The Mech Touch

The presence of a large derelict alien capital ship in what should have been a quiet stopover point completely took the Golden Skull Alliance by surprise!

The distant alien bioship was massive in human terms. She was roughly 5 kilometers long and around 3 kilometers thick at her widest section.

Her overall shape was comparable to a rather slender beehive with flat ends. Her surface was either scarred with heavy battle damage or featured numerous strange cavities whose purpose remained unclear.

The bioship looked as if she had been drifting for at least a week based on the small trail of biotissue leaking from her hull. The vessel was already dead, but she continued to bleed as her orbit kept spiraling around the local yellow dwarf as if she was a satellite.

More details kept pouring in as the alien starship received more and more scrutiny. Although most forms of observation remained passive as it took hours for active scanning signals to travel back and forth across such immense distances, the analysts still figured out plenty of new information.

The mass of the alien derelict, the probable material composition of her enormous exterior and the likely weapons that had been used to disable her all became known as the minutes passed.

A few clever minds also came up with a probable reason why the alien derelict appeared in this star system out of the blue.

Ves invited General Verle and the leaders of the other members of the Golden Skull Alliance in order to discuss this major development.

Several familiar people appeared within the virtual meeting room in turn. Marshal Ariadne Wodin, Patriarch Reginald Cross and Professor Benedict Cortez all took their seats as usual.

A new figure had appeared, though. In place of Venerable Brutus, the Glory Seekers dispatched an unfamiliar woman in his place.

The woman directed an appreciative look at Ves. "Patriarch Ves Larkinson! I've been waiting to meet you, but you haven't visited the Glory Seekers once since you entered the Red Ocean."

"Uh, sorry?"

"It is of no consequence. Oh, let me introduce myself. I am Galina Rovon-Hartul, a recent member of the Glory Seekers! Currently, I am in charge of all of our mechs. This has allowed me to study one of your works for an extensive amount of time. Despite pouring hundreds of hours into examining your Valkyrie mechs, I still don't understand how they perform the way they do. You are a genius for designing such an amazing line of mechs!"

Ves had heard of Galina Rovon-Hartul. She was a former citizen of the Empire of the Lost that had been hanging around the Opalis System in the hopes of catching a ride to the Red Ocean.

Due to the fact the Golden Skull Alliance was still short a couple of million MTA merits, the Glory Seekers eventually decided to take in Miss Rovon-Hartul because she could conveniently make up for this shortfall!

Although Ves always wanted to examine this sudden arrival, all of the priorities that came after entering the Red Ocean had taken up all of his time. He left all matters of diplomacy to Minister Shederin Purnesse and his staff, who had doubtlessly met with the prominent new member of the Glory Seekers.

However, this was a rather inadequate response towards Miss Rovon-Hartul. She was not only a young Journeyman, but also capable of earning at least several million MTA merits by herself. That immediately marked her out as an excellent mech designer with better potential than most of her peers.

Ves nodded towards the woman. "I'd love to chat with you further, but we have more important matters to talk about today. Please take a seat so that we can begin our discussion."

Once the new Glory Seeker sat at the table, Ves quickly briefed the others on what the Larkinson Clan had discovered.

Of course, the Glory Seekers and the Crossers weren't blind. They must have certainly employed their own sensor suites to scan the alien shipwreck and the surrounding environment for any useful details.

The problem was that neither of them possessed powerful sensor systems. Their starships were predominantly fleet carriers that were mostly geared towards carrying and supporting mechs in battle. How could they accommodate enough capacity for powerful detection and scanning modules?

The Larkinson Clan was better off in that regard. Although many of its vessels weren't directly useful in battle, the Blinding Banshee was an exception.

Her powerful sensor arrays were mainly geared towards detecting human forces and stealth units, but they could also be utilized to investigate unknown and unfamiliar phenomena as long as they weren't too weird.

Since the alien vessel happened to be a bioship, the Dragon's Den also became useful at this time. Her sensor systems were much more geared to detect biological phenomena, and the Lifer research teams that had taken up residence inside were passionately trying to decipher as much of the data as possible.

It was because of those excellent biotech experts that General Verle was able to convey so much interesting information to everyone.

"The probability that the derelict biocapital ship codenamed the 'Titania' is of alien origin has reached 97 percent. All of our specialists in biotechnology state that there are simply too few signs of human elements in the distant vessel."

"That doesn't necessarily preclude human intervention." Professor Benedict remarked. "The ship may be alien, but humans might have attacked her in order to use it as bait for unwitting forces such as us. Are you certain that the battle damage she suffered is not caused by humans?"

General Verle nodded, but only lightly. "We can only tentatively make this conclusion. As you know, many different weapons operate according to the same set of principles. An alien laser weapon doesn't differ too much from a human laser weapon. However, we can state that the damage inflicted on the Titania is definitely caused by warship-grade weaponry. The battle marks are simply too big to be caused by mech-grade armaments. Since we are already familiar with the typical weapons an MTA or CFA warship employs, we can develop a rough determination whether the alien derelict was attacked by a human warship. Currently, our conclusion has remained the same."

