President Nihita was a little disappointed, and also just a tiny bit alarmed.
Even a military layman like him knew perfectly well that these angular, green-skinned warships came from the raiders of the Galactic Core. They might look like ugly blocky contraptions cobbled together from assorted space junk, but in terms of integrated engineering, they were works of art. Their performance and combat capabilities were both formidable.
Furthermore, thanks to their extreme design, under certain conditions they could fight the most advanced warships for dozens of rounds without falling behind.
Well, it wasn't the best possible situation—not when these weren't the kind of pirates who were only after money and would immediately turn tail at the sight of a warship. Still, at least they weren't an Imperial infiltration fleet, so this wasn't the worst-case scenario.
...But he'd heard that those raiders didn't just murder and plunder. They ate people, too.
The thought made President Nihita panic a little. But as an excellent politician with professional training, he surveyed his surroundings and saw that many members of the security detail had donned their mechs. They stood guard along every passageway on the bridge, like an impregnable steel fortress.
He also saw Yang Mingzhao and the Kilian brothers exchanging a stack of yellow talismans. President Nihita couldn't make heads or tails of them, but he was deeply impressed. They had to be some sort of extremely sophisticated occult artifact.
His sense of security returned.
The captain came over to report. "The enemy appears to have been on the move and fighting for a long time. Their ships are badly damaged. Our recon fighters spotted scars on their hulls, and their structural integrity is less than 70 percent."
President Nihita's sense of security not only returned, it even began to grow.
"I've heard