The Mech Touch

"I never knew you were such a big deal, Jovy. Are there many Journeyman of your age who are tier 6 galactic citizens?"

Jovy responded with a modest smile as he gestured for Ves to sit at a nearby couch. "I'm a valuable prospect in the MTA due to my design philosophy. People like us are rare, but the scope of human civilization is huge. There are a lot of mech designers who have succeeded in breaking new ground. Starting out is already difficult, but making further progress is the true challenge for pioneers in their respective fields. The rights and privileges afforded to tier 6 galactic citizens are meant to help us go further with our innovations."

It did not escape Ves' attention that Jovy treated him as an equal.

As Ves took his seat, he gained a better idea how much the Association valued mech designers with high potential design philosophies. The relative ease in which he was promoted to tier 6 galactic citizenship did not diminish its value at all. From the public articles he read about this topic, the amount of humans who managed to make it to the middle tiers was tiny in proportion to the total population of galactic citizens!

While he felt it was unfair for first-raters to be born as tier 10 galactic citizens right from the start, they still needed to rely on their talent and ability to make meaningful contributions to human civilization in order to climb higher.

Wealth or powerful parentage alone could not help anyone move up the tiers. If this was the case, then the entire system of galactic citizenship would become rotten to the core.

Only those who were genuinely valuable to human civilization could climb higher through their own efforts!

From what Ves had read from a particular article, the tiers that people could reach was strongly correlated with the ability to earn MTA merits or CFA merits.

Those who were able to earn thousands of MTA merits were most likely lower-tiered than those who were capable of earning millions of MTA merits!

This was no surprise as both concepts centered around the principle that those who worked and fought for the betterment of humankind deserved to be rewarded.

The Mech Trade Association and the Common Fleet Alliance did not often see eye to eye these days, but they never wavered in supporting the galactic citizenship system.

This reflected how much the Big Two valued meritocracy over the alternatives. Each high-ranking member must be a capable individual without doubt. The mechers and fleeters did not wish to replicate the severe corruption that had plagued many human states and organizations in the latter half of the Age of Conquest.

The Big Two stood in direct contrast to the first-rate superstates in this regard.

While it was true that the New Rubarth Empire offered plenty of opportunities for commoners to rise to the top, inheritance was still a powerful force to those that already controlled most of the levers of society.

The upper echelon naturally wanted to protect their advantage!

In a situation where there was not much room for expansion, the rise of upstarts inevitably led to the downfall of established powers!

While the Rubarthans recognized that competition was a necessary force to maintain the vitality of the state, the major groups that always held tight to power never made way for others.

The most dominant example of this in Rubarth was its Imperial Household!

The Star Emperor and his menagerie of offspring held a firm grip of every conceivable part of Rubarthan society. Whether intentional or not, the bloodline of the Imperial Household directly controlled many levers of the New Rubarth Empire, making it extremely unlikely for any external actors to shake the first family of this powerful state!

A phenomenon like this was long taken for granted in the first-rate superstates, but such open nepotism and appropriation of power was unimaginable within the MTA.

This was what Ves liked about the mechers. Even though they were still snobbish and stuck-up in their own way, they also held great respect for ability and accomplishments.

Ves happened to possess both of them in spades. This made him feel more at ease when interacting with the Association.

Although he still needed to exhibit basic vigilance towards a great power that could squash him flat at any time, he took comfort in the fact that the mechers were more likely to protect him than to seek his end.

As Ves settled in one of the Simile Halifax's luxurious lounges, he started to chat about trivial topics with Jovy.

However, this only lasted a minute or two before they decided to move on to more important business.

"By the way, ever since I left the Garimel System, I don't know what is going on over there anymore. Can you tell me a bit about what you mechers have done since my fleet's departure?"

"We have already broken into the pocket space that used to be known as the Royal Tomb." Jovy stated. "We already know where it is anchored, so it is not that difficult for us to breach the spatial walls. Purgatory on the other hand is a lot more troublesome to find. We initially thought it was anchored at a fixed distance from the blue supergiant star, but when our ships tried to find the pocket space, we weren't able to find its entrance so to speak."

Ves raised an eyebrow. That sounded weird.

"I thought you mechers are really good at this stuff. You have so much high technology at your disposal that finding a nearby pocket space should be easy. How come you haven't managed to make any results?"

"Our mastery of spatial technology and dimensional technology may be good, but I have to admit that the phase whales are better in this regard." Jovy replied in a regretful tone. "We have scanned the star system extensively and found no trace of the pocket space. Our current theory is that its creator implemented an automatic evacuation function that displaces the entire phase whale enclave if an emergency has taken place. Anything could have triggered it, from our heavy-handed attempts to breach into the isolated space to the outbreak of Moby Dick."

