Blackstone Code

“You’re sure they were two identical aircraft?”

The lieutenant colonel sitting in the vehicle repeated the question once more. The officer in the front seat nodded solemnly. “Yes, sir!”

The lieutenant colonel frowned and said nothing more.

Civilian aircraft research had never really stopped. The military had even funded some independent scientists in the past, but no real results had come from it.

Sure, those aircraft could fly—otherwise, the military, with its already limited budget, wouldn’t have wasted the money.

But the real issue was landing. That’s where most of them failed.

More than half crashed during landing attempts. Out of ten aircraft, seven or eight would end up wrecked during descent.

The military couldn’t afford to invest further in such dangerous, disposable machines. They preferred hot air balloons and airships instead.

Airships were still in the conceptual stage, not yet in practical use. Hot air balloons, however, had matured as a technology.

A standard observation balloon could lift a soldier at least fifteen meters off the ground in twenty seconds. With longer ropes and more time, it could reach nearly sixty meters within a minute.

Equipped with a field radio and binoculars, one could easily observe areas beyond direct line of sight—and these were dirt cheap.

With a few chemicals and basic equipment, you could get someone airborne for just a few hundred Sol.

Aircraft, however, were a different beast. They needed engines—expensive ones. Add the full construction cost, and you’re looking at tens of thousands gone in an instant, possibly along with the pilot’s life.

Balloons might look dangerous, but they had safety protocols. Even if the main balloon burst, the descent speed could be controlled enough to keep the observer alive.

Sure, maybe you’d break a leg—but for a balloon observer, that didn’t matter much. In the air, legs were irrelevant.

On the ground, it could be a problem—but still better than dying.

For all these reasons, the military never gave aircraft the attention or recognition they now seemed to warrant, despite the rapid development of the field and the growing momentum of the entire industry.

The lieutenant colonel was mid-report. The commanding officer of the Eminence alert zone was a lieutenant general. Every day, field officers were required to brief him on the day’s plan.

A routine task, perhaps annoying, but mandatory—especially in strictly regulated military units.

Suddenly, a report came in that two aircraft had flown one after the other over the alert zone and then turned back. The alert zone commander took it seriously.

He immediately ordered personnel to pursue the aircraft while reporting the situation to the Ministry of Defense and the National Security Council.

The alert zone existed to defend Eminence. Unknown aircraft flying overhead was never a good sign.

More importantly, the eyewitness reports claimed the two aircraft looked exactly the same. That was even more concerning.

Many believed true craftsmanship was valuable because no two handmade items were ever truly identical. Subtle differences were seen as marks of the artisan’s spirit.

If two things looked exactly the same, they could only be soulless products of an assembly line. Though people once worshipped standardization centuries ago, now it signified mass industrial capability.

To the average person, assembly line might just mean another place for capitalist exploitation. But to college-educated officers, it meant something else: mature design.

No one puts immature designs on an assembly line. That’s a waste of money and manpower.

Mature design meant most known issues had been resolved—making mass production feasible.

The lieutenant colonel even suspected that this test flight might have been either the final validation before assembly line rollout—or the first batch from that line.

Had the two aircraft looked even slightly different, no one in the command chain would’ve reacted this strongly.

“They’re landing!” the officer in the front seat shouted. The lieutenant colonel immediately stood and looked to the sky.

The two aircraft circled twice, then began to descend. He grew anxious. “Speed up. We need to get there now.”

By the time they emerged from the forest and reached the site, the aircraft had already landed at the end of a runway.

“Who are you people?” the lieutenant colonel shouted.

Soldiers poured out of their vehicles. Though their weapons weren’t raised, their bodies were tense—ready for anything.

Not far away, a group stood together. Several lab coat–wearing doctors surrounded a young man, and around them were others who clearly had a military bearing.

The presence of such formidable-looking individuals immediately made the atmosphere even more dangerous.

The lieutenant colonel grew uneasy and whispered to his officer, “Request backup…”

Cowardly? Maybe. But he could sense something from the group—an elite aura. A presence that was difficult to describe.

Just by looking at them, his instincts screamed: these people aren’t to be messed with.

At the center of the group, the young man handed a small card to a nearby woman.

She walked toward them. At about twenty meters away, she stopped and saluted.

The salute eased the lieutenant colonel’s nerves a bit. “I’m a lieutenant colonel from the alert zone…”

He gave his name.

The woman replied in a similarly calm tone, “Former Federal soldier Austin. My boss asked me to give you this. He knows why you’re here…”

After making it clear she had no hostile intentions and moving without threat, Austin was allowed to approach.

The lieutenant colonel took the card from her hand and froze for a moment.

It bore only a name—Lynch—and a few phone numbers. Nothing more. Even the name was handwritten.

Compared to all the flashy business cards loaded with titles like Manager or President, this one was strikingly plain—almost excessively so.

Yet no one could truly see it as a simple business card—because on it was a name impossible to ignore.

“Is he… Mr. Lynch?”

Austin gave a faint smile and nodded. “Yes.”

The lieutenant colonel didn’t recognize Lynch. It sounded unbelievable, but this was the current reality of the Federal Army.

To prepare for an enemy that had never actually appeared, the Army’s training was nearly as rigorous as the Navy’s. To prevent internal decay, the military had become a society unto itself, detached from the civilian world.

They had their own newspaper—The Federal Military Times.

Their own television programs—Military Watch, Defense News, and others.

Even their own drama series about war.

Their contact with civilian society was minimal. High-ranking military leaders believed that a lax environment would turn their troops into the same kind of useless soldiers as those in Gephra.

Gephran soldiers got up at 9 a.m., had afternoon tea, and spent weekends at clubs and salons.

Through real-world examples, the Federal military had proven that to maintain combat readiness, the army had to stay independent.

That was also why many veterans had to go through veterans’ clubs before reintegrating into society.

In this relatively closed environment, people had neither the desire nor the means to follow outside news.

They may have heard of a rising young man named Lynch, but couldn’t match the name to a face.

Until now.

“Mr. Lynch asked me to let you know—if anyone wants to talk about the aircraft, they can contact him using the numbers on the card.”

“Well then… goodbye, Colonel.” Austin saluted again, then left with the group.

“Should we stop them, sir?” The officer, clearly upset, glared at the departing group. The fact that they dared leave without authorization enraged him.

But now that the lieutenant colonel knew the truth, it made perfect sense. Mr. Lynch didn’t just have powerful social connections, status, and wealth—he also had strong ties with top military leadership.

The lieutenant colonel, a potential future general himself, was aware of certain insider information. Lynch had a good relationship with Colonel Truman and with several Army lieutenant generals and even a few full generals.

Stop him?

They’d be arrested by the military police the next day, go through a full investigation, and have nowhere to file a complaint. The military was a closed, authoritarian system—they’d just have to accept it.

“That was Mr. Lynch…”

The officer looked confused, as if asking, “So Mr. Lynch can just do whatever he wants?”

But soon, the idea of Mr. Lynch in his head began to align with the real Mr. Lynch. His expression changed.

If it were someone else, maybe not.

But if it was Mr. Lynch—then doing whatever he wanted wasn’t a privilege. It was a baseline right.

They waited a while longer, and reinforcements from the alert zone arrived—this time led by a colonel himself, bringing an entire company.

But clearly, they had overreacted.