The Mech Touch

When the scout ship assigned to monitor and study Garimel I reported that the planet's surface was beginning to crack, many different alarms set off at once!

In the long experiences of human civilization, calamity always arrived after a planet that should ordinarily be relatively stable suddenly produced major tectonic activity.

What was happening on the surface of the planet that Ves had whimsically called Auralis was far outside the boundaries of normal activity!

Sure, the planet behaved oddly due to its proximity to the blue supergiant star along with all of the heavy materials making up its structure, but for its surface to crack to such an obvious degree was excessive!

It was hard to imagine that this was a coincidence, especially when the Cerebral King broke into the Royal Tomb just a short time ago. Any fool could figure out that the two events were intricately connected!

"Damnit, hurry up with our evacuation! Leave behind all of our stuff. They're just junk that we can easily replace!"

As shuttles and transports continued to rejoin the fleet, the various carriers began to deploy mechs in case their protection was needed.

Venerable Joshua, Venerable Tusa and Commander Casella barely had time to rest before they needed to bring their expert mechs back out into space in order to secure the expeditionary fleet's perimeter.

"What have you all been doing in Purgatory to cause a planet to crack?!" Venerable Jannzi asked as her massive Shield of Samar settled onto the hull of the Gorgoneion.

"I don't know!" Venerable Joshua replied in an exasperated tone. "What are you asking me, Jannzi?"

"You and the rest of the task force just completed an excursion where Ves has resided in the cockpit of your expert mech all the time! I don't believe you know nothing about what our patriarch has been up to these last few days."

"Look, I just played the role of a chauffeur, right? We hardly talked about anything important while he sat behind me. We just reminisced about the past, that's all. He didn't discuss any of his important plans with me. Why should he? I'm just an expert pilot."

His ex-girlfriend sneered. "Oh? And what is this I hear about your Everchanger flying around while expert candidates and expert pilots are suddenly popping up left and right?"

"Jannzi! I don't think we should talk about confidential mission details over a remote communication channel! If you want answers, I think you should wait until all of this is over."

The female mech pilot took a deep breath and sighed. "You're right. I am letting my impatience get the better of me. Many of the mech pilots in our clan are celebrating the fact that Vincent, Isobel and many others have successfully broken through, do you know that? What I have been paying attention to is the disparity between the amount of mechs that went out as opposed to the amount that got back. Why is there such a large gap? How many pilots have we lost this time?"

"I… can't tell you that much." Joshua replied in a subdued tone. "The battle against the Phaser fish-whales was anything but easy."

The two continued to talk even as the expeditionary fleet finally began to move out.

Normally, exiting a star system was easier than entering one. With ordinary human FTL drives, it was only possible to enter into FTL travel by initiating the translation process in a region of space where gravity or gravitic activity was below a certain threshold.

Most of the time, that meant traveling to the outer edge of the star system. As long as the ships traveled far away enough from any star, the influence of its gravity would drop below a point where FTL travel became possible.

The problem right now was that this range was never fixed. Heavier stars possessed more gravity than lighter ones.

Given that the one in the center of the Garimel System was classified as a supergiant, its mass was definitely not light!

Not only that, but the lack of planets in the star system as well as other risky factors made it unwise to travel to the Lagrange points to leave this place!

"How long before we can get out?" Ves urgently asked.

"It took several days to reach the orbit of Lemogo Distat when we first arrived here. It will take roughly the same amount of time for us to go out. We can't go any faster unless we evacuate and abandon our slower starships such as the Graveyard and the Gorgoneion."

"Damnit!"

Ves had a really bad feeling about what was happening to Auralis. He had the sense that he had gotten caught up in the grand plan concocted by the Flesh Conqueror or another ancient alien mastermind.

Ever since the Cerebral King revealed its true colors and used its own powers to barge into the Royal Tomb, he already came up with a few possible theories to explain what was happening.

In order to distract himself and pass the time in this tense and uncertain period of time, Ves contacted Ranya in order to swap theories on the possible layout of Purgatory and the Royal Tomb.

Getting solid answers was impossible, but it might be possible for him to reduce his uncertainty and gain a better idea of what was going on by deducing the actual story from the clues that they had gathered.

As Ves quickly summarized what he observed and how the fish-whales behaved in different situations, the director of the Larkinson Biotech Institute fell silent for a minute.

Ranya had already been studying the situation as soon as Task Force Fisherman returned to Fort Fishblood with lots of plunder.

A lot of the organic goods taken from the fish-whales needed special handling in order to preserve their value. Ranya had already been busy for a while to make sure that the Dragon's Den properly stowed away all of the extra organs as well as the all-important brains of the Phase King!

The researchers and staffers working for the Larkinson Biotech Institute were caught off guard by how much biological matter the task force brought back.

"Thank you for telling me your perspective on what has happened." Ranya gratefully said. "It is clarifying to hear the context behind the events that have led our troops to dump so many unusual fish-whale organs in our laps."

"Are there any issues concerning their storage and preservation?" Ves asked with a touch of concern. "The organs taken from the Phasers are different from the ones traded by the Evolvers. Is the phasewater-infused flesh producing any dangerous spatial activity?"

