The Mech Touch

Different from the dour and depressing proposal presented by the Xenotechnician, the alternative presented by the Mace of Retaliation made many of the attendees excited!

The thought of modifying the greater beyonder gate to launch daring deep strike raids to the hinterland of alien space caused everyone to become hot-blooded!

Why should red humans bow down to reality and seek to compromise with their enemies?

Wouldn't it be better to maintain their principles and retaliate against the aliens in the most effective way possible?

This was exactly the kind of plan that a fearless and domineering god pilot would come up with! It was a way for red humanity to fight against the aliens on its terms.

Ves could already see that much of the younger people in the crowd had become swayed by the bold and unrelenting vision of the Fist of Defiance. Their blood ran so hot that they could not wait to contribute to this enormous undertaking!

However, when Ves briefly turned his head to the rear, he could see that many of the older and more level-headed figures did not get caught up in the excitement.

They showed a considerable amount of restraint. This was not the first time in their lives that they heard an exciting pitch from another person.

All too often, wide-eyed hopefuls made a lot of claims, only to discover that they were unable to back up their promises.

Scams were still far too prevalent in modern times.

The Mace of Retaliation most definitely captured everyone's interest with his pitch. Now was the time for him to back up his words so that he could convince enough mechers that his grandfather's plan was viable.

The ace pilot pointed towards the greater beyonder gate. "It will not be easy to implement this strategy. The most essential condition is to successfully modify our greater beyonder gate to connect to portals that are generated thousands of light-years away from Bridgehead One. We are told that even if every Star Designer and other relevant experts unite to work on this project, it will likely take years before we can commence our first deep strike operations."

That... sounded a lot less pleasant to everyone. The hot-headed individuals began to cool a bit now that they became confronted by practical problems.

"It is not a problem for us to wait for several years." The Mace of Retaliation assured everyone. "The native alien warships are slow to move, so our frontlines will not break so soon. It is actually better to give them time to journey in our direction. That will empty the enemy hinterland even further, which means that they are considerably easier for us to plunder and raze."

That was right, but there were still plenty more questions related to the act of tampering with the greater beyonder gate.

The ace pilot schooled his expression. "I can see that enough of you have concerns of what all of this work will do to our greater beyonder gate. I will not lie to you all about this. It is an exceedingly intricate marvel of human technology. The modifications needed to connect to portals across many zones will disable its original purpose. It can no longer connect to its original counterpart that is located in the Maryun Ultimate System of the Milky Way Galaxy. This change may or may not be permanent, but it is better to assume the worst."

That caused an even heavier cloud to form over everyone's heads.

On paper, nothing would actually change for anyone in the foreseeable future if the greater beyonder gate broke. It was not as if it was working in the first place ever since the Great Severing occurred.

However, its continued existence gave everyone a safety blanket of sorts. So long as it remained available in its current form, there was always a chance for either branches of humanity to develop a breakthrough that could enable them to successfully bridge a distance of 50 million light-years!

Transforming one of these crucial gates did not make it impossible for red humanity to make their way back to the Milky Way somehow.

It made it a lot harder, though. Perhaps doing this would rule out any possibility for the people alive today to ever return to their galaxy of origin within their lifetimes!

The Mace of Retaliation did not appear to care about this. He crossed his arms and sent challenging stares into the crowd.

"What? Are you afraid of breaking this useless metal ring? Rather than letting this broken piece of tech rot in space, it is better for us to repurpose it so that we can actually get at least some use out of it again! Forgot about returning to the Milky Way. All we need is a device that can quickly send our strike forces to the deepest and most undefended regions of alien space! This is much more attainable in our current situation, and it also happens to be useful. If we want to give every human additional motivation to fight to the end, then let us cut off this illusionary escape route so that no one will vainly hope that our cousins in the Milky Way will come to our rescue!"

Wow. That was a brutal message. Ves could see the logic in it, but he still felt reluctant to think about any irreversible changes to the greater beyonder gate.

"Once we complete the transformation of the gate, we must protect it to the best of our abilities." The Mace of Retaliation added. "Once the damage produced by our deep strike operations begin to disturb the aliens, they will do whatever it takes to take it down. We must not let them have their way. We must strengthen the defenses at Bridgehead One and prevent any conceivable enemy from destroying the only device that can save our race."

He was right. The phase whales would probably do anything in their power to somehow bridge the enormous distance and strike directly at the gate if possible!

Red humanity needed to fortify the star system and garrison a lot of warships and mechs that could have otherwise been used to defend the frontlines.

