The Battle of Screed Tanner VI-F ended in a great success for the Larkinson Clan. Saint Commander Casella Ingvar initially did not ask for much from the Premier Fleet and the Bluejay Fleet. She only sought to bloody the alien raiding fleets. She also wanted to destroy as much of the plundered goods they had stockpiled on the surface of the occupied moon. If they had any spare firepower left, then she would have tried to cripple the enemy's infrastructure in the star system. Neither Casella nor the others expected to win a fight against so many enemies outright. The Larkinsons and the Bluejay Fleet had done more than temporarily drive away the alien phasefighters and warships. They had destroyed a lot of alien assets and frightened away every lesser phase lord! This spooked the enemy so much that they had lost their willingness to fight. Their hasty departure caused them to leave a lot of valuables behind. In fact, the Larkinsons managed to intercept a fair amount of alien transport vessels. Many of their cargo holds had been stuffed with valuable goods and materials. If not for their alien origins, the Larkinsons would have felt tempted to take control over them and use them to haul all of the additional loot back to human space. Other forces had done this before, but they always regretted it. The native aliens were clever enough to embed tracking devices and software on their own vessels. It took an extremely thorough examination of every system to root out these kinds of vulnerabilities. The Tortuous Scream went through a similar examination. It took months for computer experts and orven tech specialists to comb through every piece of hardware and software of the enormous warship. The computer engineers had never been quite certain whether they managed to root out every possible vulnerability. There was just too much programming and hardware to comb through. This was also one of the reasons why the Tortuous Scream maintained two separate computer systems. Only by isolating the human computer system from the original alien computer system could the crew mitigate the hidden dangers of the latter. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮 In any case, the lack of transport capacity bothered the Larkinsons a lot. Since Casella and the others did not expect for their strong performance to drive the aliens away from the star system, the Premier Fleet did not accommodate a lot of civilian cargo vessels. The Saint Commander regretted the decision to set off without putting more effort into adding civilian starships to the Premier Fleet. Just a handful of cargo haulers would have been enough to carry phasewater organs, phasewater, high-grade exotics and hypers, valuable alien machines and so much more! Perhaps they could still arrange all of this extra shipping if they made a request to the Terran Alliance and the Red Association to divert a few of them to the Screed Tanner System. Both Casella and Ves agreed that this was a very bad decision. The longer they stayed in the Screed Tanner System, the greater the chance that the Red Cabal would dispatch a punitive fleet. Once this inevitable force arrived, it would become much harder to withdraw to safety! When the Larkinsons consulted the Bluejay Fleet, they discovered to their surprise that the Red Three already had a handle on this follow-up threat. "Our intelligence gathering operations in this sector have become… impaired due to recent events." Jovy Armalon spoke with difficulty during a virtual meeting. "The good news is that the Red Association still has a moderate understanding of the enemy fleet movements in the Olikon Middle Zone. There are numerous enemy fleets in the general area that can move to the Screed Tanner System in a matter of days, but they are unlikely to set off right away. We have just defeated multiple fleets that are protected by both lesser and greater phase lords. Any enemy force that is smaller than this will only be asking to get trounced." That made a lot of sense. "Our intelligence concurs with that of the RA." Commodore Zonrad Reze said with a similar pinched expression on his face. "Our Seventh Light Fleet is in the process of recalling multiple scout ships from this Middle Zone, but the observation data that they have gathered so far does not suggest the presence of large concentration of phase lords and warships that can pose an immediate threat." Both Ves and Casella turned towards Formation Master Andrea Vos. The Farseer responded with a smile. "Our diviners have been busy all day. They have spent much of their energy on predictions related to the successive changes to the galactic landscape. Do not be concerned. Upon my… reminder, they have made sure to perform a few divinations centered around this star system. They foresee little else but relative calm in the next 72 hours. Their reading of the future becomes much more inconsistent after that. Our interpretation is that there is a possibility that the Red Cabal have become so alarmed that they have chosen a fast and forceful response." Casella Ingvar narrowed her eyes in thought as she looked across the virtual table. "The diviners have merely foreseen a possible future, correct?" "Yes. What I have just mentioned can be treated as the worst case scenario." Andrea Vos responded. "Our diviners are much more certain that a sizable enemy fleet will arrive within 7 days. The Red Cabal cannot ignore what has happened in the Screed Tanner System. The aliens must reassert control over this part of the Olikon Middle Zone and ensure the offensive against the Caesarion Upper Zone can be maintained." "Are you sure about that?" Ves asked. "What do you mean, sir?" "A lot of interesting news has come out in the past half day." Ves said with a smirk. "I imagine that they have responded favorably to the Red Split, but not so much to the news about the emergence of the Cybernetic Empire and what the people on the galactic net have begun to call