*ALERT* *ALERT* alarms blaring throughout the fleet where Ves and Adam is currently in, Ves was still attached to the raiding fleet of the Bright Republic ongoing to planet Aron Corona.

"w-we are under attack send reinforcements!" the soldiers we're caught off guard by the sudden attack.

"secure the engine room! don't panic!" some tried to be calm and give orders according to protocols.

*bang* *bang* *bang* sounds of gunshots and laser weapons mixed together firing in hallways and corridors.

"damn it where are they!?" the soldiers asked in panic, as their assailants remain unseen, distant shots going everywhere its like a scene from the predator movies.

Adam already knew Ves could see the invisible assailants and therefore not too worried bout him, on the other hand he himself could not see the enemies. the only 1st rate technology his clones brought were a portable personal shield that would activate and save him even if a mech decided to attack him.

*sigh* 'next time i'll bring the good stuff'

the only good news in this situation is that the assailants would reveal themselves before an attack, likely their stealth tech are not even 2nd class tech level.

the 2 clones  stuck close to each other covering their blind spots and occasionally firing in rapid succession on a suspected location of the assailant, using this method they could only take 5 enemies down after a great expenditure  of ammunition.

even the other soldiers have been firing haphazardly and only sometimes getting lucky hitting an enemy. with a blood spatter this would mark the target and the area will be saturated with firing barrage.

in a few hours all of the infiltrators have been delt with. however now that is the least of their problems because those assailants were from a cult they contacted earlier to get a "blessing" that would turn their fleet "invisible" from the Sandman race as the raiding fleet made their way towards the planet Aeon Corona where the Starlight Megalodon rests.

now that the cultists are all dead they are now under the detection of Sandmen, the entire raid fleet did not even rest and already prepared for battle, the 2 clones are also already in their respective mechs cockpits ready to sortie.

while there are no Sandman fleet attacking them yet there are however sparse Sandmen groups who have been attracted by their energy readings and have already begun their assault. due to their small numbers no mechs has yet been deployed to avoid increasing the raid fleet's energy signature.

for now artillery fire from the bunkered mechs and other close in weapons systems are being used to defend against the small groups of Sandman. but as they close in on planet Aeon Corona more and more Sandmen have been encountered, and to top it all off there are also pirate scouts being detected just in the periphery of their range.

the commanders have been debating nonstop as they planned their course of action, they see this as "the last stretch" all they need to do is enter the planet and raid the vaults of the fallen capital ship and finally return home.

but it was never going to be that easy, it never is. 

"we can't wait any longer, we might as well pick them off while their numbers are still manageable" proposed by one of the commanders

the others shook their heads "that is just going to attract more Sandmen to our fleet, by the time we arrived at the planet we will be exhausted and have taken casualties before we even begin"

"the Sandmen don't discriminate on who they attack! the attack is eventually going to come we might at swell attack them preemptively while their size are manageable!" 

this back and forth continued for an hour before they allowed the mechs to sortie and destroy the Sandmen as quickly as they came in range, for a while things looked good until as predicted.... more Sandmen fleet came towards the huge energy signature. a fleet large enough to contend them.

"oh fuck here we go!" said by one of the mech pilots in the comms

Adam thought through the clones 'well then.... i might as well show off as much as i can to leave an even longer lasting impression to Ves while he is still easily influenced'

the clones' Gundam Heavy Arms mech flew around the Sandmen as they blasted through their geometric shaped amalgamation of "fleet" some of the geometric shapes are jam packed filled to the brim and would explode when hit with saturated fire, while the others are paper thin.

while the attacks would hit them it basically does no damage due to the sheer number of the Sandmen, the scattered particles also would eventually stick to the mechs who let their guard down unknowingly allowing the sand particles to slowly build up, by the time they realize it most of them would be already too late to eject from the mech and be crushed by the Sandmen.

but the Sandmen are not all dumb and unthinking creatures, when they reach critical mass the fuse together to become a high ranking Sandman. these higher level Sandman are able to organize the others and actually formulate a coherent attack.

