The Mech Touch

Ves felt tempted to swallow the archeship and all of the spoils contained within alone.

The value of the vessel that was almost entirely made out of archemetal was obvious to everyone. Despite the relatively low-key and elusive conduct of the arche race, archetech had proven to be both powerful and ingenious due to how it developed technology in a substantially different direction than normal.

Most technological races such as humans and puelmers regraded their sophisticated products as collections of lots of little building blocks that fit quite well together.

The goal of most developers was to create a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts.

The arche approached their technological development from a substantially different angle. They took their own remarkable shells as the principal example of how their technology should work and tried to make everything into artificial adaptations of archeshells.

Their weapons were extensions of their own archeshells.

Their stealthy homeships were basically giant archeshells that could be 'worn' by multiple arche crew members at the same time.

From an engineering perspective, archetech possessed a lot of parallels to organic structures. It was as if it was originally supposed to be biotech, but somehow got transformed into metallic tech down the line.

Whenever Ves studied any part of the archeship, he had the feeling that he was studying a giant and multifunctional turtleshell that had been converted into a mechanical form.

It was beautiful and exotic in a way that Ves had never encountered from human tech or other forms of alien tech.

His mind bloomed with inspiration as he barely managed to decipher the intricate brilliance of how the arche put together their own tech.

The research and reference value of the archeship was enormous to a mech designer like Ves!

He became especially interested in the phenomenon called electronic resonance. It was a more advanced way of powering different energy-hungry parts. It was a lot more stable and provided a lot of redundancy, which was exactly what mechs and starships needed the most when operating under dangerous circumstances!

The distinct lack of moving parts as well as fragile circuitry reminded Ves a lot of luminar crystal technology.

Though archetech and luminar crystal technology were definitely distinct from each other, Ves noticed multiple parallels between the two. It was as if they were distant cousins from each other who learned from the same teacher!

This had considerable implications for Ves. If he managed to figure out an important working principle of archetech, he may be able to adapt the ingenious solutions he learned into improving his luminar crystals!

The same dynamic could also apply in reverse. His extensive expertise in luminar crystal technology might give him a powerful head-start in figuring out how to adapt archetech into his own mechs!

"In fact, it's not me who will benefit the most from reverse engineering archetech." Ves guessed.

Compared to Ves who preferred to tinker with the spiritual design of his mechs, other mech designers who focused on the physical design of their mechs would benefit a lot more from learning the working principles of archetech!

Ves could easily foresee that mechs made out of archemetal parts were great at making heavier, solid and more reliable mechs in combat.

The high average density of archetech components made it a bit less suitable for light mechs, but they offered fantastic value for heavier and more defense-oriented mechs!

Leaving aside defense, archetech also offered more efficient ways to pack all kinds of functions inside a mech without taking too much capacity. This was because the use of highly efficient electronic resonance as an alternate means of powering mechs reduced the demands for energy transmission systems and heat management solutions.

On the top of his head, Ves could already foresee that his wife, Sara Voiken, Merrill O'Brian and Beatrice Hendrix could produce a lot of breakthroughs in their work once they have properly studied and mastered the principles of archetech!

Master Benedict Cortez should also be able to gain a lot, though the downside for an older and much more experienced mech designer like him was that his existing work was not compatible with archetech.

He would have to make a lot of trade offs if he wanted to integrate archetech or a derivative of it into his fixed design style.

Hours after the Phobos made contact with the archeship again and called in the Hidden Smile to covertly secure this wonderful prize, the leaders of the Golden Skull Alliance held another virtual meeting.

Several people provided the high-ranking leaders with an extensive update on the situation.

The topic of the archeship that unexpectedly lurked in the star system dominated the first half of the discussion.

As much as Ves wanted to keep this vessel for himself, he realized that it was impossible to hide it from others.

In addition, Ves was not unprincipled enough to deprive his allies from their rightful contributions.

Even if the Phobos did much of the work, the Hidden Smile played an indispensable role in ferrying the expert mech and quietly towing away the inoperative archeship.

The Cross Clan, the Adelaide Third Fleet and the Boojay Family did not appear to contribute anything on the surface, but their overall participation in the Trailblazer Expedition as well as the security offered by their mechs, expert mechs and especially ace mechs made this trip possible in the first place.

Naturally, it was still clear that the Larkinson Clan deserved the bulk of the spoils for capturing the archeship. The others did not dispute this point.

"The archeship encountered by the Phobos and captured through undisclosed means is difficult to secure." Captain Emily Ezam who commanded the Hidden Smile reported in the virtual conference room. "Our scientists and engineers have all attained basic proficiency in operating and manipulating various different native alien tech bases. DIVA headquarters also have renowned experts on orven, nunser and puelmer tech on retainer, but none of their expertise has helped us master any portion of the vessel. We have employed many different means to perform simple tasks such as shutting off the lights to opening a hatch. None of our efforts succeeded."

