The Mech Touch

The mood across the fleet had dropped as soon as it became known that a suspected vulture fleet was heading straight towards the Ramage Repulsor System.

If there were Larkinsons who previously held doubts about the malicious intentions of the notorious Otrus Magrin, much of that had been dispelled.

There was no other reason for pioneering fleets to randomly travel to brown dwarf star systems.

They were the smallest and most resource-poor places in the Red Ocean, beaten only by the cold and naked void of interstellar space.

While it may have been suspicious for the Golden Skull Alliance to travel to this dark and relatively cold corner of space, that was not necessarily a valid reason for Cenatus Prospecting to follow suit.

As Ves thought about the intelligence provided by the Black Cats, he began to make a disconcerting guess about Otrus Magrin's motives.

"Why are you fretting so much lately, Ves?" Gloriana softly asked after she had just put their children to bed.

She moved over to the living area of their grand stateroom and seated herself onto a couch next to her husband.

Ves had been brooding all of this time. Clixie attempted to cheer him up by climbing onto the lap of his Unending Regalia.

"Miaaaooow…"

Unfortunately for her, the sight of a cute and fluffy cat did not provide any comfort to Ves at this time. How could he indulge in his cat fancy when there was a hostile fleet with an ace mech on the way?

He sighed. "Maybe we should have refrained from sabotaging the Cenatus Prospecting fleet. If we didn't provoke Otrus Magrin so much, he might have chosen to let us explore this star system in peace."

Gloriana snorted. "The Black Cats already told you that the Cenatus Prospecting fleet abruptly changed its course and headed straight in our direction. Magrin had already set his sights on us. We were well within our right to make a preemptive strike. At least we have managed to reduce the amount of mechs that he can field in battle against us. With any luck, one of his fleet carriers won't make it and we will have even less to worry about."

"I suppose you are right."

Since Clixie wasn't able to attract Ves' attention, she hopped over to Gloriana's lap and tried to earn the woman's affection.

Gloriana simply put her palm on Clixie's side and rudely shoved the cat aside.

"Miaow!"

Seeing that she wouldn't be getting any attention here, Clixie moved towards Aurelia's bedroom so that she could cuddle up with her favorite Larkinson.

Ves meanwhile continued to think about how he should respond to the incoming vulture fleet. Doing nothing was probably not an option anymore, but he didn't feel any desire to enter into an open confrontation either.

"What do you think we should do when Cenatus Prospecting arrives in this star system?"

"It depends on what we will find in the brown dwarf star." His wife replied. "If we find out there is something worthwhile, then we should stand our ground and defend against anything our uninvited guests might throw at us. If retrieving Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik is not an option, then there is no reason to linger here. We should just leave and try our best to shake off the vulture fleet."

"That will be difficult. The vulture fleet is smaller and faster. It is designed with pursuit in mind and has less dead weight than us. We will only be delaying a confrontation at best."

"Then what do you want me to say, Ves?" Gloriana grew annoyed. "There are no easy answers here. Otrus Magrin has a reason to attack our fleet and we have a reason to attack his fleet. Both sides are hostile towards each other. As far as I am concerned, this means that a conflict is inevitable. The only decision that you need to make is when you want to start the battle. Do you want to postpone the conflict at the risk of giving our adversary more time to prepare, or do you want to initiate a confrontation right away?"

Ves couldn't decide on this matter.

Fortunately, he didn't have to. People such as General Verle and Marshal Ariadne Wodin were professionals in this regard and could make the best and most rational decision on everyone's behalf.

Although he took a short and restless nap that night, he finally received a bit of good news the next day.

"The probes have made a discovery!"

Ves rushed his breakfast and quickly kissed the heads of his complaining children before he raced off to a command center.

Once he arrived, he walked over to the middle of the compartment where a number of projections displayed grainy live feeds of several different probes.

The high degree of interference produced by the brown dwarf star extensively degraded the signals. It took a lot of processing power to clean up the footage, and even then there was still a distinct lack in detail.

Nonetheless, the weak sensors of the various probes had unmistakably stumbled upon a large artificial object floating at a decent depth beneath the upper layers of the brown dwarf star.

Ves immediately tried to ascertain whether the ship had moved into action once the probes caught sight of her hull, but the large vessel remained in place as far as he could see.

She was not completely inert. The sensors of the probe could clearly detect an active energy shield protecting the vessel from the heat, radiation and gravitic energies released by the failed star in close proximity.

"Tell me what you have discovered."

A tactical officer succinctly reported the expeditionary fleet's findings. "Our probes initially managed to catch a trace of this unknown ship due to the distinctive emissions produced by her active energy shields. The Crossers repositioned multiple probes so that they could wrap around the recently discovered vessel while also spreading out others to verify whether she was alone. So far, we have yet to catch any trace of another starship underneath the surface of the brown dwarf star, but we are not ruling out the possibility that she has company."

