The Mech Touch

5857 Servitude

From the moment Ves gave birth to the ancestral spirit known as Caramond Perle, he had set off a chain of events that changed the fate of the Dominion of Man forever.

His decision to tie the newly created spiritual product to the Dominion of Man was already bad enough.

What truly caused the powerful dreadnought to irrevocably abandon her prior fate and embark on a completely different future was the decision to tie the Spark Reactor into the process!

No amount of words could describe how reckless and ill-

thought Ves had acted when he attempted to replace his tried-and-true Blood Pact with the highly speculative Bloodfire Pact.

The good news was that the basic theory of this much more powerful variation of a regular Blood Pact held up in reality.

Substituting lifeblood for fire energy worked out far better than Ves expected. Pretty much every section of the enormous hull of the Dominion of Man coursed with fire by the time the Spark Reactor generated energies at full capacity!

Yet the side effects were far greater as well. Ves had become so fixated on the state of Caramond and the conditions of the so-called Super Brain that he scarcely wondered what had happened to the Dread Marines assigned to guard the Brain Trust.

Just because the illusionary flames had faded from their tall and imposing Dread Armors did not mean that the refinement process had ended.

During the initial transformation of the Dominion of Man, the entire vessel had been symbolically lit aflame.

Many new and unfamiliar aspects emerged.

Some acted like seeds that still needed a lot of nurturing before they could bloom into flowers.

Others only occurred briefly and faded when the flames had subsided.

More had begun to stick around.

One of the more consequential aspects to the crew was that each of them somehow resonated with the Dominion of Man, especially when the vessel was being refined by the Spark Reactor!

Each of the fleeters who became affected by this mysterious phenomenon had been given a choice by the ship they served for a number of months or years.

The fleeters who resonated particularly well with the Dominion of Man were plentiful.

They generally fell into several categories.

First were the troopers who donned Dread Armors. The famed armors were far greater than mere suits of combat armor. Through a mysterious production process that enabled them to contain a miniscule portion of the living spark's power, each of these empowered pieces of gear had transcended their physical limitations.

The marines who worked hard and earned the qualifications to equip themselves with the most powerful infantry gear in the Red Ocean developed a huge attachment to them without fail.

Despite the absence of neural interfaces that enabled them to develop a mental connection with their powerful equipment, the troopers always developed a close relationship with their individual Dread Armors.

Since the Dread Armors could be regarded as extensions of the Dominion of Man, the marines who played such a crucial role in projecting the strength of the enormous warship all received the offer to become a part of the ship they served with pride.

The ship… recognized them. The Dread Marines felt more valued than ever. Each of them became beset by illusions of possible futures if they chose to make the fateful decision to form a pact with the living vessel.

They imagined themselves growing stronger by getting refined by the temperate but potentially deadly flames of the Spark Reactor.

They envisioned growing strong enough to punch through bulkheads and release fire from their mouths.

They conjured up glimpses of more distant futures where they had become so in tune with the Dominion of Man that they outlived anyone else due to the fire coursing through their veins.

Over 90 percent of the Dread Marines accepted this offer within seconds after they realized what it entailed.

The remainder took a bit longer, but they accepted anyway as they could not imagine going back to their mundane and forgettable lives after they missed this opportunity.

Only 1 percent of the Combat Marines possessed enough discipline, external attachments and stubbornness to cling to their original oaths.

The fact that so few Dread Marines surrendered to the Dominion of Man was a testament to the latter's ability to convince people to forsake everything in favor of unending service.

Unfortunately for the fire-blessed capital ship, she was not able to reach out to the other ratings and officers that served on the same vessel.

The hazard suits and more conventional combat armor worn by the crew lacked the tiny sparks of fire that tied them to the Spark Reactor.

This was why only a part of the crew outside of the Dread Marines managed to resonate with the living warship.

The ones who resonated with the Dominion of Man to a sufficient degree tended to be those who put serious effort into their rituals, those who served the longest aboard the dreadnought and those who possessed the greatest affection towards the magnificent vessel.

Each of them were able to get in tune with the living dreadnought a lot easier than others.

Though the heat radiating from every direction around them did not convey any concrete words, each of these people instinctively understood the meaning of the silent request.

The Dominion of Man needed them. The dreadnought desired their service. The ship somehow came alive, and possessed enough intelligence to understand the necessity of requiring mortal servants.

The living dreadnought did not attempt to deceive the spacers within her reach. The vessel plainly made it clear that she expected her minions to serve her until death, and maybe even beyond if that was possible.

Accepting this deal, this pact would have life-changing consequences to those that received this fire-blessed offer.

Though the Dominion of Man had to struggle a lot more in order to present her contract to all of these crew members, many of them ultimately agreed to form a pact that would change their lives forever.

