The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7605

Chapter 7605: How to Invade Another Galaxy

"How would you initiate an inter-galactic invasion?"

"Ehhh... what?"

"Let us assume you are tasked by the leaders of your race to build a foothold in a completely foreign galaxy that none of you have ever come into contact with in the past. Let us also assume that you are working with relatively limited resources. Let us further assume that you can only sneak in a relatively small amount of manpower and resources across the intergalactic void. What are your first steps? What are your priorities? What scenarios will you try to avoid at all cost?"

The Farseer posed a number of very interesting but incredibly complicated questions to Ves.

That was not how Ves expected to be greeted after he had just stepped aboard the increasingly more famous Moloch.

He was not the only notable individual to arrive at the quirky vessel crewed by the members of the Red Collective.

"I would find the weakest aliens around and kick their asses first to teach them who is boss." A boisterous young female voice sounded from behind. "Of course, you shouldn’t pick on anything big like a planetary government. There are always pirates and outlaws in every galaxy. Nobody really cares about them, especially the weakest ones, so once you have taken over a disreputable outfit, nobody will be able to tell the difference. You can do a lot from there as long as you don’t do anything stupid. What do you think, Lucky?"

"Meow!" A hovering gem cat playfully floated around her head.

"Hihihi! Of course I am right!"

Both Ves and Andrea Vos smiled indulgently at the child.

"Your plan contains sound logic, but you have missed a number of steps." The formation master gently responded. "What is praiseworthy about your plan is that you understand the importance of information warfare. Before two hostile races ever launch their first shots at each other, they always compete through the medium of information. If red humanity’s first step after reaching Messier 87 is to announce itself as a visitor from the Red Ocean, then many of the established alien civilizations will ruthlessly hunt us down to kill us, or worse, capture us and extract every piece of useful information that we possess. That sounds rather counterproductive, do you agree?"

The young red-headed girl nodded. "I suppose so, ma’am. That’s why I think it is best to make contact with the opposite of those big and powerful civilizations. Bottom-tier outlaws are so weak and messy that nobody ever keeps track of them. I bet there are many groups that consist of a mix of weird and exotic aliens. Even if ’humans’ suddenly appear among them, none of the aliens in M87 will think too much about it. That galaxy is just so damn big that it probably has more intelligent species than all of the grains of sand on a planet."

That was a remarkably insightful explanation. His daughter put real thought in her argument, though it still rested on a number of dangerous assumptions.

The Farseer still maintained her smile. "I agree with you, but my previous comment still stands. If you want to find suitable pirates to subsume, you will first need to understand the regional stellar environment, the alien polities that reside in it and the flow of traffic and forces. All of that requires intelligence gathering, and that is incredibly difficult to do at the start. As a new entrant, you have a responsibility to avoid tipping off the truth of your identity while simultaneously interacting with completely new aliens to learn what they know. Any contact is risky. The wrong words can set off a violent reaction. The wrong actions can betray your complete ignorance of regional customs and taboos. The wrong choices can turn an incredibly rare and precious attempt to invade a different galaxy into waste."

"Oh..." Andraste thought herself clever, but she clearly hadn’t accounted for so much. She lowered her head while reaching out to hug Lucky against her chest. "Then... you will first have to send out spies. Good ones. People who can look and listen at other aliens without getting caught."

The mature woman nodded. "Correct. This is a whole different subject that falls outside of the scope of this discussion. It is sufficient to note that if you keep your presence in a new galaxy as hidden as possible, you can make any low-key preparations as you want as long as they do not surpass a threshold where the buildup cannot be hidden anymore."

"I have read some of the early records about the Big Two’s initial decades in the Red Ocean." Ves couldn’t help but comment. "The documents strangely don’t explain how the mechers and the fleeters managed to cross the void between the Milky Way and the Red Ocean 70 or so years ago. Perhaps their pioneer ships set off a few centuries ago with a souped-up version of a conventional FTL drive or some other exotic faster-than-light travel technology. Whatever the case, once the first humans arrived in the new frontier, they behaved with a great amount of caution and discipline. They did not even dare to venture too much beyond Bridgehead One, as every movement could betray their true identities and origin."

The Big Two demonstrated a lot of patience. Perhaps they could have kicked off the invasion of the Red Ocean within as little as a decade, but they instead kept their heads down for 4 more decades just to collect more intelligence and increase their preparations!

The MTA and the CFA clearly possessed an immense amount of might, enough to overrun the alien civilizations of the Red Ocean by relying on brute force alone, yet did not grow conceited enough to resort to this method!

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