The Mech Touch

As a certain hidden alien starship was beginning to suffer from a severe case of gem cat infestation, the Phobos had already moved on from the immediate area.

Just as the DIVA crew members of the Hidden Smile had planned, the transphasic mines planted at a specific set of coordinates managed to strike true!

Each of them exploded as soon as their sensors detected even the tiniest hint of a warp bubble.

By the time the mines actually exploded, the alien fleet in transit failed to move away in time to escape the abrupt destabilization of the local fabric in space.

The violent spatial activity immediately threw just over 63 percent of the alien starships out of warp!

This caused the remaining alien starships in transit to manually drop out of warp a few seconds later.

The yurzens all became alarmed at what had happened. The relatively weak aliens had been promised that it was unlikely that they would suffer problems during their raiding runs.

The hateful humans were all supposed to be occupied by the main forces of the Red Cabal and the major alien races.

The relatively small and less developed colonies established by the humans were supposed to be vulnerable and ripe for plundering.

So many other alien raiding fleets had managed to return from human-occupied space with cargo holds filled with precious loot that the yurzens desired to obtain easy riches as well!

The fact that their fleet had bumped into a small minefield quickly caused them to have second thoughts about this race.

What if the humans discovered their movements and laid an ambush in advance?

The yurzen starships quickly went into high alert. Most of them already activated their transphasic energy shields and prepared for a large-scale ambush that eventually did not arrive.

Venerable Zimro Belson and the Phobos showed little interest in the activities of the yurzen warships.

They were not their primary goals. The key to preventing the entire fleet from resuming its advance towards Corellix III was to take out one of both puelmer heavy cruisers!

Yet as the expert stealth mech quietly drifted towards the site where the alien fleet initially dropped out of warp, Venerable Zimro was immediately met with a complication that significantly hampered his next steps.

The alien fleet had split in half.

The larger group of alien vessels had dropped out of warp a little sooner than the smaller group, but this time delay was enough to put a lot of kilometers of distance between the two elements!

The aliens didn't appear to be in a hurry to reunite either. Any alien with a decent brain could deduce that if an unknown party had prepared an ambush, it was best not to allow the entire fleet to get caught in a prepared massed attack!

This was actually one of the favored ambush methods of the arche race.

In response to that, the aliens had eventually determined that it was best to split up their starships a bit so that they could cover each other from multiple angles.

This time was no different. Not only did both halves of the alien raiding fleet maintain a noticeable distance from each other, the starships had all gone on full alert!

Hundreds of starfighters deployed from the hangar bays of the warships that accommodated them. Each of them patrolled the immediate surroundings and directed as much power to their sensor systems as they could in order to detect any subsequent traps.

The puelmer heavy cruisers meanwhile not only activated their formidable transphasic energy shields at a remarkable speed, but also scanned the surrounding areas of space with their most powerful active scanners!

All of this made Venerable Zimro and the Phobos a lot less confident in their ability to sabotage either of the two puelmer homeships.

Even if they managed to succeed in crippling one of the vessels, the other one would certainly go on full alert!

"We've predicted this response to an extent." The energy manifestation of Ves calmly spoke as he took in the enemy movements. "The response of the aliens in charge of this fleet indicates that they possess a good understanding of what our forces have previously done to the wheednar raiding fleet. It turns out that the aliens are quite effective at sharing information for the purpose of learning from each other's mistakes. This is bad news. It is likely that the puelmers and the yurzens have prepared multiple countermeasures against our expeditionary fleet."

"Do you think the yurzens and the puelmers are in contact with the nearby archeship?"

Ves shook his head after a few seconds. "Their current movements do not suggest that this is the case. They may look like they belong to a united bloc on the surface, but don't forget that the arche used to be persecuted for a long time. These turtle aliens invested so much into developing their stealth capabilities in order to stop getting hunted for their valuable archemetal. I seriously doubt that all of the recent changes in the past decade has caused the arche to drop all of their mistrust towards the other native alien races. I bet that an unscrupulous technology-oriented race like the puelmers possesses the greatest greed for this rare material type."

That might not prevent the arche from sounding the alarm and transmitting a distress signal to the nearby yurzens and puelmers out of desperation.

Once the archeship joined forces with the other native alien warships, then that would make them a lot harder to deal with, especially if most of them still retained warp travel capabilities!

The situation in the Corellix System was getting more and more complicated. Ves began to entertain increasingly more doubts about whether the Golden Skull Alliance should even proceed to wade into this increasingly messier and more dangerous situation.

Yet as soon as he thought about the rare but incredibly valuable archeship hiding not too far away, Ves reluctantly shoved aside his unease and thought on how to proceed.

"It will be difficult for us to act at this time." He said as he continued to analyze the situation. "The aliens are aware of us and suspect that we have waylaid their ships in an attempt to sabotage them just like we did with the wheednar vessels."

That caused the expert pilot to frown. "If that is the case, then the aliens will never drop their transphasic energy shields. At this point, I am already happy if I can cripple the warp drive of one of the puelmer heavy cruisers. That is probably all we need to do if we want to prevent Corellix III from getting raided."

