A is in StarCraft, just disembarked from the Zerg Prince spaceship.

*********************

......

"I don't know, he's probably still working overtime. Just prepare something simple, he likes everything you prepare," the Alliance Director said casually.

"Why are you all so busy lately?" the lady complained softly. "And we were perfectly fine living in our old house, why did we have to move? My former best friend..."

Before the lady could finish speaking, the Alliance Director's terminal rang, and a communication came in.

He didn't listen to what his wife was saying at all, and went to answer a call on his own.

The lady then fell silent.

After finishing the call, the Alliance Director went upstairs: "I have something to do upstairs. You and the chef prepare lunch. When Ferdinand returns, have him come upstairs to find me."

"Are we going to the study?" the lady asked, looking up at him.

"That's right," the Alliance Director said.

"But Ferdinand didn't get back until noon. Shouldn't you have eaten first? What could be so urgent that it had to be so late at night...?"

"You don't need to worry about it, just have him come to the study."

"Okay." The lady didn't ask him what he wanted to do in the study, and answered obediently.

Only after the Alliance Director went upstairs did she slowly, forcefully, clench the flower branch with her fair and soft fingers.

......

The son of the Alliance Director did not arrive home until after 12:30 noon, almost 1 p.m.

"I'm home. Mom, how was your day?" Ferdinand Rodri returned home and nuzzled his mother's soft cheek.

"Why are you so late?" His wife gently took his coat. "I had a very happy day. How about you?"

"We're still busy."

Ferdinand lay down on the living room sofa, took a piece of fruit from the fruit bowl on the coffee table, and ate it; he was starving.

"Although I don't know what everyone is busy with, everyone is indeed very busy. It seems like they are all trying to reach out to the guests from Liernia, but it hasn't been very successful."

Most of the guests from Liernia seemed to prefer interacting with the military personnel. They didn't completely ignore the overtures from the Alliance Office, but they were very polite.

The lady still looked at him gently.

Her son, only twenty-four years old, was young and handsome, and had grown up better than most alphas.

Ferdinand.

"What's wrong, Mom?"

"Lunch will be ready soon. Your father is in his study upstairs. He wants you to go upstairs to find him when you get back." The lady smoothed his disheveled hair.

"Did Dad tell me what I was supposed to do up there?" Ferdinand looked up at her.

No.

"Alright then." Ferdinand stood up, placing the half-eaten fruit on the table. "I'll go ask him."

Just as he was about to go upstairs, the lady, sitting on the sofa in the first-floor hall, suddenly called out to him again: "Ferdinand."

"Hmm?" Ferdinand stepped back a few paces down the stairs and looked at her.

The lady looked at him hesitantly: "Ferdinand, do you know... do you know why we moved here?"

It's very close to the First Military District, but quite far from their Alliance Office.

They knew almost no one around them. The Alliance Director's family had moved here, making life and work inconvenient for them.

"I don't know either." Ferdinand thought for a moment, then comforted his wife, "But it's Father's decision. We don't need to know why; Father always has his reasons for doing things."

"Okay," the lady replied. After a brief silence, she said, "Go upstairs to find your father; he's waiting for you in his study. Would you two like to come down for lunch together later?"

"Okay, Mom." Ferdinand went upstairs.

The lady sat alone on the sofa in the lobby on the first floor, next to a beautiful vase of flowers that no one seemed to notice.

She held some flower branches, and for some reason, she felt a strange sense of panic.

Why, why do I suddenly have this feeling?

I don't know where this is happening; it's so unusual.

It seems... something terrible is about to happen.

......

Ferdinand Rodri arrived at the door of the Alliance Director's study and knocked three times rhythmically.

"Knock knock knock".

"Come in," the Alliance Director said from inside the door.

In the interstellar era when this plant was especially precious, the Alliance Director's study still retains its pure mahogany interior.

True luxury lies not in gold and silver jewelry, but in the foundation of power.

In the ashtray in the study, the ash from cigars had piled up to a thickness of three fingers. The Alliance Director's fingers, though pampered, still bore the marks of time as he ground the last half-inch of the cigarette butt.

Very strange.

His father is old and has always been health-conscious; he would never smoke so uncontrollably.

Ferdinand sensed that something might be wrong.

The tobacco flavor suddenly solidified into a hard lump in my throat.

He walked into the study with a slight hesitation.

"...Dad, did you call me?"

Ferdinand walked in, and the Commissioner of the Union sat in an armchair, watching him from behind a long wooden desk.

Sunlight streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him.

Ferdinand looked at his father’s almost transparent white hair in the sunlight and his sharp eyes backlit by the light.

The projector on the mahogany table is projecting onto the wall, playing a loop of the commissioning ceremony for a new military project.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Dad?"

"Ferdinand." The Alliance Director's withered fingers traced the holographic image, casting blue shadows on his deeply furrowed fingers.

He seemed to be holding the holographic projections in a daze, and said to Ferdinand, "You've grown up now, and I think it's time for you to know some things."

The atmosphere was somewhat tense, and Ferdinand's knuckles tightened at the sides of his legs: "Yes, Dad, you said."

The Alliance Director told him, "The military is gathering more than a thousand military factories to work together to build a protective shield around the Earth, a massive project that will change the future of the planet, called the Mechanical Star Ring."

"Mechanical Star Ring..." Ferdinand repeated blankly.

That's impossible.

The research and development of such a large project must have required enormous human and material resources, and it's impossible that the staff of their alliance agency had never heard of it before.

"You've never even heard of it, have you?" the Alliance Director said. "That's normal. I hadn't heard of it either before."

That's impossible, absolutely impossible.

The Alliance controls the federal economy. Doesn't the military need to spend money or research funding to independently develop such a massive project?

Ferdinand asked blankly, "Then what about the military...?"

The Alliance Director said to him cryptically, "Because of the marriage between Crown Prince Liernia and Major General Gao Tian of the military, Liernia is supporting the rapid development of the military."

The mechanical star ring, while described as a military defense project, can indeed be considered a military defense project.

But in a practical sense, it is indeed related to people's livelihood.

A safe life is always the greatest hope of the people.

Once this mechanical star ring is completed, the military's influence among civilians will far surpass that of the Alliance.

From now on, whatever their alliance does regarding people's livelihoods will only be an add-on.

"this......"

"You know that the Alliance Office has always maintained a system of checks and balances with the military, right?"

The Alliance Director stared at him and said, "Do you know what the future of our Alliance will be if things continue to develop like this? The Human Federation will become dominated by the military, and our administrative departments will become its appendages."

When one department gains both political and military power, the other departments can be said to have become defunct in practice.

Ferdinand hesitated before saying, "Dad, so you mean...?"

"We cannot allow the military region to continue developing and becoming too dominant."

The Alliance Director pressed the projector button on the table again.

The projection on the wall changed, becoming a photo of Crown Prince Lyrnia and Major General Takagi.

In the photo, Major General Gao Tian's uniform is adorned with medals, and he is about to attend his conferment ceremony. The Crown Prince is fixing his hair, and as he raises his hand, the platinum-colored cloak almost falls over Major General Gao Tian.

"Look at him."

The Alliance Director shifted his gaze from Ferdinand to the Crown Prince projected onto the screen.

"How rare! An omega crown prince who is simple-minded, powerful, and has a love-struck mind."