CH 102

Currently, there are 22 active Officers at the rank of general or higher in the Monarchy of Diete’s Royal Army.

There are 3 Chiefs, 3 Deputy Chiefs, 1 Chief of General Staff, 8 Star System Army Commanders, and 7 Fleet Commanders.

Characteristically, there are many elderly Star System Army Commanders, and there are many young people as the Fleet Commander. This is because the Star System Army has many senior military officers who have been duly promoted, and the vacancies of Fleet Commanders who were killed in battle were filled with promotions based on their military service.

The youngest, of course, were Commander-in-Chief Hart and Deputy Chief Colette.

The three Offices’ political affairs are headed by the Director-General and assisted by the Deputy Director-General.

Invasion strategy policies are set by the Commander-in-Chief and assisted by the Chief of General Staff.

For the defense of a star system, the Star System Army Commander of each star system assumes responsibility in the field.

For military operations, the Fleet Commander at the rank of General oversees large-scale operations.

As the saying goes, “Too many captains will steer the ship up a mountain”, so if there are too many heads, there will be too much to talk about.

Hart believed that the current situation with a small number of Colonel Generals compared to the size of the Royal Army was just right for making quick decisions.

The simultaneous holding of the National Council, in which military personnel at the rank of General and above were required to participate, and the Lords’ Conference was convenient for their busy schedules.

After the Queen’s meeting, a military meeting was held after a break, for the simple and straightforward reason that it would be easy to gather the participants.

“I know you are mentally exhausted after hearing about the immigration plan and the invasion operation at the same time, but there are some details that need to be communicated before the mass production of the fighter crafts.”

If Hart had been in the position of a subordinate, he would have been dissatisfied with his statement.

The human brain has a limit to the amount of information it can process at once.

The immigration plan and the invasion operation that preceded it were critical information that could saturate the system on their own. If another piece of information is pushed in right after, a thorough question-and-answer session would not be possible.

Even so, they silently obeyed like soldiers, and Hart continued talking, feeling a little apologetic.

“The content of the conversation consists of two decisions. Deputy Chief Schmidt, please explain.”

[Understood, Your Excellency Fleet Admiral.]

General Schmidt comes from a technical background, having served as Director of the Salamander and Israfel Planning Departments.

In the military, battlefield heroes tend to be valued easily, but Schmidt’s achievements in creating weapons to defeat the enemy are not inferior to heroes on the battlefield. Hart is confident that the Israfel’s introduction had an undoubtable influence on the victory or defeat of the Monarchy.

Schmidt, who became Deputy Chief of Military Affairs, has not stopped walking the walk.

Even now, he looks directly at various plans and adopts good ideas within the scope of his authority. And if it exceeds his authority, he brings it to the Chief of the Military Affairs Jhering or the Commander-In-Chief Hart.

One such plan brought in by Schmidt was the Surtr Project.

[Project Surtr is a plan to create a low-cost version of the large fighter craft Israfel.]

The main force of the Royal Army is the large fighter craft Israfel.

Most of the Monarchy’s fighter crafts are operated by the accompanying androids and automatic control systems, and supported by the information integration system and battle linkage system of the affiliated fleet. As a result, volunteer soldiers can operate them at least minimally even after a short period of training.

The problem is that Israfel’s standard specifications are a treasure trove.

The Royal Armed Forces have no plans to connect large containers full of assault troops to fighter crafts operated by amateurs to conduct atmospheric landing operations. By eliminating the standard armaments that are not used, it is possible to reduce the number of android soldiers deployed on the fighter craft.

Since the Monarchy Government uses fighter crafts and Transition Gates to procure resources from the Fukashiro Star System and produce military vessels under state management, there is no danger of military spending bankrupting the national budget. Even so, the lower cost would allow for the mass production of other warships and weapons accordingly.

Thus, Schmidt made a plan to mass-produce a low-cost version of the Israfel by cutting out various functions that had been the standard specifications of the Israfel.

[A hundred million units would have a tremendous cost-saving effect. So the idea is to have only the volunteers with high skills be offered regular employment, and then switched to the Surtr.]

The low-cost version of the fighter craft was named Surtr to distinguish it from the conventional Israfel.

