The Mech Touch

It did not take long for the Red MTA to register the Golden Skull Alliance's victory against one of the wheednar race's raiding fleets.

This was actually a pretty big accomplishment for a second-class fleet. The Larkinson Clan and its allies took a lot of risks by confronting warships in open space. In addition to that, three ace mechs had been needed to restrain and dismantle the most threatening orven battleship.

Nonetheless, the mechers only awarded the expeditionary fleet with 300 million MTA merits in total.

This was a decent reward for a single group, but it did not amount to much when split up five-ways.

The members of the Golden Skull Alliance agreed to divide the merit award as well as all of the plunder according to the most current reward ratio.

The ratio roughly corresponded to the contributions of each alliance partner.

At this time, the agreed upon ratio was that the Larkinson Clan earned 20 percent while the Cross Clan was entitled to just 14 percent of all of the gains.

Meanwhile, the Glory Seekers, the Adelaide Third Fleet and the Boojay Family each received 22 percent of the share!

Nobody objected too much about this ratio as it roughly corresponded to the amount of effort and risks to each member of the alliance.

It was completely natural for the pioneering groups that brought an ace mech to the table to receive the greatest shares. These super machines not only turned most battles into guaranteed victories, but also provided valuable deterrence against many enemies that would otherwise try to prey on the expeditionary fleet.

The Larkinsons did not bring an ace mech to the table, but as always they made up for it with lots of unusual advantages.

From putting forth battle formations to wipe out most of the crews on a lot of warships to utilizing glows to suppress any alien combatants that remained, the Larkinson Clan had undoubtedly done much to preserve the captured warships and reduce the casualty rate.

The Larkinsons also brought along the Graveyard along with other utility vessels that substantially assisted in processing bulk salvage debris.

This left the Cross Clan in an awkward position. The Crossers did possess their own ace pilot, but Patriarch Reginald Cross remained stuck in Davute as he had made a commitment to serve Davute for a period of time!

No matter whether the war between Davute and Karlach had any hope of happening, the 77th Warborn Mech Division could still do much to protect billions of colonists against other threats.

If the aliens managed to overwhelm the Torald Middle Zone, the Krakatoa Middle Zone would be next! Davute and every other colonial state in the region would need all of the mechs that they could muster in order to resist the relentless alien onslaught.

Regardless, the Crossers assigned to take part in the Trailblazer Expedition fought decently, but couldn't come close enough to compensate for the absence of their only ace pilot and ace mech.

This led to an unusual circumstance where they received the smallest share of the plunder by far despite their comprehensive strength!

In any case, it had little to do with Ves. He was already happy with raking in 60 million MTA merits.

Sure, it did not sound like much compared to what his clan managed to earn in his previous encounters against alien forces, but it still provided him with the capital he needed to uplift his clan into a first-class organization.

"The Red MTA recently announced that it will be implementing enormous changes to its Merit Exchange." Gloriana told Ves as both of them paid a visit to the hangar bay. "Many high-end goods that used to be supplied from the Milky Way will soon be removed. The Association will gradually introduce newer high-end products in their place that are locally made and much better adapted to the new environment. We will probably gain access to a large variety of new and more exotic tech."

"Interesting. We should probably wait for any big purchases until the Red MTA put up better products on its exchange. Everyone is trying their best to leverage exotic radiation and the mechers are bound to excel in this area. I know you have been planning to buy an expensive first-class cranial implant in the near future, but I highly suggest you remain patient and wait a while. The MTA and its associated companies are bound to release much more powerful models in the coming years."

Surprisingly enough, his wife nodded and agreed with his proposal without kicking up any fuss. She may be eager for improvement, but she wasn't stupid! There was no way she would want to pay hundreds of millions of MTA merits for a cranial implant that was on the verge of becoming obsolete!

"I know." She responded. "I am not in a hurry to upgrade. There is so much to explore now that we have entered the Age of Dawn. I am already making enough progress without needing to rely on additional augmentations for the time being."

The pair directed their focus back to the present.

The Larkinsons had already brought back a bunch of useful salvage, one of which was a disabled but mostly physically intact orven starfighter.

Both Ves and Gloriana wanted to take a good look at the highly compact transphasic shield generator.

While they had no intentions of transplanting alien tech into their mechs for fear of instability and backdoors, they still wanted to learn the principles behind their operations.

They already had a lot of plans about equipping their upcoming elite quasi-first-class mechs with similar defensive measures!

As a crew of mech technicians and engineers carefully inspected and dismantled anything that could blow up and threaten the surrounding people, they slowly proceeded to remove the transphasic shield generator.

According to the scans, the device did not incorporate that much phasewater, but that was already enough to make the starfighter ten times harder to defeat!

