The Golden Skull Alliance finally set off for the deep frontier. Though the border region between the Krakatoa Middle Zone and the Zelmar Upper Zone was not that deep into unchartered territory, it was still along the route to the more exciting parts of the Red Ocean. In any case, it looked as if the Golden Skull Alliance was one of the many parties that was willing to try its luck and see whether it would be lucky enough to stumble upon Lord Pearian by luck. Practically no one imagined that the Larkinson Clan possessed an incredibly effective means of homing in on the missing first-class lordling's actual coordinates! It wasn't even that difficult to figure it out. The Larkinson Clan's association with Prophet Ylvaine was a matter of public record. The Ylvainans that utilized the mechs that Ves had especially designed for them even demonstrated astounding feats that they could have never pulled off through ordinary technological means. Yet despite the fact that all of the clues were out in the open, no one managed to connect the dots and directed any extra attention to the Golden Skull Alliance. "It's too unreal." Calabast told him when he shared his doubts about this matter. "We rarely made a big show out of Ylvaine's powers. The Sand War happened a long time ago and in an entirely different galaxy. Perhaps those who were directly involved in the battles against the sandmen may be aware of the effectiveness of Ylvaine's prophetic abilities, but those survivors are all third-raters and most likely stuck in the Komodo Star Sector." "I see." The only way to figure out the truth was to go by third-party accounts. A lot of those stories and news articles sounded so exaggerated and fantastical that it was hard for a stranger to believe it was all true. In short, the chances that others would immediately figure out that the Larkinson Clan possessed the ability to home in on Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik should be negligible. Calabast wasn't finished, though. "Suppose we enter the border region and head directly to the star system where Lord Pearian is presumably hiding. Once we take him out and return him to the custody of the Yorul-Tavik Clan, a lot of people will begin to question how we were able to succeed where others have failed." "Oh. That can be a problem." Ves frowned. "It can be incredibly dangerous for us to expose our ability to find different people, assuming that our upcoming attempt succeeds. We will have to act more circumspect in order to deflect suspicion." Calabast nodded. "That is what I wanted to bring up with you. We shouldn't be too obvious and direct about our actions. I suggest that our fleet should take a more meandering route that makes it seem as if we are doing what everyone else is doing. Once we finally reach the star system where Lord Pearian resides, we should pick him up as quietly as possible and gradually make our way out of the region." "Hm, it will be difficult to keep it all a secret." Ves guessed. "As long as proof of Lord Pearian's retrieval leaks to the public, we will probably get swarmed by hundreds of pioneering fleets. There is no way we can survive so much attention." The spymaster still maintained a confident demeanor. "I don't think our situation is as bad as it sounds. We have several advantages that we can rely upon to maintain secrecy and bring Lord Pearian away as soon as possible. We just need to make good plans and be observant enough to make changes on the fly depending on how the situation develops. If others find out, we can always toss him away and let the other pioneers fight over returning him to the Yorul-Tavik Clan." "I suppose you're right." The leaders of the clan were already forming a lot of plans on how they should handle this upcoming task. There was no need for Ves to provide his input, so he was free to spend his time on other matters. For example, he met up with Cormaunt Hempkamp and confirmed that he had succeeded in recruiting a bunch of Apprentice Mech Designers that obtained special certificates from the MTA. The new design team formed by these Apprentices would soon be ready to help with upgrading the neural interfaces of every Larkinson mech design. Ves also checked up on the installation of the new Gravity Net. The highly competent crew of engineers and other specialists had cleared out a highly protected compartment deep inside the interior of the Spirit of Bentheim. There were high requirements to the use of the experimental device. The Gravity Net not only had to be protected against external damage and shocks, but it also needed access to a huge power supply. This was also one of the reasons why the Larkinson Clan decided to install this powerful device in the flagship. The Spirit of Bentheim possessed a lot of power generators in order to meet the demand of her powerful superfabs and other production machines. Ves and many others in the fleet paid close attention to the first live tests of the new Gravity Net. In order to minimize the chances of accidents, the Larkinsons made extensive preparations. The Spirit of Bentheim had to separate herself from the rest of the fleet by several hundred kilometers. The factory ship's many expensive production machines and other equipment were buttoned down. A lot of non-essential crew members and civilian residents temporarily moved away from the factory ship. Though these measures introduced a lot of inconveniences, it was better to safe than sorry. Fortunately, the initial testing session was a resounding success. Researchers and developers working for Morton Tech witnessed and monitored the performance of the Gravity Net from remote. Their input had been crucial in solving the minor glitches and inconsistencies in the initial activation of this powerful device. When the Gravity Net became active and began to exert its influence in the surrounding space, the space around the Spirit of Bentheim didn't look any different. Ves had to look at a simulated image in order to figure out that the factory ship