Industrial Alchemy

This was comparable to a feat of industrial alchemy.

Under the effects of chemical agents and high temperatures and pressures, rot became nutrients, and corpses became rations.

There was no magic, no miracle.

Only cold chemical equations, running their course faithfully.

Rovi put away his pocket watch and turned toward the control panel.

A beaker sat there, filled with the dark green liquid that had just been drawn from the sampling port.

It was as viscous as the secretion of some kind of slug.

A suspicious layer of gray-brown grease floated on the surface.

After high-temperature sterilization, chemical flavoring had masked the nauseating stench.

"This is the Mixed Protein Formula."

Rovi picked up the beaker and gave it a gentle swirl.

Buck, standing beside him, had gone pale.

The Defense Force commander, a man who killed without batting an eye, twitched at the corner of his eye.

"Advisor... are we really going to feed them this?" Buck asked with difficulty. "This stuff looks like sludge from a sewer."

"Technically speaking, it did come from a sewer."

Rovi's tone was flat.

"But chemically speaking, it contains plenty of protein, calcium, and salt, along with enough calories to sustain heavy labor."

He raised the beaker to eye level.

Through the murky liquid, he studied the way the light refracted.

"Buck, do you know what hunger is?"

Without waiting for an answer, Rovi continued:

"Hunger isn't your stomach growling. It's your body starting to break down your muscles; your brain beginning to stop thinking; your sense of morality melting away like snow."

"When someone is hungry enough, this cup of stuff will seem sweeter than the Sacred Oil bestowed by the Emperor."

"But..." Buck tried to say something.

"No buts." Rovi waved a hand.

"Our food stores will last three days. If we don't put this plan into action, those fifty thousand people will turn into beasts three days from now."

"Then we'll either have to kill them all, or they'll eat us."

With that, Rovi did something that left Buck staring in shock.

He raised the beaker to his lips and drank a large gulp without hesitation.

Warm, viscous.

It had a strange salty flavor, with the texture of poor-quality synthetic meat.

It tasted bad, but wasn't enough to make him gag.

Rovi swallowed it without changing expression.

Then he smacked his lips like a wine taster.

"The texture's a little astringent. The bone meal wasn't ground finely enough."

He set down the beaker and used a handkerchief to wipe the corner of his mouth.

"Have Priest Alpha install another set of filters on Grinder Number Two."

"Oh, and add some thickener extracted from red algae, so it looks more like 'porridge' than 'soup.'"

Buck had witnessed the whole thing. The surprise in his one eye quickly settled into a complex mixture of fear and reverence.

In this world, where class divisions were as impassable as trenches, the upper classes usually had only two attitudes toward the food of their inferiors:

Ignore it, or avoid it as if it were a plague.

Yet Rovi had not only touched it, but drunk it.

What's more, he had seriously considered how to improve the taste of the sludge, as if he were savoring Amasec Wine.

This was no simple matter of "humble origins."

In all his years, Buck had seen too many people climb up from the bottom.

Once those people got their hands on power, they were often more ruthless than those born into nobility.

They were even more eager to use whips and exploitation to scrub the stink of poverty from themselves.

As if trampling their former peers into the mud would make them nobler.

But Rovi was different.

As he drank that stuff, there was no condescending charity in his eyes, nor any affected display of having learned from hardship.

There was only a chilling calm.

That calm seemed to say:

If it was for survival, for this ultimate goal, then turning people into fertilizer or rats into rations made no essential difference to him.

That frightened Buck more than simple cruelty ever could.

Cruelty often sprang from emotion.

This extreme rationality, on the other hand, came from a powerful will that Buck couldn't understand, but instinctively wanted to submit to.

"Go, Buck." Rovi straightened his collar. "Tell the mess hall to serve an extra meal tonight."

"Tell everyone it's a 'high-energy nutritional supplement' specially prepared to celebrate our victory over the heretics."

"Yes, Advisor!"

Buck straightened and gave a proper military salute.

This time, there was no hesitation in his movement, only obedience.

Night fell.

Searchlight beams pierced the darkness over the plaza at Granary Seven.

Fifty thousand laborers held all kinds of containers in their hands.

Some had dented mess tins, others half a plastic bucket.

Some even held rusty helmets.

They lined up in a long queue.

Large stainless-steel insulated containers were brought out.

Steaming, thick dark green liquid was ladled out one scoop at a time.

Just as Rovi had predicted, no one complained about what the stuff was made from.

For these people from the lowest strata, who had spent years half-starved,

a meal this thick and warm, with its salty taste and aroma of grease, was nothing short of a dream.

Slurping and swallowing sounds rose one after another.

Rovi stood in the shadow of the administration building, watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

He didn't go out to receive their cheers.