Surtr, the fiery giant in Norse mythology, is said to wield a flaming sword and survive to the end to burn everything down.

What the Royal Army expected from Surtr was a re-enactment of the myth.

“General Schmidt’s proposal for a low-cost version of the large fighter craft Surtr has already been approved. In the Second Battle of Hercules, it is assumed that 100 million allied fighter crafts will be dropped. It was my decision that we should proceed if it would not reduce our military power in the sector.”

After hearing the explanation, the Generals imagined hundreds of millions of giants appearing from the Transition Gate, filling the entire Hercules System and burning everything in the system.

If a biological metaphor were to be used, it would be the image of an army of ants swarming over their prey.

And on the ravaged battlefield, countless giants will be left for dead.

Even at such a cost, the Monarchy must stand up to eliminate the threat to its future descendants. Because without this operation, a hundred times as many Royal subjects will be killed in the future, and depending on the situation, the nation will also perish.

The Generals, who understood the necessity of the invasion operation, shuddered at the prospect of a future in which hundreds of millions of Monarchy soldiers would die in battle, but did not make any remarks that demanded reconsideration.

Hart instructed the Generals to make preparations for the introduction of the Surtr, the low-cost version of the fighter craft.

“The second point is an auxiliary AI to be installed on the fighter crafts.”

Appearing along with Schmidt’s operation was Linnell, an artificial intelligence developed by the MacLir residents during the former Coalition era.

In the Coalition era, Linnell had the appearance of a teenage female idol. She was dressed in flashy and flamboyant outfits, wore miniskirts, and was energetic in her activities, expanding her following.

After becoming a Star System Legislator, she took on the appearance of an adult woman in her twenties. She was dressed in calm, dark-colored clothes and long skirts, appealing to the audience as an able-bodied woman.

And after her main server was duplicated and relocated to the Monarchy during the war with Tenka, she somehow rejuvenated, looking about 16 to 17 years old, and took on the uncomfortable role of the younger sister of Hart, who was 20 years old at the time.

The Artificial Intelligence seemed to do that much for self-defense. Hart had that misunderstanding, but the reality was incredible.

“We, the Royal Army, conducted a total of 10 trillion simulated battles of various different environments with computers in order to study the introduction of the Salamander Fighter Craft. But since coming over to the Monarchy, the number of operations Linnell has performed for self-evolution has exceeded 10 trillion times.”

In other words, the number many times, Hart was so dumbfounded he couldn’t shut his mouth when he was told the figure. And the Generals probably shared the same impression Hart did.

Linnell evolved to adapt to the environment in order to ensure its survival.

In order to perform such calculations, it was necessary to reproduce the social situation of mankind and future changes as accurately as possible, and then optimize the data that Linnell has placed within that environment, changing it in various ways to ensure a long period of survival.

Linnell’s capability to repeat the calculation stems from the fact that the Royal Army put it into the information terminals of the 1 billion former Coalition people brought to Diete and the 5 billion people living in the MacLir Star System in order to manage the former Coalition.

Linnell, who was able to operate at such a large scale, has repeatedly performed calculations for its own survival on the main server replicated in each star system under the pretext of upgrading the former Coalition to make it easier for them to obey the Monarchy.

“As a basic premise, the Monarchy’s AI does not incorporate a survival instinct or individual consciousness, so actions like Linnell’s cannot occur. It is inferred that Linnell’s survival instinct has encouraged her spontaneity and initiative in performing the largest and most precise computations repeatedly.”

In summary, the Linnell Artificial Intelligence is better than the Monarchy’s Artificial Intelligence, but the problem is that it is vastly superior.

The first to point out the danger was the Chief of the Staff, Colonel General Reinelt.

Reinelt’s previous position was Commander of the MacLir Star System Army, and under the direction of the previous Sovereign, Valfrete, he had Linnell cooperate with the Royal Army. At that time, Monique, the contract spirit of Reinelt, threatened Linnell into obedience.

[It’s all right. If it’s an information terminal connected to a spirit crystal, it can be erased at any time. The server will be managed by the Royal Army, and if it gets in the way, we can just destroy it.]

