The Mech Touch

Ves developed a very warped appreciation for ’Cassandra Breyer’. Not only did her appearance solve the Scarlet Rose’s shortage of tough, metallic exotics, she also had the potential to empower his organization and fund many of his future endeavors!

He no longer questioned the absurdity surrounding her endless duplication.

How she gained the energy to produce so much valuable Breyer Alloy out of nowhere, Ves had no clue. The spiritual engineering centered around her body was as complex as any electronic circuitry.

Without a comprehensive foundation in spiritual engineering, Ves couldn’t even begin to decipher all of the wondrous spiritual interactions and mechanisms!

He suppressed his greed to master this ability for his own. He was far too weak to perform such a reality-defying feat!

Rather than aim for the miniscule chance of winning the jackpot, Ves would rather keep his modest but guaranteed gains!

Adopting a risk-averse solution was very uncharacteristic for Ves. However, anything related to spirituality always succeeded in stimulating his greatest fears.

Ves was a mech designer. He understood technology. He excelled in many disciplines related to mechs.

For this reason, when it came to taking risks in mech design, Ves always possessed the confidence to succeed when failure was probable!

Yet when it came to this inexplicable ghost woman and her horribly frightening visage, Ves did not feel assured at all. His Larkinson blood completely cooled when he considered the prospect of waking a very angry and powerful woman.

"It’s better to let sleeping dogs lie!"

"Meow!"

Lucky comfortably perched on a table while he munched a bar of solid colchis iron.

Aside from Ves, Lucky benefited from the current arrangement as well! The endless amount of exotics produced from the loop essentially meant that Lucky would never go hungry!

Ves did not forget about his current circumstances. He still had to run through the territories of the Great Zona Republic and the Crecia Republic in order to reach the Ylvaine Protectorate.

While the production loop resulted in a continuous supply of fairly dense Breyer alloy, accumulating too much of it increased the total mass of his ship.

Ves still had a lot of use for the materials in repairing and reinforcing the Scarlet Rose and her complement of battle bots. As long as he could make good of the Breyer alloy, he didn’t mind paying a price.

However, Ves could not afford to go too far. Producing an excessive amount of Breyer alloy would definitely increase the mass of his ship over time, causing her acceleration to decrease.

The slower the acceleration, the greater the likelihood that pursuers would catch up to the Scarlet Rose!

If Ves had his way, then he would order the gravitic lifter bots to stop feeding the escape pod to the forging machine.

He did not dare to do so. Who knew what would happen if the escape pod remained intact for more than an hour.

Would Cassandra Breyer wake up? Would her body resuscitate and bring her back to life?

Fearing a complication, Ves insisted on destroying her body and her escape pod on a continuous basis for good measure!

Ejecting the escape pod out of the ship was not a good idea.

Who knew what happened if it was thrown in the higher dimensions or the material dimensions. Rather than risk the witch waking up in space, Ves would rather destroy her body and her accompanying escape pod entirely!

The question therefore moved on to determining what he should do with the excess materials. Throwing it in space after he processed it seemed wasteful.

It also risked exposing his ’renewable Breyer alloy mine’! After all, there was no native source for the constituent materials of Breyer alloy in the Komodo Star Sector!

While it was possible to import the materials, it was not economic to do so! If someone found a lot of Breyer alloy chucked into space, Ves might inadvertently attract a lot of unwelcome attention!

Therefore, aside from slowing the production process and dumping the materials from the ship while she was engaging in FTL, Ves found another outlet for his excess materials.

"Keep eating, Lucky!" Ves grinned. "There is enough colchis iron and lesser geonode to stuff yourself stupid!"

"Meow meow!"

Lucky blinked his eyes as if he was in bliss. His teeth effortlessly crunched a chunk of lesser geonode as if it was nothing but a crispy snack!

Although 235-C Breyer alloy blended over a dozen different materials, the forging machine aboard the Scarlet Rose could extract four of the most important materials.

As for the other exotics, they simply lost effect and broke down entirely due to the destructive recycling process.

While it was a shame to lose those valuable trace materials, what the forging machine managed to retrieve intact was enough to make Ves ecstatic!

The most abundant material was a medium-grade exotic called colchis iron. Making up 67 percent of the alloy, the iron-like material was responsible for most of its basic properties!

Without its hardness and toughness, Breyer alloy could never be as resilient!

The second-most abundant material was lesser geonode, which made up 29.4 percent of the alloy. Though this was a very large proportion, the medium-grade exotic did not actually strengthen the Breyer alloy.

Instead, it mostly served as a binding material that allowed the colchis iron to play nice with other potent exotics without provoking an undesirable reaction.

Lesser geonode worked wonderfully as an auxiliary material that stabilized many different exotics and was used in many other alloy formulas for this reason.

The third-most prevalent material was Tommen metal, which was a high-grade exotic that patched up the main weakness of colchis iron.

Though colchis iron was very hard and tough, thereby making it very resilient against physical damage, it did not fare very well against heat and energy damage!

