After the meeting concluded, the Larkinsons learned a lot about the changes that had swept across the Red Ocean. It was a pity that they did not obtain nearly enough answers to their questions to make informed decisions. Too much had changed in a short amount of time. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦 The Larkinson Clan needed time in order to figure out what happened and how to best take advantage of the changing galactic landscape. While the Larkinsons had begun their salvaging and plundering operations in the Screed Tanner System, they also began to press their contacts and informants for further information. Several days passed by as red humanity struggled to adapt to a new reality. Just as the Larkinsons expected, no one paid attention to the astonishing outcome of the Battle of Screed Tanner VI-F. While the bigshots did not ignore the implications of fielding a full superdimensional ace mech, they did not have the time nor interest to congratulate the Larkinsons and pump them for information. Instead, they all directed their attention to the consequences of the Red Split, the sudden appearance of the Cybernetic Empire and most concerningly the Voribug Outbreak. When it came down to it, the Red Split and the Polymath's opportunistic power grab both fell under the category of human internal affairs. The events produced plenty of changes and disrupted a lot of plans, but red humanity should be able to sort it out sooner or later. The mass invasion of mutated voribugs was a different story altogether. With every passing day, another dozen or so star systems reported the arrival of massed biological signatures that always equated to the invasion of voribugs. It appeared that this cosmic bug race had somehow developed interstellar travel capabilities. The major powers frantically observed the territories located in the periphery of Rubarthan space. They wanted to know whether the voribugs managed to traverse the stars with the help of alien or cosmopolitan assistance. Unfortunately, the answer was not that simple. "What is this?" Ves asked. Formation Master Andrea Vos had dropped by his office in order to discuss a range of topics related to the recent battle. She had taken the time to explain how the Moloch Squadron tried, and occasionally failed, to assist the ongoing battle. It was hard to notice their influence most of the time, but it turned out that the cultivators stationed on the Moloch had been up to a fair amount of mischief behind the scenes. The Farseer herself had scried the bridges and command centers in order to eavesdrop on enemy orders. The curse masters also took advantage of her scrying to cast subtle curses on the clueless officers of the various fleets. Why did they lose their courage so quickly? The professionalism of these alien career soldiers shouldn't have allowed them to give in to panic so easily. It turned out that the curse masters had secretly made them more susceptible to fear and amplified their cowardice. Although their effects were not particularly strong due to their lack of strength and inexperience, they only needed to produce a small nudge in order to push their unknowing victims past their tipping point! Ves admired the cleverness of this strategy a lot. The Moloch Squadron had the potential to become a potent collection of force multipliers, but it lacked the power to achieve its outcomes by resorting to direct methods. The qi cultivators clearly understood their own shortcomings. Instead of trying to create artificial conditions by themselves, they instead took advantage of existing trends and conditions. So long as they identified the right opportunity, they only needed to apply a minor influence in order to produce massive outcomes! Ves could easily conclude that this would be Moloch Squadron's modus operandi during combat for the upcoming years! Although cultivators of the Red Collective would remain heavily reliant on other forces in order to make themselves useful, their weird and esoteric powers were so strange that they were hard to guard against. The longer the native aliens remained ignorant of the threat of cultivators, the more effective the Moloch Squadron became! Ves expected to talk more about how the Moloch Squadron should develop its amazing capabilities. He did not expect her to switch topics and address the Voribug Outbreak out of the blue. He carefully examined the image capture of a biological monstrosity flying in space. "This looks like a bioship." He said. The Farseer nodded. "That is because it can be classified as one. It is technically a mutated voribug that has grown large enough to rival capital ships. Aside from its scale, the new subspecies is not too remarkable. Its internal volume is large and divided into large pockets of holding spaces that can accommodate both living voribugs and cargo. Aside from that, its mobility is also fairly respectable. It possesses an organic propulsion system that can allow it to traverse a star system at moderate acceleration rates. More importantly, it also possesses an organic warp drive that enables it to engage in superluminal travel, though at a very slow rate compared to our superdrives." That was critical information! Knowing that the voribugs had mastered the ability to grow their own organic warp drives was bad news. It meant that they were not confined to their star systems and did not need to hitchhike on other starships in order to spread across the dwarf galaxy. The good news was that if this intelligence was correct, the voribugs had no way of traversing greater distances in a short amount of time. It appeared that the mutated voribugs based their organic warp drives on original alien warp drive tech. While these old alien warp drives were stable, reliable, simple and fairly efficient, their speed left much to be desired. Their warp factors could only go up by so much, which meant that it would take months for these slowpoke organic voribug transport ships to reach critical human strongholds