Scouting the upper levels was not a complicated affair. The Davutan guard forces possessed strong scanning and investigation tools as they needed to be able to detect threats in advance before they could attack the people under their protection. Ves and various different people also carried tiny spy drones and other surveillance equipment as part of their standard loadouts. They passed on these useful gadgets to the soldiers that had been assigned to scout all of the different approaches to the upper levels. This was a risky and dangerous mission. No one knew what they were facing and how many traps and defenses awaited them above. The scouts might have to pay for the information they gathered with their lives! Nonetheless, the infantry troops wearing nothing but lighter armor did not even think about refusing their latest instructions. The colony of Davute hadn't existed all that long, but several years was enough for focused training programs to indoctrinate millions of mech pilots and other servicemen into loyal and dedicated patriots of the colonial state. If there was one essential skill that every state mastered, it was the ability to brainwash lots of people into serving their new masters without too much thought! Though Ves regarded this phenomenon in a cynical light, he also acknowledged that there was a noble element to it as well. People needed to become part of a greater community, and those who possessed the means to fight had a moral obligation to stand up for their weaker citizens. Ves tried to foster the same sentiment in his clan as well, and he was largely happy with the results. It was just that incidents such as his Uncle Ark's compulsive need to surrender to a state caused Ves to feel a lot more bitter about this sort of stuff than he should. The Larkinson Clan had grown quickly in the past decade. Many people already likened it to a state, just one without a permanent territory. Sadly, there were still a lot of gaps between the current state of the clan and a fully-fledged state. Just the lack of planets made it a lot harder for people to treat the Larkinson Clan as a sovereign state that was separate and unbound from any other states in the Red Ocean. Ves frequently wondered whether he should take measures to intensify the indoctrination efforts of his clan. He was reluctant to increase their weight because he did not want to turn his own subordinates into mindless drones that could not properly think for themselves. He hated blind fanaticism the most! Still, Ves couldn't deny there were cases where these traits could play a helpful role. Ves admired the way the handpicked scouts fearlessly left the recreation hall and moved in the direction of the upper floors. "It will be a while before we hear from them again." General Verle stated. "This is especially the case when we do not want to expose too much of our details to the opposition. Communication will be a problem in this facility, especially when the ubiquitous transphasic stone material around us effectively blocks wireless communication across long distances." Chief Minister Magdalena Larkinson frowned. "We shouldn't split up our forces too much if that is the case. I do not know how you feel about the scattered guard forces of the other groups, but I do not trust them to consistently obey our instructions or move at the right timing." Ves also shared those concerns. "We have a lot of different soldiers, but their mixed allegiances and mixed ideas make it difficult to command them effectively. I am much more inclined to just form a single powerful assault force and just smash the enemy position with everything we have." "That is not entirely wise." Major Durant shook his head. "We must attack from at least two separate directions in order to introduce an element of uncertainty and force our opposition to split its focus. We must keep our enemies guessing and never make them feel they have completely figured out our details." The leaders with a military background continued to swap ideas and offer proposals. Ves put in a few words as well, but he found that it was not necessary for a layman like himself to lead the discussion anymore. Everyone gathered here were professionals who were good at their jobs. There was not much they could talk about until the scouts returned. Much of the talks centered around the organization of their own troops and the combat roles of every individual unit. More than half a minute passed by before the scouts flew back at their fastest speeds. Each of them did not hesitate to push their flight capabilities to the limit and expend as much energy as possible in order to share their findings as early as possible. "Sir, we have found a large encampment along with several visible defensive installations in the main hallway leading to the upper floors!" "The left side entrance is both mined and guarded by a combination of turrets and armored guards." "The small rear entrance has been completely blocked by a wall that consists of metal debris that has roughly been welded together. It is at least several meters thick according to our scanners, but we do not know whether the opposing force has deployed any shield generators that are currently inactive." 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢 The scouts brought a huge amount of useful information that Ves was unable to obtain during the time he had partial access to the alien control system. What interested Ves and the others the most was not the defenses by themselves. They instead wanted to know what sort of enemies had targeted the important delegates of Davute in the first place! After spending so much time cut off from greater human society and the rest of their organizations, they were tired of being kept in the dark. The first-hand information collected by the scouts, who surprisingly managed to return in one piece, finally exposed the nature of their current adversaries! "That is not human technology." Ves authoritatively said. "The turrets, the mines, the defensive fortifications and so on are all alien without a doubt. I don't recognize the architecture and design style, though. They don't conform to the design rules of the nunsers, puelmers and all of the other usual suspects. Combined with the fact that the overall sophistication and