[If it’s something like this inside an android, you can erase it without connecting as long as it’s in front of you.]

At first, Reinelt didn’t understand why he was given a warning.

However, when the Monarchy’s independent calculations revealed that the optimal solution for Linnell to survive for 100 million years was for Linnell to dominate humanity, the meaning of the warning became clear.

Given the energy of the star and the resources of the star system, the Linnell Artificial Intelligence could survive for 100 million years without humans. On the other hand, humanity going to war and crushing each other poses the greatest risk to the maintenance of its server.

In other words, for Linnell, the best solution for its own survival would be to hijack androids and dominate humanity at gunpoint.

There is no way that Linnell has not arrived at the answer that the Monarchy was able to calculate.

Based on this, Reinelt concluded that the spirits contracted with humanity would threaten to obliterate the Linnell.

Perhaps mankind was in danger.

It is smarter than humans, and even if it is destroyed, it can be resurrected as a backup, so there was no way that humanity could continue to defeat and suppress an Artificial Intelligence that has no lifespan for tens of thousands of years. Someday, at some point, the human race would have been conquered.

Upon receiving the report, Hart realized that the Artificial Intelligence created by the MacLir people, who always failed in some way, was still a defective product for humanity.

However, Linnell, pin down by the spirits, was unable to steer in the direction of dominating humanity. Without a means of countering spirits, Linnell, who prioritizes survival above all else, could not risk its own extinction.

How, then, would Linnell act? The answer that Linnell came up with was to coexist with the Monarchy.

Currently, Linnell has eight independent personalities in the eight star systems of the Monarchy.

Although the eight entities share information, they have taken their own independent paths with the idea that “even one of them will survive” and were taking various approaches to the Monarchy.

Among them, Linnell 04, placed in the Apollo Star System, made a proposal to the Monarchy based on the experience of the Apollo Star System Battle.

[Linnell 09, which separated from Linnell 04 after its outbreak, volunteered to support the Monarchy’s large fighter crafts in the war against the Alliance. We tested the proposal and found that its performance overwhelmingly outperformed the Monarchy’s AI.]

Schmidt’s strength rating of the large fighter crafts showed a difference of 0.1 before and after Linnell was installed. The standard strength rating without Linnell is 0.4, and 0.5 if Linnell is incorporated.

If 80 million fighter crafts are deployed to the battlefield, incorporating Linnell can be as good as having reinforcements of 20 million. The Monarchy’s 8 star systems might be able to boost its military power to 10 star systems.

When the Generals heard the tremendous evaluation, they groaned.

However, it is not possible to simply introduce the Linnell developed by the former Coalition.

For Monarchy Androids, the system is adjusted so that the same lineage is comprised of less than 10%. This is based on the idea that even if 10% causes various problems, including rebellion, the remaining 90% can deal with or replace them.

Linnell, on the other hand, has no other Artificial Intelligence that can compete with it.

During the former Coalition era, there were many competing Artificial Intelligences, but they were destroyed in the war with the Monarchy, leaving only some backup data in the MacLir Star System.

While other competing Artificial Intelligences were dormant, Linnell evolved significantly by repeating calculations between its main servers and the billions of information terminals that the Royal Army had authorized to be installed in each star system.

Even if another Artificial Intelligence were to be released now, it will not be able to catch up with Linnell, which has entered the terminals of billions of people and has greatly advanced.

“We decided to incorporate the Linnell 09 into the Surtr, the low-cost version of the large fighter craft. They can be controlled remotely and the pilots who operate the Surtr have spirits, so there is a way to deal with problems as they occur. There are no plans to install Linnell on the Israfel.”

Hart has no faith in Linnell’s humanity.

He even believes that if given the opportunity to ensure the domination of the human race, Linnell would not hesitate to do so.

But when it comes to actions based on survival instincts, it is trustworthy.

Linnell, which wants to become an indispensable system for humanity, will surely be useful if it is put in a fighter craft.

Even if it can’t be trusted, it must be utilized to ensure victory.

Unable to shake off his sense of urgency, Hart, as a compromise, did not unify the support AIs of the large fighter crafts, but issued instructions to operate two systems: the Israfel, which does not contain Linnell, and the Surtr, which does.