The Mech Touch

"Our enemies have yet to make an overt move." Admiral Tensen said during a quick virtual meeting.

The admiral, the 5 Senior Mech Designers along with a bunch of other officers were far too busy to leave their stations and gather in a conference room.

This was why they decided to hold a virtual meeting instead. The use of wired connections and laser communication arrays should make it as secure as possible under the limited circumstances.

Captain Zonrad Reze looked thoughtful as he voiced his guess. "We have not made any efforts to hide the execution of our chosen strategy. We have laid out most of our cards on the table. The cosmopolitans most definitely have the technical capabilities to observe what we were doing in the last 9 hours. They should understand our intentions well enough to understand that time is against their side. They have little to gain by persisting in their delays. If I was in charge of their force, I would have ordered an attack much sooner."

The fact that the enemy forces declined to do so and opted to stay quiet and out of sight made no sense in a situation where the enemy possessed complete information and rational decision-making capabilities.

There were two possibilities that could explain why the enemies had yet to make the move.

The first one is that the assumption that their enemies had a clear grasp on what the expanded Bluejay Fleet was doing was false.

The second possibility was that the enemy was unable to exercise rational and efficient decision-making.

The leaders and officers of the Bluejay Fleet pretty much assumed that the second possibility was true.

"The enemy leadership is either split or incompetent." Ves grinned. "I think it makes a lot of sense. The cosmopolitans likely masterminded the effort to waylay us in transit, but they don't possess the muscle or authority to order the native aliens around. Given that it takes at least 3 greater phase lords to erect this weak spacetime bubble, I am sure that there is at least one greater phase lord left to take charge of the combined ambush force. This aged alien personality must probably be old, arrogant and set in his alien ways. Otherwise, the alien commander in chief would have heeded the warnings of his cosmopolitan collaborators and launched an attack already."

That bode fairly well for the members of the Bluejay Fleet. Although they had been warned to not underestimate their native alien enemies, it was hard for them to respect the leaders of the native alien races.

The original residents of the Red Ocean were just too underdeveloped. Their mastery of warfare was too shallow, and their long-term stagnation had made them far too complacent and slow to learn.

Not every alien leader matched this generalization, but it happened often enough to make it a safe bet.

While this was a welcome development to the Bluejay Fleet, no one dared to take this situation for granted.

"The native alien leaders may be slow to adapt, but they are not stupid." Admiral Tensen judged. "The more time passes by, the more time the cosmopolitans have spent on persuading the alien leaders to launch their assault ahead of time. We do not have any clues to tell us how soon this will happen, but we must stay fully alert and avoid deactivating large parts of our defensive works in order to perform comprehensive upgrades. The space fortress—"

"—Fort Rock." Ves interjected out of turn. "We decided to call it Fort Rock for obvious reasons."

The RA admiral silently made his displeasure at the interruption known, but continued to finish his speech. "Ahem, Fort Rock shall remain the lynchpin of our defensive strategy. Its battleship-scaled capabilities are vital in our efforts to guard against the more unorthodox attack vectors that our enemies may wish to employ. So long as it remains operational, our adversaries have little choice but to approach us in the open and assault us directly."

That was far better than the alternatives. The installation of multiple upscaled interdiction field generators and space suppression modules made the entire space around Fort Rock into a remarkably strong and stable spatial region.

Although the strong spatial effects partially reduced the effectiveness of friendly transphasic applications, they hindered their enemies even more!

It was impossible for greater phase lords to teleport straight inside and perform all of his spatial abilities at full power.

Phase lords would become progressively weaker the closer they moved to Fort Rock. That would hopefully deter the enemy champions to maintain their distance and avoid using their massive bodies as crude battering rams.

However, if a phase lord failed to heed the danger posed by Fort Rock and insisted on ramming the improvised defensive works, then the powerful alien would definitely encounter a nasty surprise!

Fort Rock also put great effort into countering infiltration through active stealth. The space fortress did not possess the space, energy and heat limitations of sub-capital starships. The mech designers and engineers stationed of the Bluejay Fleet were readily able to install large and energy-hungry sensor and scanning arrays that were constantly pulsing the surrounding space with energies.

There was a large variety of active stealth systems in existence. They each utilized different ways to mask or suppress common energy emissions.

However, none of them should be able to maintain their effectiveness after they got flooded with an abundance of scanning energies!

What was worse for the ambushers was that the mechers and fleeters were constantly improving the detection capabilities of Fort Rock.

With every passing hour, they fabricated and installed a greater quantity of higher-quality scanning equipment.

The sensor specialists had even begun to install large scanning arrays that were much more effective at longer ranges!

If the enemy forces refused to show themselves after so much time had passed, then it was better to confirm their coordinates to make sure the ambushers did not pose an acute threat.

As the virtual meeting continued to progress, the most powerful pilot among the gathering decided to make his own proposal.

