The Larkinsons and the liaisons all remained silent as they watched the latest live feeds of the ongoing bug invasions. The voribug swarms seemed endless. They approached from the dark of space and set off towards any planet filled with life and civilization before engaging in indiscriminate slaughter and feeding. The voracious bugs were completely fearless and relentless. They charged straight at third-class mechs and first-class multipurpose mechs alike. It did not matter if they had no chance of survival. So long as their sacrifice kept the mechs busy and depleted their ammunition and energy reserves, it was undoubtedly worth it for millions if not billions of them to give up their lives! None of the voribugs visible in the live feeds appeared to be too big and sophisticated. All Ves and the other viewers could see were different versions of cannon fodder. What stood out was that the race had drastically evolved since the time they were known to the humans and intelligent aliens as pests and nuisances. In the past, the voribugs definitely possessed the potential to devour entire starships and depopulate entire planets. However, the voribugs were so consistent as a race that they did not mutate at all despite their rapid reproduction rates. The race was so strict towards deviations that they could immediately detect a voribug who only possessed a single mutation and make sure that insect never had a chance to pass down his deviant genes! It was a strange characteristic for a race and was clearly artificial in nature. Whatever the case, many native aliens of the Red Ocean thanked the unknown maker for imposing this limitation on the voribugs. As long as they understood everything about the voribugs, it was fairly easy to develop and implement countermeasures that could limit their infestation. From developing special detectors that were specifically designed to detect the biosignals unique to the voribugs to inventing an energy field that could make juvenile and adult voribugs feel so unwell that they would do anything to stay away, a lot of tech came into existence that pretty much turned this major threat into an ordinary nuisance. While there were instances where these anti-voribug protections failed, these cases were few and far in between. More people died from piracy, industrial accidents and other mishaps than getting devoured by voribugs. This was why people rarely if ever put any thought into their existence. The voribugs were the Red Ocean version of cockroaches. At least that used to be the case. The live feeds of dozens of star systems situated along the periphery depicted a very different reality! Dozens of new subspecies of voribugs had emerged out of the blue. Each of them appeared to be stronger, hardier, more tenacious and utterly hostile towards life! It was difficult to overstate how utterly frightening it must be to be stuck on a planet that was about to get invaded by a gigantic swarm of voribugs. So many of them appeared in orbit that they were partially able to block the light of the local star! While it did not appear that the voribugs were operating under the direction of an intelligent commander, this was just a glimpse of the full scope of the threat. There was much about the voribug race that people like Ves did not know! After the Saint Commander cut off the live feeds, the virtual meeting room fell into silence. No one remained unaffected by the sheer scale and speed of the voribug invasion. They were much more effective than the native aliens due to their exaggerated numbers! Whereas the native aliens relied on a mix between quality and quantity to steadily push red humanity back, the mutated voribugs most definitely took advantage of their insane propagation capabilities to clog all of the mechs and warships with far more voribugs than they could repel! This was a strategy that red humanity never guarded against. The Rubarthans that were most vulnerable to the Voribug Outbreak were about to have a really miserable time! Ves eventually decided to break the silence. "Did any of you know about this in advance?" "No." Jovy immediately answered. "We had no idea. I am sure that we have dispatched scouting vessels in the regions of space where they came from, but they have not detected any unusual biological activity as far as I am aware of. The native aliens that are based in these territories have not shown any indications that they are fighting against an overwhelming threat. We can only form the preliminary conclusion that the mutated voribugs have hidden themselves extremely well up until the Day of Pestilence." That caused Ves to frown. "Does that not suggest that the voribugs are directed by an intelligent being? It may be a voribug queen of sorts, or it may be a phase whale that had lost control over his bioexperiment. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if a cosmopolitan cell had artificially created the mutated voribugs to give both humans and the native aliens a common threat to united against." "All of that is speculation." Commodore Reze warned. "In the face of this new terror, it is dangerous to form preliminary conclusions. We need to be patient and collect more intelligence on this new enemy. Only when we have enough verified intelligence will we be able to devise targeted countermeasures to contain this threat." "That sounds nice, but how long will that take?" Ves pushed back. "How many Rubarthans will end up in the bellies of the voribugs? How much materials will they devour that is subsequently used to expand their swarms? By the time we develop a proper countermeasure, their numbers may have already ballooned to the point that they can devour almost all of our territories aside from the territory around Bridgehead One!" Sigrund should know quite well the price of delays. In his previous incarnation as a hybrid sentient AI and sandman admiral, he had manipulated his former race into invading the Komodo Star Sector en masse. Dozens of third-rate states and