The Mech Touch

by welldarn

Just posting this here so I can listen to it while I'm at work. I obviously don't own this work. If you are looking for the previous 175 chapters look up the User: Srtyi.

1. Chapters 176-200

Chapter: 176

The majority of the Dragons of the Void fought to the death. They clung to the heels of the expeditionary fleet and tried to gnaw through as much flesh as possible before they perished. This diehard behavior was completely uncharacteristic of opportunistic pirates who only cared for money and their lives.

After the vanguard led by the Ark Horizon completed their firing pass, much of the pirate fleet lost their coordination. Every ship and every mech on their side ended up in random positions. They couldn't gather into a cohesive formation anymore that could withstand the concerted efforts of House Kaine.

Most of the other pirate gangs fled. They made for easy pickings and more than half of the pirates never made it very far before they got shot to pieces.

In contrast, every mercenary corps suffered losses. Lord Kaine hired them to hunt hexapods, so they possessed the wrong loadout to fight a space battle. Combined with the defection of some other mercenaries, the expeditionary fleet lost about half of its original force of local hired help.

The mercenaries hadn't signed up to be cannon fodder. They were just about to mutiny until Lord Kaine granted them full salvage rights. Every wrecked ship and mech that belonged to the pirates were free reign. The clever measure placated them and caused most mercs to descend on the derelicts like bees in a hive.

After all, any wreck contained a lot of untapped treasure. Any mech or ship contained many millions of credits worth of exotics. Even if they lacked the facilities to extract the most valuable resources out of the wrecks, they still cut away the juiciest bits and intended to sell them to a professional salvager once the expedition returned to civilized space.

Ves found out that Keller's Blades distinguished themselves in battle. They possessed a small number of spaceborn mechs and helped put down the traitors when they caused a ruckus. The Vesian mercenaries even received a public commendation from Lord Kaine.

As for the Ark Horizon, the fleet carrier adopted a somewhat somber mood. A small number of spacers and mech pilots lost their lives in the ensuing chaos, not helped by Lord Kaine's abrupt decision to plunge the flagship into the enemy formation. While his maneuver succeeded in breaking the pirates, it also left much of the crew unprepared for a pitched battle.

"You should go with us to the funeral service." Chief Ramirez said as he wore a dress uniform. Around sixty people lost their lives in total, half of them killed by traitors who set off explosives. "You and your cousin fought alongside us. Even if you're not a part of our crew, you're comrades nonetheless."

"Alright."

Ves and Melkor switched their antigrav clothes to something more appropriate before joining the rest of the maintenance department. They entered the largest hangar bay where a large space had been emptied near the ramp. Although a security screen kept the vacuum out, everyone wore skin tight vacsuits underneath their dress uniforms just in case.

As soon as Ves saw the coffins, he started to turn a little numb. When Lord Kaine arrived and presided over a brief ceremony, he kept staring at the coffins with morbid fear.

"I could have ended up in one of those coffins."

Only now did the danger of the expedition truly sink in. They hadn't even met the sandmen in battle and already the expedition lost half of its peripheral mercenaries. Though House Kaine and their core mercenary partners hadn't lost too many assets this time, they might not be so lucky next time.

After sending off the coffins into the endless road of stars, everyone resumed their duties. The mech technicians became twice as busy as several mechs came back from the battle in a damaged state.

Even Ves and Chief Ramirez had to make do with fewer mech technicians as every department became short-handed. Still, the overhaul of the Ajax Olympians still continued largely on schedule. Lord Kaine personally sent them a memo telling them not to reassign too many men away from this project.

"The big man himself wants to see these mechs up and running before we set foot on Groening IV." Chief Ramirez told Ves. "There will be hell to pay if we end up holding up the timetable. We've already suffered too many delays."

Everyone soon got over the deaths and went back to work with determination. This time, the hunting platoon didn't regard Ves as a busybody who had no place in their midst. While Captain Kaine still avoided him like the plague, he got along a bit better with the rank and file.

Even Ensign D'Amato mellowed out. He gave permission to Melkor to carry his personal sidearm and allowed Lucky to stroll around with just a tracking collar. Ves appreciated the amount of trust House Kaine extended to him. He felt a little safer now that Melkor could respond immediately.

"Will the expedition still be viable?" Ves asked the ensign one day. "We lost an awful lot of mercenaries. Will Lord Kaine be able to hunt enough hexapods to make up for his massive investment?"

"I'm not privy to the costs, but from what I know, Lord Kaine has already taken the loss into account before we even set off for this expedition. We always knew that we'll be losing a lot of mercenaries along the way. They're not exactly the most trustworthy bunch."

His remark made Ves look up at him. "You guys intended to cull the mercenaries from the start."

It sounded really devious now that he thought about it. He always wondered why Lord Kaine hired so many mercenaries to begin with. The man appeared to invite disaster by keeping so many potential enemies close. Now it seemed that the wily old fox had other intentions in mind.

The ensign smirked. "There might still be some people with questionable loyalties among the mercenaries, but they won't have the numbers to threaten our fleet. We've already cleaned up the worst of the bunch together with their pirate associates."

A few questions remained, however. Post-battle analysis revealed that much of the Dragons of the Void fought to the death except for the flagship of the pirate group. The pirate commander ruthlessly threw away his entire force and fled without a single shred of decency.

Once investigators began to dig into the wrecks, they found to their surprise that much of the crew had been hopped up with stimulants. The poisonous cocktail fanned their aggression and lowered their inhibitions. In particular, they stopped fearing death.

To everyone's surprise, none of them had been forcibly injected with them. Instead, an unknown force subjected many of the pirates to a sophisticated form of brainwashing. The mech pilots had it particularly worse as their neural interfaces had been tampered with. When Ves had been asked to take a look, his face turned white as a sheet.

He beheld the half-broken neural interface helmet like it was a live grenade. "This thing is pure insanity. Messing around with the neural interface without express permission from the MTA is never a good idea. They've touched on a fundamental taboo."

The human mind was sacred. No one condoned brainwashing, not even if it happened to pirates. In the long history of humanity's rise to the stars, they dabbled plenty of times with various forms of brainwashing and mental conditioning. The horror of forming a society of human-form robots had once threatened humanity's dominance over the galaxy.

Still, the professional investigators working for House Kaine kept the details close to their chest. They only briefly consulted Ves on his opinions of the mechs they salvaged from the battlefield.

"They look like what a well-off pirate group is able to offer. It doesn't look like anything they fabricated themselves. Much of these mechs are pretty much off-the-shelf models that you can find in any corner of the Komodo StarSector."

"Besides the tampered neural interfaces, are there any other anomalies in these mechs?" The lead investigator asked. His own men must have already checked the salvaged wrecks, but it didn't hurt to obtain a second opinion.

"I haven't spent enough time to make a definite judgment. The Dragons of the Void don't seem to be a fan of custom mechs or custom loadouts. This is all standard gear."

Not every fleet enjoyed an abundant amount of trained and skilled personnel. Generally, only criminals and degenerates resorted to piracy. Skilled mech technicians and engineers enjoyed way too many job prospects. Anyone with a brain would never volunteer to become an outlaw that had to run from the authorities like a dog for the rest of his life.

Days went by as Ves and the maintenance department assigned to the hunting platoon finished the overhaul in time. Under his personal supervision, Ves made sure that nothing went wrong with regards to the final reassembly of the Ajax Olympians. When their surly pilots entered the cockpits and brought both mechs online, the diagnostics revealed that everything ran according to specs.

"We did it!" Ramirez bellowed and cheered along with the other technicians. They certainly outdid themselves in transforming the heavy knights into a much more formidable machine. The twenty percent boost in strength on top of their already prodigious power ensured that they stood a much better chance at subduing a hexapod king.

They only had a few days to smooth out the kinks. Ves worked hard to ensure the Olympians could take the abuse for an extended amount of time. They finished right on time as the expeditionary fleet finally arrived at their fabled destination.

The Groening System's size and wealth exceeded everyone's expectations. The system possessed nineteen planets and many more moons. Much of these planets didn't amount to much. The expedition had no interest in exploring the lifeless rocks or boring gas giants. They made their way straight towards the inner system and to the only planet that possessed an atmosphere.

When D'Amato showed Ves a projection of the planet, the metal storms had already started to subside. "It truly looks like a treasure."

The constant storms had smoothed out the surface of the metal ground, causing it to adopt a pattern of dream-like waves. The Groening System's active yellow dwarf cast a glossy sheen atop the metal globe.

The ensign hadn't come up to Ves with this projection without a reason. "It's good that you appreciate the planet's beauty, because you'll be part of the ground team."

"What?!"

Ves knew that despite its exotic look, the planet hid a lot of threats. Who knew if the logs of the previous expedition encompassed all of the wildlife. In addition, things might have changed after more than twenty years.

"Lord Kaine gave the word himself and wants you on the ground. Even though the metal storm has entered its low period, it's still too dangerous to expose our shuttles to the planet's hostile atmosphere. We also have to take the hexabats into account. Each trip will degrade the integrity of a shuttle or transport, and we only brought so many to this expedition."

The hunting platoon and the mercenaries deployed to the underground paradise couldn't operate around the clock. Their pilots needed rest and the mechs might need some quick repairs.

Just like the previous expedition, House Kaine intended to establish a temporary base camp at a defensible position. With some hasty entrenchment, the camp should be able to withstand a horde of hexapods for a limited amount of time.

That still didn't mean that Ves could treat this trip like a vacation. The hexapods had already proven their lethality and Ves didn't look forward to seeing one in the flesh no matter how many walls the base camp erected.

"You're assigned to assist the hunting platoon. You can't do that effectively up in orbit." D'Amato explained. "Lord Kaine doesn't want to see you slacking off. Your contribution to improving the performance of our Ajax Olympians isn't enough to pay for your services."

In other words, Lord Kaine wanted to squeeze every little bit of value from his presence. Ves understood that the hunting platoons and other mechs might face some difficult problems. A mech designer like him could prove very useful in various ways. He couldn't come up with a viable excuse to shirk this duty.

"Very well. I'll prepare to join the ground team."

He should have expected to be employed in this fashion. From what he experienced so far, Lord Kaine and the rest of his men hardly valued the lives of their mercenaries. While they had to treat their formidable mercenary partners from the Grey Willow Star Sector with care, they obviously didn't extend the same amount of concern to the help they picked up in the frontier.

Even if the hexapod kings all rose up and wiped the base camp off the map, then so what? If Ves ended up in a hexapod king's belly, House Kaine already earned a massive fortune from their earlier harvests. Even the Clifford Society didn't seem so scary once the Ark Horizon left the Komodo StarSector.

Chapter: 177

The night before planetfall, Ves and Melkor gathered together in their bunk. Ensign D'Amato also turned in for the night, so they didn't have to worry about any nearby physical presences. Ves turned on his trusty Privacy Shield which doubtlessly blocked all forms of hidden monitoring.

"It's safe to talk now." He said.

Melkor immediately brought up his suspicions. "Have you noticed how this expedition is vastly over-prepared for a mere hunting expedition on an untamed planet?"

"Huh, I never thought about it that way. You're right in that House Kaine has brought way too many mechs, but aren't they making sure they'll be harvesting as much monoexurite as possible?"

"Even with all the losses, they are bringing in so many mechs that the local ecosystem will definitely notice. The scale of this expedition is vastly larger than the previous one."

The surveyors who stumbled upon the Groening System came as explorers and mappers. They only possessed a handful of smaller ships and only several dozens of mechs at most. The expedition organized by House Kaine was at least a magnitude larger.

When Ves thought about the scale of the entire venture, he started to suspect the motives of House Kaine. "You're right. A hunting trip doesn't require a capital ship like the Ark Horizon. Half of the fleet is geared to fight the sandmen, which is strange since no one has explicitly mentioned any plans to raid sandmen space."

What did that mean? Either Lord Kaine intended to attack the sandmen, or he had good reason to believe the sandmen might take the initiative.

Unfortunately, neither of the Larkinsons could figure out the real aim of the expedition. They lacked a lot of information and had no way of gathering more. Ensign D'Amato made sure that Ves didn't wander around or ask too many uncomfortable questions, not that anyone in the lower decks knew anything important.

The only person who might know the full picture was Captain Felicity Kaine. As an up-and-coming scion of the House, she had to be informed of the real score.

Ves found some reassurance to the fact that she and her entire hunting platoon would also be deployed to the underground world. The need to provide safe haven to the hunting platoon meant that the base camp should be safe as well, up to an extent.

In order to increase his chances of survival, Ves decided to spend a large portion of his DP. He accumulated a few thousand more Design Points in the last month. Besides the ongoing sales of his virtual mechs, he also earned a little extra through the sale of his physical mechs.

"I think it's time to boost some of my physical attributes."

Groening IV posed a lot of challenges to those deployed on the ground. Not only did everyone have to contend with 1.4 times the gravity of Ancient Earth, it also featured a dense atmosphere filled with toxic, heavy gasses. Everyone had to wear customized hazard suits in order to function normally.

Those with feeble constitutions like Ves might not even last an entire month in those conditions. Even if the base camp offered pressured accommodations where workers can get rid of their bulky suits, the brutal work schedule ensured that no one had enough time to laze about.

The metal storm that raged about the surface only slumbered for a limited amount of time. Everyone had to work overtime in order to make sure that the ground team harvested as much monoexurite as possible within their forty-day window. He'd be physically exhausted a long time before the end of the window if he kept his attributes at their shabby level.

[Endurance Attribute Candy]: 800 Design Points

[Endurance Attribute Candy]: 900 Design Points

[Endurance Attribute Candy]: 1,000 Design Points

[Strength Attribute Candy]: 800 Design Points

[Strength Attribute Candy]: 900 Design Points

[Strength Attribute Candy]: 1,000 Design Points

Ves quickly ingested all of the candies in succession. He groaned a bit but kept his pain to himself. While the candies came with a much milder effect, it still took a lot of effort to rein in his agony. The increase in strength and endurance to a level just above an average human should come very handy without attracting an excessive amount of attention.

Minutes later, he finished his transformation. A thin layer of sweat suffused his body as he beheld his firmed up muscles. He hadn't bulked up a lot, but he definitely gained a bit of mass. As long as he wore a bulky hazard suit, no one would find out his body gained a sudden upgrade.

After that, he considered a way to improve his chances of making it out safely in the event of an unforeseen crisis. The truth was that he couldn't do much if the hexapods decided to storm the base camp. Ves pretty much had to put his faith in others.

"Will a stealth augment even be of any use?"

He'd be able to hide from hexapods and people with ill intentions with a permanent augment. He could also wrap his comm around Lucky and let him sneak into restricted places. The utility of complete stealth at his fingertips should serve him well throughout his career.

[Comm Upgrade - Privacy Shield - Level 0 - Augment - Full Stealth]

Price: 30.000 DP

Duration: 5 Minutes

Upgrades a level 1 Privacy Shield to emit an overpowering field that disrupts any means of observation. It is capable of obfuscating every possible means of observation that is known to the Mech Designer System.

Even with his minor fortune, Ves couldn't afford the level 1 version of the stealth augment. He had to take a step back and buy the gimped version. This energy-inefficient augment gobbled up so much power that it only lasted five minutes in total.

"It's better than nothing. Five minutes should be more than enough to save my life."

Normally, a comm possessed enough power to last for months. Hardly anyone bothered to recharge their wrist devices every night, something which Ves planned to do now that he had a stealth augment in his hands.

"This should be the last time I open up the Mech Designer System. It's too dangerous to fiddle around with it once I'm on the ground."

Ves already browsed some of the plans of the base camp. It featured extensive monitoring and shielding of every kind. In such a sensitive location, Ves didn't dare call up the System. Using the Privacy Shield without Full Stealth also risked attracting a lot of attention.

"Status."

[Status]

Name: Ves Larkinson

Profession: Apprentice Mech Designer

Specializations: None

Design Points: 1,648

Attributes

Strength: 1.1

Dexterity: 0.8

Endurance: 1.1

Intelligence: 1.8

Creativity: 1

Concentration: 1.7

Neural Aptitude: F

Skills

[Assembly]: Apprentice - [3D Printer Proficiency III] [Assembler Proficiency III]

[Battle Mechatronics]: Apprentice

[Business]: Apprentice

[Computer Science]: Incompetent

[Electrical Engineering]: Apprentice - [Structural Pathway Configuration II]

[Mathematics]: Apprentice

[Mechanics]: Journeyman - [Jury Rigging II] [Speed Tuning III]

[Metallurgy]: Journeyman - [Alloy Compression II]

[Metaphysics]: Incompetent

[Physics]: Apprentice - [Directed Energy Weapon Optimization II] [Lightweight Armor Optimization I] [Medium Weight Armor Optimization III] [Melee Weapon Optimization Ii]

Abilities

[Superpublish]: Available. Can be activated once a year.

Evaluation: A mech designer who graves the abyss.

Ves completely splurged his reserves of DP this time, but he didn't regret it. The utility of his stealth augment should see him through a lot of crises from now on. He deactivated his Privacy Shield and removed his comm in order to place it on a charging station on a counter next to his bed.

After a good night's rest, Ves woke up to a busy day. A large amount of mechs had been partially disassembled and packed into standardized containers in order to ease their shipping down to the surface. Even Melkor's Stanislaw joined the stacks of containers waiting to be loaded into heavy-duty transports.

"Good morning, Ves."

"Morning, Ramirez."

Most of the mech technicians busied themselves with packing up their inventory. The maintenance department had to make sure they had every essential tool and material on hand.

"We'll be joining the second wave." Ramirez continued. "Last night, the survey bots sent out from the Ark found a good location to establish a beachhead. The first wave is largely composed of mechs and scouts and will make sure that there isn't anything nasty waiting for us down there. Once they clear the site, we'll be joining them to construct the initial facilities to support a medium-term occupation."

The ground team had to construct a rudimentary wall and a barracks before the end of the day. After that, they'd put up mech stables and workshops while continuing to expand the base's security envelope. At the end of the week, the base camp should be fully operational.

"I'm not sure how much use I will be if I go in this early." Ves dubiously replied. After all, he didn't know anything about construction.

"There's little reason to delay your deployment. Relax. There are plenty of things to do outside of erecting some walls. A lot of screwups happen in the process of unpacking the mechs from their containers. It's always the patch jobs and sloppily applied mods that get in the way of such things."

The chief had a point. The mech technicians likely needed someone with a brain in order to handle any complications that arose without damaging the entire mech.

After several hours of waiting, Ves, Melkor and Lucky followed the rest of the maintenance department into boarding a reinforced passenger shuttle. The pilot wasted no time in setting off once everyone strapped to their seats. The shuttle smoothly glided out of the Ark Horizon's shuttle bay and started to plummet downwards.

No one came in a skinny vacuum suit this time. Even Ves had changed into the hazard suit issued by his client. The suit came with gravity compensators that eased the alien planet's elevated gravity. It also came with special lining that worked great against blocking out the persistent level of radiation they'd face in the underground world.

The shuttle started its violent descent down to the planet. Groening IV possessed a thick atmosphere filled with toxic gasses and dense metal shards even when the periodic storms entered their resting phase.

Everyone aboard the ship felt the vibrations and the shuttle strained to fly through the metal mist. Even with a magnetic screen pushing aside most of the metals in its way, the shuttle still suffered plenty of impacts.

Fortunately, nothing happened when the convoy of shuttles and transports finally reached the surface of the planet. The flight flew over the smooth and shiny surface of the planet before coming across a gaping cavern in the ground. Every shuttle plunged into the abyss and followed a series of narrow tunnels before ending up in a vast underground jungle.

As the sensors readjusted to the lower intensity of light, everyone beheld the beauty of the underground kingdom. The primal alien flora and fauna gave the environment an enchanting promise of hidden wealth and buried treasures. Anyone who braved the dangers could certainly stumble across a fortune.

"Alright, we're setting down in five minutes." Chief Ramirez spoke through the local communication channel. "Stick to the plan and don't wander off. I don't need to tell you what will happen if you end up in the belly of a hexapod."

The chief only spared a couple of words in order to keep the men and women from doing anything stupid. The novelty of landing on an untapped alien planet always sparked some delirium among the more excitable people.

Once the shuttle finally reached its destination, everyone stepped out into the open air.

The first thing Ves noted when he looked at his flourishing environment was that he couldn't see very far. All of the particles in the air along with the constant electromagnetic disturbances caused everything beyond fifty meters to be obscured in a hazy grey mist.

This mist obscured more than sight. It also played a lot of havoc with communications, to the point where the ships in orbit wouldn't be able to communicate with the base camp in real time. The base had to rely on its fragile quantum entanglement nodes in order to keep in touch.

The restrictions on communications also effectively cut off the mercenary teams when they went out to hunt. Anything might happen deeper in the jungle. House Kaine could hardly do anything if the mercenaries were up to mischief, not that they particularly cared all that much.

With the Ark Horizon and the rest of her fleet keeping a watchful eye in orbit, no one had the chance to make off with smuggled goods. Every haul the mercenaries brought back would be handed over at the end of the day. By controlling the metaphorical gates, House Kaine possessed an ironclad insurance that nothing went up without their say so.

"Buckle up, Ves." Ramirez bumped his chest. "We're going to have a lot of work on our hands. You can forget about relaxing for the next forty days."

Ves nodded in agreement, but had other thoughts in mind.

Chapter: 178

The construction site bloomed into existence as the first shipments arrived. The prefabs took little effort to put together, though they took up a large portion of the cargo. The extremely rigid ground and soil made it highly difficult to dig through, but the construction team achieved some progress with the help of high-powered diggers.

The first wave of mercenary mechs arrived shortly after the shuttles finished hauling the construction materials. Despite the insufficient facilities, the plan called for unpacking them immediately in order to help secure the base.

As expected, a lot of hijinks happened in the process of taking the mechs out of their containers. The partially detached limbs required a bit of finesse to put them back into their sockets. Having to work in the awful conditions outdoors made everything worse.

"No no no, don't put that back together without cleaning the joints! All of the gunk in the air has fouled the connectors. We're not working in a modern workshop environment right now!"

"Have you forgotten how much gravity we're dealing with right now? Those loaders aren't rated to lift at maximum capacity under our current gravity levels! It's a wonder they're even lifting off in the first place!"

"Start with the light mechs first! They're easier to put together and we need them to scout the perimeter. Doesn't matter what outfit they're a part of, start with the lightest mechs and work your way up!"

The heavy workload kept Ves up all night. House Kaine wanted every mercenary mech up and running within three days, which he found utterly unrealistic. Around two hundred different mechs in total joined the operation. If it hadn't been for the previous battle, that number could have reached as high as four-hundred mechs.

Compared to the mechs belonging to the forces from the Grey Willow StarSector, the local variants didn't seem impressive. None of the Komodo mercenaries belonged to the elite. Some mercenaries piloted their mechs so badly that Ves wondered how they graduated from the academy in the first place.

"This is a real mess." Melkor commented in a disdainful voice. "I bet that half of the mercs have embellished their track record. There's no way that the expedition accepted them otherwise."

The lack of training and professionalism among much of the mercenaries also caused the slowly emerging base camp to be a rowdy site. The security officers keeping the peace had their hands full trying to prevent the various grudges between individual mercenaries to come to blows.

In order to keep the mercs busy, Commander Tregis sent out the mercs to begin their first hunting expedition. Tregis took charge of the entire base as it slowly took shape. Under his leadership, the mercs stopped brawling with each other and cleaned up their act.

Ves found him to be a highly competent leader. As the man in charge of the expedition's only settlement, Tregis eased into the job like his entire life revolved around the role. The man must have prepared for the job many years ago. It showed when he argued with the civil engineers on how to tweak the existing wall designs to accommodate their current terrain advantages.

The base camp sat on a low hill that overlooked a vast swathe of terrain. The metallic foliage surrounding their site obscured much of the wildlife, but the view afforded them plenty of warning should a hexapod king decide to attack their base.

On the second day, the first team of mercs arrived from their successful hunt. Everyone put down their work and welcomed the squad of mechs that came back with a bunch of scratches on their coating. They dragged over two incredibly formidable corpses of hexapods that instantly attracted everyone's attention.

Even Ves came over to touch the recently perished hexapod. While they weren't as impressive as a king-sized beast, the regular adults posed a significant threat against isolated mechs. Only through teamwork could the mercs hunt these beasts without incurring significant losses.

"It's pretty big." Chief Ramirez remarked as he knocked his armored fist against the dead hexapod's surface. The beast possessed some kind of palm-sized scales composed of an organic composite. Different hexapods derived the metals from their diet in different proportions, leading to many variations of colors.

Commander Tregis tried to get everyone back to work, but the crowd continued to converge around the carcasses. They waited until a team of exobiologists personally harvested the heat organs.

In order to cut open their extremely tough scales and hides, they employed a specialized surgical mech to make the necessary incisions. The mech's awesome power easily parted the skins, allowing more delicate tools and bots to sever the heat organ from the bodies and store them into a transparent container.

"Is it me, or are the heat organs glowing?"

"All those exotics packed into a single mass of tissue are bound to act weird."

Everyone returned to work after that. Ves found the hexapods to be remarkable creatures to be able to thrive in these difficult circumstances. The vast galaxy possessed an uncountable amount of stars, but only a handful possessed the right conditions to support a form of life.

Humanity had the misfortune to evolve from a star system devoid of any exotics. This shaped the race in a way that provided them with hardly any innate superiority compared to other forms of life.

As a rule, the most formidable forms of life evolved to make use of the exotics present in their native environment. This granted them many special and even metaphysical capabilities, such as a near-total immunity to heat, a passive form of telepathy that spans the entire race, or an intelligence that mimics quantum computers.

Strangely enough, all of these innate strengths came with a major downside. All of these extremely dangerous aliens were constrained by their dependence on specific types of exotics to procreate. They couldn't propagate as fast as the human race because they constantly had to seek out star systems that contained deposits of the right types of exotics.

This constraint formed massive invisible shackles among the various alien races. Some of them transcended the stars hundreds of thousands of years ago or even more. Despite their higher levels of development, humanity had beaten them back through luck, trickery and sheer numbers.

These days, humanity also depended on exotics, but only to augment their existing technologies. Only a couple of critical technologies such as the FTL drive couldn't do without exotics. As for everything else, humanity wouldn't collapse if every exotic material suddenly disappeared one day.

Weapons and armor would lose most of their potency and it would become more difficult to traverse the stars. Only the most primitive FTL drive worked without employing trace amounts of exotics to massively increase its range and effectiveness.

