The Foundry- B6
Three weeks before the Salient's arrival in the Arcturus System

The command center was the first thing to be found on Basement Six. It was a hub of information- all of the computer banks were housed nearby and all intel gathered from anyone in the field came directly there. The room was circular, and it had computer monitors covering the half of the room facing the entrance. There were ten terminals lining the outside, one set back from those in the center of the room where Arthur McNare sat, and a short distance from the entrance was a semicircular desk where the Lord of Liberty stood when it was time to give orders. The room was suffused in a dull blue glow and filled with the hum of machinery loud enough to drown out any small sounds. There were five doors, two leading to stairwells that led to other parts of Basement Six, two leading to hallways, and one to an elevator shaft, which was the main entrance to the floor.

The elevator doors slid open to admit The Lord of Liberty and his four wraiths with a long tone. They walked in and took their usual positions in the command center, footsteps making heavy thuds as quarter-ton men stepped across steel plating. Not one of the ten men sitting at terminals in a semicircle looked up at their entrance. The Lord of Liberty arrived exactly on schedule, and had a known disdain for people who shirked their duties in the slightest. McNare began to rattle off significant developments and intel that had been gathered since the Lord's last visit.

The improvements he had requested for B10 were being implemented, Thirty six new recruits had arrived and were beginning training, a series of all-quiets from a number of posts about the surface, reports of the FSPC movements, and the men were in place. All was going according to plan.

The Lord of Liberty placed his hands on the desk and looked out at the wall of monitors. With everything going according to plan, it was time to begin the raid. Without any command from him, much of the wall switched over to a large field map containing marks of all his men, a layout of the Federation complex they were to attack (provided by a man on the inside), and some other details in smaller print like weather conditions, time, et cetera.
His men had the complex surrounded, but the majority of the force was ready to swarm in through the main gate. Primitive perhaps, but when storming a fortress primitive tactics were sometimes necessary.

The complex was large and roughly square shaped. It stood in the desert on a concrete foundation they had built. To keep the dunes from swallowing them, the walls contained giant fans for blowing the piles of sand away. As such, the area immediately around the complex was flat, but the dunes rose again when out of the fans' range. It was upon these dunes that the insurgents waited, poised to fire their scorpion stingers into the building from all angles.

The Lord of Liberty gave the command to begin- as one all the stingers soared, leaving sickly green trails of toxic smoke behind them as they flew. Up to the main gate drove a stolen tank, the federation logo spray painted over with the logo of Libertas Mundi. The tank fired a shot and the gates caved in on themselves. After the gates were down, vans drove in carrying insurgent strike teams. They leapt from the vehicles and took their separate paths through the halls, shooting down anyone in their way. It was at this time that the Lord of Liberty began to give orders. With the building schematics laid out before him, he commanded the teams in their battles. The teams took prescribed routes through the halls, sweeping for defenders. Whenever knots of defenders came to block the normal path of the sweep, the Lord of Liberty had his men take out walls or floors or ceilings, crushing the enemy or removing their strategic advantage. Within twelve minutes, the facility was captured and swept for resistance. Then it was time to visit the labs, to take or destroy the research inside.

An officer's voice came over the loudspeaker. "I've entered the labs... There appear to be holding cells here for large specimens." A pause. "This one almost... looks... human." There was a dim sound of vomiting, though not from the speaker. "Almost." There was a sound of a keyboard, then data began to come up on the monitors. "Looks like this was another immortality research station."

The Lord of Liberty gave another order. "Kill the poor wretches, then overload the generator. We have everything we need."

"Yes, my Lord," came the officer's answer.

The Lord of Liberty cut communications. The mission was over.
It was the third raid this week... Things were heating up. The FSPC was growing more cautious. More of the soldiers were being outfitted with airtight suits to prevent the horrible effects of Venom. And wherever possible, more men were being placed to defend. They held all of the world's cities, and propaganda was high to recruit more soldiers from every last crevasse. They were almost on the border of hiring mercenaries. Despite their efforts, it had grown impossible to keep things under wraps. Word always seemed to leak out about the raids, in no small part due to the insurgency itself. The FSPC was beginning to stop hiding their movements from the people- there was no point to it anymore. Everything they did was watched, and managed to find its way out anyway. Tanks rode through the streets and soldiers made themselves conspicuous, showing power if they could. Because they had begun to ignore secrecy, their movements had sped up and their actions had grown more bold. New Sidney was on its way to war, and nobody could deny it any longer. They could not deny it and not look foolish, anyway.
In addition to the public propaganda for joining the FSPC, the voice of Libertas Mundi was also growing louder. On one side of the street there could be posters for the army, while on the other posters for the insurgency. Insurgency posters were torn down and graffiti whitewashed as soon as a soldier saw them, but they appeared. Public tensions, and insurgent power, were growing.

