The enemies of Ves sought to entrap the Bluejay Fleet and let his protectors stew in their own uncertainty. It would have been a good plan if the ambushed party had no idea of what was going on. Yet the availability of detailed intelligence that appeared accurate so far had completely changed the dynamic of the situation! Certainly, the revelation that the native aliens were able to create temporary spatial bubbles that could envelop an entire star system, if only a small one, shocked the mechers a lot. This was an infamous capability that the Red Cabal and its alien associates had not repeated since they managed to isolate Bridgehead One from the rest of the universe! That certainly alarmed the Red Two and other powerhouses. The bigshots that quietly monitored the circumstances of the Bluejay Fleet from the distance could no longer pretend as if this was a controlled test. The native aliens were improving too much! While it was unreasonable to expect the old and powerful phase whales and phase lords to remain completely stagnant in the face of a powerful extragalactic threat, most human leaders did not expect for their enemies to defy their historical patterns and innovate to such an amazing degree! Red humanity already got caught by surprise when the Red Cabal sacrificed 6 ancient phase whales to virtually freeze and isolate Bridgehead One for 4.5 years. Now, the upper echelon of human civilization grew even more concerned when it became known that the native aliens were able to replicate this capability to a lesser degree. Even a short-lasting spacetime bubble could be a gamechanger in a serious battle! To be able to isolate all travel and communication within the confines of the bubble could easily cause the human defenders to falter for all sorts of reasons. Reinforcements would not be able to arrive in time to lift the siege of a faltering fortified planet. Lack of communications could prevent the defenders from transmitting vital messages about getting attacked and other important developments. Fortunately, the native aliens shouldn't be able to employ this solution too much. It took so much energy and power to isolate a star system that the phase leaders responsible likely had to devote their full effort to maintain the effect. It did not make sense to take 3 or more greater phase lords out of action just for this purpose. The aliens would be missing too much fighting power that could have been used to inflict defeat on the human defenders. It only made sense in this instance because the Bluejay Fleet was just too mobile. There was no effective way to ambush it and create an opportunity to claim the Devil Tongue's life unless the aliens managed to inhibit the FTL travel capabilities of all of the starships in the fleet! In order to distinguish between the more powerful spacetime bubble that enveloped Bridgehead One, people quickly categorized the effect that isolated Bridgehead One as a strong spacetime bubble, while labeling the one that enveloped Mazepan as a weak spacetime bubble. Though the weak spacetime bubble did not possess a temporal difference factor and could theoretically be broken by killing one of the three greater phase lords that maintained the effect, it was still a challenge to hunt down one of them and breach the blockade. The Bluejay Fleet and its allies declined to accept this challenge. They instead sought to play their own game. Taking a random asteroid transforming it into a constantly improving space fortress was an inspired idea. The plan took advantage of the conditions in the Mazepan System and granted the Bluejay Fleet a defensive advantage that became increasingly stronger over time. Space fortresses were different from warships. The former may be relatively static and unmoving, but that meant that they possessed much less requirements. More of its abundant capacity could be devoted to mounting stronger weapons, defenses and auxiliary modules than normal! It was like adding an immobile battleship to the Bluejay Fleet. The time passed by, the more the space fortress matched the raw capabilities of an armed capital ship! Of course, the cost of erecting such a space fortress in a hurry was great. A lot of ships that were previously loaded to the brim with supplies and spare parts had to empty all of their reserves in order to construct the defensive works. The quality of all of the construction work left much to be desired. If Gloriana was present, she would have probably weeped before trying to gouge her eyes out. Much of the elements that made up the space fortress were derived from standard templates that were hastily stripped down to their barest and most essential configurations. In many cases, the lack of specific raw materials and inadequate industrial production capabilities forced the joint design and construction crews to improve a lot of suboptimal solutions on the spot. There was no time to design anything fancy. The engineers and construction experts hastily used their judgment to jury-rig a sloppy but barely workable solution on the spot without even bothering to conduct any tests or simulations. Despite employing such a crude and hasty approach, the engineers and designers were all highly competent first-raters. They were trained and educated to such an exacting degree that they knew exactly how to make the best use out of the limited quantity of high-quality raw materials and spare parts. If Admiral Tensen hadn't vetoed the proposal, the incredibly smart and intelligent engineers would have gone as far as to strip apart some of the combat carriers in order to strengthen their makeshift space fortress even further! It only took 2 hours of speedy construction to make the space fortress barely operational, with much of the focus placed on erecting powerful sensor and detection systems. It took 3 more hours to strengthen its offensive and defensive capabilities to the standards of a small first-class warship! At that point, the engineers and construction crews had exhausted much of the available high-quality parts and materials. The engineers and construction crews were not content with their