As they passed by the various star systems, Max noticed something odd in how the planets were arranged. Over a dozen of them appeared to have no inhabitants at all, but their layouts were exactly the same, mimicking the mythical Sol, the homeworld of humanity, in that the third and fourth planets of the system were inhabitable, as well as one moon around a gas giant.
It was clear that so many nearby systems consisting of identical planetary arrangements, right down to the atmospheric composition, could not possibly be natural, but the sensors said that all of them had been extracted from their major natural resources and abandoned, leaving behind only nonsentient life.
Some planets still had living flora and fauna, but some were completely barren, destroyed by whatever force or industry had caused the architects of their design to abandon them.
It was completely unnatural that a culture that could rearrange an entire planetary system would mine them empty and then depart, but it was right there on his display, clearly identified by the sensors. Fourteen identical stars, with fourteen identical solar systems, all abandoned.
Could an ancient species have been using them as a test bed to develop something, perhaps even an experiment to develop an advanced species, since the arrangement seemed so deliberately friendly to pre-warp civilization, with three planets needing nothing but to be inhabited?
Max ran an analysis of them all and found one more strange fact. While they were not in a straight row, from no planet could another be clearly seen. They were arranged so that the stars were almost completely behind another intervening star from any of the other systems.
Could the ones who did this have possibly rearranged the stars themselves for their experiment?
Humans could arrange planets if they put in enough effort, but the entire star? That was far beyond anything that they could do.
Going by the conversation and thoughts on the ship when he displayed his findings, it was beyond the alliance as well. They could do miraculous things to put a planet where they wanted it, but there wasn't much that they could do about the location of a star. Even their technology couldn't alter the constellations.
Max filed it in his mind and computer files as an unsolvable riddle and moved on to the next bits of data until the one-hour alarm alerted him to the fact that his unit would be preparing to make landfall while Terminus herself would be hiding from the inhabited planet behind its nearest neighbor.
That would attract the least attention while letting the residents of the ship watch the feeds from the Cutters and Command Mecha, a compromise that the pilots were all used to now, as it kept the Alliance observers at bay and prevented accusations that they were doing something inappropriate.
Of course, they turned them off when they were actually going to do something against the rules of war. They weren't idiots, and a few lapses in the data could be written off as glitches in the nascent human streaming technology. Don't like it, why not arrange to trade the humans some of that top-notch alliance tech?
As the Cutters dropped out of warp, Nico sent a flood of drones out to join them, looking to the locals as if the Cutters had launched them as they arrived behind their planetary neighbor.
The bombers and orbital fighters made the first wave of attacks, clearing the flight paths and landing zones for the Cutters, while Max prepared to launch Cleansing Light out toward the edge of the solar system and intercept the Klem threat, and Nico prepared a personal shuttle to land next to the Hunters with Shattered Pride.
Now that they were close enough for detailed data, Max made sure he wasn't sending anyone on a suicide mission due to outdated data and found that the only one whose target was more formidable than expected was the position that Nico and the Hunters' leader were attacking. The Narsians had taken a whole city, with a population of roughly twenty thousand, with sensors indicating over two thousand giant soldiers currently in residence.
Even for the two super-heavy mecha, that was a lot of enemies to deal with, and they were both melee-focused units. That was an advantage in a city environment, but it was also a disadvantage against overwhelming numbers.
[All Cutters, prepare to begin landing sequence. Flight Paths are clear.] Max informed the unit as the last of the reports came in and then checked on the drone bays, where the regiment's infantry was currently stationed, flying all the fighters that were clearing the path for the Mecha to land.
[Message from the Canis team: Can we do anything productive?] Max's watch informed him.
[Talk to the Drone Pilots. They might have something for you to do. I know Canis doesn't have anything similar, but if you catch on quickly, you might be allowed to pilot sensor drones and do reconnaissance.]
There wasn't much damage they could do if they screwed up flying a sensor drone. At worst, they might not provide useful data, but everything it recorded was sent back automatically, and they might accidentally find something interesting if they just wandered around with it.
The Klem fleet had just come into the range of detailed scanners and visual imaging, so Max brought it all up on the screens inside Cleansing Light, making a plan to deal with the extras before they could become a real issue.
This was the very northeast region of Klem space and the very northwest of Narsian space, with only empty planets to the outside of them, as far as their sensors and the data he had gotten from Canis indicated, so the Klem fleet might be responding to the Narsians as if they had encroached into the neutral territory between the two species.
Both species had started their development in this area, from what the Kepler records said, so it was possible that the behavior of the Klem would be very different here than what he was used to, which was mindless attack waves and brute force.
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