The Mech Touch

Stealth tech always fascinated Ves. Having fallen victim to it plenty of times, he always desired to harness this tech for his own purposes.

The problem was that Ves had a hard time accessing books on stealth tech. While Aisling's library helped to supplement his knowledge, he didn't feel as if they were fully up to date.

The most current and effective stealth applications were never publicized in any textbooks or teaching material. Instead, they remained hidden within the databases of secretive research bases.

As long as these applications became accessible, they no longer provided a strong advantage!

After all, as long as someone was able to figure out the principles behind a stealth system, they could easily target its weaknesses and develop a counter!

This meant that while Ves was able to design a stealth mech, it simply wouldn't be good enough to fool powerful enemies. He could forget about dispatching a stealth shuttle to infiltrate a government base or the headquarters of a powerful organization!

All of that changed once Gloriana chose to design a Hexer stealth mech. She personally lobbied the Hegemony to design such a mech for the state and completed a deal that granted the Design Department access to specific stealth systems and stealth components along with the requisite knowledge to integrate them in a mech design.

This was exactly what Ves needed to design an effective and modern stealth mech!

Theory had to be paired with the right component licenses. If Ves only possessed the former, then he would have to develop stealth systems from scratch, which would take years. If he only possessed the latter, then any mech he designed would never possess cohesive stealth abilities.

Now that he obtained both, he didn't have to struggle with this dilemma anymore. Ves just needed to devote some time to study the provided literature and manuals in order to advance his understanding by leaps and bounds. He even felt as if his understanding of stealth tech had shot up all the way to Journeyman-level!

Together with Gloriana, they enthusiastically came up with a basic but promising stealth mech concept. In the past two months, they slowly built it up until they ended up with an incomplete mech design that could perform multiple stealth-related roles.

The Devious Project centered around a landbound light mech that featured minimal defense, low offense and fairly good mobility.

It was not a front-line combat mech. As long as it exposed its whereabouts to the enemy, even a single rifleman mech could take it down after landing just a couple of hits!

With a budget of around 200 million hex credits, the light mech was supposed to be as affordable as possible while still possessing effective stealth capabilities.

This was a very difficult project. It would have been a lot easier to design a mech that could keep its presence hidden from the enemy if his budget was three times higher!

As long as he could make use of more expensive materials, he could design a mech with much better stealth capabilities!

Unfortunately, the Hegemony preferred to obtain a more frugal mech design. Ves guessed that DIVA and the other intelligence agencies wanted to perform a lot of stealth missions without burdening their strategic materials reserve.

If any of the stealth mechs got caught, then their loss wouldn't hurt the Hegemony!

"These Hexers expect too much from my glows." Ves shook his head. "Glows can't single-handedly hide an entire mech from plain sight. They're too big!"

Gloriana placed her hand on his arm to reassure him. "The government doesn't expect you to do that much. The stealth tech incorporated in our Devious mech should be good enough to evade most forms of detection. Only high-powered directional scans and continuous active scanning will cause it to expose some flaws. Mech pilots and operators normally don't perform these scans too much because it imposes a heavy burden on their sensor equipment. What the government truly wants is a mech that can reduce the vigilance and suspicion of enemy mech pilots and other personnel."

"I know. I'm just not too certain whether it will be useful."

The Devious was supposed to possess a glow that cast a spiritual veil over the mech. The goal was to make the enemies around it more complacent, but the range of the glow was too short to cover too much ground.

Of course, Ves could also employ the directional glow channeling method of the Valkyrie Redeemer, but that only took care of one person at a time.

Any mech pilot who wanted to utilize the Devious mech needed to exercise precise judgement under high-stress situations.

Ves was afraid that the Hexer mech pilots assigned to pilot this mech wouldn't be up to the task.

"You're worrying too much, Ves. Hexer mech pilots are the best in this star sector! While I admit that the Fridaymen come close, the Hegemony trains its mech pilots well! The Devious will succeed. I know it. You just need to figure out how to create your new proto-god."

To be honest, Ves wasn't too worried about the technical challenges either. Even though Ves and Gloriana didn't possess much experience in designing stealth mechs, starting with a fairly low-tier one meant that the Devious design wasn't too complex.

In fact, if not for the fact that both of them had to spend a lot of time on bringing their proficiency in stealth tech up to standard, they probably would have been able to complete its design in four months instead of longer!

Yet the most important component was still missing. Out of all of his existing design spirits, nothing seemed to be fit for the purpose.

Gloriana suggested that he employ the Superior Mother, but slanted towards the dust phase of existence this time.

It wasn't enough. The dust phase was one of the most passive and less intrusive glows of the Superior Mother, but its effect was very subtle.

To the Hexers, dust was trivial. Dust was forgotten. Dust was silent. While it sounded as if these traits fit well with a stealth mech, in practice it mostly on other Hexers.

