General Verle and his staff truly had an eye for excellent devices. Ves already fell in love with the features of the SPM and the Gravity Net. Both of them were new. Both of them were insanely costly to build. Both of them offered strong capabilities that could substantially strengthen the expeditionary fleet. If he had a choice, Ves would have wanted to obtain both of them, but that was way too extravagant. He had always insisted on showing restraint in his spending. It was okay to splurge every once in a while, but he would always make sure that he never exceeded his budget. This was no different. The latest gains afforded the Larkinson Clan enough room to exchange a single super device. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚 Though General Verle informed him that it was possible to obtain lesser versions of the SPM and the Gravity Net at the same time, Ves immediately rejected this compromise option. The strength and the effective ranges of the neutered versions of those products did not impress Ves that much. It was better to obtain the strongest iterations of one of them in order to produce the greatest possible impact on the battlefield. "What else is available?" He asked as he was ready to hear about the next super device. "Melmen Advanced Systems has also worked on a product that might interest you. It has done extremely well as of late, and we have contributed much to its success. Professor Neihy Almar has therefore let us in on a secret project that she has personally been working on for the last three years. While she wasn't able to share too many details in order to prevent premature leaks, she was generous enough to give us a couple of hints." Ves grew curious. Although Melmen Advanced Systems was not as big and capable as other rivals such as Morton Tech, it was still a decent player in the tech industry. It could probably support at least one ambitious research project. "So what did you learn?" "Well, her new invention is oriented towards defense. It offers much greater protection than ordinary products, but the demand for phasewater is massive." "What is the scale of this new defensive tool?" Ves inquired. "Is it designed for mechs or for starships?" General Verle frowned for a moment. "Professor Neihy didn't give us a solid answer, but I can guess from the context of the discussion that it is likely applicable to starships. It makes the most sense. A lot of developers such as Truvek Defenses have already invented strong defensive systems such as the Abasis Armor. Melmen does not have the scientists and resources to top these products. It makes more sense for the smaller company to focus on less saturated product categories." Improving the defenses of starships was just as important as enhancing the defenses of mechs, but the difference was that the latter was a lot more affordable due to the smaller scale! This was why R&D institutions did not prioritize research projects centered around the former. The idea was that they should first establish successful implementations with regards to mechs before trying to transplant the same working principles to starships. While this was a logical approach, the downside was that not a lot of companies offered effective products related to protecting starships at this early stage. "How effective is this new defensive measure?" Ves inquired. "That… is a bit uncertain since Melmen has never built a prototype despite completing all of the main research and design work. The company can't muster up the huge amount of phasewater needed to build a working example. However, Professor Neihy was adamant that her invention would be a game changer for us. She makes it sound as if we can take advantage of this new defensive measure to resist attacks from alien warships for an extended amount of time." Ves was willing to believe that claim. Melmen never fooled around and it had always been thorough in calculating and simulating all of its experimental designs. Besides, even if the actual defensive product was rather shoddy, the huge amount of phasewater put into it should still be able to generate a strong effect. "Do you have any other details about this new defensive tool?" "I'm afraid not, sir. We can speculate a lot, but none of our guesses are reliable." Ves became a bit frustrated at the lack of information. The Larkinson Clan possessed a 7.75 percent stake in Melmen, but that still wasn't good enough for him to learn about this classified project. He waved his hand. "Forget it, then. I'm sure that Melmen will be able to astound the market with its new starship defensive systems in the following decade or so, but right now it is not necessary for us to jump in first." General Verle introduced a couple more experimental products developed by different research institutes, but none of them sounded as compelling as the ones mentioned earlier. It was still useful for Ves to hear about what the development companies were working on these days. He was surprised at how much progress the researchers had made. He also became impressed with the variety of phasewater applications that would soon be available to the market. Ves shook his head. This was not the time for him to indulge in all of those exotic possibilities. With the Trailblazer Expedition right in front of him, he needed to maintain his cool and focus on what could provide his fleet with the most useful and effective boost. It did not take too long for him to make up his mind. "I'm really attracted by the SPM and the Gravity Net." He told the general. "Detection and warp travel inhibition are both essential. However, if I have to make a choice, I would rather go for the Gravity Net." General Verle did not look too surprised at his decision. "The Gravity Net is a solid choice. If it truly works as Morton Tech has promised, you can't go wrong with it. We still have to