The moment Rigo gave permission to Islinda droid, the moment that official started to make the call. Islinda was startled at first, but she smelled the scent of Rigo in this process. She knew Rigo wouldn't volunteer to give her any help or advantage, not like how he was treating Dora, so this was James' call, and she appreciated his call.
"zrteto epepel pwpk sa;s;d pepe…"
The moment the call linked, a strange conversation with alien language appeared. James looked to Rigo as he asked:
"What language is it?"
"The Terases language," Rigo sighed as he ran a translation system, so the language changed to form understandable one.
"And I welcomed her, and she asked for opening another trade business. And what do you think, sir?"
The sound of an official came, as he was speaking, with utmost respect, to his leader.
"We are now busy, very busy. I can't just leave everything in hand and come to see this matter. Tell her after one year we will grant her a meeting."
The voice of the leader came, and he seemed quite annoyed by the call of this official.
"I'm sorry to bother you, sir, and I will do as you told me, and I hope your business will be thriving."
"I'm not free to chat with an ignorant little being like you, I have worlds to conquer now. see you in one year… Don't bother me at any time, and inform others with that order."
"I will, I will my lord."
The call then ended. James glanced, silently, at Rigo as he had some thoughts in mind regarding how to solve this problem. yes, they were far away from Terases race, but they were still inside this grand sector, so no matter where they went to, they would bump into them, no matter what.
"Tell Islinda good work, and ask her to run a diagnostic check over the whole planet, and other planets. We need to specify the presence of these buried cruisers here. plus, I want you to start a plan, to black out any incoming or ongoing communication until we take over this place."
James knew the simple mission of taking this place had just got complicated. When he thought about it, such a place must have eyes on it, but the question still remained, was Terases' race in control of the whole black market? Or just a tiny part of it?
He hoped it was just a tiny part, as he didn't want to spend the next year in actual strife and war with the whole black market. He wanted a period of peace and prosperity, building up his forces in this year, and be ready for warring with Terases race with no worries.
War was coming, no matter what!
"Affirmative," Rigo replied, as he did what James told him to do. He had to, bitterly, admit to himself that Islinda did a marvelous job this time.
Islinda received Rigo's transmission with a big wide smile over her face. She started this for her personal benefit, so any bonus coming from James was welcomed.
She knew the importance of looking for these buried ships, and she already had a hypothesis regarding these ships' places. Each inhabitant city on any planet here must have one ship, at the least, buried deeply into its lands.
That would help save a lot of time for her, but she had to search the whole planet afterward, as she couldn't neglect one ship buried here or there.
She waited until the official left, and made sure no one was watching here, or her, then she started moving. The first thing she did was to explore and scan the whole planet she was at. She headed towards other cities in the vicinity, and through the whole way, she asked the droid to scan and search for any buried cruiser.
She didn't manage to find any buried ones until she reached the next city, where she found one buried cruiser there. Her assumptions continued to be proven right, as all the places she visited had only cruisers buried deeply under the cities, with no other cruisers anywhere else.
However, she didn't stop looking for cruisers at the whole planet, and when she finished looking at that planet, she returned to the first planet she started from, and started digging.
With the additional mission in hand, the time she needed for arranging the next mission was longer than before, which made James take a couple hours of rest, leaving Rigo in charge of leading the operation.
The next attack came in five hours, and Rigo didn't wake James up, as he led the operation as James did, mimicking his actions and orders regarding prisoners and captured ships.
This time, they managed to clear four waves of attacks, each with thirty to fifty ships, half at least surrendered to them. that added up to one hundred and eleven ships, plus one thousand and six hundred fighters.
The amount of fighters they had now was insanely growing, without having enough pilots, this seemed like a crippled advantage. Rigo knew they would take quite some time to train these pilots, but they needed them, especially if they wanted to secure their grasp over this area.
The battle didn't take more than one hour to end, and after that with a couple more hours, Rigo woke James up, as there was a sort of problem that appeared.
"What is this?" James asked, as he was trying to understand what was seeing in front of him right now.
"The remnant forces are now united together, fully alert, and now they are patrolling the first trap site, looking for evidence," Rigo said.
James was seeing a large army, made up of three hundred small and intermediate cruisers, plus one large cruiser. the threat came from this large cruiser, as long as it was present anywhere, in battle mode, the situation would be dangerous.
James stood silent for a long time, observing this scene in front of him. directly fighting with such a force without good layout and strategy would be a suicide.
He knew as well as Rigo how dangerous it was for a large cruiser to be present in a star fight, especially if there was no such an equal at the other side. He sighed, if Dora just decided to come with him, he wouldn't be forced to do such low tricks and take such a huge risk.
He needed to seize a large cruiser for himself soon, not only one but a huge fleet of them; and surely he would!
"You think they have discovered our doings?" James asked.
"This, or they learned about the rumors, so they united each other to make sure of this rumor," Rigo said, but James wasn't convinced with what he said. He was sure they must have felt some suspicion towards what they were scheming.
He wasn't panicked, as his personal army was enough to deal with all the cruisers, except the large one. He had such an idea in mind, so he waited for a while, silently thinking, giving it much thought before asking:
"This is the first site they are visiting, right?"
"Yes, leader," Rigo replied.
"Good," James nodded, "I want you to make a trap, plant explosives hidden deeply into many asteroids. Once the fleet appeared, and that large cruiser is quite deep into it, activate the bombs and make the asteroids explode and attack that large cruiser," he added.
"But…" Rigo couldn't see how this would work. Again he failed to read the mind of his supreme leader, making doubt himself if he really knew James better or not.
Rigo was missing a very crucial moment; a moment when James honestly questioned himself and emerged with his new beliefs. Beliefs were such a scary existence, enough to reshape any man, forging dirt into gold and turning steel into ash!
"Just make them use most of the explosives we had acquired from Dora's armory. Let's bomb the whole belt over their heads," James said.
"What if that large cruiser survived?" Rigo asked, "Wouldn't they ask for help?" he added.
"From whom? If they survived, they would survive with great damage, and we could use this either to infiltrate the cruiser with an elite team of droids, or to permanently destroy it using space bombers we had," James replied, as he was excited about the fact he would destroy a large cruiser, or occupy it.
"What about Islinda's mission?" he asked.
"She had roamed five planets so far, and she managed to spot one cruiser buried under the ground in each city," Rigo explained the current findings Islinda had informed him with.
"Good," James nodded, in satisfaction, "inform her to continue looking, and stop spreading the rumor. Inform her to hurry things up, as we will move to occupy the planets once we get rid of the current hostile fleet," he added, after thinking about the next step after taking this large cruiser down.