The Mech Touch

The expeditionary fleet had finally come close enough to the Titania to get into action.

Naturally, the Golden Skull Alliance wasn't stupid enough to park all of its valuable capital ships right next to the unknown alien capital ship. What if she was rigged to explode? What if the space and her were mined?

There were so many possible dangers that it was best if the main fleet maintained a healthy distance from the Titania.

The ship still needed to be investigated, though.

The good news was that the relative proximity gave the expeditionary fleet's sensor systems a much more detailed look at the motionless biovessel.

A lot of additional data and information emerged, but very few of it actually changed the considerations and approach of the alliance.

They still expressed an interest in exploring and plundering the silent vessel.

There was one major question that had wide-ranging effects on what might happen in this star system.

Should the Golden Skull Alliance adopt a cautious or speedy approach?

The more the Larkinsons and its allies took their time to explore the unknown alien vessel, the safer they would all be. Their abundance of precautions would allow them to respond adequately to any unforeseen moments.

On the other hand, the longer the Titania and the Golden Skull Alliance kept lingering in this star system, the greater the chance that outsiders would drop by and crash the party!

Of course, Ves wasn't worried about human forces. Jovy Armalon and the Simile Halifax should take care of that. What he was really worried about was whether the alien attackers of the Titania would arrive.

The longer it took to examine and plunder the Titania, the further this possible alien fleet traversed through warp travel!

Alien warp drives were substantially slower than human FTL drives, so they might not arrive anytime soon if they were on the pursuit. Yet their ability to speed up and whizz about much closer to gravity wells such as planets and stars gave them a great advantage in most combat situations!

In short, the expeditionary fleet truly had to gamble on how to proceed.

Should they act with haste and risk suffering damage when the Titania or the surrounding environment suddenly exploded?

Was it better to speed up their exploration and get out before any possible follow-up parties arrived?

These questions and more constantly plagued Ves and the other leaders. They could make lots of guesses but simply didn't have enough clues to know for certain which answer was right.

Perhaps the best answer of all was to just turn around and leave this potential danger zone as soon as possible!

Ves never thought about this option. The Titania hooked his curiosity and he was determined to explore it one way or another!

Fortunately, all of the scans made so far pretty much ruled out a lot of possible threats. As far as the Larkinsons were concerned, the chance of encountering hidden mines and other weapons were fairly low.

If the Titania ever mounted any warship-grade weapons, then the attackers must have blasted them off the organic hull. The Lifer biotech researchers over at the Dragon's Den had already concluded that the bioship did not contain any dormant weapon systems.

This tempted Ves to go for a speedy approach, but he was too afraid that his clan would expose itself to hidden threats. This had happened many times so Ves truly felt it was better to go for a cautious approach.

"Sir, we're about to dispatch our first probes." General Verle's projection informed Ves.

"Understood. Don't be in a hurry to proceed with the next steps. Let's see how the ship will respond when we poke her hull with our drones."

Hundreds of little unarmed drones launched from the capital ships and whizzed forward at rapid speed.

These drones were cheap, lightly-armored and disposable, but they were packed with sensors and scanners that could examine a fair amount of details up close.

It took a bit of time for them to approach the distant alien vessel. This was a result of the safe distance the main fleet adhered to. Ves and everyone else had to wait impatiently for the drones to traverse many kilometers until they finally began to reach the Titania's silent hull.

"The drones are beginning to examine the wreckage, sir!"

"Don't focus too much on her exterior. Get those drones through the holes in the hull and record what's inside. Our long-ranged scans never delivered any clear answers on what's inside."

Ves carefully studied the footage transmitted from the drones. The signals coming back remained mostly clear as the dead biocapital ship did not throw up a lot of interference.

All he saw from the projections were walls and bulbs of strange, grayish flesh interspersed with massive structural components in the form of bones.

"What a macabre image."

"Meow."

Lucky didn't even want to look at the disgusting flesh ship. If the derelict was a CFA warship or something, his mouth would have been watering by now. However, the sight of all of that cold and fleshy matter caused him to grow sick.

He wasn't the only one who found the footage disturbing. Few Larkinsosn were accustomed to seeing such a huge organic construct in such poor condition!

Ves turned to the projection of Directo Ranya Wodin. Given the nature of the main subject of this exploration mission, he could not rely on his technical knowledge to figure out what was going on. He had to lean on the expertise of a biotech scientist in order to understand what the probes were seeing at the moment.

"Is there anything new?"

"It's difficult to say." Ranya said as she quietly studied all of the footage. "My research teams and I have developed a number of expectations based on the data that we have gathered earlier. We believe that even if we encountered a bioship of this size that was grown by an unknown alien race, there should be enough similarities between human and alien-built biovessels to know what we are getting into. It appears that our assumptions were wrong. I am not spotting any obvious compartments, hatches, discrete biomechanical parts and so on. It could be that the alien race who developed the Titania is further removed from humanity than we assumed."

