The Mech Touch

Ves became fascinated by the internal situation in Purgatory.

The phase whale enclave had fallen into ruin, but the native life forms that originally resided in it had thrived during their long-term isolation.

Cut off from the rest of the galaxy, these out-of-control test subjects or former slaves or whatever turned the largely self-contained field of large asteroids into their own little world.

Few overt traces of the phase whale race remained. Aside from the ruins on the Lab Continent, the other landmasses contained no obvious artificial traces.

None of the asteroids appeared to be normal, though. Ves and many other science-minded individuals wondered how this pocket space maintained equilibrium.

There was no point in thinking too much. There was no way that the science teams at his disposal could figure out how Purgatory worked and how it interacted with energy and matter.

These were profound questions that could only be solved by greater forces such as the MTA that was definitely paying a lot of attention to Purgatory.

What Ves and the others should focus on instead was attaining more modest goals such as plundering the Lake Continent of all of its phasewater!

If not for the fact that there were lots of powerful phasewater-augmented fish-whales on that landmass, the expeditionary forces would have departed already!

As Calabast commanded everyone's attention during the virtual conference meeting, she projected a map of Purgatory.

Compared to the previous version of the map, this one not only showed the asteroids in greater detail, but also featured overlays that cleverly conveyed additional information.

Important elements such as phasewater deposits, energy sources, fish-whale concentrations and their estimated combat power could all be viewed in the glimpse of an eye.

Anyone who looked at the map would notice that there were four distinct asteroids that were occupied by four groups of distinct fish-whale groups.

"Before we discuss our strategy, let us take stock of the 'natives' occupying this newly-discovered pocket space." Calabast said as she gestured towards the map. "Thanks to the observation data brought by Venerable Tusa, we know that there are 23 major asteroids floating in a spherical space. These asteroids are all of substantial size. The smallest one can fit a city while the largest one can easily be regarded as a true continent. Each of them is occupied by different fish-whales though not all of them are treated as important. As far as we can tell, the landmasses of value are all divided among four fish-whale 'kingdoms' that all possess the strength to defend their own territories."

Nine continents began to glow in red.

"Let us begin with the most familiar group of fish-whales to us. The color-coded fish-whales that we have encountered and killed en masse are much more numerous than we feared. They also happen to occupy almost half of the landmasses in Purgatory, granting the so-called Swarmers an abundant amount of room and resources to breed a lot of fish-whales. While we can only make inferences based on limited sensor readings, we estimate that the Swarm Kingdom contains as much as 12 million fish-whales, a significant proportion of which are located on the Central Continent!"

Everyone looked shocked.

"Twelve million!"

"There's no way we can defeat that many fish-whales by ourselves. Our mechs will wear out and our energy reserves will run dry before we have killed a tenth of this amount!"

Calabast remained unfazed despite describing an alien group that possessed as much combat power as a small state.

"Based on what we have observed and what we can infer, the Swarm Kingdom is overwhelmingly made up of non-sentient drones that act more as elements of a superorganism than self-contained life forms. The most common white fish-whales essentially cannot think for themselves and need to be led around in order to accomplish greater goals. While the existence of an intelligent queen has not been definitively proven, based on various behavior patterns such as sending out an attack horde on a suicide run against a rival kingdom, we are 90 percent certain that there is at least one guiding intelligence among the Swarmers."

The Swarm Kingdom was the most dominant group in Purgatory. The other kingdoms could not come close to matching the numbers of this huge fish-whale group!

"This kingdom is not without flaws, however." Calabast smiled. "The vast majority of fish-whales are in an inactive state when they are not being guided. We believe the guiding intelligence is limited by how extensively it can reach, communicate and issue orders to other Swarmers. Otherwise, the activation of the ancient alien gate and the appearance of a human fighting force on one of its continents should have attracted an immediate response from these opponents. Despite setting foot on Purgatory a day ago, the neighboring hordes of fish-whales have not shown any sign of exploring our beachhead or launching an all-out attack to repel the foreign invaders from their realm. A human state would never be so complacent."

The Swarmers easily had the numbers to push the human invaders back to the other side of the portal, but they continued to act stupid. Either the guiding intelligence was playing the long con or there were severe deficiencies in the operation of its kingdom!

"Although we should always be on guard for a sudden change in awareness and behavior from the Swarmers, we should not let that stop us from taking advantage of them whenever possible."

Calabast turned to the second fish-whale kingdom that Tusa had encountered. The map no longer highlighted the continents occupied by the Swarmers and instead lit up two floating asteroids.

"Let us move on to the Evolvers. You can clearly see that their numbers and their amount of territories are much smaller compared to the Swarmers. The Evolution Kingdom should not have been able to compete against the millions of cannon fodder that their enemies can throw at it if not for several extenuating circumstances."

The map zoomed in to highlight the numerous giant phase whale-scaled structures.

