The Mech Touch

"We must not show any mercy to the aggressors that seek to take over our colonies." President Yenames Clive continued to rail against the greatest threat of the Davute Project. "Karlach will remain an ever-present threat to our wealth, our possessions, our livelihoods and the future that you have promised to your descendants. Only by ending this threat on a permanent basis and taking custody of all of its colonies will we be able to safeguard our new homeland."

As the man of the hour continued to impress his audience upon the importance of eliminating Karlach as a threat, Ves no longer had the mind to think that much about what the president was saying.

He was much more concerned about the nature of the threat that would soon doom the lives of hundreds of people if not thousands of them in the coming minutes!

Despite how little time there was left for a possible attack to occur, Ylvaine still couldn't provide Ves with a lot of certainty.

After working with the human design spirit for several years, Ves had gradually gained a general understanding of how Ylvaine's predictive capabilities work.

The mechanism behind the ability to see the future was still a mystery to Ves, but it wasn't necessary for him to know all of that if he just wanted to comprehend its limitations.

From what Ves was able to piece together, there were many possible futures. There were ones where Ves might spontaneously combust and die, though the chance of that happening was so exceedingly small that Ylvaine did not spend a single thought on these outlandish timelines.

What interested the Great Prophet more were the futures that had a realistic chance of coming true.

However, just because an event had a 70 percent of coming true did not mean it was guaranteed to happen.

This was why his ability to predict future possibilities became a lot fuzzier and more abstract the further he cast his gaze. Every subsequent prediction built upon a previous one which in turn rested on another probable event. Ylvaine's prophecies could become entirely wrong if a crucial early event that had a high chance of coming true did not actually happen!

In theory, the design spirit could largely avoid this problem if he only looked forward a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes at best, but Ylvaine still became confronted by the same cloud of uncertainty as before.

This suggested to Ves that a large amount of dramatic events could take place in the following minutes!

Each crucial action completely changed the subsequent equations, thereby invalidating a lot of scenarios that Ylvaine previously considered.

It all reminded Ves about the confusing mess that was quantum mechanics. It was exceedingly hard to apply it at the macroscopic level, but the most advanced civilizations had somehow managed to develop working applications that should have been impossible to realize in any other circumstance.

Since high technology was capable of playing around with quantum mechanics, it was not that big of a stretch to assume that metaphysics could interact with this difficult field as well.

In any case, the problem with quantum mechanics was that it could never make a 100 percent prediction of the future. A simple question of whether the founding ceremony would get disrupting within the next 3 minutes became an event that was 60 percent likely to happen.

Still, despite the fact that there was a whopping 40 percent chance that Ves had been overreacting for no reason all of this time, he felt it was better to assume the worst.

"60 percent is already far too great of a risk." Ves muttered under his breath.

The apparent fact that an attack would happen 60 out of 100 times was already strong proof that nefarious parties definitely intended to cause a lot of disruption during the founding ceremony!

Enemies, traitors and other malicious actors had already put a lot of work and effort into circumventing the extremely tight security arrangements of the main event.

They just needed to pull a series of crucial triggers in order to launch a devastating strike that was sure to produce a major tragedy on this day!

"C'mon, help me out here. What is going to happen?"

What Ves had to do right now was to narrow down the possible causes of the possible mass killings.

He directed his gaze towards the many military mechs that stood guard or patrolled the surroundings with great diligence.

Any of them could turn their armaments against the seating blocks at any moment, though the chance that they would succeed was minimal as they would immediately get shot down by the ever-watchful ace mechs.

It was a lot more probable for a strike to originate from a long distance. For example, a stealthed satellite hovering in orbit or a hidden artillery cannon emplacement installed in a remote area over a hundred kilometers away.

It would be difficult for highly alert ace pilots to anticipate threats from extreme ranges. Their intuition may have reached a superhuman level, but their ability to predict threats in advance was nowhere close to comprehensive as that of Ylvaine!

Ves tried his best to look around in each direction, but to no avail. Neither he nor Ylvaine came any closer to ruling out any possibilities.

What was worse was that they couldn't even rule out the chance that he and his fellow Larkinsons might fall victim in the ensuing chaos.

Unlike with the Crossers, Ylvaine did not foresee a strong certainty of death among the Larkinsons.

That didn't mean that Ves was happy with this knowledge!

It told Ves that whatever chaos that might ensue had a decent chance of spilling over the other seating blocks.

He had hoped that this probably would drop as the critical moment drew closer, but it appeared that he was hoping for too much.

He subtly shook his head.

This wasn't working. Since Ylvaine could not pin down the potential in advance, that left Ves with few acceptable choices.

Fine then.

He concentrated his mind on another part of himself.

He did not focus on Blinky or Vulcan this time as they were both intangible in nature.

Instead, he shifted his attention to a third incarnation that no one should know about except himself.