thousands of populated star systems got swept up by the invasion of the sandman race! While the Fridaymen and Hexers were able to keep the sandman fleets at bay with the help of their superior second-class mechs, they were too few in numbers to push the swarming sandmen back. It did not help that the Fridaymen and the Hexers were very close to going to war against each other. They did not want to weaken their defenses by diverting too many mech units from their strategically important locations. The second-raters simply assumed that the mechers and the fleeters would get around to ending the threat posed by the sandmen. The Big Two eventually did so, but not before they took their sweet time to respond. It also did not help that the CFA made a mistake and suffered avoidable losses. The entire Sand War was an indictment against the Big Two but especially the CFA. The latter specifically took on the role of humanity's external guardian, yet the fleeters had been too slow and complacent to stop the sandmen from starting up a mass incursion into human space! As the main instigator and ultimate culprit behind the war that led to the slaughter of trillions of humans, Sigrund probably possessed greater insights into this invasion than anyone else in this virtual meeting. Of course, he probably did not feel eager to share his profound insights with everyone. He had already left that part of his life behind. Ves stared at Commander Reze for a time, but seeing that the RF officer did volunteer any further insights, he turned to the Farseer instead. "Have your diviners and seers detected any clues in advance?" Andrea Vos grimaced. "No. You have cooperated with Ylvaine for many years. You should understand the limitations of divinations and prophecies. It is much more difficult to become aware of a threat when it remains unknown to us. At most, our diviners may perceive a vague foreshadowing, but they experience that on such a frequent basis that it is nearly impossible to determine the precise nature of the threat. Our diviners are also too weak to accurately predict the actions of beings of immense power. The energy needed to make a successful prediction is too much for them, and there is a real risk of suffering a backlash. I cannot tell you how many diviners there are in the Red Collective that have been forced into early retirement because they dared to predict the future of a god pilot." Ves inwardly snorted. That was pretty much one of the worst possible subjects to divine. Those qi cultivators had it coming. "I understand." He said. "The circumstances should be different after the Day of Pestilence. Now that the mutated voribugs have stepped out of the shadows, it should be much easier for the RC to collect intelligence on their nature and movements, correct?" The Farseer slowly nodded. "That is partially true. Our diviners in the Rubarthan Pact have been attempting to predict the speed and direction of the voribug incursion into human space. What they have found out so far is nothing surprising. The voribug swarms show no sign of being directed to invade specific locations. They are merely propagating from star system to star system without any greater considerations. If they maintain their current pace, the Rubarthan Pact may fall in a decade if they are unable to defend their territories against these new enemies." That sounded incredibly scary considering the size of the Rubarthan Pact. It was slightly larger than the Terran Alliance due to its more laid-back policies towards pioneers and colonists. In fact, the Rubarthan Alliance contained a lot more star systems that had been colonized by smaller pioneers. The settlements were still relatively rudimentary and were completely unable to defend against the native aliens, let alone a massive mutated voribug swarm! Whether it was coincidental or not, the voribugs couldn't have picked a better colonial alliance to kick off their invasion! The Red Split most definitely exacerbated the crisis as relations between the Rubarthan Pact and the Red Two had massively deteriorated! If the Rubarthans hadn't followed the Terrans into reclaiming their sovereignty, then the mechers and the fleeters would have been more willing to send reinforcements to the new front. The only points in favor of the Rubarthans was that they had two god pilots at their disposal who could exterminate the bugs. The arrival of the Cybernetic Empire also presented the Rubarthan Alliance with a potential ally who could come to their aid. However, whether the Polymath would agree to dispatch her massive warfleets and warplanets to the Rubarthan frontlines remained to be seen. She possessed an enormous amount of leverage over the desperate Rubarthans and everyone knew it. The Star Designer was definitely smart enough to exploit this advantage to the fullest! Ves also developed an interest in the voribugs. He craved novelty, and the voribugs represented a very different kind of enemy from the ones he and his Larkinsons fought in the past! The native aliens were already old news as far as he was concerned. The Premier Fleet no longer needed so much help from him as it was already well-equipped enough to completely trounce the numerically superior defenders of the Screed Tanner System. This was when the Premier Fleet only fielded RA first-class multipurpose mechs as stopgap solutions! Once Ves designed a bunch of living first-class multipurpose mechs for the first-class Larkinsons, his work here should be done as far as he was concerned. Perhaps it was time for him to leave the Terran Alliance and move to the Rubarthan Pact in order to study the bug menace and develop targeted countermeasures against the mutated pests. It would be a good reason for him to depart the Premier Fleet and get rid of the bad taste of his early retirement from his patriarch position. His departure would also give the Saint Commander or whoever succeeded him a better stage to lead and shape the Larkinson Clan according to his or her own will!