go this well. After all, the site supervisors were navy officers who could make even a crying child fall silent.
To the general public they were symbols of power no different from royals or nobles. The difference from nobles was that they were personnel of excellence befitting their station.
“We cannot show those Paraiso women an unseemly scene.”

That was the unanimous view of the officers who had just experienced that gunnery exercise.
They had already given up on various things, and were thinking only of engaging Paraiso amicably. Legislation on the domestic side was thrown entirely to the clerical offices. Of course, they had firmly warned them not to sneak in any foolish clauses first.