The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7246

It was a great relief to know that the Red Collective was working on a promising idea to defend planets against the voribug menace. Formation masters were about to become a very popular profession once it became known that they had the most promise when it came to building a sustainable defense against mutated voribug invasions. The RC was definitely not the only group to develop a solution. Others were probably doing this as well, if only to ensure that their territories and holdings would not collapse if the voribugs managed to overrun the Rubarthan Pact. The Dark Apostle still believed that relying on a defensive qi formation was ultimately the most sustainable solution. It would be extremely advantageous for the weak and mortal humans to build a shield that largely remained active by absorbing E energy radiation that was everywhere. While he could think of a few ways to undermine this defensive measure, it would still take a lot of effort from the mutated voribugs to defeat it entirely. He hoped that the formation masters could produce a result sooner rather than later. The news from the frontlines of the Rubarthan Pact kept sounding worse over time. Just thinking about it made the Dark Apostle feel uneasy. Despite his chosen moniker, he did not actually want to spread desolation at an apocalyptic scale. He just wanted to carve a place in the dwarf galaxy for himself and the Ascended Giants. Whether he would have to maintain a dependency relationship with the humans did not matter so much to him anymore when the mutated voribugs would gladly devour both of their races if given the chance! In a way, the mutated voribugs were the perfect enemies to promote cooperation between humans and Ascended Giants. The insects earned no sympathy. No human possessed any emotional baggage that could prompt them to prioritize the lives of these disgusting space vermin. Letting the Ascended Giants fight side by side with humans to combat this collective threat would do wonders for interspecies cooperation.

The Dark Apostle was very much aware that there was no other way out for his 'people'. This was also one of the reasons why he was enthusiastic to fight against the latest enemy menace. There was no better way to melt the hostility and tension between the two groups than to forge bonds of trust on the battlefield. To be able to do that without messing up, the Dark Apostle needed to be careful about where to deploy and which hive he should fight against first.

"Tell us about the third hive."

Eliza Mo Ragadan complied with his order. "The third hive that is assailing the contested border regions of the Rubarthan Pact is the Solari Hive. As its name suggests, the Solari Hive has a strong relationship with the energies produced by the stars in the skies. Whereas the Superswarmers desire to conquer star systems by starting from the coldest reaches in the periphery, the Solarii prefer to settle the satellites that are the closest to a star. This will expose their voribugs to a great amount of thermal energy, which they can readily use to accelerate their growth and procreation."

The projection showed how such a conquest unfolded. "Only a small amount of Solarii are needed to infiltrate a globe in the inner system. They could either drift on a small and insignificant asteroid that just happened to be flung at the planet, or they could hitchhike on a starship that hasn't been properly cleansed of a bug infection. Whatever the case, so long as a Solari voribug has landed on a hot planet, it can immediately begin to procreate and expand its numbers on a rapid scale. The hotter the planet, the faster the reproduction rate. The resources of planets that are closer to stars often tend to be fairly decent, so the average quality of a Solari voribug is also higher on average. This is usually enough to rapidly overwhelm whatever defenses humans have built on the planet if they have bothered to do so. In sparser star systems, that is not the case as it is difficult to justify the expenses."

The expansions always happened quickly. Hot planets or asteroids were ideal breeding grounds for Solari voribugs because they provided an abundance of energy and matter. That was all the insects needed to explode in numbers in the shortest possible time. The Rubarthans were not prepared against the Solarii. They had previously dispatched many patrols to the outer system to detect and hinder Superswarm-style invasions as much as possible. This just happened to leave their armed forces in a very poor position to respond to rapidly escalating crises that kicked off in the inner system! It only took a few mistakes for an entire hot planet to become engulfed with voribugs in a matter of days! Once all of these bugs began to spread out and infect other nearby satellites, it became incredibly difficult to defend against the onslaught. The expansion rate was too high and the defenders usually weren't prepared to fend off such a high-speed onslaught.

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It was easy to deduce that the Solarii preferred to start their invasion in the inner system because they wanted to take settlements by surprise. So long as they could complete the first steps of their invasion cycle quickly enough, the Solari voribugs could rapidly assault a human-occupied star system within a week, which was not enough time to transfer a lot of reinforcements! In fact, shortly after the Solari Hive emerged, it was already on the verge of conquering half a dozen star systems where this sequence had occurred! The Solari must be preparing to capture dozens more star systems utilizing the same strategy. The Rubarthans came under even greater pressure. Not only did they have to remain on guard against the Superswarmers, they also had to watch over their hot planets for fear of letting the Solarii take root. This was maddening!

"These Solari voribugs are black. That is odd."

"Yes." Eliza confirmed. "The Solarii are the only mutated voribugs that have adopted a functional color. Early autopsies have confirmed that they are adapted to absorb as much heat energy as possible and convert that into useful energy that can promote their growth or strengthen their attacks. Compared to other voribugs, they are exceptionally good at resisting energy attacks. However, the same biological adaptations make them much more vulnerable to kinetic attacks. They have proven to be considerably less resistant towards old-fashioned bullets and kinetic rounds."

"I imagine that the Solarii do not care about that. They can reproduce so quickly that they can mobilize more voribugs than the defenders have bullets."

His leader of staff nodded. "That is unfortunately the case. It is harder to resupply units that use up physical ammunition as opposed to energy cells. High-quality weapons designed to penetrate azure energy shields and transphasic armor are overkill when used against the voribugs. Most kinetic weapons such as gauss rifles have a slower firing rate because penetration power matters more than attack rate. These weapons may play a good role when employed against Goliaths, but they are the wrong weapons to use against the Solarii voribugs, which are not as weak as Superswarm voribugs but are not particularly strong either."

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