The Mech Touch

The ancient cities populated by the sacred gods and the blessed people regarded those who lived outside the city walls as cursed. The dwarves with their ugly, squat forms became affected by the curse of the soil, and developed an irreconcilable hatred against the folk who enjoyed a relatively easy life inside their thick and sturdy city walls.

The dwarves as a whole lived nomadically due to their dependence on following the massive animal herds for sustenance.

If they settled at a single place, they either exhaust the surrounding animal herds or get trampled by hundreds of thousands of animals marching in a single direction.

The dwarf tribes therefore wandered endlessly as they followed after the animal herds, hunting the old, weak and lame alongside the packs of predators.

Most managed to tame and domesticate godlings as their mounts and pack animals. This saved them from expending their energy by walking across the planet with their stubby legs, but it also placed further pressure on the tribes as the animals required much more sustenance.

Large dwarf tribes numbering more than ten-thousand individuals rarely emerged because at some point, the logistical pressure of feeding so many mouths through a nomadic lifestyle was simply too hard.

However, the situation changed when the dwarf tribes managed to tame a wild god. With this apex predator as their biggest weapon and most luxurious pack animal, the wild gods in partnership with the dwarf tribes turned into regional hegemons.

None except other wild gods could match their might, and they never fought among themselves except if one challenged the other over territory. This rarely happened as the planet’s surface was big enough to make room for much more wild gods.

The dwarf tribes generally obtained the cooperation of wild gods in two ways. The first method was to nurture and protect a godling mount from young. This was quite difficult as godlings in their adolescence became aggressive and eager to prove themselves. The dwarf tribes often warred among themselves and against deadly packs of predators.

For a godling mount to survive to a century old was extremely difficult, as their growth and food intake accelerated hugely in their final growth spurt!

Yet if a tribe managed to protect their biggest godling mount during this difficult time, they would be rewarded with a completely loyal wild god, who held boundless affection for the tribe that cared and protected it from its birth!

Another way a tribe could obtain a wild god was to come to an accord with one of the many wild gods roaming the lands by themselves. However, these free spirits ordinarily didn’t accept the dwarves, as they lived blissful lives by themselves as regional overlords who reigned from the top of the food chain.

Only under rare and exceptional circumstances would such tyrants agree to bond themselves with a dwarf tribe.

These feral and unruly wild gods possessed a much more domineering spirit than their more docile cousins. These feral wild gods typically developed wild ambitions as more and more dwarves started to worship these magnificent exobeasts.

Affected by the racial hatred and biases of the dwarves, these wild gods slowly adopted these same prejudices and began to hate the blessed people and the sacred gods as well!

It was always these wild gods grew jealous of the city dwellers and attacked their ancient cities!

Therefore, once the scout mechs reported sight of a large dwarf tribe led by three different wild gods, none of the Flagrant Swordmaidens thought about approaching them with a hand of peace.

"We should steer clear of this tribe. There’s no point in picking a fight them with them, which they’ll be sure to do once they see our forces and realize that we aren’t dwarves."

"We should attack! There’s a lot of research we can perform on those wild gods and their dwarf riders! They’re different from the solitary lazy brutes that spend their time sleeping and eating without end!"

Most people in the expedition preferred to avoid any further trouble and delays. However, a small number of people thought the opposite. In particular, the experts of the beast rider project including Ves pushed to attack the dwarves.

He presented the case in a small emergency meeting between the Vandal officers and chiefs.

"The beast rider project is progressing at a glacial pace right now because we have never gathered any detailed data on a man-beast connection in action." He began. "The neural interface that we are developing is mostly propped up by guesswork rather than solid data and theory. There’s a chance that it might work in connecting our candidate beast riders with Qilanxo’s bestial mind, but there is an even larger chance that it might fry their minds into a crisp!"

Many early attempts and interfacing the mind of a human to the mind of an animal never ended well for both. Neural interfaces became prohibited technology for a long time until the advent of mechs.

Mechs were non-living machines that thought in well-ordered machine logic and patterns! Mech pilots found it a lot easier to interface with mechs than with living animals that possessed chaotic thought patterns.

While neural interface technology advanced by leaps and bounds ever since they became popular with mechs, Ves did not have access to the restricted knowledge concerning those fields. He basically found himself back in time where he needed to reinvent the wheel on his own.

This was a daunting task, as neural interface technology only truly became safe to establish a man-beast connection after centuries of research performed by millions of specialist researchers!

Ves may possess certain advantages, but he’d never be able to close that big of a gap by himself!

Therefore, the only alternative to reinventing the wheel was to steal someone else’s wheel and reverse engineer it to produce his own plagiarized wheel!

It wasn’t as if the dwarves or whoever originally engineered their genes could file a patent violation complaint to the MTA!

