The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3606

Chapter 3606 Opportunities in Krakatoa

The expeditionary fleet resumed its journey deeper into the Red Ocean.

After leaving the Pellysa System, the Magair Middle Zone no longer offered anything interesting to the Golden Skull Alliance.

A lot of pioneers already laid claim to nearby star systems and other curiosities. Intruding onto their turf would generate a lot of bad will.

Although the MTA escort guarded the Larkinson Clan against any human aggression, that did not mean that Ves could use the Simile Halifax as a club against other pioneers. The agreement he made explicitly stated that he could not abuse his current privilege to rob other people!

"All of the good stuff in this zone is mostly picked clean anyway." Ves determined. "If I want to obtain anything new and interesting, I'll have to move over to the Krakatoa Middle Zone."

The Big Two swept the Krakatoa Middle Zone a lot more recently than the Magair Middle Zone. The area was still fresh enough to include a fair amount of stray alien vessels as well as completely untouched alien settlements.

As a result, the more daring and confident second-class pioneers all flocked to this zone so that they could plunder all of the low-hanging fruit while they were still available.

If they didn't move in fast enough, they would have to go even deeper into alien territory to obtain their chances!

In order to learn more about the area that the expeditionary fleet would soon be entering, Calabast held a virtual presentation where she explained the most pertinent information and intelligence that the leaders of the Larkinson Clan should know about.

The virtual version of Arnold scurried about on the deck as Calabast pointed out the evolving hotspots and danger regions on the star map.

"The intelligence we gather is not complete and usually gathered late, so don't think that this map is an accurate representation of what is truly taking place in the Krakatoa Zone. There are many more pioneers that either keep their discoveries under wraps or have met an unfortunate end at the hand of powerful aliens." She warned everyone. "What we do know is that Krakatoa has an unusually high presence of nunsers. According to what we know, Krakatoa fell into the periphery of the nunser civilization."

"What do you mean by periphery?" Commander Casella Ingvar asked.

"It's a backwater in the eyes of the nunsers. It's worthwhile enough for the nunsers to plant their flag in the region but its wealth and strategic value do not warrant their full attention. The nunsers settled on a large number of planets, but did not populate them to the fullest. This means that the different star systems are still relatively pristine."

"What happened to the nunsers?" Ves asked.

"The Big Two apparently conducted a lightning invasion in order to catch the nunsers off-guard and prevent their ship-homes from lifting off and running away in an instant. Many of these raids succeeded, but even more ship-homes have already departed. There are relatively few living nunsers left in Krakatoa. The living aliens in the zone mostly consist of the smaller and less consequential races. Their threat level is not comparable to the nunsers."

Everyone nodded in understanding. Although not all of these aliens were pushovers, they were still a lot more manageable than angry nunser ship-homes! The tech and scale disparity of the latter were simply too great!

"So what are human pioneers doing here, exactly? Give us an idea of what we can do here to pass the time."

Calabast switched the projection to show a typical untamed planet in the Red Ocean.

"First, we can explore and survey the undiscovered or lightly-surveyed star systems. The MTA rewards any pioneer who performs detailed and thorough scans of every corner, with a particular focus on life-bearing planets or those with the potential for terraforming. In order to meet the MTA's standards, we can't perform a handful of cursory long-ranged sweeps. We need to spread out ships and mechs and get close to as many places of note as possible."

"This will also be a good opportunity to pick up valuable treasures first." Commander Sendra of the Swordmaidens smirked. "If none of the pioneers have scoured through these places yet, we can easily fill our cargo holds with exotics and alien loot."

Ves looked skeptical. "The chance of encountering a planet that contains anything worthwhile should be pretty low."

"We can still dream."

"There have been a few surprises. There are star systems which look empty at first but may harbor a hidden alien enclave. There are other star systems that contain resources that the aliens considered worthless but are of considerable value to us. Every pioneer has the potential to win the jackpot with each new exploration. That said, the majority of pioneers generally encounter nothing, so don't put your hopes in getting rich in a single trip." Calabast stated.

She soon moved on to the second type of activity that pioneers engaged in. The projection switched to a planet that was already populated by an indigenous alien race.

"Although Krakatoa is only one zone among many, it is still populated by lots of sentient alien races. Some of them are populated by races that were part of the old galactic community. Others are inhabited by more primitive races that have not managed to conquer their local star system. Whatever the case, the MTA and CFA did not consider them to be threatening enough to divert their warfleets to these sites. The main invasion still must go on. If all of those human warships are assigned to crush every little backwater star system, then the momentum of their invasion will surely stall. It falls upon humanity's irregular forces to handle these neglected alien systems."

Several mech commanders began to look uncomfortable. They already had a good guess what pioneers needed to do at these sites.

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