The Mech Touch

Venerable Zimro Belson may have made an explosive discovery!

If his intuition did not lead him astray, then Zimro had a strong hunch that the Hidden Smile had never been alone since she entered this star system.

What if the aliens had sent a scout ship into the Corellix System in advance?

What if that scout vessel possessed stealth capabilities?

What if this hidden ship not only managed to track the Hidden Smile's movements, but quietly followed the Hexer-built stealth frigate from a distance?

It sounded too ludicrous to be true, but Venerable Zimro couldn't think of any other way why a hostile alien ship in stealth just happened to be drifting in this specific area of the Corellix System!

"Meow meow meow?" Lucky questioned as he looked up at the expert pilot in doubt.

"I don't know what you have just said, Lucky, but I do not think my instincts are leading me astray." The expert pilot responded in an increasingly more certain tone.

The more he thought about his guesses, the more he wanted to stand by them. He felt that the adversaries that the Golden Skull Alliance attempted to challenge this time might be considerably more formidable than they expected!

The Larkinsons and their allies may have gotten too complacent by the relatively decisive victories attained in past battles against the native aliens of the Red Ocean.

That may have given the entire Golden Skull Alliance a distorted perspective on the competence and the threat level of their opponents.

Venerable Zimro Belson quickly tried to think why this opponent may be a lot different from the ones that came before.

The expeditionary fleet managed to defeat the wheednar raiding fleet with relative ease by employing a set of unconventional but highly effective tactics.

The Red Cabal who monitored and coordinated the deployments of alien forces in its ongoing war against red humanity may have received the details of what the Golden Skullers had done to secure victory against the wheednars.

The aliens may have developed the suspicion that the Golden Skull Alliance, which they have most certainly taken notice of, was on the hunt again.

It wasn't all that difficult to confirm whether this was the case. As long as the native aliens kept their eye out on the movements of the many scouting vessels of the Golden Skull Alliance, it may even be possible to figure out that the yurzen raiden fleet was next on the list!

"We've become too sloppy and predictable." Venerable Zimro concluded.

A competent and intelligent enough adversary wouldn't allow the Golden Skull Alliance to pick apart the alien raiding fleets one by one at its leisure.

If Zimro was correct about his suspicion that there was a competent alien leader at the helm, then the Corellix System may have turned into a trap for the expeditionary fleet!

He could not hold in his suspicions any longer. He needed to convey his strong suspicions up the hierarchy. The higher ups needed to be alerted right away!

This problem was that it was not so easy for a stealth mech to talk to others.

An open transmission in space would definitely get picked up by an alien stealth vessel that was lingering in the neighborhood!

Even a tight beam transmission that should theoretically keep the Phobos and the Hidden Smile as undetected as possible could still expose the expert mech to the hidden enemy.

"Meow meow." Lucky said as he noticed Zimro's dilemma.

"I think I get what you have just said. Let me try. Kalo! Can you do us a favor?"

The Phobos churned a bit before a ghostly chameleon abruptly landed on top of Lucky's body without warning.

"Meow!"

"Hisssss..."

As Lucky started to make indignant noises about getting jumped from behind all of a sudden, Zirmo gently reached out and touched the back of the energy manifestation.

"Kalo, you can contact the patriarch, right? Can you serve as my messenger and pass on my warning? I truly think the clan needs to know about my hunches."

"Hissss..."

The design spirit did as Zimro requested. It took a lot sooner than the expert pilot thought for the clan to make contact with his expert mech!

Kalo disappeared as an entirely different energy manifestation appeared into place.

Zimro looked incredibly surprised when a realistic image of the clan patriarch himself appeared inside the cockpit!

He was pretty sure that Ves' current appearance was not a projection. His expert mech was currently operating under full stealth, which meant that the Phobos was not supposed to be able to receive incoming electronic transmissions.

"How are you able to connect with the Phobos, sir?"

The energy manifestation of Ves smirked. "This is only a small trick. What you might not know is that every time I make a masterwork mech, I subconsciously impart a piece of myself into the machine. Not many mech designers can do this, but 1 can directly with my masterwork mechs and even channel a part of my power through this wonderful connection, especially after the Great Severing has occurred."

"What if the Phobos is not a masterwork mech?"

"Then I would just continue to use Kalo as a communication channel. Design spirits are quite convenient in that sense."

Venerable Zimro no longer wasted his thoughts on this matter. He returned to business and immediately conveyed his feelings.

It gratified him that his patriarch and direct superior did not reject his hunches out of hand.

"You are not wrong for trying to express your misgivings about the current situation. In my decades of experience, I find that expert pilots such as yourself are rarely wrong about predicting threats and dangers." Ves said. "It is best to err on the side of caution. If the situation in this star system is truly as dangerous as you have speculated, then it might not be a bad idea to abort this operation. We can always hang back in order to make more observations."

"No!" Zimro objected with a harsh whisper. "I do not want to condemn the colonists of Corellix III to certain doom. We can still save their lives as long as we navigate the current situation well enough. I believe that there is only a single hostile stealth vessel in this star system. The aliens may not have too much confidence in their guess that our expeditionary fleet would be arriving here. We can still foil the trap that the aliens have quietly laid."