"It's pretty sad to see these awesome creatures devolve into six-legged bags of monoexurite." Ves idly commented. "They've been ruling this underground kingdom for how many years now? To think that all of this might end now that humans like us have descended down into their world."

"It's their misfortune to grow up alongside monoexurite." Ensign D'Amato smirked underneath his own hazard suit. "Life isn't fair. Our FTL drives hunger for the stuff. Every gram we extract from their chests will help a couple of warships fight back against the aliens who wish to see us dead."

Since Ves didn't feel too much compassion for the hexapods, he merely shrugged before returning to work.

The base finally took on a semblance of order on the fourth day. An expansive set of walls in the shape of a five-pointed star enclosed the perimeter of the base. Extensive rows of flimsy prefabs provided climate-controlled berths for the mechs who returned from their hunt.

They also provided the bare minimum amount of space to allow the mech technicians to maintain the battered mechs.

The mercenaries definitely had to get used to hunting the hexapods. As the native predators of Groening IV, none of the hexapods went down without a fight. Each of them possessed the strength of a light mech at minimum, with a couple of them reaching the level of a medium mech.

A hexapod who fought without regard for its life could easily dish out a lot of hurt. Ves even had to lend a hand to the repair teams once in a while. He didn't mind the work, as he got to experience a variety of mechs suffering from different kinds of damage. The work opened his mind to how a real expedition worked.

The hunting platoon set off on the start of the fourth day.

Captain Kaine in her highly advanced white mech stood before the main entrance of the base. Ves found out that the model carried the name of Cathrec, which sounded a bit too masculine for such a slim and graceful medium mech. Despite its emphasis on mobility, the Cathrec was capable of piercing through almost any material with its powered spear.

Behind the Cathrec, the Ajax Olympians looked as sturdy as always. Few knew they packed a lot more punch than before. With its enhanced strength and various other kinds of boosts, Ves put a lot of faith in their ability to pin down a hexapod king. Still, he couldn't help but worry a little bit for the machines.

The Volmars and Empyreans stood further back. Compared to the previous two models, they attracted less attention, but that didn't make them less important.

The Volmars looked and fought like brawlers or skirmishers. They possessed the right mix of strength, speed and agility to make full use of their staffs and maces to deliver crushing blows onto their prey.

As for the Empyreans, no one expected them to vanquish the largest predators in the area with their railguns. Their weapons might be able to take down a king if they had the time to unleash a couple of volleys, but their prey wouldn't let them do so with impunity. Still, the ability to deal damage from a distance gave the group a large amount of tactical flexibility.

"Alright fellows, I'll be back with a trophy!"

Ves joined the others in waving at the elite group of mechs as they disappeared into the jungle. No one knew when they returned, not even Ves. The hexapod kings rarely made an appearance unless the expedition did something drastic. Even the current deployment of mechs hardly fazed the elder creatures.

Even as the initial rush of activity made way for a new routine, Ves and Melkor never forgot to keep an eye on what went on. Ves conscientiously built up a reputation among the work crew for his excellent work and sage advice.

With the absence of the hunting platoon, he mingled among the other crews performing maintenance on the mechs. He learned a variety of news concerning the other mercenaries involved in the expedition. Even though Ensign D'Amato kept a constant eye on him, even he grew bored of his job.

He found out something interesting one day.

"So you say these mechs have been digging into the ground?" Ves asked with minor astonishment. "How can they do so when the ground is as tough as ship armor?"

"They've been melting it, I guess." The bearded mech technician casually remarked. "God knows what kind of temperatures they're working with or where they are getting their gear in the first place. I haven't seen anything in the stores that's capable of pumping so much heat. They require energy cells the size of air cars as well."

A female mech technician added her own thoughts. "They're trying to locate the main deposit of monoexurite, I bet! The plants around this region have to get it from somewhere to be able to feed the hexapods with the stuff. With so many flora containing traces of monoexurite, there's bound to be a major concentration nearby that's been spreading it outwards."

That made some sense. Ves wondered what else could be found deep underneath. Perhaps the expedition aimed to uncover other kinds of natural treasures.

Chapter: 179

Since the hunting platoon left to scour the jungle for the alpha beasts, Ves sought to find more clues. Through regular contact, he learned that several mercenary teams received missions other than hunting the hexapods to harvest their valuable heat organs.

"This bunch of fellows came back with an uprooted tree! It's a small one, though. Like, no taller than you and me. It looks really old and gnarly and it definitely had been gnawed at by the beasts. Besides that, I don't have a clue why the mercs brought it back."

"This team encountered a hexapod and instead of slaughtering it on the spot, they pinned it down and shot lasers at it! I swear, they received orders to pump it full of energy before killing it. The beast thrashed so much the team almost lost some of their mechs. It's going to take an extensive overhaul to bring those mechs back to normal."

Though he heard plenty of gossip, Ves didn't gain anything truly useful. The main factor that limited his exposure to information was that the core of the expedition gathered within the inner area of the base.

All of the mercenaries and most of the outsiders lacked the permission to enter this highly secure area. Instead, House Kaine had relegated them to the periphery of the base. Even Ves received the same treatment, though most of the maintenance department including Chief Ramirez also had to stay outside.

Ramirez shrugged at him when he remarked about it. "The only people who get to know the important stuff are those who need to know. Techies like us are only here to keep the mechs running. It doesn't matter what's going on. Even if the cavern is collapsing, we'll still continue to maintain everyone's mechs."

"You don't think they're hiding something from us?"

"Of course they're hiding the truth from us! Do you think they showed us the full recordings of what went on in the previous expedition? That's just the tip of the iceberg! I'm sure the hexapod heat organs are worth a lot of money, but even the dumbest mech technicians know Lord Kaine is after something else. There's no reason to take a high-profile approach otherwise."

Neither Ramirez or D'Amato answered any of his questions. They deliberately stifled him even if they knew something more.

Perhaps Ramirez had a point, but Ves couldn't leave things be. He constantly had a bad feeling about this entire venture. If he received some kind of advance warning, he'd be able to maximize his chances of getting through a crisis unscathed.

He also kept Master Olson's words in mind. So far, the expedition hadn't suffered any major setbacks. Besides the strange and unusual pirate attack, everything went according to plan.

Ves stared at the solidly guarded entrance to the inner sanctum of the base. Ves considered employing his stealth field to sneak into the inner sanctum, but he reconsidered after thinking about its limited duration. Neither he nor Lucky could accomplish anything in only five minutes.

With no other choice, he opted to wait. In any case, his workload kept growing as the mercenaries returned with dead hexapods and damaged mechs.

The highly competent mech technicians serving under House Kaine were able to fix most of the issues they encountered even without the help of a mech designer. He mainly found himself trying to fix extensively damaged components that took a lot of time and effort to replace. His much greater knowledge on the workings and composition of each part allowed him to bring almost anything back to life.

He managed to accomplish most of the challenges he faced due to his long-dormant Jury Rigging II sub-skill. The skill provided him with a mentality that prompted him to think outside the box. His solutions might not always be proper, but they always held up in the short term.

When Ves thought he'd continue to improvise solutions for the rest of the expedition, Ensign D'Amato suddenly received an emergency transmission.

"Ves, put down your work. You're needed elsewhere."

"Is there an emergency?"

"A critical one. The hunting platoon encountered a mishap. One of the Ajax Olympians suffered critical damage. Captain Kaine used up her only high-powered signal device to relay her help request to the nearest mercenaries, who eventually relayed her message back to base."

The news came as an unpleasant surprise. Ves worked so hard to upgrade the heavy knight's parameters. "What's the damage?"

The ensign consulted his comm. "Its entire left leg received extensive damage to the point of immobilizing the machine. The mech can't walk back to base and it's too heavy to be hauled over. The rest of the hunting platoon is staying by its side, but the site is highly unsafe."

As a heavy mech that weighed about five times as much as a medium mech, Ves knew that nothing they had on hand could bring it back to base. The 1.4 times gravity complicated the situation even more. The mech effectively weighed forty percent more on this planet, which made it impossible for any hauler platform to bring it back to base.

They made their way over to the eastern gate of the base camp. "What's the plan?"

"Commander Tregis has already formed a rescue party. You will lead a repair team over to the hunting platoon and bring the damaged Olympian back up its feet. It's vitally important that the heavy knight regains enough mobility to walk back to safety."

"I have to perform repairs on the spot?!" It sounded outrageous to Ves that he had to leave the safety of the base camp's walls and be forced to traverse an alien jungle.

"I'm aware that we're demanding a lot from you, Ves. You'll be safe inside an armored transport that will also bring the necessary supplies to facilitate the repairs. A couple of mechs will accompany the transport on the ground to make sure that no indigenous life forms will intercept the vehicle."

It still sounded crazy, but Ves had no choice but to follow orders. The success of the entire expedition hinged on the Olympians.

Commander Tregis worked fast. He commandeered an armored transport scheduled to ship their current harvests back to orbit and emptied it of its entire cargo. Chief Ramirez took over at this point and ordered his subordinates to load it up to the brim with tools, machines and materials.

Once Ves arrived at the transport, he wondered why they didn't intend to pick up the damaged mech from its current location. It sounded much more convenient to him if they could bring the mech back to base before attempting repairs.

"There's too many metal trees in the way. They're so tough and resilient that it's nearly impossible to form a clearing without creating a huge commotion." The chief replied as he supervised the loading process. "Instead, the transport will be hovering above the site, allowing us to drop in our gear one by one."

The transport also wouldn't be sticking around for long. Once it unloaded all of the gear, the pilot had orders to return back to base. Otherwise, the transport risked attracting the attention of a flock of hexabats.

The expedition learned pretty early that their flying craft attracted the hexabats like moths to a flame. The heat from the thrusters and other active systems formed an irresistible attraction to the small but dangerous beasts.

Everything had to be done quickly. Ves barely took stock of the damage readings when Ensign D'Amato forced him to board the transport. Fortunately, Melkor also came along with his Stanislaw while Lucky slept in his embrace.

"Let's go!"

The transport slowly lifted off and headed east at a slow pace. A squad of seven mechs accompanied the low-flying craft on the ground and tried to navigate through the trees as fast as possible.

Except for the Stanislaw, all the other mechs consisted of elites from George's Cavalry. The supposed mercenaries navigated the alien jungle with a high degree of proficiency. They hardly let the dense forest slow them down. It became apparent that they took to arboreal terrain like fish to water.

Impressively enough, the Stanislaw didn't lose out too much in speed. Melkor skillfully danced aside any obstacles in his way and always found the right footing to travel forward without tripping up. He only lacked the practical experience to match the older mercenaries who had already been through a lot.

The transport and its escort made good speed towards their destination. They encountered a couple of hazards along the way, but the squad of mechs took care of most of the issues.

The biggest danger occurred when a small flock of hexabats flew too close to the transport. They noticed its heat emissions and instantly went berserk. Melkor and the two other ranged mechs all aimed their ballistic rifles in the air and shot down the beasts with specialized airburst ammunition.

Despite the plentiful fire, the hexabats were so resilient that glancing hits only shrugged off their thick scales. A couple of bats reached the transport and tried to drill through its thin armor. It took quite a bit of effort to stamp them out for good.

"Continue on! We can't afford any delays!"

They reached the Olympian around a standard day later. The surrounding brush and ground exhibited a lot of traces of a furious battle. Despite the marks, the larger trees remained stubbornly intact. Nothing in their arsenal could take down these incredibly resilient plant life.

"We're here! Start lifting down our gear!" Ramirez then turned to Ves. "I want you down there first to take stock of the damage. We've already received the Olympian's internal telemetry, but who knows if it's complete. We've got to go down there and scan the damaged limb ourselves."

With that, Ves boarded a lifter platform that snuck him past the razor-sharp leaf cover until he finally touched the ground. As soon as he stepped off, he put down Lucky who eagerly started to explore.

Unlike Ves who had to wear his hazard suit, his feline companion roamed the toxic environment like a hexapod. As a mechanical beast, he didn't need to breathe in the first place. Lucky would still be fine if he ended up in a vacuum. Even the constant levels of radiation hardly fazed the miraculous cat.

While he waited for the scanner module to be gently brought down, Ves studied the battered hunting platoon in order to figure out what happened.

Most of the mechs looked like they had better days. Only the Empyreans looked pristine.

The only intact Olympian obviously had a rough time. Its robust shield featured many deep scratches. Its armor was in better shape, which was a testament to both its quality and the skill of the pilot.

As for the Volmars, around half of them suffered damage. Claw and bite marks scuffed their weapons and armor, which wasn't supposed to happen in the first place.

Once the air car-sized scanner module arrived, Ves steered the lifter platform in the direction of the crippled Olympian.

Its leg looked as if a giant beast chomped its thigh. Huge bite marks and traces of tearing suffused the entire limb. Its thick armor saved it from being gulped into the stomach of a giant hexapod, but it hadn't prevented the teeth from punching past the armor, dealing loads of internal damage.

"Don't move!" Ves instructed the pilot when the heavy mech tried to turn. "Just stay in place while I scan the affected portion."

The pilot frantically spoke back in the local voice channel. "Stay away and get to cover! He's back!"

"Who's back?" Ves turned around and noticed the high-strung hunting platoon getting ready to meet a formidable opponent. His stomach sank as he realized whatever chewed up the Olympian hadn't left the area.

Captain Kaine's Cathrec frantically gestured him back with its charged spear. "Larkinson! Move to the center of our formation! We can't let the doctor get his hands on you!"

Doctor?

"Hahahaha!" A loud screech echoed through the trees. Different from the earlier conversation, the awful voice hadn't been conveyed through any of the local communication channels. "A mech designer, you say? Delightful!"

While Ves still wondered who the voice belonged to, a gigantic moving object charged through the trees and impacted against the braced Olympian that met the charge. A loud impact sounded as the Olympian had been shoved back more than a dozen steps.

As for the beast itself, it looked nothing like a normal hexapod. In fact, it looked like a cross between a mech and a hexapod king. Various rusting mechanical parts had been married into a rotting but still largely intact hexapod king carcass.

"Is that an improvised mech?" Ves inadvertently blurted out.

The strange marriage between mech and beast sent chills through his spine. Even more remarkable was the ragged human man strapped to the top of the chimera's head. The man had obviously seen better days. His ragged lab coat had been scruffed to the point where its formerly pristine white composite fabric took on a disgusting black appearance.

Even now, the madman laughed. His amplified voice disturbed the entire rescue party. How could a human being even breathe the toxic gasses that make up Groening IV's incredibly hazardous air?

"Hahahaha! The interlopers think to stop my pet! The nerve! I am the king of the forest! No one disobeys me without paying the price!"

"Doctor Jutland!" Captain Kaine shouted out from her Cathrec as she quickly positioned her mech between the beast and Ves. "I know it's been long, but you're still human! Please allow us to treat you and we'll promise to return you to civilized space."

"Human? HUMAN? You DARE call me a human! I AM NO HUMAN! I AM A KING, THE ONLY KING OF THE FOREST! HAHAHAHA!"

The madman atop the chimera went absolutely bonkers. Despite his evident madness, no one made a move. Despite the deplorable state of his chimera mech, it still possessed enough power to rip the hunting platoon to shreds.

Chapter: 180

When Ves was young, he used to watch a lot of dramas about mechs. Some of the staple villains of the shows piloted irregular mechs built with strange materials. The idea of cannibalizing a formidable alien creature's corpse and using it to form a chimera mech often horrified and fascinated the impressionable kids that watched these broadcasts.

He had never thought to come across an actual chimera mech in a serious setting. The maniacal Dr. Jutland sat on a crudely crafted chair welded to the top of the dinosaur-shaped hexapod king. The massive creature resembled an unholy amalgamation of rotted hide and rusting metal.

Despite its shoddy construction, the base materials exceeded those used by every other mech on site. Despite colliding with the intact Ajax Olympian several times, its entire frame simply took no damage. An unknown but potent power source kept the chimera mech running at an astounding level.

"Hand over your mech designer!" Doctor Jutland raged as he ordered his chimera mech to bash through the Olympian standing in its way.

Through a combination of guts, the hunting platoon avoided getting bulldozed by the extremely powerful chimera mech. The Empyreans tried to pin it down with their railguns, but the chimera mech hardly took notice of the high-powered kinetic projectiles. Even shooting at its head didn't work, as some kind of energy shield bounced away anything that could threaten the mad doctor.

Only Captain Kaine achieved some progress in pushing the monstrosity back. Her gleaming white Cathrec possessed a remarkable combination of speed and power that allowed it to threaten the chimera mech's incredibly tough exterior with its powered spear.

"Get out of the way!" The doctor bellowed as his chimera mech shied away from a deadly spear strike. "My subjects! Heed my call! Destroy these interlopers!"

Half-a-dozen adult hexapods answered his call and stormed the hunting platoon. The Volmars had their hands full fending off the berserk beasts. Unfortunately for Jutland, the sole functioning Olympian and the Cathrec continued to fend off the chimera mech.

The Olympian's shield looked increasingly tattered, but the Cathrec landed a couple of solid blows in exchange.

Evidently, the damage pained the doctor to the extreme. He wailed and shrieked in an inhumanly loud pitch that caused the nearby hazard suits to dampen their sound transmissions. Even Ves started to feel dizzy for a reason.

"Get back, Ves!" Ensign D'Amato urged as he showed up by his side. His other hand held a ballistic pistol that appeared completely useless to the situation at hand. "Doctor Jutland is trying to kidnap you. The last thing we want is to see you ending up in his hands!"

Under the ensign's guidance, Ves reached the base of a massive tree and holed up inside a hollow.

"What's going on? Who's Doctor Jutland?"

The ensign carefully watched the surroundings for approaching hexapods and considered his answer. "There's no use hiding it any longer. He's a survivor of the previous expedition that previously traveled the Groening System. We never expected him to cling to his life in this way."

Ves had so many questions. How could anyone survive for twenty-seven years straight on this planet? "Is he still alive or is he some kind of AI?"

"He's still human, for a given definition of it." D'Amato quickly explained. "He's an exobiologist who already extensively modified his body before he signed up for the previous expedition. Like many scientists, he flocked to the frontier in order to escape his past. He's vastly overqualified for the job. Our logs show that he conducted a small number of very reckless experiments during the previous expedition."

The battle continued to rage around the two. Mechs fought against hexapods while the chimera mech continued to chip away at the Olympian's shield.

Meanwhile, the mechs from George's Cavalry reluctantly offered their aid. They assisted the Volmars in repelling the maddened hexapods, allowing the hunting platoon to mop them up one at a time.

Though Ves still had questions about the doctor, D'Amato didn't know anything more. Instead, he turned to the chimera mech. "Who's controlling that monster? It doesn't appear that Jutland is controlling it directly."

"That's one of the questions we are wondering about as well. Take a good look. What's your judgment as a mech designer?"

Ves took a very good look at the chimera mech. Once he got past his shock, his fascination started to grow. For a mech that lasted more than two decades, it exhibited an astounding level of resilience.

"Jutland isn't employing a neural interface, nor is he using any physical controls. If we leave out the metaphysical possibilities like telepathy, then I'm guessing something else is piloting the chimera mech. Is he using the hexapod king's own brains to control the chimera mech, or is another survivor piloting the monster from within?"

Both possibilities sounded horrifying. If Jutland implanted a brain from a dead beast, then technically the chimera mech was an undead creation.

On the other hand, if a human pilot controlled the chimera mech from within, then he might be even madder than Doctor Jutland. Who knew how much a twenty-seven year isolation from human space took a toll on their psyches.

Ensign D'Amato held his hand over his helmeted head. He received new instructions. "Ves, Captain Kaine is ordering you to analyze the chimera mech's weak points. She wants to know the best way to disable Jutland's ride."

"I can do that."

He wanted this ordeal to be over as quickly as possible. Ves didn't relish being kidnapped by a mad doctor who had been stewing among the hexapods for so many years. The faster the hunting platoon destroyed the chimera mech, the faster he'd be able to repair the crippled Olympian and return to the highly guarded base camp.

Ves started to study the mech in greater detail, paying attention to the various holes in the rotted creation. "The chimera mech looks to be in an awful state, but don't let its appearance deceive you. The hexapod king's hide and bones haven't degraded to the point where they are easily broken."

"That's not a weak point."

"I know, I'm just telling you not to focus upon its intact sections. The chimera mech has been through a lot of battles over the years. I'm seeing plenty of signs of battle damage. A lot of them have been patched up by improvised repairs. Whoever fixed the damage is no mech designer or mech technician. Some of the limbs are slower and have lost a lot of range of motion. You can try to pressure the joints of its middle left leg and its upper right arm."

The captain had evidently patched into their communication channel, because she immediately adjusted her targeting. Her speartip started to dart at the joints of those specific limbs. A single strike even struck a heavy blow near the joint that caused a handful of scales to fly away in a shower of sparks.

"Nonono!" Jutland screeched. "My Kaius! My lovely Kaius! This is unforgivable!"

Despite his indignation, the chimera mech lost a lot of its aggression. The mind that controlled the Kaius knew that taking a hit at its imperfectly repaired joints could result in a lot of damage.

By the time the Cathrec pushed the Kaius a fair distance back, the rest of the hunting platoon had finished off the hexapods with the help of George's Cavalry. The Volmars started to flank the chimera mech while the mercenaries stayed close to the transport that continued to hover above the tree cover.

This time, Ves determined another weak point. "I'm fairly certain the head is the cockpit. That must be the reason why it's protected by a shield generator."

"The shield generator is impervious." The ensign replied. "I know you are wearing one as well, so you should know that they are capable of resisting almost anything as long as they have enough power."

"They drain an enormous amount of power. I don't know what this Kaius is running on, but I bet there's a limit to what the shield generator can bear at a time. Even with an unlimited power supply, the shield generator won't be able to sustain the massive amounts of energy running through its systems."

A light went off in the ensign's head. "I see. I should have thought of it myself. As incredible as the chimera mech appears, it's still a machine. What do you suggest?"

"Keep hitting the head with simultaneous attacks. It doesn't matter if the blows seem ineffective. As long as the shield generator is working at its upper limits, it will only be a matter of time before it breaks down."

What Ves suggested allowed the weaker mechs in the hunting platoon to do something useful. As medium melee mechs, the Volmars lacked the strength to damage the chimera mech's weak points. Their staffs and maces constantly bounced off the Kaius when they struck the oversized machine.

Melkor's Stanislaw joined the Empyrean into pressuring the shield generator with carefully aimed volleys. Even though the Stanislaw's ballistic rifle lacked the punch of a railgun, its rate of fire made up for it. Both models held the Kaius back when it tried to retaliate against the flanking Volmars.

The doctor finally had enough. "Insolent creatures! You humans are always in the way!"

The doctor retrieved a strange, cylindrical device from his blackened lab coat and pressed a button.

"That doesn't look good! Get away!"

The Volmars that assaulted the Kaius from all sides reacted quickly and turned away.

The empty eye sockets of the Kaius started to glow in an unearthly blue light. The jaw of the chimera mech hinged down and a jet of blue-colored flames emerged from the opening that engulfed the Cathrec.

Captain Kaine frantically dodged her mech aside. The Cathrec suffered a nasty burn that caused the hand that held onto the spear to melt into slag. The captain's quick reaction saved her elite mech from suffering more substantial damage.

Having lost its initial prey, the Kaius turned its head towards the lumbering Olympian. The heavy mech couldn't step back fast enough to escape the effective range of the chimera mech's breath weapon and suffered a substantial amount of burns onto its entire frontal surface. Only its half-broken shield and it's incredibly thick armor saved the mech from total annihilation.

The Kaius couldn't maintain its breath weapon for long. It drizzled out after a dozen seconds. The incredible heat washed over the entire area and even caused the ground to scorch and melt into a puddle due to the incredible amount of heat.

Even Doctor Jutland didn't look so fresh anymore, even though the shield generator saved him from getting cooked by proximity. Frustration marred his mad expression.

"Keep defying your fate! I shall return to take back my dues!"

The Kaius turned around and lumbered away on all of its six limbs. Even though the mech weighed more than the Olympian, its running gait could match the Cathrec in speed. Captain Kaine didn't order her mechs to pursue. Instead, she rearranged the hunting platoon in order to cover both of the damaged Olympians.

Ves and D'Amato emerged from the tree hollow as the mechs secured the perimeter. They approached the Olympian who faced the breath weapon head-on but couldn't get very close due to the lingering heat.

"The pilot reports that he can still move his mech." D'Amato relayed to Ves. "Is it safe for it to walk back to base under its own power?"

"While I'm certain there's some internal damage, the Ajax Olympians won't be taken down so easily. Their armor has an incredible capacity to withstand heat. It will need an overhaul once it returns to base, but it will hold up for several days without problem."

His announcement relieved the hunting platoon. The repair party only brought enough supplies to repair one Ajax Olympians. Ves and the other mech technicians had to repair the Olympian with the crippled leg as fast as possible before Doctor Jutland returned with a horde of hexapods.

Chapter: 181

The departure of Doctor Jutland and his gigantic Kaius mech gave the hunting platoon a much-needed reprieve. Mech technicians and supplies continued to pour down the transport at a steady rate. A maintenance team replenished some of the depleted energy cells of the battered mechs. They also replenished the Empyreans with ammunition for their railguns.

As for the Ajax Olympians, they both suffered badly in the last engagement. One heavy knight laid down on the ground with a mangled leg while the other stood haplessly with a scorched exterior. Both mechs required an extensive overhaul, something which Ves couldn't do in the middle of an alien jungle.

In order to bring the damaged mechs back home, Ves prioritized restoring some mobility to the mech with the crippled leg. The limb suffered grievous damage, but the readings the scanner module spat out showed that he had a way out of this mess.

"Looks like the chimera mech's teeth haven't cut very deep." Chief Ramirez muttered as he stood next to Ves. He gestured to the center of the wireframe leg. "While much of the outer sections are in disarray, the internal frame of the limb is still intact."

Both of them had worried about this possibility. Since it functioned as the leg bone of the aforementioned limb, a broken internal frame meant that the mech couldn't support its weight on the limb even if they fixed some of the internals. The Olympian simply couldn't walk in this condition without snapping its hastily propped up leg in that case.

Fortunately, the scans revealed that the leg suffered from extensive but shallow wounds. Ves already adjusted his preliminary repair plans.

"We can get this Olympian back up its feet if we replace the broken control modules and repair some of the tears in its musculature." Ves explained and pointed at the most critical components to repair. "At a minimum, we have to fix these areas in order to raise the load-bearing capacity of the leg. That's the real challenge that we're facing at the moment. Even with some patches and improvised repairs, the mech might never be able to walk on its own feet without crippling the leg again."

