The Mech Touch

The wedding held in the middle of Fort Fishblood started and ended in joy.

Brutus Wodin became a husband for the first time while Commander Sendra set a fantastic example to her still-unmarried female subordinates.

Interestingly enough, neither of the newlyweds decided to change their names despite their change in marital status.

This was due to a combination of personal choice and political considerations.

It was not that simple for members of different organizations to marry each other.

While humans were technically free in the sense that they were not bound by their states, employers and so on, the situation was more complicated in the expeditionary fleet.

The Glory Seekers all pledged their loyalty to their organization and the Wodin Dynasty that funded and supported the mech force. Leaving was not easy as they had all signed contracts that bound them to the organization for the long haul.

The Larkinsons dedicated their lives to the clan they had signed up for. It was not a state where they could leave its borders whenever they wanted.

Just the logistics of making this marriage work was complicated. It wasn't as if the Star Dancer Mark II could casually enter the hangar bay of the Wild Torch without warning.

It also wasn't simple for a Larkinson legion commander to randomly visit the Indigo Tremor and spend the night with one of the key mech pilots of the Glory Seekers.

Although the Glory Seekers and the Larkinson Clan were fairly reasonable and already set a few ground rules, they were far from ready to allow for free and unrestricted movement between their ships.

In short, even if Brutus and Sendra became wife and husband, they were still active servicemen that needed to put their duty above their personal lives.

Fortunately, neither of the two were unreasonable in this regard. When Ves spoke to the couple and talked about how they would spend their lives together in the future, they sounded fully cognizant of the limitations they had to endure due to their tangled union.

"I needed to get married with haste in order to get my mother to end any attempt to arrange a match of her choosing." Brutus told Ves after most of the festivities had ended. "Now that I have completed my objective, I do not have to accelerate my schedule anymore. We can progress our new relationship at our own pace."

Commander Sendra smirked as she bumped her elbow against her new hubby's side. "Hey, don't act like I don't exist anymore. I'm your woman now. Do you think you can just go back to your job of piloting mechs like before?"

"What do you mean by that, Sendra..?"

"A lot of people are having kids these days, hehe. Do you think that I want to be left out? If I have my way, you're going to be a father soon."

"What?!" Brutus looked distressed! "We haven't even broached this topic yet! We have only been together for little over a week. It is far too soon to think about having children."

"Why not? Your sister, who is younger than you by the way, is already raising a baby of her own. As her older brother, how can you tolerate the fact that you are falling behind? Face it, Brutus. We're going to have a baby soon!"

This development was too fast. Brutus couldn't adjust to Sendra's desire for haste. Why was she in such a hurry? Didn't she have her own career to worry about?

"Sendra, your body…"

The woman dismissively huffed. "It won't be a problem. Ketis already explained the ins and outs to me. We just have to scrounge a few hundred MTA credits and contract a genetics company like Witshaw & Yeneca to formulate a designer baby that my body can safely bear."

"I'm willing to throw in a thousand MTA credits or so." Ves spontaneously offered. "Consider it a wedding gift of mine. It's the least I can do for my brother-in-law and one of my key military commanders."

"Thank you, patriarch! That is great news! Did you hear this, Brutus? We'll have many more options for our designer baby than before!"

The Larkinson Clan had yet to reach a level of prosperity where Ves could casually fling away enough money to casually buy eight limited edition two-toned lavender-and-white puelmer leather giarna handbags.

However, it was worth it for Ves to show his sincerity and magnanimity by investing in two key mech pilots. The happier they became, the more likely they were willing to fight and die on his behalf!

If their wonderful and precious child was born as a designer baby, then Brutus and Sendra would have even more reason to fight at their hardest and sacrifice their lives if necessary.

Although Ves did not deliberately scheme to encourage the two newly-weds to raise an expensive designer baby in the hopes of increasing their commitment to defend the fleet, it would be a nice bonus if that happened.

"Will your first kid be a boy or a girl?" Ves casually asked.

"Girl of course." Sendra immediately replied. "We can discuss having a boy as our next baby, but the first one absolutely has to be a girl. I need someone to follow my footsteps."

"Will she grow up as a Larkinson, then?"

"All of our children will become Larkinsons first. If they want to join their dad over at the Glory Seekers when they are old enough to make their own decision, I'll let them, but that is for the future."

While Sendra announced all of her decisions as if they were already decided, her new husband raised his hand in protest.

"Sendra! You should talk to me about these important matters first."

The new wife snorted. "And what? Raise our children among Hexers instead? I don't want my daughters to grow up as carbon copies of Gloriana. The Larkinson Clan is a much better place for children to spend their childhoods. We have access to complete facilities in our fleet. There are schools, mech academies, abundant living and recreation spaces, biomedical experts that are good enough to keep our designer babies healthy and more. What can the Glory Seekers offer that is better than what our clan can already provide?"