had generated a large and invisible spatial net around her hull! The density of the nets was extremely high at close range, but this rapidly dropped the further away from the new device. In truth, the 30 kilometer range was just a loose estimate. The actual truth was that the net could still be effective at inhibiting warp travel at 50 kilometers or even 100 kilometers as long as the target's warp travel power wasn't too high! pan(da-n0vel.c)om Numerous different mechs and starships cautiously strayed into the spatial net and began to initiate warp travel at various ranges. The results largely matched the promises of Morton Tech. The device pretty much worked as expected and any deviations between expectations and reality were well within acceptable range. When the Gravity Net worked at full power, the Spirit of Bentheim would definitely struggle to keep it running while at the same time providing sufficient energy to her shield generators. However, the effect was astounding. None of the Larkinson expert mechs equipped with minidrives were able to engage warp travel at all. The exact ranges where they could no longer speed up their own flight differed by the phasewater and other properties of the minidrives, but none of them were able to employ vastly superior mobility in the vicinity of the flagship! The same applied to starships equipped with warp drives and superdrives. It turned out that these vessels were even more sensitive to the restrictions produced by the gravity net. They could be inhibited hundreds of kilometers away due to the relatively modest amount of phasewater integrated by their drives. "Essentially, the amount of phasewater put into a target is the most important variable that determines the effectiveness of the Gravity Net." Ves concluded. This pattern had massive implications to the Larkinson Clan and the Golden Skull Alliance. The most immediate one was that poorer enemies would probably suffer immensely! Even richer opponents had to take care not to stray too close to the Spirit of Bentheim! This became abundantly clear when the Mars ventured closer to the factory ship under warp. The ace hybrid mech's advanced Pulsvar V-1 Transphasic Flight System developed by the Godwin Institution ran smoothly until it came closer to the 30-kilometer bubble that surrounded the Spirit of Bentheim. As soon as it passed an invisible border, the warp bubble generated by the Pulsvar V-1 fizzled out and threw the Mars back into normal space! "What?! This is impossible!" Patriarch Reginald thought that he and his ace mech were strong enough to partially resist the spatial net. Even if the Mars was unable to maintain its warp bubble through its own means, the support from Reginald's strong force of will should have been able to keep the powerful mech free and unburdened. Unfortunately, the density of the web was so high at this point that not even Reginald's stubbornness could will the inhibition effect away! "Amazing!" "So ace mechs can't do everything after all. How disappointing." "The only reason why the Mars can't warp around anymore is because its transphasic flight system is fairly weak. It was originally designed for high-tier expert mechs and doesn't match the standard for an ace mech!" Whether that last argument was true or not, it was conceivable that the Gravity Net would still remain effective to mechs with even stronger warp travel solutions. Ves already looked forward to putting this new super device to good use. Whether the next enemies were human mechs or alien monstrosities, none of them should be able to resist the effect of the Gravity Net! The initial test of the Gravity Net produced a lot of data and made the researchers of Morton Tech extremely happy. They had already promised the Larkinsons that they would analyze the data and propose various tweaks to optimize and improve the performance of the Gravity Net. After handling all of this excitement, the expeditionary fleet soon returned to normal, though Patriarch Reginald spent a lot more time on trying to figure out a way to break the inhibition effect. Ves on the other hand went back to his original job, which was designing mechs. He and the other Journeymen of the Larkinson Clan had all focused on completing the remaining batch of design projects while simultaneously preparing for the next design round. Ves had spent a fair amount of time on preparing for the design of his first expert stealth mech. "I don't want to design a generic stealth mech at the expert mech level." He told Gloriana during a design session. "I want it to be able to sneak up to other expert mechs and stab them in the back without giving them a chance to repel the attack." "You're asking for a lot." Gloriana responded. "Expert pilots are too good at detecting threats even if they aren't visible. Their intuition is so unreasonably good that most expert mechs that rely on advanced stealth technology to get close simply get found out too soon. This is also the reason why many of them tended to be equipped with powerful ranged weapons instead. It is easier for them to pull off an assassination strike when they can maintain their distance from their targets. Staying away also helps with preventing damage as mechs equipped with stealth systems are much more fragile than normal." "I already know that, but I don't think we need to stick to this pattern. Venerable Zimro Belson is proficient in both ranged and melee combat, but he is particularly strong in the latter. It would be best if we can design an expert mech for him that performs similar to an expert light skirmisher in combat but is also equipped with a highly capable cloaking system." His wife did not have much confidence in this idea. "The fault tolerance of such a mech is low even if we make use of phasewater technology. It can take only a couple of mistakes to doom Venerable Zimro. Are you sure you want to take this route?" "I'll have to talk with Venerable Zimro in order to make sure, but I am confident that he will be interested in this idea."