Ramirez nodded, though his hazard suit hardly bobbed. "It's this damn heavy gravity. I reckon we won't be able to bring the mech up to a state where it can walk under its own power. A couple of Volmars are needed to support the Olympian on its way home."

"Are you certain that the Volmars won't get crushed under all of that weight? The moment the Olympian diverts more than twenty percent of its weight onto a Volmar, the latter mech will get crushed."

"Let's run the numbers then. You're a wizard at math, right? Let's say we fix the Olympian so that it will be able to stand and walk with assistance. If nothing else, we can employ the other Olympian as a support as well. Only a heavy mech can support another heavy mech's weight."

"I don't think Captain Kaine will like that proposal." Ves carefully replied. "We're in a bad spot right now and Doctor Jutland might be cooking up another attack. Pinning down our remaining heavy knight leaves the hunting platoon with no viable tank that can meet the chimera mech's charge."

Both of them had to keep in mind that they faced a lot of constraints. Not only did they have to make repairs in the field with hardly any proper facilities at hand, they also had to keep in mind the constant threats from the environment.

"I'll begin to prep the leg and clean up all the ruined parts. You should stay here and refine the repair plan."

They split up to perform their own tasks. With a mech designer like Ves on hand, Chief Ramirez didn't have to perform a haphazard repair job that might work out for a couple of days but quickly broke down afterwards. While Ves modified the Olympians to perform beyond their safety margins, the heavy knights still had to last for at least another month.

The mech technicians started to use their limited supplies to cut open the mangled and deformed armor plating. Once they opened up the leg, they quickly tore out the internal components that looked dubious.

By the time the repair team was about to install some replacement parts, Ves finished testing out a rudimentary model. He passed on an updated repair scheme to Ramirez, who used it to guide his men in prioritizing the restoration of a small number of critical sections.

The repair team made good speed in restoring the functionality of the leg. After half a day of rushing the repairs, the Olympian managed to rise up to its feet with the assistance of the scorched Olympian. Once it stood on its own two feet, a pair of Volmars took over and carefully let the half-crippled heavy mech sling its arms around the skinnier medium mechs' shoulders.

An awful sound of metal pressing against metal sounded out, but the Volmars hadn't caved in yet.

A lot rested on the shoulders of the pilot of the damaged Olympian. He had to juggle between balancing the right amount of weight his mech put on its damaged leg and the shoulders of the Volmars that supported his machine. He had to put some weight on each of his supports, but not too much to overwhelm any one of them. The hunting platoon had no choice but to take it slow.

Once it became clear that their repairs accomplished something, the repair team started to pack up and lifted their gear back up to the transport.

Ensign D'Amato approached Ves as he stared out at the metal forest. "Commander Tregis has sent his compliments to you for a job well done. It will take about two days for the hunting platoon to return to base, but at least it will be able to do so under its own power."

He nodded at the ensign's words, but took them lightly. Ves was only here to do a job. Once he completed his mission, they'd go their separate ways. Building up a favorable impression availed him nowhere at this moment, especially considering House Kaine's current stance.

"I'll return to the transport in a moment." He answered D'Amato. "Let me admire the scenery while I can."

Once the nosy ensign walked away, Ves leaned his hazard suit against a metallic tree trunk and beckoned with his hands. "Lucky!"

The cat sprung out from nowhere and landed its paws in front of his feet. Lucky looked fairly frazzled at the moment. Ves quickly picked up his pet and removed the comm he slipped around the neck.

"Good work, buddy! Hopefully you got some good shots in."

Since they arrived at this location, he let Lucky loose with his comm attached to his gem cat's collar. Ves wore a replacement comm on his wrist that could send out simple commands to his primary comm.

The moment Doctor Kaius showed up, Ves quietly relayed a couple of commands from his replacement comm. He first sent the code to activate the Stealth Field on his primary comm along with its attached recording sensors. He then ordered Lucky to find a way to sneak inside one of the Kaius' many holes in order to record its internal state.

While Ves also ordered Lucky to try his luck in trying to approach Doctor Jutland, the shield generator prevented his pet from getting anywhere close. If Lucky succeeded in his mission, Ves could probably look forward to a couple of minutes of valuable footage of the chimera mech's internal makeup.

Lucky kept yowling at his owner. Ves exasperatingly made another promise.

"Okay, okay, I'll make it up to you! Once we're back, I'll order another batch of luxury minerals for you to munch on."

After placating his cat some more, Ves finally joined the rest. He stepped on a lifter platform and let it bring him back up to the hovering transport up above. It gained a few more scratches on its hull after suffering from sporadic hexabat attacks. Though the vessel boasted thicker armor than regular transports, even the smallest indigenous life forms on this planet could tear through the armor over time.

Once they finished loading all of their gear and men, the transport returned to base along with its escort. The mechs from George's Cavalry and the Stanislaw adopted a dispersed formation and overtook the hunting platoon in their fairly brisk journey back to base. Besides encountering a couple of wild hexapods, they enjoyed a quiet trip back to the safety of the base camp's walls.

Ves let out a deep breath. Everyone on the repair team started to relax once they realized they had a couple of very thick walls between them and the monstrous Kaius. While the frightening Doctor Jutland still had the run of the forest, at least the mech technicians didn't have to risk their lives in the field anymore.

Ensign D'Amato received a message on his comm. Once he read his instructions, he turned to Ves. "Commander Tregis wants to debrief me in his office. While I'm gone, you should start setting up a plan to bring both Ajax Olympians back to full functionality. They're the only mechs we have on hand that can withstand a head-on charge from both the hexapod kings and the Kaius."

"I understand. I'll be sure to work with the chief to set up a detailed plan."

"Also, your presence is needed two days from now when Commander Tregis convenes a meeting on how to handle Doctor Jutland and his Kaius. Your expertise will be of vital help here. You can access the workshop's secure terminal to look at the recordings and sensor readings we've taken of the Kaius."

"I'll be sure to do that."

The repair team settled back in the maintenance department and immediately went to work. Ves hadn't spent the trip back to base idling around. He already formed an extensive repair plan that saved as much time as possible.

Ves didn't anticipate much of a challenge in this matter. The experienced mech technicians serving under Ramirez could fabricate and install the replacement parts on their own.

However, a complete repair required at least two weeks of constant working. With the limited manpower and facilities on hand, they'd waste far too much time, leaving the mercenaries out in the field without a shoulder to lean on when they encountered a hexapod king.

In order to speed up the repairs, Ves and Ramirez huddled together in order to determine which parts needed to be replaced and which parts only needed a couple of taps to bring it up and running.

"We're cutting a lot of corners here." Ramirez remarked as he leaned back onto his seat. They both worked for hours to complete a detailed repair scheme. "This is real sloppy work. I won't be surprised if a few components blow apart under stress."

"Heavy mechs have ridiculous amounts of redundancy. It can handle a few malfunctions."

The repairs of the Olympian with the crippled leg was fairly simple. In comparison, the other Olympian who bathed in the flames of the chimera mech's breath weapon posed a thornier problem.

While the heavy knight remained functional bar the need to replace its shield, its entire frontal area had been subjected to a massive amount of heat. This not only degraded the integrity of its extremely expensive armor, it also affected the components at some level. Most of them functioned properly for now, but who knew if the Olympian could sustain its current level of performance.

Ves made a difficult suggestion. "We can keep most of the existing components in place. We should trust in the quality of the Olympian. All of its internals are rated to withstand a very high heat level already. As for its armor, we can manage for now if we settle for replacing its upper layer. It will take far too much time to fabricate replacement plates for its middle and lower layers."

Chief Ramirez shook his head. "It takes over two days to fabricate a single plate with our facilities. The only heavy duty armor compressor in this expedition is back on the Ark Horizon. The fabricators there will have to work around the clock to form the most essential replacement plates and ship them to the surface in the next couple of supply runs."

That meant they had to pick and choose the worst sections of armor to replace. Ves didn't look forward to making the decision. If he made the wrong judgment, the Olympian might suffer grievous damage when its armor failed to hold up against a heavy blow.

Chapter: 182

Ves entered the conference room with tired eyes. He stayed up late the last two days as he tried to juggle various duties at once. Not only did he have to come up with a way to bring both damaged Ajax Olympians back to fighting form, he also had to devote some time into studying the sensor data the hunting platoon had taken of the Kaius.

The more he studied the Kaius, the more he admired the strange and primal-looking chimera mech. For a mech that had been built more than twenty-seven years ago, it possessed a lot of charm.

Whoever designed the initial incarnation of the Kaius possessed a lot of hands-on experience. However, that mech designer's skill level didn't exceed what Ves already mastered. The mech designer must be a senior in age who never made any achievements in the field. Doubtlessly he only reached the level of an Apprentice Mech Designer in his later years.

Still, age and experience brought its own strength. His work might lack in sophistication, but he made up for it with a strong mastery of the basics. The sound design and solid foundation of the Kaius allowed it to remain functional long after the first expedition ended in failure.

Commander Tregis welcomed Ves into the conference room and nodded him to a seat at the side. Since the headquarters of the base featured full climate controls, everyone took off their bulky helmets and breathed in the sterile air.

Ves took a seat next to a handful of exobiologists. They had been studying the same sensor readings as he had, but they focused instead on the incredibly powerful heat organ.

The room already had a handful of other important people present. Captain Kaine sulked next to Tregis, while an officer wearing the uniform of George's Cavalry conferred with someone from the Stray Phantoms. A handful of other officers whose roles Ves couldn't guess rounded out the gathering.

Commander Tregis clapped and gestured to everyone to take a seat. "Now that we are here, let us begin with this meeting. First, I'd like Captain Kaine to recap her encounter with Doctor Jutland and his strange biological mech."

Captain Kaine didn't wish to recount the awful experience, but Tregis put her on the spot. She briefly described the events that took place, and described how a crippling strike against one of her heavy knights forced them to hunker down and wait for rescue.

No one laughed at her. They all knew that she did her best under the circumstances. The power and endurance shown by the Kaius exceeded every other mech in the expedition.

After she sank back into her seat, Tregis turned to Ves. "Before we go into Doctor Jutland, let's start with the Kaius. Mr. Larkinson, please relay your analysis on the chimera mech."

Ves dutifully described his initial results and threw out a guess on the identity of the mech designer. "One thing to note is that the Kaius shows definite signs of cross-discipline collaboration. At a minimum, a mech designer and a specialist in biology have had a hand in its initial design."

He summoned up a projection of the chimera mech's wireframe model. Sections of it had been shaded in blue while a lot of other areas had been shaded in red. "That's living tissue. The chimera mech isn't so much a mech but is more like a carcass brought to life with the help of technology."

The Kaius told a story of its own. The mech hadn't been designed and fabricated in a well-stocked workshop. It looked more like a product that a mech designer came up with in the field. The lack of facilities along with the limited amount of supplies necessitated some compromises.

The survivors of the first expedition must have started hollowing out a hexapod king carcass. It's powerful on its own and Doctor Jutland must have done something in order to preserve the heat organ which acts as the power reactor for the Kaius. They then augmented it with parts salvaged from other mechs in order to turn it into a controllable war machine.

"Isn't the beast supposed to be dead for over two decades?" Captain Kaine suddenly asked, expressing the bewilderment of many of the mech pilots present in the room. "How come it hasn't rotted to the point of becoming a useless mess?"

"That's something for the exobiologists to explain." Ves nodded to the exobiologists who patiently remained at their seats. "I don't have a clue how Jutland managed to stretch the longevity of the Kaius' muscles and organs, but there's obviously been some failures over the years. You can see in the readings that there's a lot of gaps and places where salvaged parts have taken the place of living tissue."

"So the mech is failing?" Tregis honed in on the most important point.

"The state of the mech is fairly awful at this point." Ves stated carefully. "That doesn't mean it's a pushover. The design is incredibly robust. The mech designer, whoever he may be, had built it to last for years, perhaps in anticipation that a second expedition will arrive twenty-seven years later. However, the patchwork repairs over the years have not been very effective in maintaining the full capabilities of the design."

"In other words, the mech designer is dead?"

"He's either dead or is unable to help with the maintenance and repair of the mech. Whatever the case, these repairs appear to be done by someone who is inventive, but is not an engineer. The current version of the Kaius has already drastically drifted from its original design, to the point of performing around twenty to thirty percent worse."

Captain Kaine shuddered at his words. If her hunting platoon faced the Kaius at its peak, then they would have been smacked down hard.

"This sounds promising." Commander Tregis smiled viciously. "While the Kaius represents an enormous threat to this base, we still have a chance to turn the tables on Doctor Jutland. Doctor Mellow, please report your findings on the biological aspect of the Kaius."

A prim and proper middle-aged woman with her brown hair tied in a neat bun stood up from her seat. "Our studies of the hexapod species and its various properties are still ongoing. Though we lack a direct comparison of an apex hexapod, our studies of the smaller hexapod adults allow us to extrapolate the properties of this chimera."

Doctor Mellow slowly explained her findings in a simplified way. None of the people present had a background in the biological sciences, so she skimmed over much of the details.

"The Kaius takes advantage of the remarkable capabilities of the heat organ, as you call it." The doctor frowned for a moment, as if she disdained the layman's term of such a powerful example of life's ingenuity.

"The role of this marvelous organ is first and foremost to draw in power from ambient heat and radiation. It is incredibly capable of doing so, to the point of absorbing the energy from any form of direct energy weapons with near-complete efficiency. What is even more remarkable is the role the monoexurite plays in this system. It's part of a complex organic structure that's compressed all of that energy into a space the size of your palm."

What she described truly defied convention. While the most advanced technology humanity had at its disposal could also achieve such an effect, that took thousands of years of scientific accumulation to develop. Even Ves couldn't recharge his precious shield generator by himself with the facilities he had on hand.

"The Kaius expended a lot of energy in the last engagement. Its breath weapon is especially potent. Do you believe the mech is on its last legs?"

The doctor shook her head. "Do not underestimate the prowess of the indigenous life forms on this planet. The heat organs become increasingly more formidable the larger they become. The average adult hexapod has a heat organ the size of a human, while the heat organs of an apex hexapod has reached the size of a small aircar."

She waved her hand, causing the projection of a wireframe model of the Kaius to zoom into the center of its torso. Its heat organ deviated from its purely organic counterparts with the addition of various mechanical attachments that served unknown purposes.

"The Kaius is unusual in its size. It is about fifty percent larger than what our models suggest. Our conjecture is that Doctor Jutland must have preyed on other hexapods and processed their heat organs to augment the chimera mech's biological functions. All of the other tissues show evidence of extensive modification, much of which we are still determining their purpose."

In other words, the exobiologists knew that Jutland had done something, but they didn't know how he did it. Still, the effects spoke for themselves. The Kaius performed significantly better than a purely organic hexapod king. It truly deserved to be called the king of the forest.

Commander Tregis rapped his fingers on the table. "Is there any way to exploit the biological portion of the Kaius? Can we synthesize some form of poison that can weaken its functions?"

The exobiologists all shook their heads. "The hexapods are the most resilient forms of life on this planet. They've thrived under incredibly difficult situations that would poison an unaugmented human to death in seconds. I'm not sure even Doctor Jutland has managed to find a way to poison this species."

All of this meant that they couldn't take any shortcuts. With Doctor Jutland's extensive tampering, the internal structure of his chimera mech had become exceptionally resilient to all forms of damage. They stood a better chance of defeating the Kaius by focusing on its mechanical portions.

Everyone turned back to Ves. While House Kaine had its own experts to consult with, Ves remained one of the most knowledgeable people around when it came to mechs.

Ves zoomed the projection back out and pointed his finger at a couple of portions, causing them to be shaded in orange. "I've already determined that two of its six limbs are improperly affixed to its joints. I found a handful of other components that show similar signs of poor maintenance and patchwork repairs."

Ten percent of the wireframe model turned into orange. "These portions should be the chimera mech's achilles heel. They're much less tolerant of damage than the rest of this complex mech."

A light shone in Captain Kaine's eyes. She dearly hated the Kaius for beating her first command to the point where they had to abandon their mission and return to base in disgrace. Her Cathrec also lost its hand at the end, which cut her combat effectiveness in half.

"Unfortunately, the scans we've made of the Kaius have not been very extensive, especially in its deepest portions. I'm still unable to figure out the state of its cockpit or if it's even present on that thing. However, I'm confident that the weak points I've pointed out should severely impact the performance of the Kaius."

In truth, Ves learned a lot about the chimera mech's internal structure with the help of Lucky's surreptitious recordings. He even encountered something frightening that gave him a whole new conception of what mechs were capable of. He left all of these details out of his story because he didn't wish to explain how he got ahold of this information.

After Ves finished his report, the meeting turned to other topics. They talked about Doctor Jutland and whatever scraps of information they found of his background, which was surprisingly brief. He definitely had a checkered past, but someone with a lot of power had scrubbed all mention of the man from the galactic net.

Tregis even brought in a psychologist who talked a whole round of nonsense about the crazy doctor's mental state. Ves largely slept through his long and winding explanation.

The man had simply gone native. He also let the poison in the air affect his judgment despite his best efforts to modify his body to become more compatible with the environment. The twenty-seven year long wait for the next expedition had also taken a toll on his psyche.

At the end, Commander Tregis relayed something unsettling. "The mercenaries in the field have started to relay unusual movements among the hexapods. Much of them are being drawn away to the east of our position, which is where the hunting platoon had been circling towards. Our analysts believe that Doctor Jutland is gathering them for an assault."

The news came like a thunderbolt from the sky. While the hexapods possess a formidable amount of power, they generally acted with beastly instincts and thus could easily be outfoxed. They also generally roamed the forest in a solitary pattern.

If Doctor Jutland gathered them into a horde, and directed them with a rudimentary strategy, the base camp could very well be overrun.

"We should ask for reinforcements from the fleet!" A nameless officer proposed. His eyes darted around as if he feared a hexapod could jump out at any moment. "There are still a lot of mechs that haven't been shipped from orbit!"

"That is out of the question." Commander Tregis shook his head. "The vast majority of the assets of this expedition has brought together spaceborn mechs that function best in zero-g space. Bringing them down to the surface where they will have to face crushing 1.4 times standard gravity will severely hamper their effectiveness."

In addition, the spaceborn mechs also possessed flight systems that wouldn't be able to function in the atmosphere. This severely neutered the spaceborn mechs to the point where they were better off with deploying obsolete mechs.

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I also have to relay an important change that affects our entire operation." The base commander continued. "Scout ships have reported sightings of a small but potent sandmen fleet. They're approaching the Groening System in an inexorable march. Due to this approaching threat, the main fleet has quietly left orbit to meet the sandmen fleet in battle."

If the threat of Doctor Jutland could be likened to a rabid dog, then the threat of the approaching sandmen fleet was comparable to a hungry tiger. Between the two adversaries, Lord Kaine put a higher amount of priority in beating back the space-faring aliens. Half of the people present in the conference room adopted despairing expressions.

Even Ves frowned at the news. The departure of the Ark Horizon cut off their supply lines, which meant that they couldn't get their hands on replacement armor plating for the damaged Olympians. Without the heavy knights, nothing could stop the Kaius if it decided to barge past the walls of the base.

"We're so dead."

Chapter: 183

The situation changed abruptly the next day. Doctor Jutland had finally made his move. The mercenaries in the field started coming back with damaged and half-broken mechs. They moaned about getting overwhelmed by large hordes of hexapods.

"More than a dozen of the beasts popped out of nowhere! They destroyed Jimmy's mech in an instant! If he hadn't ejected in time, he would have ended up in their bellies!"

"I looked over the hill and saw six of the hexapods following this giant monstrosity. It's like a mech, but not! I don't know how to describe that crazy thing! Here, my mech recorded the whole thing. Do you see that weirdo sitting atop its head? He's not even wearing a hazard suit!"

The mercenaries hadn't lost too many mechs, but all of them returned to base with extensive battle damage. This led to endless frustration as the unseated mech pilots hounded the overworked mech technicians to bring their machines back to prime condition. Practically every mech technician had to work around the clock.

The absence of the main fleet up in orbit exacerbated the problem. The base's logistics became severely strained as far too few mech technicians had to repair too many damaged mechs.

No matter how hard they worked, they ended up with even more mechs waiting for repairs the next day.

The brass wanted to keep the presence of Doctor Jutland and the departure of the main fleet quiet, but the deteriorating situation caused everyone to know of their new circumstances.

Doctor Jutland deliberately showed up and taunted the hapless mercenaries whose mechs crumpled in a single hit when faced with the awesome might of his Kaius.

"I'm not sure whether I'm glad the mad doctor is taking his time." Chief Ramirez remarked to Ves as he looked over the spotty repairs they rushed through for both Olympians. "The man's turning the mercenaries against us just as Lord Kaine and his fleet are gone, but at least he's giving us a chance to bring the Olympians back in action."

Even if a vast horde of hexapods descended upon the base, its defenses provided the expedition with a formidable advantage. Nonetheless, the Kaius exceeded everyone's expectations and could easily open up the base by charging through a wall. Only the Olympians stood a chance of surviving a head-on charge.

Ves shook his head. "Three days is far too little time to restore these machines."

Both Olympians sustained a moderate amount of damage. The main issue with these mechs was that their highly advanced armor required a lot of time and effort to replace. They simply couldn't replicate the original armor system with the facilities on hand.

Thus, Ves and Chief Ramirez made a difficult decision. They gave up on the original composition of the armor and used a cheaper formula instead. The alloys they chose to work with possessed a decent amount of strength and could be formed quickly. However, its production wasted a lot of exotics, which depleted a large amount of their available stock of raw materials.

This worsened their already awful reputation. Not only did the hunting platoon fail to tackle the strongest threat in the region, their extravagant mechs also wasted a large amount of resources.

The mercenaries who waited for their mechs to be repaired grew surlier by the day. These rough and hardened men and women easily resorted to their fists whenever tempers flared. The grounded mech pilots had nothing to do while they waited for their mechs to be patched up. The entire hunting schedule had to be halted.

"You should watch your back." Ramirez warned Ves. "There's talk of handing you over to Doctor Jutland because he's loudly demanding your help in repairing the Kaius. He says as long as we hand you over, he'll stop harassing the mercenaries."

"I know."

The mad doctor aimed to force the expedition to give up on Ves through applying continuous pressure. His strange ability to control the local wildlife gave him a decisive edge in the field. Currently, he made the hunting parties suffer miserably whenever they set off.

"We won't serve you on a silver platter to Jutland." Ensign D'Amato spoke from the side. He carried a stun baton around these days in order to deter the mercenaries from doing something stupid. "It's counterproductive to empower the doctor by allowing you to repair the Kaius. He'll immediately employ his strengthened chimera mech against our base."

The analysts and psychologists who studied Doctor Jutland's behavior believed that he wanted to wipe out everyone who trespassed his territory. The doctor fully believed that only he possessed the right to enjoy the fruits of his underground kingdom.

Ves huffed under his breath. "Tell that to the mercs."

The tense standoff couldn't be maintained for long. After calling back the mercenaries in the field, Commander Tregis let slip that he intended to go on the offensive. A strong strike force centered around the hunting platoon and its partially repaired Olympians would go out and confront the Kaius away from the base.

Ves imagined not a lot of people would be willing to sign up for such an arduous mission. Indeed, almost none of the mercenary groups signed up. Only the mercenaries with close ties to House Kaine such as George's Cavalry and the Stray Phantoms expressed any willingness to join the strike force.

With no other choice, Commander Tregis conscripted a third of the mercenaries who shied away from the job. Through a combination of naked threats and generous rewards, he managed to augment the strike force with fifty mechs of dubious quality.

The strike force gathered at the main entrance of the base. Such a large gathering of mechs posed enough of a threat to topple many smaller planets, but against an anomaly like Doctor Jutland and his steed, they barely qualified as cannon fodder.

Captain Kaine walked over and conferred with Chief Ramirez about the particulars of the hastily patched up Olympians.

"It's best to employ the Olympian who took a breath weapon in the face as the primary tank. Its armor has largely held up apart from a few critical sections. It's just the internal components close to the surface that have gone bad."

"What about the other machine?"

Both Ramirez and Ves grimaced. "The leg is rather shoddy. We haven't been able to replace nearly as many plates as we wanted. While it's able to bear the Olympian's full weight, I don't recommend using that leg to absorb the impact of a charge. It's liable to snap in that case."

They discussed a few other concerns that Captain Kaine had to shoulder. Her elite Cathrec mech also received a touch-up. House Kaine prioritized its repairs, and allocated several mech technicians in other departments to replace its molten hand in record time. Out of all of the recently repaired mechs, only the Cathrec enjoyed a better treatment than the Ajax Olympians.

Once she finished her discussion, she returned to her mech and boarded its cockpit. After raising Cathrec's spear, the strike force finally left the base.

The departure of a large number of mechs caused the base to quiet down. While the mech pilots waited for the results to come in, the mech technicians quietly resumed their repairs. Ves also did his part by lending a hand at the other workshops.

While Ves supervised the overhaul of a partially crippled mech, Melkor spoke out. "Do you think the expedition has any chance of success?"

"I don't think highly of their chances. Doctor Jutland might be missing a few screws, but he isn't the type to take the bait."

Doctor Jutland's indirect approach of pressuring the mercenaries showed that he possessed some form of restraint. Adversaries who actually contemplated their moves scared Ves more than a strong but overconfident brute.

Put into his perspective, why would he want to fight the strike force in the first place? At best, a pitched battle could result in mutual wounds. While his Kaius handedly beat every other mech on the planet in terms of power and resilience, the hunting platoon knew its weak points now.

"Supposedly, the exobiologists determined that the Kaius requires a large amount of fluids to keep its living portion running. The regular hexapods draw their moisture from their diet, but the Kaius doesn't even have a digestive system anymore. The scientists think Doctor Jutland must be basing around a spring. If the strike force manages to find his hiding hole, then he'll be forced to stand and defend."

Ves also heard the rumors. Doctor Jutland also had to take care of his own needs. Even though he messed around with his body's makeup, he still needed to drink if he retained a shred of his humanity.

While Ves quietly talked with Melkor, Ramirez and D'Amato received an alert and turned around. Ves became alarmed when the ensign armed himself. He wielded a laser pistol in one hand and a stun baton in his other hand.

"There's trouble! Quick, move away! We have to run to the inner base!"

"Has Doctor Jutland sneaked up to our base?"

"No, it's worse. Half of the mercenaries are mutinying. They've forcibly activated over forty mechs at once and intimidated the security officers into standing down. They're on their way here!"

Ves froze in place. The mercenaries brazingly defied their current orders at the worst possible moment. They waited until the strike force left, bringing away much of the mechs who ordinarily worked to restrain the mercenaries from acting out.