Ranya shook her head. "So far, we have not encountered any accidents. The flesh and tissue of the Phaser fish-whales are good at inhibiting and containing phasewater. They are natural stabilizers that have been designed to do an excellent job at suppressing any unstable spatial activity. In fact, that makes the biomass taken from the Phasers extra valuable even if they don't contain any phasewater. If we can study this effect and reverse engineer the biological structures that can stabilize phasewater activity, we may be able to develop future biomechs or biological constructs that can fight against enemies that rely on spatial manipulation as their weapon."

That was a nice bonus, but not a particularly interesting one to Ves at the moment. "It sounds like everything is fine. Is the Phase King's brain still in good condition?"

Ranya's expression twitched. "It's not in a good condition to begin with, sir. The removal of a brain from any body, human or alien, is an exceedingly delicate and complicated procedure. Hacking it out of the brain cavity of a fish king with a mech sword of all tools hardly conforms to the standards of an operation room. Besides, just like humans, the Phase King's central nervous system encompasses more than just the brain. You also left out a lot of nerves attached to the spine of the king fish."

"We can't exactly take out and drag back the spine of a starship-sized beast. We did the best we could."

"I understand. What I am trying to say is that even if this brain is much more resilient to external pressure, the damage and trauma it has suffered makes it challenging for us to keep it alive."

Ves frowned. "Is the brain dying?"

The director hesitated. "I wouldn't say so. We know far too little about fish-whale biology to be certain about anything. For now, our stopgap measures are working, but I believe that is mostly because the fish-whale race is artificially designed to be exceedingly more tolerant to drastic medical and biological procedures. This lends credence to your theory that the fish-whales are part of a greater biological experiment. Races that have evolved naturally usually do not function well when their organs and body parts are taken out. The fish-whales on the other hand are able to integrate and remove various biological matter with minimal rejection or integration problems."

That sounded peculiar to Ves. A bioresearcher would never go through so much trouble to configure a new race with such properties if they were pointless.

There was definitely a purpose behind creating such a malleable species?

"So the fish-whales are truly the equivalent of lab rats to the phase whales?"

"They're even more than that, Ves. Given what you have learned from the Cerebral King, I fear the meaning of the fish-whale race is much more significant. Let me remind you of the giant skeleton we stumbled upon in the Royal Tomb. We speculated whether it belonged to a clean whale, a legendary existence among the phase whales. Do you know what defines the clean and unclean whales the most?"

"The unclean whales are delinquent phase whales that prefer to accumulate strength by cannibalizing the prized organs of others of their kind." Ves answered. "This usually leads to a lot of genetic and physiological instability and only grows worse the more they combine foreign organs in their bodies. A clean one happens to be a cannibalistic phase whale that has solved the sources of instability. It enjoys all of the benefits of cannibalism while suffering none of the sequelae."

"At least that is what the sources have told us. Let us assume the 'Flesh Conqueror' that the Cerebral King has referred to used to be an actual clean whale. Do you truly think it has conquered the flaws of its own path to power?"

"You… think that its status as a clean one is a lie?"

"It's a reasonable suspicion." Ranya shrugged. "As an exobiologist, I can tell you that integrating so many foreign matter into a single body will produce lots of problems regardless of race. Organisms simply aren't meant to work this way. What if the Flesh Conqueror lied when it proclaimed to the Red Ocean that it was a clean one? What if its body was actually a lot dirtier than every alien at the time assumed?"

Ves found this to be an interesting train of thought. "If I was in the Flesh Conqueror's place, I would never stop researching solutions on how to solve the hidden dangers in an unstable body. After all, it's well-known that unclean whales are ticking time bombs. Then…"

His eyes slowly widened in realization.

"You guessed it, right? Purgatory may be one of its hidden biolabs that is dedicated to solving this fatal problem. The reason why this may be true is because of the properties that the Flesh Conqueror has instilled in the fish-whale race. We have confirmed that the artificial race only contains partial phase whale DNA, but have you ever wondered about the sources of the rest of its genetic code?"

"Are you suggesting… that the Flesh Conqueror attempted to create a hybrid race that mixes phase whale DNA with other aquatic races that can easily assimilate foreign biomatter?"

Ranya grinned. "Although we do not have any hard evidence to suggest this is the case, this is the logical conclusion to make. It would explain much if not everything about what we have discovered in this star system."

"Then how does this theory relate to what is happening at the moment?"

"Well, if we assume that all of this is true, then there are two possibilities. The first possibility is that the Flesh Conqueror has attempted to cheat its inevitable demise by turning itself into a giant skeleton that is awaiting the arrival of a genetically optimized fish-whale to bring itself back to life. The second possibility is that the fish-whales are the children and the inheritors of their maker. They are an improvement of the Flesh Conqueror's original species and are meant to replace the phase whales as the preeminent power of the Red Ocean!"

"What?!"

The first theory sounded plausible, but the second one was crazier! Only a nutcase would think about realizing such a dangerous ambition!