Chapter 529: It Begins

The moment the meeting ended, Hephaestus and Mnemosyne got to work. Hephaestus had already received the updated schematics for the DR gear version 2.0 and the massive industrial atomic printers inside the Cube switched from what they were doing to printing hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands of new DR gear. As most government officials used both glasses and pods, the printing and delivery would take a few days.

But Mnemosyne's job could immediately begin. She directed the individual librarians in the Akashic Library to begin doing immediate deep scans on the people they were monitoring. A full 80% of the government officials were immediately scanned, while the others would be scanned as they came on shift and began working.

The civilian scans, however, would take some time; unless it was absolutely necessary, no orders would go out to interrupt people's daily lives. Not only would it increase dissatisfaction and resentment among the populace, it might tip off the target and startle them into hiding deeper. But the priority list was set, and anyone with sentiments toward the empire that crossed a specific threshold, either positive or negative, would be the first to be deep scanned.

Aron had also informed Sarah of the new 2.0 hardware update to the DR gear, and she began generating buzz around it. Increased clarity! Decreased mental fatigue! Higher immersion! The buzzwords released by the public relations machine of GAIA Tech were endless, and the ad campaign was in full swing.

Meanwhile, Gaia also released a memo to the government employees saying that they would be given the DR 2.0 gear for free as a government perk. What went unsaid was that anyone who chose to continue using their original hardware would still be strictly monitored, and soon replaced. It wasn't just a security issue, but rather one of mentality; the empire wouldn't be well served by workers that disdained the new and clung to the old.

Technology advances had been sped up to the point that keeping up with it was one of the core responsibilities of the uppermost echelons of society, let alone the government.

Athena and Nyx were also busy. They had spent the past few months laying out an enormous net called Operation Hunting Dog, and it was finally time to draw it in. The orders went out and stealthed shuttles began moving, carrying strike teams to the hidden bases that had identified cult sympathizers and cult cells, while the operatives themselves retreated to their underground facilities, as they had been the face of the operation from the beginning and couldn't risk being captured, no matter how far-fetched that scenario may be.

......

Thirty minutes later.

Aron was on the roof of the Cube, waiting for the special stealth shuttle that was being printed for him. He would be personally heading out with only a single emperor's aegis team and a team of reapers to deal with miscellaneous issues. At first, he had argued against the inclusion of anyone else, but Rina had put her foot down and exercised her authority as his fiancee. He would bring them, or else.

And emperor or not, Aron was a man first. Thus, despite his unwillingness, he would bring along the extra people.

'It's time for this to end once and for all,' he thought as he boarded the sleek stealth shuttle, the other members of his expedition already inside and waiting for him.

As the emperor's shuttle lifted off and oriented itself for a suborbital hop to its destination, Athena appeared in her virtual form. She saluted Aron, who nodded at her and said, "Status report."

[We're currently heading to one of the cells we've identified and been tracking during Operation Hunting Dog. We believe it's the cell of a mid-level recruiter and local boss, so the process of the capture and resulting suicide programming being carried out should provide more information for you to use than can be captured in recordings. After all, our recording technology still can't detect minute mana flows.]

Athena wasn't worried about Aron in the slightest; she knew that, with his current abilities, while he may not be the most outstanding offensive powerhouse, there was nothing on the planet that would be capable of even mussing up his hair. She even agreed with him that the reaper and aegis teams were completely unnecessary, though she also saw Rina's point in that emperors should have a certain amount of dignity and not be forced to do some mundane tasks for themselves.

"Got it. Let's try to keep some of them alive, then."

One of the aegis members handed him a briefcase. He opened it and pulled out a small black cube, then closed the briefcase and handed it back to the person that had given it to him. He closed his eyes and pressed the cube against his forehead, where it dissolved into a nanite colony and spread across his face like ferrofluid.

The nanite colony rippled for a minute or so before finally settling down into a featureless black mask. Aron reached up and pulled off the mask, revealing a different, yet still handsome, face beneath it.

Silence reigned in the shuttle, as the realization finally hit home among the reapers and emperor's aegis that the emperor was indeed going into the field and would be actively participating in the cult cell takedown. At first, they had thought they were there to protect him as he spectated from the side, but after listening to his conversation with Athena, it seemed... they would be the spectators instead?

But something seemed rather off to them. From the display in their headgear, Aron had no defensive gear on. No armor, no pappy, nothing. He was wearing normal clothing and wasn't even carrying a weapon! How was he going to fight? Then it dawned on them—he must be armed and armored to the gills, it was just that their detection methods couldn't penetrate the masking of his advanced tech.

After all, he was the one that invented everything, so of course it only made sense that he would keep the best things for himself. At his level, it didn't even count as selfishness, but would rather be considered good sense. He was an emperor, and his person SHOULD be inviolable!

Thus, the reapers and emperor's aegis settled down and performed the final checks and last-minute maintenance on their gear. Though the maintenance was unnecessary, as ARES gear was printed fresh before each mission and recycled afterward, it was still a time-honored pre-battle tradition that the superstitious armed forces would never abandon.