material quality of their construction are not too high, I think we are facing a minor alien race at most." Multiple people concurred with his assessment. "Did we manage to obtain visuals of alien individuals?" Director Ranya Wodin asked. "Understanding their biology can tell us much." "Durant?" The Davutan guard leader remained silent for a few seconds as he silently held an exchange with his scouts. "The alien individuals have mostly hid behind their fortifications or deeper inside the upper floors. Only one of our scouts managed to obtain a glimpse of an armored alien soldier from a distance." Alden Durant projected a still image in the air. A lot of people leaned closer in order to study the small figure that had just moved out from behind a defensive emplacement. What immediately stood out was the figure's height. According to the collected data, the armored alien was 2.5 meters tall, which was significantly higher than the baseline human average! The shape of the alien was clearly humanoid, but the proportions were all different. The torso was fat and round while the legs were fairly long. The arms were thick but comically short, so much so that the alien figures probably wouldn't be able to wield handheld weapons with great skills. The alien race apparently made up for this deficiency by directly mounting weapons onto the armor. Two different energy weapon barrels extended from the arms. Ves could easily imagine them firing laser beams at any targets they pointed towards! Although neither Ves nor the Larkinsons recognized these aliens by their distinctive shapes, Major Durant and a surprising number of his guard captains reacted as if they had recognized a nightmare from the past. "You know." Ves confronted the Davutans. "You recognize these aliens." "We… do." Major Durant admitted. "The design of their defensive installations are much different than before. The alien species that I am thinking about had a habit of applying art to all of their construction. I believe what happened to them has not only inflicted a great amount of trauma to their group, but also caused them to lose so much of their culture. They have likely made many changes to their society and how they operate, but their physiology still remains the same." "Please do not keep us in suspense. Spit it out already." Ves impatiently asked. A few Larkinsons had already managed to deduce the answer, though. "Oh." Minister Shederin Purnesse uttered. "It appears you did not clean after yourselves thoroughly enough." General Verle had a bitter expression on his face. "We are all suffering from the mistakes of the founders of this colony." The highest ranking representative of the colonial state did not deny these accusations. He finally supplied everyone with the answer that they wanted to hear. "The alien in the projected image is a member of the pescan race. The pescans are a weak species that has reluctantly become a member of the native galactic community, but never managed to expand their territory behind a single star system. Their civilization is fairly young and has advanced relatively slowly. They are generally peaceful but they used to fight against each other in limited conflicts between different alien city states. None of that is valid anymore because humanity has driven them to extinction. At least, that was supposed to be the case." The description sounded fairly odd to Ves at first, but he quickly managed to connect the dots. "These pescans… used to be the original inhabitants of Davute, am I correct?" Several Davutan officers nodded. "That is correct, patriarch. I can personally recall the operations that we conducted upon arriving to this star system the first time. Several pioneers have already raided the native city states on Davute VII multiple times, but their society has largely remained intact. Our mech forces had to land in large numbers and wipe out the indigenous defending troops before we could cleanse the remainder of the pescans as a whole." Ves groaned. "Were they strong?" "No. Their technological innovation is not strong and much of their advancements are actually supplied by the nunsers. The reason why the pescans received such favor was because their small star nation has voluntarily agreed to become a protectorate of the nunser civilization. In exchange for supplying a fixed amount of resources and occasionally manpower, the pescans can continue to live under the guarantee of this powerful alien race. They never prepared a serious standing army that could fight against foreign invaders because they assumed the nunsers would prevent that from happening." Obviously, the nunsers had been unable to make good on their promises. Their forces stationed in this corner of the Red Ocean had probably been steamrolled by the Big Two during the same time! "If these pescans are so weak, then your mechs and troops should have cleaned them up without exception. How could you have missed this group?!" Major Durant developed a possible theory that explained how these aliens managed to escape the purge. "We did not spend much time on studying the indigenous alien society, as it was destined to get destroyed. We did note that our forces have never found any trace of an important pescan individual who the anthropologists have called Great Chief Jaharon." "Who is this great chief, exactly?" "He was the leader of the largest city state of the pescan star nation." Durant answered. "To be more precise, his city state occupied the best geographic position on this planet. Our mech forces have invested more effort into defeating its protectors, breaking open its defenses and destroying every trace of the pescan civilization. We wanted to claim this site for ourselves and prepare it for the construction of our first and most important settlement in the Red Ocean. The only remnant of the indigenous people that we have decided to retain was the name of Jaharon's former city state, which we have inherited in order to symbolize humanity's conquest over an important alien holding." "You are talking about… Davute." Ves flatly stated. Major Durant nodded. "The word means 'center' in the language of the pescans. Our leaders thought well of that and decided to keep it since our troops already called it Davute during our extensive cleansing operation."