Without the deterrent posed by George's Cavalry and the Stray Phantoms, the mercs who were supposed to defend the base instead turned against it in order to act out in their own interests.

Even the base defenses couldn't do much to deter the mercs, as most of the turrets could only fire outwards. Any threat that bypassed the walls would ordinarily be handled by the mechs in charge of security.

For a moment, he considered running. But then he recalled the distance to the inner base and gave up. "There's nowhere we can hide."

The only way he could escape the incoming mercs was by making use of his stealth field. Though he strongly considered activating it now, he didn't wish to reveal one of his trump cards to his current audience. He never really fully trusted House Kaine.

The four waited for the workshop to open up. A small squad of mechs coated in back stepped forward. The lead mech was a swordsman mech. It chopped down the toxic air with its massive two-handed blade, causing Ves and his companions to stumble backwards due to the wind it whipped up.

A deep and grizzled voice patched into the local channel. "Ves Larkinson, I'm going to have to ask you to surrender yourself in our custody."

Ves recognized the voice. It was Commander Keller of Keller's Blades. Of all the possible mercs who had the guts to pull off this stunt, it had to be the Vesians who organized the entire revolt.

Ensign D'Amato bravely stepped forward. "Mister Larkinson is a mech designer contracted to House Kaine. You have no right to apprehend him!"

The black mech crushed the tip of his mech-sized sword into the pavement of the workshop. The impact threw everyone back.

"Don't speak to me about rights! We're the ones who are risking our lives out there every day! What is the worth of a mech designer for the safety of my brothers and sisters? Don't forget that this expedition will only turn a profit if mech pilots like us continue to enter the forest!"

A handful of mercs on foot arrived at the workshop and forcibly pulled Ves away from Melkor, D'Amato and Ramirez. None of his three companions made any moves to resist. Against the awesome power of a mech, nothing could make a difference.

"You'll regret this mutiny! Lord Kaine never forgets a slight!" The ensign impotently yelled.

Commander Keller laughed without holding back his amusement. "Lord Kaine won't care a thing. Compared to a bag full of monoexurite, the safety of a consultant is not even a priority!"

Ves might not be so sure about that. Keller and his band of miscreants might enjoy their moment of superiority for now, but once the strike force and the main fleet returned, he'd lose much of his temporary leverage.

Unfortunately, he'd have to wait a couple of weeks for that to happen. Right now, a sword many times larger than his own body pointed straight at Ves. He had no choice but to go along with Keller's arrangements.

Chapter: 184

The revolt spearheaded by Keller cleverly pitted the fate of the expedition against the freedom and safety of a hired mech designer.

Commander Tregis could do nothing but glower and watch on from his personal mech. Though the mechs that answered to his call could match the rebels in numbers, he hesitated to engage in a senseless battle that could only result in mutual annihilation.

As a trusted subordinate of Lord Kaine, he knew he had to prioritize the harvesting operation over anything else. Nevertheless, he felt he couldn't let the mercs tear down the social contract they had with House Kaine.

Even if he didn't like it, Ves understood what Commander Tregis had to go through. In order to prevent the situation from spinning out of control, he allowed the revolters to take him into custody without a fuss.

A handful of footsoldiers in the employ of the mercs came close and pushed Melkor and the rest aside. They prepared a bulky set of cuffs designed to restrain the hazard suit that Ves currently wore. Without even checking for any weapons, they slapped it on his wrists.

"That will keep you in place." One of the mercs smiled cheekily.

The mercs hauled him out of the workshop and dumped him into a beaten-up shuttle. The craft clearly had seen better days. Ves could spot the tell-tale signs of hexabat claws and fangs scarring its hull.

"Get in there!"

They threw him into the empty passenger compartment of the tiny shuttle. Ves tried to get comfortable as the shuttle started to ascend. Unfortunately, the pilot blanked out the windows, preventing him from looking out.

After a couple of minutes of wondering what to do, a small projection came to life. Keller's face leered at him from the cockpit of his mech. Unlike his usual controlled expression, this time he completely revealed his nefarious intentions.

"Commander Keller."

"Ah, the smart little Brighter." He spoke, drawing out his voice at the mention of his nationality. "You Brighters always think you're smarter than anyone else.

Ves didn't give the Vesian the satisfaction of seeing him beg and plead for his life. "You are making a very big mistake here. Doctor Jutland isn't your friend, or anyone's for that matter. He'll never honor whatever deal you made with him."

"Hah! As if it matters!" Keller laughed. "The good doctor can't do anything once we return to space at the end of our forty-day stay. Last I knew, dinosaurs can't fly. I'll be eagerly leaving this ratty planet and the crazy doctor behind. Eliminating a Brighter mech designer along the way will earn me enough merit to earn my knighthood!"

"You Vesians chase after nobility as if it's something attainable. It's just a carrot your slave drivers dangle in front of your heads. No matter how hard you work, the carrot will always be out of your reach."

"You lie! You understand nothing!"

"I'm sure they won't welcome you back with open arms. After all, you clearly mutinied against your client when you signed a mercenary contract with them. As far as I recall, most of those contracts are filled with clauses that will make your life very short once you cross a few lines."

In today's society, mercenaries were plentiful, but the means to control them had also evolved. Mercenaries generally didn't possess the same loyalty and dying devotion of a warrior nurtured by the clients themselves. Too often news came back that revealed that the mercs abandoned their cushy assignments as soon as they encountered a spot of trouble.

In order to bring some order to the chaos, some enterprising organizations formed a trans-galactic Mercenary Association to regulate this blooming business. Though the Mercenary Association lacked the enforcement power of the Mech Trade Association and the Common Fleet Alliance, they were nevertheless the only game in town.

Earning a bad mark on your record in the Mercenary Association often spelled a dead end to your career as a reputable mercenary. Those with negative records often retired in ignomy or resorted to taking shadier jobs that hadn't been regulated by the Mercenary Association. People usually called them dark mercenaries, and were often regarded as one step away from pirates.

Keller snorted at Ves. "Once I earn my knighthood, I can leave my mercenary days behind me. My boys and I will be able to retire to a quiet mansion on a rural planet in the Kingdom until we're called back to fight a war."

The man had a decent plan. Depending on how much Vesia valued his head, eliminating him could indeed earn Keller enough kudos to propel him into the lowest level of nobility. By then, what did a negative mercenary record matter?

The mercenary commander gloated some more before he shut off the channel. Ves sighed in frustration as he looked down at his shackles. The mercenaries never regarded Ves as a threat, and didn't even pat him properly for weapons.

Outwardly, he only wore a tool belt around his hazard suit. He didn't carry any holstered weapons because they'd be worse than useless against the native life forms on this planet.

"Turns out I've been watching out for the wrong threat." He sighed.

He learned a very painful lesson today. Ves had never considered the mercenaries to go out of control in such a dramatic fashion. He continually relied on the iron grip of his client to keep the rowdy men and women in line. Today's event proved that the iron grip was as soft as a pillow.

Well, no use recriminating himself. Ves regained his composure and started to take stock of his gear. First, he still wore his hazard suit. The suit's heads-up display showed that he still had over seven days of oxygen.

After that, he'd get into a lot of trouble, because the air on Groening IV contained plenty of junk but precious little oxygen. The exobiologists discovered that some of the plant life emitted oxygen, but most of the other plants seemed to thrive on a very different cycle. Ves would slowly suffocate at that time if he couldn't get any replenishment from his captor.

Second, he had his shield generator with eighty percent charge remaining. This might save him from a couple of fatal blows, but Ves had no illusion that it would last very long against a raging Kaius.

Though a shield generator looked conspicuous, he hoped that Jutland wouldn't notice. As long as the doctor didn't frisk him or force him to take off his hazard suit, Ves was sure he'd be able to keep its presence a secret.

Lastly, Ves still wore his all-important comm. Besides the System, his comm also held his Privacy Shield and its Full Stealth augment. He put most of his hopes on the latter in order to provide him with an opportunity to escape.

That was also why he didn't struggle too much when Keller came to whisk him away. He still held on to a lifeline.

A shudder interrupted his thoughts. The shuttle's engines cut off, and the hatch of the vehicle opened. "We're here! Throw him out!"

The same pair of soldiers grabbed hold of Ves and dragged him out of the shuttle. After bringing him in the middle of a clearing, they unceremoniously dropped him against the harsh metallic soil.

"We've got your mech designer here! Come and pick him up!"

To his surprise, the Kaius itself appeared from the jungle. Its giant, half-rotting form crawled over to the middle of the clearing with deliberate steps. Everytime the Kaius stomped with one of its six limbs, the entire ground appeared to be shaken up.

The looming sight of the Kaius intimidated everyone present in the clearing. Remarkably, no one brandished their weapons. Despite the fact that a strike force composed of more than a hundred mechs had set off to pin down the Kaius and force it into a decisive engagement, the monstrous mech evaded House Kaine's determined efforts.

"Ah, the esteemed Mister Larkinson. How delightful that you have come!" The infamous doctor spoke from his makeshift seat atop the head of the Kaius. "For an Apprentice Mech Designer, you are very far away from home. The likes such as you never venture this far out in the frontier."

Ves chuckled deprecatingly at himself. "I let my greed get the better of my judgement."

"Greed, the ever-present motivator of man. You can do a lot with greed." Jutland replied as he rummaged through his dirty lab coat and retrieved a small sack. He threw it towards one of Keller's soldiers standing beneath the towering giant. The man easily caught the falling bag with dextrous skill.

"As promised, here's your fifty grams of pure monoexurite. Take care not to eat it all at once. You'll turn into a human furnace in seconds before blowing up! Your flesh will be scattered over hundreds of meters! I should know, because I once saw someone try! Hahahahaha!"

Ves leaned back when the doctor continued to babble on. The mercs meanwhile stayed silent and waited for something to happen. Once the soldier verified its contents with a handheld scanner, Commander Keller spoke out from the speakers of his mech.

"It's all there. Thanks, doc. Pleasure doing business with you. If you need anything else from me, I'll be sure to lend a hand."

The doctor abruptly swung his mood and scowled at the loose collection of mechs in front of him. "I do not need more help from hired thugs like you! Do not presume that you are of equal standing to me!"

"M-My apologies, doctor!"

Commander Keller and his gang of mercs ended the conversation as fast as possible and practically fled away at the first available moment. They didn't wish to hang around any longer in case Jutland decided to kill them on a whim.

Unfortunately, Ves couldn't go anywhere. Even if his shackles didn't prevent him from running, a man on foot could never overtake the massive Kaius.

"Up you go now, mech designer! A vast new world awaits your mighty presence!"

The Kaius lowered its tail and forced Ves to climb on top of it. A crude metal poke hammered between the unbreakable scales of the chimera mech provided him with the only means for him to hang on to the mech as it slowly slithered back into the forest.

Ves had an awful ride as he tried to maintain his seating on the moving mech. If his grip ever lost power, he'd fall several stories down and certainly break some bones. He could even bump against a sharp metallic tree on the way and cut a hole through his hazard suit.

Once he started to get a hang of staying seated, Ves looked up to the raised head of the Kaius. The chimera mech practically strutted through the jungle as if it truly believed it ruled the forest. Doctor Jutland appeared to be engrossed in something as he frequently talked to himself and laughed.

He considered sneaking off. The doctor didn't pay any attention to him at the moment, granting him a prime opportunity to flee from Jutland's presence. Perhaps his shield generator could absorb the impact of his fall. If Ves remained unharmed, he could immediately activate his stealth augment and run like hell.

Yet he paused after considering the stakes. Even if he ran away now, he couldn't go very far. Without any map or way to orient himself in the jungle, he would never be able to find his way back to base camp.

Furthermore, Ves wanted some answers. House Kaine always acted like they held back a significant secret. Perhaps he could pry something important out of Doctor Jutland, though he also had to survive the doctor's unstable temper.

Ves started with something simple. "How is it you're able to breathe without a suit?"

"What's that? Did you say something?!" Jutland turned his head and snapped at him. "Hah, your puny little mind won't understand the wonders I've been able to craft with my mind. The flesh is trivial! With my unfathomable genius, modifying my respiratory organs is child's play! I've done so much more to my body that it will break your simple little mind if I list them out!"

"You might not know this, but I'm still a regular human. I'll die once my suit runs out of oxygen after a week."

"What?! Your suit runs out of air after a week?! That's too short! You still have so much to do! Damn these hired thugs!"

Jutland's anger extended to the Kaius. The chimera mech began to shudder dangerously, making it even harder for Ves to hang on.

Then, the doctor suddenly stopped his tantrum and looked at Ves like he was an interesting lab rat. "Don't you worry, mech designer! Once I bring you back to my lab, I'll implant my latest set of enhancements in your body. You'll be able to breathe the air without risk! Oh your body will be transformed into a true new species, just like me!"

Ves almost wanted to let go of his grip right then and there. He didn't relish being cut open by the craziest exobiologist in the rim. The thought of losing his sanity and becoming best friends with the delusional Jutland frightened him to death. He had to escape before the doctor cut him open!

Chapter: 185

Carlos stepped backwards and looked at his latest finished work. The Marc Antony Mark II sparkled like a shiny new jewel. It looked to be his best work to date. Too bad he still lacked the skill and finesse to match the gold label mechs.

Raella whistled impressively as she hobbled over while chewing a nutrient bar. "It's really impressive to see you conjure up a mech out of nowhere. How much do these go for anyway?"

"Our company's mech broker is currently selling them for twenty-eight million credits. It used to be thirty million, but the models haven't proven to be very popular at that price."

Though twenty-eight million credits sounded respectable, Carlos knew that it wasn't enough. The Living Mech Corporation needed to accumulate billions of credits in order to establish a fully mature production line as well as acquire the necessary licenses to design and fabricate a newer generation mech model.

Still, he believed that Ves had a handle on the problem. His previously average friend and classmate had turned into a terrifying mech designer as of late. While Carlos still scratched his head at the sudden transformation, his friendship with his increasingly inscrutable boss gave him a unique opportunity to ride on his coattails.

"Man, you must be rolling in credits right now! Won't you slip a few million credits on my way?"

"No can do." Carlos shook his head. "I don't have full authority over the company's accounts. Ves' grandpa is constantly keeping an eye on the company's expenditures."

As a director of the LMC, Benjamin Larkinson took an active interest in the development of the company. He especially guarded over the influx of money used to buy a twenty-five percent stake in the business.

"Cheapskate." Raella shrugged and finished off her nutrient bar. "It's so boring around here. I really would have liked to join Ves. Do you think he's having fun right now?"

"No idea. All I've heard is he's somewhere out in the frontier doing something dangerous."

"That sounds like an adventure! Ves and Melkor must be having the time of their lives right now! Damn, why am I stuck here recovering from a bout of Molgon? I could have been out there beating up pirates and aliens in order to rob them of their treasures!"

No matter how much Raella moaned about her fate, she couldn't do anything at the moment. Her body still had to undergo several treatments stretched over months before she became fit enough to pilot a mech. Any excessive physical exertion risked setting back her progress.

In reality, Ves experienced none of the wonders she imagined that went on in the frontier. Instead, he hobbled down from the tail of the Kaius and sat down on the ground of the hollowed out cave. A pitifully small stream of water flowed from the cave, making it one of the few readily available sources of water in this underground kingdom.

Ves looked around the cave and tried to peer through the relative darkness. From the ambient light streaming from the entrance of the cave, he spotted decades worth of improvisation and neglect.

A couple of makeshift structures ringed around the pool. They were cobbled together from a combination of fallen metallic trees and salvaged building materials from the prior expedition.

A large pile of rusting mech wrecks laid heaped upon a pile in a corner. Doctor Jutland must have been cannibalizing their parts over the years to supplement the Kaius.

What struck Ves the most was that he detected various forms of life scurrying about. Dog-sized hexapods vaguely shimmered around the wrecks while small flights of hexabats flew lazily over his head.

None of them showed any hostility to him. Ves figured that Jutland must have tamed them with his strange control method. The madman's ability to tame and direct the hexapods alone gave him the qualifications to call himself the king of the jungle.

The Kaius lumbered over a deep pool dug out from the side. It submerged itself into the water up until it reached its neck. Doctor Jutland removed the straps holding him to his makeshift seat and jumped to the edge of the pool with practiced ease.

The man grinned at him, as if he knew what Ves tried to hide. "There will be no rescue for you here. Mr. Keller has helpfully kept me apprised of what your expedition is up to. Don't think this is my only base! In fact, I've built up over fifteen outposts! They'll never be able to find all of them! Hahahaha!"

That traitor! Ves cursed under his breath. Keller's nearsighted decision to collaborate with Jutland just ruined one of his hopes. The expedition couldn't divert too many mechs to chase around a madman, especially after he got what he wanted. The chance of rescue just dwindled down to almost nothing.

Ves could only rely on himself for now.

"Why did you kidnap me?"

"What else?! I need a mech designer, and you're the only idiot who's stupid enough to land on this planet. You're it, hahahaha!"

Hearing the hysterical laughter of Doctor Jutland grated on Ves's nerves. The man acted like he constantly injected himself with stimulants. Sometimes he paused and whispered softly to himself as if he had a second personality in his mind.

When Jutland regained some clarity, he turned to Ves with a laser focus. "A mech designer only needs to design mechs! Why else have I brought you here! Finally my Kaius will receive the attention it deserves!"

The doctor whistled loudly in a very peculiar pattern. A juvenile hexapod lounging nearby sprung to readiness and approached Ves in no time. The creature hissed at him and bumped its head forward.

Through the creature's direction, Ves stepped forward and approached the lake with the half-submerged Kaius. The mech looked like a wreck stranded in water, though the darkness prevented him from spotting more details.

"It's too dark here. Do you have a light or something?"

"You pitiful baseline human." Jutland shook his head, but he started moving and approached one of the structures formed out of salvaged armor plating. Both of his hands touched a pair of twin rods poking out from the sides. "Let there be light!"

Something incredible happened. A live current emerged from Jutland's hands and transferred over to the rods. The entire cave came to life as different lights salvaged from wrecks lighted up and illuminated the breath of the cave.

Ves had underestimated the amount of hexapods Jutland gathered in his base. He could spot an entire colony of hexabats quietly resting on the roof of the cave. As for the landform hexabats, a small group of formidable adults rested near the entrance, ready to swat Ves into mush the moment he tried to escape.

Jutland's control over the hexapods had reached a terrifying height that couldn't be explained through common sense. Even if he spent decades training up the same group of hexapods, he shouldn't have been able to make them smart enough to follow orders only a sentient being could follow.

"Are the hexapods sentient?"

"Hihihihi!" Jutland erupted into giggles. "You blind fool! They are mere beasts! Can you ask a dog to cook you dinner? You can't unless you've tinkered with their genes, but then they won't be dogs anymore!"

The man rambled onwards for another minute before he inadvertently revealed something important. "The Compact never believed in my research! The nearsighted idiots at the Life branch only concentrate their funds on replicating the MTA's secrets to longevity. They've gone completely astray! We cultivate the soul, not the body! The flesh is trash!"

Ves tried to rub his ears with his shackled hands, only to bump against his helmet. Did he hear correctly? "Were you part of the Five Scrolls Compact?"

The man snapped shut and his gaze bore down on Ves like how a cat gazed at a bird. "You are not supposed to know about the Compact. You're not a regular mech designer, are you?"

"I, ah, my master has some intelligence reports on the Compact. My clearance is too low to read them though. I only glanced at their titles."

The odd mix of truth and lies saved Ves from having his secrets exposed. He definitely did not wish to let Jutland know that the Five Scrolls Compact forced his father into the life of a fugitive.

Oddly enough, Jutland smiled at Ves as if he performed a funny trick. "To those who are only peripherally aware of the Compact, we are often made out as cultists and terrorists. Do you know why?"

"No."

"Because it's true! We venerate the Five Scrolls! We revere the Immortal Gods who gifted us with forbidden knowledge! For these reasons alone, the vile traitors of the MTA and CFA saw fit to bite the hand that fed them! We provided them with the means to prolong the life of a baseline human up to five hundred years! Without our exclusive life-prolonging treatments, they would have never been able to subdue the elites who rule over their petty states!"

Ves couldn't determine whether Jutland spoke any truth. The devastating secrets flowing out of his mouth changed his entire cognition of the current human order. He often wondered why the MTA and CFA maintained such an iron grip on human society. Perhaps the offer of living far beyond the natural lifespan of a human presented a fatal attraction to these pampered rulers.

"You know how to extend the life of a human?"

"Of course! I'm part of the Life Branch! I've even had the opportunity to glimpse some of the majesty of the Earth Scroll and the Water Scroll. Do you know how rare it is to view a fraction of a copy of the Scrolls? It was the most defining moment of my life! The Scrolls, oh the precious Scrolls, if only I was able to view the originals! The missing portions are constantly haunting me even now!"

Perhaps the doctor already went off the deep end before he fled to the frontier. Ves guessed that these supposed Scrolls turned anyone who saw them into lunatics. Doctor Jutland kept lamenting on how he only understood a tiny portion of the secrets contained within these elusive Scrolls.

No matter what, Ves wanted to dig out more secrets out of Jutland while he was still in the mood to talk. "What did you learn from the Scrolls? Did they teach you how to communicate and control the hexapods?"

"Shut up!" Doctor Jutland jerked his arm, causing the dog-sized hexapod next to Ves to slam him down with a forelimb. "The sanctity of the Scrolls cannot be tarnished! The Immortal Gods will strike me down if I disseminate what I've glimpsed!"

Despite his stern words, Jutland quickly laughed again and rambled about his conflicts with former affiliation. "The Life Branch thoroughly misunderstood the point about life! They pursue longevity to a ridiculous extreme, not even realizing that they're merely placing more shackles upon the soul! Only by cultivating the soul can we pursue immortality! Every other path is a distraction!"

While Ves believed in metaphysics, he only admitted that he didn't fully know how the multiverse worked. Everything could be explained through logic and science once you understood the rules of how things worked.

Unlike this reasoned approach to the unknown, the Five Scrolls Compact assumed that gods actually existed. A delusional fantasy like believing that a bunch of rolled up parchments of dubious origin could help your soul become immortal clearly went too far.

No wonder the MTA and CFA considered the Compact a collection of crazy cultists.

Throughout Doctor Jutland barely understandable rambling, Ves got a small sense of what the Compact did.

The scientists of the Life Branch experimented without any regard for safety and sanity. Their wild experimentation often led to bizarre results like human-alien hybrids that deserved to be incinerated, all in an attempt to develop new ways to make a human body more formidable.

Though they failed more often than not, their rare successes sometimes led to a radical advancement in a difficult field of research. Jutland obviously enjoyed some of the fruits of this extensive research in order to be able to modify his body in a way that allowed him to adapt to this alien biome.

"Ah, what have I done? I spoke about the Compact! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!"

Jutland loudly berated himself to the point of punching himself in the face. Ves got a terrible fright when each of the punches released a small burst of potent heat that washed over their surroundings. Any unprotected human would have been burned to ashes with the amount of energy Jutland's fists released, but the doctor still looked fine.

"Ah, that reminds me, I should bestow upon your body some new implants. We can't have you dying of hunger and thirst while you slowly suffer from the pain of your body breaking apart from acute radiation poisoning like Mike! He only lasted a couple of months and croaked as soon as we ran out of nutrient paste!"

Jutland leered ominously at Ves, as if the doctor intended to cut him open right now. While Ves secretly envied Jutland's strange abilities, he didn't wish to lose his sanity in the process. Besides, Ves suspected that Jutland wouldn't stop with only a couple of essential implants.

"Look, we can get some food, water and air from the base. No need to go through the trouble of operating on me, right?"

"Too slow, too limited, too finite! With my exclusive Jutland organ wrapped around your heart, you'll be able to draw out most of the energy from around us like the hexapods! I'll make sure you'll last long enough to consolidate my rule over the forest!"

Before Ves could take a couple of steps back, Jutland stepped forward with inhuman speed and gripped the collar of his hazard suit. The doctor fumbled at the outer controls and forcibly removed the helmet!

"Air! I can't breathe!" Ves choked as he tried to hold his breath. The toxic air of Groening IV stunned his eyes to the point of almost turning him blind. The insides of his mouth, nose and ears burned like they'd been doused in acid. The pain overwhelmed his body so much that he couldn't activate his life-saving gadgets.

Jutland put his bare palm atop Ves' thrashing head. "Sleep now."

Chapter: 186

One of the biggest fears any human faced was the prospect of never waking up after sleep. This especially crept up when you were being operated immediately after being knocked out. The prospect of never knowing when you died haunted Ves when Doctor Jutland forcibly sapped his consciousness.

It came as a small relief when Ves eventually woke up. That relief quickly made way for pain, as his entire body ached.

The most prominent pains came from the incisions in his chest and in his head. Jutland obviously hadn't wasted much time cutting him open. The recently cut flesh still radiated a lot of pain as his flesh actively worked to recover from the damage.

Several new portions inside his body emanated a lot of pressure that constantly washed over his flesh and bones. A portion near his heart constantly released a stream of omnipresent pressure that constantly pressed against his body as if he was a dam about to burst. Having nowhere else to go, the scalding hot energy washed inside his body, forcing it to accommodate the excess.

His body couldn't take the sheer amount of energy flowing out from the organ next to his heart. However, a strange sensation swept from a spot near his spine that forced the volatile energy to submerge in every cell of his body. Ves could vaguely sense that the energy brutally transformed his flesh and bones through a constant cycle of destruction and rejuvenation.

Each time his cells got destroyed, new ones grew in their place that were able to contain a little bit more energy before they reached their limits. Ves didn't know how many cycles his body already went through, but it grew to the point where he could breathe the foul-tasting air of Groening IV without suffocating to death.

His eyes and all of his orifices only lightly stung when they came into contact with the toxic air. A constant prickle suffused his body from his surroundings. They weaved through his flesh and entered the organ besides his heart without stopping. Ves took that to mean his body drew on the ambient heat and radiation to fuel his ongoing transformation.

"Ah, you're awake!" Doctor Jutland entered the makeshift hut with a smile. A small, salvaged light taken from a mech hung from a wire extending from the ceiling. Jutland's face took on a mock-fatherly appearance as he studied the readouts from a medical device strapped to his bed. "Your life signs have stabilized. Good! You've passed the most difficult test!"

Jutland turned around and brought up a bucket filled with freshly butchered meat. He grabbed a random thigh of a juvenile hexapod and ripped the hardy scales from the flesh with his bare hands, coating it with greenish blood. After he finished removing the inedible scales, he extended the raw piece of meat to Ves. "Here. Eat! Your energy is limitless, but your body still needs nutrients!"

