When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

Chapter 1145 Defection!
A carriage adorned with the emblem of the Holy Alliance sped along the road, while cavalrymen drove the crowds away to avoid it.

The black carriage, carrying a huge black box, hadn't even come to a complete stop when military police and Cheka officers, carrying wind-up muskets and swords at their waists, jumped out one after another.

"Cheka investigations, bystanders stay out of the way!"

He kicked the oak door of the apartment building, and the door swung open with a bang, revealing a surprised resident passing by.

Ignoring the residents' reactions, a squad of military police strode up the stairs.

They split into three groups: two teams blocked the way downstairs, and one team went upstairs to make arrests.

Unfortunately, when they arrived, there was only an empty room left.

The windows were wide open, and the curtains were being tossed back and forth by the wind.

Everything was neat and tidy, very clean, as if the owner just hadn't come home yet.

Except for one thing.

That is, after the Cheka's inspection, all the documents, books and locomotive-related papers, and even the draft paper were left behind.

At this point, it goes without saying that Capone has practically defected.

Just as the action team leader stepped out of the room, he saw René slowly walking towards him. He immediately bowed and said, "Sir, we believe there is an 80% chance that Capone has already defected."

“He has defected 100%, we already have evidence.” René said coldly, “I have already conducted preliminary checks at the port and border checkpoints.”

"Can we catch him?" Putting aside the fact that Capone was an elite engineer of the Holy Alliance, he took a lot of valuable data with him when he left.

"I don't know." Even René couldn't guarantee the answer to this question.

It's September now, during the expo season, which is when the flow of people is at its peak.

Capone escaped at just the right time; even if we were to investigate him, it would take a lot of time and effort.

Humans are human; they make mistakes.

If Capone is lucky and the inspector is careless, he might actually escape.

Moreover, it would be a case of penny-wise and pound-foolish to try to influence the Expo, and the Holy Alliance's policies are even less likely to change because of this.

Therefore, René believed that Capone had a very high probability of escaping successfully.

He entered the empty room and looked around, searching for clues.

"But why? What was his reason?" the action team leader following behind him wondered.

Capone and Lorton came from the same lab, and were even Leonardo's students.

The latter is already a prospective academician, while Capone, the senior brother, stayed behind during the Holy Alliance's most critical time. Would he choose to defect now?
If he goes to the Holy League, will he still be able to play with his beloved player cards? Or is there a hidden reason?

René hesitated for half a second: "Capen seems to like star player Card, but in his lab, he's neither good enough for high-level players nor good enough for low-level ones."

Compared to ordinary people, he is certainly very smart, but his intelligence is limited. If he wants to acquire wealth quickly, he can only rely on other methods.

His gambling on the odds of winning player cards, and his subsequent hoarding of those cards, reveal a lot about his character.

"There must be external factors involved, right?" The action team leader knew that without objective impetus, no one would risk such great pressure to defect for no reason.

"Our current speculation is that he hoarded player cards and engaged in betting on matches, accumulating a large amount of debt, which allowed the French team to take advantage of his vulnerability."

"...Didn't they find him during the recent crackdown?"

"This is also one of the trigger points. He escaped that purge, which must have been with the help of the French. He had no choice but to run away."

The team leader was speechless for a moment. Because of this simple greed, such an important experiment and an elite mechanical engineer were ruined.

"Fortunately, this time only the clockwork locomotive was destroyed and His Majesty was not injured. We can repair it later and it won't affect the Expo."

“Is it really that serious?” René opened his wardrobe, prying aside the piles of clothes one by one. “Do you know why I’m 100% sure he’s defected?”

"why?"

"Last night he secretly brought a Farron assassin carrying the breath of a red dragon into the Clockwork Locomotive Laboratory, which is now burned to the ground..."

Regardless of how the Red Dragon's Breath fell into the hands of the Farron assassins, this incident alone was enough to give the action captain a bad feeling.

"Then, then..." "Yes, you guessed right."

The technology of the clockwork locomotive is highly classified, and many parts are difficult to manufacture.

Therefore, the blueprints were kept separately, and many of the parts were handcrafted by dwarven artisans.

Even if the Fran spy destroyed the prototype of the clockwork locomotive this time, as long as the basic framework is intact, it will only take some effort to repair it.

But the Fran spy knew this, so in addition to poaching the Holy Alliance's mechanics, they also set fire to and blew up the laboratory.

Many handcrafted parts were deformed in the flames, and even more horrifyingly, a large number of data drawings were also destroyed in the fire.

Fortunately, Capone had some conscience; he sent the on-duty craftsmen and engineers away and drugged them beforehand.

Thanks to advancements in watchmaking technology, the laboratory fire and the clockwork locomotive explosion occurred almost simultaneously.

After the fire broke out, most of the craftsmen and engineers were not seriously injured, and some even rushed into the fire to rescue some blueprints and documents.

As long as they're not in any trouble, rebuilding a clockwork locomotive from scratch is not a problem.

But this still takes time, and there are only ten days left until the start of the expo.

It's impossible to restore a locomotive to its original state in ten days, no matter how you calculate it.

Because the dwarves handcraft parts, there is a defect rate; often only one out of ten will turn out.

Even if you can make the parts by hand, assembling and adjusting the spring-loaded locomotive is still a time-consuming process.

In particular, the prospect of returning to the state where they were able to defeat the chariot within such a short timeframe is fraught with uncertainty.

"No backup?" Hearing this, Horn couldn't hold back any longer and shouted angrily, "What's going on? Who arranged this?"

The engineer who was reporting nearly fainted, stammering for a long time, "Your Majesty...Your Majesty...we...have...have backups..."

"What about backups?"

"It was also destroyed by the red dragon's breath..."

"what why?"

"Because both the original and the backup are in the Clockwork Motorcycle Lab, where the security level is very high."

"When I said backup, I meant keeping an extra copy, just in case!" Horn's eyes widened, a rare sight for him. "Who told you to put the backup and the original together? What did you even prepare?"

People often view the head of state, government, and nation as a trinity, much like the Gestalt concept of a honeycomb.

But after sitting on the papal throne, Horn discovered that this was not the case.

He's more like the brain of a giant octopus, with each tentacle having its own ideas.

He can tell these tentacles what to do, but he can't precisely control how they do it.

Or, to put it another way, it can be precisely controlled, but at the cost of relaxing the overall directional control over other tentacles and limbs.

Just like in this incident, Horn's decision-makers said to make a backup, and the execution team immediately put the backup and the original together.

They thought it was to make a backup in case the part broke down, so that it could be easily replaced.

If a dozen people relaying a message can get it wrong, then the distortion of a complex decision during its execution is even more likely.

Before the advent of information technology enabling high-speed, real-time communication, such haphazard mistakes were almost unavoidable.

Even after the emergence of this information technology, sometimes jokes have been made.

Faced with Horn's angry rebuke, the engineer simply fainted.

Rubbing his temples, Horn could feel the throbbing veins on his forehead, while the people around him remained silent.

Leonardo's lab is truly full of talent; it produced the first academician of theology and technology in the Holy Alliance, and also the first senior engineer to defect from the Holy Alliance.

After thinking for a long time, Horn turned and left: "Summon the cardinals to hold an emergency meeting immediately."

(End of this chapter)