136 Expedition Arc 21 Countermeasures Against Neahyūm

The third prince (Ethan)'s territory had been contaminated by Neahyūm, but it wouldn’t have been surprising if the same had happened to the second prince (Henry).

Yet Henry had heeded Kyle’s warning and conducted a thorough contamination survey—thus narrowly avoiding disaster.

Kyle called an emergency prince’s council and, through swift resolution, prevented civil war by appointing himself regent.

Furthermore, as regent, Kyle convinced Henry to annihilate Neahyūm from Henry’s own fleet.

As an added bonus, Henry had to prove he wasn’t turned into a cyborg by stripping completely naked in front of witnesses.

"Hey, Kyle. Doesn’t it seem odd that only Ethan was untouched by the contamination?"

"Yeah, Akira. There might’ve been some purpose behind it."

‘If… if it happened to Henry too, then Henry’s domain would be…’

‘I wish we had a way to check that.’

Right now, we’re doing direct inspections to see whether we’re contaminated by Neahyūm.

If Neahyūm’s core is parasitizing the ship’s neuro-computer, it’s a fail. If the CIC’s pilot’s been mechanized, it’s a fail—something like that.

The problem is, if the inspector doing the check is already contaminated, it’s easy to just skip right past it.

I could board a suspicious ship, seize control of its neuro-computer, and check for the core myself. But checking every ship in the Empire—military, civilian, all of them—just me? Not realistic.

If it takes too long, the ship we’re still inspecting might already be contaminated by the time we finish. And then the work never ends. Ever.

What’s needed, then, is a way for everyone to detect Near-Hyume.

We also need to establish early-warning systems for Near-Hyume arriving across the galactic arms.

But the Empire can’t develop new technology. It doesn’t even consider adapting existing tech.

It only uses whatever it has—by the book. And even those manuals are getting outdated, forgotten, the procedures slipping away year by year.

This job can’t be entrusted to anyone in the Empire.

‘I’ll figure out a way to detect Near-Hyume myself.’

‘I’m counting on you. Full authority over Near-Hyume countermeasures is granted to Akira.’

I say it with a grin.

‘Understood, Sixth Prince Akira. Appointed Imperial Representative, w.’

‘Hmph. Let’s make it work.’

Kyle plays along, just as I expected.

But in the middle of that joke exchange, I realize—realistically—I’ve just been granted full authority by Kyle.

Right, back at my end, the tech lost on the Daron 4 and the factory mothership is finally seeing the light again.

We can manufacture what the Empire couldn’t—right here in my territory.

The Empire didn’t notice the invasion of Neahyūm until it had already reached the Eighth District.

It’s like you don’t realize it until you’re being attacked.

We only noticed the next invasion because we detected dimensional anomalies while tracing the attack route—caught the signature of a dimensional jump, and sent a ship capable of warp travel for a forced reconnaissance at the site.

It's a bit much to keep hoping for that same lucky break—finding a dimensional anomaly right where we happened to be observing.

Yeah, the Dimensional Radar’s definitely the first thing we should be developing.

Can track enemy ships during dimensional jump (warp) and calculate warp-out coordinates.

And you can scout dozens of light-years away,跨越ing space and time.

Anti-Ship Radar is designed for intra-system distances. Dimensional Radar, on the other hand, assumes interstellar range.

You could call it a super-long-range radar without exaggeration.

Right now, the only ship carrying a Dimensional Radar is my Personal Ship.

If I hand this over to the Empire, I’d better have some kind of contingency plan, wouldn’t I?

If things go south and we end up fighting the Empire in the True Imperial Restoration, handing over the Dimensional Radar could put us at a disadvantage.

So maybe it’d be better to only install Dimensional Radars on ships under my control and lease them out.

Then again, if someone wants to steal it, they could just dismantle it and fuse the parts together.

Or maybe make it so big it can’t move at all. How the hell do you deploy something like that…?

Best to just put a stop mechanism in the black box, like a proper setup.

‘Can you do me a favor, Factory Mothership?’

‘My lord, what do you require?’

‘Can you manufacture a Dimensional Radar?’

‘Yes. The schematics have already been acquired from your DNA.’

‘Can you hardcode a stop mechanism into the black box—so we can shut it down ourselves if needed?’

‘A simple request, my lord.’

‘Then go ahead and start mass production.’

This should get us some early warning against the Neahyume.

Next up: figuring out how to detect ships already infected by Neahyume.

Let’s dig through the data from the Neahyume-equipped vessels, the parasitized ships, and the noble corpses turned into automatons—run it all through the Personal Ship’s neural core.

Maybe we’ll spot some unique readings that can flag contamination.

Worth a shot. Turns out there’s a specific wavelength where Neahyume cores link up with each other.

We might be able to detect Neahyume if we observe this wavelength.

No special equipment needed—just a comm unit. Let’s share the info with the princes and give it a try.

Neahyume have the ability to evolve in response to us.

They probably adapted and counteracted by building those automata.

Eventually, someone will figure out how to intercept this wavelength—rendering it useless.

Maybe the automata have already evolved to adapt to it.

If they ever steal our tech—our humanoid organic terminals—then they could build automata indistinguishable from humans, right down to the materials.

"Something unpleasant just came to mind. Should probably talk to Kyle about this."

Thanks for the rating and bookmark. Really keeps me going.

Wow—100 comments already. Thanks so much.

Felt like a few got deleted in the middle…?