"We need to increase our scouting efforts." Saint Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson said. "It is a bad idea to keep our enemies out of sight for so long. We still haven't confirmed their force composition. What if they brought more phase lords than we expected? Let me go out and scout the places that have drawn your suspicion. My Dark Zephyr is the perfect scout. My Saint Kingdom can sniff out even the smallest of pocket spaces. My living mech is faster than your scout ships and can survive any traps and ambushes that our enemies can throw at him. He is also not as easy to detect and track as other mechs or ships."

"With all due respect, your proposal is too dangerous." Admiral Tensen shook his head. "Your departure will leave us open to sudden surprise attacks. We cannot adequately defend ourselves against a greater phase lord without your ace mech acting as a deterrence and a guardian. The Dark Zephyr is also vulnerable in isolation. Ace mechs are not invincible, and if a large enough enemy fleet led by a greater phase lord is able to surround your mech all at once, you may find it impossible to retreat."

It was difficult to deny an ace pilot his wish, but Admiral Tensen was not an ordinary officer of the Red Association. He was over 2 centuries old and must have dealt with his fair share of high-and-mighty expert pilots and ace pilots.

However, Saint Tusa was not the only person who wanted to make more productive use of the Dark Zephyr.

"Let him go." Ves said as he backed his cousin up. "Saint Tusa and the Dark Zephyr specialize in evasion. It is impossible to trap them in place. We don't necessarily need their protection as much anyway. Fort Rock has already become so powerful that it can partially compensate for the absence of an ace mech. It might not serve as a good attack tool, but it is amazing at defense. We can stall any determined enemy attack long enough for the Dark Zephyr to return and lift the siege."

Several other individuals voiced their agreement to this plan. It was risky, but they all possessed enough surface understanding of the Dark Zephyr to know that the ace light skirmisher could nimbly escape from many situations that would have normally doomed other scouts.

"Your safety is on the line here, Professor Larkinson. We have all been assigned to guard you from the enemies of humankind. It is not a responsible decision to weaken your protection just so that your ace pilot can stretch his legs. You will have to bear the most severe consequences of making the wrong decision. Are you still willing to permit the Dark Zephyr to conduct solitary reconnaissance?"

Ves nodded. "I am sure. I am confident in the defenses of the Bluejay Fleet and Fort Rock. Even if I have misjudged, I can always evacuate and rendez-vous with the Dark Zephyr."

The rear admiral closed his eyes before making a firm nod. "Very well. I shall permit the Dark Zephyr to conduct reconnaissance on the nearest planetary satellites and act according to the Saint's discretion."

Tusa's projection grinned. "That is exactly what I was waiting for. I will start my scouting run straight away."

The ace pilot's projection disappeared from the virtual meeting room, leaving Ves to shrug his shoulders.

"I think he must have grown impatient after remaining on standby for almost 9 hours straight. He is not the sort of person who likes to stay in one place all of the time."

"Understandable. He is a light skirmisher specialist, after all. Staying mobile has become a compulsion to a pilot with his inclinations."

They discussed a few more important topics after that. The virtual meeting room became a lot more tense when Ves raised a controversial topic.

"I know you guys have weapons of mass destruction in your vaults." He said to the mecher and fleeter officers. "It is a necessary precaution in case the enemy does not play by the few rules that you and the native aliens have established."

"Are you suggesting that we should take them out of our vaults and deploy them preemptively at our enemies?" Admiral Tensen frowned.

"Not straight away." Ves awkwardly coughed. "I just think it would be great if we take them out of their troublesome vaults and have them ready to launch as soon as the enemy has escalated first. We don't know how far the cosmopolitans and native aliens will go, but if I was in their place, I would pull all of the stops to kill me. We need to be ready and eliminate the enemy forces as quickly as possible to prevent them from unleashing stuff that is worse."

Those remarks raised the tension in the virtual meeting room. Nobody wanted to entertain this idea. Humans had suffered too much in the past when they threw around weapons of mass destruction left and right. The legacy of that trauma still haunted contemporary humans to this day.

"I agree with Professor Larkinson." Captain Zonrad Reze of the RF voiced his support for this controversial proposal. "The procedures needed to retrieve them from our vaults and ready them for deployment can take minutes at the very least. That is too much of a delay in a fast-paced battle. We should have them ready for use at all times."

The rear admiral still looked reluctant, but he understood the logic behind this decision.

"Very well. I will authorize the retrieval and arming of the less dangerous and more controllable weapons of mass destruction. The remainder shall stay in their vaults unless there is enough cause to bring them out as well."

That was not exactly the answer that Ves wanted to hear, but it was better than nothing. He made another proposal.

"Since that is the case, can you move as many of them to Fort Rock as possible? My newly created Doomspreader Torpedo Launcher is the perfect launching vehicle for them once I have loaded their warheads into my custom torpedoes."

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