For this reason, 3.58 percent of the Breyer alloy consisted of Tommen metal, which massively improved this shortcoming, though at great cost!

Tommen metal was not cheap in the slightest! The fact that 235-C Breyer alloy only incorporated so little of it was already a very generous proportion!

In fact, some of the better variants of Breyer alloy actually blended in a greater proportion of Tommen metal!

The last important material in the alloy formula was a high-grade exotic called Amris. Consisting of just 0.02 percent of the alloy that made up the main structure of the escape pod, just a little bit of it significantly improved the shock-absorbance attribute. Any shock exerted onto the Breyer alloy partially disappeared into nowhere due to the strange effects of Amris!

Aside from that, Amris also seemed to strengthen Breyer alloy in more subtle ways. Ves didn’t have enough information to find out more. The sources he had at hand did not really explain the full potential of this trace exotic.

With his knowledge of metallurgy, Ves could slowly figure out its properties by performing some research. He could also scour the galactic net for information or seek detailed information from the MTA or an exclusive library in exchange for payment.

Right now, Ves did not have the time to figure out its properties and uses. He could only put Amris aside.

Due to its high value and small volume, Ves did not allow Lucky to eat it. With how little of it the forging machine produced, he did not fear weighing the Scarlet Rose down even if he recycled a million escape pods!

In total, these four exotics each had their own uses. Whether Ves alloyed them back together or blended them with different materials, he could produce an endless variety of alloys!

Of course, trying to preserve the original 235-C Breyer alloy was a little difficult. If Ves wanted to retain its properties, then he couldn’t melt it down and destroy its original structure.

After spending some at the mech workshop, Ves discovered that Breyer alloy was still malleable enough to be reshaped as long as he applied enough force.

This was very difficult, especially when the Breyer alloy was still as thick as the layer applied to the escape pod!

For now, Ves did not have the equipment to reshape the Breyer alloy into armor plating or other end product. He would have to take care of this after he ended his flight.

"Regardless, just the four exotics is enough to form all kinds of resilient alloys!"

Perhaps the best use he found was producing a large batch of gauss cannon projectiles.

Such products often came in the form of solid slugs made out of very hard materials.

The rounds produced from this new supply of materials were absolutely better than the conventional ammunition!

Almost nobody could bear to waste high-grade exotics on a consumable product! Yet the effect of doing so often yielded greater results!

With his new batch of gauss cannon projectiles, the Kravon became a lot more deadly!

Against very tough targets, the rounds wouldn’t shatter as easily. The armor-penetrating properties of the new batch was at least multiple times better!

If Ves had more time, he would have incorporated some of the materials in the missiles, but that was far too much work for him to accomplish on his own. The benefits were also a bit too marginal as missiles generally relied on their payloads to deal damage.

Time passed by. As Ves and Lucky became obsessed with Breyer alloy, the Scarlet Rose quietly made it through the Great Zona Republic without encountering another prepared ambush.

Whether his enemies gave up or failed to catch the ship at the right star system, the Scarlet Rose managed to escape trouble for two weeks!

By the time the mobile supply frigate left the Great Zona Republic, Ves had entered the final stretch of his flight.

As long as the Scarlet Rose managed to pass through the territories of the Crecia Republic, Ves would be safe!

The chance of encountering hostiles in the territory controlled by the Ylvaine Protectorate was minimal!

Just as Ves started to hope for a safe and quiet return, the Scarlet Rose finally bumped into a hostile force.

The alarm that rang from his comm and the mech workshop shocked him to no end! After realizing what was going on, he dropped his tools, pulled Lucky away from his perch and ran to the bridge!

Once he arrived, he seated himself on the captain’s chair and called up the data gathered by the sensors.

The threat just arrived at the same emergence zone that the Scarlet Rose had entered a few hours ago!

With two hours to go until his ship finished cycling her FTL drive, Ves did not expect any dangers to occur once a sensor sweep revealed no starships in the vicinity.

For a new ship to arrive in the same emergence zone was very alarming! This was especially the case when the new arrival also happened to be close enough to intercept the Scarlet Rose within an hour!

The new arrival did not hide her identity. Her transponder not only broadcasted her ship identity, but also her allegiance!

The ship just happened to belong to the Coalition Reserve Corps!

"Damnit!" He cursed. "The Fridaymen finally caught up! I knew the good days wouldn’t last!"

The CRC did not dispatch some harmless scout ship either. The ship that emerged happened to be a frigate that was somewhat similar to the Scarlet Rose!

This explained her speed and ability to catch up to his flight.

Unlike his own ship, the new CRC vessel did not appear to be a mobile supply frigate. She looked sleeker, faster and much more oriented towards combat action!

Her mech hangar compartment looked a bit larger as well, which hinted that the hostile ship probably carried more mechs as well!

Because of the lack of mech pilots, his battle bots weren’t capable of fending off an equal number of mechs.

If his battle bots happened to be outnumbered by a bunch of second-class mechs, then defeat was almost assured!