The Battle of Screed Tanner VI-F wound down after the collapse of the alien orbital starbase. The violent dismantlement of the starbase caused the remaining alien phasefighters and warships to give up on their plan to make a last stand. The Viscounts were too scary! While they were clearly not as outrageous as ace mechs, they still outclassed practically every other conventional combat unit on the battlefield! What was worse was that their native gods had been rendered impotent by the presence of a superdimensional ace mech. The Protector of Karnak and the Endless Stomach had given up on winning the battle. They had gone from trying to kill the First Sword Mark III to keeping it preoccupied long enough to prevent the powerful machine from interfering with the evacuation. Once enough aliens managed to get out, the surviving greater phase lords intended to follow suit. The aliens stationed on the ruined starbase all boarded their escape pods and other vehicles. The cargo vessels that were previously docked at the starbase or parked in orbit hastily picked up aliens looking to flee before moving away from the human forces. More ships that had landed inside Karnak Base briefly took in personnel before lifting off and making their way out of the star system. Not all aliens chose to flee. There were still far too many aliens that stubbornly kept fighting out of faith, conviction or honor. The Protector of Karnak had not yet abandoned this star system. How could his worshipers possibly do any worse? The juregs among the crew were especially devoted to their native god! Sure, the juregs always worshiped the phase whales over any other phase lord, but the former was too rare. The juregs did not prohibit the worship of phase lords of their own kind. In fact, they encouraged it as it was quite hard for them to come into contact with an actual phase whale most of the time. "#$&#%@!" "#$&#&%$!" "#%$#&&!" The native aliens kept shouting at the Viscounts, the fleeing alien starships and the scary superdimensional mech that prevented their native god from coming to the rescue. Their ire was inconsequential. The Saint Commander had no interest in finding translations for their speech. She had even less interest in communicating with these sore losers. The 57 Viscounts spread out and in order to disable the remaining orbital defenses. They also shot at any evacuating alien ships. It didn't matter if most of them consisted of civilian transport vessels. Their cargo holds likely contained a lot of high-value goods such as phasewater and strategic materials. There was no way the Larkinsons were willing to let the native aliens abscond with their most valuable loot! As the fighting in orbit died down, the fighting on the surface of the moon intensified! Different from the battle up in space, the battle that unfolded on land had been initiated by the original insurgents and refugees of Screed Tanner VI-F. These poor bastards were all that remained of the original residents of the moon back when it was still in human hands. Whether they willingly stayed behind in order to pursue vengeance or failed to sign up for one of the evacuation ships, the once prosperous population of humans in the Screed Tanner System had been reduced to a little over 1200 combatants. Fortunately, these 1200 fighters happened to be the best of the best! The previous missions had already filtered out the least competent among the recruits. The battlefield was a harsh and ultimately fair existence. Months had passed since the human insurgents started to fight against the alien occupants. Many of these confrontations either yielded little progress or ended up badly for the human soldiers. There should have been more human insurgents on the moon. If the Premier Fleet arrived a few months earlier, then the attackers that crawled out of the various caves would have been ten times more numerous! In any case, the timing of the current meant that remaining humans on the moon did not have the numbers to conquer the base outright. They still happened to be numerous enough to be a nuisance. Months of resistance had caused their equipment to become increasingly more worn and damaged. The insurgents already used up their mechs. The only vehicles they could employ were armored shuttles and homebrew land vehicles. Under normal circumstances, they would have never been able to pose a serious threat against Karnak Base. That still applied to an extent, but the difference was that the base had suffered so much damage and losses that they were unable to adequately respond to the human attackers. The situation up in orbit affected the situation on the surface of the moon. As the native aliens began to suffer multiple setbacks in a row, many of the defenders of Karnak Base became increasingly more timid. Only the most faithful fanatics fought with all of their strength. The ones who possessed a little more sanity already started to plan out their exit strategies in case their side completely lost control in orbit. When the remnants up in space transmitted orders to evacuate from the star system, the aliens stationed in Karnak Base immediately lost cohesion! The disturbed but disciplined troop of alien soldiers descended into anarchy as they got in each other's way to the starships that could take them away from this cursed star system! The fanatic aliens that remained behind and continued to man their stations still managed to hold back the insurgents, but not as good as before. When the human attackers discovered that a lot of aliens had cut and run, they intensified their assault while simultaneously sending out small teams to slip through the cracks and hopefully take the aliens by surprise! The results were mixed. Only some of the infiltration teams had access to superior weapons and equipment as well as the training to utilize them correctly. Others were less competent and easily got caught when the native aliens detected unusual activity. The disparity in tech was too big. The human insurgents were originally second-raters, while the fleet serving under the Protector of Karna