"There is enough evidence to suggest that these structures used to be a place of importance to the alien creator of this pocket space. We know that the phase whales are obsessed with bioresearch, so it is not a stretch to think that one of them is engaged in research in those structures. Since the fish-whales are clearly an artificial race, we can assume that these labs birthed the race that has survived in Purgatory up until today."

The labs had to be valuable for the Evolvers to fight so hard to retain control over the Lab Continent!

Calabast tapped her fingers against her wrist. "The value of these structures and whatever functions they have retained is quite evident, then. The king fish or other intelligent Evolver fishes have not only managed to get a part of these labs to work, but also utilize them to bestow targeted and powerful biological augmentations to the members of the Evolution Kingdom. We can conclude that the style of the Evolvers is the opposite of that of the Swarmers. Each of them are presumably intelligent and each of them possess significantly more combat power than many Swarmers put together. Their society is also closer to that of the civilizations that we are familiar with. This is an important trait and will play a key role in the strategy that I am about to outline."

The Evolvers were the fish-whales that were closest to humans in their society and traits. When Ves recalled that the king fish attempted to communicate with Venerable Tusa, there was actual hope for cooperation between the Golden Skull Alliance and the Evolution Kingdom!

"The ancient facilities on the Lab Continent may be of value to us, but accessing them is not a critical objective to us. Not only is it unlikely that we can decipher the tech that the phase whales have left behind, we cannot stay and occupy them permanently with our current level of strength."

Ves grimaced even though he knew that Calabast was right. The others pretty much treated the labs as a secondary objective. It would be nice if they could gain access to it, but they would lose no sleep if they failed to make this possible.

The map changed again. The two continents of the Evolution Kingdom returned to normal and another floating landmass became highlighted.

"The next kingdom holds what we want. The Phase Kingdom is aptly named. Each of the light blue fish-whales has integrated a significant amount of phasewater in their bodies and we can assume that they know how to make use of them in a destructive manner. Despite the great potential of their phasewater abilities, the Phasers do not appear to be capable of projecting their power outwards. They only occupy a single landmass, namely the Lake Continent, and have adopted a full defensive posture to retain hold of this great prize. We can be certain the other kingdoms recognize the value of phasewater, yet for so many years the Phase Kingdom has maintained its hold on this key territory."

The Lake Continent was the most valuable landmass to the Golden Skull Alliance. While Ves and the others were uncertain whether the fish-whales thought the same way, it should definitely be a desirable prize!

"It is unfortunate that we know far too little about the Phaser fish-whales themselves. We have not seen them in action nor confirmed whether they are at war with the Swarmers. We can presume this is the case as a domineering and expansionist group as they should not be able to resist the temptation to take over this resource-rich landmass. The Phasers would have been more assertive in expanding their territories if they were not under so much pressure."

The map changed to highlight three of the most distant landmasses from the Gate Continent.

"Finally, we have the Hot Kingdom. The Heater fishes as Tusa calls them are all black in coloration, which we believe they have developed in this fashion to absorb the maximum possible light and heat energy. The continents they occupy happen to play an important role in the semi-closed ecosystem of Purgatory. Much of the powerful rays generated by the blue supergiant star selectively passes through certain membranes that separates the pocket space from the main reality and subsequently land in specific places. Most of these hotspots happen to be concentrated in the continents occupied by the Heaters."

Every continent appeared to contain hotspots, but the ones occupied by the Hot Kingdom were definitely more endowed than others!

"The Heaters have not only claimed the three adjacent landmasses that receive the most energy, but have also evolved their combat approach to match their favorable conditions. While this may have turned the Blue Light Continent and the other two asteroids into key locations to the fish-whales, their value is almost zero in our eyes."

Many people nodded. Energy was hardly a scarce resource in human civilization. There were plenty of stars and plenty of rich fuel sources available in the territories occupied by humanity.

The troublesome part about energy was storing it and generating it in the right manner, but that was not relevant to this situation.

"Now that we have surveyed all four kingdoms, it is time to talk about how we should handle them." Calabast started to grin. "I am sure that each of you have looked at all of these powerful and numerous fish-whales and thought to yourself that it is impossible for us to defeat even a fraction of their numbers. While that may be true, your vision is severely limited if you think that direct combat is the only way to attain our objectives. The entire concept of the divide and conquer strategy is to slice up a large body of enemies and take advantage of their internal divisions to make them fight against each other."

It was a clever if difficult way to defeat specific fish-whales without paying a ruinous price.

However, before she could proceed, a skeptical-looking Ariadne Wodin raised an important question.

"Can we even divide the fish-whales?" She asked. "We are the foreign aliens in this pocket space. For all of their hatred against each other, a threat from beyond should be of far greater concern to them. Not only do humans like us threaten the survival of their race, we also hold the only gateway that can lead them outside of this prison that has confined them for so many years. If I was in their place, I would band together with my fellow fish-whales and launch an all-out attack on Fort Fishblood!"

That… was a serious possibility.