For a competent manager, maintaining an air of mystery and distance at a time like this was more effective than trying to seem approachable.

"The data shows a thirty percent increase in the crowd's mood index."

Priest Alpha had appeared behind him at some point.

Several Mechanical Tentacles deftly worked the Dataslate in his hands.

"The rate of fights and brawls dropped to zero over the past hour. It seems carbohydrates and protein really are the best sedatives for maintaining order."

"This is only a stopgap measure."

Rovi turned around.

He didn't let the calm before him lull him into lowering his guard.

"Once people are full, they'll have the strength to act. Once they have the strength, they'll have ideas."

He went to the desk.

Picking up a newly delivered supply-consumption report, he said, "We need to find an outlet for all that extra energy."

He used a quill to draw a few lines on the back of the report.

"Starting tomorrow, increase the intensity of the trench-digging work. Change the rotation from three shifts to two. If they're eating better, they can work harder."

"Sound logic." Priest Alpha's bionic eye flickered. "However, Esteemed Advisor, I noticed you instructed them to add a small amount of antibiotics to the formula..."

"It's a precaution."

Rovi walked over to the map on the wall.

It was a detailed map of Granary Seven and the surrounding area.

Several key points had been marked in red.

"We burned the poisoners and cleaned out the Irrigation Canal, but the contamination left behind by the Lord of Pestilence... I mean, by those heretics, may be more persistent than we imagine."

Rovi pointed to a drainage outlet in the Eastern Sector.

"While watching the food distribution, I noticed that a few laborers had faint red spots on their arms."

"The color is very light. They look like ordinary allergic reactions or eczema. But their distribution is suspicious. They're all near the lymph nodes."

Priest Alpha's mechanical body stiffened slightly. He asked gravely:

"Do you suspect they've been infected with a virus of Chaos?"

"I don't suspect anything. I simply plan for the worst."

Rovi's voice dropped.

"Alpha, I need you to find those people. Make up any excuse you like, something like 'an adverse reaction caused by excessive nutrition.' Isolate them in a separate medical tent."

"Then what?"

"Then use your Industrial UV Lamp to give them a thorough 'treatment.'"

Rovi's gaze was as cold as ice.

"If the red spots fade, let them go. If they start to fester or ooze..."

He didn't finish the sentence.

He merely made a cutting motion across his throat.

Mercy toward a few could be cruelty toward the many.

To save the lives of these fifty thousand people, sacrificing a few potential sources of infection was a necessary calculation.

Just then, the communicator on the desk rang, interrupting the oppressive conversation between them.

It was an encrypted line on the command channel.

Rovi strode over and pressed the answer button.

"This is Granary Seven. Rovi speaking."

Buck's voice came through the communicator, hurried but excited:

"Advisor, a convoy's arrived. They're not Defense Force issue. Judging by the paint... it's the Governor's Mansion's Black Armor Guard!"

Rovi's hand tightened slightly around the communicator, but his tone remained steady. "Who's leading them?"

"Captain of the Guard Lilith. She's here to inspect the area on the Governor's orders."

Rovi and Priest Alpha exchanged a glance.

They were here.

Sooner than expected, and more direct.

"Let her in." Rovi gave his orders at once. "Don't stop them, don't inspect them. Take them straight to the plaza below the administration building. I'll wait for her there."

He ended the call.

Rovi straightened his somewhat worn Defense Force greatcoat.

Then he touched the cold lead plate against his chest.

Since arriving in this world, he was about to face his first true political test.

His confrontation with Supervisor Kase had been an intellectual rout;

his dealings with the tax official Marquez had been a game played by the rules.

But now he was facing the Governor's envoy, a representative of the highest authority on this agricultural world.

The slightest mistake

could undo everything he had worked for.

"Alpha." Rovi walked to the door, then suddenly stopped. "Have those Engineering Servitors make a little more noise."

"I want the Captain of the Guard to see that this is a fortress operating at full capacity, not a Refugee Camp waiting for relief."

"As you wish, Advisor."

Ten minutes later.

Accompanied by the low rumble of engines,

three Chimera armored Personnel Carriers, painted a matte black, rolled over the newly laid gravel road and stopped in the plaza before the administration building.

The doors opened.

A squad of fully armed Black Armor Soldiers jumped out of the vehicles.

They quickly secured the surrounding high ground.

Their movements were crisp and ruthless. They had the aura of elite troops who had seen real bloodshed.

Compared to them, the Defense Force under Buck, dressed in pieced-together armor, looked like a bunch of farmers in uniforms.

Finally, the hatch of the middle vehicle slowly opened.

A foot encased in a black metal combat boot stepped onto the ground.

Captain of the Guard Lilith stepped out.