were originally equipped to deal with first-raters! The humans had to be inventive and make sure they weren't in a position to get exposed and dealt with in an efficient manner. It was actually incredibly brave of them to launch an all-out attack on the damaged alien base under the circumstances! Their interference also prevented the native aliens from loading up their ships with too much strategic materials as well as other valuables. "Hah! Look at the aliens run! Our time has finally come! Let us help the Larkinsons secure this base! It is the least we can do to repay the favors we owe to their clan!" As the insurgents kept pressing the die-hard loyalists, both sides suffered substantial losses. By the time the vanguard dispatched by the Premier Fleet and the Bluejay Fleet eliminated the remaining opposition up in orbit, they quickly dispatched support in order to prevent more insurgents from getting killed. The humans on the surface finally cheered when a few hundred first-class multipurpose mechs descended from orbit and began to focus their firepower on the remaining intact defense facilities. Cheers continued to erupt from the human insurgents! As the Dracoloids, Omega Threshers and E-MULES of the Larkinson Clan began to spread out and secure all of the quadrants of the sprawling base, the human insurgents tried their best to be of assistance. They pointed out the locations of special materials and evolution materials. They also directed the mechs towards key defensive nodes. The Premier Fleet managed to topple the alien base much faster than anticipated due to the indefensible assistance provided by these 'guides'! As the fighting on the surface of Screed Tanner VI-F gradually died down, two metallic cats quietly emerged from a large pool of liquids that was located on the north side of the alien base. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦 This was not a regular pool of water. It was enormous and located in a broad and deep underground habitat. What made this pool even more special was that the aliens had mixed a huge quantity of phasewater in it. Testing showed that i 25 percent It went without saying that it made the body of water a lot more dangerous. If not for the aliens taking precautions, the massive pool of water would have generated so many spatial disruptions that everyone would have suffered if they kept all of this intact! As it was, the pool may be stable, but it was not particularly enticing. Almost anything that entered the pool by accident and without sufficient preparations would quickly get torn to shreds by all of the spatial disruptions! It was actually a small miracle that Lucky and Ferrum were able to dive into this dangerous pool and safely navigate its depths. Lucky incorporated transphasic materials and completely internalized them a long time ago. He had also begun to digest superdimensional matter and already gained a small fraction of its potent power. Ferrum on the other hand was made out of hull-grade superdimensional matter from beginning to end. So long as his internals remained shielded from the environment, he was not at risk of getting torn to pieces by spatial disruptions. Nobody aside from Lucky, Ves and the Golden Cat knew what they encountered while they had been diving in this massive pool. The few Larkinsons that caught sight of the two cats emerging from the suspicious pool noted that the two mechanical cats both looked subdued for whatever reason. Nobody inquired with them yet on what they managed to find inside the Protector of Karnak's lair, but it was clear that the two cats must have stumbled upon important clues for them to grow so severe. Hardly anyone paid attention to them, though. Most of the Larkinsons and their allies paid much more attention to the goods they found in the warehouses of the half-broken base. Investigators had found ample proof that the native aliens had definitely loaded up their vessels with the most valuable goods. Whether the Premier Fleet could retrieve them was still a matter of debate. The attackers were lucky that the native aliens still left enough materials behind to massively benefit the Terran war industry. "Do we have enough transport capacity to take away everything of value?" The Saint Commander asked one of the cargo handling experts. The civilian consultant looked startled when an ace commander contacted him out of the blue. "Not even close, ma'am. Our two fleets are not accompanied by any dedicated cargo vessels. The cargo holds of all of our carriers and warships are limited in capacity. It is best if we focus on collecting phasewater and high-grade materials. If there is enough room left over, we can fill up the remaining space with high-value debris and unusual alien goods that can fetch a high price on the market. Oh, we should also salvage the most valuable phasewater organs from the carcass of the deceased nunser phase lord." The Fifth Lord of Bis'qet perished during combat! He not only died at a relatively early stage of the battle, but the First Sword Mark III had also managed to land a killing blow that kept most of the carcass intact! The phasewater organs of a nunser phase lord were predominantly located in the enormous lower torso section that supported the four hooved limbs. This torso had only suffered minor flesh wounds due to getting struck by transphasic sword fey. It was actually rather fortunate that Saint Dise did not gain a lot of proficiency in controlling her new sword fey. They could have inflicted much more serious damage to the nunser phase lord under other circumstances! The phasewater organs also happened to be in a partially folded state. This was not an unusual sight. So long as they did not receive a disturbance, they could continue to remain relatively compact. It would have been a nightmare to retrieve phasewater organs if the carcass had grown to the size of a small moon! The news from the harvesting operation remained optimistic. The biotech researchers were fully confident that they could extract at least half a dozen phasewater organs within the current deadline!