If not for the presence of this large cruiser, he wouldn't hesitate to issue the order to attack these ships directly, as he was confident in his ability to win this war, if the large cruiser was eliminated from the picture.

"How do you plan to get rid of the fleet?" Rigo asked, once he finished relaying orders to everyone. James just smiled, silently contemplating the plan in his mind, trying to perfect it. Rigo remained silent, on the side, as he waited patiently, until James finished.

"We will do an obvious distracting operation, followed by a tactical infiltration, then we'll play hide and seek operation until we kill the most of their fleet, dominate their large cruiser, then we can route them up and kill or capture what's left," James said, in a more vague tone to his speech, making Rigo unable to follow him.

"Can you elaborate, leader?" he asked.

James turned to look towards the holographic presentation of such a massive fleet, compared to his. Only one piece made such a difference, that large cruiser.

All his thoughts were directed towards how to deal with this behemoth, as if he managed to slay it, things would end up being better for him.

But this was easier said than done, so he revised the plan in his head once again before starting to explain:

"We first will send our boys down there, to plant bombs, very carefully, after jamming any sensors around the cruisers buried at each planet. When Islinda uncovers every single cruiser buried there, and we finish planting bombs around them, we will then detonate the bombs," he said.

Rigo thought for a moment in this part of the plan, as he muttered:

"It's a diversion, an obvious distraction, they won't fall into it."

James always knew this, and that was the reason to take all this time to formulate and revise his plan; he made it in layers. One block above the other; that was the structure of his plan.

Even the simplest and most obvious traps would succeed if it was used properly and wisely.

"I know," James nodded, before adding, "but I'm depending on them, but on those corrupted officials here. bombing these cruisers would make them unable to reach their masters, and so they will, in panic, order the fleet of mercenaries to come back, and protect them," James said.

"They will think they are under attack, not being a distraction," Rigo nodded, as he got what James meant, but this wasn't enough to calm his doubts towards the whole plan. Despite that he remained silent waiting to hear his supreme leader's next words.

"Nice, what's next then is based on the reaction of these mercenaries, but I think they will comply, partly, by sending some medium and small sizes cruisers, plus many fighters, to protect the planets, and silence those officials who hired them," James said, as he pointed to circle on a part equal to a fifth of the fleet, moving them from the hologram to the place of the planets.

James didn't put the hypothesis of the mercenaries to fully comply with the orders of the officials; they were mercenaries not slaves! They would prefer to die than to run away from a fight, especially a fight against their pride and reputation, a fight against such a meager force like his.

"That will reduce their forces a bit, but not too much," Rigo said.

"Right and wrong. Before I explain further, when we detonate the bomb, we will spread out one hundred elites of our droids in space, acting like dead objects in the course of the large cruiser. Once they start opening their hatches to launch the fighters, they will silently infiltrate the cruiser," James said, finally revealing his big piece.

"But leader," Rigo stopped him in the middle of his speech, "for one hundred to take control over the large cruiser, it's not an easy task," he said, pointing out the hard task his droids would have to face.

"No, I didn't say they will take control of the cruiser," James said, despite the mere thought of controlling such a behemoth really crossed his mind, and Rigo's words bitterly reminded him of that.

"This cruiser must be eliminated rapidly, in the earliest possible moment," he added, and he didn't need to elaborate further, as Rigo understood his meaning.

Rigo thought James would try to aim and seize this cruiser, and James thought initially like this, but then he removed this idea from his mind. He was now focusing on destroying the cruiser as fast as possible, as with this single blow, the entire hostile fleet would be in disarray.

"In addition to that, our main problem, besides this large cruiser, is the large number of fighters these mercenaries have. Each ship we took a seizure of had many fighters inside. So, by sending most of the fighters away, and destroying the big shark in the waters, we could hunt them down easily and without many losses," James finished explaining his plan, as he looked at Rigo, waiting for his opinion and pointers.

"Good plan," Rigo nodded, "but you said a hide and seek operation, but I can't see it in the plan," he added, in an inquiring manner.

"Oh, I forgot this. If we started to destroy the cruiser near the planets, the dispatched ships and fighters might join the main force and regain their morale, so we need to draw the main force away, far away than here. so we will play a hide and seek little game, with some skirmishes here and there just to make the game little spicy," James said, explaining this missed part of his plan.

"It seems quite interesting," Rigo said, "as like this we can let our boys enter, plant bombs at the engine and the energy generators, then retreat, safely exiting the ship, before detonating it," he added, while nodding his head in satisfaction.

"That's part of it, plus I will detonate it inside the asteroid belt," James said, "as there the movement of the hostile fleet would be limited, with chaos added to the mix, they would destroy themselves on their own," he added, with a sneer. "Now, start distributing orders, let the boys go in small teams, and start phase one of the plan," he said to Rigo, who started to relay orders to the whole fleet.

James sat there on his seat, listening to the beautiful silence around him, it was the silence before the storm.

Down there, Islinda had received the detailed instructions about the plan, and she had to admit to herself that it was a great plan, and great plans usually had a tendency to fail.

She started to see the major point which might lead this whole plan to crumble. The only spot where things might go south would be when the large cruiser reacted, as its reaction if was minimal, or didn't react at all, the plan would entirely fail.

She started to think, on her own, alone, about how to make sure these mercenaries wouldn't put the nearby, rumored wealth ahead of the current business deal with these officials.

The only thing she could think of, was to instigate the wrath and doubt of those officials towards those mercenaries, as they would deal with them not out of fear, but of anger and revenge.

To do so, there was a simple means to that, so she asked the droid next to her to relay this message to Rigo, and then to James.

"What do you say?" James opened his semi-closed eyes, as he asked Rigo to repeat what he just said.

"I got a transmission from Islinda, she says in it this message: to avoid the failure of the plan, and secure a strong response from the enemy, you must disguise the bombing to be caused by those mercenaries. That's what she said."

James didn't say anything for a while, before nodding and smiling in content. Islinda's opinion and advice was really superb, perfectly on the spot. He knew the only weakness in this plan was the part when his enemies would respond, and he couldn't find anyway to force their hands.

However, Islinda had solved this issue for him. by faking the bombing to be done by the mercenaries, they would make the officials suspect the mercenaries, with the fact the mercenaries wouldn't respond to them, or send a mere weak force out, they would be enraged, threatening the name of their master on the line.

Either the mercenaries would comply or try to go and teach those officials a lesson. Either way, they would send a bigger part of their fleet, acting in favor of James' plan.

"Good, good," James muttered, before looking to Rigo, "Make the bombing to appear the mercenaries did it, use the ships we just secured from them, and throw some killed bodies of their surrendered fleet on the sites of the explosions," he added, with a wide grin, as this time he was confident, very confident in the success of his plan.