He had never told his wife, his children, Calabast, Ketis or anyone else about his masterwork cyborg cat. Ves could never explain where it came from or how he managed to make such a transcendent marvel.

Though Ves planned to employ her as a backup to his own life, he had yet to find a quality home for his living divine artifact.

For now, he was content with leaving her with the fleet whenever he was stuck on the surface of a planet and vice versa.

It was only after his eventful talk with Calabast that Ves secretly decided to bring his third incarnation to the surface of Davute VII as well.

This did not align with the rules he set for himself, but he broke them because he wanted to save the Crossers that were marked for death.

Of course, he also agreed with Calabast that he could exploit this situation to his advantage.

Right now, Secret Agent Veronica was on the job!

Myaow.

The Cyborg Cat was currently hiding within the solid floor directly underneath the seats of Block M.

It was quite risky to sneak Veronica into the right position. Just getting her there was a little troublesome as she had to smuggle herself onto the same floating platform as the one that carried the leaders of the Cross Clan in order to bring her to Block M.

Throughout this period, Veronica constantly made maximum use of her strong inherent hiding abilities.

Her inbuilt ECM functions prevented most electronic sensors from detecting her body.

Her phasewater affinity allowed her to integrate a higher proportion of phasewater in her partially organic body than Ves. It also enabled her to execute a variety of basic abilities such as placing her body slightly out of phase with the material realm.

Her Permanent Mimic Arcutuleum Platinum body allowed her to mimic any material she came into contact with, allowing her to blend into structures.

She possessed a variety of other advantages, many of which were geared towards making her more difficult to detect through both material and spiritual means.

Veronica was actually a better version of Ves in that sense. As his 'divine artifact', she partially represented what Ves could become in the future if he continued towards Spiritual Ascension.

Ves designed Veronica with clear strengths in mind. As a simple mech designer who just wanted to stay alive so that he could do his work in peace, he designed his cyborg cat with survival in mind.

More specifically, Veronica was supposed to excel in survival by making sure that no one knew she existed in the first place!

Of course, if any did happen to know about the existence of the cat, that was still fine as well. People would never think that this 'simple' silver mechanical cat actually possessed a lot of transphasic and electronic warfare capabilities!

Sneaking Veronica into Block M and keeping her hidden from all of the high-tech sensors and scanners was her first test.

Preventing his cyborg cat from tripping the unnaturally sharp and prescient intuition of patrolling Saints was her second test.

Once Veronica did the deed that Ves had mind, getting away completely undetected was her third test!

The cyborg cat needed to pass through all three tests in order for Ves to declare her mission a success.

For now, Veronica easily managed to pass the first test. Reaching the right position turned out to be manageable. Sneaking past the powerful sensors and scanners that protected the outer perimeter had also been easy enough.

Sensor systems that were specifically developed to detect any transphasic phenomenon failed to sense anything wrong. The cyborg cat relied on multiple different measures to escape detection, so if one of them failed, the other methods still had a chance of working!

Passing the second test was a lot more nerve-wracking.

Of the half-a-dozen ace mechs that were active in the Government District, the Indormeon piloted by Saint Yorvick Clive was hiding right behind the grand stage where the president held his speech.

The impressive machine remained out of sight of most people and recording devices in order to avoid stealing the show from his cousin.

The Koi Riser piloted by Saint Megan Roonzin took over the Indormeon's previous task and shadowed Block A. The ace swordsman mech thereby guaranteed the safety of all of the important representatives of the Clive Consortium, the Dogen Collective, the Serenitas Foundation and the other original investors of the Davute Project.

Ves tried to find the Mars but couldn't see the machine piloted by Patriarch Reginald Cross from his seat at Block L.

Since the Mars was an absolutely stellar masterwork ace mech, the Davutans feared that it would have stolen President Yenames Clive's thunder during the time he held his speech.

That was why they presumably assigned the Mars to a guard position that was far enough away from the center of the Government District!

This was bad news for Ves, but he already took this possibility into account.

The only ace mech that Ves had to worry about was the Shotgun Shogun, a destructive ace striker mech piloted by Saint Antai Shogi.

Though the Shotgun Shogun was a hefty machine that could never be overlooked, Saint Shogi tried his best not to steal the show either.

For this reason, Saint Shogi tried to minimize the amount of disruption that he could cause. He only made a few rounds before the start of President Yenames Clive's speech before he slowed down. He also tried to keep his ace mech out of sight as much as possible while utilizing his Saint Kingdom at a lower intensity to sweep through the seating blocks with the lightest of touches.

Though the Shotgun Shogun had swept Block M while Veronica was hiding inside it multiple times, the ace mech showed no sign that it picked up on the fact that a strange cyborg cat was secretly hiding inside.

Ves minutely narrowed his eyes. Everything looked clear so far. After another second of contemplation, he decided to go through with his radical plan.