The Geist System that turned the Phobos into such a highly effective sabotage and assassination tool was incredibly effective at bypassing material obstacles.

However, just like how energy shields blocked Lucky from phasing through under most circumstances, they were also capable of blocking the passage of the Geist System's fiends.

This was a massive restriction that severely limited the ability for the Phobos to sabotage alien starships!

Seeing that the waylaid aliens continued to remain alert towards infiltration, Ves knew that the current capabilities of the Phobos did not suffice anymore.

It needed to be able to overcome the transphasic energy shields one way or another.

So long as one of the fiends of the expert stealth mech managed to pass through the energy shields without getting detected, there would be a great opportunity to sabotage the puelmer vessel's crucial warp drives!

Ves began to think back on the design features of the Geist System.

He could think of multiple possible ways in which a change in the operation of the Geist System might allow the Phobos to push one fiend through a transphasic energy shield.

Many of these possible ideas sounded a bit too complicated or impractical in the current situation.

Ves regretted that he did not explore all of these options under lab conditions in the past. It was a lot harder for him to work them out in the field!

For example, he theorized that introducing the Phase King as an additional design spirit might enable the fiends to phase through an active energy shield without causing a disturbance.

Ves did not dare to do so though as Kalo was the principal design spirit of the Phobos. The Ghost Chameleon played an essential role in minimizing the emissions and the detectability of the expert stealth mech as much as possible!

As soon as Kalo was forced to share with another design spirit, this benefit might undergo a significant downgrade, enough to expose the Phobos to the powerful puelmer sensors and scanners!

He began to entertain an alternative idea.

His original design for the fiends was that they were made up of negative energies such as death.

This not only granted the malice-filled spiritual entities with the power to torment their victims and inflict material damage with a little assistance, but also made them so hard to detect in general.

Negative energies alone did not suffice.

Ves had to infuse them with vitality in order to animate them and bring them to life.

It was this component of positive energy that prevented the fiends from passing through transphasic energy shields.

He was able to make this determination because he recalled one important fact about death energy.

The death energy waves unleashed by battle formations performed in past battles had always managed to pass through every obstacle without fail!

Not only that, but the death energy component of the energy beams fired by the Gray Lotus also managed to bypass the transphasic energy shield without any apparent effort!

Perhaps a part of that was because of the enhancement from Helena, but Ves strongly believed that negative energies or at least death energy operated according to different rules than positive energies.

Ves shared his latest theory with Venerable Zimro, who looked incredibly thoughtful when he took in the information.

"I am not an expert in this science stuff, but I suppose it makes sense. So all I need to sneak a fiend to the other side is to drain it of life, is that correct?"

"Yes. I will go and tinker with the Geist System a bit. I believe I can do so with the current connection between myself and the Phobos. I just need to reduce one of your fiends. This will probably weaken the creature and may even kill him, but so long as you can still control him to an extent, we can use him as an effective infiltrator even if he has grown incredibly weak."

Ves moved into action without bothering to wait any further. He extended his awareness to the Geist System and tried to pick out the weakest and least valuable fiends among the bunch.

He soon found an appropriate candidate whose attribute was also based on death.

"Hmm, I remember calling you Nosferatu. Well, you shall be my latest test subject."

Before the fiend knew it, his life was passing away at the hands of his distant progenitor!

The creature let out a wordless cry as he quickly lost all of his vitality and 'died'!

When Ves looked at the state of the fiend that he had just drained, he noticed with some satisfaction that the fiend still maintained a certain degree of cohesion.

Maybe it was because Nosferatu was mainly formed out of death energy, but he still retained a tiny semblance of life!

"It's like I accidentally created an undead spirit." Ves muttered.

Nosferatu had not only lost a lot of strength, but developed a strong hunger towards the vitality that originally sustained his life.

This was enough!

"What do we do next, sir?" Venerable Zimro frowned. "It is all well and good to sneak a crippled fiend through a transphasic energy shield, but we won't be able to bring it back to life. That means that it won't have the strength to sabotage the puelmer homeship's warp drives."

"I already thought about that." Ves smirked. "What the fiend needs the most is life energy. We may not be able to supply it from the other side of a transphasic energy shield, but don't forget what these intangible monsters are good at. As long as Nosferatu here can approach a puelmer and drain the alien of his vitality, our sneaky fiend will regain at least a part of the vitality he needs to gain material strength!"

"Will that work?"

"I don't know." Ves honestly admitted. "Let's try it out!"

Though Venerable Zimro was in favor of taking action, he took another glance at the two separated alien fleet elements that were still on high alert.

"It... will not be easy for the Phobos to get close to a puelmer warship when the aliens are doing all they can to sweep for invisible intruders." He reluctantly said. "The chance of getting detected is... considerable."

"Is that enough to deter you from proceeding forward?" Ves asked with a knowing smile.

"...No. It is not enough. I have to go forward. I have to do something. If we cannot stop these ships from approaching Corellix III, then I will have to live with the knowledge that I could have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of colonists, but ultimately did not do so due to my own incompetence."

With so many lives riding at stake, Venerable Zimro Belson was more than willing to risk his own life and that of his battle partner in order to complete a noble goal!