just now the Sandmen are no longer attacking head on haphazardly, they are also using energy shields and targeted attacks. if it wasn't for the few Sandmen in the immediate area the focused laser attacks would have long melted the armored hulls of the combat carriers and other capital ships.

space knight mechs would rotate and take the blows using their large shields, while the other skirmisher mechs would perform a quick run by showering the entire area with ballistic fire.

the Gundam Heavy Arms performed remarkably, it has easily dominated the area it is currently in, it is exactly designed for the purpose of extended fire support. despite being limited to 3rd rate technology, the resonating exotic materials that made up majority of the mech created a "fake" resonance that not even the high level commanding Sandmen could do any significant damage to the Heavy Arms mech.

 

after a few days of hectic battles with the scattered Sandmen they have finally arrived within the gravity well of the heavy gravity planet of Aeon Corona, the entire planet is covered with a somewhat thick colorful atmosphere making in hard to survey the landscape.

shuttles and dropships are preparing they descent on a target location. meanwhile Adam's clones could not join Ves Planet side due to the maintenance requirements of the Gundam Heavy Arms, this is because they pushed their mechs a little too much. with heavy gravity planets being known to decrease the structural stability of machines not designed for such heavy gravity.

meanwhile in the shadows, a stealth 1st class frigate is observing everything happening.

this is the "3rd brother" of the clones introduced to Ves, but right now Adam has sent this clone with a lone stealth frigate with only his Exodia hybrid mech and 3 other skirmisher mechs based on the design on Gundam Kyrios all 1st class technology of course. 

and unlike the space peasants, 1st rate technology does not need and anti gravity compensator add ons on their mechs to operate on heavy gravity planets, they can just jump right in and go on their way.

2 of the Kyrios skirmisher mechs were left on the stealth frigate as rear guards, while Adam's clone together with one escort scanned the planet to locate the downed capital ship Starlight Megalodon.

Adam's clone and its escort went in directly towards the Capital ship, as they come close the Ship's defenses came to life and a containment beam tried to incapacitate the 2 mechs luckily to no avail.

over 300 years technologically outdated, for 1st rate states this kind of technological gap might as well be an eternity. an invisible shield protected both of their mechs as they landed on the entrance of the Starlight Megalodon.

the mech pilot escorting Adam's clone is one of the few B class mech pilots he managed to salvage from his family vassals who's loyalty he can ensure. the mech pilot stood on guard as Adam's clone came close to the entrance and pulled out a hacking device to force his way inside.

'hmmm that took longer than expected, as expected i guess even over 300 years the CFA tech is still one of humanity's top after all'

 

Adam knew he had to hurry and downright ignored the A.I. and left them undisturbed, he wanted to copy some files without taking out much from Ves and change canon.

by ignoring the A.I.'s he also saved himself from coming in direct contact with Sigrund , the clone went directly to the nearest information terminal for CFA' core research over 300 years ago, The CFA relied heavily on automation and A.I.'s to run their ships, and the Starlight Megalodon’s continued operations, if only barely, proved that there was merit to this belief.

as Adam's clone move  into the administration, his expanded authority enabled him to view a listing of all the mech research projects that fell under his scope. Among the hundreds of projects that varied in scope and confidentiality, he noticed that their descriptions sounded more and more extreme as the latter increased.

'Looks like for all the principles and values the CFA espouses, they don’t practice what they preach' he smirked to himself thinking he previously held the CFA on a high pedestal.

'hypocrite like the rest'

A lot of their research on mechs entailed finding the best and most efficient way to counter them. This encompassed methods such as bombarding mech pilots with an enormous amount of gamma radiation in "Project Radiance", and this was just the least of the extremes.

"Project Mech Eater" aimed to develop alloy-eating nanites that could break apart any mech, human or machine without a protective marker.