He emphatically presented his case to the Vandals. "We know that the cursed people can safely and successfully interface with their tribal wild gods. If we managed to secure this pairing alive, we can strap them with loads of sensors and point a million scanners at them while they are forced to demonstrate their abilities to us. As long as we can get a few hours worth of data, I can virtually guarantee you that the modified neural interface for the beast riders will be absolutely safe. I dare say I can finish it within a week!"

"I think we should give it a shot, captain!" Chief Dakkon rose in support of the suggestion. "The god crystal project has been waiting for the beast rider project to achieve a breakthrough. Once they manage to get their beast riders bonded to Qilanxo, it’ll be much easier for us to ask her to demonstrate how she makes use of the god crystals."

Dr. Tillman also pitched in. "Capturing a tribal wild god is also beneficial to the god crystal project. We’ve studied how Qilanxo’s existing god crystals are embedded into her hide and flesh. If we can experiment with embedding one of our spare god crystals into the hide of a captive wild god, particularly one that is bonded to a high gravity variant human, we have hopes that we can perform the same procedure on Qilanxo!"

This not only furthered their understanding of the god crystals, but also allowed them to dangle another carrot in front of Qilanxo! Every sacred god liked to collect more god crystals.

Still, the risks of attacking a large tribe of wildlings under the protection of three mature wild gods was not a trifling matter. Though they lacked the god crystals that allowed them to accumulate a huge amount of energy, their bodies naturally stored a decent amount of intermediate energy, enough to power a couple of strong expressions of metaphysical abilities.

"We’ll have to attack them from long range. We still carry the scrap from the old artillery cannons. Let’s just assemble them close to the projected route of the dwarf tribe and fire the guns once they come into range!"

The Vandals developed various attack plans. Having learnt their lessons from Pairixan’s attack, they no longer underestimated any of the god species no matter how weak and underdeveloped they might seem.

All of their heavy transports and most of their fast transports would be parked at least several days away. This put them well out of range of any counteroffensive and allowed them to maintain their distance against the hostile wildlings in the event of a pursuit, though the chances of that happening would be low because the wildlings shouldn’t even be aware of the main convoy.

The attacking forces solely consisted of fast-moving mechs and disposable artillery cannons installed in place beforehand.

If the artillery batteries ever came under attack, all of the personnel manning the cannons could easily board a fast transport and abandon the position without crying over the losses. The value of the artillery cannons was a fraction of the assets secured on the main convoy.

However, as the mech officers bandied about more detailed offensive plans, Dr. Tillman suddenly made an unanticipated suggestion.

"Before we resort to direct combat, why not try to defeat them using a trick? During the last battle, we tried a number of hasty tricks. None of them worked, but back then we did not have a good understanding of physiology of the dwarves and the god species. It’s different now. Over a span of two months, we’ve studied Qilanxo’s body and performed deep studies into the remains of the sacred god carcasses. Right now, I am reasonably confident that we can develop irresistible bait then when ingested could instantly knock out any wild god as long as they aren’t too old and powerful!"

"How confident are you of your chances of success? And why make another giant candy bar?"

"I’m eighty percent confident that it will work as long as a wild god ingests our adulterated bait. I’m only five percent confident we can manage to do the same with an airborne substance. Therefore, the so-called candy bar presents the highest means of success."

"What about the dwarves?"

"They are much easier to take care of. After performing extensive studies on dozens of wildling captives and numerous wildling corpses, we have managed to achieve several breakthroughs. Their physique is very robust, but the knockout gas that we’ve developed can sedate the vast majority high gravity variant humans. However, this gas possesses such a high concentration of toxins that it is highly lethal to the blessed people and baseline humans such as us. Everyone has to wear an airtight suit if they want to enter a zone that’s been affected by this gas."

Both of these developments had the potential of simplifying the confrontation. Though the Vandals weren’t afraid of picking a fight with the dwarf tribe, if they could lay them down by using a few inexpensive tricks, then it was worth pursuing!

"Please outline your plan and tell me what you need in a report." Captain Byrd ordered. "I’ll go over it with Commander Lydia, and if we both think it’s viable, we’ll implement it first as plan A."

Not many mech officers held much faith in the plan. Previously, Pairixan appeared tempted, but he recognized the trap for what it was and bypassed the giant candy bar made out of lots of nutrient packs.

Would the wild gods possess the same level of vigilance?

Ves privately expressed a bit more confidence. So long as the large dwarf tribe never encountered a force like the Flagrant Swordmaidens before, then they shouldn’t be on guard against unusual encounters.

As the meeting ended and everyone started preparing their attack plans. This time the battle against ne natives shouldn’t be a near-disaster like last time!

With an undeniable information advantage against the potentially dangerous dwarf tribe, the Flagrant Swordmaidens completely held the initiative. They could attack when they wanted to and retreat out of sight whenever something didn’t go their way.

The wildling tribe and its wild gods wouldn’t know what hit them if everything went right!

As for whether the wildling tribe deserved to be attacked or not, none of the Vandals really thought about those ethical issues. They were just a bunch of smelly savages, after all.