The Lord of Liberty turned to go. As he walked away from the desk, McNare spoke up. "A word, my Lord?" The Lord stopped, and turned to face him.
"Speak."
"It's about... The weapon," he said, a touch of nervousness creeping into his voice. He glanced behind him and up at where the generator was located. Where the weapon was housed.
"How is development going?"
McNare shook his head. "Whoever wrote the original coding must have been some kind of deity. Or at least some of those super geniuses with asbergers. I bet Durant would crap himself if he saw it. We can barely read the stuff, let alone repurpose it. We're trying, but... It's madness. With as many weeks as we've been working, we've barely made a dent."
"And? That was your report last time." Durant? Why was that familiar?
"I know my lord... It's just... I am harboring doubts. Right now, you are the only being in the known universe with this power... Are you sure you want to put it into such hands as mankind?" Normally such doubts would have resulted in immediate termination. The Lord of Liberty had no use for such doubts. But... People in his upper echelons were difficult to replace. They earn a bit of leeway in discussion, for no ruler can have absolutely no advisors. Arthur McNare was his longest standing ally- more than eight years in service. Everyone the Lord of Liberty worked with beforehand was gone now- he could not allow people who knew his face to continue on. All men have their breaking points, and he could not risk them breaking to the Federation's interrogators.
"Arthur... You are not the first man to bear this weight, nor will you be the last. But as all men who bear the fates of countless brave, noble souls, you must press on to the future. We need to have this edge. Just remember that in the end, the result is better than the alternative."
McNare looked down at his lap. "It will change the face of war. We will live in infamy for the ruin we bring."
"So it shall be. Can you finish the task you have been assigned?"
"Yes, my Lord."
"Then see that it is done. And remember time is running short. The war will begin in earnest soon enough." With that, the Lord of Liberty retired to his chambers at the top of B6.

The Foundry - B5
Two weeks before the Salient's arrival

Arthur McNare sat before a sizable array of monitors trying to keep an eye on the data coming into each of them at the same time. In other words, an average day. What was not average was what was being monitored. Through a rocket-proof glass wall, McNare could look out into the battle training room, a massive area the size of four driftball fields with a lot of debris and cover. The room's main purpose was battlefield training for the soldiers, but today the Lord of Liberty was putting it to different use.

Yesterday
The Lord of Liberty walks towards McNare's desk. "How is the weapon?" he asks.
Arthur begins to sweat. "I'm sorry my Lord, we just... We're only human." The Lord of Liberty stands motionless for so long, Arthur fears he is about to meet his end.
"... I understand," he says at last.
Arthur struggles to maintain his surprise. "You understand?"
"Yes. This is a job beyond any normal man's capabilities. Unfortunately, we no longer have the time to allow you and your team to continue this study as you have been. Is it the original ready for use?"
Arthur looks dejected- he has failed. "We can hook it up within the hour."
"Good. I will begin battle training with it tomorrow."

Arthur watched through the glass at the spectacle below. The weapon was a gravity generator. Not a normal one, a massive hunk of metal that has to be secured in a ship, a personal gravity generator. It was wired into the Lord of Liberty's suit, and the fields were emitted from his hands. With the generators, the Lord of Liberty was able to change the way mass behaved around him. Projectiles slowed down or missed completely. He could reduce his weight to nothing and leap across any distance. He could increase his weight and decrease his target's so a physical blow would throw them as far as he could throw himself.
In the field below, the Lord of Liberty was doing all of these things. Any piece of debris from a rock to a tank became his weapon, the wraiths were thrown about like rag dolls, and the bullets they fired never connected. It was complete combat superiority.
The Lord of Liberty stands surrounded on all sides by the wraiths, hulking metallic men all with different weapons. Pistols, machine guns, chain swords, and the last was wielding a sand speeder. As one they charge, and Lord Liberty leaps immediately for the one with the vehicle. As the wraith swings, Lord Liberty throws extra weight into the swing, throwing the wraith off balance and the vehicle crashing into the floor. Lord Liberty delivers a punch along with the gravity fields required to turn his simple swing into an overwhelming force. The wraith is thrown the length of the field and leaves an indent in the stone wall before he crashes to the ground.
Lord Liberty turns to face the other three, who, having learned that guns are useless, have drawn their blades. The first recieves a sturdy kick to the ribs and is blasted through a wall. The second finds himself doing a graceful aerial cartwheel past Lord Liberty, though he isn't sure why or how. The third jumps and raises his blades high. The Lord of Liberty steps into a horse stance and give a punch with the full power of his generators.
There is a flash of light, and six objects clatter to the ground.

