Chapter 1742 Slalom After hearing about how much leverage the Ylvaine Protectorate gained after they managed to master the use of his Deliverers, Ves felt a bit proud. He even considered whether he should make use of his influence on the state to dictate their decisions. If Ves wasn't so rational, then he would have followed his angry impulses and told the Ylvainans to bleed his former state dry! A darker part of him even wanted to take a step further and withhold assistance entirely! However, Ves quickly ruled out these impulsive decisions. From a logical point of view, the fall of the Bright Republic would expose the flanks of the Ylvaine Protectorate and Vesia Kingdom against the sandmen. There was no way the Ylvainans and Vesians would be able to stretch their overstretched defense forces any further! Since its own safety was at stake, the Ylvainans would never break relations with the Brighters entirely! They still depended on each other to protect each other's flanks! Aside from that, Ves maintained a principle that he should not be too picky about his customers and how they utilized them. The moment the mechs ended up in the hands of his customers, he no longer possessed any say in their use. If the Ylvainans wanted to use his mechs to help the people who stabbed his back, then Ves shouldn't interfere. This was what a mech designer ought to do! They only provided the tools. It was up to the recipients to use them for their desired ends! Of course, the situation was a little special right now. It was not that easy to remain hands-off when the Deliverer had the potential to wipe out most sandman fleets before they inflicted any substantial damage! He managed to move on, though. This was not the time to indulge in improper influencing, especially when the lives of trillions of Brighters and Ylvainans were at stake! The three leading dynasties were the rightful rulers of the Ylvaine Dynasty. Ves did not possess the mandate, experience or training to be a qualified leader of an entire state! After reminding himself of this, Ves loosened his shoulders. "Let's end this call before the Fridaymen find out anymore. Each communication attempt is risky, so we shouldn't talk too often." Though Gloriana looked regretful, she reluctantly accepted his argument. Tears began to well in her eyes as she gazed at her boyfriend. Ves clearly wasn't in a good state right now since he was still relying on a floating chair to move around! "Don't give up, Ves! I'll do everything I can to bring you to safety! Once you're in the clear, we should have a good talk about our future!" That sounded rather ominous to Ves. He immediately suspected that Gloriana wanted to encourage him to move to Hegemony space in order to avoid Coalition pursuit! Ves quickly ended the comm call before he said something he might regret! In his rational state, who knew what kind of insane decision he might make! He felt as if he was in Axelar's shoes right now! His sane self was a lot more suspect than his ordinary self! Because it wasn't him! Only when he regained his emotions would he trust his own judgement! Right now, he acted as if his judgement was impaired. "It's like I'm drunk right now! I can't assume I'll make the right decisions!" Perhaps someone like Patricia would disagree, but Ves had always been someone who stuck to his choices even if his logic disagreed. One benefit about his recent changes was that he gained the opportunity to make a comparison between his rational self and emotional self. With the help of Patricia's explanations, Ves gained a much greater awareness of himself. It was as if he was on the outside looking in on how he acted. While his judgement wasn't always good, he longed to return to normal. This was because Ves never doubted his decisions! Whenever he made a choice, he usually committed to them with unflinching conviction! His decision to commit to Gloriana despite the dubiousness of the relationship was a typical example. As long as he was happy, who cared about whether he made the wrong decision?! This certainty was missing in him right now, which troubled him quite a bit. He continually doubted some of his decisions. If he wasn't used to sticking to his choices, then he would have changed his mind already! "My mental state is not very good right." He concluded. "I should distract myself." Before he did anything else, he first prepared the data package for Gloriana. Ves did not assume he could hide his encrypted data package from the Coalition. To assume otherwise was to insult their intelligence capabilities. However, there were ways to frustrate them. It just took a bit of time to set up the preparations. Ves spent a few hours in programming a software program that performed some very simple tasks. First, it received some data input. This input could be as little as a single document or an entire data chip worth of files! Once it received the input, the program encrypted it with a randomized encryption method. This consumed most of his attention because he configured the software with a lot of encryption methods. Each of them relied on a lot of randomized elements that made them very hard to crack by relying on quantum rotation and all kinds of other techniques! No matter the method, Ves believed it would definitely take some time and computing power to decrypt the data! Once his software program finished encrypting the data, it uploaded its output on a random address on the galactic net. Each time it uploaded something on the galactic net, it uploaded the encrypted file on another address! While the principle of his software program sounded trivially simple, the annoying part about it was the sheer volume of encrypted output it disgorged onto the galactic net! In the first minute since he activated it, it started to upload more random encrypted files at a million different addresses! Each of these files