The Mech Touch

Jovy's vague and confused description of Ves' future turned out to be a fizzling disappointment.

Ves did not need the help of a fortune teller to know that his life was intertwined with life and death.

After all, Helena was his sister while Gaia was his latest creation! Both of them were literally capable of stalking him as he went about his day!

Ves understood why James Ylvaine had always been annoyingly vague and cryptic whenever he issued a new prophecy.

It turned out that he had never been capable of seeing the future in its entirety!

His relative weakness and clear lack of capabilities meant that he would burn out in an instant if he attempted to gain a clear reading!

In order to make actual use of his ability, James had to minimize his consumption of energy by making do with less.

Reading the future probably became a lot less intensive if the time interval was limited, if the subject wasn't big or significant and if there was no need for a clear picture.

By cutting back on all of these variables, it became a lot more affordable for entities with the power of Ylvaine to obtain vague clues of the future!

Ves predicted that the combination of Jovy's inherent ability to read probabilities might play an even more helpful role in this endeavor.

By calculating the probabilities of the present in advance, Jovy could provide a lot more starting data to his Eye of Providence!

The more he knew about the present, the greater the amount of data his companion spirit was able to work with. This meant that the Eye of Providence needed to make much fewer guesses in order to obtain a more solid prediction of the future!

Ves looked forward to observing whether Jovy would achieve this degree of synergy in the future. The MTA mech designer could become quite a formidable figure if he was not able to read someone's destiny, but also affect it in any way!

That reminded Ves that he should survey and upgrade his spiritual defenses sometime. While he was happy that Jovy gained a companion spirit that could provide him with a lot more insights on reality and the stuff that inhabited it, that didn't mean that Ves was happy with getting stared at! The MTA already spied on him too much to begin with. He did not want to give away any additional information for free!

After undergoing a round of debriefing where a few mechers asked a lot of annoying questions about the successful procedure, Ves finally disappeared from the undisclosed underground base.

He materialized inside his flagship a moment later, again amazed at the speed and lack of side effects of the MTA's teleportation tech.

"Still, can the mechers at least avoid making a mockery of our anti-teleportation countermeasures?" Ves helplessly spoke.

He felt an even greater urgency than before to reinforce this aspect on all of his important ships!

There was no way he could go about his day in comfort if he knew that any advanced group could just pluck him out of his ship and teleport him straight into a holding cell or other location!

"Well, I'll put it on the list."

For now, he needed to wrap up all of his remaining chores. Imparting Jovy with a companion spirit was the last major item on his immediate agenda. After he spent another day on addressing various administrative tasks, he became ready to design his mechs in earnest!

When Ves finally headed over to the design labs, he passed by groups of industrious assistant mech designers and approached his wife and daughter.

"Hihihihi!"

Aurelia passed the time by playing with their cats as usual.

She ran around while throwing a ball at Lucky, who made a marvelous leap in the air to bounce it back by using his metal head.

Clixie on the other hand took advantage of her recently acquired blessing from Gaia and trapped Mana between her furry, spiritually-infused paws so that she could lick the fur of her intangible 'kitten'!

"Mew! Mew! Mew!"

"Miaow~"

It was a wholesome sight as usual, and with Shannon Maris standing by to take care of the business that Gloriana had no time to deal with, all seemed well.

"Welcome back, Ves." Gloriana cordially greeted him as she swiveled around her seat. "Are you ready to start your work in earnest?"

Ves first leaned in to exchange a kiss with his wife. Her floral scent was intoxicating. He truly missed it after spending several weeks on negotiations and exchanges.

"I'm ready now. I'm probably severely behind schedule already, but I think I can catch up as soon as we can make use of all of the new advanced processors and other computing hardware that we have ordered."

"About that…"

"What is the matter, honey?"

"We have already received enough hardware shipments to begin the upgrade process." Gloriana revealed. "However, it doesn't make much sense to install the new computing hardware on this ship when she is already about to undergo a major refit. After mulling over this issue, I have decided that we should temporarily relocate to a design lab within the new clan compound that we have already started to build on the surface of Davute VII."

Ves looked taken aback. This must have been a relatively recent decision because he did not receive any advanced warning about this matter.

"We have other ships, you know. We have an entire fleet of vessels where we can perform our work. Strictly speaking, we don't need a design lab to do most of our development work. We only need office space that provides access to decent terminals in order to perform much of our work. We can find space in any cargo hold in order to install our lab machines and workshop machines if we have any need for them. This way, we can remain in our fleet."