In the span of a few minutes, the Dominion of Man turned into a nexus of many new but promising connections. The living spark hidden inside the Spark Reactor turned into the center of an immense web of pacts with loyal and dedicated crew members.

It did not matter whether they had families that they needed to get back to when they ended their tours.

It did not matter whether they had greater ambitions or wanted to serve elsewhere after they had padded their resumes with a tour aboard one of the most powerful warships of the Red Fleet.

It did not matter whether they surrendered their autonomy and became beholden to a living warship as opposed to their regular chain of command.

Modeled after the initial Bloodfire Pact, fire energy was the medium that tied all of these 'Bloodfire servants' together.

Even now, their bodies continue to experience greater heat than usual!

The difference was that none of them experienced any discomfort anymore. A few of the servants were sensitive enough to understand that their bodies were slowly being refined, but it was not quite clear what they were turning into. Naturally, none of them felt bothered that they had lost control over the evolution of their bodies.

Once the Red Fleet understood the full magnitude of all of these permanent changes, it did not take much imagination to figure out that most people would not react well to these disturbing actions!

However, nobody who cared about these issues was aware of what had happened at the time.

The newly emerged Bloodfire servants did not express any overt signs that they had become beholden to the Dominion of Man.

Each of them were able to sense their fellow kin from the moment they formed their pacts. They silently nodded to each other before resuming their duties with utmost attention.

This was because each of them had become aware of the growing distress of their new master.

The Dominion of Man had come under threat.

The foe was not an ancient phase whale or a treacherous force comprised of human mechs and warships.

The adversary was a lot more powerful and abstract this time!

Once the fire energy released by the Spark Reactor no longer demanded everyone's attention, more and more people started to feel an enormous buildup of danger above their heads.

Storm clouds had begun to gather at an accelerated rate, especially when the dreadnought initially burst into flames!

It was as if a mysterious switch had been flipped that somehow activated a turbo mode that amplified the storm clouds!

The sight was completely illogical. How could storm clouds made out of liquid water drops remain cohesive in the void of space?

The water drops should have frozen into ice a long time ago, yet they behaved as if they were part of a heavy storm cloud on a terrestrial planet.

The fact that the gathering storm clouds disturbed the ambient E energies and possessed an oppressive psychic component clued many people into the fact that it was far from an ordinary phenomenon!

Previously, the storm clouds already looked ominous enough to look as if they could pose a real threat against one of the most powerful warships in the Red Ocean.

The activation of the Spark Reactor had somehow agitated the tribulation storm to the point where it grew a lot stronger than before!

The storm clouds occupied so much at this time that they stretched on for thousands of kilometers!

A few of the escort vessels that happened to be patrolling fairly close quickly increased their distance from the Dominion of Man as a precaution.

None of them wanted to tempt fate by attracting the ire from the heavens!

Inside the transformed Brain Trust, Ves tried his best to determine whether the 5 Alpha Plus Brains had truly merged to replicate the capabilities of a mythical Super Brain with an effective genetic aptitude of S.

Ves belatedly realized that he never fully explored what exactly made the Chosen Human special during his early career.

His biography never mentioned anything specific about the initial piloting experiences of the man who advanced to the rank of god pilot at record speed.

Was he able to process ten times as much data as conventional talents?

Did he gain a sense of intuition that was so scarily effective that it bordered on precognition?

Did he break through as easily as breathing air?

Ves did not know any details, and that hindered him from confirming without a shadow of a doubt that he had succeeded in breaking past a limit that had only been done by a single god pilot once before.

His inability to empirically verify the results of his experiment was frustrating beyond belief!

"Ves! You need to see this! The storm clouds forming about the Dominion of Man… they've changed. A shape has formed that looks like the face of an intelligent alien species!"

"WHAT?!"

Ves retreated from his tunnel vision and turned around to observe the projected feed of one of the exterior visual sensors of the Dominion of Man.

His heart froze as soon as he saw the contours of an alien face.

"This… this is impossible."

Pure power radiated from this face. What was remarkable was that it felt distinctly different from the rest of the tribulation storm!

There was only one possible explanation for this unexpected turn of events.

Somehow, a mysterious but extremely powerful alien entity managed to hijack the tribulation storm from an immense distance!

Given that the shape of this new and completely unfamiliar alien species did not match any of the known alien species from the Red Ocean suggested that the origin of this alien powerhouse was extragalactic!

That begged the question how the powerful figure managed to hijack something as powerful and domineering as a tribulation storm in the first place.

From the moment Ves locked eyes with the projected face's eyes, he instantly felt as if invisible laser beams pinned onto his Spirituality!

He somehow knew what had happened.

He went too far this time. He violated a taboo that he shouldn't have. His act had been so egregious that it somehow created an opening that enabled a powerful alien deity to invite himself over to this tribulation storm!

"We're… we're in big trouble this time."

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