The Mech Touch

Chapter 7493 Stealth Interception

The combined fleet continued to advance deeper into alien space.

That certainly took the native aliens in the region by surprise.

They had become far too accustomed to the notion that red humanity no longer possessed the guts or spare forces to launch a serious incursion into their territories.

Although the Terrans and other human forces occasionally played tricks by sending in scouts and saboteurs, these paltry efforts could never shake their hold on their star systems.

The forces led by the Larkinson Clan were different.

Though the Terran Alliance had not launched an all-out offensive that could shift the entire border back by entire zones, the combined fleet still gathered enough mechs and warships to destroy an extensive amount of infrastructure!

Even if the completion of the Promethea Mark II was still multiple weeks away, the red humans did not need to rely on a miracle mech to tear apart entire space stations and bombard entire cities. At worst, they just had to expend more time and munitions in order to get the job done.

Due to how little the native aliens actually prepared to go on the defensive, the invading humans actually encountered much less resistance than expected.

Once they moved past the border regions, they only encountered sporadic enemy fleets and stationary defenses.

The former all fled upon sighting the now-infamous Premier Fleet and Bluejay Fleet. The native aliens were not stupid or ignorant. Captured intelligence already exposed the fact that the alien fleets in the region already received express warnings not to waste their manpower and assets in a fight that they had no hope of winning.

As long as they did not enjoy an overwhelming advantage in numbers, the alien mobile forces always chose to flee rather than stand their ground!

This was both good and bad news.

On the one hand, it made it easier for red humanity to sweep the underdefended planets that had only been left with static defenses.

On the other hand, the native aliens still managed to preserve a part of their more important combat forces.

Though the Saint Commander always sent out pursuit forces in order to intercept the fleeing enemies and eliminate them before they could flee to safety, they could never catch up to all of the escaping rats in time.

This meant that the scattering native alien fleets could retreat to a central location and amass enough phasefighters and homeships to pose a credible threat to the human invaders.

Despite this escalating threat, Casella Ingvar still decided to split up the combined fleet.

She wanted to take advantage of the relatively thin defenses of most of the star systems that the native aliens had not bothered to heavily fortify.

Though it was still risky to spread apart the assets under her command, she arranged a team of Ascended Giants in each naval detachment.

Though she wanted to keep the human phase lords as a trump card, if the alien enemies tried to ambush a detachment, the Ascended Giants should always prioritize survival over secrecy!

With this extra guarantee, the various detachments proceeded to fan out and sweep through a dozen light to moderate industrial star systems in quick order.

Each of the locations had been scouted in advance. Though the intelligence was not up to date in multiple cases, serious infrastructure never emerged or disappeared overnight.

Few surprises took place during these tense but relatively calm weeks.

The alien fleets continued to act cowardly while the unfortunate soldiers manning the fixed defenses fought to the death despite being abandoned.

Though it was not uncommon for undisciplined or poorly trained alien conscripts to break down and surrender to the human attackers, they never managed to get very far with more fanatically loyal aliens in their vicinity.

Besides, their pathetic efforts never achieved any results. Neither the Larkinsons nor the other forces expressed much interest in taking in any alien captives.

Perhaps the more clandestine organizations might make an exception or two if the surrendering aliens happened to be a senior officer or scientist, but those esteemed individuals tended to be far too patriotic towards their own civilization or species to bend their knees. They were also much more closely monitored.

Whatever the case, the various detachments managed to inflict plenty of destruction, but often failed to harvest much spoils.

They could not afford to linger in any single star system for too long for fear of attracting a massive alien armada.

This was especially the case when their lower numbers massively shrunk their fault tolerance.

While it was reassuring for them to be accompanied by a secret troop of Ascended Giants, they were not invincible by any means!

Even if they managed to squeeze out a victory under desperate circumstances, they would definitely suffer serious casualties in the process!

That was not acceptable. The Nemesis Campaign might put all of them at much greater risk, but the Larkinsons never intended for this to be a suicide run.

