The Mech Touch

As the main fleet under the command of Otrus Magrin set course for the coordinates that corresponded to the mysterious image transmitted by an alien beast goddess, Saint Neville Magrin began to entertain doubts.

It was not often that ace pilots doubted themselves or their judgment. It was pretty much mandatory for those who had pushed their willpower to such great heights to develop an unreasonable amount of confidence in themselves.

Ace pilots had many reasons to be confident in themselves. They had succeeded in reaching a level of strength that countless mech pilots could only dream of. They had survived battles where they should have died, won duels against opponents that were supposed to be stronger than them and recognized their true selves.

The only warriors that could bring Saint Neville Magrin to heel were senior ace pilots and god pilots,but they were so rare that the chances of encountering them in the wild was miniscule.

Even if it was possible for him to confront them on the opposite side of the battlefield, he knew that his father was far too shrewd to make this happen in the first place.

However, despite his father's great track record, Saint Neville couldn't help but think that the current circumstances were a bit… wrong.

"Everything has become more complicated since we entered the Red Ocean." He muttered as he stood at the side while a crew of mech technicians performed routine maintenance on the Unrelenting.

His father demanded the highest possible care for the proud ace hybrid mech. After each deployment, it had to go through an extensive round of inspections.

Anything that even looked slightly wrong had to be marked and analyzed to determine whether it needed to be replaced immediately or a few weeks later.

This pace of replacement was way too exaggerated and always made Saint Neville feel off-put by his own machine. The fit between himself and 'his' ace mech never felt completely right as he constantly had to readjust himself to the minute changes induced by the frequent swapping of parts.

Nonetheless, the performance of the Unrelenting always managed to remain close to its factory peak. Saint Neville knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could always count on his ace mech to perform reliably and endure exactly as much stresses as described in the manual.

Yet despite the formidable strength and combat power of the Unrelenting, Saint Neville still grew concerned that it wouldn't be enough to survive the latest tide.

"This entire star system is dangerous." He concluded.

The Red Ocean was always dangerous to begin with. Ace pilots like him possessed keen intuition that was far in excess to that of normal people.

Though plenty of scientists who studied this phenomenon claimed that ace pilots unconsciously predicted future events by extrapolating many little clues, Saint Neville had always thought that it worked differently.

Those people who always spoke with complicated and confusing words never knew what it was like to stare down a gun barrel that was strong enough to punch through the cockpit of a mech.

How could they know that mech pilots such as himself generated an inexplicable sense of threat and danger?

It was too bad that as sensitive as Saint Neville had become towards danger, it still possessed many limitations.

The reason why the unknown saboteurs had managed to cripple nine combat carriers as well as the Roaring Berann was because the culprits never targeted him and those closest to him in the first place.

The infiltrators had managed to sneak their way through every checkpoint without fearing discovery from either the crews or Saint Neville himself.

It disconcerted a lot of people in Cenatus Prospecting. Many of them had become assured that no one around them had the guts to attack a fleet watched over by an ace pilot.

That a severe incident happened anyway was a personal failing of Saint Neville.

He had never expected the Golden Skull Alliance which had developed a good reputation over the years to launch such a detestable attack!

Though Saint Neville knew that his father intended to take advantage of the Golden Skull Alliance somehow, the Golden Skullers should have at least waited for a casus belli before they initiated hostilities.

For them to strike without bothering to find an excuse threw many people in Cenatus Prospecting off-guard.

No matter what, people had died under his watch. No matter what reason drove his father to shadow the Golden Skullers, the fact of the matter was that blood had been spilled.

This was why he never questioned his father's decision to enter SDDD-4343X-AER-232666410 and figure out exactly what the Golden Skull Alliance had been up to in this part of space.

Yet now that they had arrived, Saint Neville grew unsettled despite his unflinching confidence in his own strength.

The first indication that everything was not quite right was the absence of his father's current target.

Even though the fleet of the Golden Skull Alliance had probably lingered in this star system for a week or so, it had left by the time that the fleet of his own group arrived.

The second indication that something may be amiss was the mysterious abandonment of a piece of alien ship wreckage.

Though Cenatus Prospecting hadn't been able to dispatch a scout vessel to this brown dwarf star system in advance, it was still possible to monitor what happened in the past by exploiting the speed of light.

By dispatching a scout vessel equipped with a warp drive far away from the center of the star system, they could eventually reach a distance where they could capture light that depicted everything that happened a few days in the past.

It was a relatively new tactic that humanity had taken over from the indigenous alien races.

While the effect sounded magical, the results weren't as impressive as everyone initially thought.

Due to the inverse-square law, the rapid dispersal of light rapidly made it more and more difficult to observe fine details.

Other factors such as the strength of the light source, the size of the subject of interest and the angle of observation further limited the amount of information that could be derived from this method.

