The Mech Touch

When Task Force Predator reached the edge of the Nyxian Gap, the transition became obvious.

Entering the Nyxian Gap was not that simple, but it wasn't difficult either.

Instead of traveling to a star system, any ship that wanted to reach the gap simply had to program the FTL drive to travel in its general direction. At some point, the spatial warping reached a point where a starship's FTL drive automatically shut down.

This condition essentially meant that any pirate vessel could easily shrug off pursuit! To any Peacekeeper outfit, the difficulty of determining the exact coordinates of the emergence point of a fleeing pirate vessel was nigh-impossible! Even a 0.01 deviation in angle could result in days or weeks worth of distance between the hunter and the hunted.

Many people therefore likened the Nyxian Gap as an abyss. Hardly anything that entered it went back outside. If the Gap did spit something up, then more often than not they were pirates looking to raid vulnerable trade convoys.

Not a single state had managed to tame the Nyxian Gap. Neither the Sentinel Kingdom nor the Hexadric Hegemony managed to exert effective control over the region. The MTA declined to invest the resources needed to root out all of the pirates, fearful of losing too many assets to the Gap's inexplicable anomalies.

"The only way to exert true control over the Nyxian Gap is through a slow, unstoppable invasion involving millions of mechs." Major Verle spoke as he stood alongside Ves. "Within this star sector, only the second-rate states are able to commit to such an operation. Neither will do so until the entire star sector is in their grasp."

Ves nodded. "Even then, they probably won't care. The Nyxian Gap might be a source of rare exotics that aren't commonly found elsewhere, but the yield is a little low. It's more likely that whoever wins the Komodo War will just treat the Nyxian Gap as a playground for their private outfits."

Anyone who performed a cost-benefit analysis would make the same conclusion as the MTA. Forceful conquest of the entire Nyxian Gap was too costly and too troublesome. It was much cheaper to contain it by stationing some garrisons outside while allowing mercenaries, treasure hunters, prospectors and other rabble to dive inside and find their fortune.

In fact, the Sentinel Kingdom and the other states surrounding the Nyxian Gap already adopted this strategy.

Though the Nyxian pirates sparked a lot of unrest lately, as a whole they were too scattered and weak to pose a serious threat to states.

The power of a faction or organization depended on a robust foundation. States held too many advantages in this area. They ruled over many stable and productive planets, each of which hosted populations that numbered in the millions to billions.

The entire population of humans in the Nyxian Gap only numbered a hundred million at the most, and that was one of the most optimistic estimates!

Just an average industrial planet such as Cinach XI alone already possessed more than ten times the population of the Gap. It's production output was also at least two orders of magnitude higher!

Pirates weren't known to be productive, industrious or capable of running prosperous states. The Nyxian Gap didn't offer an environment that was conducive towards founding major settlements.

As a result, the Nyxian Gap wasn't even worth colonizing.

"Don't underestimate the power of the Nyxian pirates." Major Verle nonetheless cautioned. "While the individual pirate organizations and alliances pose no threat to a state, it's a different story when it comes to smaller players like us. According to my research, there are a decent number of entrenched pirate organizations that have managed to survive the perils thrown at them for centuries and accumulated enough power to become a behemoth. It is rumored that their elite units consist of second-class mechs."

"I'm aware. Most of them are based in the core regions, though. As long as we stick to the periphery, we won't touch their bottom line."

It was incredibly difficult for Nyxian pirates to produce, field and maintain second-class mechs. Not only did they need to gather a lot of higher-grade exotics, but also acquire excellent production equipment and have someone skilled enough to fabricate the mechs.

Then, they needed to obtain the second-class mech pilots that were capable of wielding so much power.

Yet the biggest issue that plagued them was the expense and difficulty of maintaining these sophisticated machines.

Even if a pirate gang stumbled upon a derelict second-class mech in space and somehow got it to work, eventually the mech would falter due to an inability to maintain it. Such a machine required the care of knowledgeable and excellent mech technicians.

If there was one thing the Nyxian Gap had in common with the frontier, it was that technical personnel were very hard to come by! Most ship crew and mech technicians that ended up working for the Nyxian Gap either started off as fugitives, outlaws or kidnapped trade vessel crewmen!

Hearing all of this reminded Ves of the frontier. The circumstances might be a little different due to the complicated environment, but there were enough similarities to make him feel as if he entered familiar territory.

When over sixty vessels, most of which consisted of light carriers, entered into the endless field of asteroids, the Larkinsons officially entered the Nyxian Gap.

It became very obvious once they crossed into the threshold. Ves felt a bit sick as he felt as if his body had been stretched a bit.

"That's the spatial warping at work. You'll get used to it, though the sensations will get worse the closer you travel towards the center of the Gap."

While Ves had already expected to feel discomfited from reading various reports, he nonetheless frowned.

He sensed another form of instability around him. Rather than affecting his body, it affected his spiritual senses instead!