were encrypted in different ways! No single method solved all of them easily! Even if the Friday Coalition managed to decrypt the files, most of them only contained gibberish data! The vast majority of files his program uploaded on the galactic net consisted of decoys! Ves intended to run this spamming program for an entire day. After uploading an uncountable amount of files on the galactic net, he believed the Friday Coalition would definitely be frustrating themselves if they attempted to crack each and every one of them in the hopes of gaining any useful data! Out of all of those decoys, only a hundred files contained the data that Ves wanted to convey to Gloriana. Ves had split up his package in a hundred parts as another precaution. Only Crindon knew the right addresses and decryption methods of those files. As a Kinner, Crindon was absolutely loyal, so Ves did not worry about any leaks on his end! Of course, while this method was very consuming, Ves did not rule out the possibility that the Friday Coalition found a way to recover the sensitive data. "Well, it's not like I can do anything better." He shrugged. If he relied on the Scarlet Rose's communication system, he could employ much more sophisticated solutions. It was too bad that he didn't trust it at all. The reason why he wasted valuable time in programming an encryption solution was because he could only trust what he made himself! After making sure that his software program and his control module worked as expected, he left them alone and returned to the bridge. He became a little tense as his floater chair entered the bridge. The ship was just about to reach her second stop. Ves wasn't sure whether it was as lifeless as the first stop. It took less than two weeks for the Scarlet Rose to travel from the Bright Republic to the border of the Friday Coalition. However, this was the most direct route. The ship travelled along a popular shipping route. Many ships frequented this route, which was very bad news to a fugitive like Ves! While most of this traffic consisted of neutrals, as long as one mercenary corps or escort force decided to do the Friday Coalition a favor, Ves would definitely be in trouble! Therefore, he had no choice but to take an inefficient, circuitous route to safety. His current route resembled a slalom that meandered its way to the Ylvaine Protectorate. Not only did he have to make a lot of detours, he also had to travel to the most lifeless star systems imaginable! Most of these consisted of red dwarf systems. Their weak mass and energy made it very hard for FTL drives to reach these destinations. This wasn't a problem when the jump was short, but as long as the distance lengthened, it was too risky for ships to travel to them! As long as they missed the mark, it was a complete mystery where they ultimately stopped! All of these measures doubled or tripled his return time. He might have to wander the stars for more than a month before the Scarlet Rose reached her destination! This wasn't the first time he traveled in this fashion. The Flagrant Vandals successfully used these methods to avoid getting cornered by the Vesians as they boldly cut through their space! Ves did not forget that one of the reasons the Vandals succeeded was because they had the help of the Vesian Revolution Front. If Ves wanted to replicate the feat of the Vandals, he needed some intelligence assistance as well. He had no choice but to rely on Gloriana and Calabast to provide him with this valuable information. Even with all of these advantages, he was not very optimistic about his chances. The Friday Coalition's influence in this region of space was simply too heavy! All of this was proven right as soon as the Scarlet Rose finally emerged out of FTL. Despite ending up in another empty star system that didn't even contain a single manned space station, the Scarlet Rose still detected the presence of fifteen ships in the system! Three of them even appeared within several light-minutes of his emergence point! If the variance of the Scarlet Rose's FTL emergence hadn't nudged the ship away, the Scarlet Rose might have ended up in the middle of their triangular formation! A few minutes after entering the star system, Ves received a transmission from one of the unknown ships. [VES LARKINSON. ON BEHALF OF THE COALITION RESERVE CORPS, WE ORDER YOU TO CEASE YOUR FLIGHT AND SURRENDER THE SCARLET ROSE.] "How friendly." Ves snorted. He didn't panic. Ves immediately commanded his ship to engage her thrusters and run as far away from the closest ships as possible. Immediately, her powerful propulsion systems accelerated the Scarlet Rose away from the nearest ship. At the same time, he activated the scanners and allocated a lot of energy into scanning the properties of the three pursuing ships. The results quickly came in. It turned out that the three vessels belonged to a third-class mercenary corps that had doubtlessly been hired to squat at one of the likely emergence zones the Scarlet Rose might end up next. The three ships were all light carriers. Due to their low relative velocity, none of the carriers enjoyed a head start on the Scarlet Rose. More importantly, the pursuing ships consisted entirely of bog-standard third-class light carriers! Compared to a second-class mobile supply frigate, their acceleration was too inferior! The mercenary corps would never be able to catch up to the Scarlet Rose before she transitioned back into FTL! Ves put down his worries. Though the light carriers appeared to be distressingly close, in truth the distance would only grow larger instead of smaller! "There's no reason for me to worry about them! At this distance, not even laser weapons can hit my ship!" While Ves put down his concerns, he was still displeased. This was just the start. Ves bet that he would definitely encounter this situation several more times!