His overarching hunger suppressed usual disgust when presented with a raw piece of meat. Ves grabbed onto the shank and sank his teeth into the hardy flesh, not even taking note of his strengthened denture. He finished up the shank in only a couple of minutes. His stomach finally subsided from its constant nagging for food.

The urge to sleep overtook him. Ves tried to restrain his fatigue but his strengthened body overwhelmed his feeble desire. He returned to slumber just as Doctor Jutland injected his body with a strange solution.

Over the course of an unknown amount of time, Ves kept waking up with hunger gnawing in his stomach. Each time, Jutland entered the hut and eagerly handed him another freshly butchered hexapod limb.

Sometimes, the doctor fed him their organs. Ves even got to sink his teeth into a juvenile's heat organ, which instantly scorched his mouth despite its increased tolerance for heat. Just a tiny bite of the underdeveloped heat organ had surpassed what his stomach was capable of digesting at any single moment.

Minutes later, the organ beside his heart flared up as if it had been injected with chicken blood. The torrent of energy that flowed out from his chest almost physically pressed against the insides of his toughened skin. When the waves finally subsided, Ves blissfully returned to sleep.

After his twentieth-or-something awakening, Ves woke up devoid of excessive hunger. His body had finally finished whatever Jutland had initially spurred on. His exposed flesh withstood the alien atmosphere without any signs of degradation. Though his body still generated a lot of energy, most of it threaded through his body in a circle and returned to the strange organ in his chest.

When Jutland finally returned to check his body, he cackled maniacally. "Hahahaha! You not only survived the process, but exceeded my expectations!"

"What did you do?" Ves asked weakly.

Though the excess of energy invigorated his body, he had a hard time gaining control over it. It was as if the energy didn't belong to him but merely rented space in his body. Sporadically, it even showed signs of erupting, which Ves suspected would be really bad.

Jutland grinned at the opportunity to brag. "I put in twenty-seven years of focused research to use. My Jutland organ is carefully designed and grown to incorporate the best traits of a hexapod's heat organ. Meanwhile, the regulator I've implanted in your spine has spurred your body to renew itself along a modified genetic makeup. All of your cells down to your bone marrow have fully adapted, just as I intended!"

"Did you change my genes?"

"Of course! It's the only way I can force your body to transform with the failing tools I have on hand. Be glad that I found out that you took an initiating elixir. Without that gene boost as a primer, I would have never been able to spur your cells to swap their DNA so effortlessly!"

Ves recalled the M-21 Initiating Elixir gifted by his master. He only received a small boost in attributes from the injection, but he'd been told that it only laid the groundwork for further gene boosts.

If Doctor Jutland recognized that he used that gene boost, then his earlier rants about the relationship between the MTA and the Five Scrolls Compact might be true. Ves tried hard not to think too deep about that connection.

"What else did you do to my body?"

Jutland cackled again and rubbed his hands in a nefarious manner. He rambled on a bit about the various enhancements he developed over the years. His Jutland organ formed his magnum opus, but he didn't limit his research on the humanized heat organ alone.

Overall, Ves received two other major enhancements.

First, his digestive system received a large enhancement in order to be able to process food that regular humans could never stomach. The doctor expanded the range of foods he could digest.

To his relief, Ves did not lose the ability to digest conventional human food. He hadn't lost any capabilities in that area. Instead, his digestive system became even more effective in extracting every possible nutrient out of everything he ate. Combined with the energy provided by his heat organ, Ves required a lot less food to make it through the day.

Next, Jutland implanted a small growth next to his spine that initially directed the transformation of his genes. Now that his body adapted to his revamped genes, the regulator organ mainly functioned as his heat organ's central processor.

For example, the energy cycle within his body had only come into being with the help of the regulator organ. Its cells contained extensive biological programming that coordinated his central nervous system with all of the changes in his body.

After all, a baseline human didn't have anything like a human-sized heat organ. Without some form of instructions, his body wouldn't know what to do with it. The regulator essentially augmented his baseline central nervous system like how his Full Stealth augment added a new function to his Privacy Shield.

That reminded Ves to check his gear. He found out that Jutland stripped him of all clothes and gear, replacing them with a spare set of hospital clothes that must have been stewing in a box for a couple of decades.

"Ah, wondering where your devices are? I confiscated them both! Thank you for your spare shield generator. As soon as I decipher its identity lock, it will make for a useful guarantee of my safety! That blasted lock! The latest system is too tricky!"

Ves already expected to be stripped of his shield generator when Jutland stumbled upon it. After all, without it, he'd be at the mercy of his deranged captor. He could only give up on that avenue. Instead, he focused on his comm. He had to get his hands on his System.

"What about my comm?"

"What about it?"

"I need it to redesign the Kaius. Do you expect me to design a mech by drawing hexapod blood on the ground?"

Jutland waved his hand dismissively. "I've salvaged a number of terminals from a couple of derelict workshops from the first expedition. Half of them still work, last I checked!"

"Their processors have never been rated to endure this much radiation and corrosive air over time. Even if they still look functional, you can't trust them to produce reliable results."

"Then I'll commission that thug Keller to steal a terminal from your current expedition!"

"That won't do. The workshop runs on a vastly different software suite. I'm used to working with the software installed in my comm. Please give it back to me."

Doctor Jutland uncharacteristically fell into silence. After a long consideration, he nodded and pulled out a familiar comm from his dirty lab coat and threw it onto Ves.

"Fine! But no more delays now! You've slept for eight days straight now and your expedition is already halfway through its window! You'll start your work immediately! "

The news that Ves had intermittently slept over a stretch of eight days affected him greatly. He already missed so much! A new sense of urgency washed over his mind, spurring him on to sit up from his cot. He slowly reached upwards, but his sudden movements disturbed his internal energy cycle. A large portion of energy escaped the cycle and traveled onwards until it smashed the front of his chest.

The invisible impact forced a painful cough out of Ves. He heaved a bit and vomited out some blood.

"Reckless! Just because your body finished its transformation doesn't mean you've mastered your new source of energy!"

"How can I control this rampant energy?"

"You can't!" Jutland cackled again. "An unenlightened boor like you will never be able to master this higher form of energy! Instead, the cycle will continue to revolve your internal energy until its quantity surpasses the limits of your flesh."

"Am I dying?"

"Everyone is dying, Ves! You are merely expiring faster than others because your body is eventually unable to process the vast amounts of energy from my Jutland organ! You'll blow up in a grand explosion that will spread your scattered flesh over many kilometers! Maybe you'll even break Mike's record! Hihihihihi!"

Jutland's insane behavior frightened Ves but also made him question why his thoughts and behavior still remained the same. Had Jutland improved his new organs and fixed the flaws?

"Don't think all of that energy will keep strengthening your body." Jutland ominously said after he recovered from his latest bout of giggling. "The flesh is weak. Your only salvation lies in cultivating your soul. I predict you'll be bedridden for a few weeks. Don't bother moving away. Instead, start working on improving my steed!"

Doctor Jutland made some arrangements to his bed so that Ves could prop himself up into a somewhat comfortable seating position. He also threw a datachip at Ves that he could slot into his comm.

"I'm not a mech designer, but years of boredom have given me plenty of time to master a trivial scanner device. I've already included extensive scans of the Kaius in that chip. Ignore the living tissue and focus on remedying its mechanical components!"

After Jutland finally left the hut, Ves tiredly smiled. Despite the ticking time bomb implanted in his body, he remained hopeful he could remedy the flaws in his body.

He already achieved significant progress after Jutland had rambled about the soul. Even though he automatically dismissed the doctor's assertion, his beliefs gave Ves a clue on how to tackle his runaway energy cycle.

Obviously, Ves couldn't rely on his body to sort the problem out itself. Even the regulator organ did nothing but impose a rudimentary cycle that extended his lifespan from a couple of hours to a couple of months.

Ves didn't believe in the existence of the soul. Yet the idea prompted him to employ his mind. He instinctively sharpened his focus onto his Jutland organ, trying to impose his will on it. He treated it like he wanted to nurture the X-Factor onto a design.

Strangely enough, it worked. His Jutland organ jerked a bit, and it took several minutes to figure out how he could dial down the overactive organ. The energy cycle slowly subsided from a raging torrent to a placid stream.

It became much more bearable for his body, which enjoyed a reprieve for the first time in more than a week. He regained control over his body in rapid time, which broke Jutland's estimate that he required weeks of rest before he could even leave his bed.

"Now we're talking."

Now that he managed to restore his mobility, Ves could finally cook up an escape plan.

Earlier, Jutland ignorantly handed him back his comm. Not only did he regain access to the stealth augment, he also recovered the ability to access the System and its various marvels.

Ves carefully pretended to be weak and tired and slowly activated his comm. Instead of opening his hidden Mech Designer System, he executed a mundane designer software.

Who knew if Jutland kept some eyes on him. Ves had to be very careful in order to preserve his ability to escape.

"First, I'll have to master this abundant power reactor in my chest."

Pseudoscience or not, Ves resolved to cure his body through his own efforts. He refused to entertain Jutland's delusions and his heretical faith that he could find salvation from these supposed Immortal Gods.

Ves recalled two very pertinent quotes he learned from school that guided his resolve.

First, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Second, the weak believed in God while the strong sought to surpass his existence.

Chapter: 187

Ves currently likened his body to a balloon that steadily took in air without stop. His body could only hold a limited amount of energy. Even after Jutland directed his body to grow stronger, it had reached its limits, meaning that Ves eventually faced the possibility of bursting apart like a balloon with too much air.

For now, he couldn't figure out a way to release the pressure. The strange energy cycling inside his body consisted of a strange sort of energy that resembled a thick, permeable gas of some sorts. It was remarkably difficult to control and currently Ves had no way of siphoning a portion outwards.

Therefore, the only way to relieve the problem was to slow down his overactive heat organ. Such a solution wouldn't work forever, as he merely delayed his eventual death, but he bought himself a lot of time.

When Ves narrowed his concentration on corralling the heat organ, he estimated that the rate of accumulation had slowed down to a fifth of its former activity level. His active efforts also pulled the wind out of his internal energy cycle, which reduced the pressure it put onto his body. This allowed him to regain his mobility.

"I can't keep this up forever, though."

It took a lot of effort to maintain his current level of concentration. Ves felt as if he had to maintain two trains of thoughts, one for the present and one dedicated to keeping his heat organ in check. Designing the Mark II which employed three images had been a bit more onerous.

He estimated he could keep this up for three hours at a time before he needed to take a break. He also determined that he couldn't maintain his concentration when he slept, which potentially cut the effectiveness of this exercise by a third.

"This is merely a temporary fix. I'll find a more permanent one once I've returned to civilization."

At worst, he'd travel to the Titanium Garden and beg Master Olson to remove his newly implanted organs. Despite the awesome power they provided, it was useless if he couldn't control it. Ves constantly played with fire the longer he hosted this strange new energy.

The door of the hut slammed open. An angry looking Jutland saw that Ves hadn't done much of anything, as he still pretended to be suffering from an of energy. "Get a grip! Your body isn't crippled to the point you're never able to move again! Get to work!"

Ves minutely shook his head. Despite all of his fanciful thoughts, he remained vulnerable to the whims of a madman.

"Let's see what's on the data chip."

When Ves studied the contents of the data chip, he found the information to be partially complete. Much of the inner portions of the Kaius remained obscured, as Jutland probably didn't intend to put all of his eggs in a single basket.

Pity he didn't know that Ves already had a good look inside, courtesy of Lucky.

Doctor Jutland made detailed scans of his chimera mech's mechanical components. In case of salvaged components, he also documented the wrecks from where he sloppily removed them. The chip even contained the precious notes of the initial mech designer.

Parsing them proved to be a challenge for Ves. The mech designer mostly wrote down miniscule details and incomprehensible calculations that meant nothing without knowing the context. The mech designer never intended to present his notes to others, so he didn't bother to format them in a way that allowed other mech designers to pick up his torch.

Puzzling through the schematic and documents yielded a little more understanding of the Kaius. The mech designer not only mastered the humanoid form, but also knew his way around several beast shapes, including reptilian ones which the hexapod mostly resembled. Ves vaguely gleaned several insights about the peculiarities a reptilian form demanded.

"It's all about stability."

A hexapod massed as much as a mech and more due to its highly developed bones, muscles and scales. This granted them an incredible amount of speed and power that surpassed the specs of most mechs with an equivalent mass.

All of this strength came at a cost. Hexapods required six sturdy limbs in order to leverage their heavy muscles. Though they could make do with four limbs for a time, eventually they reached its limits. Supporting their immense bulk required a lot of constant effort.

"That heat organ is certainly a cheat."

The plentiful amount of energy provided by a highly developed heat organ allowed the hexapods to do more with less. It removed most of the bottlenecks that constrained their size and allowed them to balloon to epic proportions.

According to the schematic, Jutland modified a hexapod king's heat organ into an organic power reactor. The highly augmented organ was a marvel of nature and technology. It provided a stable output of energy that powered both its organic and mechanical components. The only downside to these tweaks was that the Kaius thirsted for water whenever it exerted its heat organ.

"Everything is balanced. Limitless energy doesn't exist."

Exotic materials often produced miracles, but they always hid a lot of limitations. Besides their scarcity, their effects always exacted another price. The heat organ's dependence on water gave Ves a clue on one of the vulnerabilities of the Kaius.

"Too bad it's not something I can mess around."

Ves was a mech designer. He hardly knew anything about exobiology, which was Jutland's core strength. If Ves wanted to figure out a way to sabotage the Kaius, he'd be better off focusing on his own core strength.

A fifth of the hexapod king carcass that made up the Kaius had been replaced with metallic parts. All of them were in pretty bad shape. They withstood decades of corrosion, neglect and incompetent handling.

In addition, the quality of the salvaged mech parts left a lot to be desired. The mechs brought by the first expedition simply didn't hold a candle to the advanced models employed by the forces from the Grey Willow StarSector. Even in an optimal environment, it would be remarkable if they lasted over twenty years.

This fits with the modus operandi of small-to-medium scale expeditionary fleets. They employed fairly cheap mechs made out of materials that could be easily recycled and be used to fabricate new replacement parts or even entire new mechs.

While this meant that the materials were easy to work with, the parts never lasted very long. The Kaius clearly suffered a substantial degradation in performance due to the perennial weaknesses introduced by its various mechanical components.

It was like a galactic-class athlete being hobbled by a crude prosthetic made of wood. That single imperfection ruined the perfect balance of his body that allowed him to break galactic records.

Depending on the facilities at hand, Ves could think of a number of remedies. To be frank, the parts needed to be broken down and reformed. Ves had no expertise in the former and he'd require a fully functional 3D printer to do the latter.

From the state of this sorry-looking outpost, Ves guessed that Jutland hadn't been able to preserve a 3D printer. Even if he did have one in the early years, it must have broken down as many of its components were rather delicate.

"I'll have to assume I only have basic tools at my disposal."

Expeditions that established an outpost groundside usually brought a standard set of portable equipment to service their mechs.

A compact auto-forge was a step down from a 3D printer in that it couldn't fabricate precise components from a ready supply of raw materials. However, its low-tech nature gave it a robustness that could withstand many different hostile environments without a sweat.

"I don't know how to work an autoforge."

He used to handle one when he studied mech design, but only to familiarize himself with its various functions. The much superior industrial 3D printers provided students with a much easier experience. Only the true hardcore metallurgists kept hanging around an autoforge in order to fine-tune the casting of alloys.

Ves spent the rest of the day drawing up a preliminary overhaul of the Kaius. He only touched up the most glaring weaknesses in order to placate Jutland.

The next day, Ves woke up with his entire body aching lightly. He obviously lost control over his energy cycle somewhere in the night. Without his conscious direction, his heat organ went back to pumping his energy at full throttle.

Jutland came by sometime later. "Good! You're awake again! You better show some work, or I'll feed you to my subjects!"

"I've already drawn up a plan!" Ves quickly replied, and proceeded to show his captor his meager efforts.

"Hmph. Considering the state of your body, you've made an adequate amount of progress. How soon until you finish a new design?"

"That's difficult to say because I don't have a complete grip on the facilities you have on hand. Do you still possess a working 3D printer?"

"I don't know! Let's take a look! It's your first day on the job, so you better familiarize yourself with your workplace. Haha!"

The doctor summoned a random juvenile hexapod and dumped Ves onto its back. Its coarse scales chafed against his skin, but Ves refrained from uttering a complaint. Ever since he started working on the doctor's long-awaited overhaul, Jutland hadn't exploded into anger very often.

When the hexapod brought him to a shambling shack, Ves got to see the outpost's workshop.

"Well? What do you think? I've salvaged more than enough tools for you to work with! I've even hauled over a 3D printer for you!"

It looked abysmal. A broken 3D printer took up most of the space. From all of the rust and broken parts poking out of its massive shell, Ves directly wrote it off. As for the pile of handheld tools such as plasma cutters and welders, he briefly sorted them and found that maybe one in four still worked.

At least the workshop held an autoforge. It exhibited sporadic signs of use. Jutland must have fumbled with it over the years as his Kaius began falling apart and needed more mechanical replacements. the hexapod brought Ves over to the autoforge, he turned on its control terminal.

It booted up at least. When Ves initiated its diagnostics, the terminal reported the state of the autoforge. While he didn't understand some of the readings, he noted that the machine largely held up despite the abuse it suffered over a period of twenty-seven years.

"Your autoforge needs some work. It's not in the best shape."

"Then fix it!"

Ves bought some more time for himself with that trick. The diagnostics painted a worse picture than what actually went on, as the diagnostics reported all of its error reports up front. That gave the machine the illusion that it suffered under a mountain of issues.

Jutland left the room to do his own things, but before he left he ordered the hexapod to stay put. While Ves didn't relish hanging on to the creature all day, it behaved noticeably docile under Jutland's influence. He probably didn't have to worry about it getting hungry and wanting to take a bite out of Ves.

"You won't eat me, will you?"

The stupid creature didn't even jerk at his question.

"Whatever."

Now that Ves had a better picture on what he had to work with, he began to formulate an actual escape plan.

After thinking through his options, he reluctantly gave up on running away on his own. From what he saw, a horde of juvenile hexapods guarded the cave and its surroundings. With only five minutes worth of stealth, Ves could never run away fast enough to escape Jutland's reach even if he sabotaged the Kaius.

He'd have to send a signal back to base camp asking for rescue.

In order to send a strong enough signal that could penetrate the miasma of metallic particles and garbled radio spectrum, he'd have to get his hands on two different things.

First, he had to get his hands on a transceiver. Fortunately, Jutland's datachip showed him that most of the derelict mechs still possessed their transceivers, though they weren't in the best shape. Ves could use the tools at hand to covertly bring them back online.

Second, in order to penetrate the miasma, he required a massive amount of power, enough to short out the transceiver seconds after it sent out its message. Ves expected a lot more difficulty in getting his hands on a power source.

The base obviously ran on Jutland's own internal energy which he somehow converted to a stable current. The salvaged energy cells Jutland used as batteries must have also slowly degraded to the point where they frequently ran out of juice.

Powering a high-strength transceiver would probably drain most of the energy cells all at once, alerting Jutland that Ves had done something sneaky. Once he came across the transceiver, there would be hell to pay.

"I've got to find an alternate source of energy."

Ves instinctively turned his attention inwards. His internal energy cycle continued to revolve inside his body. Could he figure out the trick Jutland used to draw out this strange energy in the form of electricity?

Chapter: 188

Ves spent the next couple of days pretending to be physically infirm while dragging his feet on the redesign of the Kaius. Jutland frequently hounded him in his free time and made sure that Ves presented some progress.

His job became vastly more complicated due to its dual nature as a mechanical and living machine.

The huge chimera mech incorporated a vast amount of living tissue that Jutland spent a lot of time trying to keep alive. The incomplete schematic included in the datachip only briefly mentioned the various functions of the strange organs inside the beast.

In truth, Ves only partially directed his attention on the Kaius. Most of its complexity lay in its living components. As for the mechanical parts, they mostly provided support, taking the place of bones and tissue that Jutland hadn't managed to save.

They were simple to design but difficult to fabricate. The lacking facilities available in the cave forced Ves to be a little more creative in his designs. He had to take into account his meager proficiency with the low-tech autoforge.

Whenever Jutland holed up in his lab to cook up his latest biological horror, Ves slacked off in his current duties and focused on his goal of upgrading a transceiver and providing it with a vast amount of power. Both of these challenges required a lot of effort to make any headway.

Ves gained an opening when the doctor suddenly appeared alarmed and readied the Kaius for action. "The nerve of these outlanders! I will be off for a while!"

Before he left, Jutland gave a stern warning for Ves to stay put. He called out even more hexapods and stationed them around the entrance and his most important labs. If Ves got anywhere near the creatures, they'd gobble him up without hesitation. The biolab practically turned into an impregnable fortress by the time the doctor finished his arrangements.

Seeing the Kaius come to life and emerge from the pool of water once again gave Ves a sense of majesty. Even devoid of actual life, the chimera mech still provided him with a sense of dread.

Each step elicited a minor earthquake. Its vast bulk forced the Kaius to expend a mountain of energy which its modified heat organ provided in spades. It slowly crawled out of the cave like a dragon about to raid a village.

Something serious must have happened that caused Jutland to bring out the big guns. Ever since he kidnapped Ves, Jutland had been content with keeping an eye on Ves while he holed up in his precious labs. Perhaps the expeditionary forces stumbled upon something important to Jutland.

"I'm finally alone."

Without the good doctor looking over his shoulders, Ves could accomplish a lot more things. He scoped out the outpost for the last few days and got a good measure on Doctor Jutland's security arrangements.

The man generally disdained relying on technology. Everything high tech had already degraded to the point of turning into scrap. The plentiful amount of hexapods standing guard spoke of Jutland's trust and reliance on these remarkably dimwitted beasts.

Though Ves still hadn't gotten a clue how Jutland directed the alien creatures. Still, no matter the control method, he doubted they worked like cameras, which meant that Ves had free reign of much of the outpost.

Besides the biolabs and exit, Ves could walk everywhere as he pleased. In his boundless confidence, he judged that Ves should still be coping with his runaway internal energy cycle.

Ves indeed suffered a lot of pain and a loss of control, but that only happened when he stopped suppressing his Jutland organ. Once the doctor and his giant mech disappeared, Ves sharpened his focus once again and dedicated at least a third of his mental capacity to dialing down his rebellious organ.

Days of practice enabled him to become more adept at channeling his concentration. The urgency of the situation and the constant threat of harm had spurred his will to life like a torch.

Before he ended up in Jutland's hands, he always required a lot of lead time to transition his mind. Now he only required a couple of seconds to switch his focus.

Once his artificial organ had been leashed, Ves slid out the uncomfortable back of the hexapod that acted as his transport. The hexapod that ordinarily watched over him did nothing to stop him from leaving.

"Heh, thought so. These hexapods don't understand Jutland's intent. At the very least, the juveniles are as dumb as rocks."

Two hexapod adults patrolled the biolabs at all times, which clearly indicated their importance to the doctor. Ves thought it wise not to challenge these beasts. Though he was curious what preoccupied Jutland these days, he doubted he'd get away without losing a couple limbs.

Still, his curiosity continued to nag at him. If he activated his stealth augment, he could sneak past the oblivious hexapods and take a peek. Yet he shook his head after weighing the possible benefits.

"Using the stealth augment will drain the batteries of my comm."

Ves couldn't find a single outlet that allowed him to recharge his comm. Such a thing must have been a low priority to Jutland who lost his own comm many years ago.

He decided to hold back his stealth augment for his inevitable escape attempt. Without five minutes worth of stealth, he'd never be able to sneak past the vigilant hexapod adults standing guard near the exit.

Instead, he turned his gaze towards the pile of derelict mechs shoved into a corner of the cave. A devious smile appeared on his face for the first time in weeks.

There weren't any hexapods standing guard over the wrecks. His captor hadn't considered the possibility that he'd regain enough strength to make use of them. This allowed Ves to waltz over the pile of junk without challenge.

"This is truly a mess."

All of the wrecks consisted of remnants of the first expedition. Twenty-seven years ago, Ves could have salvaged a good number of high-quality parts. Now though, neglect and the passing of time allowed corrosion to set in deep.

In the overall scheme of things, a transceiver played a vital role for the mechs that carried them. They enabled the machines to keep in touch with each other and send back vital telemetry.

As humans often employed mechs against each other, the use of jamming technology was widespread. This limited the ability for mechs to communicate across vast distances such as a ship in orbit. Most mech designers therefore employed a transceiver that specialized in establishing secure short-range communication channels.

Thus, a mech transceiver had to fulfill two criteria.

First, they had to be robust enough to withstand shocks. It would be monumentally bad if a crippled mech couldn't call for help when its transceiver got taken out as a bonus.

Second, they had to be capable of scaling up its output when it received an increase in power. Most of the mechs in the junk pile happened to use the same

Like other sophisticated components such as power reactors and engines, mech designers always licensed a readily available transceiver model from a third-party developer.

Such a model had been designed from the ground up to accommodate many different kinds of mechs. A heavy mech possessed a shipload of power while a light mech had to be sparing in its energy expenditure. A transceiver had to work reliably in many different situations if its developer wished to license them out.

Ves brought a heavy duty plasma cutter over to the wrecks and began to make some careful cuts. He chose to work at the wrecks from the rear so that Jutland wouldn't notice anything amiss when he glanced at the pile.

When he worked with the plasma cutter, Ves noticed his body lost a lot of flexibility. His recent body transformation played hell with his coordination, which often led to near-accidents when he overshot his aim with his plasma cutter. Ves had to slow down even further if he wished to avoid a very nasty burn.

He wondered what the System thought of his new attributes. His strength and endurance must have shot through the roof at the expense of his dexterity.

"I haven't checked my Status in months."

It should be almost two months since he joined the expedition. Due to House Kaine's omnipresent surveillance as well as Ensign D'Amato's watchful presence, Ves never dared to access the System.

Now that he'd been left alone with a bunch of stupid hexapods, Ves could finally access its many miraculous functions. He quickly turned off his plasma cutter and placed it aside.

Just in case Jutland hid some cameras around the cave, Ves dove inside the half-open cockpit of a fallen mech. Closing the hatch took some effort, but a judicious application of strength allowed him to seal it somewhat shut.

The cockpit looked even worse than the rest of the mech. All of the projections and status screens either rusted away or hosted some strange metallic plant growth. Even the soft ergonomic seat cushions had decayed in a foul puddle of viscous ooze.

