The Mech Touch

5957 Chimera Base

Ketis continued to contemplate the information provided by Vice Director Maria Abselon.

Task Force Solus wouldn't be able to complete its objectives as quickly as she previously anticipated.

This was bad because it would keep her and the Larkinsons assigned for his mission away from the expeditionary fleet for a longer period of time.

However, Reticula Corein V was a nice change of pace for the soldiers who fought against the alien raiding fleets.

The abundance of hostile exobeasts gave every mech pilot plenty of chances to polish their skills, spill more blood and temper themselves in actual combat.

The fact that the Emperor Tree kept sending over beast wave after beast wave provided the defenders with much more opportunities to accrue combat experience than if they stayed with the expeditionary fleet!

Even if most battles took place on land, the exobeasts and mutated beasts that displayed unrelenting aggression towards the humans possessed a lot of diverse strengths and abilities!

Each mutated beast was unique. Their strength may be weaker than expert mechs on average, but their abilities were often strange and confounding.

One mutated beast possessed the ability to speed up its movement as well as the movement of nearby beasts by a factor of 5.

That creature was responsible for breaking multiple azure energy shields as well as a physical wall the other day!

Another mutated beast spewed out firebombs at a very long range. Each time a firebomb struck a target, it exploded with enough power to cripple a Monster Slayer in close proximity!

The fact that there were always at least a couple of mutated beasts with highly unpredictable abilities in every beast wave made it difficult for the defenders to avoid losses.

Plenty of mechs had already incurred significant damage. If not for the fact that Task Force Solus was accompanied by support ships that were able to fabricate or repair mechs at a modest scale, Ketis would have been forced to request reinforcements from the expeditionary fleet.

That did not help much when the mutated beasts managed to inflict enough damage to breach a cockpit and kill a mech pilot in an instant.

Her heart weighed heavier when she thought about the clansmen who died on an unimportant battlefield.

There was much greater honor in making the ultimate sacrifice in a battle against the native aliens.

Ketis could not afford to be softhearted in her first true independent command. She knew this was not an opportunity, but also a test. She needed to prove

The situation was not sustainable, though. Until Chimera Base managed to construct enough defensive works, the beast waves would continue to inflict material damage onto the mechs.

As Ketis continued to talk with Vice Director Abselon in her capacity as the commanding officer, she inquired about the studies conducted on the carcasses of all of the defeated beasts.

"We have far too many beast carcasses than we know what to do with, ma'am. We have decided that it is best to throw many of them back onto distant forests and plains. This will help to preserve the ecosystem and divert many living exobeasts away from the domination range of the Emperor Tree."

Ketis nodded in understanding. "That is a clever response. What of the mutated beasts?"

"The carcasses of the mutated beasts offer a wealth of information, though not much of our discoveries are truly new. What we are particularly interested in is how exposure to Solus Gas affects their physical states and their self-

evolution trajectories. The gas is not toxic to the indigenous organisms in lower concentrations, but it can still inflict damage. One of our highest priorities at this time is to discern whether the mutated beasts can adapt to Solus Gas exposure and develop an immunity towards its harmful effects. This will give us a greater understanding of the Emperor Tree and other calamity beasts."

"Have you discovered anything important about Solus Gas that we do not already know?"

"We have made a number of interesting discoveries. We have discovered that Solus Gas is organic in nature. It is likely generated by at least one organism, but whether the creature is alive or dead remains uncertain. We have initiated surveys of the underground environment, but the presence of underground Solus Gas deposits and channels makes it difficult to maintain contact with our probes."

"Can you send down manned probes?"

"We have tried that, but there are dangers underneath the ground that have posed a threat against them. This planet is not simple. I fear that the source of all of the Solus Gas produced on this planet may be of a greater origin than we anticipated."

That caused Ketis to grow concerned. "Is it a phase whale? Do we need to evacuate some of our more sensitive and irreplaceable assets on the surface?"

"We cannot say what the source may be, but we do not think it is a phase whale, ma'am. There would be more phasewater present on this planet if this was the case. There are multiple sources of danger on this planet, but the threat from below should not be acute. It is more reasonable to guard against the Emperor Tree over other threats. Calamity plants are known to be more passive compared to their beast counterparts, but they are also known to lash out much more violently than usual when they perceive any intruders in their territory. In hindsight, Chimera Base is placed too close to the location of the calamity tree. We would not have attracted so many beast waves if we planted our base 50 to 100 kilometers away."

Ketis crossed her arms. "None of the minor deposits that are located further away release as much Solus Gas. It may be safer for us to occupy those sites, but we will not be able to harvest enough resources to satisfy our needs. Aside from that, provoking the Emperor Tree to this extent is helping us clean up the surrounding region of exobeasts in advance. Our mech pilots are also obtaining a large amount of practice from the daily intensive battles. It should not be long before the expert candidates assigned to our task force will have their chance to break through, especially with the help of my husband. They only need to participate in a battle that is more serious than a routine base defense."

