Neris, who still looked half-asleep at a glance but was clearly paying attention if you bothered to notice, spoke up in her usual soft tone.

"I’ll prepare conversion stock as well. If you end up harvesting or capturing anything worth moving, it will be easier if the return chain doesn’t have to figure things out on the spot."

Aurelian gave a small nod. "Do it."

She dipped her head slightly in acknowledgment, then added, just as calmly as before, "Also, if this is going to be a long-distance raid instead of a short frontier strike, then I shouldn’t be left behind."

It wasn’t said like a complaint or a request. It was just stated plainly, like something obvious that didn’t need to be argued.

He had already reached the same conclusion.

"Yes," he said. "You go."

Rhoswen, who had come in late enough to only catch the last part of that exchange, immediately perked up, her attention snapping into place. "So almost every ship girl with weapons of war is going?"

Astercourt glanced at her without any real expression. "That is one way to describe it."

Rhoswen ignored that entirely and turned back to Aurelian. "Then when do we leave?"

"When Lysara returns, and the route is confirmed," he said. "Not before."

She made a face at that, though it wasn’t as sharp as it might have been earlier. Even she understood that pushing ahead without a proper route wasn’t worth the risk.

That settled that part for the moment, but there was still another issue sitting in the background, one that hadn’t been addressed properly yet.

The people Solenne had brought back from the last extraction were now part of Haven, and that wasn’t something that could be ignored while planning a larger operation.

That topic came up later the same day when Solenne returned to the command area. She looked better than before, more rested, though it was still obvious she hadn’t enjoyed being forced to take that time.

Aurelian used the moment to get a direct update.

"How are they settling?" he asked.

Solenne pulled up the current intake summary while Astercourt quietly added her own notes beside it without interrupting.

"Better than expected," Solenne said. "Vaeren’s people adjusted quickly once the shock of the transfer wore off. The Hushen are more careful, but they’ve chosen to work rather than resist. There have been some tensions, but nothing serious."

Astercourt added to that right away, clarifying the situation in more exact terms.

"It’s mostly caution, not conflict," she said. "The Haven locals still see them as outsiders they don’t fully understand, and the newcomers expect betrayal or force because that’s what they lived under before. That kind of thinking doesn’t disappear overnight. But giving them structured work, especially in construction and rebuilding, has helped stabilize things."

Caelan, who had come in mid-report, spoke from the local side, his tone steady and grounded.

"The human settlements haven’t rejected them," he said. "They’re not welcoming them warmly, but they aren’t pushing them away either. People who just went through a plague and an invasion recognize what it looks like when others have been through something worse."

That mattered.

More than it might seem at first.

It meant the situation had a chance to hold together rather than break apart right away, which often happened when different groups were forced together too quickly.

"And the working relationships?" Aurelian asked.

Caelan shrugged slightly, not dismissive, just realistic. "Better than the first day. Some people don’t care about words. They care about whether someone can work and hold their ground. The Hushen can do that. Vaeren’s people have adjusted fast to structured tasks. And once the bastion’s awakened machines start showing up in larger numbers, everyone will have to get used to sharing space with things they didn’t expect."

That was true enough.

Aurelian let that settle for a moment before speaking again. "Keep watching it. I don’t need everything to work perfectly right now. I just need it not to fall apart."

From there, the focus shifted back to preparation, this time leaning more heavily toward what needed to be done on the bastion side.

Seris and Meren joined through the command link, their projections steady as Aurelian moved on to the next step.

"I need heavy transport capability prepared," he said. "Not for direct combat, but for follow-on movement once the strike begins."

Meren responded first. "How heavy?"

Aurelian brought up one of the older bastion production files and placed it alongside the current shipyard capacity report so both could be seen clearly.

The design he selected was a Tier IV transport from the Vhaloric bastion archives, a massive logistics ship built to move fleets, support occupations, and carry large volumes of cargo rather than fight directly.

It was enormous, larger than many combat ships that tended to get more attention, but that didn’t make it less important. If anything, it made it more useful in the long run.

According to the records, a single ship like that could carry an enormous amount of supplies, equipment, or personnel if properly configured.

And more importantly, the bastion had built ships like it before.

That meant it wasn’t just theory.

He didn’t need a full production line running yet. He didn’t need a fleet of them.

What he needed was enough capacity that if the strike into Kharov space went well, if it opened up opportunities for extraction or resource capture, the March wouldn’t be stuck watching those opportunities slip away because it didn’t have the ability to carry anything back.

Seris reviewed the file carefully before answering.

"One can be built quickly if we shift priority away from other lines," she said.

"Not all other lines," Aurelian replied.

"No," she agreed. "But enough to make it possible."

Meren added her own assessment after looking over the numbers. "If we focus the awakened technical teams and redirect part of the drone labor, I think we can finish the first full hull in about fifteen days. Possibly faster if we divide the work more aggressively."