The Mech Touch

It took a bit of persuading to convince Lucky, Nitaa and Calabast that the grey phantom that he caught was not a threat.

"I have it under control! Don't do anything stupid! You probably won't be able to harm it anyway!"

"What the hell is it and how in the galaxy did you manage to corral it?" Calabast asked as she kept her back pressed against the corner.

"Meow meow meow!"

"I know the thing looks dangerous, but it's perfectly under control!" Ves approached Lucky and held his aggressive cat back. "Calm down already and put your weapons down!"

Seeing that the grey phantom that reminded them so much of the inexplicable event that ended just a moment ago, Nitaa and Calabast reluctantly lowered their weapons.

They still remained vigilant, though. Neither of the two trusted his claims completely. What had just taken place had shook their minds so much that they began to question everything.

"Are you truly Ves?" Calabast asked with evident suspicion in your eyes. "Please verify your identity immediately."

Ves looked unamused. "Really? Do you actually think I've been replaced by a doppelganger or something?"

"...VERIFY YOUR IDENTITY!"

"Alright alright! Sheesh!" Ves turned to his cat. "You know me the best, Lucky. Am I my mother's son?"

"Meow!"

That was not enough for Calabast. "What if Lucky is compromised as well?"

Ves laughed. "Then I guess you're screwed! That's unlikely, though. Lucky is a completely different life form. Besides, I can verify my identity more thoroughly. Nitaa, hand over the Larkinson Mandate."

As soon as Ves received the heavy tome, a sense of intimacy and completion emanated around Ves. Even a spiritually-barren individual such as Calabast could sense the strong aura from him with the help of the Larkinson Network!

"Okay. It's you, alright." Calabast eventually conceded.

As for Nitaa, she required much less proof to determine his identity. She only remained on guard against the strange grey phantom.

"Now that we have left this nonsense behind us, let's step out and check on the state of our fleet. I am certain that this strange anomaly affected at least several ships! If they experienced the same weirdness than us, then they're probably in disarray!"

He temporarily left the grey phantom in the office and headed to the exit. As soon as they stepped out into the design lab, they immediately stumbled upon a shameful sight.

The Braves who had been quietly working on the design projects a half hour ago now turned into shaken and confused people.

"Ahhhh! I don't want to stay in the Nyxian Gap anymore!" Maikel cried as he huddled underneath a desk with his hands over his head.

"Me too!" Zanthar shivered as he huddled next to his cousin. "I hate it here! It's too dangerous!"

Only a handful of assistant mech designers managed to retain their wits.

"Calm down, you pansies!" Rina Orion shouted. Her vocal implants allowed her to shout loud enough to ring the ears of everyone in the design lab. "Are you Braves or are you cowards?! Panicking and losing your minds will do nothing to help our situation!"

Moltar Ringer kicked a Brave from his design team who had collapsed on the ground. "Get up! I can't believe that Mr. Larkinson recruited you. This is the Nyxian Gap! You should have been prepared to face situations like this. If you can't handle it, then quit right away before you lose your wits again!"

With the help of several exemplary Braves, the assistant mech designers soon calmed down. Ves personally stormed over to his two students and pulled them from their hiding spot.

"Ouch! Ouch!"

"You are trueblood Larkinsons!" Ves pressed his face close. "Get yourselves together! When have Larkinsons like us ever cowered against potential threats? Rendering yourself useless by huddling underneath a desk is the last thing you should do! What if attackers barge into this compartment? What if the Scarlet Rose has incurred catastrophic damage and is close to blowing up? Giving in to your fears like this is the least productive choice you make!"

"I-I-I'm sorry!" Zanthar blubbered.

"W-W-We will do better!" Maikel echoed.

Ves slapped the two in the face to shock them a bit. "Get yourselves together and don't become a hindrance! The two of you need to learn to keep your wits instead of losing them in times of danger. As long as you keep doing the latter, you won't live long during times of trouble. I know it is difficult to go against your instincts, but they are tuned to times where we still lived in caves and hunted mammoths for a living. Use your logic instead!"

The threats that humans faced in the Age of Mechs fell far beyond the scope of humanity's current degree of evolution. Baseline humans were actually woefully incapable of adapting to the demands of modern society.

For example, eating excessively during humanity's early days used to be a way to build up the body's energy reserves. When food came in short supply, those reserves of fat could easily turn into lifesavers.

Unfortunately, in the current age, starvation was a concept of the past to most people in the galaxy. Even if fresh food couldn't be cultivated, industrial food such as nutrient packs were so cheap and abundant that no one truly needed to build up their fat reserves anymore!

This was why becoming fat was a detriment rather than an advantage. It was too bad that the evolution of the baseline human genome had practically stalled due to the ubiquity of humans in the galaxy and the extensive use of modern technology to compensate for genetic faults.

If not for the development of fat-restraining drugs and easy fat-removing treatments, there would have been a lot more overweight humans in the galaxy!

Though Ves adopted a harsh tone against his students, his words managed to stiffened them up and consider what was best for them. While they were still in the grip of their fear, his two students at least managed to muster up some courage.

"What do we need to do, teacher?"

