Chapter 1284: Infiltration
When the joint report from Iron Axe and Edith reached him, Roland’s first thought was spy films — the particular genre of them, black and white or washed-out color, with men in overcoats slipping through checkpoints while carrying microfilm. The thought came and went in a second. What remained was the recognition that this was genuinely workable.
He had thought further than Edith, if only because his frame of reference was wider.
Espionage was one of the oldest professions in organized warfare, and it had worn many names across many centuries. What Roland was familiar with were the networks of the two World Wars: early in those conflicts, intelligence gathering had been improvised, almost artisanal — two individuals communicating without system or structure. As governments tightened their grip on civil society and record-keeping, the craft had evolved under pressure into something systematic, something that could survive the scrutiny of a police state. Cell structures. Dead drops. Legend-building.
But in a feudal country governed by nobles, where registration was inconsistent, movement records nearly nonexistent, and local officials largely indifferent to whoever passed through the market square — the operational environment was almost incomparably permissive. A trained agent here would be essentially invisible. Even Nightingale, who could strip a lie bare with a glance, would get nothing from someone who carried no lies — only a routine life and a second identity stitched beneath it like a hidden seam.
Roland approved the proposal immediately.
He had no intention of handing the whole project to Edith, though — and that had nothing to do with trust. Intelligence collection was long, slow, granular work. Edith’s mind was best deployed at the level of strategy and the whole shape of the war. To pull her down into the operational details of a single network would be waste on the order of using a master lens-grinder to cut window glass.
He needed a professional.
Roland uncapped his pen and placed Hill Fawkes at the top of the letter.
The Kingdom of Dawn had been quiet lately. The former ringmaster, who had built his fortune on the circulation of information and the management of people who needed to disappear, must be restless with inactivity. Roland sealed the letter and passed it to Nightingale, who handed it to Honey.
That problem, at least, was dispatched.
What occupied him afterward was larger: not a single intelligence cell, but a communications network — one that could carry information across a continent without a carrier pigeon that took days or a messenger that took weeks.
Until the expedition to Taquila, all his intelligence needs had been domestic, and the “Seagull” had been adequate. Now the First Army was fighting in the Kingdom of Wolfheart and the Kingdom of Everwinter simultaneously. The report in his hands had been composed a week ago and arrived by sea. Even with Honey’s animal messengers cutting the lag down to two or three days, the delay was structural: Honey could not extend her network indefinitely, could not modify animal behavior at its roots, and had a hard ceiling on the number of creatures she could hold at any one time. She could not support communication across the entire Western Region, let alone across the nation and beyond.
The only true solution was radio.
Telegraph technology was simple in principle — simpler than what they were already running — but like any signal system, it depended on reception. A telegraph line could carry a message reliably for roughly a hundred kilometers without an amplifier. An electron tube could extend that range, repeat and boost the signal, make distances that a pigeon took two days to cover into a matter of minutes.
And if he could build an electron tube, he could build a radio.
There was almost no electromagnetic noise in this era: no cellular towers, no power grids, no industrial interference. The electromagnetic spectrum was clean and quiet. A properly tuned antenna on the Impassable Mountain Range could receive signals from thousands of kilometers away. Portable radios, distributed to front-line units, would give commanders a picture of the battlefield that no messenger system had ever provided. The communications advantage alone would outweigh almost any numerical disparity.
He did not know yet where to begin with the electron tube. Perhaps it was time to give the Design Bureau of Graycastle a new direction.
That night Roland crossed into the Dream World, sent Zero off toward school, and drove south to the Clover Group’s construction site. Garde had moved quickly — the plant’s exterior had been repainted, the equipment replaced, the rust stripped away. Had the man not been so intent on demolishing the apartment block, Roland might have found him genuinely agreeable to work with.
He heard the machinery before he saw it. The yard was crowded, workers drifting in from every corner of the plant, and in the center of the gathering stood a machine that was simultaneously ingenious and slightly absurd: the lower half of a tracked vehicle, not yet assembled into anything recognizable as a final product, coupled to a steam-powered piston arrangement that sat atop a second tractor. The second tractor was, in effect, powering the first — providing the steam that the tracked vehicle’s engine could not yet generate on its own.