They constantly needed to survey their surroundings and measure the risk of every decision and maneuver.

Saint Commander Casella Ingvar came under more and more pressure by the day as a consequence.

It was not easy for her to bear ultimate responsibility over the entire campaign.

She had been entrusted with so much decision-making power that she could not pass the blame on anyone else if a catastrophe happened under her watch.

This was why she spent much of her time outside of the cockpit of the Minerva Mark II rather than the other way around.

The time she needed to allocate to actually piloting her living mech and Commandeering the surrounding forces was just a fraction of the time she spent on strategizing!

She did a good job so far, though much of that was because the alien opposition had yet to execute a proper countermove.

There was no way the regional native alien powers would let the insolent human attackers rampage throughout their productive star systems forever!

As the days passed by, the intruding humans noticed increasingly more signs of a coordinated counterattack.

Though the native aliens had difficulty tracking the fast-moving human raiding detachments, they could still read the overall pattern of advancement on a star map. This allowed them to redirect multiple alien fleets and phase lords to locations that were situated ahead of the estimated route.

Human scout ships and other sources of clandestine intelligence usually managed to detect these movements in advance, thereby giving the Saint Commander enough time to make adjustments, but this was not a completely reliable means to evade the enemy's edge.

Sooner or later, the native aliens would succeed and force a confrontation that could not be avoided.

For this reason, the Saint Commander eventually instructed the separate naval detachments to converge onto a central location.

"We have reached the limit of our ability to raid ordinary industrial star systems at acceptable risk levels." The ace commander spoke in the conference chamber. "Time is on the enemy's side. We have inflicted a moderate amount of damage to their infrastructure, but we have yet to land a truly crippling blow to their core operations. Enough time has passed for our scouts and intelligence analysts to direct us towards a truly strategic target."

The central projection came to life. It depicted the local star map that already highlighted numerous possible targets in red.

Many of these destinations looked familiar.

"Let us talk about the 3 star systems that recently came to our attention. Though we have not been able to gather a sufficient amount of information on each of them, we at least learned more about them than before."

The projection zoomed in on the closest priority target.

"First, the Hypeh-Tekas System has indeed proven to be a highly suspicious enemy site. The Red Cabal has prohibited every major alien race including the arche from entering this star system. It is apparent that this is not an empty warning. Upon our request, the Terran Alliance sent one of its stealth frigates to Hypeh-Tekas. The ship entered as quietly as possible and only managed to transmit a single data burst containing a broad, low-resolution multi-spectrum snapshot of the local space. Shortly after that, the Terrans lost contact with the stealth vessel entirely."

"..."

"Impossible."

"Space is big. A ship that has just arrived in the outer system could never have been intercepted so quickly! Even if the native aliens managed to track her route and anticipate her arrival in advance, there is still millions if not billions of kilometers worth of variance when it comes to the arrival coordinates!"

Many people looked shocked. Intercepting a ship that had just transitioned out of FTL travel was an incredibly difficult endeavor!

While it was not impossible to do so by any means, a successful interception right after returning realspace had to meet stiff requirements!

The native aliens might have managed to gather detailed and precise data about the stealth vessel's heading and timing upon entering FTL travel in the previous star system.

However, stealth vessels were expressly designed to make this as difficult as possible!

They shouldn't be detected in the first place aside from the unavoidable emissions generated by a hull entering into the higher dimensions.

Even so, without being able to track the ship in advance, the brief window of emissions alone could not provide enough data to perform accurate calculations.

Enemy sensors also needed to be located close enough from a departing stealth ship in order to distinguish between genuine data and background noise!

This was all incredibly difficult unless the native aliens completely beat the Terran stealth frigate in terms of stealth technology and detection technology!

This did not sound plausible. Even the arche did not perform too much better than the humans unless they secretly deployed a ship that matched or exceeded the specifications of their archecruiser!

