As the expeditionary fleet continued to approach the more dangerous side of the Torald Middle Zone, the Golden Skull Alliance gradually shook off its complacency.
The chances of meeting a powerful alien fleet may be low, but it was not zero. The peculiarities of alien warp drives meant that it was difficult to catch any trace of them in transit until they had already arrived!
The only consolation was that most alien warp drives were much slower when it came to hopping from one star system to another. FTL drives worked according to different principles and took advantage of the shorter distances in the higher dimensions.
Of course, that meant that the aliens had begun to employ FTL drives themselves!
Only a few ships belonging to the Red Cabal showed the capability of this stolen tech. It would not take long before FTL drives became ubiquitous among every newly built alien starship!