A short moment of silence ensued as everyone chewed on the information.

"What can you tell us about the attacker?" Patriarch Reginald asked as he grew interested about the power brought to bear against this shipwreck. "Have you managed to identify whoever is responsible for leaving this broken alien capital ship behind?"

"We are still investigating this matter. While there is a chance that one of the 13 major races of the Red Ocean such as the Nunsers or Puelmers are responsible, we do not think that is the case. Many of the ships of these races have long been pushed out of this zone. Considering the magnitude of the firepower brought to bear against the Titania, the chance is small that such a powerful alien warship would have been able to roam around undetected this deep in human-occupied territory!"

Ves nodded in agreement. Though there were stories about isolated alien ships belonging to one of those prominent races showing up in these parts, they were mostly sub-capital ships that were not that powerful.

"Just look at those big holes in her hull." He gestured at the projection in the middle. "The vessel that inflicted such damage has to be at least a cruiser, but it's more likely that another battleship is responsible. The question now is whether this big and probable alien threat is lurking in a hidden corner somewhere."

"We have not detected any alien vessels in the star system at this time. We have also failed to find any clues that suggest that such ships have visited this star system in the last month aside from the Titania herself. In fact, the lack of debris and other battle traces in this star system leads us to guess that the Titania did not get attacked here. The more probable explanation is that she fought against another powerful alien warship in a different star system, only to suffer crippling damage that prompted her to flee madly. Whoever was in charge of the alien vessel may have programmed her warp drive to flee to this star system. However, once she arrived at her destination, she deteriorated to such an extent that she eventually succumbed to her grievous wounds."

That was an interesting theory. Although the story had a couple of holes, it certainly explained the lack of traces.

"If this is true, then the attacker of the Titania must still be out there somewhere." Marshal Ariadne observed. "If the aggressor is also an alien warship, then she might be following the trail of the Titania. The longer we stay in this star system, the greater the chance we may be confronted by an alien warship that is even bigger and stronger than the Titania!"

"And also a damaged one, hopefully. I don't know how good the Titania is in a fight, but a vessel of this size has to be able to hit back hard." Ves added.

No one knew for sure whether any of this was true. However, if this theory happened to be true, then a powerful enemy might come in at any time!

General Verle briefly swept his gaze around the virtual meeting room. "Before we decide anything further, we must make an important decision. Will we proceed with exploring the derelict alien wreck, or will we endeavor to leave this suspicious site as soon as possible?"

"I vote in favor of exploring the Titania." Ves immediately said. "We did not come to the Red Ocean only to avoid every interesting discovery just because there is the possibility of encountering danger. We can implement precautions that can mitigate the risks."

"If that's the case, I am in favor as well." Miss Galina Rovon-Hartul chirped. "This alien bioship is massive. Think of the resources and tech we can salvage from her. We might even be able to recover a database of some sorts that can contain a lot of useful information such as technical knowledge or detailed star charts."

Ves looked at the Crossers.

Patriarch Reginald did not look particularly interested.

"What is the point of investigating a bioship, and an alien one at that? We do not make much use of biotechnology. I cannot imagine that anything we learn from this wreck will strengen our mechs in any way."

"I wouldn't be so quick to judge if I were you." Ves told the other patriarch. "Many useful innovations were originally derived from salvaging alien tech. A vessel as large as this one must certainly be filled with lots of goodies!"

Professor Benedict agreed with his fellow mech designer. "The Larkinson Patriarch has a point, old friend. Even if we cannot recover any useful tech, just deconstructing this biomass and recycling all of the high-value exotics will net us a great amount of profit. This will help us alleviate our debt."

The Larkinson Clan wasn't the only one that went deep into the red in order to upgrade its fleet. The Crossers had been just as extravagant!

The reminder caused Patriarch Reginald to soften his objection.

"Fine. Go and explore the Titania if you want. Be sure to guard against ambushes or surprise alien warships."

"General?"

Verle already had a plan ready. "We should deploy a number of combat carriers and sensor probes throughout the star system. If we are facing an alien warship that is native to this dwarf galaxy, then she will certainly be equipped with a warp drive. While they are slower than an ordinary human FTL drive, they allow for acceleration at superluminal speeds in real time. In simple terms, that means that they can arrive faster than we can detect!"

It was like lightning and thunder. Even though both originated from the same phenomenon, the flash of lightning arrived at a distant observer much sooner than the sound of thunder!

In this case, an alien warship could actually appear beside the Spirit of Bentheim and fire her main cannons at short range without any forewarning!

This was the scary part about fighting against forces equipped with warp drives!

Fortunately, the Larkinson Clan and her allies invested in a solution back in Vulit that could reduce the effectiveness of these surprise ambushes.