The evaluation began with questions, and SCORPIO asked them like surgeons.
They did not challenge Tobias's motives, because motives were too easy to lie about, and they did not question his courage, because courage could be manufactured for an audience. They asked about procedures: why he sealed certain transit lines, why he prioritized refinery security over harbor patrols on the third week, why he allowed Merwyn guards to accompany Hawthorne engineers into sensitive zones. Tobias answered evenly, and each answer felt less like speech and more like placement of stones in a structure that would later be tested for fractures.
Trace spoke when asked, but only when asked, his tone clipped and professional.Cassian answered with a soldier's clarity, providing timelines and tactical justification without embellishment. Kvasir offered data support with polite precision, producing references and corroboration from Cocytus vault standards that even SCORPIO operators did not dismiss. Tobias felt the strange discomfort of realizing that this was not a conversation meant to create understanding, but a process meant to create certainty.
When the questioning paused, the commander shifted the hololith from security overlays to combat doctrine.
"We will conduct a joint exercise," she said. "Not for spectacle, not for morale, but for calibration." A new grid unfolded over the capital's outskirts, showing a simulated breach at three points, a civilian evacuation flow, and an enemy WarMech lance pressing toward refinery access. Tobias watched Cassian's eyes sharpen, because battle problems were honest in a way politics never were, and he watched Trace's jaw tighten, because he understood what SCORPIO was doing.
The exercise began at noon, with the city's outer training flats converted into a controlled combat arena.
Hawthorne deployed a mixed lance: three Hoplites and two Hetairoi running overwatch with missile pods set to simulate suppression rather than destruction. SCORPIO arrived with a prototype squadron that moved differently than any machine Tobias had seen, their silhouettes sleek and angular, their steps too quiet for their mass. Their pilots did not speak over open comms, and their coordination seemed to occur in a private space Tobias could not enter.
At the start signal, Tobias reached instinctively for prescience, seeking the branching paths of probable motion.
The world should have opened to him in familiar geometry, futures blossoming like fractured crystal, each choice casting a shadow of consequence. Instead, he met haze, a soft static that blurred the edges of possibility, as though someone had draped gauze over the inner eye that usually saw too much. He steadied his breathing and tried again, focusing not on outcomes, but on intent, and the haze only deepened around the SCORPIO units.
They moved first, not fast, but exact.
One prototype WarMech took a rooftop angle that should have been inaccessible, using compact thrusters to settle into a position that denied the entire avenue below. Another slid into the civilian corridor route, not to protect the evacuation, but to control it, forcing flow into a narrower channel where it could be monitored. Tobias watched their geometry and felt cold admiration, because it was beautiful in a ruthless way, like a blade crafted to fit perfectly between ribs.
Hawthorne units responded as trained, with Cassian anchoring the Hetairoi and directing the Hoplites into a flanking sweep.The Hetairoi established a long-range firing lane and simulated smart-missile pressure on the enemy lance, forcing it to maneuver. Tobias began to weave Warmind threads lightly, linking his pilots and infantry controllers with a restrained touch, careful not to overextend himself. He watched his own people move with discipline and pride, and for a moment he believed the haze would not matter if training and trust were strong enough.
Then SCORPIO executed their solution.
They accepted a simulated civilian loss percentage that Tobias found intolerable, using the narrower evacuation channel as bait to lure the enemy lance into a crossfire trap. In seconds, the enemy mechs were "neutralized," the refinery access secured, and the breach points sealed with a methodical efficiency that felt less like victory and more like erasure. The results flashed across the board: optimal strategic outcome, acceptable collateral tolerance, mission success in record time.
Tobias felt heat rise behind his eyes, not from anger alone, but from the moral friction the scenario had been designed to create.
He cut his channel open, voice calm but edged. "You sacrificed civilians to close the problem quickly," he said, keeping his words precise. "That is not a doctrine I will accept on No'aar." The SCORPIO commander did not argue, yet the silence that followed carried a question: what would Tobias accept when the cost was real, and the enemy was not simulated.