Whenever non-Hexers experienced this aspect of the Superior Mother, they experienced a small but noticeable sense of nihility and despair!

It was as if they began to recognize their insignificance! The galaxy and the multiverse were infinitely larger than any individual!

Just the Superior Mother alone was able to treat Fridaymen like dust!

This was an odd, weak but very noticeable effect. Pairing it with the Devious defeated its purpose. At best, it could hide its presence among other Hexers. Against the Fridaymen, such a glow would only serve as a giant proximity alarm.

Therefore, Ves had little choice but to resort to another design spirit. With nothing suitable in his collection, he eventually concluded he had to make a new one from scratch. He could pair with the Superior Mother for the Devious design in order to combine their useful traits.

However, after losing a convenient source of spiritual fragments in the form of Nyxie, Ves had very few sources to create what he wanted.

So far, the most reliable source of spiritual energy was his other design spirits. As long as he didn't bleed them too often, it was okay for him to ask them to make a donation.

However, Ves hadn't found the attributes he wanted. He wanted to obtain a fragment taken from a source that excelled in hiding.

Finding this source was his biggest headache so far! While Ves had ordered a bunch of strange exobeasts and biological products that possessed excellent hiding capabilities over the past two months, none of them possessed spiritual potential. They were just creatures of flesh and blood that held no value in his eyes!

As Ves explained this problem to his wife, she frowned.

"What will you do if you can't find what you seek? Will you be able to make your proto-god without the right ingredients?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I can form images, do some pre-processing and conduct a ceremony, but that will only result in a mediocre design spirit. If we want to obtain the best, then we should really obtain an appropriate ingredient."

"Do you have any solutions other than buying random exobeasts?"

"We still have a couple of months left before we reach the deadline. According to our current schedule, we will probably arrive at the Life Research Association in Majestic Teal around at that time. The LRA is a regional leader in developing biological products. They have invented artificial creatures that we can't even imagine! They should definitely have what we want and more."

In fact, if there was enough time left, Ves didn't mind harvesting the spirits of more spiritually active exobeasts. The LRA was famed for setting up expansive reserves. Many of them were even open to recreational hunting, attracting lots of tourists who were eager to harvest trophies and expand their prestige.

All of these hunting planets offered regulated hunting environments that were officially recognized by the Galactic Hunting Club.

Since the LRA was a second-rate state, its hunting preserves were several times more dangerous!

Gloriana began to look upset. "A lot of overconfident hunters die in those preserves. Are you thinking about heading back into danger again? You just got out of the Nyxian Gap!"

Damn! She caught on to his scheme! Ves rapidly readjusted his plans.

"Nonono! I'm not heading down there in person, honey! I'm a mech designer and a clan leader, remember? I think it's much more appropriate to dispatch a bunch of clansmen to these hunting preserves and tell them to retrieve some noteworthy exobeasts. We can just sit back and relax while our mech pilots and soldiers complete their missions."

She softened up when she heard this answer. "That's better. You're learning, Ves. You don't have to take part in these silly hunts anymore. With all of your design achievements, the prestige you can earn from hunting a challenging animal is really trivial!"

Ves didn't quite agree with that. There was something visceral and exciting about confronting a dangerous exobeast in its own territory. He wasn't stupid enough to voice these desires.

"It'll be hard to obtain the right exobeast this way." Ves warned. "The biological products that we can buy straight away tend to be tamer and less ferocious than the animals that are specifically made for the hunt. It's unlikely that the former possesses the right strength. We need to hunt down formidable creatures that have proven themselves to be strong enough to overcome several hunting teams. What is even more troublesome is that I need to obtain these animals alive!"

This was a lot harder than the hunt for the Crown Cat that he had previously participated in on Felixia I. When Zeigra finally died, Ves had to act quickly in order to salvage his dissipating spirit.

If Ves wasn't on the field at the time a spiritually powerful exobeast died, all of the creature's spirituality would disappear by the time the hunting team brought the corpse back to the Larkinson fleet!

Gloriana wasn't interested in hunting, so she didn't express much interest in his problems.

"Our soldiers and mech pilots aren't average. Have some confidence in them. I'm sure they will be able to bring the animals back alive. The Swordmaidens are supposed to be quite good at hunting ferocious exobeasts if I recall."

Ves reluctantly nodded. "That's true, but they are mostly interested in decapitating or bleeding their prey to death. I'm not sure they will be able to show enough restraint during the hunt."

Well, he would figure it out when he reached the LRA. The Swordmaidens may have been pirates once, but their discipline and obedience was quite good. They were not prone to losing control.

"By the way, our stealth mech is a light mech. Even if it doesn't have any flight capabilities, we should bring in Juliet to this project. She can definitely improve the mobility of the Devious by another notch."

"GET LOST!"