The DIVA naval officer proceeded to describe more failed efforts to hack the archeship and gain control over her hull.

"It is only when a... specialist from the Larkinson Clan agreed to lend a hand that we managed to insert a prize crew into the ship without compromising her hull integrity and causing her active stealth to drop." Captain Ezam finally said.

In other words, Lucky made use of his new ability to harness electronic resonance to fumble around until he finally managed to open a small hangar bay hatch.

It took a lot of effort to gain the angry cat's cooperation. Lucky was not happy with Ves to say the least!

"The archeship is still operating under full stealth despite the complete incapacitation of all of her alien crew, is that correct?" General Herman Foraine asked.

"That is correct."

"How long will that remain the case? It would be detrimental for us if the yurzen raiding fleet along with other possible parties manages to discover this extremely valuable prize."

Ves smirked when he heard that. "I don't think we need to worry too much about that. One of the conclusions of our preliminary examination of the archeship shows that she is designed to operate under near-permanent stealth. Human stealth technology is mostly developed on the basis of short to medium-term usage. Stealth mechs and stealth shuttles are designed to hide their traces for hours, days or weeks at most. Archeships can easily go months or years without ever dropping their active stealth state. The extensive damage inflicted to her internal systems shouldn't affect the core stealth systems too much. The arche are known to be paranoid about this kind of stuff, and have incorporated a high degree of redundancy in all of their vessels."

Not many people possessed more than a superficial familiarity with archeships and archetech. Even Ves did not know much better. He could only base his guesses on the paltry information contained within the Red Association's internal database and what little insights Lucky agreed to reveal.

In any case, everyone grew less tense when they learned that the archeship was not about to malfunction and reveal her presence anytime soon.

"We should be able to retrieve the archeship quietly and without revealing her existence to any third parties as long as our expeditionary fleet arrives at her coordinates." General Verle stated. "We have already started to prepare the Diligent Ovenbird to scoop the archeship inside her fully enclosed small oven. The internal drydock will offer our alliance the freedom to study and disassemble the archeship while our fleet is still on the move."

The archeship was only as large as a small destroyer, which effectively meant that she was not as large as a combat carrier.

The Golden Skull Alliance often encountered situations where the most valuable warships captured from their adversaries tended to be capital ships that were several kilometers long.

There was no way for the expeditionary to easily bring these titanic beasts away!

The archeship was a clear exception to this rule. Master Benedict Cortez clearly looked interested in taking a deep look at the interesting archetech contained within the captured vessel!

"We have already earned a profit with minimal investment as far as I am concerned." The Master Mech Designer shared his opinion. "I think we should seriously consider the decision to back out of this operation. The presence of an alien stealth ship that apparently expected our arrival in advance has many troubling implications. If we proceed with our planned assault on the yurzen raiding fleet, our more vulnerable starships in the rear may face a sudden threat with the secret arrival of a second or a third archeship. Is there any way for us to determine whether the archeship we have captured is alone or part of a larger alien naval squadron?"

"I'm not too sure about that." Ves frowned. "The manner in which our 'specialist' has reluctantly managed to command some of the functions of the archeship is still too rudimentary. We cannot exert any control over the more advanced functions of the vessel, and I suspect that accessing information or making contact with other hidden archeship requires exceedingly high permissions. These are not commands that anyone with access to an archeship can exert."

There were too many unknowns related to the control mechanisms of the archeship. Humans did not possess archeshells so it was impossible for any of them to interface with the shell-shaped control points spread throughout the interior of the hull.

The arche didn't even have the decency to implement any backup control measures that could be manipulated without the use of an archeshell!

Ves believed that this was a deliberate design choice on the part of the arche in order to prevent other races from hijacking their own vessels!

The discussion slowly strayed from the disposition of the archeship to how they should the next battle.

The unexpected variables and partial setbacks that the Golden Skull Alliance encountered so far made it impossible for them to follow the original plan.

General Verle swept his hand at a projection that displayed the state and the locations of the ships of the yurzen raiding fleet.

"The Phobos has only managed to cripple the warp drives and assassinate a small portion of the crew of one of the puelmer heavy cruisers. We project that it may take a couple of days at most for the puelmers to repair or replace at least one broken warp drive. That does not give us too much time for us to take action. What is worse is that the second puelmer heavy cruiser is not only completely undamaged, but has also entered into warp travel in order to frustrate another covert attack. If we want to defeat this fleet, we will have to do so while being pressured by a highly mobile alien warship that is packed with advanced transphasic technologies."

The risks of proceeding with an assault were considerably greater than projected due to the failure to restrict the mobility of the second puelmer heavy cruiser!