The Edenian-China oil transfer agreement was signed within a week, after all the kinks in the clauses had been ironed out. During that time, the Edenian Minister of the Exterior, Gabriel de los Estrada, had toured the country and presented his diplomatic credentials to Chinese President Zi Jinping, officially opening an Edenian embassy in Beijing. He had also opened new topics of discussion, setting a foundation for future cooperation between the two nations. The Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Wang Yi, had done the same, but his interests differed from Gabriel's. Where Gabriel was interested in raw materials, especially wanting to tap into China's extensive deposits of minerals that, to his knowledge, were lacking in Eden and Esparia, Wang Yi was more interested in buying a batch of weapons and technology transfers. But Gabriel countered that by using ARES and GAIA as shields; he couldn't make the call on behalf of the government, since the things China wanted were property, in

Eden, Northwest airbase.An alarm started blaring, signaling a general scramble among the base personnel. They immediately dropped whatever they were doing and headed to their assigned locations like an anthill that had been kicked over.Pilots were urgently putting on their gear according to a strict checklist procedure. And within five minutes, they were headed to the duty hangar, where they would receive their mission briefing and launch. As they crossed the hangar on their way to the briefing room, they passed a virtual hive of technicians scrambling over the parked jets and giving them last-minute checks and fueling them.The pilots reached the briefing room and received their briefing, then boarded their jets and taxied out of the hangar.Soon, with the screaming sound of jet engines spinning up, four planes were lined up on the runway access lane, ready for takeoff as soon as they received final clearance from the tower."Tower, this is SU-3

Somewhere over the ocean on approach to a nameless island in the Indonesian archipelago.Four Edenian fighter jets were screaming through the air at supersonic speed, trailing flame from their engines. They had been flying with their afterburners on for over an hour and were about halfway to their destination, a pirate base on an unnamed island in the Indian Ocean near Indonesia.The pilots were relaxed, trading jokes back and forth and hyping each other up for their first combat mission. They had just graduated their training a few weeks before and, like many soldiers, sailors, and airmen, were feeling invincible after having been broken down and rebuilt into new versions of themselves through the tried and true method of basic training.The difference was, the members of ARES—whether they be in the Army, under the command of the AI, Mars; the Navy, under the command of the AI, Poseidon; or the Air Force, under the command of the AI, Aeolus—actually

"Is that a simulation of one of our classified projects?" President Trump was in his office receiving his daily briefing. Currently, he was looking at a satellite image of what almost looked like an alien naval fleet.The tablet he was using for his briefing switched to recorded satellite footage of the ships sailing at a rather fast speed. But the idyllic image didn't last long as the ships' batteries turned in unison and fired repeatedly, kicking up enormous waves on the surface of the water near the ships from the overpressure. The recoil from the guns caused the ships to heel over and shift on the ocean's surface, as well as slowed them down a bit.The room fell into silence as the president was stunned into speechlessness by the sheer violence of the gun batteries' barrage."Care to explain what that footage was?" he asked."That was footage our surveillance satellites caught of the Edenian fleet firing yesterday," Reince Priebus, his Chief of Staff said. He was the one in charg

"The Republic of Eden remains open to the prospect of peaceful dialogue and cooperation with Indonesia to resolve this dispute through diplomatic means. We have already withdrawn our vessel from their territorial waters and have already attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement to this whole affair. But so long as their specious allegations against us remain unwithdrawn, our stance remains firm: we will not tolerate their slander, nor will we remain quiet as they tarnish our reputation in the international community."Thank you for your time, Madame President and other distinguished members of the security council. I yield the floor," Ambassador Foster finished, then sat back down in her seat. She had presented nearly all of the evidence Eden had, choosing only to withhold the information about the submarine that was responsible for the jamming to begin with.The back-and-forth continued, with impassioned pleas, rigorous arguments, and tense exchanges between the two na