discuss how much phasewater is required to make it and how much phasewater we have to pay as commission. We also have to pay an astronomical amount of money to help Morton Tech pay for all of the high-grade materials needed to build this advanced tool." "Leave it to the professionals." Ves said. "I'm not afraid of investing ten or twenty kilograms of phasewater for a good product, but I don't want our clan to get ripped off. Our negotiators should make sure that the phasewater fee is not too excessive. We are already paying a lot to turn ourselves into voluntary test subjects. There is a limit to how much these development companies should be able to exploit our clan." pan(da-n0vel.c)om The Larkinson Clan worked quickly after this meeting. As a regular customer, Morton Tech already began by offering plenty of sincerity with regards to its new Gravity Net. The main iteration of this new R&D project demanded 26.5 kilograms of phasewater. This was a hefty amount of phasewater and would eat away much of the gains from Pima Prime. However, Ves already expected this and did not object to it. What he did have a problem with was how much Morton Tech tried to charge for this commission. "5 kilograms of phasewater is too much!" Ves complained. "We are testing the Gravity Net on behalf of Morton Tech. Not only are we working with unstable and untested technology, we have also agreed with the concession to share all of its usage data to the greedy researchers. The least they could do is thank us for trialing their new Gravity Net in the field!" In the end, the Larkinson negotiators managed to reduce the commission fee to 3 kilograms. This was still a hefty amount, but Ves and the clan had little choice. The Larkinsons were crucially aware that Morton Tech needed enough incentives to continue to provide technical support to the clan. If the researchers at Morton Tech developed the impression that the Larkinsons were generous people, the developers of the Gravity Net would show a lot more enthusiasm in debugging and updating the device over time! The Larkinson Clan soon transferred 29.5 kilograms of phasewater as well as 650,000 MTA credits to Morton Tech. Both sums were dazzlingly high to Ves. A lot of people in the clan who found out about this matter issued a lot of complaints. The clan could have invested this money in all kinds of improvements that could strengthen the Larkinson Army as a whole or substantially increase the quality of life of the civilians in the fleet. Ves paid no notice to these complaints. General Verle and many other leaders thought it made a lot of sense to purchase the Gravity Net. Weaker threats generally didn't employ much phasewater, so they could easily be defeated through the clan's existing means. It was the bigger and stronger enemies that started to make use of a lot of phasewater. Being able to inhibit their warp travel functionality as well as a couple of other effects was immensely valuable in battle. Ves partially regretted that his fleet didn't have a Gravity Net on hand in the last battle. The Shield of Samar probably wouldn't have suffered a massive calamity if the Skorpion Kommando lost its ability to engage in warp travel. Then again, without the Shield of Samar's death, Ves would have never come up with the Dullahan Project. The current situation was actually a lot better to Ves as a mech designer because he finally became inspired to work on a potentially ground-breaking project that could finally push his design philosophy forward! Losing one expert mech was already bad enough, though. His clan really couldn't afford to lose more of them in quick succession. In any case, now that the Larkinson Clan had made a deal with Morton Tech, the latter promised to supply a working version of the Gravity Net within a week. Though this would delay the departure of the expeditionary fleet by a couple of days, this was more than an acceptable tradeoff. Ves was surprised that it didn't take a month to fabricate such an amazingly complex machine. It turned out that Morton Tech had already built the main chassis as well as many other components several months ago. The only parts it needed to make and put into the machine were the most expensive ones that demanded lots of phasewater or extremely expensive high-grade materials. Time quickly passed by and Ves and many others waited for the completion of their order. In the end, an armored transport escorted by hundreds of the Avatar mechs slowly lifted off from the surface of Davute VII and approached one of the fleets in orbit. A special crew of engineers and other specialists carefully transferred the precious cargo from the transport to the hangar bay of the Spirit of Bentheim. After the Larkinsons removed the protective packaging, Ves and many other Larkinson finally laid eyes on their latest super gadget. "So this is the Gravity Net AXR-01." Ves spoke with a breathless voice. "It looks uglier than I thought." Morton Tech clearly didn't have aesthetics in mind when they designed this iteration. Only function was important. The result was that the Gravity Net turned into a large mech-sized machine that looked as if a lot of bent tubes were wrapping around a cube. A lot of unknown and unfamiliar components were visible as well. Each of them could be tweaked, removed or replaced in order to change the performance of the Gravity Net, but the Larkinsons received strict warning from Morton Tech not to mess around. "I wonder if this gravity net is strong enough to catch a phase whale?" Ves idly wondered. Gloriana snorted. "You're dreaming if you think this tool can trap a phase whale. The mature ones have accumulated a lot more phasewater than was put into the Gravity Net. I think the creatures should easily be able to break the net by relying solely on their massive strength." "I guess you're right, but I can always dream."