James' words were perfectly and swiftly executed by Rigo, who knew this would be considered the first big battle they would really fight. The past battle could hardly be described as such, so he made sure everything would go according to the plan.

Islinda, on the other hand, continued her expedition, looking for buried cruisers, and her mind was rethinking about any loopholes that might be missed here.

She didn't know all the new developments at James' side yet, but she was already so tense. She knew her part was crucial; any single mistake and she would fail; everyone would fail.

But the more she thought about it, the more convinced with the plan, the more fearful she became, as perfect plans always had major issues, hidden until they happened already.

She continued her journey though, and the pattern she found never changed, as each inhabited city here had one cruiser buried underneath. That meant the number of these cruisers were really great, bigger than what she initially thought.

She thought after a while of thinking about this matter that she might find a couple of buried cruisers on each planet, but not next to each city!

She kept scanning without any delay until she went to the main and central planet of this place.

Just entering into this planet made her feel some doubts, as the atmosphere itself was quite heavy. She decided not to look at cruisers at once, and took a stroll on the streets of the main city here, the capital city.

The capital here was such a large city; the largest she ever saw on these planets. She had many high buildings, exceeding twentieth floor at least, with many buildings being established using the cloud theory; floating over artificially condensed clouds.

The style of this capital was modern, making it worthy to be the capital of this whole sect. The streets were bustling with activity, mainly merchants and customers, like the usual finding at any city street she visited before.

But there was a new addition this time, making her realize why she felt so tense and wary when entering this magnificent place.

What she saw didn't like her, as she spotted many armored patrols, going around the street, as they were looking for someone, or something. She had to know what was going on, so she entered one of the most crowded bars here.

"Have you heard it? many mercenary forces went missing the other day," one of the sitting close to her said, to one of those sitting with him.

"Really? They ran away? Just typical of them."

"No, that's not the case, one of these mercenaries sent a distress signal, warning others from a trap happening at the asteroid belt."

"Trap? Who is crazy enough to face the two large cruisers we have guarding this place? they are insane!"

"Yes, they are. What I heard, though, was that one cruiser went into a nearby system, hiding there, while the other led a search team, looking for those hostiles."

"I hope they find and kill them all. That's the reason then all these patrols are going around all the streets since morning, disturbing my clients and ruining my business!"

Islinda's eyes shone, as she now knew what went missing from their plans, that other large cruiser! if her guess was correct, then this cruiser went with the company of some other smaller ones, hiding away, waiting to lure them out of their hiding, and they were just walking directly into their trap!

This wasn't good news, this was very grave news. She needed to alarm James and Rigo, warning them that the plan had a leak, unintentional one but it was enough to devastate everything!

Just as she was about to move, the speakers continued their chat, and their next words attracted her attention, making her refrain from leaving now.

"I also heard about our officials asking for help from external force, and they promised to show up if things got messy here," another one suddenly said, making Islinda's heart fall to the ground!

"No, that's just a rumor, an old rumor of a force behind this place, but we never saw or heard about such a force!"

"No, I'm telling you the truth, there is a real force behind here, and they intend to send some reinforcements in a month to protect this place."

"So, even if, miraculously, those intruders managed to best our mercenaries, they would be doomed eventually?"

"Yes, that's the case."

They didn't know what this force was, but she did! the terrifying Terases race! She also knew they were so far from here, on the other end of the galaxy, so if they decided to come and rescue her, they would take a long time; reaching even two weeks until they would come.

"This isn't the time to think about that," she thought to herself, trying to sort out her priorities. Islinda knew they were doomed, but not right now. so she decided to put her attention to the highest priority now; not alarming James but gathering intel!

Knowledge was power! And just spending half an hour here made her gain all this info, such info that would change the course of the entire war and their whole plans.

So she didn't hurriedly leave the place, as she continued to listen to the gossip and rumors here. they had been already discovered, and now the Terases race already knew about what was happening here.

One month, they had only one month left to strengthen their grip here and make themselves stronger. Initially they thought Terases race wouldn't interfere except after six months, but it seemed they underestimated the importance of this place to them.

She returned to her cruiser, and then relayed the bad news she found to James.

James received the news with admirable calm. He was expecting something to go wrong, but truly he didn't expect another behemoth to be lying in darkness, waiting for him to trip and then viciously attack him.

"I really greatly underestimate you, my dear mercenaries," he laughed on this as this seemed quite amusing and challenging. Rigo was next to him, listening to all this, waiting for James to give the orders to halt the plan and wait until redrawing another one.

James went silent for a long time, but he didn't give the order to stop the operation.

"We will continue as planned, but first we will take that large cruiser out, using the same tactic we intended to use against the other large one," he finally said, giving the green light to all the plans to proceed. He knew his time here got shortened, but he intended to make best use of this month, to strengthen his army.

He was sure Terases' race wouldn't risk loosening their hand over the newly acquired territories, and so they would only dispatch a small number of cruisers to here. He had to match their numbers, and use the advantage of his droids to max.

A confrontation with the Terases race was inevitable. Fighting them with a star system under his control was way much better than fighting them using these refugee fleets!

Rigo, on the side, didn't know what to say to his leader, but he knew this plan was a must to do, no matter how many sacrifices they would suffer here.

"Do we proceed with the disguise plan?" he asked.

"Sure," he said, "we must make them believe they had us tricked, so they wouldn't suspect anything to happen to their trap, and then they might change their approach. Despite being discovered, and losing our element of surprise, at least we had gained great intel, and we mustn't lose that advantage now."

James point of view was correct, and Rigo couldn't argue with that, but he had to admit to himself, the odds of their success had fallen dramatically from high percentage to a very dangerously lower one.

However he didn't have any better suggestion to make, so he proceeded with instructions given to all his men, and ordered Islinda to be careful while looking for those buried cruisers.

At the same time, he sent many small fighters to look for that large cruiser in the nearby systems. Fighters were so small, hardly could be detected if they were in small numbers, and he intended to make their appearance a surprise for that large cruiser.

The search took a whole day, while they kept their eye vigilant over the other large cruiser leading the main mercenary army, they also kept themselves hidden well not to be discovered. The plan of planting bombs went smoothly, and Islinda finished her job, and then decided to stay at the capital, trying to look for any updates.

After one day of constant and careful search, they finally found the large cruiser, hidden three star systems away from here, hiding with a fleet of one hundred small and medium sized cruisers.

"Let's go and pay them a visit then," James said, "send our droids first, and when they infiltrate the cruiser, we will move to meet them," he added, before he retrieved the map of that system, looking at the spot these cruisers were hidden, and try to come up with a strategy.