such as Yernstall and Bridgehead One. The Rubarthan Pact should also gain a lot of reassurance from this news. The slower the propagation speed of the voribugs, the more time they had to reposition their forces and prepare more defenses. The voribugs should not be able to devour the Rubarthan Pact in a short amount of time. However, what they lacked in speed, they made up for it in numbers! The Farseer switched the projection to display a map of human-occupied space. The large regions of space that corresponded to the Rubarthan Pact did not look good at the moment. Not only were the native aliens pressing on a broad front, the voribugs had suddenly appeared on a flank that had previously suffered few attacks! "The Rubarthans hate to admit it, but they do not have the numbers to fend off both the native aliens and the voribugs at the same time." Andrea Vos explained the Red Collective's read on the situation. "Their numbers are already not adequate enough to hold back the native alien invasion. Now that the voribugs are invading from a different direction, the Rubarthan defensive strategy has become completely invalid." Ves grimly observed the map. He tried to visualize the pace and direction of the voribug advance, not just through human space, but also through alien space. He raised his fingers and traced the border regions where the native aliens had been making inroads into Rubarthan space. "This front here should not remain unaffected by the Voribug Outbreak. Many alien star systems in the vicinity are being devoured by the mutated voribugs as we speak. There is no way all of these alien attackers will continue to focus on killing humans when there is a huge amount of alien pests invading their rear. Their homes, their logistical support and their supply lines are all under threat. If the native alien fleets dare to persist in their attacks on Rubarthan Space, they will eventually get cut off by the voribugs. It makes no sense for them to continue their attack on red humanity." All of this sounded logical, but Ves reminded himself that human logic did not necessarily equate to alien logic! "The native aliens have not shown any indication of withdrawing from the Rubarthan front, Ves. The Red Cabal is large and its hierarchy is extensive, so we expect that it may take weeks if not a month for the ancient phase whales to discuss the problem and form a consensus. You have to remember that long-lived aliens do not perceive time in the same manner as short-lived species as humans. To the phase whales, the Red War has lasted as short as a brief nap. The Voribug Outbreak is so new that the old whales may not have fully acknowledged the dire nature of this threat." "Great." "That is not the extent of the problem." The Farseer said with a deepening frown. "There is a high probability that the Red Cabal decides to persist in their attack on human-occupied space. Even if they acknowledge that the mutated voribug menace poses an indiscriminate danger to everyone who resides in this dwarf galaxy, the native aliens are still overwhelmingly confident in their vastly greater territories, populations and industrial capacity. The aliens still have not put their entire civilians on a full war footing. They have plenty of reserves available that can be converted into military use so long as they are willing to make sacrifices." Ves looked perplexed. "Are you saying… the native aliens are so full of themselves that they think they can squash the voribug invasion by themselves? They don't think they need the help of humans to share the burdens?" "That is the most probable outcome according to many leaders in the Red Collective." The Farseer confirmed. "That does not mean this outcome is set in stone, but if nothing changes, the native aliens will likely decide to borrow the power of the voribugs to collapse our civilization first before they turn their full attention towards the insect invasion." How… brutal. A decision like this was exceedingly arrogant on the part of the native aliens. It was based on two assumptions. One, they really hated red humanity and did not want to give the extragalactic invaders any chance to make a comeback and turn the tide of the Red War. The Red Cabal most definitely learned about the arrival of the Cybernetic Empire. This drastically increased the threat posed by red humanity, especially if the other human powers had enough time to absorb and propagate the advanced technological innovations shared by the Cybers! Combined with the massive amounts of warfleets and war planets raised by the Cybernetic Empire, red humanity had a very good chance of beating back the Red Tide Offensive and retake the territories that it had lost! If the Red Cabal feared red humanity's growth potential, then it made abundant sense to borrow the power of the voribugs to squash red humanity! The voribugs would unintentionally serve as the hammer to the native alien anvil! The ancient phase whales no longer had any reason to fear the enormous technological progress and the massive military buildup of the Cybernetic Empire anymore. The voribugs possessed such vast numbers that they could entirely consume the strength of this unexpected human variable! The only price that the native aliens needed to pay was to allow lots of their own territories to get swept by the mutated voribug tide. This was an unacceptably high cost to pay for many aliens, especially those who called those vulnerable territories home, but it didn't matter to the high-and-mighty native gods! "How terrible." Ves gasped. He could totally see the leaders of the Red Cabal opt for this cruel and bloody strategy. They may be arrogant, but they were not stupid. Red humanity had proven over and over that it possessed the capacity to challenge and even kill the ancient phase whales! Compared to swarms of bugs that could easily be shredded by the spatial abilities of a phase whale, red humans and their amazingly powerful god pilots clearly posed a greater threat to the Red Cabal!