Another possible explanation that could explain why the native aliens managed to take out the Terran stealth frigate so quickly after arrival was that a traitor spilled the relevant details to the Red Cabal.

Nobody sitting at the conference table mentioned this possibility, but it had doubtlessly entered their minds.

Grim faces stared at each other. They still maintained trust in each other, but they had begun to question whether one of their subordinates with access to sensitive information had somehow been compromised.

The Second Elf looked especially displeased.

The Terrans were ultimately responsible for the loss of their own ship!

"We do not have enough credible information to explain why this happened." The Saint Commander said as she bypassed any possible problems related to the Terran Alliance. "That does not mean the stealth frigate has failed to yield anything useful for us. We know it is important to the enemy, though not yet why. We know that the enemy has employed highly effective means to intercept arriving starships, even ones under stealth. We also received a relatively up to date impression of the local space."

The projection changed to show multiple images that interpreted the only data burst from the Terran stealth ship.

Ves and the others frowned as they tried to make sense of the images and data.

"This does not tell us anything notable." He said. "There are no obvious signs that indicate the presence of artificial construction, alien homeships or phase lords. It looks like an empty star system for the most part. The only oddities that I can interpret from this data is a bit of fuzziness close to the star."

The Saint Commander looked grim. "The lack of interesting data is highly suspicious. We believe that the native aliens have taken a considerable amount of effort to hide their true machinations. To put so much effort into evading detection yet proactively intercepting scout ships right after their entry makes it clear that the Red Cabal may very well be working on a project of great importance. For multiple reasons, I have decided to bring together all of our divided assets before entering the Hypeh-Tekas System as a single whole."

This was a big strategic decision!

Whether the Red Cabal was truly working on a grand endeavor or tried to weave an elaborate deception, it would all become clear once the combined fleet entered the mysterious star system in force!

Not everyone welcomed this strategic decision, though.

"What if… you are wrong? What if it is a trap?" Gloriana couldn't help but ask.

Casella did not disregard this possibility.

"There is indeed a possibility that the enemy has hatched an elaborate ruse intended to turn this star system into a trap." The Saint Commander conceded. "I believe that we have enough fault tolerance to manage any threats that may appear. Besides, we are not completely relying on this data alone. We have also consulted another source to tell us what we may encounter."

The ace commander shifted her gaze to the head of the Moloch Squadron.

The Farseer informed the others of her own findings. "We have attempted to scry the Hypeh-Tekas System multiple times in the past week. The growing proximity to this location should have yielded more results, but we have consistently been frustrated by a new and unknown form of obstruction. Somehow, the parties responsible for defending this star system have taken specific countermeasures that are effective at blocking our means of remote observation."

"What?!"

"Are there traitors within the Red Collective?!"

"What if the native aliens have produced their own qi cultivators?!"

Andrea Vos began to smile. "While we cannot say much about the nature of our opposition in the Hypeh-Tekas System, we have partially been able to overcome the blockade. Our methods have proven to be slightly more effective, especially after we began to experiment with our techniques."

"So what have you learned?"

"Not much, to be honest." The formation master admitted. "The only discovery we have made that has a high confidence level is that the Hypeh-Tekas System is steeped with death. A massive quantity of sentient beings have lost their lives in a very short amount of time."

"..."

What did that mean?

Had the native aliens set up a concentration camp for captive humans, only to kill them en masse all of a sudden?

Or did they round up their fellow aliens and kill them off wholesale in a deranged religious frenzy?

Perhaps the Red Cabal and the 13 major alien races tried to take advantage of the Red War to commit genocide on the minor races while everyone else got distracted by the threat posed by red humanity and the mutated voribugs!

One other possibility came to mind.

"Is the Red Cabal… attempting to collude with the so-called deathborn that have recently emerged?" Ves suspiciously asked.

"We do not know." Casella grimly answered. "We cannot rule out the possibility. That is why it is imperative for us to take a look in person."