Roland stood at the edge of the crowd and laughed.
The principle was the same as a solar torch that only worked in sunlight. Master Xie had not solved the chicken-and-egg problem of testing a steam-powered vehicle without a working steam source; he had simply added a second chicken. The tractor had to run under its own power and power the caterpillar rig simultaneously. Ludicrous. Elegant. Exactly what Roland needed.
“Ahem — hey, boss.” Master Xie appeared at his elbow, visibly bracing for judgment.
“Good work,” Roland said. “This is exactly what I wanted.”
“R-really?” Master Xie scratched his scalp. “You’re certain your collector friends want something like this?”
The tractor frame, Roland noted, had been completed since his last visit. Master Xie had been putting in nights.
“Did you produce the testing components with machine tools?”
“Every one.” Master Xie’s hands moved together, the habitual gesture of a craftsman accounting for his choices. “The tractor, the boiler, and the water tank I bought secondhand — all of it came to around three hundred thousand yuan…”
“Money is not the problem.” The Clover Group was covering the costs. “As long as the parts were machined, not cast or forged by hand, my friend will be satisfied. Keep going. When the deal closes, your salary doubles.”
The workers, all still crowded outside watching the machine, left the plant floor nearly empty. Roland found the workshop quiet and passed through it toward the office.
Qingqing — Garde’s secretary and financial adviser, a very recent graduate of somewhere impressive, efficient and precise — had already positioned herself at the far end of the room, the distance between them having expanded during the walk from two meters to five.
Roland was quietly amused. She had good instincts and apparently thought him either dangerous or improper. Garde had clearly not told her Roland was a martialist — if she had known, she would have understood that five meters provided no advantage whatsoever.
He sat down and went straight to it. “I have a friend —”
Here it comes, Qingqing thought, pressing her lips together.
Every new project started the same way. Some friend wanted something absurd built from scratch, and this man who dressed like a street vendor and drove a battered minivan would instruct her to spend significant sums on it. She had worked for the Clover Group since graduation, and she knew what genuine wealth looked like. True rich kept low profiles, yes — but they wore the low profile like a well-cut coat; their shoes were expensive; their watches were subtle but right. This man was wearing clothes from a night market, no accessories at all, driving what might charitably be called a vehicle.
He was simply poor. Yet somehow he had wealthy friends.
She had begun to suspect, during her second week here, that either Garde had been deceived or Garde was running something she did not want to know about.
She was still thinking this when she registered what Roland was saying. Radio communication. He wanted to build radio components from scratch — not purchase them, not adapt an existing kit, but machine every part by hand in this facility. You could buy a functional walkie-talkie online for less than a hundred yuan. You could acquire antique telegraph equipment from any number of dealers. He wanted to build everything. Himself. Here.
She massaged her forehead.
“I don’t need specialists,” Roland said. “New graduates or radio hobbyists will do. Set up a room outside the main plant so I don’t have to travel back and forth. Whatever equipment they ask for, approve it. One condition —” He paused, and his tone did not change, but something in it landed differently. “All parts must be manufactured here. They don’t need to be perfect. In fact, the worse the quality, the better — rough, improvised-looking, like something cobbled together in a barn. My friend prefers that aesthetic.”
She stared at him. “That’s different from a salary increase. I’ll need to report to Mr. Garde.”
“That’s fine. He’ll approve it.”
Her phone was already in her hand when his rang.
Roland picked up. “Hello, Mr. Roland.” Rock’s voice, the Defender’s particular brand of calm, came through clearly. “I have an assignment. Would you be available to visit Greenleaf Sanatorium this afternoon?”
The Design Bureau of Graycastle ran on Rock’s goodwill. Roland could not refuse.
He set the phone down and thought about it. The Fallen Evils had gone quiet since the extermination at the Erosion — conspicuously quiet, as though they had registered the danger and pulled back from the city. The Taquila witches were finding almost nothing to fight. Roland did not believe in the quiet. The Fallen Evils were hunting the Force of Nature carried by Awakened martialists; with the Martialist Contest drawing practitioners from every corner of the continent, this city was more saturated with targets than it had ever been. They would not leave voluntarily.
New information from the Association would save him time.
He closed the office door and went to meet the Defender.