Ves recalled that the Ancient Sarcophagus that trapped Nyxie used to emerge from the Gap. Since the ancient alien tyrant possessed an immense amount of spiritual strength, it shouldn't have been surprising that the area he came from also exhibited unknown spiritual phenomena!

Discovering this came as an unwelcome surprise. Ves couldn't handle too many complications. However, possessing the ability to sense spiritual disturbances might not be detrimental. Perhaps he would be able to sense potential threats ahead of time.

He would have to see when his fleet dove deeper into the Gap.

In order to scout for danger and prevent a hazard zone from swallowing them all up at once, Major Verle initiated a rotation where certain carriers and mech companies had to scout ahead and around the main fleet.

Ves wanted his own troops to gain some exercise, so he ordered Major Verle to keep the Penitent Sisters in the rear. Not only would the fleet have no concerns about being ambushed from the rear, the formidable Hexer combat carriers and second-class mechs would also be out of sight, thereby giving the illusion that Task Force Predator consisted entirely of third-class assets.

Despite these measures, a few days went by without a pirate in sight. None of the sensors picked up any active elements.

The only sign of humans they uncovered were the numerous wrecks and debris floating between the asteroids.

An increasingly higher concentration of low-quality metals and materials bumped against the hulls of the ships traversing through the endless asteroid sea.

Even the mechs got hit at some times despite their attempts to circumvent the flinging bolts and other minor debris.

The impacts didn't pose a threat to the mechs and ships. Whenever the Larkinsons encountered something larger, they either shot it to pieces or evaded it. Some of the commanders in the task force even used them as target pratice.

When Ves analyzed the scans of some of the debris, he found that some of them were more than a century old, while other pieces had only been severed from a ship or mech a few weeks ago!

No wonder this portion of the Nyxian Gap became known as Wreckage Paradise. If the debris wasn't so worthless, then scavengers would likely have to spend decades to pick up all of the pieces!

Clearly, a lot of skirmishes took place in this zone, yet so far the vanguard of their task force found no hide nor hair of any pirate gangs.

"Where are the pirates?" He asked Major Verle one day.

"They're evading us like the plague, I believe. The pirates that prey on passerbys here have a very keen awareness on who they can afford to attack. All of them have access to the galactic net, as their connections aren't blocked this far from the center of the Gap. The clever and more pirate outfits are even in touch with information brokers. Since we haven't made any attempts to hide the formation of our task force, many pirates here already know about the strength we can bring to bear. There is no reason for them to throw away their lives."

Sadly, the pirates knew the importance of intelligence as well. The pirate gangs that neglected to collect enough intelligence usually didn't last very long. The true survivors of this environment picked their targets carefully and never made any moves that resulted in more losses than gains.

The problem here was that the Larkinsons did not do a very good job at disguising themselves. The Flagrant Vandals combat carriers were very conspicuous and still bore much of their military characteristics.

The mere sight of them already caused many bottom feeder pirate gangs to flee in the opposite direction!

Ves looked very upset once this reality dawned on him. "How can my forces get any practice if pirates keep making way?"

"Don't worry, sir. Your warriors will have plenty of enemies to fight once we get deeper. Maynard Fields is much more chaotic due to the denser concentration of asteroids. The effective range of sensors is much lower, which means that the pirates are much less likely to discover the full might of our fleet. In addition, if the roaming pirate fleets still refuse to attack us, we can simply target the fixed pirate bases instead."

"I suppose that will do." Ves sighed. "Let's just pass through Wreckage Paradise as quickly as possible then. There is nothing here of interest."

With nothing happening outside to hold his interest, Ves instead turned inward and holed himself up in his design lab again.

Since his departure, he had already been thinking about designing some new mechs.

The one that occupied most of his thoughts was a rehash from the past.

Several years ago, Ves just started off as a Novice Mech Designer with a single mech workshop and a lot of debt on his hands.

In order to extricate himself from his impending bankruptcy and launch his career, he had to design several virtual mechs and fulfill several missions issued by the System.

One of the most iconic mechs he designed for Iron Spirit, the most popular simulation game for mech pilots, he designed an impressive areal light mech called the Seraphim.

As a variant of the slim, female-shaped Fantasia 2R, the Seraphim resembled a lethal valkyrie with its oversized wings and colorful particles trailing from them during flight.

Though it primarily functioned as a light marksman mech, it could nonetheless launch a devastating dive attack with its combat knife against immobile ground targets.

Though Ves had long put this early work out of his mind, Gloriana found the design to be very charming despite its many flaws and lackluster performance.

She encouraged him to revisit his old Fantasia 2R Seraphim design and reimagine it as a second-class mech.

"It has everything Hexers want." She told him. "It's mobile, it's aggressive and it provides a lot of agency. The air war is very important in planetary combat and a second-class version of the Seraphim can help a lot, especially when they are deployed in teams."

The thought of Hexers fielding formations of Seraphims, each of them releasing their iconic rainbow particle trails, sent a shudder through his spine.

A part of him felt intrigued enough to explore this idea!