The Mech Touch

As the fighting at the frontlines intensified, both sides employed new technologies and tactics in order to gain an advantage over their opponents.

Starfighters, phasefighters, pulse space suppressors and ever more sophisticated transphasic missiles all resulted in greater results, but also increased casualties and misery.

Both the humans and the native aliens were locked in a conflict where neither side wanted to stop until they either managed to wipe out their adversaries, or gained enough dominance to secure their own survival.

The Red Tide Offensive directly raised the stakes. With the 1st defensive band gone and the 2nd defensive band moments away from total collapse, the 3rd defensive band had become the new focal point of the conflict between the opposing civilizations.

Fortunately for red humanity, the 3rd defensive band was much more fortified than the previous two bands.

The major powers invested much more manpower, resources and assets to secure every major node along this crucial defensive line. The native alien offensive had also slowed down just enough due to meeting stiff resistance in the doomed 1st and 2nd defensive bands.

As news about the struggles in the 3rd defensive band continued to circulate over the galactic net, Ves faced his own struggles well away from the frontlines.

Although he did not have to risk his life like the brave men and women who were putting themselves in the crosshairs of deadly transphasic alien weapons, his decisions could easily lead to the deaths of millions or even billions of people in the future.

This kind of pressure was enough to push many mech designers to their knees, but to Ves, it was just another work day.

Many of his works had already affected the lives of trillions of people. From the moment his Ylvainan mechs produced wondrous results during the Sand War by accurately identifying and eliminating the very difficult to detect sandman admirals, he had become accustomed to influencing the lives of entire sectors with his works.

"Speaking of admirals, how is my liaison from the Red Fleet doing these days?" Ves wondered.

Ever since he returned from his latest 'business trip', he hadn't really exchanged anything substantial with his 'favorite' fleeter who he happened to know from the days before entering the Red Ocean.

This was rather odd. Ves maintained plenty of contact with the two liaisons from the Red Association. He was currently collaborating with them on the crucial Swarm Project at the moment!

In contrast, Ves did not really maintain any active cooperation with the Red Fleet at the moment. He would have thought the fleeters wanted to follow up on transforming their other dreadnoughts into Carmine vessels.

He decided to arrange a meeting between himself and Captain Zonrad Reze.

The latter had no objections to a personal meeting. Ves soon found himself teleported aboard the Babylon Excavator.

Ves took in the atmosphere of the fleeter reconnaissance cruiser as he strode across the corridors.

Few people were moving about at this time, which was not unusual as the ship had been parked in high orbit of New Constantinople VIII for a long time.

Ves could easily sense that the crew members were not content at the moment. Frustration, impatience and unwillingness welled up inside their spirits.

They were fleeters. A war was being waged at the frontlines. They would all rather have their ship get sent to the frontlines or even deep behind enemy lines doing something that could make a difference.

None of them wanted to remain stuck in this safe Terran star system in the hinterland of human space while babysitting a tier 3 galactic citizen.

Of course, it was not as if the fleeters disrespected Ves and his many accomplishments, but it was in their nature as soldiers to yearn for more action.

Not only were they missing out on the fights that could determine whether red humanity would survive or go extinct, they were also missing a lot of opportunities to earn merits and work towards their promotions.

As their colleagues stationed on other warships began to confront the native aliens and earn merits, recognition and glory in the process, the fleeters assigned to the Babylon Excavator continued to remain shakled to a mech designer who was prohibited from coming anywhere close to the frontlines.

There was no way for people to climb up the ranks faster than to actively participate in combat missions!

As their colleagues stationed on other warships began to confront the native aliens and earn merits, recognition and glory in the process, the fleeters assigned to the Babylon Excavator continued to remain shakled to a mech designer who was prohibited from coming anywhere close to the frontlines.

How frustrating!

Ves deeply sympathised with the plight of these spacers, but that did not necessarily mean he was willing to speak up on their behalf and recommend that the Babylon Excavator should fulfill her purpose as a reconnaissance cruiser.

He wasn't stupid.

The Red Cabal and the Cosmopolitan Movement were more than happy to chop off his head. Without enough military deterrence, a native alien strike force could drop by at any time in an attempt to pull off a decapitation strike!

Ves was quite happy with the current situation. Now that his Larkinson Clan had yet to raise a proper first-class mech force, he still remained dependent on the mechers and to a lesser extent the fleeters to protect him from the enemies and other malcontents.

He soon reached a work compartment where Sigrund in his human guise was working on a software program for a purpose that Ves was not able to discern. He was not only busy with finishing a few lines of code, but also supervised a team of other fleeter software engineers.

"I will be there in a minute." The captain of the ship called from his desk. "There is a tight deadline on this bug fixing attempt."

"Take your time."

"It will not take long."

The RF captain quickly completed his code and issued instructions to his subordinates to complete the remaining work tasks.

"Follow me." Sigrund curtly said as he stood up and moved to the exit.

