The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 8 Emergency Meeting

As the first rays of dawn appeared outside the window, Perfit put down her pen. Before her lay twenty-seven pages, each page densely covered with writing, footnotes indicating citations, and appendices filled with key data clipped from medical records.

In the final paragraph of her report, she wrote three initial recommendations: establish quarantine stations in the Empire's major ports to enforce mandatory quarantine on all ships arriving from the Old World; send expeditions to the front lines of the Rus' Empire and the Holy Romulus Empire to collect firsthand data on the spread of the blight; and authorize the research team to expand its scale and systematically treat existing infected individuals according to the dual intervention protocol she and Sabel had validated that evening.

She pulled out the last page and placed it on top of the stack of reports. That page wasn't the main text, but a brief note she had written separately to the Naval Intelligence Office, consisting of only four lines: I have confirmed that the wilt disease affects both the physical and spiritual levels simultaneously.

The current treatment plan requires the joint operation of an alchemist and a judge to be implemented.

For large-scale deployment, please begin training more people immediately who are proficient in both human transmutation and requiem prayers. We don't have much time.

She did not write "emergency".

She never uses such words because, judging from the handling of those four researchers last night, the speed at which the infection spreads could very well cause the entire quarantine system to collapse within weeks.

Perfitt organized the report, put it in a file folder, sealed it with sealing wax, and then handed it to Archibald, who was guarding the door.

"Please forward this report to the Naval Intelligence Bureau for transmission to the Imperial leadership," she said. "At the same time, place the base under complete lockdown. No one is to be allowed to enter or leave until tonight."

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The report was sent to the Office of Naval Intelligence's classified archives that afternoon, and that evening it was personally brought to the military headquarters building by the deputy director of the intelligence agency.

Three days later, it was placed on the round table at the imperial council meeting.

Perfit received the notification on the morning of the fourth day.

A carriage bearing the royal crest stopped outside the Brandlis Manor, and a secretary to the Minister of the Palace alighted and gave her a standard bow.

"Miss Brandlis, an emergency meeting of the Imperial Council will be held at Windsor Castle at 10:00 AM today. Her Highness the Imperial Princess has ordered me to come and fetch you to the meeting."

Without asking any further questions, Perfit went upstairs to change into a formal dress, restyled his hair, and then got into the carriage with Belfast.

As the carriage entered Windsor Castle, she saw through the window that the castle was already filled with all kinds of carriages and military vehicles, some of which were decorated with the flags of naval and army officers.

It seems the military arrived even earlier than she did.

She was led into a conference room that wasn't very large but was furnished in a very formal manner.

The long table was filled with people on both sides. At a glance, there were at least three naval commanders, two senior army officers, a minister of the palace, two representatives of the noble council, and two cardinals wearing dark red robes.

In the corner sat a chubby medical professor who looked like he had been frightened by something.

At the top of the long table, Princess Anne sat regally.

Two adjutants stood beside her, and on the table lay a document that Perfitt knew all too well: the original of her twenty-seven-page report, the sealing wax already removed.

"Miss Perfit Brandlis," the princess began, her voice clear and steady, "please sit."

Perfit sat down at the end of the long table and placed his hands on his knees.

Her relationship with the eldest princess has always been a minor mystery within Langdon's aristocratic circles.

When Lady Brandlis was still alive, Princess Anne would come to the estate every winter for a few days to have afternoon tea with Perfit's mother, reminiscing about old military school days and discussing which nobles in Langdon had made a fool of themselves in Parliament.

Perfit doesn't really remember these things—they are the original owner's memories, remaining in this body like a well-worn book, occasionally a page will be turned at some point.

She knew that the princess had braided her hair when she was seven years old, but she couldn't recall any details of that scene.

She only knew that it had happened.

Just as she knew, after her parents' accident, the eldest princess personally visited her three times, asking if she would be willing to be adopted by the royal family, and she refused all three times.