That was a good argument and one that instantly squashed Brutus.

Compared to the rich and prosperous development of the Larkinson Clan, the Glory Seekers grew in a more narrow and limited fashion.

The Hexer mech force was primarily a military organization and did not really do anything else aside from fighting.

The Larkinson Clan on the other hand was a lot more rounded. It did not only consist of soldiers, but also carried a large number of civilians.

These non-combatants might not be able to pilot a mech or repair them when they were damaged, but they fulfilled all kinds of other roles that were more prevalent in ark ships than carrier ships!

If any parent in the fleet had a choice of where they wanted to raise their children, then the Larkinson Clan was definitely on top of this list!

With an impressive collection of civilian capital ships such as the Vivacious Wal and the Discentibus, the Larkinson Clan was by far the most well-prepared to support the formation of new families in space!

The only ways for the Glory Seekers and the Cross Clan to catch up was to host their families and children in a planetary environment. Discussions regarding that had already begun, but in the short term the Larkinson Clan possessed a definite advantage.

After seeing that the two newlyweds had the situation well in hand, Ves and Calabast chatted with them a bit more before letting the couple enjoy their honeymoon as best they could in a military fortification on foreign soil.

The festivities surrounding the wedding celebration did not last. Soon, the rhythm of the expeditionary forces returned to normal as Task Force Fisherman prepared for a massive battle where many unpredictable factors would collide on a single battlefield.

A lot of officers, planners, analysts and other experts were pouring over the limited amount of data in their possession to determine how to best topple or at least crack open the Phase Kingdom.

Although their efforts were severely hampered by the lack of scouting data on the Lake Continent, the information that Ves had received from the Cerebral King helped fill in plenty of the gaps.

The supply chain also worked to form a transport fleet that was capable of transporting all of the large and heavy goods that the Golden Skull Alliance and the Evolution Kingdom intended to exchange.

Ves and a few other dignitaries watched from the side as a small fleet of cargo shuttles passed through the portal and entered Fort Fishblood.

Each of their small cargo holds contained numerous valuable goods that were ready to be shipped to the Evolution Kingdom.

"What do you think about the stuff we are trading away, Ranya?"

The director of the Larkinson Biotech Institute looked impassive. "I am still withholding my judgment. I am not a negotiator so I don't know whether you made a good deal or not. In my opinion, the cargo carried by those shuttles aren't particularly valuable to us. We can build entire batches of mech-grade power reactors easily enough with the Spirit of Bentheim. The nutrient packs are even cheaper despite their considerable volume, and I am sure the story is similar for the batches of low-grade exotics that you are prepared to transfer. The only real item of note is the ship-grade power reactor. From my understanding of shipbuilding, a reactor that is big enough to power a ship is an impressive feat of engineering."

"You're correct." Ves nodded. "To me, the Evolver fish-whales and the Cerebral King are sort of like mechs or biomechs if you will. Their bodies are their mech frames and their powerful organs play the same role as mech parts. While the phase whale bioscience inherited by the Cerebral King possesses a lot of unique advantages, energy generation is a persistent limitation due to the lack of technological development and lack of resources in Purgatory."

Ranya nodded in understanding. "I've read the reports and watched the footage. I truly envy the Cerebral King for gaining access to a portion of the scientific accumulation of the ancient phase whale race. Civilizations that pursue a pure biotechnology route are rare, but the biggest among them have developed a lot of impressive applications that would be considered high technology in our industry."

"Phase whale technology is impressive, but the Cerebral King only has limited access to it. The fish-whale organs responsible for generating energy are highly optimized, but their base is too low. Our power reactors are much better off in that regard. There are massive industries in human space that support the development of power reactors and producers have access to a much wider variety of materials to build more impressive products.Even a basic power reactor is already a technological leap in the eyes of the fish-whales."

Ranya chuckled. "Now that I think about it, this scenario sounds similar to how we have adopted luminar crystal technology. This time, it is the aliens that are making use of advanced human technology instead of the other way around."

Ves laughed with the exobiologist. This indeed sounded like an absurd scenario. It painted humanity as the ancient and advanced race that happened to let one of its technologies fall into the hands of alien races that were much further behind on the technological ladder.

This was a simplistic view of the situation. While it was true that he looked down on the lack of development of the fish-whale race, the Cerebral King still had plenty to teach to the humans if it was willing to share the so-called inheritance of god!

The fact of the matter was that neither side were clearly ahead of the other. Combined with the fact that the Cerebral King was likely over a million years old, it remained to be seen who were the savages in this relationship!