the Voribug Outbreak. The 102nd day of the fourth year of the Age of Dawn will be a date that will be remembered in history." Ever since they scheduled this virtual meeting, the attendees knew that they would inevitably address these galaxy-shaking events. They were far too impactful for them to ignore! What happened across human-occupied space and beyond were so massive that they threatened to overshadow the Premier Fleet's accomplishments in the Screed Tanner System! "It is… possible that our diviners have made their predictions based on outdated information." The Farseer admitted. "They have made most of their predictions before the news about mass attacks launched by mutated voribugs have begun to circulate on the galactic net. If the native aliens have decided to divert their fleets from the human-alien frontlines and redirect them to the alien-held territories that are at risk of getting swept by the Voribug Outbreak, the Red Tide Offensive can no longer be sustained. We will be… safer." "This is one possibility." The Saint Commander voiced her own opinion. "We cannot assume that the Red Cabal and other alien leaders will abide by the same logic as a human. They are still aliens, after all. In their unfathomable minds, they may think that since they have sacrificed so many lives and hardware to tear down our defensive bands, it is unconscionable to quit halfway without completing the goal of exterminating our race. The enemy leadership may think that it is an acceptable sacrifice to let thousands of populated star systems turn into voribug nests in order to finish their original mission. The Red Cabal may even intensify their current efforts now that they are under much serious time pressure." What a heartless calculus! As much as Ves and the others wanted to reject this possibility, they all knew how much the phase whales and phase lords looked down on the mortals. They may very well think this makes too much sense. "The Survivalist Faction is also trying to analyze whether the native aliens will favor this extreme plan." Jovy Armalon mentioned. "It does not help that every race and every star nation has their own cultures and values. One of the more optimistic scenarios that may occur is that some, but not all, of the major alien races will unilaterally choose to suspend their participation in the Red War and move towards the star systems under threat by the voribugs." "Which races are likely to do so?" Ves inquired. "As herbivores, the nunsers are highly communal and empathetic towards each other. They will feel most compelled to come to the aid of nunser civilians that reside on the planets that are in the danger zone." The humans mostly saw the nunsers as violent and physically imposing centaur-like aliens. Since the start of the Red War, the nunsers were the second-most common enemies that humans might face. Part of this was because the nunser race possessed good fertility. Another part of it was because they cared a lot about the nunsers that the humans had wiped out en masse. The humans had only begun to plant their colonies across the new frontier in less than a decade, and already they committed genocide on the aliens that resided on thousands if not tens of thousands of occupied star systems! "Our pioneers and colonists have become so avid in eliminating indigenous populations that ordinary alien individuals view humans as more intelligent versions of voribugs." Vector mentioned. If this was the case, then the Red Cabal and the other aliens considered the human race to be just as threatening as the voribug race. From this perspective, it made no sense to suspend the Red Tide Offensive in order to divert valuable combat assets to the new bug frontlines. Trying to defend against both extinction-level threats at the same time was a recipe for failure. If the native aliens applied sound logic to this situation, then they would definitely be willing to sacrifice a great deal in order to ensure the total destruction of one of these major threats! As long as the native aliens managed to destroy the humans fast enough, they should still be able to reposition fast enough to push back the voribug menace. Ves frowned as he considered this scenario. Everything about it made sense. This possibility made it even more important to constantly stay on the move. "Sovvy." He said as he called up the smart AI based on the SEA SOVEREIGN template. "What do you think is likely based on your own understanding?" The projected avatar of the smart AI took his time to formulate his answer. [I must state in advance that I am not programmed to analyze the ripple effects of geopolitical events on a galactic scale. My own crude analysis indicates that the Red Cabal can be pragmatic when it suits them. There is a low probability that their diplomats will approach us and negotiate a temporary or permanent cease fire. This will also allow them to comfortably divert more troops to the frontline between the humans and the native aliens.] "There you have it." Ves smiled. "There is bad blood between our races, but it is still possible to resolve them. We just need to emphasize that we can at least tolerate each other's presence without needing to kill our entire race." They may even be able to sign non-aggression pacts and trade agreements! The Saint Commander made a cough. "This virtual meeting is straying too far from our more immediate priorities. We must first complete our recovery efforts in this star system before setting off to the Caesarion Upper Zone as soon as possible. Ves looked puzzled. "Why go to Caesarion?" "We need to resupply and replenish the mechs that we have lost." Casella said. "I originally intended for us to preserve our strength and build up more momentum with successive raids. Everything else that has happened earlier today has made our plan irrelevant. We need to return to friendly space and take the time to truly understand how all of the changes will affect our clan."