That period was the first few months after she transmigrated.

She hadn't fully adapted to this body, hadn't figured out how the Philosopher's Stone and the Emerald Book worked, and hadn't learned how to survive in this world as an orphan.

Each visit from Princess Anne was not a comfort to her, but a pressure—she had to play the role of a fourteen-year-old girl who had just lost her parents in a completely unfamiliar world, while carefully hiding the things in her mind that did not belong to this era.

She can't.

Therefore, she rejected all of the princess's kindness, isolating herself from the entire Langdon aristocratic circle in an almost indifferent manner.

Over the years, she and the eldest princess have maintained this delicate distance in their relationship.

The eldest princess would still send her gifts every year on her birthday and would still speak up for her in the council of nobles.

But it had been a long time since they had sat down together for tea like they had when Perfit's mother was still alive.

At this moment, the eldest princess sat at the top of the long table, flipping through her report, presiding over the meeting as a representative of the imperial family.

The first speakers at the meeting were two cardinals.

They brought out the church's old debates again, arguing that wilt disease was God's punishment of mankind and should be dealt with through large-scale religious ceremonies.

Next to speak were representatives of the Council of Nobles, who argued that the blockade of the port should be further strengthened, ideally by keeping all ships from the Old World out of the harbor, along with their passengers.

The naval commanders suggested sending warships to escort the merchant ships and protect them from infection.

Perfit did not speak.

She simply answered a few technical questions briefly when someone called her name.

Then, the medical professor stood up.

"A seventeen-year-old girl wrote a twenty-seven-page report claiming to have discovered some kind of 'dual infection mechanism'," he began with a distinctly contemptuous tone. "I've read her report carefully. The so-called soul corruption is nothing more than a seemingly respectable theoretical package using old church archives."

True science should be based on repeatable experiments, not on one person's subjective speculation.

There was a moment of silence in the conference room.

Perfit noticed that the two cardinals' expressions became somewhat subtle—they were clearly not used to hearing church archives referred to as "packaging" by a medical professor.

The only change in the eldest princess's expression, sitting in the main seat, was that her eyes tightened slightly.

"Miss Brandlis's suggestion to establish a quarantine station at the port," the Princess began, her voice low but enough to instantly silence the entire conference room, "I believe it is absolutely necessary. As for the navy, how many ships do you have capable of completing the deployment of Langton Harbor this week?"

The naval commander immediately stood up and recited several numbers.

The atmosphere of the meeting changed noticeably after that sentence: the princess was no longer seeking the medical professor's opinion; she was directly implementing Perfit's advice.

In the nearly half-hour discussion that followed, every question raised by the conservatives was refuted by the eldest princess with even greater speed.

She didn't say, "Perfit is my best friend's daughter"—a statement that no one present needed to be reminded of.

She simply used her authority as the first in line to the throne to reject each of the attempts to stall for time.

Perfit sat at the end of the long table, watching all this without saying another word.

She knew that from today onward, the Empire's specific policies for dealing with the Blight—port disease prevention, expansion of quarantine zones, and dispatch of expeditions—would be implemented according to the framework she had outlined in her twenty-seven-page report.

When the meeting ended, the eldest princess called her over.

"Little Perfitt," she said, standing at the conference room door, handing Perfitt the report that had been discussed all morning, "your report is very well written. If you need anything, just ask my adjutant."

The tone she used when she said this was completely different from that of the eldest princess who had been giving orders at the meeting.

That was the voice of someone who would say to her, "Stay for dinner tonight."

Perfico nodded and put the report into his briefcase.

As she walked out of the meeting room, she looked through the corridor window and saw a group of naval engineers setting up the framework of a temporary quarantine station on the open ground outside the castle.

In the distance, towards the port, several merchant ships that had just entered the port had been ordered to stop in the restricted waters, and no one was allowed to disembark.

The report's impact came much faster than she had anticipated.