Max stared over the map of the planet below him with annoyance. Sure, the inhabitants had all holed up inside barriers, but that meant that the Klem were clustered around the barriers, and he would have to encircle them to eliminate them without hitting the shielding of the cities, which honestly couldn't take much more damage than they already were.
The barriers had been created on the expectation of civilian riots causing issues, not an aggressive alien species invading them, and they were woefully inadequate for the job.
"Envoy, how long has it been since those city barriers were upgraded?" Max asked the Giant standing beside him, taking notes about the situation on the holographic projection coming from the tabletop.
"According to my data, it was right after the Valkia Resurgence when they rose to the top of the Alliance political system." The Giant replied after a moment's hesitation.
"And when was that?" Max continued.
"Roughly seventeen thousand years ago? I am assured that they are still in peak operational condition, though, and they were recently refurbished, so there is no fear of an unexpected failure." The Giant Envoy replied confidently.
"Can we expect similarly dated technology on the other threatened planets?" Max asked.
"Most likely. It has been serving its purpose for as long as your species has been an interstellar Empire, so there really hasn't been a need to upgrade any of the civilian defences within the core regions of the Alliance." The Giant shrugged.
"I am beginning to see why these particular areas were targeted. They have become so complacent in their safety that they were easy targets for someone who wanted to prove a point or settle their grudge with the Alliance.
Even the most obsolete military technology that humans have is only a few thousand years old, and most of it has been updated at least once a century, just in case there is an increased threat from what they were already prepared for.
After so long, the core occupants of the Alliance have forgotten what being under threat feels like, and they aren't prepared for it.
Don't worry, though. We will be able to take care of the threat on this planet. We will drop on a few cities at a time so that we safely eliminate the majority of the Klem, and then we will spread out and cleanse the planet." Max explained.
"So, you're saying that it's unlikely to be an accident that the Klem ended up here?" The Giant asked.
"Check this star map. What do you notice about the Galaxy that we are in right now?" Max asked.
"Seventeen million inhabited planetoids, twelve intelligent species, irregular elliptical shape with no black hole at the core." The Giant responded.
"There is another Galaxy and a nebula in between here and my Galaxy. There is no way that the Klem, which can't maneuver in space without their few specialized life forms, could have ended up here but not in either of the other two locations. Even if they tried to use the gravitational pull to slingshot around the other Galaxy, they wouldn't have ended up here.
See, these are all the viable routes where they could have ended up without contacting a solid object. None of them are anywhere near the list of planets that we have been given. So I don't think that they came to your region of space on their own. It seems almost certain that they were sent here unless we find a wormhole or portal somewhere that might lead back to their home region."
"All wormholes and portals in the Alliance Territories should be mapped and explored. If they were brought here, it should have been through a portal. But that raises the question of how and why. I can't imagine what might have caused someone to want to destroy multiple planets." The Giant wondered.
Max could see that he really didn't understand the vindictiveness and cruelty of the Galaxy, but his species was good at analyzing it and determining when it would pop up, as long as they had enough data on what had transpired in the past.
[Nico, what did you find for a Commander on the last planet? Was it an immature Queen?] Max asked while his mind was on the topic.
[Even better. It was a new form of Behemoth. One that specialized in tactics. It seems to have been immature, but it certainly wasn't a queen, and it didn't have command over the others. It only provided them with data, like a mainframe computer.
The deficiency was because the others lacked sufficient intelligence to make the best use of the data that it could provide. Unfortunately, it is dead now, but the Hunters have finished translating a portion of the transmissions that it was making, including some from the infested human ship that you destroyed.
It was sharing and storing data from human computers, so Klem has been learning more about our capabilities. Fortunately, the ship was at least a generation behind in terms of Mecha capabilities, but I suspect that the Klem will start improving their tactics all over the front lines of their expansion very soon.]
[You sound entirely too happy about that.]
Nico's happiness grew even more prominent in her mind with his response. [I am. I've got a lovely sample here, and the data we get from the ongoing battles will help a lot with my attempts at self-modification, as well as my attempts to create a biomechanical computer system.
Even the Hunters are excited about it. They found a larval version on the ship they cleared, and they're going to try to modify it into a data storage center and see how much it can hold, as well as how efficient its communications are. It might actually turn out to be a leap ahead for their own computer systems.]
[So that's why. Your new friends found a new toy, and they're going to send you the data of them playing with it so that you can make something new.] Max joked.
[Exactly. If we can tweak it properly, we will even be able to improve the Mecha systems to link them more effectively than our current computers.]
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