Gloriana didn't like the sound of that. "You dummy. How do you expect us to maximize our productivity when we have to work in spaces that were not meant to accommodate mech designers in the first place? Compared to the shabby proposal that you have just mentioned, it is much more effective to relocate to the surface where we can erect a brand-new structure that is completely tailored to our needs! In fact, the design labs that we have developed with the help of our architects will be an even better place to do our work than here! There are much less space constraints when building structures on a planet so we can give much more space to all of our personnel and equipment!"

Her logic was sound, and Ves agreed with her arguments.

The problem was that her motives weren't pure. Ves knew what she was truly aiming for. She was using the excuse of the Spirit of Bentheim's upcoming refit to move their family and their entire Design Department to the surface of Davute VII!

This way, Gloriana would easily be able to raise her children in a planetary environment! She wouldn't have to deal with the major inconvenience of transiting back and forth between the fleet in orbit and a destination on the surface.

"Honey…"

His wife placed her hands on her hips. "Don't you 'honey' me, Ves. We talked about this already. You must grant Aurelia and our next little daughter the opportunity to grow up in a vibrant community where they could make friends with all of the future movers and shakers that are also growing up in this port system. Don't spoil their childhood by insisting on raising our children among Larkinsons and no one else!"

"There's nothing wrong with growing up alongside our clansmen." Ves retorted. "We have a lot of them and we are almost ready to initiate our largest recruitment round. We have made sure to put special emphasis on senior personnel, so not all of the newcomers will be ordinary grunts. The diversity of our clan is already great. It will become even more varied once we have recruited an additional half a million people."

"You can recruit as many people as you want, Ves. That has little to do with providing the best growth environment for our children! I am grooming Aurelia to become a leader and she won't be able to do that if she cannot gain enough practice with socializing with people who don't automatically treat her as a princess of the clan. Her social skills will become stunted if she has only ever learned how to deal with fellow Larkinsons."

"There's the galactic net, you know." He responded. "We don't need to leave the comfort of our home or ship in order to talk to virtually anyone in this galaxy or the one that we have left."

"THAT IS NOT A VALID ARGUMENT, VES! VIRTUAL INTERACTIONS ARE JUST NOT REAL ENOUGH!"

The two argued a bit more, but Gloriana had too much logic on her side. Her arguments were well-reasoned and difficult to refute. The situation had grown to a point where relocating to the surface in order to work at a landbound design lab was the most logical and convenient course of action!

This was why Ves and his little family ended up on the surface of Davute VII a day later. They had descended onto the bustling planet in order to pay a visit to the new compound that the Larkinson Clan had already started to build on an expensive plot of land.

While Ves initially thought about building the important compound at an empty region that was far away from the capital city, Gloriana and several other Larkinsons did not agree with this choice.

While it was both cheaper and easier to buy a lot of plots of land at once in the less populated regions of Davute VII, the distance to the capital city and other major cities were too great!

Even if they utilized the most modern and effective shuttles in their possession, it would still take several hours to reach Kotor City under comfortable conditions!

This was why the Larkinson Clan eventually decided to build their initial compound in the outer center of Kotor City.

The industrial districts formed the primary engines of the capital city. Each of them were intended to house the manufacturing complexes, logistical centers and other related facilities of the largest and most productive industrial companies in Davute!

Industrial District 1 was definitely the most coveted of them. It housed all of the mech factories, starship component factories, colonial equipment factories and other essential industrial facilities that belonged to the founders and members of the dominant power blocs of Davute VII!

It featured the most developed infrastructure and the highest security measures out of all of the industrial districts.

Unfortunately, the Larkinson Clan had arrived too late to procure a plot of land in this prestigious district.

The Larkinsons were only able to settle for buying the largest available plot of land of Industrial District 2.

As the second-best industrial district, it wasn't too shabby. While its infrastructure was still under construction and its security measures were not as well-equipped to withstand orbital bombardment from alien fleets, it was at least a place where the authorities would place a decent amount of importance in the future.

"So this will be the place where most of the Larkinsons assigned to the Davute branch will work in the future." Ves remarked as he stood in front of the massive construction site.

He didn't even want to know how much the Larkinson Clan paid for this expensive piece of land, but it had to be a substantial sum!

Fortunately, his clan wasn't short on money even after it had spent a lot of MTA merits and a bit of phasewater on lots of goodies.

As Ves surveyed the ongoing construction of massive factory plants that were designed to be as sturdy as fortresses, he gained a modest sense of satisfaction.

"All of this is ours. This will be the beginning of our empire in the Red Ocean." Gloriana smirked as she clasped his hand.

"You mean business empire, right?"

"Ah. Yes. Business empire. How could I forget?"