The mysterious absence of Purgatory heavily frustrated the mechers! The value of this pocket space was not low!

Not only did it still retain a lot of phasewater, but it also held a lot of fish-whales including the ancient and unique Hive King and the Hot King.

Aside from that, there were the half-derelict biolabs which still contained a lot of alien scientific accumulation. The mechers would have definitely been able to advance their understanding of the phase whale race by leaps and bounds if they captured this important phase whale enclave in its entirety!

"You still have Moby Dick, right? There's no way this giant phase whale can go anywhere now that you have put the massive creature into a cage."

Jovy briefly smiled. "That's true. Moby Dick has already provided a wealth of information and novel research results. Master Dervidian has stopped taking any calls in order to completely devote his attention to studying the creature's impossibly massive body and inner workings."

This was good. As long as the mechers felt they still managed to harvest gains from the Garimel System, they were unlikely to return and demand that Ves surrender much of the profits he gained from the Purgatory Campaign!

The events that took place in the Garimel System may be of great importance to many people, but Jovy had long lost interest in it. The Transhumanists had long taken over the star system and everything related to it. The Survivalists had other priorities.

"The Red Ocean is growing more turbulent." Jovy warned Ves. "It may be difficult for you to notice any differences, but our conquest is slowing down. The indigenous alien races are finally showing more signs of organization. Not only that, their mastery and understanding of human technology is increasing by the day. It has become abundantly clear to us that there are human traitors among us who are deliberately leaking our tech and intelligence to the native resistance forces."

Ves grew grim when he heard this news. Strengthening humanity's enemies was a completely deplorable act! Wasn't it enough to allow every human to find a second chance in the Red Ocean? Why were there idiots out there who wanted to spoil this game for other humans?

"What does this mean for someone like me, Jovy? All of this sounds too far away for a simple pioneer like myself."

"You won't experience any direct consequences, but the changing situation at the front will produce a lot of ripple effects. It is likely that the density of pioneers and colonists in every zone will rise sharply in the following years and maybe decades. Groups who originally prepared to colonize the deeper regions of the Red Ocean can't follow through with their plans if the spaces are still in alien hands. That means that their colonization fleets will settle for star systems in existing occupied territories such as Krakatoa."

"Ah. That's going to be a lot of trouble."

A sharp rise in pioneers and colonists exacerbated many of the problems that Ves and his clan were suffering from. The demand for goods and services would probably skyrocket even further while the supply of them would not be able to keep up. That meant that prices would get even more ridiculous while access to essential products such as starships became even more restrictive!

Fortunately, the expeditionary fleet was heading back to Davute with an immense haul of phasewater and MTA merits. While an abundant amount of wealth could not solve every problem, a lot of barriers that hindered Ves before no longer bothered him anymore.

This was the privilege of being rich and powerful!

His mentality towards many of the problems that used to plague him a few months ago no longer fazed him in the slightest. Compared to all of those poor and impoverished pioneering organizations that had already exhausted much of their wealth and resources to afford passage into the Red Ocean, the entire Golden Skull Alliance had already overcome the difficult initial period!

Ves relaxed once he realized that the changing trends might not be a bad development for his clan. "It sounds like Krakatoa will become a lot livier in the coming years. More and more star systems will get colonized while the amount of forces exploring or rubbing against each other will rise as well. This is a great opportunity to sell a lot of mechs and build up my brand in the Red Ocean!"

"Hehehe. Well, you are not short of ambition, I can tell you that." Jovy chuckled. "Seriously though, if we can't defeat the alien opposition quickly, the conquest of the Red Ocean will not stop, but it will certainly turn into a more drawn-out affair. Dealing with alien forces will become a fact of life in this dwarf galaxy for a long time. You should be more prepared for that. We still don't know what the human traitors will do next to frustrate our progress."

"Don't you mechers and fleeters have a lot more mechs and starships at your disposal? I don't believe that you have exhausted all of your reserves for this invasion."

"You may be right, but this worrisome development is exactly the reason why we should hold back even more." Jovy explained. "If we stretch our warfleets thin, we might not be able to respond as well to an attack from an unexpected direction. We would rather slow down our ongoing invasion than to leave ourselves open to nefarious actors within human civilization."

The Big Two as a whole no longer considered their alien neighbors to be their greatest threat.

What the MTA and CFA were truly worried about was their fellow humans!

In this day and age, the strongest threat to every form of life in the Milky Way and the Red Ocean was not the phase whales or the voribugs, but humanity itself!