The energy manifestation of Ves fell silent for a few seconds.

"I understand your personal priorities. I would like to save the lives of those colonists as well if possible, but I need to put the interests and the survival of my clansmen ahead of other goals. How certain are you that there is only a single unanticipated enemy ship in this star system?"

Venerable Zimro wanted to dress up his answer, but his pledge to Ves and his personal integrity prevented him from massaging his words.

"I... cannot tell whether there are multiple enemy ships spread across the Corellix System. My intuition doesn't span that far. I only have a vague suspicion that there is one enemy stealth ship floating silently in front of the Phobos."

Ves scratched his head in thought. "Then let's do this. You can try to scout the alien stealth vessel. I don't have that much faith in the stealth system of the Hidden Smile to keep the frigate hidden at closer ranges, but I have a lot more confidence in the cloaking capabilities of your Phobos. I designed him, after all. He has accumulated two Ascension Runes, right?"

Zimro nodded. "That is correct, and both of them are invested in the Path of the Hidden Stalker."

"Very well. So long as the enemy stealth vessel does not have detection tech that is as good as that of the Red Two, your Phobos should be able to remain undetected. We are about to embark in a stealth competition, then. Let us try our best to detect our hidden adversaries before they can find us first."

This was an incredibly risky operation, but it was the only way for the Golden Skull Alliance to intercept the alien raiders and stop them from bombarding another human colony into a crater!

Time was running out. If the yurzen raiding fleet still maintained its expected trajectory and speed, then it would be hitting the minefield pretty soon!

The Phobos needed to find the hidden enemy ship and deal with her in a fashion before it was too late!

The expert mech silently accelerated forward again. Venerable Zimro felt a much greater sense of urgency than before. The stakes were too high, and he could not live with himself if he failed to foil whatever the aliens had in mind in this star system!

Due to this haste, the Phobos was accelerating forward at a dangerous rate. No matter how well his designers had made the machine as quiet as possible, it was impossible to suppress every minor fluctuation.

This caused Zimro to subtly resonate more intensely with his battle partner. He might not share a Blood Pact with his machine, but his strong sense of purpose along with the implicit approval of the Phobos caused them to work a lot better than during their regular training sessions!

The manifestation of Ves briefly glanced down at the console and saw that Zimro's resonance strength had spiked to a new record.

This showed once again that expert pilots progressed the fastest when there were real consequences to their actions.

The Phobos began to slow down and even accelerate in reverse.

"I feel it is becoming increasingly more dangerous for my expert mech to continue forward at a higher pace." The expert pilot spoke. "The enemy must be nearby if my intuition hasn't steered me wrong. I don't know the precise location. It will take too much time to conduct a careful search."

"I know." Ves said. "Let's work together, then. The detection methods of the Phobos are pretty good, but I'm not sure they will be effective here, especially when they have to remain entirely passive."

"Then how should we locate the hidden enemy? Should I activate the Geist System and send out the fiends?"

Ves shook his head. "That won't be necessary. I will connect my companion spirit with the Phobos. He is pretty sensitive and he can sense energies and detect signs of life from a respectable distance. Proceed forward."

The invisible Phobos accelerated forward yet again, but this time Blinky had partially descended on the powerful machine and was using all of the senses he could marshal to detect anything unusual!

The Phobos changed his direction upwards and to the left along the way. Though Venerable Zimro felt increasingly tenser as if he was about to fly into the maw of a gigantic beast, he suppressed his fears and continued to pilot his machine forward.

"Stop." Ves commanded.

The stealthed expert mech stopped accelerating and only slightly tried to arrest his current forward momentum.

The machine tried to do this as gently as possible because even Venerable Zimro could tell there was a hidden enemy starship within a kilometer from his machine!

This was awfully close when it came to space operations!

Ves' expression turned a lot graver this time. "Your hunches did not lead you astray this time, Zimro. I can feel them. There are dozens of living organisms serving aboard an unusual starship that is clearly under active stealth. The closer your expert mech drifts to their coordinates, the clearer I can sense their lives. It is truly amazing that you have been able to lead us to them without possessing any solid proof or traces."

Though Zimro felt proud for receiving validation from the person he looked up to the most, he still had a mission to complete.

"I am ready to deploy my friends on this hidden starship." He said with a sharper edge in his tone. "Can you give me an estimation of her size and the species who built her? I will be able to coordinate the actions of my fiends more effectively if I know what style of alien vessel that we are supposed to sabotage this time."

This request caused Ves to look troubled again.

"Sir?"

"I heard you, Zimro. While I find it hard to believe what my senses are telling me, the species that are crewing the ship that is hiding in front of us is a little more special this time. If my judgment is correct, they are part of a major alien race of the Red Ocean that our clan has yet to meet."

That caused Zimro to feel even less at ease with this situation. "Which race?"

"The Arche, known as the sneakiest turtle-like aliens of the Red Ocean!"