The Mech Touch

As much as he did not like it, Ves understood that Vivian Tsai was correct.

Neither the Larkinson Clan nor the other partners of the Golden Skull Alliance possessed the research capabilities to adequately figure out the archeship.

Perhaps Ves might be able to make good progress if he studied the captured alien stealth vessel in person, but the opportunity costs of doing so were too great.

He was a mech designer! If he wanted to advance to Master anytime soon, he could not afford to squander his time on rummaging through a complex alien ship.

This was why it made sense to outsource this job to a more competent partner.

The problem was that reasonably intact archeships were both rare and highly valuable. They were so elusive that only the Red Two and perhaps a couple of first-class powers managed to get their hands on similar alien vessels.

Just as Ves intended to teach in his Frontier Wisdom course, trust was always in short supply.

If he handed the captured archeship over to a bigger player, would Ves and his clan actually be able to receive the research results and materials that they were due?

"We can't turn the archeship over to the Red Two." Ves immediately decided. "The fleeters are the most qualified people to research the archeship, and the mechers are not too far behind. However, they probably already have a bunch of these ships in their possession, so they won't particularly value our contribution. I also don't trust these guys to share all of their findings with us. There is nothing we can do if they embezzle our stuff."

Vivian could not say anything about that, so she offered a few alternatives. "Both the Hex Federation and the Colonial Federation of Davute possess the adequate research infrastructure required to study the archeship. However, I don't expect these second-rate colonial states to attain quick results due to their inherent limitations. It may take five to twenty years for their best researchers to decipher the working principles of archemetal and electronic resonance."

This was just an estimate on her part. It might take a shorter or longer amount of time to attain these crucial results.

"What if we leave the archeship in the care of a first-class power?" Ves threw out. "I'm not talking about an entire state, but merely a large enough organization."

"A proper first-class research group will be able to produce meaningful results faster. This is especially the case if it is allowed to reach out to other research institutions to tap into the expertise of more qualified researchers."

This was how the bigger players usually handled situations like this. Ves favored this solution a lot more than the other alternatives, but the problem was that he needed to find a trustworthy first-class partner to hand over this important responsibility.

He briefly thought about the Eden Institute of Business & Technology. After he had completed his high-profile inaugural lecture, he had managed to deepen his integration into its academic community.

While he developed a lot of respect towards Master Laila Devos, he was not certain whether he could trust the Devos Ancient Clan that she ultimately answered to. What if the snobby Terrans chose to renege on the agreement anyway?

This matter demanded a lot more careful consideration. Ves needed to explore these options at a later date. For now, he was eager to step foot inside the archeship.

"Lead me to our prize."

Ves and Vivian strode towards the Small Oven. They made sure they had fully enclosed their protective suits before they strode into an artificial vacuum-filled space.

It was far too troublesome to pump in air every time the Small Oven took in a new starship or sent one out again. This was why the entire space remained in vacuum.

Engineers and shipbuilding crews already started to crawl across the complex exterior of the archeship. They apparently figured out how to deactivate the alien vessel's stealth vessel, because her multi-colored hull was plainly visible to the naked eye.

"She's beautiful." Vivian spoke over the communication channel with a tone of pure admiration. "There is little that we know about the arche, but their shipbuilding tradition is completely different from anything else we have encountered. Not even the aliens of the Milky Way have developed anything comparable in their tech base."

A lot of basic technologies were rather common and universal. Pretty much every technology-oriented race inevitably started to discover and make use of electricity, alloys and warships in similar ways.

It was quite rare for alien races to step outside of established technology and come up with truly new and unique inventions.

Luminar crystal technology was one such example. Archetech was another case of signature alien tech.

As Ves and Vivian moved closer to the alien hull, they were able to gain a much better view of the alien ship.

The archeship looked like an elongated oval egg that was surrounded by patterned alien metals

The coloration of the hull plating ranged from dark bronze to rusty green copper. The primary reason why the surface of the alien ship was so inconsistent was because the arche dynamically produced it by combining a lot of random exotics together.

One of the more confounding traits of archetech was that it did not impose too high demands on consistency. As long as the arche threw in enough valuable materials with the right properties, the aliens didn't care whether a block of archemetal was a little too heavy or lacked a bit of power.

Archeships were essentially machines that were made out of a large collection of semi-ad-hoc archemetal parts.

Just like how no two puelmer homeships were the same, archeships also exhibited large individual differences in material composition and performance because their makers did not value consistency.

"Every archeship is a unique work of art." Vivian aptly described. "They are products made with a collection of individual alien shipbuilders who all developed their own style of constructing starships."

The archeship was not only colorful, but also covered with lots of patterns. Ves knew that this was key to the principles behind archemetal. Without all of the internal patterns that functioned like circuitry, it was impossible for them to evoke and respond to electronic resonance.

He could see the clear parallels between luminar crystal technology and archetech. Both alien tech bases preferred to construct large, solid objects of matter and carve out internal patterns that functioned like circuitry.