"Transphasic energy shields will not help our mechs survive a direct strike from the primary or secondary armaments of a serious warship." Gloriana noted as she carefully inspected the alien circuitry.

Ves nodded even as he poked at the wiring of the internals of the device. "I know, but they can help our mechs survive damage near anything else. We've got hundreds of kilograms of phasewater in reserve, and we will probably be able to harvest more as our expedition progresses. All of that stuff is doing for us while it is rotting in our vault, so we need to get our Design Department into gear and design a series of quasi-first-class mechs that are comprehensively transphasic. It is not enough to make their armor systems transphasic. Their weapons need to be augmented by phasewater and we should also look into mounting cruise drives onto them if possible."

His wife already knew about his intentions to equip all of their future Larkinson-exclusive mechs with transphasic weapons and armor, but that last part was new!

"We do not have access to cruise drive technology, especially not the lower cost varieties that are suitable for mass production." She told him. "Even if you manage to obtain it, adding a cruise drive to every mech in the Larkinson Army will deplete our phasewater reserves much faster than we originally planned for. Are you sure about this, Ves?"

He nodded. "This recent battle might not be our most exciting or memorable, but it has fully exposed our strengths and weaknesses. Stronger weapons and armor can help in many situations, but it does not really make a difference during the lengthy and dangerous approach stage. Miniature warp drives can not only make our mechs spend less time in transit, but also increase the difficulty of shooting them down. We cannot neglect the importance of mobility in a future where battles against warships will become more common."

This was one of several solutions that he came up with to reduce the loss rate of his mechs going forward.

However, Gloriana looked less than enthused.

"You should realize that if you want to implement this to the fullest, we must attack larger alien strongholds or remain in the deep frontier for additional years. This is the only way for us to obtain all of the additional phasewater needed to propagate your new standards. We are bound to suffer considerably more casualties if that is the case. We may end up losing more mech pilots due to greed than by sticking to our original plan."

Ves shrugged. "I am aware of the risks, but mechs equipped with cruise drives are extremely useful in many other circumstances as well. I am ultimately planning to form a highly mobile strike fleet that consists of quasi-first-class or genuine first-class starships that are fully equipped with high-powered superdrives. This way, the entire Red Ocean is within our reach."

In truth, he also wanted to equip his starships with superdrives as an escape option!

Their warp travel capabilities granted Ves and his fellow Larkinsons the option of escaping the Red Ocean entirely and slowly make their way over to Messier 87 or one of the 50 or so satellite galaxies!

Of course, it would probably take hundreds if not thousands of years to cross such an immense void with relatively slow warp drives. It was extremely likely that the vessels would break down and get stranded in the vast and empty interstellar void between galaxies with no star or planet within sight!

It was better than nothing, Ves supposed. He was pretty sure that a bunch of scared and paranoid red humans had already started to depart from the Red Ocean entirely!

The couple discussed a bit more about the standards of the Larkinson Clan's new generation mechs. They not only needed to offer superior performance against the natives of the Red Ocean, but also had to possess at least preliminary combat effectiveness against the speculative alien forces of Messier 87!

Gloriana placed her hands on her hips when Ves mentioned that last part.

"You are shifting the goal posts yet again. Don't you think you are being too ambitious this time? The indigenous aliens of the Red Ocean pose the most acute threat towards us. We need to do all we can to strengthen our forces in the short term. I am not telling you that it is unwise to prepare against more distant threats as well, but we do not have the time or resources to do both at the same time."

"I don't entirely agree with that, honey." Ves retorted. "While it is true that exotic radiation is in the process of mutating a lot of materials and turning them into new and much more powerful exotics, we do not need to wait until these materials have shown up. Haven't you forgotten about my specialty in spiritual engineering? I can develop a number of new spiritual constructs that can actively strengthen the performance of mechs by making active use of ambient spiritual energy. I probably don't enjoy a monopoly in this field, but I am pretty sure that I have a huge head-start compared to the rest of the mech industry. I think I can get a lot of stuff done without adding to the material cost of my products."

"Hm, maybe you are correct. How long will it take for you to develop these brilliant new design applications of yours?"

Ves grinned at her. "Probably not as long as you think. I have a few... sources that I can consult to quickly master a couple of useful tricks. The new age is tailor-made for me and my talents. Our children will be able to thrive a lot more as well. Our future mechs are about to become far more outstanding than the ones we currently have."

In his opinion, the only way that mechs could attain the strength to defeat any opponent no matter whether they were human or alien was if they maximized the use of phasewater and E energy radiation!

He strongly believed that mechs in the future would not only be evaluated by conventional parameters such as their material composition and use of conventional tech, but also by how well they derived strength from the defining resources of the Red Ocean as well as Messier 87!