The two moved through the corridors and headed up a few decks before they reached the entrance of a secure meeting chamber.

Ves and Sigrund went through a mandatory security check before they were allowed to enter.

As the double hatches slid shut, the pair sat down on opposite sides of a plain metal desk.

In order to be able to talk about confidential matters, both of them made sure to activate their respective jamming devices and other sources of interference.

Neither of them were under the illusion that these measures were completely effective, but it was the best they could employ for the time being.

"You contacted me because the Red Fleet has not approached you for anything as of late, is that correct?" The fleeter captain began.

"That's right. Is there something wrong? Did you guys suddenly not like me anymore?"

"That is not it, Ves." The disguised hybrid sandman admiral and AI said as he shook his human head. "We are… far too preoccupied with other matters at the moment. The Red Tide Offensive has put us all under great pressure. The premature collapse of the 1st and 2nd defensive bands has disrupted much of our war planning. We are scrambling to deploy our Starfighter Corps as soon as possible, and the timeline of our Auxiliary Warship Program is also being compressed."

Ves was familiar with the former, but not the latter.

"Wait, the Auxiliary Warship Program is the scheme where you would allow second-raters and third-raters to field their own warships, is that right?"

"Yes. Not much visible development has taken place at this time as it takes much longer to construct the hulls and train the crews in their use. Starfighters are much smaller, easier to mass produce and faster to gain proficiency in, so our current focus is to deploy enough of them to negate the numbers advantage that the native aliens are relying on to overwhelm our defenses. As long as the 3rd defensive band holds out long enough, we can begin to roll out our first second-class and first-class auxiliary warships. They may lack many of the features that make our own warships so powerful, but their scale advantages alone should be more than enough to even the odds against most alien adversaries."

Ves looked impressed. The fleeters not only put serious thought into the Auxiliary Warship Program, but also had a clear idea in mind how they should contribute to the war effort.

"How long do we have to wait until auxiliary warship fleets begin to reinforce the middle and lower zones on a larger scale?" Ves inquired. "From what I have heard, the fighting at the upper zones is really intense, but you guys are mostly successful at managing to keep the native aliens at bay. It is the middle and the lower zones that we are experiencing mixed results. The native aliens occasionally send out their stronger fleets to bully the humans who are not as well equipped."

"We are aware of that. I have heard that we are taking more active countermeasures against this phenomenon, but it is difficult to prevent every tragedy from occurring. This is one of the reasons why we are eager to press auxiliary warships into service. Still, they are so large and require so much work on multiple levels that they can only truly be put into service a year later."

"A year?! That is way too long! The 5th defensive band may already fall by the time those auxiliary warships can arrive to make a difference!"

"This is just a loose estimate of mine." Sigrund raised his hand. "We are still doing our best to accelerate the construction of warship hulls and so on. We may be able to field the first cohesive fleets of auxiliary warships two to three months earlier."

That was still not ideal, but it was better than nothing.

"Well, seeing as auxiliary warships are none of my business, let's get back on topic." Ves proposed. "How is it going with the Dominion of Man? You fleeters sounded so enthusiastic about your very first Carmine dreadnought, but even if you needed a lot of time to study her extensive transformation, you should have made a decision by now on whether you want to upgrade another dreadnought. Why haven't I heard anything from you about this in the past few months?"

Captain Reze's expression drooped. "To be honest, we were on track to follow up on this matter with you, but… an unexpected problem has occurred."

"What sort of problem?"

"The kind where an easy solution is not available."

"Captain, what is going on, exactly?"

"The problem lies with the Dominion of Man. You see, just before the outbreak of the Red Tide Offensive, we secretly transferred the Carmine dreadnought to Bridgehead One for reasons that you should be familiar with. Then the Red Tide Offensive kicked off at the same time six ancient phase whales unfolded a spacetime bubble around Bridgehead One."

"I see. I expected as much. It is nice to hear someone from the RF admit it, though."

"You knew?"

Ves snorted. "Half of red humanity has already guessed the truth. All but two of your precious dreadnoughts have made an appearance so far. The Dominion of Man is one of the two that had yet to show up on any of the battlefields in the border region. It is a pretty logical assumption that she got stranded in Bridgehead One. I managed to get additional confirmation when I couldn't get in touch with Furia anymore. Do you know that it is pretty easy for me to contact a lot of design spirits?"

"That is nice to know…"

"So why does the mishap involving the Dominion of Man stop you from approaching me to transform the other dreadnoughts?"

"We have yet to complete a thorough examination of all of the changes. We also lack enough information to make additional preparations that could improve the results of the next attempt. There are those among us who hate it that the Dominion of Man only received a brief amount of preparation time before undergoing her miraculous metamorphosis. We would like to increase the yield by making targeted modifications and alterations to another dreadnought, but without the latest data from the indisposed vessels, we cannot make any significant progress on this end."

"I see. Did you just consider going through without waiting for all of this extra information?"

"..."

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