Ves ignored his surroundings and hunched over his body, trying to shield his comm from as many angles as possible. Once he ensured that almost nothing would be able to capture the contents of his comm, he navigated through a hidden menu and executed the Mech Designer Program.

[Mech Designer System Menu]

Status

Designer

Missions

Skill Tree

Shop

Lottery

Inventory

The familiar menu reassured him that he hadn't lost his most important tool in his career. The System accompanied him in his current rise as an Apprentice Mech Designer. The difficulties he faced nowadays strained his current capabilities. Without the help of the System, Ves faced an uphill struggle if he wished to escape with his hide intact.

First, he called up his Status.

[Status]

Name: Ves Larkinson

Profession: Apprentice Mech Designer

Specializations: None

Design Points: 17,643

Attributes

Strength: 1.6

Dexterity: 0.5

Endurance: 2.2

Intelligence: 1.8

Creativity: 1

Concentration: 1.7

Neural Aptitude: F

Skills

[Assembly]: Apprentice - [3D Printer Proficiency III] [Assembler Proficiency III]

[Battle Mechatronics]: Apprentice

[Business]: Apprentice

[Computer Science]: Incompetent

[Electrical Engineering]: Apprentice - [Structural Pathway Configuration II]

[Mathematics]: Apprentice

[Mechanics]: Journeyman - [Jury Rigging II] [Speed Tuning III]

[Metallurgy]: Journeyman - [Alloy Compression II]

[Metaphysics]: Incompetent

[Physics]: Apprentice - [Directed Energy Weapon Optimization II] [Lightweight Armor Optimization I] [Medium Weight Armor Optimization III] [Melee Weapon Optimization II]

Abilities

[Superpublish]: Available. Can be activated once a year.

Evaluation: A post-human mech designer capable of surviving harsh environments without protection.

The moment he saw his attributes, his eyes practically bulged. "My strength practically doubled and my endurance almost tripled!"

The last time he checked his Status, his physical attributes all scored below average at 0.8. Mech designers weren't hotshots like mech pilots who had to be able to navigate a battlefield on foot in event their mechs broke down. Thus, Ves always paid no attention to his lackluster fitness.

Right now, Ves didn't know what to think. His strength and endurance rose to a ridiculous level to the point of throwing his balance out of whack. He even broke through the natural genetic limit of a human body by surpassing the barrier at a score of 2.0!

As expected, all of the benefits came at the cost of dexterity. He definitely had to address this deficiency once he returned along with every other side effect. The System's Status only summarized his attributes. They didn't list out his overall fitness nor all of the junk that Doctor Jutland stuffed inside his body.

"My DP hasn't grown by much." He muttered with disappointment.

After thinking about it, Ves figured out the reasons.

He'd been absent from the market for two months. This pushed him out of the current news cycle which severely impacted his brand awareness.

Several other factors also limited the sales of his catalog. His earlier creations performed poorly compared to the most popular mechs in their market segments. His later works could be piloted for free via the game centers that participated in the promotion spearheaded by his publicist Gavin.

Only his most radical fans purchased the Young Blood or the Old Soul. The accessible and well-received Young Blood already capped out its DP contribution, so Ves earned nothing else from its sale. As for the Old Soul, its ambush sniper playstyle didn't appeal to the vast majority of young potentates who craved instant action.

"Well, it's not like I can scoff at seventeen-thousand DP. I can do plenty of things with this amount."

Chapter: 189

With around seventeen-thousand DP in his name, Ves had to consider his purchases carefully. The greedy System charged an arm and a leg for a high-powered transceiver or high-density energy cell, the latter of which also came without a charge.

"It'll be a waste to purchase an item from the Shop except for attribute candies." He concluded.

A side effect of his decreased Dexterity strangely reset the prices for the equivalent candies. It seemed like such a great deal that Ves instantly bought three of them in order to regain his former level of coordination.

[Dexterity Attribute Candy]: 500 Design Points

[Dexterity Attribute Candy]: 600 Design Points

[Dexterity Attribute Candy]: 700 Design Points

After swallowing the candies one after another, his body merely tingled for a couple of minutes before it finished its transformation. When he flexed his fingers, he nodded in satisfaction. His body hadn't changed much, but he regained his coordination, which helped him a lot when he worked with his tools.

He retained fifteen-thousand DP after his minor purchase. This sum wouldn't be enough to purchase a powerful item, but he had plenty to spare for handy Skills and Sub-Skills.

When he initially obtained the System, Ves spent a lot of DP on Skills. Only later did he wake up to the fact that he needed to upgrade his Attributes and his equipment as well, so he spent vast sums on the latter two categories to make up for his deficiencies.

"That doesn't mean I can neglect my Skills."

A mech designer relied on his knowledge and expertise to make a living. A powerful mind assisted him in advancing up the ranks, but what mattered now was what he could do with the resources and tools at hand.

Their awful state made them very difficult to work with at his current level. Ves had only ever really worked with gear in their optimal or at least well-maintained state. Now that he had to work in dismal circumstances, he urgently required an upgrade in his capabilities.

"Otherwise, it will take too long to get a transceiver up and running."

Ves didn't expect Jutland to return for a couple of days, but he'd be hard-pressed to complete his project by then without the convenience of a working 3D printer. The autoforge worked great with large, uniform components but couldn't really fabricate any micro-components such as processors or chipboards.

[Salvaging - Incompetent]: 1000

[Salvaging - Novice]: 2000

[Salvaging - Apprentice]: 4000

[Signals and Communications - Incompetent]: 200 DP

[Signals and Communications - Novice]: 400 DP

[Signals and Communications - Apprentice]: 800 DP

[Jury Rigging III]: 600 DP

Ves added two major Skills to his repertoire. The Salvaging Skill encompassed everything related to recovering parts from derelict mechs. Purchasing the Skill in succession dumped a large amount of knowledge into his head.

While the cost of getting it up to Apprentice-level halved his available DP, his increase in capabilities made it up in spades. It urgently filled the gap in his knowledge on how to fully exploit the heaps of wrecks piled up in Jutland's cave.

"At least I won't be ruining anything I dig out now that I know how to recover them safely."

Different from fundamental skills like Physics or Mechanics, Ves learned a large amount of practical knowledge instead of highly abstruse theories. Seasoned salvagers mostly learned on-the-job, and the System-granted Skill offered him years worth of experience in an instant.

His entire perspective changed. Where once Ves saw a wreck, now he saw a hidden treasure ready to be unearthed. Even with all of the damage and corrosion, Ves could still recover millions of credits worth of materials and components. Even if he failed in his mech designer career, he could still earn a decent living among the rough-and-tumble world of salvaging.

"Heh. They earn a lot but they're also exposed to a lot of danger." After all, not everyone appreciates a grave robber.

The other Skills spoke for themselves. Ves always gained a lot of use out of his Jury Rigging skill, which allowed him to apply unconventional solutions in case he lacked the ideal part for the job. Enhancing it brought him a wealth of insight that, among other things, increased his understanding of damaged parts and how to employ them despite their deficiencies.

He also picked out some primers on signals and communications technology in order to avoid fumbling like a caveman when he tried to repair a transceiver. As a bonus, the Skill also provided him with a good foundation on how to reduce a mech's emissions and enhance their stealth. Naturally, this benefit would only help him out later once he returned home.

"Status."

[Status]

Name: Ves Larkinson

Profession: Apprentice Mech Designer

Specializations: None

Design Points: 6,843

Attributes

Strength: 1.6

Dexterity: 0.8

Endurance: 2.2

Intelligence: 1.8

Creativity: 1

Concentration: 1.7

Neural Aptitude: F

Skills

[Assembly]: Apprentice - [3D Printer Proficiency III] [Assembler Proficiency III]

[Battle Mechatronics]: Apprentice

[Business]: Apprentice

[Computer Science]: Incompetent

[Electrical Engineering]: Apprentice - [Structural Pathway Configuration II]

[Mathematics]: Apprentice

[Mechanics]: Journeyman - [Jury Rigging III] [Speed Tuning III]

[Metallurgy]: Journeyman - [Alloy Compression II]

[Metaphysics]: Incompetent

[Physics]: Apprentice - [Directed Energy Weapon Optimization II] [Lightweight Armor Optimization I] [Medium Weight Armor Optimization III] [Melee Weapon Optimization II]

[Salvaging]: Apprentice

[Signals and Communications]: Apprentice

Abilities

[Superpublish]: Available. Can be activated once a year.

Evaluation: A post-human mech designer capable of surviving harsh environments without protection.

Right now, Ves figured he gained the minimum amount of proficiency for his current project. His Status page looked much better equipped to face his current crisis.

"A low-end transceiver isn't complicated in its functions. I should be able to salvage most of what I need from these wrecks. What else should I spend my 6,800 points on?"

Too bad the Mech Designer System only conveyed Skills related to his primary profession. Ves could sorely use an upgrade in his ability to survive in an alien wilderness.

He shifted his priority to the Kaius. As long as the giant chimera mech remained operational, the expeditionary forces had to treat Doctor Jutland with kid's gloves. Taking out this asset would prove immeasurably useful to his safety.

"I need a quick fix."

Ves estimated the expedition was already halfway through their forty-day window. This left precious little time for everyone to complete their goals. He didn't believe Jutland intended to let the expedition rob his entire territory blind. It didn't fit in with his erratic and vindictive behavior.

How could he sabotage a monster like the Kaius without tipping Jutland off?

He considered the issue carefully. The mech withstood a head-on clash from the entire hunting platoon without a sweat. Its vulnerable head, which contained the chimera mech's most vulnerable components, enjoyed an almost perfect level of protection by employing an integrated shield generator.

Then he remembered the pool of water in the middle of the cave.

"The Kaius will certainly rest in the pool once it returns."

If Ves discretely messed with the water, he'd be able to deliver a crippling blow to the Kaius. Best of all, Doctor Jutland wouldn't be aware of the danger until it was too late.

Yet, to do so without getting caught required a lot of thought. "Doctor Jutland won't be easy to hoodwink."

As much as Ves improved in most of his physical capabilities, he had no doubt that Jutland reserved the best for himself. Who knew how much work he had done on his smell, hearing and sight. Once he spotted something fishy in the water, the game was up and the Kaius remained fully functional.

"I'll just have to pick carefully and risk a try."

To do nothing at all left the expedition open to retaliation from Jutland. While he didn't care too much about House Kaine, their failure affected his own rewards from the Clifford Society.

Ves had very limited options with his remaining budget. If he skimped on upgrading his Skills, he'd be able to do more, but he didn't regret his earlier purchases. After all, without a working transceiver, he'd still be on his own.

"That reminds me, I still haven't figured out a way to convert my internal energy into a stable current."

A powerful transceiver required a corresponding amount of power. The last few days, Ves frequently tried to manipulate his internal energy, but he came back with absolutely nothing.

He found no way to exert any influence on the mysterious cycle of energy. No matter the method, be it physical or mental, the energy cycle behaved as it was aloof to the mortal plane.

That didn't mean he became stuck. His Salvaging Skill conveniently provided him a lifeline by giving him the option to recover and perform basic repairs on a reasonably intact energy cell or power reactor.

And if one reactor didn't suffice, then he could always string up a bunch of them with the help of his Jury Rigging Sub-Skill.

He left the issue of poisoning the water for later, as he still needed to consider his options carefully. Instead, he started working on salvaging what he needed from the pile of wrecks.

Unlike before, Ves didn't opt for the crude option of cutting straight through a damaged mech's frame. Instead, he approached the wreck like a salvager wishing to preserve as much of its value as possible by using various tricks to peel off the layers of armor and components in the way.

He had to exert a lot of effort this way. Working without bots or a decent assembly system slowed him down a bit. However, the upside to his slow and methodical work was that he succeeded in removing a couple of decent-looking transceivers after a couple of hours. He also conveniently removed a couple of energy cells along the way, though he had less luck with the power reactor.

"These things are too heavy!" He wiped his brow and stood back. Even his increase of strength meant nothing when it came to several tons of weight. He didn't even dare to attempt to bring it online.

The absence of a power reactor as a moderating force meant that Ves had to pass another hurdle before he completed his setup.

First things first, he worked on the transceiver. Having scavenged the same model over four different mechs, he dismantled them all and reassembled a single copy from the best parts.

Unlike a sophisticated industrial 3D printer, a low-end transceiver like this one didn't bother with employing restrictions. This saved him a lot of time and effort.

"Still, I'm not sure it will be able to handle the amount of power required to reach the base camp."

Ves estimated that this cave should not be too far away from base camp, so he set an upper limit of five-hundred kilometers. That still exceeded the base parameters of his stock transceiver.

Fortunately, he had a solution to this shortcoming. His newly Signals and Communications and upgraded Jury Rigging Skills enabled him to upgrade his transceiver's range while also boosting its ability to cope with a large influx of power. While his work had no chance of passing certification, it would work in a pinch.

He worked through the night to tackle the power problem. If there was one thing his newly enhanced body improved, it was his ability to work through his night cycle without losing too much focus.

In order to prevent the energy cells from short-circuiting his transceiver, he salvaged various components off the available power reactors. He combined these parts into a makeshift power converter. Ves even jury-rigged a rudimentary control panel that allowed him to adjust the amount of power he pumped into the transceiver.

The moment of truth had come. Ves selected a widely used distress frequency and began to transmit his voice.

"This is Ves Larkinson, the mech designer assigned to the expedition! Is anyone listening? I repeat this is Ves Larkinson, please respond. I repeat, this is Ves Larkinson the mech designer. Base Camp do you copy?!"

The transceiver only returned a large amount of static even after he kept his message up for five whole minutes. Ves frowned and appraised his current setup.

"Looks like I'll have to put my work to the test."

Ves gradually cranked up the power.

Chapter: 190

Ves pushed his setup to its limits when he failed to get a response. Due to the inverse-square law, the poor little transceiver had to accommodate an increasingly alarming amount of power.

Neither the salvaged energy cells, the improvised power converter or the hastily upgraded transceiver handled the increasing load well. Ves frequently shut down the power to cool down the stressed devices and replace a few of the more delicate components that only hung on by a thread.

His persistence finally paid off when his shabby transceiver finally returned a response. It came in with dense encryption that made no sense if Ves didn't have the right key.

"Why reply with encryption?"

Then he thought about the untrustworthy elements in the expedition. If someone like Commander Keller listened in to their correspondence, then that could lead to a lot of unpleasant consequences.

Acting upon a hunch, Ves applied a unique code that his father hammered into his head to his transceiver.

The gibberish transformed into simple text.

[This is base camp. We read you loud and clear. Both your cousin and the commander are present.]

Ves checked his transceiver and noticed a trail of smoke. He rapidly typed in his reply on the projected keyboard.

[I am still in captivity and am transmitting through an improvised transceiver. It will only hold up in a limited amount of time.]

[Roger. We are triangulating your position but it will take time. Please explain your circumstances.]

Without any delay, he briefly transmitted what he experienced including the fact that he'd been operated on. He also emphasized that Doctor Jutland and his Kaius departed the cave a day ago.

[Copy that. We have anticipated his arrival. Base camp is currently in upheaval. Expeditionary fleet suffered a defeat against the sandmen fleet but fled in good order. Cmdr. Keller and his supporters have rebelled and are at large. Prospectors have found the motherlode and its exploitation has disturbed the local ecosystem. Disabling the Kaius is a critical priority. Do you have a solution?]

The brief message came at a bombshell. The defeat of the expeditionary fleet caught everyone off-guard. No wonder Keller and his ilk went AWOL. That latter part of 'fled in good order' sounded reassuring, but who knew what the truth really looked like.

Without a stable fleet presence up in orbit, they'd never be able to leave this miserable planet. If they couldn't leave within twenty days, they'd be joining Doctor Jutland in his merry isolation.

Forget about retaining your sanity, you'd run out of food, water and air long before the next twenty-seven year lull arrived.

As for the motherlode, Ves figured that House Kaine finally found the source of all the monoexurite spread throughout the jungle. An unimaginable amount of wealth should be locked away in this vein.

Digging it out should net the expedition an unimaginable amount of monoexurite, perhaps in the kilograms even! However, taking such a valuable source of monoexurite away would also devastate the local ecosystem and cut off Jutland's ambitions.

"He's just like an alien who can't do without a source of exotics. Cutting him off from monoexurite is like taking away the stimulants of a hardcore addict. Jutland will never be resigned to give up his source of bliss."

Fortunately, House Kaine took its security seriously, and with Ves warning them of the coming of the Kaius, they'd be fully prepared to repel the monstrous mech.

That reminded Ves of his data chip and the valuable schematics within.

[Please stand by while I transmit incomplete schematics of the Kaius.]

Ves retrieved the data chip and inserted it into an open slot on his transceiver. After selecting the pertinent files, the device slowly transmitted its contents to base camp. Due to the great distance and the constant interference in the air, the transmission dragged on for minutes.

[We've received your transmission in full and are in the process of verifying its contents. Please stand by.]

His transceiver started to release a lot more smoke by now. It shouldn't be able to hold on for long.

[My transceiver is breaking up. I have only seconds left. Please send rescue to my transmission point. There are half-a-dozen adult hexapods and a score of juveniles under Jutland's thralls. No elder hexapod kings are present to my knowledge. If the Kaius returns, I will attempt to sabotage it.

[Our manpower is short. We can only divert a limited amount of help. Your rescue will hinge on the success of your sabotage. Rescue party will abort its attempt in the event of failure.]

For a moment, Ves felt the need to slam his fist down the radio. House Kaine practically pushed him into a corner and blatantly blackmailed him into disabling the Kaius! Still, if they had to fend off Jutland, Keller and the native wildlife at the same time, it'd be a wonder if they could send out a squad of mechs.

[Roger. I will await your rescue party. Out.]

His transceiver finally bit the dust before he received the final reply from base camp. He hastily put out the flames, then dismantled his entire setup before stashing his half-fried gear among the desolate pile of mechs.

After cleaning himself up, he left the junk pile and walked over the edge of the massive pool of water. A familiar juvenile hexapod padded over and croaked towards him as if he was a dog welcoming back his owner.

"Hey there friend." He said and tentatively reached out a hand to rub its head. The hexapod barely noticed his touch. "I guess you're nothing like a dog."

The dimwitted creature acted more like a badly programmed bot than anything else. Ves wondered how Doctor Jutland managed to direct these creatures in the first place.

Did he raise them from their infancy and conditioned them to obey him from the start? Had he fed them with a cocktail of drugs and slowly weaned away their instincts? Or did the crazy doctor use some mystical mind magic?

The truth mattered little to him for now, as his rescue party could clean up the beasts themselves. Ves only had to figure out a way to cripple the Kaius. He looked down the pool of water and tried hard not to smell the disgusting scent emanating from its murky depths.

"What can I purchase with my remaining points?"

His newly added insights into salvaging provided him with a couple of decent options. Sometimes, they had to bypass obstacles without resorting to heat-based cutters.

The most sophisticated salvagers in the center of the galaxy employed highly advanced nanites. These microscopic bots not only ate through the toughest materials, but were also capable of limited self-replication.

Sadly, the System's Store charged a ludicrous price for a thumbnail's worth of basic nanites. Even if he possessed the points to exchange them, his lack of expertise prevented him from employing them as he wished.

A lower-tech solution to salvagers was the use of chemicals. They relied on various acids and the like to dissolve extremely hardy obstacles. Proper use of chemicals required a lot of foreknowledge on the kind of materials the salvagers expected to encounter. If you brought the wrong formula, you'd be liable to waste your time.

"It's a good thing I know exactly what kind of alloys the Kaius has incorporated." He smirked.

He couldn't do anything against the chimera mech's resilient living tissue. Jutland spent a lot of time and resources to strengthen them against every possible form of damage, and they were already strong to begin with when the hexapod king was still alive. Ves only aimed to weaken its mechanical replacement parts.

He returned to the junkyard and found a quiet corner to activate his System. He visited the Store and sought out the chemicals that should be effective against the alloys incorporated in the fallen mechs.

[Formula FDER-351]: 25,000 Design Points

[Formula HH55-00030-F]: 50,000 Design Points

[Formula U-22 V77 Folmention]: 30,000 Design Points

[Formula 22256F]: 5,000 Design Points

Of the handful of formulas that met his criteria, only one of them came close to his price range.

As the most affordable chemical on the list, Formula 22256F appeared to be a product designed to appeal to the cheapskates. It was highly unsafe and had a limited shelf life. It also came in a smaller container than the rest.

"Will it be enough to weaken the alloys?"

If Ves dump the skinny vial into the giant pool of water, the chemical would spread out over a very wide volume. Still, despite its price, the chemical was very potent on its own. Ves even knew a couple of tricks that salvagers often used to give the formula some extra kick.

He decisively purchased a vial from the store. It materialized in his hand, which he carefully stuffed in his pockets. It would be a disaster if he spilled it. Now that he possessed the main ingredient, he could get to work with adding some supplements.

Ves returned to the junkyard and carefully opened up the engines and power reactors. Most of these core components were highly complicated systems by themselves that incorporated a number of chemicals. He salvaged a couple of critical chemicals that hadn't evaporated or turned bad over the years.

"Damn!" He hissed as he barely drew his fingers back in time. A foul splash of chemical goop exploded from the power reactor he worked on. "Even my thickened skin won't save me if I get any of this acid on me."

Doctor Jutland could return at any time, so Ves worked with haste. He finally gathered a sufficient amount of chemicals after several hours of focused work. He looked down at the makeshift buckets he fashioned out of spare scrap.

After blending them together, he added in the formula. The entire mixture instantly seethed as if it came alive. Ves didn't wait for it to fully mix and tipped over the container into the pool. The mystery blend submerged into the water and had become diluted to the point where Ves couldn't spot any difference from before.

He wouldn't want to dip into the waters, though.

"I've done all I can now."

Ves cleaned up the scene of the crime as best he could and returned to his designated juvenile hexapod. He laid down on his ride and deliberately loosened his focus.

With his reins loosened up, his Jutland organ hit back with a vengeance. The massive influx of energy destabilized his internal energy cycle and caused a lot of pain.

He gritted his teeth and tried to deal with the problem without resorting to his mind. Ves only achieved a minimal amount of progress in this regard.

Time passed slowly as he pretended to be weak and infirm. Ves caught up with his sleep but could do nothing for his hunger and thirst. He didn't dare piss off the hexapods by attempting to slaughter them for sustenance. Besides, he detested the barbarity of eating raw flesh. He'd rather go hungry for a while.

"Seems my body hasn't finished adjusting if I'm still craving for food."

While Ves continued to speculate about the changes in his body, Doctor Jutland finally returned after half a day of quiet contemplation.

The Kaius obviously suffered a setback. Its entire left torso appeared to have suffered a massive explosion that cracked some of its scales and enormously weakened the exposed metallic components close by.

The man also came with company this time. A very familiar looking swordsman mech that had seen better days trudged after the Kaius.

"Keller!"

The situation on the ground must have been dire for the both of them if they retreated to this cave in a hurry. Neither of the two men paid much attention to Ves, which was just the way he liked it.

Jutland even directed his Kaius to submerge into the pool without glancing at it, which relieved Ves from one of his worries.

"Doc! This isn't what you promised!" Keller yelled as the cockpit of his mech opened up. Unlike Ves, the mercenary commander wore a vacuum-sealed piloting suit, which possessed less armor than a hazard suit but provided him with much more flexibility.

It didn't avail him when Jutland pounced on him from a ludicrous distance with his massively enhanced body. The crazy doctor grasped Keller's neck and slammed him against the side of his cockpit.

"Don't talk to me in that tone, little worm! I'm the one in charge, not you! If you and your men remained patient, we'd be able to attack the expeditionary forces from two seperate fronts!"

"You don't know my men! I couldn't get a lid on my men once they got wind of the main fleet's defeat. They had to lash out!"

"Incompetent simpleton!" Jutland cursed and slammed Keller against the surface of his mech again. "Are humans always so dumb? What is the use of keeping you alive when you don't have any men anymore?"

"W-W-Wait a moment, doc! I can still get in touch with some of my friends on base! Not everyone lost hope! I can continue to feed you information and-"

A loud crack sounded out as Jutland mercilessly punched his fist into Keller's visor. The force not only broke through the transparent composite that made up the foreplate but also crunched the Vesian's head like a watermelon.

Ves felt a chill in his spine. The brute force displayed by Doctor Jutland far surpassed a baseline human's limit. Even he didn't wish to measure his strength against the murderous exobiologist.

With hardly a word, Jutland threw aside the corpse. Keller's broken form practically shattered upon landing. Only his vacsuit prevented his body from splattering out in a disgusting display. The doctor jumped from the vacant mech without a word and landed on the ground.

"Hahahaha! I'm surrounded by incompetence! There is no hope for humanity!" Jutland's gaze turned vicious as he stared at Ves. "Are you incompetent as well?"

Chapter: 191

Ves had a premonition that if he replied with the wrong question, he might not have his head on his shoulders anymore. A lot had happened that pushed Doctor Jutland to his breaking point. One more shove could send him over the edge.

He decided to come clean, if only a little bit. "I can work! I've been working on my mobility. Look, I can move again!"

He allocated a tenth of his focus on his Jutland organ. His energy cycle became lethargic, which relieved some of his pain and loss of control. Ves quickly demonstrated his competence by moving his fingers.

"This shouldn't be possible!" Jutland muttered as he stared at Ves dancing his fingers. "Your physique should still be adjusting to its changes."

Enthusiasm replaced his earlier rage. The speed in which he changed his mood astounded Ves. For fear of triggering him back to a fouler mood, he kept his mouth shut and tried not to resist the doctor's inspection.

"Hmm, this is exceedingly strange." The exobiologist mused and pulled out a rusty scanner from his lab coat. "But the readings don't lie! This phenomenon is exceedingly rare!"

Jutland practically slobbered over Ves as he poked and prodded his body. The man particularly paid attention to his internal energy cycle and noted how much it had diminished compared to its uncontrolled state.

"You shouldn't be able to exert any influence on your Jutland organ! Your regulator organ lacks the capacity to do so!"

Despite his discomfort, Ves mentally sighed in relief. At least he got rid of Jutland's impulse to wrench apart his neck. The doctor had proven to be highly unstable when things didn't go his way.

As the doctor dragged him back to his cot and brought out a number of machines to study his body, Ves tried to wait out the examination. All he had to do for now was to drag out the time while he waited for rescue.

Hopefully his help was on its way, because he did not enjoy Jutland's ministrations. The obsessive doctor started cackling as he injected Ves with several different solutions. The uncertainty of their purpose kept Ves from relaxing. Who knew if Jutland decided to kill him off on a whim?

