The plan was very simple and yet incredibly unlikely to work. All that was needed was to redirect a large enough asteroid and have it slam into the barrier. If the UGN’s blockade intervened, or if the Spy Ship was discovered, then it would be much, much harder to let the Numol-kaian People know just what kind of fate had befallen them. Even if the mission succeeded, there was no guarantee that the natives would act in a way that would be desirable. But it was not like they could just send a fleet to destroy the barrier, as that could constitute an act of war. Even sending Mobile Suit Golems or Mobile Armor Golems and nothing else was out of the question, as they were small enough to be ineffective but large enough to be detected.

The whole process of redirecting an asteroid would not take very long, but the process of getting it to a high enough speed and have it hit just the right place would be what really would make or break the operation. A single miscalculation could lead to the asteroid veering wildly off course, possibly colliding with a planet or a moon, or missing everything entirely and flying into the system’s star. Thankfully, the operation went off without a hitch. The most dangerous part was accelerating the asteroid while also focusing its trajectory; a task which very nearly resulted in a few Mobile Suit Golems being crushed between two or more massive space rocks on multiple occasions.

But it was all worth it when the ten-and-a-half-mile wide hunk of rock and other various materials smashed into the barrier and sent it careening off into multiple directions, reduced to a multitude of differently sized pieces. Almost as soon as the giant space rock impacted the vision-blocking barrier, the comms chatter erupted into a cacophonous mess of profanities and outcries, which only got worse when the debris field scattered far enough to give the natives a good view of the industrial hell that their home world had become. It did not take long after that for riots to erupt all over the planet and the UGN’s ‘peace-keeping forces’ to try and suppress the justifiable anger and rage by force.

Unfortunately for the UGN, this had been foreseen by the High Command of Arcadia, which had discretely dropped weapons and supplies on the planet. The blockade runners just barely evaded the blockade, which had grown lax in the decades since it had begun, and the weapons and supplies that were continuously granted to the ‘terrorists’ proved to be just enough of an edge that the UGN found their hands full. Eventually, similar insurrections broke out in various other parts of UGN controlled space, all caused by Arcadia’s saboteurs and black ops teams. Soon enough the UGN, which was mostly run by the various corporations and special interest groups, decided it was better for their profit margins if they abandoned the ‘primitive backwater nations’ and left them to fend for themselves.

After all, there were crime families and pirates that were going to be more than willing to swoop in and pick up a few primitives as easy slaves, and their technology would not be enough to fight them off. The Crime Families like the Urk Consortium could deal with the rebels, and once they had ground them down enough the UGN would swoop back in and ‘liberate’ the ingrates from their fate. Such a thing was not to be, however, as once the UGN pulled out, Arcadia moved in.

It would take several years of diplomacy, (something that was yet to happen) but the Arcadian Solar Commonwealth was getting on the fast track to becoming a galactic superpower with parts of itself scattered across the vast sea of stars. Unfortunately, a bigger issue would rear its head several years before the Numol-kai, Vangratia, Zurlok and Feltriton people signed on to the charter for the Arcadian Galactic Commonwealth. This was due to the fact that the Angelus Holy Union has finished its preparations and embarked on its 13th Holy Crusade. The UGN’s embargos and sanctions had done nothing to stop the warmongering tendencies of the AHU, who began their march to galactic conquest with a rampage across the borderlands that made up a flimsy buffer between the AHU and UGN.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

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In the council chambers aboard the mobile headquarters of the UGN, the delegates from the nine remaining members of the formerly ten nations were in utter disbelief. Their sanctions and embargos were supposed to have crippled the AHU’s capabilities! If they were any other nation in almost any other situation, this would have been the case. But the AHU was completely self-sufficient, and the things that were being denied from them were things they never acquired from outside to begin with. Media, food, resources, free travel and more were denied from them, but the AHU had plenty of all but some, and those they did not have were unneeded. If they wanted to go somewhere, they would not bother to pay for passage, they would go there and scuttle any ship that tried to stop them.

The AHU had done a lot of preparation for this Holy Crusade. They had been planning it for decades, and long before Arkhan had been born. Even if Arkhan had never been born, there still would have been a Holy Crusade. It was, in all actuality, due to Arkhan’s meddling that the Holy Crusade had started when it did, rather than a few more decades down the line when the AHU had built up a fully unstoppable steamroller of a force.

So, whether the UGN knew or not, Arkhan was not only responsible for their Crusade being what it was but also for it being something less than it could have been. It was certainly a challenge, but not one that was insurmountable. If Arkhan had never existed, then the odds of the UGN being even able to put up a decent defense would be practically nil. What made their job even easier (despite the fact that they would have to sacrifice 78% of their military to even have a 50/50 shot at victory) was the fact that much of the best hardware the AHU had was being sent to deal with the Arcadians.

So, despite the fact that the UGN leadership was running around like chickens with their heads cut off, they were actually in a far better spot than they knew. If they pulled themselves together and stopped dicking about, then they stood a decent shot at blunting the spear and avoiding total erasure. But this was not the UGN at its best, but the UGN centuries after it had seen its peak of power and political purity. It was mired by corruption, bribery, nepotism and more, and the odds of the council working together and not advocating for the interests each of their own personal backers was less than 38.93%. So, while the galaxy burned, they sat and debated the merits of having X company and Y planet be protected while leaving Y company and X planet to deal with their own problems.

While they argued on behalf of their backers, the AHU glassed worlds and slaughtered civilians, until at last they (the AHU) seemed to have bigger fish to fry and pulled out of UGN space. Even as the dust settled, the bureaucrats and politicians did not focus on the issues at hand and left the glassed and ravaged world to fend for themselves. Little did they know that they had been saved from total annihilation by a battle that had taken place in a system that they had intended to abuse like the other ‘backwards species’ they had wronged.