There was no purple lightning heralding the opening of a warp rift, nor any violent surge of gravitational waves.
A Gretchin Scout Ship less than fifty meters long, shaped like a rusty sardine can and sporting a huge, crookedly painted face in red paint, abruptly "squeezed" out of a fold in the realspace dimension without the slightest warning.
Inside the cabin, Snot, the Gretchin in charge of reconnaissance, pressed his face hard against a scratched porthole repurposed from some unknown warship's observation window.
At the sight of the countless lights, drone swarms, and enormous steel structures before him-a scene grander, more magnificent, and more precisely ordered than anything he had ever seen-Snot's normally sly eyes went round, and his mouth opened wide enough to fit a Squig.
"Oh my..." he murmured as if in a dream, his voice filled with shock and wild delight. "So much good stuff... so much clean metal... so many wires with nobody watching them..."
"Quick! Send what I'm seeing back to Ghazghk! He's gonna... love this place! It's a bloody buffet!"
The scan images were transmitted in a signal encoded using a uniquely Gretchin form of encryption.
Meanwhile, lurking silently in the shadow of an asteroid belt several light-years from the Strong Shield-01 system was the Gretchin flagship Big Wrench.
When Ghazghk saw the outrageously clear scan images from his command seat, buried amid screens and control sticks, his scrawny body began to tremble uncontrollably.
It was not fear.
It was the extreme, unparalleled excitement of a technological maniac!
"Heh... hehehe... hehehehehe..."
At first, he chuckled quietly and nervously. Then his laughter grew louder and wilder until it became a shrill cackle that rang through the entire bridge like fingernails scraping a blackboard!
"**Hahahahaha! Perfect! Absolutely perfect! Those blue-skinned idiots! They really did put all