"Project Magnetar" entailed mixing various exotics together to synthesize an extreme magnetizing agent that would turn every mech and metallic object sprayed with it into powerful magnets that squashed into each other.

"Project Battle Casket" took the cake. A joint project from both the Mech Research and Human Genetics Research Sub-Departments, it involved cultivating heavily-modified cloned human brains to act as organic A.I. pilots for mechs!

While many scientists, mech designer and organizations entertained such notions, they never really worked out due to the listlessness of the cloned brains.

as Adam read through the condensed logs of Project Battle Casket, the researchers bumped into the same problem. A complete human clone simply didn’t ’live’, in a sense, and the same applied to cloned human brains. They also found difficulty cultivating an artificial human brain that possessed the right genetic aptitude to pilot mechs.

So what was the solution the participating mech designers and specialists came up with? They decided to rip out brains from actual human mech pilots and force them to pilot mechs while being stuffed into jars!

'huh.... now this is quite disturbing information, now i really need to keep my secrets to myself otherwise i might end up in a disecting table'

of these innovative solutions either involved enormous ethical breaches, massive collateral damage or a high risk of running out of control! If any of these methods went out of control, it wasn’t out of the question for them to destroy an entire city or planet!

Yet despite these concerns, the CFA back then went ahead and authorized these research projects anyway.

Adam downloaded these files and moved on to the next terminal.

first he decided to enter the lab of "Project Void Calamity" at the Exobiology Research Sub-Department. Such a project name made Adam imagine that the CFA tried to develop some powerful superbomb so calamitous that it shattered the surrounding space!

Yet for some reason, this top-secret research project fell under exobiology. As Adam slowly went through security checkpoint after security checkpoint, he finally entered the long-dormant lab of this strange and potentially ruinous research project.

The lights of the main compartment lit up, illuminating a giant stasis cage. a Void Beast about 50 meters in height is locked in time.

Interstellar life existed, and they were all terribly powerful in some way. With asteroids, lethal radiation, extreme resource scarcity and many other harmful factors at work, it was nearly impossible for life in space to evolve into being.

Yet interstellar space was unimaginably vast. No matter how small the odds, as long as even the tiniest chance existence, nature somehow found a way. Void beasts represented the ultimate adaptability of life. Against the extremely harsh environment of space, the creatures that managed to cling to life in space all turned into extremely formidable beings!

No regular outfit would even consider capturing a void beast alive. Even many state militaries would probably decline the opportunity because the losses simply didn’t match the gains.

It was a different story for the CFA, however. If anyone could catch them alive, it was the Big Two.

 

he stepped softly towards the semi-transparent, glowing stasis cage and admired the vaguely whale-like form. Its pitted black skin seemed flexible, but he knew that it could withstand an incredible amount of radiation and kinetic energy. Ordinary laser beams and kinetic rounds would bounce right off the surface without inflicting any major damage.

'is this project void calamity' Adam wondered reading about it and seeing it in person was a completely different experience.

what the CFA wanted to do with this void beast, he turned to the bank of terminals and logged in with the credentials that  provided to him. The terminal read all the authorizations from his  comm and beeped in approval.

Numerous encrypted files became accessible to him. He retrieved the secure data chip  and inserted it into the terminal’s slot.

The chip glowed orange as its hacking software went to work in trying to override the copy restrictions of the research project’s core data files.

Project Void Calamity truly deserved to be kept top secret. The story went that a renowned exobiologist specialized in the study of void beasts discovered a new species which he named void breakers that possessed a peculiar defense mechanism.

As their species name suggested, they possessed the ability to ’break’ space. Technically, they somehow broke the relation between the dimensions in a very limited fashion. This basically meant that anyone falling under its field of effect would be torn apart as the matter that made up their bodies would be spread across a very wide distance!

Naturally, the CFA wasn’t interested in harnessing the void breakers as blunt objects to whack enemy ships. They already possessed more than enough weapons to inflict mass destruction.