This contrasted sharply with conventional technology that essentially consisted of a lot of tiny components that were never meant to function by themselves.

The latter was a lot easier to work with. It took a lot less effort to repair a broken product, and it was also easy to modify or upgrade it by swapping a few components.

In contrast, whole pieces of luminar crystals and archetech were not as malleable. Their relative lack of modularity meant that it was a lot more difficult to repair or upgrade them if their current versions were inadequate.

It was a lot more common to discard the unwanted pieces and make use of brand-new replacements that were quite expensive to build!

The cost efficiency of archetech was clearly not as good, but the benefits may be worth all of the added complications!

"Even though this archeship is just a well-equipped scouting vessel to the aliens, her physical properties are not inferior to a warship of a slightly larger class." Vivian commented as she came close enough to study the individual patterns that caused the hull to acquire a lot of depth texture. "If we can learn and master the principles behind archetech and archemetal, we can design and produce a paradigm-shifting series of starships that are far more resilient and suitable for combat than our current collection of vessels!"

Ves was just as excited as Vivian to be honest. Archetech could be used to produce more than enormous metal constructions like starsihps.

It could potentially be used to construct much tougher and damage-resistant mechs!

What Ves valued the most out of archetech was that there was a drastic lack of moving parts. Entire functions that previously relied on delicate circuitry and other sensitive parts could be entirely phased out with a single solid block of archemetal!

Of course, making mechs out of archemetal also came with plenty of downsides.

For one, the Larkinson Clan needed to adopt an entirely new set of industrial infrastructure in order to produce and maintain archemetal products.

The mech designers, fabricators and maintenance crews needed to go through a lot of additional training in order to become familiar with the alien principles of this completely new tech base.

Just as with biotechnology, Ves was reluctant to convert his entire clan to a tech base that diverged from the common human standard. Society generally imposed a lot of penalties to groups that tried to be more nonconformist.

"Let's not put the cart before the horse." He spoke to Vivian. "We first need to figure out how archetech works before we can explore this tech base further."

"I understand."

Once they were done with admiring the complex exterior of the archeship, they stepped off the catwalk and floated over to an open hatch.

The good news was that the interior of the archeship was not designed to accommodate the small and short puelmers.

The overall dimensions of the hallways and compartments were designed to accommodate the exaggerated sizes that the more developed archeshells could reach.

Since a typical adult arche was roughly as tall as a human, this meant that there was a lot of additional room.

Several different teams of scientists and engineers had already boarded the captured vessels.

The varied colors and markings on their hazard suits showed that every alliance partner had dispatched their own R&D personnel to the incredibly valuable archeship.

Even if they lacked the capabilities to learn how to reproduce archetech by themselves, it was always useful for them to collect a lot of data in order to increase their understanding of one of their enemies.

This would not be the last time an archeship stalked their fleet!

A detailed study of the archeship would allow the specialists to develop new sensor systems or tweak their existing ones that were much better equipped to detect the distinct alien vessels under active stealth.

As Ves and Vivian passed by dozens of researchers who were engrossed in their individual examinations, he eventually reached a central compartment that was already occupied by a bunch of familiar people.

"Hihihi! Look at my shell, Clixie! I'm a turtle now! Don't I look cute?!"

The suited form of Andraste ran around while carrying a large round wok on her back. The equally suited form of Clixie playfully chased after the girl and pounced the solid metal pan, which almost caused Andraste to trip!

"Miaow!"

Meanwhile, Gloriana held Marvaine in her arms as she started to point out interesting pieces of exposed archetech.

"What does this big bowl do, mama?" The suited boy asked.

"That is what the turtle aliens use to operate their devices. Instead of using conventional buttons and control panels like humans, the aliens directly connect their big shells into these form-fitting depressions. Can you see how the surface of this bowl is adjustable? This will help turtle aliens of different sizes attain a comfortable fit while they are connected to the archeship."

"Can we take control of the ship without a turtle shell?"

"It is possible, but difficult." Gloriana answered. "Lucky and the Black Cats are reluctantly able to control the basic functions of the archeship by relying on a combination of electronic resonance and careful manipulation of backup controls. It is enough to safely bring the archeship to the Diligent Ovenbird, but not enough to command the ship as well as her original owners. Oh, look! Your father has finally come back!"

Andraste immediately interrupted her game with Clixie and ran up to embrace her father.

"Papa! I missed you! I was so scared that something would happen."

"Haha, I'm completely fine, pumpkin. See? The aliens didn't hurt me at all. Our flagship is much tougher than she looks."

As Ves embraced her daughter, he looked around but failed to spot his oldest daughter.

"Where is Aurelia?"

"She is keeping Lucky company in another compartment of this ship." Gloriana answered. "You should visit your cat. I can't speak cat language, but even I can tell that he has become considerably disgruntled towards you. I would be careful about approaching him if I was you, Ves."