existing efforts. They selectively tore down their existing works, tearing down shoddily-made gun turrets and defensive measures before reconstructing them into super versions of what they used to be. The additional time and care spent on the reconstruction effort gradually caused the makeshift space fortress to look more solid and menacing. The Bluejay Fleet did not attempt to hide this at all. The workers were even proud to show off their constantly improving work, as if they were afraid that their peeping enemies would not be able to get the message! The space fortress basically transmitted a giant 'ATTACK US' signal to the ambushers who thought they had the Bluejay Fleet in the palm of their hands. "Hehehehe..." Ves regularly grinned and laughed as he worked on producing and installing a large missile launcher system. "This is going to be fun, hehehe. Those filthy cosmopolitans and native aliens will regret giving us the time to build all of this up. The longer they delay, the worse they are making this for themselves!" "Meow..." Lucky looked increasingly more frightened at all of the massive weaponry that the members of the Bluejay Fleet had built up in such a short amount of time. One of the more unfortunate realities of compressing months worth of construction work in a matter of hours was that the workers had to skip a lot of prudent safety measures! There was a disturbing lack of redundancies, buffers, inspections and other safety measures that had long turned into standard industry practice. The heavy reliance on repurposed materializers and other repurposed high-tech production equipment presented additional risks as they were never designed to work at this scale and intensity. Nonetheless, Ves and the other workers could not afford to worry about these insignificant problems when they remained stuck in the middle of an isolated star system. The enemy could come at any time, so they needed to make the most out of every single second and make their space fortress stronger. "This is such a good idea. It's too bad we did not include any factory ships or auxiliary ships in our fleet. We could have built a much better space fortress if we had access to an actual industrial ship." The Bluejay Fleet consisted entirely of combat vessels in order to keep it lean and mobile. Ves could appreciate the merits of this composition, but he already missed the versatility of the expeditionary fleet. The inclusion of support vessels added a lot of depth to a fleet, enabling it to fare better in situations that did not require direct fighting. 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎 This reminded Ves to make sure he added at least one sizable factory ship to his upcoming first-class fleet. His most ideal solution would be to upgrade the Spirit of Bentheim to true first-class standards. Ves had already made a head start in this by laying the groundwork during her last refit, but it took a lot more work than that to bring her up to modern first-class standards. Fortunately, the two largest warships of the expanded fleet possessed enough versatility to partially make up for the absence of a factory ship. The RA's Tarrasque and the RF's Babylon Excavator both possessed enough mining and production capabilities to make the plan feasible. "I do love it when a plan comes together." Ves grinned and chuckled as he continued to supervise the construction of the large missile launcher bay. He had been the first to propose the construction of a makeshift space fortress. Such an idea did not come naturally to Admiral Tensen and other career soldiers as their mindsets were predominantly fixated on making use of their existing combat assets. It took an outsider who was able to think outside the box to remind them that they could theoretically build up an improvised space fortress with their existing capabilities. The mechers and the fleeters quickly took charge once they realized the potential of this strategy. They fleshed out the tentative design of the space fortress and undertook most of the construction work. However, the inclusion of 5 Senior Mech Designers added extra flair to the design plan of the fortress. Sure, their expertise mainly centered around mech design, but they could still transfer much of their expertise to fortress building. They just had to scale up much of their existing works, allowing them to play with toys that were much more powerful than they normally utilized in their mech designs. It was incredibly fun for Ves and the others to stop repressing themselves and arm the space fortress with all kinds of incredibly potent solutions! Lord Richard Brownstone suddenly became the most valuable expert that the Bluejay Fleet had on hand. His extensive expertise in first-class kinetic weapon systems allowed him to design highly adapted kinetic gun turrets that turned the space fortress into a punishing battle station! Ves just knew that the Rubarthan scion must be feeling a lot more exhilarated than himself at this time! This was like a dream come true for the kinetic weapon specialist! Lady Romanda Devos had opted to employ her less relevant specialization to beef up the space fortress' defenses and damage control systems. Jovy Armalon and Vector Loban possessed a stronger grasp of high technologies typically used by the Red Association, so they busied themselves with assisting the design and installation of the most high-tech solutions. That sort of left out Ves, whose expertise on living mechs and limited grasp on first-class technologies left him unable to help with much of the advanced construction work. This was why he decided to devote his time to a relatively low-tech but devastating weapon system. Ves decided to design and construct the largest possible missile launcher system that he could get away with under the circumstances! Of course, since Ves had taken charge of this project, he refused to create a bog-standard weapon system. He had tried his best to apply his unique touch to it in order to make it more difficult for his enemies to deal with when they finally decided to launch their attack! "Hahahaha! I almost can't wait!"