In order to distract himself from all of these morbid thoughts, he tried to think about what happened to the expedition as a whole.

What concerned him the most was whether he'd still be able to leave this planet when the forty-day window came at an end. With the metallic storm on the surface of Groening IV starting to pick up again, the groundside forces had scant little time left to leave this exotic but exceedingly dangerous planet.

Without a fleet presence in orbit, they'd never get picked up. Still, Ves didn't entirely lose hope. A naval defeat rarely spelled the annihilation of all of the ships on the losing side. As long as the Ark Horizon herself retreated in good order, then the nucleus of the main fleet could still stage a comeback.

In addition, Ves could also rely on getting picked up by the Barracuda. His corvette might have been seconded to House Kaine, but the crew answered only to him. If Captain Silvestra could get his ship out of House Kaine's leash, then she'd certainly attempt a pickup.

Therefore, he still clung to hope. Even if the worst-case scenario happened, he still had a lifeline in the System. As long as he spent a couple of years pumping out designs, he'd be able to accumulate enough DP to purchase a long-range teleporter that could take him away without going through the murderous metallic storm clouds.

The doctor eventually left him alone and returned to his biolabs. The reprieve allowed Ves to relax and prepare for his escape attempt. Depending on the effectiveness of the diluted chemicals, the Kaius could still retain some of its functionality. Hopefully, the formula affected more than just the mechanical parts which mainly played a supporting role.

The hours dragged on as Ves quietly waited for change. Just as he dozed off, a tiny prickle against his palm interrupted his rest. Something metallic brushed against his hands. Ves carefully grasped the object and raised it to his face.

It turned out to be a tiny bot. His rescue party finally reached the cave. His heart started to pump faster as he grasped for hope.

The bot extended a secure cable which Ves attached to his comm. It established a secure, short-ranged comm channel.

[What is your current status? Are you in restraint?]

Ves typed in his reply.

[In captivity in a hut. There is no lock to the structure. I'm not restrained. Jutland thinks I'm infirm due to the implants he installed in my body, but that's not true. I can move if needed.]

[Please detail Jutland's security arrangements.]

He emphasized that he only got a glimpse of what Jutland prepared. With his excellent memory, he noted all of the hexapods and their positions as well as described the various makeshift structures in the cave. He pointed out that Jutland cared the most about the biolabs. He also warned his rescuers that Jutland had long exceeded the standards of a baseline human.

[Is he able to match blows with a mech?]

[I'm not sure about that, but he is very fast. You won't be able to stop him if he's determined to run away.]

[Your suggestions will be taken under advisement. The operation will begin as soon as we've verified your words and gathered more intelligence.]

The rescue party took extreme caution in their approach. After all, Doctor Jutland frequently defied expectations. Confronting him in one of his main hideouts would surely prompt him to reveal the trump cards he developed for many years now in preparation to confront the next expedition.

The bot shut down the channel and floated away after retracting its cable. Ves guessed that his rescuers intended to go through the entire cave from top to bottom.

Unfortunately, they underestimated Jutland's vigilance.

"What is this?! A bot? Mere rats seeking to gnaw my heels! Arise, my subjects!"

The hexapods that used to wander around like broken puppets turned savage. Even the little fellow next to Ves behaved as if someone snatched his dinner. The amount of threat the juvenile beast even intimidated Ves.

It proved that despite his extensive enhancement, he could never hold a candle to a real predator.

A lot of things happened in succession. Ves stopped pretending to be lame and landed on his feet. He ignored the growling hexapod and went to the entrance of his hut. As soon as he opened it, he witnessed a daring entrance from his rescue party.

It turned out that the base camp pulled out the big guns. Half the hunting platoon spearheaded the charge. They pushed aside the hexapod adults and squashed the juveniles into paste. A handful of other mechs bearing the colors of George's Cavalry secured the entrance of the cave and took out the handful of hexapod adults in their wake.

"Doctor Jutland! This is Captain Kaine!" The Cathrec in the lead released from its loudspeakers. "We've got you cornered! We beat you once, and we can beat you again! Give it up!"

The doctor laughed maniacally as he raced towards the half-submerged Kaius. "Hahahaha! You've made a grave mistake in confronting me at my seat of power! Arise, my guards!"

The cave walls collapsed at certain points as several strange creatures emerged from their holes.

The beasts looked like worms but resembled hexapods with stubby limbs. Though they lost the use of their limbs, they made up for it with speed, toughness and an incredibly strong bite. Their ability to bore through the resilient cave walls alone showcased their strength.

The intervention of the hexaworms for lack of a better word stalled Captain Kaine's forces from apprehending Jutland. It took all they got just to fend off the danger.

Mechs that lacked flexibility such as the sole Ajax Olympian participating in the attack suffered grievously from the agile worms that nipped its heels. The Cathrec aborted its attempt to intercept Jutland and turned to save their only heavy mech from an early grave.

The doctor noticed Captain Kaine's movements and released a mocking laugh. "You call yourself a captain!? A sentimental sop like you is unfit to lead a mech unit!"

Once the doctor reached the Kaius, he stamped his foot on top of the dormant chimera mech. Its eyes glowed with menace as the massive mech roused from its slumber. The gigantic mech emerged from the pool with lumbering grace, ready to face its challenges.

As the Kaius slowly neared the entangled hunting platoon, Ves had already taken advantage of chaos by running off. The little hexapod juvenile in charge of keeping an eye on him squawked with indignation and ran after Ves like a prison guard attempting to stop a fleeing inmate. Ves didn't relish being bitten in the angry hexapod's deadly jaws and ran even harder.

A familiar mech entered the cave. The Stanislaw kicked aside a couple of juveniles and brandished its ballistic rifle towards Ves. Melkor's voice emerged from its speakers. "Get down Ves!"

Ves threw himself on the ground as the Stanislaw fired its rifle. The air above Ves wooshed awfully as he narrowly avoided being splattered by the bullet. The projectile traveled over Ves and tore apart the hexapod about to bite his rear.

The impact of the bullet against the solid cave floor pinged his ears and momentarily overwhelmed his focus. This inadvertently freed up his Jutland organ which unleashed its revenge on Ves for being suppressed.

While Ves tried to get himself together, Jutland finally noticed something amiss. As the Kaius slammed against the Olympian in a head-on charge, its internals started to release some distressing sounds. Jutland swiftly drew back the Kaius, only for it to stumble as it appeared to lose control of its limbs.

The madman adopted a befuddled expression on his face, but the hunting platoon already knew what to expect. Despite the intervention of the worms, the Cathrec's powered spear pierced through their near-invincible scales one by one. Once Kaine eliminated half of them, she left the remainder to her subordinates and proceeded to assist the Olympian.

Jutland hardly figured out why his pride and joy moved so jerkily. The Kaius suffered from so many ailments that it couldn't even balance itself on its legs despite having six of them.

It moved like a snail when it attempted to avoid the Cathrec's glowing white speartip, with predictable results. The powered spear punched through the scales that exceeded the protection of a heavy mech and wrought serious damage to the muscles underneath.

Sadly for the captain, her target's immense bulk brushed aside the piercing blow. Instead, the Kaius attempted to force its limbs into moving faster. It even darted forward to bite the Cathrec, but the highly advanced mech danced back well before its jaws came close.

By this time, Jutland figured something out. He sniffed the air a couple of times. His face slowly soured. "Sabotage!"

"It's you!" His eyes honed in on Ves who flopped helplessly on the ground. Jutland's stare somehow aggravated his impaired condition as his internal energy cycle shook erratically. "Even you betrayed me! After all I've done to strengthen your body, you would rather bite the hand that fed you! Perish then like the rest!"

Jutland ignored everything else and wordlessly directed the Kaius to storm over to Ves. The Olympian tried to stand in their way but Jutland retrieved his controller and activated his chimera mech's blue flame breath. Its jaws released much less flames from before, but they still posed such a threat that the pilot of the heavy mech instinctively dodged aside.

Only the Cathrec kept its cool. Captain Kaine circled her mech around and expertly attacked some of the weak points pointed out by Ves when he transmitted the schematics of the Kaius. While she inflicted serious damage, it took much more to cripple the huge mech.

When the flame breath sputtered off, Jutland pressed another button on his controller. The Kaius slowed down in its stride while its chest started to glow distressingly. The doctor finally unleashed one of its trump cards.

Ves was afraid of this. The schematics on the data chip hadn't included the strange growths inside the chest of the Kaius. Over the many days since he first got his hands on a recording of the interior, he continued to puzzle over its appearance and purpose.

The only thing he provided he transmitted to base camp when he got in touch with them with his transceiver was that it looked like an oversized human brain. The artificial brain took up a prominent place within the chest of the Kaius. It even enjoyed a direct connection to the chimera mech's augmented heat organ.

Now, a significant amount of power flowed from the heat organ to the strange oversized brain. Ves could even see its outline as the strange glow seemed capable of penetrating through all obstruction.

A grin appeared on Doctor Jutland's face. "I command you to stop!"

An invisible wave of psychic energy blasted outwards from the artificial brain. Every mech and every hexapod in the cave suddenly halted their actions. Some of the mechs even tipped over due to their precarious stances.

No one could move.

Ves got it worse than others. Jutland's words propagated through a vast and powerful psychic shockwave that burrowed straight into his mind and body. The strength of both turned against him, making it impossible for him to breathe or blink his eyes.

Worse, the phenomenon showed no signs of subsiding. Everyone turned into fish on the chopping block while Jutland loudly laughed at the turn of events.

"I have waited twenty-seven years to wreak my revenge! Unenlightened beings like you will never be able to match my genius! Hahahaha!"

Chapter: 192

Just as Jutland indulged in his triumph, the Cathrec suddenly beeped in alarm. Its limbs moved stiffly as its pilot failed to respond. "Detecting incapacitated pilot. Initiating contingency Gamma-One-Six. Autonomous control mode activated."

Some of the other mechs of the hunting platoon also started to move without any prompting from their pilots. From their awkward movements, Ves figured out that artificial intelligences had taken over their controls.

It was a brilliant countermeasure against Jutland's psychic attack. Ves remembered that no such backups existed in the designs of the Olympian. Chief Ramirez must have taken his warnings seriously!

"These primitive bots won't stop me." Jutland hissed and commanded the Kaius forward.

The smart intelligences that appropriated the mechs finished off the hexapods first. Jutland's indiscriminate mental command affected not only humans but also the native wildlife. The AI's conveniently cleaned them up before the Kaius lumbered over. Its extensive internal damage due to the corrosive chemicals Ves slipped inside the pool slowed down its gait, giving its opponents plenty of time.

The massacre didn't even affect the raging madman. He continued to push the Kaius onwards as if he helmed a spaceship about to crash into a moon. He disregarded every possible consequence as the AIs mastered the controls and formed to receive the charge.

The Kaius stopped in its tracks as its anemic charge failed to phase the prepared Olympian. The Volmars along with the Cathrec had long positioned themselves at the flanks. As medium mechs, they pounced on the briefly immobilized Kaius like a pack of raptors.

All of the AIs aimed at the weak points, as if they'd already been programmed with the relevant data. The Kaius truly buckled this time as some of its weakened metal parts buckled under the force.

However, a starved camel was still bigger than a horse. Even with all of its ailments, the Kaius continued to hit back with slow but powerful attacks. It even managed to pull off a difficult feint and struck a Volmar square in the chest.

This highlighted the faults of using AIs. They had obviously been implemented with haste, giving them very little time to master their respective mechs, let alone develop a smooth routine that took full advantage of the strengths of their machines.

Still, as bad as they currently performed, they rapidly learned their lessons. Their movements grew smoother over time, and they made less mistakes than in the first minute. The Kaius became increasingly hard-pressed to fend off their coordinated attacks.

If the hunting platoon fought against any other opponent, House Kaine would hesitate giving up control of the mechs to AIs.

Yet they lucked out this time because as much as Jutland excelled in exobiology, he lacked the expertise to counter the use of AIs. Any competent force employed hackers and cybersecurity specialists that punished any widespread use of bots and AIs.

Despite falling leeward, the doctor still urged his Kaius to fight on. Neither side yielded.

Now that the Kaius became preoccupied in its battle against the AI-controlled mechs, Ves gained a much-needed reprieve. Ever since his body became immobilized by the psychic attack, he started fighting back against the restriction keeping his mind and body imprisoned.

It helped that while the restriction covered much of his mind, it focused predominantly on his subconscious. Somehow, it hadn't managed to get a good grip of his conscious mind, allowing him to nibble at the edges of the restriction.

The more he freed up his conscious mind, the faster he got rid of his entanglement. He employed his newly freed up brain capacity to assist his efforts to free his mind. Once Ves reached a tipping point, he outright broke his shackles, freeing his entire mind as well as his body in rapid succession.

He gulped in some air as he breathed in and out. His heart pumped with fury and his Jutland organ roiled as if it hated being stopped. Ves quickly devoted his full concentration on suppressing the rebellious organ. He didn't wish to lay down on the ground any moment longer.

A welcome arrival padded over to him then. Lucky greeted his owner with a relieved meow. As a purely mechanical creature, the psychic attack hadn't affected the gem cat at all.

"Lucky! It's good to see you again." Ves picked up the cat and affectionately hugged the pet. "I'm going to need your claws for something important. Let's go!"

He turned around and instead of running for the exit, he rushed towards the biolabs. While Ves cherished his life quite a lot, he also possessed a burning curiosity of what Jutland had been cooking in his labs. What if the doctor prepared something even worse than the psychic attack?

So with Lucky in tow, Ves reached the highly guarded lab area. Ves ignored frozen hexapods standing guard in front of the sturdy structures. He looked at the three structures and chose to begin with the smallest lab. With the help of Lucky's energy claws, they easily bypassed the lock.

"Damn, this is a dud."

The smallest lab primarily consisted of scavenged computing terminals and the like. Jutland must have performed most of his data analysis and number crunching in this room. The lab also contained a few rudimentary microscopes and the like. After a round of searching, Ves finally found a cooler stashed underneath a desk. When Ves opened it up, an entire rack of vials greeted his eyes.

Most of them carried coded labels that Ves had no way of figuring out. Without a guide, he couldn't figure out which ones were poisons or medicines. Whatever the case, Ves grabbed a nearby pole and resolutely smashed all of the vials.

A dangerous stink emerged from the cooler, so Ves only made sure he broke most of the vials before he quickly left the lab and shut the door.

"Let's go to the next one, Lucky."

After another swipe broke the lock to the lab next door, Ves entered it with trepidation.

"What the?!"

Unlike the first lab, this one contained actual specimens. Ves expected to encounter a genetically engineered monstrosity like the hexaworms. Instead, he came face to face with half-a-dozen incubated human bodies. They floated silently in their own transparent vats with many tubes and cables connected to their bodies.

The most frightening aspect about the bodies was that they looked identical to Doctor Jutland.

"That madman cloned himself!"

Worse, the clones consisted of human-hexapod hybrids. While the original Jutland still retained a semblance of human appearance, he hadn't constrained himself when he developed his clones. All of them featured a different mix of typical hexapod traits such as claws or scales. One Jutland hybrid even adopted a complete reptilian head!

While the clones appeared dormant, given the amount of time Jutland had spent on their development, Ves took no chances. First, he turned off the power to the various machines that connected to the bodies. Then he requested Lucky to claw through the vats and destroy the brains of the monstrous clones.

It took a tense minute for Lucky to complete his task. While the human-like clones perished quickly enough, the ones with scales fended off his energy claws with alarming ease. Lucky had to sneak his claws through their mouths and penetrate their brains from the inside in order to finish the job.

Just as Ves and Lucky exited the middle lab and approached the largest lab, they finally got caught. Jutland bellowed with rage as he diverted his attention from the AI-controlled mechs.

"My labs! What have you done with my experiments!?"

Ves cursed Jutland's perception but continued to the final lab. This one had obviously been built to last, as its walls, doors and locks outclassed the other labs in thickness. Despite their robustness, Lucky only had to swipe a couple more times to destroy the sturdy lock.

"You rat! Get away from that lab!"

The doctor finally noticed Ves skulking about. He became so alarmed at the intrusion that he resolutely abandoned the fight and jumped from the Kaius. While the chimera mech continued to clash against the hunting platoon, the doctor himself employed his full might into closing the distance.

Naturally, Ves became scared at the approaching doom. Nevertheless, he opened the door of the lab and sneaked inside. Despite the risks, Ves wanted to see why Jutland cherished this lab.

He came across an unusual sight. Ves expected to encounter a formidable hexopod, or some other biological horror. Instead, he came across an incubation chamber which housed a single, resplendent flower in the center.

The flower resembled a white lotus flower in the middle of a pond. It rested quietly in the middle of an artificial pool that was constantly being fed with nutrients from a reconstructed dispenser. The size of the containers told him that the radiant flower had a voracious hunger for nutrients.

Where did it all go? Ves couldn't figure it out really, but one thing was for sure, the scent it gave off instinctively roused his appetite. His entire body screamed that if he were to eat this carefully cultivated flower, he'd receive an unimaginable amount of benefits.

"Time is running out!" Ves reminded himself while shaking his head.

Though he didn't know what purpose the flower served, with Jutland hot on his heels he had to make a swift decision. Would he listen to his body, which hungered for the flower, or his instincts, which warned him of the danger of eating a completely alien organism?

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained!"

In the end, Ves couldn't resist the temptation. The flower must be representing Jutland's hopes and dreams if he devoted so much effort to this magnificent flower that completely clashed with the local environment. Ves guessed that Jutland must have grown it from a seed he obtained elsewhere.

With Jutland breathing down his neck, Ves didn't hesitate any longer. Once Lucky swiped open the incubation chamber, Ves ignored the hot gasses escaping the chamber and grabbed hold of the flower. His skin tingled as he brushed against the beautiful plant by its floating roots.

Ves stuffed the flower in his mouth while grabbing hold of Lucky. As soon as he completed his actions, he turned on his stealth augment. Ves disappeared from every kind of view just as Jutland smashed open the front of the lab.

As the lab door bounced beneath his feet, the maddened doctor beheld the damage Ves had wrought just seconds earlier. He gazed at the broken chamber as well as the dissipating gasses. His eyes took in every detail before focusing on the very center where a flower used to float.

In the meantime, Ves quietly sneaked away under the cover of his stealth module. He smoothly bypassed Jutland as he stumbled towards the broken incubation chamber and successfully exited the lab.

Once he passed the broken door, he picked up his pace, wanting to get as far away from Jutland as possible. The flower already started to disintegrate in his stomach, turning into a strange kind of energy that resembled the one cycling through his body but with much higher potency.

Despite the incredible amount of energy rolling in his stomach, the flower possessed an exceedingly gentle attribute. It was as if it had been made to be compatible for consumption.

"What is this energy?!"

After a couple of seconds of accumulation, the energy jumped straight past his internal energy cycle and reached his brain. The sudden influx of energy momentarily caused him to blank out. His body suddenly fell mid-stride, causing Lucky to meow in alarm. Fortunately, the stealth augment remained active.

While Ves dealt with the rash consequences of eating an alien growth, Jutland screamed with indescribable rage and blasted the entire lab to pieces with a single shock wave emanating from his primal body.

"RETURN MY HEAVENLY FLOWER YOU THIEF! THAT'S THE CULMINATION OF MORE THAN SEVENTY YEARS OF RESEARCH!"

Jutland continued to bellow his demands while overturning the entire surroundings. A distressing amount of heat escaped his body as he slowly spun out of control.

He completely disregarded his Kaius, which slowly succumbed under the increasingly competent teamwork of the AI-controlled mechs.

Captain Kaine even broke through the psychic shackles on her mind and body somehow. She took over from her awkward AI and brought her Cathrec to its full potential. The spear-wielding elite mech danced around the increasingly burdened Kaius while trying to dig through its scales in order to stop the giant glowing brain buried deep inside its chest.

While the battle turned against the so-called king of the jungle, Ves slowly recovered from his impulse action. He didn't know whether he made a mistake by eating the flower, but much of its energy suddenly flowed inside a hole inside his brain.

"Where did it go?"

Once the energy disappeared from his body, Ves regained control over his body. For a moment, he thought the energy would fry his brains into ash. Never did he expect to see it disappear like water flowing down the drain. His rudimentary inspection of his body revealed no other changes.

"I can't afford to dawdle any longer. I've got to go!"

Ves resumed his escape, passing by Melkor's immobilized Stanislaw as he neared the exit. After suffering from several delays, his stealth augment only lasted for another minute. Ves had to get out of Jutland's sight or he'd have a post-human madman going for his head!

"Damnit, what heavenly flower? All of that energy instantly flushed away into another dimension."

He guessed that the flower's potency ended up in one of the other dimensions besides the visible ones. Spacetime only consists of the three dimensions of space along with time, but scientists have long determined the existence of additional dimensions, mostly through their interaction with exotics.

The flower must be an exceedingly precious growth nurtured with precious exotics then to possess its special characteristics. Ves therefore speculated that the flower was meant to nurture Jutland's supposed soul, but in actual fact it just dumped a huge load of energy inside a higher dimension that, as far as he knew, had nothing to do with the human body.

"Did I just throw away a priceless treasure into the trash?" He idly wondered. As long as Jutland didn't get his hands on a power-up, Ves had done his job.

Chapter: 193

The amount of energy Doctor Jutland released surpassed anything Ves had ever witnessed. His body even glowed red from the sheer amount of heat leaking from his pores. He definitely pulled out all the stops this time.

"I shall destroy you all!"

He went after the biggest target, the Olympian. By now, the venerable heavy mech endured a lot of abuse. Not only did it engage the Kaius in multiple engagements, it also had to deal with the consequences of running its systems at full tilt. Its overall performance already began to slide.

Jutland clearly didn't care. He just wanted to pound the biggest mech to pieces. While he obviously couldn't fly, his ability to run and leap reached superhuman levels.

Bang! He became so terrifying that when he slammed against the huge building-sized Olympian, the heavy knight actually stumbled back! A loud crunching sound accompanied the impact. Jutland actually wrenched away a couple of layers of armor!

"Is he challenging a mech with his body?" Ves wondered as he kept running away now that his body became unburdened. "This is impossible!"

Ves had never thought that he'd witness a phenomenon many people dreamed about. A human actually challenged a mech upfront! More than that, he actually held the advantage!

With his powerful body and his endless supply of energy, the crazy doctor exhibited both strength and speed. Jutland challenged everyone's perception on the primacy of mechs by boldly treating the Ajax Olympian as his punching bag.

After slamming his body against the shield for the sixth time, Jutland finally broke through all of its layers, causing the heavy object to splinter apart!

The AI that controlled the heavy knight reacted poorly to this, having never been programmed to fight against a human-sized monstrosity. It treated the loss of its shield as a prompt to go on the offensive, and proceeded to foolishly attempt to kick Jutland with its agonizingly slow foot.

"Insignificant worm! Get out of my way!" Jutland contemptuously growled with a deep, inhuman timbre. He drew his body inward before jumping straight at the center of the Olympian's chest!

Bang! The high-powered collision dented the Olympian's incredibly durable armor. Even the Kaius would be hard-pressed to do the same! Everyone present genuinely feared for their lives. A man with the power to challenge mechs represented certain doom. If they didn't want to die, they had to do something about him!

"Stop it!" Captain Kaine yelled as her Cathrec ceased to cripple the largely immobilized Kaius and turned around to aid her beleaguered subordinate.

Her entry changed the dynamic of the battle. As an agile spear wielder, the Cathrec possessed just enough speed to keep up with Jutland's rapid movements. It helped that he merely possessed a lot of straight-line speed and couldn't easily change directions.

Whenever Jutland charged forward, the Cathrec brandished its powered spear in his path. Even maddened as he was now, he personally witnessed the weapon's power against the Kaius. The glowing white speartip tore straight through the chimera mech's scales! Thus, the doctor always veered away.

"Volmars! Constrain Doctor Jutland!"

Four of the Volmars ceased their assault on the Kaius and moved to reinforce the Cathrec. The remaining two Volmars along with the heavily damaged Olympian took over the duty of suppressing the extremely hardy Kaius.

Despite suffering a myriad of crippling blows, it still hadn't gone down. As long as the chimera mech kept its artificial brain alive, it continued to put pressure on everyone's mind.

Fortunately enough, the AIs controlling the Volmars observed the Olympian's reaction towards Jutland and learned plenty of lessons. Like the Cathrec, they refused to block with their frames, instead preferring to dodge Jutland's charges.

One of Jutland's major flaws was that he never tried to feint or take advantage of his incredible speed and flexibility. The rage suffusing his mind had turned him into a half-coherent animal that only knew how to employ brute force.

In this case, the AIs used their superior processing speeds to analyze Jutland's movements and predict his vector before his legs completed their steps. The Volmars all avoided his attacks without fail!

Captain Kaine ordered all of the Volmars to surround and constrain the doctor.

While he didn't feel threatened by their maces and staff, they still delivered quite a bit of damage if he got hit. His impregnable body didn't suffer a lot of damage, but the attacks were never meant to finish him off. Instead, they interrupted his rhythm and halted his high-speed movements.

Once Jutland bounced away from a solid staff strike, he didn't get the opportunity to recover. A massive white spear struck him from behind and tore through his spine! Its powered enhancement sheared through the doctor's body like a hot knife through butter and brutally dissected his torso from the stomach!

Time seemed to slow as Jutland fell in two pieces. As mighty as he appeared, even he couldn't survive without half his body.

When his upper body slammed against the cave floor, he gasped and vomited streams of blood. He gaped at the Cathrec, which slowly drew back its spotless white spear. His blood never even stained its tip.

His hand stretched forward, as if he wished to grasp the mech-sized spear in his hands, but eventually fell down as Jutland completely lost his strength.

Ves let out a sigh of relief. A man chose to challenge a mech on this day. He failed.

"It's over."

Captain Kaine still had her scruples, however. Jutland spent so much effort on his body that he might be pretending. The Captain impulsively decided to finish the job, forgoing the possibility of capturing him alive and milking out his incredible wealth of knowledge and secrets.

The butt end of the Cathrec's spear landed upon his upper body several times, pounding his brain and all of his unique organs to mush. Once the madman's highly developed heat organ got hit, it instantly exploded. A huge wash of heat escaped the site of the impact, disintegrating Jutland's entire body as well as burning his lower body which had landed nearby.

Fortunately, not all of the energy released from the Jutland organ at once. It leaked out an unstable current of heat and other energies over several minutes like a deflating balloon.

The battle truly came at an end this time.