Now that she mentioned it, Ves also failed to spot any obvious compartments and so on, though he did recognize a couple of corridors of different sizes. Some of them were large enough to fit several mechs at once while others were only large enough to accommodate dwarves.

There were considerably more of the smaller ones, and they were spread across any open section of the Titania.

Their weird round cross-sections caused Ves to grow confused. Which orientation was up or down on this vessel?

"What kind of alien race would grow and inhabit such a strange ship, Ranya?"

"There are still too many possibilities for me to pin down an approximate answer." She replied. "I am currently leaning towards a non-humanoid race that are extremely small but numerous such as the sandmen. Perhaps this large shipwreck is even more enormous in the perspective of her original owners. It could be a gigantic ark ship just like the ones that many alien races in the Red Ocean have started to build."

The alien societies in the Red Ocean were all undergoing an existential crisis after the Big Two accelerated their invasion.

The alien civilizations that were in humanity's way didn't sit around and do nothing as the MTA and CFA blazed through their star systems and wiped out their populations.

The alien races all diverted an immense amount of resources in building evacuation ships that could safely bring as much of their population out of their doomed star systems as possible.

All of them pretty much fled in the direction away from the Big Two's advance, but a few starships tended to get lost or suffer major damage that somehow caused them to go in the wrong direction!

This might explain why the Titania ventured this deep in human occupied territory, but the damage she suffered did not seem to be made by human weapons.

As a mech designer, Ves witnessed plenty of mechs sustaining damage in battle. He became quite good at identifying the cause of their battle marks.

Yet when he was confronted with the large and strange holes riddled throughout the Titania's structure, he had to scratch his head.

There were few apparent signs of heat and burning, so she obviously hadn't been struck by laser beams or positron beams. Ves was also sure the Titania hadn't been struck by missiles or explosive weapons for that matter.

She hadn't been struck with solid kinetic projectiles either. Even if he did not play around with biomechs, he had seen enough bodies getting struck by kinetic weapons to know how flesh and bone reacted to getting impacted by large and heavy rounds.

The wounds seemed too… clean, for a lack of a better word. Perhaps the unknown assailants used a form of high technology to literally void oval-looking portions of her hull.

It was as good of an explanation as any, but Ves lacked enough proof to feel any confidence in his conclusion.

Several minutes passed by as the drones continued to transmit bewildering footage that featured a lot of unfamiliar and indecipherable alien biotechnology.

Fortunately, none of the drones encountered any active threats. The Larkinsons became more and more certain that the Titania was safe to explore.

That was until the Lifers over at the Dragon's Den began to recognize what they were seeing!

"WAIT!" Dr. Ranya's projection burst. "According to one of our experts, the Titania is too natural to be a bioship. There are too few signs of logical and artificial structures for us to state with certainty that she is a purpose-grown asset."

"What are you saying, Ranya?"

"The Titania… is not a bioship at all. She… it… may be the carcass of an immense astral beast!"

"What?!"

Not just Ves, but everyone else who she was connected to reacted with great shock at this revelation!

Just as the Larkinsons and the others were trying to wrap their heads around this bold but increasingly more likely guess, a mutation had occurred!

Alarms began to ring throughout the ships as many sensors detected abrupt spikes in activity deep inside the Titania's hull!

"Our most inward probes have been destroyed!"

"The Titania's enture structure is convulsing!"

"Our sensor arrays are detecting multiple spikes of heat and energy generation throughout the Titania. The energy and heat is quickly spreading throughout her structure!"

Half a minute later, many of the open 'corridors' began to spray out large spurts of strange and hot gray liquid!

Director Ranya gasped. "That's blood! The Titania is reviving by resuming the circulation of blood throughout its body!"

"That's it." General Verle stated. "We cannot let this alien 'creature' wake up. Even if there is a chance that this living is friendly, we can't take the risk."

Fortunately for him and everyone, the Titania soon made it clear what it thought about the humans.

Some of the holes that looked more natural than the others began to pinch and squeeze as if they were giant mouths.

While everyone was wondering about the purpose of these motions, the mouths soon spat fleshy bullets that were at least twice the size and mass of a typical medium mech!

The Titania quickly spat out over 80 of these grayish 'flesh bullets'. They all looked alive because of all of their squirming and because the sensors detected that they each contained a high amount of energy.

"The unknown bioprojectiles are adjusting course! They're heading straight towards our fleet!"

"We're under attack!"

Much of the ambiguity had disappeared. The Titania may look awful, but the apparent astral beast was still alive and possessed plenty of hostility towards the human fleet that sought to pick apart its corpse!

All of the mechs that had already been deployed as a precaution were all prepared for battle.

While the melee mechs didn't have much to do at the moment, the ranged mechs all opened fire at the Titania and the fleshy projectiles were rapidly soaring towards the expeditionary fleet!

"Intercept those bioprojectiles! Don't let any of them hit our ships!"