"That is a reasonable precaution to take." Ves nodded in satisfaction. "What can you tell me about the ship herself?"

"According to our preliminary findings, she is approximately 1.7 kilometers long or tall depending on how you interpret her. She is a fairly slender and narrow starship and is not designed to function as a carrier. She is a pure warship as far as we have been able to determine, and our probes have identified numerous primary and secondary weapon batteries across her hull. She is likely built for maneuvering through battlefields rather than slugging it out with other warships, and she boasts powerful thrusters to support that role."

The way the tactical officer described the basic properties of the discovered ship immediately exposed what kind of ship they were dealing with. No private human starship was allowed to mount any weapon batteries!

"So she's an alien vessel." Ves deeply frowned at this revelation. "Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik is residing on an alien warship."

"That appears to be the case."

"The nunsers or whoever owns this warship has gone out of their way to capture Lord Pearian alive." Ves said in an increasingly more concerned tone. "Do you know what this means? It means the aliens have gained an understanding of the structure and the hierarchy of human society. For some reason, these aliens can not only tell pioneers apart from other humans, but also recognize their greater value. This is extremely disconcerting!"

"There is more, sir. Our men have been doing their best to analyze the ship and her many features, and what we have managed to uncover is… difficult to believe. I think it is best if I give the word to one of our foremost experts on starships in our clan."

The projection of Chief Shipwright Vivian Tsai came to life. The woman had already prepared a short presentation for the patriarch of the Larkinson Clan.

"Oh hey, Vivian." Ves said as if he wanted to distract himself from the many implications swirling in his mind. "What is so strange about this alien warship that you need to come and provide clarification?"

"Let me show you, sir."

The projection of the Larkinson Clan's main ship designer called up a basic wireframe model of the warship discovered by the probes.

"Are you familiar with the basic structure and overall design patterns of the warships of the major races of our current galaxy?"

"I do." Ves nodded. "If I look at this model, I think it closely resembles that of the so-called home ships of the nunser race. The vessel is awfully thin, though."

"A lot of races tend to build their ships vertically as if they are towers." Vivian quickly summarized. "This is because they treat their starfaring vessels as their houses or their apartment complexes rather than a successor to oceanbound ships. The nunsers share this tradition. Given their size and their heavy preference for communal living, they tend to design 'fatter' and 'wider' home ships so that they have enough room to accommodate large herds."

Ves pointed his armored finger towards the ship model. "That doesn't exactly look like a fat or wide vessel."

"That is true. While the basic structural layout matches that of a typical nunser warship, the relative sleekness and other diverging attributes has caused us to wonder if we misidentified the vessel. It isn't until a few probes have managed to hover closer and send back clearer footage that we have a better understanding of the nature of this vessel."

She pointed towards another part of the projected model. Several elements across the hull lit up in red.

"These parts are almost never found on nunser warships. Their presence on the surface of the hull of this ship has perplexed us for a moment, but it wasn't until we recognized where they are more typically used that we have cleared a few doubts."

"Wait, are you saying that a nunser warship contains surface modules that are derived from the ships of another alien race?"

Vivian nodded and projected an oval-looking starship. "Take a look. This is a typical home ship of the puelmer race. Do you recognize anything familiar?"

"Damn! This starship incorporates the technology of two major alien races at once! Is there any other tech that is derived from another race?"

"Well, once we discovered that this ship appears to be a product of a multiracial group, we performed additional investigations and managed to glean more details on the hull plating that protects the ship from damage."

Another projection came to life. It detailed the approximate technical parameters of the hull plating. The data all showed estimates of the hardness, density, mass, material composition and other properties of the alloys used to form the shell of the ship.

Ves frowned. "What am I looking at here? The armor is tougher than we can typically find on alien starships, but it doesn't appear to be too amazing."

"It is not the strength of the hull plating that I am trying to direct your attention towards, but its origin. The properties that we have managed to derive from the raw footage closely match that of an existing formula for starship hull plating."

"Uhh…"

"A human-developed alloy formula."

"..."

"Sir, if these readings are accurate, then we may be looking at a warship that is developed with both human and alien technology. We have already identified tech of three different races, and we cannot rule out the possibility of more. This Frankenstein ship hasn't even integrated them in a seamless manner. Whoever is responsible for designing her was only concerned with mashing them all together in a brute force fashion."

"What does that imply, Vivian?"

"No human designed this crude vessel." She stated in a clear tone. "Any shipwright should be ashamed of making such a monstrosity. It is much more likely that either the nunsers or the puelmers have designed her. No matter what, neither of these two races are weak."