Both Taon Melin and Lanie Larkinson had thrown themselves into the thick of fighting.

The Zeal's semi-modular guns roared with thunderous power as they shelled and pulverized scores of exobeasts with every attack salvo!

The customized Lucid Rage often darted in and out to defeat and disorient specific exobeasts, causing chain reactions that caused the beast waves to become more disarrayed.

Both expert candidates and their living mechs managed to improve their skills in ways that were not possible when fighting battles in space. The more grounded combat environment gave Taon and Lanie an opportunity to return to basics and immerse themselves in the fights.

Ketis' hands twitched. She longed to go down to the surface and swing her Bloodsinger against the horde of exobeasts that fought to the death in order to topple Chimera Base.

Alas, part of being a commanding officer was knowing when to keep her head cool. She deliberately kept her distance from the battlefield and stayed behind on the Wild Torch in order to avoid the temptation to kill the exobeasts in person.

"I… have a suggestion." Maria Abselon spoke.

"Explain."

"It is not necessary, but our research teams should be able to speed up our effort of understanding the Emperor Tree if we can obtain a sample of its body. We can learn a wealth of relevant information if a team of mechs can move closer to the major Solus Gas deposit and obtain a sample of the giant tree's root, trunk, branches and leaves. Our researchers can already make progress if they are able to obtain one of the samples, but the more we have, the greater our ability to deduce the Emperor Tree's strengths and weaknesses."

A confrontation against the Emperor Tree was not set in stone. Removing it would allow the Larkinsons to set up a much larger harvesting site at the major Solus Gas deposit.

This should yield enough Solus Gas to enable the mass production of mechs that incorporated this material as a means to counter detection and interfere with targeting!

However, Ketis also saw the Emperor Tree as a potential ally. The calamity plant may be hostile towards humans at the moment, but if the Larkinsons could prove that they did not have any intentions of killing every calamity beast and destroying the planet's ecosystem, they might be able to form a compromise with the calamity plant.

Before that could happen, the Larkinsons still needed to understand the Emperor Tree first.

"I will instruct Joshua to form a plan to gather the samples you request." Ketis decided. "An elite squad of mobile mechs will accompany his Everchanger. Even if they fail to retrieve any samples, the data gathered during this attempt should serve as a decent consolation prize."

The two women talked a bit further about the affairs related to their current mission. Reticula Corein V had thoroughly captured their imagination. Just the mysteries surrounding Solus Gas compelled them to persist in their investigation.

Once the meeting came to an end, Ketis stood alone in her design lab. She reviewed the information she learned and went over her decisions to determine whether she had made any mistakes.

"Is it too soon for me to pit my husband against the Emperor Tree?" She questioned herself. "He has grown so much, but the Everchanger continues to hold him back. It will be difficult for his living mech to pose a threat to the Emperor Sword without the Scarlet Ember."

It was difficult to make a proper strength comparison because calamity beasts worked differently from other enemy types. They showed a huge amount of variation in strength and abilities.

Most calamity beasts possessed advantages that matched or in certain cases exceeded that of ace mechs.

However, they also possessed weaknesses and shortcomings that caused them to be no better than expert mechs, especially when they had evolved relatively recently.

The good news was that the Age of Dawn had only just begun. Less than two years had passed, so most calamity beasts did not benefit from a lot of accumulation.

The story would definitely be much different a decade or a century later, but for now these outrageously talented and lucky beasts were still in a relatively controllable range.

Despite all of the uncertainty, Ketis did not allow herself to coddle her husband.

Venerable Joshua Larkinson was an expert pilot in his own right. His resonance strength may have grown rapidly through shifty means, but he fought and worked hard to make sure he lived up to his newfound power!

"It is just…"

As a mech designer who was familiar with Joshua's machine, she understood quite clearly how extensively the Everchanger fell behind the times.

Third order living mech or not, Ves originally designed and fabricated him in a time when the Phasewater Generation was still a stranger to the Larkinson Clan.

While the use of Unending alloy unintentionally turned the Everchanger into a hyper mech before such a classification even existed, the lack of transphasic components severely hampered his combat effectiveness against the alien raiding fleets!

Aside from that, the overall specifications and hardware limitations of the Everchanger were mostly optimized for a low-tier expert pilot.

Ketis had tried her best to raise the hero expert mech's upper limits, but there was only so much she could do to uplift a masterwork mech that was not of her own design.

Only Ves and Gloriana could do the Everchanger justice.

Just as she was about to return to her design work, she received a call from a familiar friend.

Her lips curled upwards.

"I wonder what he wants from me this time. Do you have any idea, Sharpie?"

"Sharpie! Sharpie! Heaven! Heaven!"

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