"You don't have a position in the Larkinson Clan right now, so the only way you can help is to get out of everyone's way and listen to instructions. I need to check up on the rest of the fleet, so I have no time to babysit you two. Return to your cabins and remain there until the crisis has passed."

Before Ves headed anywhere else, he first needed to secure the grey phantom. Since he was unwilling to show it around to everyone in the Scarlet Rose, he remained in the design lab while dispatching Lucky and Nitaa to retrieve some objects from the vault.

The cat and bodyguard raced off and returned a few minutes later with a P-stone and the B-stone lockbox.

"Good!"

Ves grabbed the P-stone and shoved the grey phantom inside while ignoring its tortured cries. He then threw the P-stone into the B-stone lockbox and closed it. He waited for a moment in order to confirm the phantom remained inside.

"Good. Nitaa, hold this lockbox and keep it safe."

"Yes, sir."

With that taken care of, Ves quickly brought Lucky and Nitaa out of the design lab and headed all the way to the bridge.

Upon arrival, he saw that the bridge officers had their hands full in trying to manage the confusion and panic that had ensued once the anomaly had passed.

The communication officer tried to pass on Major Verle's orders to the different commanders of the fleet.

The sensor officer urgently tapped into the sensor arrays of multiple ships in order to scan for any anomalies or threats in the vicinity.

Other officers commanded the carriers to deploy their mechs or form elaborate patrol routes in order to make sure that nothing threatening had snuck up on the fleet.

"Sir!" Major Verle noticed Ves entering the bridge. "A third of the fleet has been affected by the unknown temporal anomaly! We are still in the process of verifying the condition of every ship and crew affected by the incident. The clansmen on the ships unaffected by the anomaly have become incredibly confused by our behavior. In their perspective, no time has passed and no anomaly has taken place."

That sounded strange!

Ves asked a few more questions, though Major Verle didn't have all the answers. All of the communication channels were filled with confusions and requests for instructions.

It took a fair amount of time to impose order onto the ships affected by the anomaly. Fortunately, none of the crew had gone crazy. The clansmen who took part in this excursion had all received extensive training. Their discipline was fairly good and the officers who exercised leadership knew better than to run around like headless chickens.

As the task force, which still remained on high alert, gradually regained its composure, some horrifying news passed on to the Scarlet Rose.

"Sir! One of our carriers is missing!" The communications officer immediately reported to Major Verle. "The Nova Krakow is nowhere to be found! None of our sensors nor our communication requests has reached the Avatar light carrier. Even her quantum communication node has lost connection to the galactic net!"

"WHAT?!" Ves shouted.

While Major Verle did not blow up, his tense posture signified that he felt just as alarmed!

"Dispatch our search parties! Search the surrounding asteroids for any sign of the Nova Krakow! Deploy more mech patrols to guard our perimeter. Disperse our fleet formation. We can't afford another anomaly engulfing so many of our ships at once."

"Aye, sir!"

As the entire task force went on high alert, the Larkinsons quickly confirmed that the Nova Krakow was truly gone from the fleet lineup!

Word of the inexplicable disappearance of an entire light carrier, causing every Larkinson to feel much more insecure about their continued stay in the Nyxian Gap.

The clansmen had finally learned why the MTA and CFA avoided this cursed region like the plague! Against anomalous hazards that could come and go without warning and devour entire ships without any resistance, no amount of firepower or tech could defend against the danger they brought.

This was because the anomalies were the equivalent of natural disasters! The huge vortex in the imaginary realm was so stupendously powerful that ordinary black holes paled in comparison against the might that Ves had witnessed!

In a way, Task Force Predator actually suffered a minimal loss. If the anomaly that engulfed a third of the fleet had taken away all of the ships affected by the temporal anomaly, then the Larkinson Clan would have suffered a fatal blow!

Ves quickly inspected the details on the Nova Krakow and winced. The Avatars of Myth had lost forty mechs, forty mech pilots, hundreds of highly-trained crew members as well as valuable supplies and cargo.

Why couldn't it have been a Living Sentinel ship?

The value of an Avatar mech company was incomparable to a Sentinel mech company! Ves would rather lose three or four Sentinel mech companies than a single Avatar mech company. Due to the lower recruitment and training standards of the Sentinels, he could replenish their losses a lot easier!

As for the Avatars, training forty new elites was not as easy as posting a recruitment notice. The Avatars had to hold a cumbersome selection process, filter out the ones who were somewhat suitable and invest a lot of time and resources in training them up to standard.

The only consolation that the unlucky occurrence spared the more important Avatar ships such as the Redfeather and the Greenfeather.

This meant that the Melkor, Joshua, Jannzi, Tusa and the Ingvar siblings were all safe and sound.

Nothing happened to the Shield of Samar and the Quint.

Of course, the rest of the Larkinson Clan thought differently.

It was one thing to lose a light carrier and a full mech company in a valiant battle against evil pirates.

It was another thing to lose so many assets and lives against a terrifying anomalous hazard that came and went warning and couldn't be defended against in the slightest!

While the panic in the fleet may have subsided, the fear that welled in everyone's hearts had only grown stronger. Many clansmen began to develop the desire to drop everything they were doing and leave the Nyxian Gap as soon as possible.

Who knew whether they would disappear from reality in an instant the next time they got caught in an anomaly?!