The Mech Touch

The Phobos had no choice but to retreat.

Ves was fairly satisfied by the fact that the expert stealth mech managed to cripple the warp drives of at least one puelmer heavy cruiser.

However, despite all of the alien crew members that fell at the hands of an increasingly more outrageous spiritual fiend, the overall fighting power of the alien homeship likely did not drop that much.

Nosferatu had become so addicted at harvesting the lives of his alien victims that he completely neglected to sabotage any critical ship systems such as power generators and transphasic shield generators!

The Phobos could have done a lot more damage if the aliens did not employ so many effective and targeted countermeasures.

It was a pity that the arrival of so many alien starfighters made it impossible for the Phobos to linger around any further.

No matter how effective he was at hiding his presence, stealth technology could not prevent a machine in hiding from getting struck by another solid object!

As the Phobos retreated from the rear section of the alien fleet, Venerable Zimro Belson briefly considered whether he and his battle partner should approach the other puelmer homeship in order to find a way to immobilize her as well.

However, the puelmer captain and officers in charge of the second puelmer heavy cruiser responded far too quickly to give the Phobos any openings.

The powerful alien homeship did not even wait for any human infiltration units to get close enough to reduce her capabilities.

She instead began to propel forward again while engaging one of her warp drives.

Soon enough, the undamaged puelmer vessel entered into warp travel again!

Once she continued to build up a respectable amount of speed in warp, the ship began to turn and circle around the surrounding areas.

The puelmers made sure to vary and randomize her trajectory extensively enough to prevent any humans to mine her route or allow any units in stealth to have any chance of getting close enough to perform their mischief.

Seeing that the alien raiding fleet had become extremely alert towards further intrusions, Venerable Zimro Belson briefly considered whether he should attempt to cripple the yurzen warships, but ultimately decided to back off and distance his expert mech from all of the commotion.

The difficulty of attacking a prepared and fully alert adversary was hundreds of times more difficult!

No matter how well the extensive stealth capabilities of the Phobos could elude the alien search efforts, the chance of accidents had become too great at this stage.

"Let's move towards the hidden archeship." The energy manifestation of Ves suggested. "Lucky is still stuck in captivity. The longer he remains at the mercy of the arche, the greater the chance we won't be able to get him back."

It had been a bit of a reckless decision on their part to dump Lucky into an alien warship that they knew little about. Ves was a bit surprised that the arche managed to do what so many other enemies had been unable to do over the years. They successfully managed to contain the gem cat!

"What is the status of your cat?" Venerable Zimro asked.

"I'm not sure. Only Goldie is able to maintain contact with him. Since Goldie hasn't given me any updates, we can presume that Lucky is not being acutely threatened by the arche. That can change at any moment, though, so it is better for all of us if we hurry up and get him out sooner rather than later."

"The arche should be taking countermeasures as well in order to prevent us from rescuing your cat." Zimro remarked.

Ves nodded. "That is true, but their means are a lot more limited. Lucky has not only managed to sabotage the warp drives of the archeship, but also damaged a lot of other archemetal systems. The alien vessel's overall effectiveness has dropped to an extent. Right now, our target ship is quietly trying to distance herself from the yurzen raiding fleet as well, but her acceleration and traversal speed are largely constrained by the need to keep her presence hidden from both us and the other aliens. The arche don't even have the option to throw all caution to the wind and warp away anymore."

Mobility was the key to many engagements. Controlling the movements of the enemy was key to setting them up for defeat.

The Phobos soon changed course and quietly tried to catch up to the fleeing archeship.

"It will take a while for my expert mech to reach the archeship." Venerable Zimro said with a frown. "According to the supplied data, my expert mech should be a little faster under full stealth, but the alien ship has a headstart on us. Lucky will have to wait longer for rescue."

"Understood. There is little we can do about that." Ves sighed. "Let us hope that the archeship won't be as difficult to infiltrate as the puelmer heavy cruisers. The arche rely a lot more on their famed archemetal to protect their ships. Much of the reason why that is the case is because energy-based defenses will practically give away the presence of a starship that is trying her best to remain hidden. So long as this is the case for our latest target, you should be able to deploy all of your fiends."

The biggest uncertainty was whether the Phobos would be able to catch up to the hidden alien vessel in time before the arche did anything serious to the captive gem cat!

Ves glanced at the timer that Venerable Zimro had just put up. It would take a while before the Phobos could get into action again. He decided to pass the time by checking up on Nosferatu and evaluating what had happened earlier.

After the puelmers tricked Nosferatu into boarding a shuttle that subsequently launched out of the hangar bay and got vaporized by the potent firepower of the alien warship, the Geist System managed to recall the heavily injured fiend.