From what their distant warp-capable scouting vessels reported back, the fleet of the Golden Skull Alliance hadn't appeared to have done anything remarkable in the star system.

The first human ships to have arrived in this star system appeared to have lingered in orbit of a tiny planet for a long time until they departed by moving to a Lagrange point.

The scout vessels weren't able to glean any further details and they saw no sign of any battles or major movements.

What was particularly frustrating was that this method of 'looking back in the past' could not only capture any footage about a potential confrontation against an alien warship due to the orientation of the planet, but also because the details provided by the dispersing light would be too fuzzy at that time.

It didn't help that a brown dwarf star wasn't a strong light source to begin with, so the resolution of the past footage was already fairly low in quality from the beginning!

All of these circumstances seemed a little too convenient for the Golden Skull Alliance, and that caused Saint Neville to smell something wrong.

It didn't help that his sense of latent danger had grown stronger despite the apparent emptiness of the star system.

The threat shouldn't be acute, but Saint Neville was definitely convinced that this small brown dwarf star system wasn't as harmless and empty as it looked.

Though a part of him wanted to warn his father about the increased threat, he refrained from bothering the older man.

Every star system in the Red Ocean was dangerous, so much so that ace pilots had to tune out the constant awareness that a powerful alien warfleet could drop in at any time and lay waste to everything in sight!

Pretty much all of the indigenous alien races of the Red Ocean were hostile towards the invading humans. The enormous hatred and animosity that they held towards humanity was affecting the 'air' of the dwarf galaxy, as silly as that sounded.

This ironically made it harder for people like Saint Neville to discern threats because there were so many of them. There could be multiple reasons why this small and relatively inconspicuous star system could be dangerous.

"I hate this place." The ace pilot growled under his breath.

Another reason why Saint Neville didn't want to bother his father about his concerns was because he didn't want to stop his father from pursuing the current mystery.

The alien warship debris and the strange alien idol were both authentic. The alien beast goddess that he had tentatively made contact with harbored no particular ill will against he and his father, and the location transmitted by the creature made him feel more excited for some reason.

Whenever he recalled the image of a position that was a bit closer to the brown dwarf star than he would have liked, he felt an increasingly stronger desire to visit this place in person.

There was something special about the chunk of alien ship debris depicted in this mental image. His instincts told him that there was something hidden in this wreck that could help him do a better job at protecting his father and fulfilling his great ambitions.

"Let's wait and see, then." Saint Neville decided.

His desire to explore this mystery ultimately exceeded his need for caution.

That didn't mean he would drop his guard, but he felt there was little harm in seeking out a piece of alien wreckage floating in a star system that was devoid of enemies.

Time passed by. The Unrelenting had just completed its latest round of servicing while Saint Neville woke up from his power nap.

His father contacted the ace pilot shortly afterwards.

"My son. Our fastest scouting vessels have just approached the location described in the 'oracle' sent by the alien goddess. The image is accurate. We found another chunk of alien ship wreckage, apparently from the same vessel of the debris that we found on the planet."

Saint Neville became a lot more interested when he heard this. "So it is true! How fares the investigation?"

"Several teams of engineers, exoarchaeologists and other scientists have just boarded the second piece of wreckage." Otrus Magrin said over the private communication channel. "They have yet to discover anything of value, but I expect that to change. They are proceeding slowly and cautiously for fear of damaging delicate alien artifacts. I would like you to be close at hand when they breach the most central chamber that our most scanners have mapped out in advance."

Saint Neville nodded.

He hurried to the cockpit of the Unrelenting and deployed into space.

By now, the main fleet had drawn close enough that it didn't take long for a speedy ace mech to reach the site in question.

It struck Neville that the wreckage indeed looked identical to the image provided by the alien goddess that apparently held a grudge against the Golden Skull Alliance.

Before his ace mech even came close, Neville already felt an increasing attraction to the wreck or more precisely whatever it held inside its depths.

Since he was too impatient to wait for the exploration team to reach the central chamber, Saint Neville cautiously brought the Unrelenting closer until the edge of its Saint Kingdom encompassed this compartment.

His eyes widened as he came into contact with a different influence.

"What…"

Though the presence was brief, he felt an invisible force stirred his thoughts in a way that stimulated his willpower!

While he could have easily blocked this influence, he did not do so because his instincts strongly urged that it was beneficial to him if he allowed himself to subject himself to this influence.

What was it? How could it have made him feel more self-assured? Why did it feel so… human?

Upon a hunch, Neville called up the logs that tracked his resonance strength.

He discovered that his resonance strength had momentarily spiked past his previous record!

Excitement ran throughout his body as he increasingly became hungry for more.

As an ace pilot, there were few desires that were more tempting than an opportunity to grow stronger.

He knew right then and there that he could definitely become stronger than he was before as long as he subjected himself to a stronger and more long-lasting version of this effect!

"I need more!"