In fact, one of the most serious downsides to the plan proposed by the Fist of Defiance was that humanity needed to spread out its forces!

A strong defense force needed to protect the greater beyonder gate at all cost. Many different deep strike fleets had to be sent on distant missions in order to quickly gather enough resources.

All of this meant that red humanity would not be able to protect its own lines as well as before.

So long as the aliens chose to ignore the frequent raids and push through their invasion, the Fist of Defiance's plan would fail!

The ace pilot continued to speak in order to address people's doubts. He clarified other aspects of his grandfather's aggressive plan in order to convince everyone that it was viable.

"There are many risks involved in any deep strike operation. It is not advisable for red humanity to allocate this responsibility to its strongest and most elite first line troops. It is overkill and it would deprive our front lines of their most capable defenders. It is better to hand over this responsibility to pioneers and volunteers among the colonial states. Their forces are much weaker and less consistent, but we can exploit their greed to make them do what is necessary. We all want them to succeed, but if any of them have suffered a calamity in the deep, then it is not a painful setback to us. We can find other volunteers so long as we offer the right incentives."

Jovy turned his head and threw a knowing glance at Ves.

The Mace of Retaliation was not wrong. There were a lot of people who were willing to accept insane and unreasonable risks so long as there was promise of an even greater payout!

"In order to send our deep strike fleets to the correct locations, our stealth frigates must arrive at the target destinations in advance." The 250-year old Survivalist explained as he pointed to a projected animation that depicted this process. "The ship must generate a portal at her location under extreme conditions. This will cause her portal generator to consume a large amount of phasewater that grows progressively larger at greater distances. Each frigate can only generate so many portals before she runs through her reserves. In the most extreme cases, a single portal may already cause her to drain everything. What this means is that unless the arriving raiding fleets are able to plunder enough phasewater to make up for the shortfall, the ship cannot open a return portal."

This was a serious limitation!

Although it was only applicable if the greater beyonder gate attempted to transfer a raiding fleet to the opposite side of the Red Ocean, this was still a serious risk!

No one wanted to attract a lot of hostile attention, only to discover that they couldn't pay for the fare that could quickly take them out of enemy territory!

"It is also important to preserve every ship equipped with portal generators at a given location. We believe that once the Red Cabal learn what we are doing, the aliens will invest much greater effort into sweeping their territories to hunt down these key ships. The difficulty of conducting these deep strike operations will increase over time, but by then we will have hopefully made enough progress to thoroughly split up the aliens and ruin their own offensives."

One of the most crucial parts about this plan was to hit the right targets to draw the enemy fleets away from human space.

Red humanity could do so by heavily targeting the territories of only a limited selection of alien races.

There were many possible choices, but the Mace of Retaliation mentioned one of them in particular.

"We can exploit the racial and cultural traits of the nunser race. These quadruped aliens are evolved herd animals. Even if they have become sentient and intelligent, they still possess many vestiges of their ancient origins. They may seem aggressive to outsiders, but they are intensely protective and caring towards their fellow nunsers. How do you think they will react when they receive news of dozens alien fleets ravaging their star systems and killing trillions of vulnerable nunsers crying out for help?"

If the nunsers were rational, then they would certainly be able to figure out that this was a ploy to divert their warfleets back to their own territories.

The most logical decision they could make was to endure all of the damage and work hard to push through the invasion so that the scourge of humanity would finally come to an end!

However, the nunsers weren't known for their sober and level-headed heads. It was quite probable that they would ignore the direct orders from the phase whales themselves and immediately turn their warships around!

That would definitely deprive the Red Cabal of a significant amount of attack units!

The plan actually did not sound half-bad to Ves as he continued to listen.

It was not as cowardly as the plan proposed by the Xenotechnician, but it was not as realistic either.

Cowards tended to attract a lot of scom, but they also happen to live longer on average.

The Xenotechnician failed to generate any excitement when he made his pitch, but he did not need to. There was no point for him to outdo the Fist of Defiance on this front.

What the wise and flexible Star Designer banked on instead was the assurance that his 'cowardly' plan was the most realistic way to save red humanity from extinction. Its logic was simply too strong and the plan did not involve risky or sketchy operations that had a good chance of doing nothing to alter the adverse strategic situation.

Reality was not an action drama. Committing to all-out attacks might not be enough to shake the resolve of the native aliens.

Was it better for humans to re-learn the art of diplomacy so that they could pull off the most important divide and conquer strategy of their lifetimes?

Or was it better for humans to stay true to their current selves and unabashedly commit to extremely risky diversionary assaults in the hope of resisting the aliens all by themselves?