Nosferatu experienced far too many ups and downs in a short amount of time. All of the abuse and uncontrollable feeding behavior produced a lot of distortions that permanently scarred and contaminated the undead spirit.

At this time, the heavily injured fiend was in an awful condition. His state was not much better than his lowest point.

If not for the fact that the Geist System offered him a stable and supportive environment for him to recuperate, Nosferatu would have probably deteriorated until he could no longer keep himself together!

As it was, the special fiend had changed forever. Despite losing almost all of the vitality that he had drained from so many puelmer crew members, the spiritual entity still maintained his 'fat' and many-armed shape.

He looked extremely grotesque to humans such as Ves. A chaotic air of cruelty, hunger and suffering radiated from his form.

"How is Nosferatu doing, sir?" Venerable Zimro asked.

"He has reached, no, exceeded his limits." Ves answered. "His condition is extremely poor and he is in no state to deploy right away. The good news is that the events that affected his state have expanded his tolerance. So long as he is able to survive from his ordeals, he will be able to endure similar abuse a little better. You can make use of Nosferatu to infiltrate ships that are fully covered by transphasic energy shields again once he has fully rested and digested his gains."

"What is the bad news, then?" Venerable Zimro asked next. "The Phobos and I failed to exert any influence when he was rampaging on the enemy ship. Is there a way to increase our control over him? We cannot make full use of him if he constantly gives in to his baser instincts."

The energy manifestation of Ves pressed his lips. He did not look optimistic about this situation.

"I believe that Nosferatu should be able to sober up a bit once he has rested, but he won't be as docile as before. You have to realize that he is a relatively young spiritual entity, much like all of the other fiends. I designed their initial forms and brought them all to life only a few months before I fabricated the Phobos. They are not young, but also a lot more sheltered compared to living mechs. If that is not enough, they are largely made up of negative energies."

Venerable Zimro understood what Ves was trying to convey.

"We haven't treated them very well since they were born. A young fiend like Nosferatu has not lived very long, and he has already been subjected to multiple strong traumas on his second deployment. Experiences like that could drive anyone crazy. It's actually remarkable that he still retains the desire to live after all of that abuse."

Despite sounding sympathetic towards a poor spirit like Nosferatu, Venerable Zimro still understood that it was not appropriate to improve the treatments of fiends.

They were all evil and destructive life forms. Ves deliberately made them that way in order to maximize the harm they could do to their designated targets.

They could do a lot of damage against innocent people if they somehow got free!

There was no way to counteract their evil tendencies because doing so would either kill them or render them ineffective!

If Venerable Zimro Belson wanted to retain his abnormally effective means of sabotaging enemy starships and other assets, he had no choice but to continue working with creatures that shared an awfully close resemblance to demons.

Ves too did not find this situation to be ideal. It went against his principles to bring spiritual entities to life, only to exploit them without giving them any hope of relief.

He still hadn't figured out how he should deal with the ethics of using the Geist System in its current form, so he pushed this troublesome matter aside and directed his thoughts elsewhere.

He began to discuss possible improvements for future missions.

"It is not good to rely on Nosferatu alone." Zimro told his patriarch. "If the Geist System had four more fiends like him, they could have inflicted a lot more damage to the puelmer heavy cruiser before the aliens eventually managed to drive us away. Can you make more ghosts like him, sir?"

"I'm thinking about it. This is not a simple matter. Theoretically, I can drain the life from other fiends like Mephisto, but that will cause them to become less controllable and a lot more vulnerable to spiritual contamination. They will also create an imbalance in the Geist System that it was never designed to handle."

There was still far too much about the Geist System that Ves had yet to figure out. While his dramatically increased understanding of cultivation science and other weird phenomena helped to clarify a few matters, it was far from enough to explain everything.

So long as Ves did not make much progress in this area, he did not dare to experiment too much with the current implementation of the Geist System.

"It would help if I can get more company while I complete my missions." Venerable Zimro suggested next. "We could get a lot more work done if there are multiple stealth units acting on an enemy fleet at the same time."

"I know. I have been thinking about building a dedicated stealth units around your Phobos. In order to make this happen, I will have to design an expensive high-tech stealth mech that is almost as good at keeping its presence hidden as your Phobos. Since it is merely a standard mech, the new design won't have the benefit of resonating exotics and true resonance empowering its stealth capabilities. I can try to make up for that by fabricating them one by one in person. That should at least elevate them into third order living mechs, which means that they can cultivate on their own and accumulate Ascension Runes."

The only problem was that Ves had no time to take on another mech design project at this time. He needed to complete a lot of ongoing mech designs before he could even consider this job!