Era of Madness

Chesspiece

A few hours later, the spatial ship actually landed on one of Londris terminal without any complication. Tyler had been nervous about this, considering their situation, but John had reassured him: after those few weeks of travel, they had finally exited Enilteria, the Stellar Field where Glactia-62 was situated.

Londris, as a tourism location, and known as one of the most easy-to-enter planet in the galaxy- as long as one had a ship that is- was a relatively secure place to get At the same time, Tyler learnt that one of the Fields Eniteria bordered was the Poseis Field, which had the particularity to be part of the SGO Republic.

John and Erica didn't mention it, but Tyler effortlessly understood why Cifer chose to establish a base on such a planet: situated at the border of the Poseis Field and the SGO Republic, right next to the Paradise Council's territory.

This way, not only could they easily monitor and supervize their operations in ennemy territory with far lower risk, and offer a more solid escape way in case of retreat, they could also harvest numerous useful information thanks to the constant flow of visitors.

That said, one question remained: if he could get to this conclusion, why would the Paradise Council and the SGO Republic couldn't? Just because nobody had the kindness to indicate them its location didn't mean that those didn't have the means to notice its existence.

Just by using the mouvement pattern of Cifer's operations, retracing suspicious ships and reinforcing the surveillance on Londris, both the Council and the Republic could've easily deduced not only its existence but also its position. In addition, as it was known to gather the most suspicious individuals, there was no doubt that Londris' surveillance was high-level, it was one on the galaxy's most famous planet after all.

Then... what if the SGO Republic voluntarily let it exist, and even used the fact Londris was under its juridiction to secretly protect the base? After all, even if officially the war had stopped, they were still ennemies, and no one knew if eace would last. Therefore, the Republic most likely wanted to use Cifer as a tool...

... but they were probably also restraining them from acting too violently, as it could promptly restart the war, which wasn't a good ending for anybody. Then was Cifer just a chesspiece?

On the other side, if Cifer managed to do enough damage to force the Paradise Council to start a new conflict with the SGO Republic, it would finally gain the ally it needed to fight them on equal standing. Which was the chesspiece of the other actually wasn't such a sure thing after all.

Such a situation reminded Tyler of another event he had read about, that happened during Numeric era, in the first half of the 21th century: the Ukraine war.

Ukraine war had deep similarities with this situation. Russia, the domineering country, would be the Paradise Council, Ukraine itself would be Cifer, and the European Union would be the SGO Republic.

But there was one big difference: at that time, the war happened when Earth was humanity's only home, and was already on its way to destruction. If the scale of the war became too large, it would've signified the end, which was why an all-out war had been avoided at this time.

But now that humanity had conquered the entire galaxy and could easily reshape it with the Fefnir technology, no matter how much destruction would happen, it'd still be reversable in a matter of a few dozens, or at worst hundreds of years, thus there was no guarantee that an all-out galactic war could be avoided in case of a major event triggering it.

'Hmm... wait, but then, if the thing they want me to steal is so important, in case of success... wouldn't that be the triggering event?' Tyler wondered.