"The Emperor's doctrine is continuity," the commander replied evenly, "and continuity sometimes demands hard tolerances."
Her gaze did not waver, and Tobias realized this was not a debate, but a measurement, the kind designed to see whether he would bend, break, or hold. Cassian's voice entered the net, controlled and respectful, offering an alternate solution path that preserved evacuation flow while delaying refinery security by two minutes. Tobias seized it, because Cassian's mind worked like a weapon, and because the best rebuttal to ruthlessness was competence that did not require it.
They ran the scenario again, and Tobias used Warmind more deeply, threading reactions into anticipation.
Cassian anchored the line exactly where he needed to, the Hoplite exploited a narrow alley lane, and suppressed enemy advance without choking civilian routes. Tobias guided the Hetairoi into a position that forced the enemy lance into retreat vectors rather than trap vectors, reducing risk without abandoning pressure. The outcome was less "perfect" by SCORPIO metrics, but it held a different kind of victory, one that preserved the city's people as part of the objective rather than a variable.
When the exercise ended, Tobias removed his neural interface band with controlled slowness, forcing himself not to show the strain the haze had caused.
The commander approached him on the field's edge, her operators still silent behind her, and Tobias felt the static again even at conversational distance. He studied them, not with suspicion, but with recognition, and memory surfaced like a blade drawn from a sheath. The Quiet Sisterhood had taught him to quiet his dreams, yes, but they had also taught him the language of minds that hid themselves.
"You've been trained," Tobias said softly, and the words were not accusation but certainty."Mind-blocking discipline. Quiet Sisterhood technique. That is why my prescience blurs around your people." The commander's expression did not change, yet a subtle tightening near her eyes confirmed what her lips did not. Tobias felt a chill, not because SCORPIO could resist him, but because it meant the Emperor had planned for someone like him long before Tobias ever set foot on No'aar.
"Some assets require protection from what they might unintentionally reveal," the commander replied, voice level.
"SCORPIO cannot be compromised by psychic interference, deliberate or incidental." Tobias heard the careful neutrality in the phrasing, the way it left room for trust and suspicion in equal measure. Trace watched from a short distance away, his stance casual but ready, and Tobias knew Trace understood too: SCORPIO was not only a shield. It was a lock.
That night, Tobias returned to the war chamber alone, letting the hololith project No'aar's anatomy in quiet loops.
He traced refinery nodes and tunnel lattices as though drawing lines on a living body, and he considered how easily SCORPIO had reshaped the field without ever raising its voice. He thought of Archimedes, weakened but present, and of Duchess Satine's steady rule in crisis, and of Cassian's clean competence that made victory feel achievable. He also thought of the Emperor's words, and the way they had praised him without freeing him from scrutiny.
When Tobias finally left the chamber, he found Archimedes waiting in the corridor outside, cane resting against his leg.
The Duke's face was calm, but his eyes held the weary clarity of a man who understood what it meant to be evaluated by forces larger than family. "You met the Emperor's blade today," Archimedes said quietly. "And you did not flinch." Tobias's throat tightened, because approval from his father carried a weight that Imperial praise never could, and he nodded once in silence.
Archimedes placed a hand on Tobias's shoulder, firm despite the tremor in his fingers."They will watch you," he said, voice low, "because you matter, and because the future is never trusted to one set of hands." Tobias looked back toward the corridor where SCORPIO had vanished hours earlier, and he felt the haze of their presence still lingering at the edge of his inner sight. "Let them watch," Tobias replied, his tone steady. "I intend to be worth what they fear."
The sea wind moved through the palace's open arches, carrying the scent of salt and distant storms.
No'aar slept uneasily beneath the stars, guarded now by Hawthorne steel and SCORPIO shadow. Tobias felt the future stretching outward, branching beyond the planet, beyond the palace, beyond the visible war, and he knew the joint exercise had changed the shape of what came next. He had been tested, and he had not broken, but the Emperor's eye had opened fully upon him, and it would not close again.