Instead, they became interested in the void breakers because this dimensional decoupling took place in many dimensions at the same time. It wasn’t just the material dimensions being affected, but also the higher dimensions that FTL drives depended upon to traverse, The CFA wants to build a giant higher-dimensional space net.

It took a lot of energy for a void breaker to ’break’ the material dimensions because they were relatively barren in energy. However, the creatures found it much easier to decouple the higher dimensions from each other because they somehow managed to draw upon the energy-rich environments to fuel their own separation from each other!

What this did mean? As long as the researchers of Project Void Calamity managed to decipher the mechanics behind the special ability of the void breakers and replicate them artificially, they could potentially build a series of interdiction machines that essentially blocked many methods of FTL travel!

A typical star system encompasses many light-hours. It’s not feasible to block every approach with an interdiction machine if they are too costly to produce.

Yet the void breaker didn’t have a particularly special physique and doesn’t have a demanding diet in terms of exotics. This meant that it was highly possible to mass produce thousands of interdiction machines without bankrupting a state!

Best of all, not only did these interdiction machines block space, they also served as lethal traps. Any ships that crashed into their field of effect would tear themselves apart like noodles, eliminating every hope of entering the star system alive!

A couple of hundred interdiction machines set up at a predicted FTL emergence zone would definitely be able to annihilate a major fleet without firing a single shot!

'a weapon that needs planning and prediction to make the best use of it. How frightening'

After departing Project Void Calamity’s lab, he quickly went over to the Human Genetics Research Sub-Department and made his way to the lab that housed "Project Pandemonium Descent".

This lab was a lot more modest and didn’t host any organisms locked in stasis. As Adam repeated his actions at the other lab, he quickly read over the introductory files of this strangely-named project.

Project Pandemonium Descent possessed a much more insidious goal. The secret project aimed to discover and exploit special frequencies that when broadcasted to a crowd of humans would slowly agitate them and make them more aggressive and impulsive.

he didn’t understand even an iota of the theories described in the documents, but the summaries and abstract painted an extremely potent weapon aimed squarely at large populations of humans.

The emitters that broadcast these extremely subtle frequencies can be spread all over a city or even encompass an entire planet! If they aren’t discovered fast enough, a planet can easily descent into absolute pandemonium! Even the most cohesive and prosperous of planets can ignite into a madhouse over the course of a couple of months.

The CFA approved of Project Pandemonium Descent with the express intent of reserving them for use against the first rate super states.

'So even the CFA is apprehensive against the two most powerful human states, the Greater Terran Confederation and the New Rubarthan empire'

Generally speaking, the power and reach of the Big Two transcended the might that could be mustered by the Terrans and the Rubarthans, yet the disparity wasn’t that large. If a full-scale conflict really broke out for some reason or another, the Big Two would probably end up with a pyrrhic victory.

Adam really had to hand it to the researchers who proposed Project Pandemonium Descent. The main strength and weakness of the Greater Terran United Confederation and the New Rubarth Empire was their massive territory and the enormous amount of rich and highly-populated planets under their control.

No matter how well the first-rate super states defended their core planets, it was all too easy for the Big Two to insert their spies among their populations. The best part about the pandemonium emitters was that it worked in a very wide range, so the spies could hide them nearly anywhere in a city and still affect the more heavily-guarded city districts.

As long as enough emitters did their magic, these prosperous and productive core planets that formed the backbone of the first rate super states would break without external intervention!

Project Void Calamity tried to devise a means to destroy an incoming war fleet by laying a trap in their FTL emergence zone.

Project Pandemonium Descent attempted to discreetly plunge a highly-populated city or planet into absolute anarchy.

' so much crucial information, this will definitely build an empire late at red ocean galaxy!' Adam said to himself excitedly

he opted out from taking any physical resources to minimize his presence on the Starlight Megalodon, and walked out towards the entrance like a guest who's done touring.

"we're done here let's go" he said to his escort

and both mechs flew back to space while on stealth with no one any wiser