Nothing moved. The wraiths stared in stunned silence. The six objects were as follows: The last punched wraith, his two chain swords, a piece of the Lord of Liberty's mask, and two halves of the wraith who was kicked through a wall.
hovering a short distance from the Lord of Liberty's fists were two matching shifting fields of energy. The fields faded as he powered his hands down and straightened.
"McNare... What the -hell- was that?"
In the observation room, McNare snapped himself out of his stupor and stammered into the mic, "r... ripfields, my Lord."
The Lord of Liberty turned his masked head slowly to the window. "And why... are there -ripfields-? I was told these generators would not produce ripfields even at the maximum setting."
McNare flinched as though struck, and stammered once more. "I-I-I don't kn-know. I..." Then it dawned on him, as he listened to the hum that pervades the central floors of the Foundry. In B6, Libertas Mundi held a large gravity generator that was used to cancel out gravity in the floor above so the men could train in "space". "The main generator. The main generator is interfering with your hands," McNare announced.
The Lord of Liberty looked down at the floor. "Hm. So it is." He held his arms out from him and fired the generators as high as they would go. To oblige his whim, the ripfields appear over his hands.
"My Lord, I would not---"
"Be silent." McNare was silent. The Lord of Liberty began to create fields of seemingly random shapes and strengths. The ripfields shifted rapidly in response as debris drifted through the altered gravity. A few times, they almost scrape the Lord of Liberty's armor. Almost. "Is there any way to generate these when I'm -not- in a spaceship?"
McNare was quiet for a moment. "You -want- to make those? You could kill yourself!"
"I am not so inept as to destroy myself with ripfields... when I know they will form." At the end of his retort, he turned his head sharply towards the window, and McNare flinched again.
"W... Well, my lord," Arthur said nervously, "Your generators are not at full strength right now."
"... What?"
McNare refrained from flinching this time. He knew he was resigned to some later punishment. It would not come right away. "The original came with four power cells. If you had activated them at their full strength, you would have died immediately. Right now, the full power is coming from one cell. The others are backups in case the first one dies. I can fix our alteration quickly."
The Lord of Liberty stood still, ideas crashing into his head faster than a strobe light can flash. "Four. You're the new Three. Take old Three's armor down to be repaired and throw his body in The Pit. One and Two, with me. McNare, fix the suit. I'm going up top to figure this out."

Up in the observation room, McNare grimaced. The Lord of Liberty was never supposed to find out he had so much more power at his disposal. One quarter of the weapon's power was all he needed to make defeating the four most dangerous fighters in the galaxy child's play. Everyone would be in terrible, terrible danger once he mastered the weapon, and there was no longer any way to stop it.
"God save us all," he muttered to himself.

The Sand Snake
The Skies above New Sidney
One week before the Salient arrives

231564 was a rather large ship, but it was little more than a Federation transport vessel. Not enough to earn a name, yet it was an important vehicle to the shipping business. It was an armored vessel that carried enough fuel in its tanks to visit all eight major cities on New Sidney in one tank. This has never been necessary, but 231564 does forays into the deepest reaches of the desert where one can find large complexes that are not marked on any maps. The crew never asks what it carries- it almost never wants to know. The crates are never labeled, the men who load them and unload them know little more than the crew, and nobody asks any questions of any sort. It's a lucrative business.

However... The ship's captain had other things on his mind this very minute than profits.

Corpses littered the bridge. The navigators, the guards, the communications boy (who was shot a few more times than necessary), one unfortunate insurgent, and still more were visible through the hallway doors. Still standing were ten men. One captain, one first mate, seven Insurgent grunts, and The Sand Snake. Two grunts and one first mate had their guns trained on the captain, three grunts tapped away at the terminals, two grunts checked bodies, and The Sand Snake stood holding a whining metal contraption in his hand.

"What's the meaning of this, Sieg!?" cried the captain to the first mate.
Sieg cocked his pistol. "I opened one of the crates."
The captain grimaced. "You know our orders."
"DID YOU KNOW WHAT WAS IN THERE?" The first mate was red in the face, his rage boiling over.
The ensuing silence was broken only by the whine from The Sand Snake's device.
"... I asked them once. A long time ago. They said I had a right to know why I had to fly so carefully, why I was paid so well. I never asked again."
The first mate shot the captain through the chest. He had been issued the pistol by Libertas Mundi one month prior, when he joined to fight the Federation's corruption. The home made round exploded when it hit the captain's chest, and he was dead before hitting the ground.
Sieg turned to face The Sand Snake, picking pieces of shrapnel out of the shallow piercings they made on his body. "I'm going to need some of that armor," he said nonchalantly.

But, little did the Insurgents know, the captain had knowledge beforehand that he would die this day. In fact, he planned for it. During his career, the captain of 231564 had main numerous attempts on his own life, but he couldn't go through with it. He resolved to get himself killed in the line of work- perhaps his assailants would bring him a swift end.
As soon as he found that his first mate had gone over to the Insurgents (it didn't take long - he showed all the signs of someone who were struggling internally with their life and was poor at keeping anything secret), he planned for this day. Part of his planning was the crew- he chose unreliable guards and a handful of bridge officers who knew the trade well. Officers who knew they would see their end, and who did not struggle. Another part was the distress beacon he sent out, long before the Insurgents ever neared the ship. They would shortly find themselves in hot water.