The Cathrec returned to the pitiful Kaius and efficiently pounded its limbs before cutting through its chest. After pricking the strange magnified brain, the psychic attack finally ended, allowing everyone to regain control over their bodies and mechs.

The hexapods also regained their faculties, but the mechs made quick work of the annoying beasts. Without Jutland's directions, the creatures devolved into primitive creatures that cared only for their own needs. Half of them fled the cave and disappeared into the jungle.

None of them even glanced at Ves who rested halfway towards the exit. His stealth augment ran out of power, but even so he didn't fear the beasts as Melkor stood guard over him. His Stanislaw shot any hexapod that neared their position.

Once the recovered mech pilots secured the perimeter, the Cathrec slowly approached Ves. Its cockpit opened, revealing Felicity Kaine in her piloting suit. She floated down with the help of an integrated antigrav module and landed right in front of Ves.

"You're not looking so good, Mr. Larkinson."

"I've had better days."

The woman rested her arms on her hips while she regarded him through her helmeted head. "How is it you're able to survive in the open without a suit?"

"Doctor Jutland found it inconvenient to accommodate my baseline human body. Whatever he did to his own body, he partially applied to my own. I'm not fully human anymore."

Despite his gains, Ves genuinely sounded depressed. After all, the label of hybrid carried a certain stigma in human society. With so many alien species wishing to wipe out every human, no one dared to flaunt any obvious alien features.

"This is going to be trouble." Captain Kaine predicted.

The aftermath of the rescue attempt proceeded quickly. Once Captain Kaine sent back a mech to convey their victory, a horde of transports along with workers descended upon the cave.

Chief Ramirez led a crowd of mech technicians that looked over the heavily damaged Olympian and the Kaius. The former pretty much turned into a crippled machine, while the latter represented a bounty of exotic development.

The scrapping of the Olympian pretty much turned into a sideshow compared the herculean effort of trying to haul the crippled Kaius back to base camp.

A couple of exobiologists also arrived at the cave. While Jutland hinted that it merely represented one of many outposts, the presence of the research labs proved otherwise. This must surely be his principal hideout. The exobiologists along with the help of other experts systematically dismantled and preserved Jutland's labs.

House Kaine made plentiful gains, to the point where Captain Kaine behaved like a cat who got the canary. She frequently rubbed her palms as she stared at immobile Kaius.

They not only recovered a unique chimera mech of immense power. They also recovered Jutland's damaged clones as well as reams of data, though Jutland encrypted all of it, so it would take years to decipher their contents.

As for Ves, his surprising transformation alarmed the exobiologists and the regular doctors. Doctor Mellow took charge of his health and urged the expedition members to send them back to base camp.

Thus, Ves got to return to a half-ruined base camp before the end of the day. The transport had to fight off several sporadic hexabat waves along the way, though their escorts expertly beat off the opportunistic wildlife.

"What happened here?" Ves asked from his floating medical bed.

Doctor Mellow insisted that he rest on the bed despite his protests that he was fine. She constantly studied the readings from the bed. She glanced at him with a distracted look.

"Once some of the mercenaries learned of the fleet's defeat, they responded with irrational violence. Keller's Blades instigated a violent mutiny that inflicted many casualties, especially when he tried to storm the communications center. Commander Tregis ordered the destruction of all of our quantum entanglement nodes."

That sounded especially bad. The quantum entanglement nodes represented the only form of contact between base camp and the rest of the galaxy. Without it, they could never get in touch with Lord Kaine and the fleet, let alone anyone else.

Mellow guided his bed off the transport and into a treatment facility. Ves noticed that all of the rooms were occupied with wounded. To think that all of them suffered injuries from other humans instead of hexapods.

"Do you think it's possible we might be stuck on Groening IV after our forty-day window subsides?"

The exobiologist shrugged. "It's not my job to care about these matters. In my opinion, the mutineers acted prematurely and gave in to their despair in vain. As long as the storm hasn't blocked our way out, there's still a chance we can make it out."

Put in that way, the mercenaries indeed lashed out without proper consideration. Perhaps Commander Keller secretly fanned the flames and incited the more impulsive mercenaries to take action.

Luckily, they failed, though House Kaine paid a grievous price. Doctor Mellow estimated that not more than a hundred mechs remained functional. Half of the base camp's defenses also got destroyed in the ensuing battle.

No one was in a mood to hunt for hexapods any longer. Commander Tregis allocated most of his core forces to guarding what remained of their base camp. As for the mercenaries that remained loyal, they had mostly been sent out in batches to guard over the extraction of the motherlode.

"How much wealth are we talking about here?"

Mellow pursed her lips. "It's not much of a secret, so there's no harm in telling you. The surveyors determined that the vein reaches about fifty meters below ground. The raw minerals contain lots of waste elements of little value, but the total amount of monoexurite you can expect after processing them should yield around seven kilograms."

Ves adopted a dumbfounded expression when he heard the ludicrous figure. That should be enough monoexurite to supply several CFA battle fleets! "House Kaine has made it big!"

"That is only if they can recover it." Doctor Mellow retorted gently. "Remember, all of that monoexurite will amount to nothing if we're unable to leave the planet. While Commander Tregis has promised me that House Kaine is working on the problem, he hasn't provided any details."

She had a very good point. Thinking about earning a windfall distracted Ves from the despairing fact that they probably couldn't expect to be picked up by the expeditionary fleet.

What transports and shuttles the base camp had at its disposal would only be able to bring a limited amount of men and cargo into orbit.

They were powerful, short-ranged craft meant to transfer cargo across planetary distances. They lacked the acceleration and fuel capacity to cross the star system so they couldn't even take refuge in the Groening System's other planets. More importantly, they didn't come with an expensive FTL drive, so they couldn't even limp back to civilized space.

"We're truly stuck." Ves concluded with a tone of finality.

Chapter:194

What struck Ves the most when Jutland made his last stand was that he completely became unhinged. His overwhelming rage at losing his flower pushed aside his devious intelligence and his admirable capacity for patience.

If Jutland hadn't lost his rationality, he still had a chance to turn the tides. In the end, he lost to himself. All of his plans came to nothing due to a lack of self-control.

Ves feared the same could happen to him. "So how's my brain, doc?"

"It appears to be fine, but that is only a preliminary assessment." Doctor Mellow replied as she put him through the latest barrage of scans. She already took extensive samples of his blood and tissue. She even cut a tiny portion off his Jutland and regulator organs. "It's too early to make a conclusion. Doctor Jutland's fascinating work has a myriad of wonderful effects. I can't even make sense of this new kind of energy!"

The exobiologist had never encountered this form of energy that could only be induced through special circumstances. It didn't show up on any existing scans and could only be perceived through the minute amount of heat it released as waste. This proved that it at least adhered to some of the rules that governed energy.

"So you can't figure out a way to make it less destructive?"

"No!" She resolutely shook her head. "We can't make any headway on this matter with the equipment we have on hand. It's better to focus on what we can do for now."

Over the next couple of days, Doctor Mellow along with some other specialists treated him like a patient and test subject depending on what struck their fancy.

At least with Lucky hanging around, they shouldn't be reckless enough to do anything radical like cutting him open and removing all of his organs.

The modifications made to his body represented something new to the scientists. They constantly learned something new every day, but even more remained out of reach.

"Doctor Jutland is a brilliant man, but he's also a paranoid man." Mellow explained when Ves asked if he figured out his changes. "Cyber specialists are still trying to crack his datachips but it will take years to open them up. Meanwhile, we aren't making much progress deciphering the functions of your new organs either because Jutland has employed a form of biological encryption."

The doctors did the best they could to map out his various 'improvements'. They confirmed his suspicions that his flesh and bones had toughened up to an absurd level compared to an average human. The most remarkable aspect of Jutland's work was that he successfully transplanted the capacity to resist radiation damage from hexapods to humans.

"Not even the best gene therapy applied to the special forces of the Constance Grand Kingdom can match up to this level of enhancement!"

His respiration and digestion systems also gained a massive enhancement, though that didn't mean that Ves could eat icky stuff. He concerned himself the most about adapting back to normal human standards. Could he still breathe the same air and eat the same foods as he had always done?

"There is some loss of efficiency there, make no mistake about it. However, your Jutland organ sufficiently makes up the gaps in these areas."

In conclusion, Ves gained a remarkable boost in strength, endurance and adaptability in a wide variety of environments. He'd make for an ideal treasure hunter and pioneer with his new physique.

Still, that didn't mean Mellow grew confident enough to declare his body healthy. Jutland could have sneaked all kinds of hidden bombs and booby traps in his body, but the man's extreme level of paranoia made it difficult to figure out where they've been buried.

"There is one anomaly that you should be aware of." Mellow said as she handed over a scan of his brain to him. "Your central nervous system is influencing your regulator organ in a markedly concerning fashion. Usually, it's the other way around, as the regulator organ is designed to provide additional instructions that your regular brain is incapable of controlling."

The projection began to animate a model of what might happen. "As you can see, our models predict that your central nervous system will gradually merge with your regulator organ. What kind of effects this will result in is still to be determined, but whether they are positive or negative, we can still interrupt the process if you wish to do so."

Ves could hardly make a decision on his own. He truly lamented the limited facilities of the half-ruined base camp. A proper hospital or research institute would make a lot more progress on the mysteries of his body.

"From your words, I gather this shouldn't be happening. Could this merger be initiated by that strange 'heavenly flower'?"

While no other heavenly flowers existed, the expedition knew about its existence due to the various references Jutland had left behind. Ves eventually had to admit he ate a dubious alien growth.

Fortunately, Jutland intended to consume it himself, so it likely didn't come with any negative side effects. However, that only truly applied to Jutland's unique physique.

"The amount of resources Doctor Jutland spent on nurturing the heavenly flower is astounding. It also explains why the expedition has never met another apex hexapod. He preyed on them all and harvested their biomass to feed this flower."

While it sounded fairly concerning to them both that Ves ate a growth that contained a ridiculously high concentration of energy, they couldn't do anything about it. Unlike the rougher form of energy being cycled by his Jutland organ, the heavenly flower extraordinary energy stream truly escaped any form of control.

In the end, the doctors and specialists threw up their hands and declared him safe, for now. They hadn't found any acute threats that could kill him before he returned to civilized space, that is if they would ever get picked up. The defeat of the expeditionary fleet still hung over the entire base like an omnipresent cloud of rain.

Once Ves got discharged from Doctor Mellow's care, he carried Lucky out of the treatment center and met with Ensign D'Amato.

The young and promising ensign looked a lot worse off this time as he lost his entire left arm. "D'Amato! What happened to you?"

"I suffered a laser burn that forced the doctors to discard the entire limb." He shrugged nonchalantly. "They're growing a replacement arm for me, but there are others in the waiting list who get to have their turn first."

Since D'Amato didn't show any concern, Ves put down his own. "So what is happening these days? Are we making any progress getting out of here?"

Right now, the groundside team suffered many losses but also made enormous gains. Both the motherlode and whatever Doctor Jutland left behind could be sold for a huge pile of credits back home. No one wanted to leave this wealth behind.

"You should know about the truth." D'Amato said and gestured Ves into an isolated office. "We've been sparing with the details before, but that was obviously a mistake. Some of our less stable employees who haven't been able to cope with their deployment to the surface have leaked what has happened to the mercs, who promptly lashed out and tried to take over the communications center. Do you know why they aimed for our quantum entanglement nodes?"

"I'm guessing they wanted to ask for rescue from anyone they can reach. They don't care about keeping the Groening System a secret anymore."

"That's true, but it's not their main goal. In truth, the expeditionary fleet came prepared to repulse the sandmen, which they did after expending a lot of effort. What happened immediately afterwards brought the fleet into disarray. They were set upon by the Dragons of the Void who pounced on the exhausted fleet."

A chill went through his spine as Ves imagined the consequences. He was no expert in fleet engagements, but even he knew how difficult it would be for Lord Kaine to fend off a follow-up attack when he least suspected it. "How could the pirates have found our fleet?"

"We may never know." D'Amato replied with a grim face, which hinted at the possibility of traitors within the expedition. "What we can determine is that the Ark Horizon sustained heavy damage along with the vessels of our core partners. The Dragons of the Void aimed to behead the expedition in a single stroke, but the Ark Horizon proved to be more resilient than they thought."

The expeditionary fleet lost a lot of smaller ships as well as many mercenary transports. When it became obvious that they couldn't win the engagement, the expeditionary fleet dispersed in all directions, forcing the mysterious pirates to spread out and lose their advantage. The heavily-damaged Ark Horizon successfully slipped away in the end.

"Have the Dragons of the Void left to pursue the remnants of the expeditionary fleet?" Ves curiously asked.

"No. They spent some time salvaging the wrecks before making their way to the Groening System. In fact, the pirate fleet is currently orbiting over this planet. The only reason why they haven't made their way to this underground region is that they can't find the entrance. The pirates don't appear to have any surveyors in their midst."

That sounded both good and bad. If they wanted to get off this planet before the storms began to rage anew, they could surrender to the Dragons of the Void. However, pirates weren't known to be merciful to their captives.

"I'm guessing the rebels tried to signal the coordinates to the entrance of this underground cavern."

"That's correct." The ensign grimaced while holding the stump of his arm. "Make no mistake. House Kaine will never give in to pirates. Commander Tregis has promised to execute anyone who intends to do so."

"Even to the point of resigning ourselves to being stuck on this planet for twenty-seven years straight?"

D'Amato didn't reply to his question, but his face exhibited unflinching resolve. That proved that the core of the groundside team held out hope for an eventual rescue, if not now then perhaps a couple of decades later. They held firm to their loyalty to House Kaine and refused to hand over their bountiful harvest to the pirates.

"Who are the Dragons of the Void anyway? They've attacked the expeditionary fleet twice."

"We may never know their true origin. Even before we destroyed our quantum entanglement nodes, our investigation turned up very little information."

Even the vast resources and manpower House Kaine had at its disposal couldn't penetrate the fog that surrounded these determined pirates. D'Amato believed that they definitely enjoyed support from a powerful backer.

"So what's the plan?" Ves tentatively asked. "Are we doing anything that can get us out of here?"

"Nothing that matters. We're busy wrapping up our operations on the surface and we'll be packing all of our valuables. We can't lose hope at this moment."

In other words, they had to pray to the heavens for deliverance. Besides surrendering to the pirates, nothing else on hand could surmount the impossible problem of fleeing their grasp and transition out of the Groening System. The absence of FTL-capable ships alone halted any fanciful ideas.

"There's nothing else we can do but do our jobs and wait."

As the final ten days of their forty-day window loomed, Ves spent most of his time helping the maintenance department pack up their gear. They prioritized the recovery of their most valuable assets such as the Kaius, and planned to leave behind everything that wasn't valuable but took up a huge amount of space, such as the prefab structures and walls.

Ves half-suspected that they were only doing make work in order to distract the men and women from giving in to their despair. Did Commander Tregis truly hope for rescue or had he already resigned himself to an extensive stay on a hostile planet with limited resources?

The entire predicament showcased their helplessness in the face of losing the backing of their fleet. As much as the Age of Mechs revolved around groundside operations, the battle in space negated all of their efforts.

The situation changed on the thirty-seventh day. A new fleet entered the Groening System.

Chapter: 195

"Is it ours?" Ves asked as he walked towards the inner base.

"It's doubtful." D'Amato replied as he tried to hurry up. His missing arm disrupted his coordination. "From what little sensors we still have in place that are transmitting back their readings, the fleet is several times larger than the expeditionary fleet at its height. None of the incoming ships are broadcasting any identifiers that we can recognize either."

Could there be a fourth party trying to ruin the third party's game? Or were the sandmen up to no good?

"It's not the sandmen, if that's what you're thinking. They're fairly distinctive even at a distance."

They entered a command center after the guards verified their identities. These days, his contributions extended Ves a lot of privileges including extended access to the base. He even got to meet Commander Tregis in person.

The man looked as if he'd aged a lot since the start of the expedition. Tregis wearily gestured Ves into his office. "Ah, I was just about to summon your presence. Please sit."

After Ves and D'Amato took a seat, he began to ask the first thing that came to his mind.. "What's the status of the pirates?"

Tregis gripped his fist. "They're getting close to finding out the entrance to the underground cavern. Even without a professional surveyor in their payroll, they're exploring and scanning the surface of Groening IV with numbers on their side. With the amount of processing power at their disposal, they'll discover the entrance at any moment now!"

The ground team faced a difficult situation then. If the recent arrivals turned out to be friendly, then the base camp merely had to wait out their arrival. If they proved hostile, then they had even less hope than before, because any friendly reinforcements would have to go through two enemy fleets.

Ves couldn't give up too soon. He held out hope that the incoming fleet would prove friendly. "How shall we fend off the pirates if they come? We don't have a lot of assets left. In addition, all of our mechs and mech pilots are worn out."

"According to the latest calculations, the unknown fleet is making good speed towards Groening IV. If the Dragons of the Void make a stand, then both fleets are projected to clash within twenty-two hours. A fleet engagement will drag on for several hours, though, so we'll have to hold out for around thirty hours."

Thirty hours sounded a lot. With the arrival of an unknown element, the pirates must be accelerating their efforts at finding the entrance to the lush metallic jungle underneath the surface of the planet.

"We'll have to do our best to fortify our position then."

Tregis nodded. "Our miners have already finished extracting the motherlode, so we can fully concentrate our defenses here. However, that still leaves us with an exhausted force. In truth, I've assigned some men to employ a radical solution to increase our defenses."

"What is it?"

"Bringing back to Kaius online."

What? Ves widened his eyes as he heard the preposterous words coming from his mouth. "That's impossible! That mech is a badly-damaged enigma and we don't even know how it works!"

Ves thought that Chief Ramirez and his men were in the process of dismantling the huge chimera mech in order to make it easier to move.

The base commander didn't deny his assertions. "It's a longshot, but we should be prepared to employ every resource we have on hand. Our exobiologists and mech technicians are already at work trying to get the biological machine to work. They're still encountering problems with the control method. You should see if you can lend a hand."

After Ves received his assignment, he left the office, but not before he got his shield generator back. He'd been looking for the valuable life-saving device. Tregis told him that his men found it in a corner or something, but Ves knew they probably tried to appropriate it for themselves only to get defeated by its highly advanced locks.

Once he stepped outside, he took a deep breath and sampled the local air. Ever since he got transformed, he didn't bother wearing a bulky hazard suit anymore. The things were nuisances as far as he was concerned, though he also drew a lot of weird looks. No other human could survive a toxic atmosphere without a suit.

"It smells like death."

With D'Amato and Lucky in tow, Ves walked over to a beefed up workshop and received a very firm security check before being allowed entry.

The Kaius obviously received a lot of care. A combination of workers from multiple disciplines crawled over the dormant monster. They worked on both its mechanical and biological components.

Impressively enough, the workers made good headway with both. Replacing the worn-out alloy components with freshly fabricated ones required little brain power, though Ves found it regretful that they hadn't consulted him about it. After all, Jutland likely improvised the later additions, which caused the chimera mech to become increasingly burdened.

Still, that mattered little compared to the living components of the mech. A couple of exobiologists who Ves didn't recognize led a team of assistants in reviving and healing most of the damaged tissue. Compared to Doctor Jutland, they made a lot of progress by virtue of their collective intelligence and much better lab equipment.

"Come over, Ves." Ramirez called while he looked over the giant mech from a ramp. When Ves climbed the ramp, he once again got a good glimpse of the chimera mech's primal majesty. This was truly a mech that ruled over all. "The commander wanted to keep you out of it, but we're running out of time. This mech is nothing but a hunk of junk if we can't figure out its control method."

Ves understood House Kaine's desire to monopolize the inner workings of the Kaius. The machine not only represented a unique fusion of the living and the mechanical, it also outperformed any other mech of its size.

"How did Doctor Jutland control the mech anyway? What kind of progress have you made?"

The maintenance chief shrugged his shoulders. "You'll have to ask the exobiologists for the specifics, but in short they found some creepy stuff inside the head of this big thing. It looked like a brain of a mech pilot that's been tortured into staying alive. Well, we ripped it off as fast as possible and started working together to rewire the Kaius into accepting the input of a standard cockpit."

When Ves looked over the schematic of their progress, he found that they made some significant changes to the Kaius. They stuffed a sturdy cockpit in the chest cavity that used to hold the giant psychic brain that Captain Kaine punctured at the end of Jutland's final stand. The mech technicians worked together with the exobiologists to allow the cockpit's neural interface to connect with the nervous system of the Kaius.

"I'll be honest with you." Ves said after studying the schematics. "I don't have a clue how the neural interface works. This is out of my area of expertise."

The Mech Trade Association posed very strict limits on the modification of a neural interface. It would be very easy to make the wrong decision that could end up frying a mech pilot's mind. Most mech designers opt to use a standard, off-the-shelf neural interface without any tweaks for that reason.

"No one else knows a thing either. Just take a look at it and see if you can knock it into place."

With time running out, the base camp needed every asset ready to defend against invaders. Commander Tregis put a lot of hope into the Kaius. The chimera mech was a king among melee-oriented mechs, possessing a perfect mix of speed, power and armor.

Ves first approached the chest area that had been opened up to make way for a cockpit. An exobiologist stood next to it, wracking his mind on the problem.

"Hey, can you tell me what kind of issues you've encountered trying to get the neural interface to work?"

"It's complicated." The man replied, but explained the issue in a simple way. "The Kaius is not just a machine. It's also a living being. The remarkable thing about this chimera mech is that it possesses its own subconscious that is able to decide whether to allow you to control it. Obviously, we're not Doctor Jutland, so it hasn't submitted to our control."

"The machine can think?" He already started to get a headache after hearing about the issue. This went way above anything he learned. Even though he founded the Living Mech Company, Ves never imagined working with actual living mechs.

"We've tried to coerce the subconscious mind with various methods, but the Kaius is an immense system derived from an apex hexapod. Nothing we have on hand can force it into surrender."

The exobiologists also tried to use a softer approach, but the subconsciousness ignored any entreaties. The thing behaved like an ancient dragon sleeping atop a mound of gold. Without being able to wake it, they had no opportunity to negotiate with it for its coins.

When he read through the logs and tallied their methods, he had to admit the exobiologists tried everything he could think about. Ves couldn't figure out another way except for... the X-Factor.

Ever since he joined the expedition, Ves resolutely sealed his abilities concerning this mysterious phenomenon. Working together with a crowd of mech technicians muddied up the mechs he designed and worked with, so the X-Factor never had a chance to break out of its shell.

Now though, he faced a mech that lived, in a way. If Ves was correct about the rules governing the X-Factor, then it had an intricate connection to life.

Could he communicate with a living mech through the X-Factor? Could he manipulate it in his favor? How would he go about it in the first place?

"Nothing ventured, nothing tried."

Ves ignored the exobiologist as he prattled on and approached the chimera mech's chest. He put his palm over its hardy scales and tried to connect with the beast. He expanded his mind and narrowed focus, tuning out every other distraction.

The sounds of mech technicians installing new parts and exobiologists treating damaged tissue faded out. Deep within his mind, a brilliant light ascended into the heavens and threatened to burn down in an unprecedented nova of destruction.

"Agh!" He painfully pulled out his mind from the dangerous illusion. Ves had a suspicion that if he let the image run its course, he'd blow out his brains. "What is happening to me?"

Ves wasn't stupid. He associated the phenomenon with the disappeared energy from the heavenly flower. He faintly recognized its flavor.

The strange occurrence forced him to take a step back. He left the cockpit and sat down in a quiet corner while stroking Lucky's back. The cat had missed his presence and demanded a lot of attention since Ves returned from captivity.

"What do you think is going on, Lucky?"

The cat meowed ignorantly at him, caring more about his scratches than his owner's conundrums.

The dangerous vision in his mind scared him quite a bit. Would he be risking his mind every time he tried to focus his concentration? He carefully dipped his mind inwards.

Nothing happened.

He easily manipulated his thoughts into a mental blade that could cut through any errant thoughts floating in his head. Ves found that its potency had even increased. Was this another effect of the heavenly flower?

"I can't be sure of that. It could have grown from surviving the last few weeks. I know far too little about the mind to make any solid conclusions."

Ves avoided making assumptions and instead tried to determine the changes. It became even easier to form his focus into any shape he willed into existence.

He found it difficult to describe the process. It was as if he applied a giant net onto a cloud of myriad meanings. It ignored all the irrelevant meanings and only latched on to the concepts he wanted.

"It's even easier to shape the right image."

Ves imagined upgrading an ancient second-hand image projector with a premium-brand one. The resolution and vitality of his images received a substantial upgrade. Whether it could help him break through the impenetrable border between the System's C-rating and B-rating was another matter.

From his understanding of the X-Factor, it demanded more than brute force to break through that barrier. It required an evolution in his methods.

"It's still a benefit, though."

A more focused and intense image likely allowed him to impart more life in the same amount of time. He wouldn't have to spend months trying to saturate a design with his fingerprints.

He even guessed that once he became powerful enough, he could wipe off the fingerprints of others in a collaborative work.

"I don't even know if I reached that point."

He only brushed against the tip of the iceberg with both his physical and mental changes. Though they all appeared to be beneficial, the doctors warned him that they might take a turn for the worse. Only through extensive examination at a proper facility would Ves be able to uncover some of the hidden dangers buried within his body.

He laid his worries aside since he still had a job to do. Once he regained his composure, he approached the Kaius and touched it again. This time, Ves formed a mental probe of sorts and carefully tried to pry into the shell of the monstrous mech.

His mind encountered a thick, nebulous cloud. Ves thought he encountered some form of barrier that acted as a form of protection. He firmed up his mental probe a bit and dove deeper into the cloud.

The probe continued extending until the cloud suddenly reacted. Ves became alarmed when his instincts warned him of a major crisis. The roiling cloud turned hostile and bore down onto his probe.

The cloud established a connection to Ves.

It conveyed a sense of hostility.

Ves blanked out.

He woke up half an hour later, his entire body stained with sweat.

"What just happened?"

Chapter: 196

No matter how much he tried, Ves couldn't recall what happened when his mind got sucked into the Kaius. It was as if the conscious mind got pulled into the vast vortex of the chimera mech's subconscious.

Fortunately, most of the workers ignored his unmoving presence. They probably figured he was making calculations in his mind and didn't wish to interrupt his train of thought.

Ves departed the workshop with a flush on his cheeks and spent some time freshening up. All the while, he mentally assessed his state of mind. Nothing appeared to have changed. He didn't get the sense that he lost anything, nor did he gain any boons from the encounter.

He simply lost half an hour of his time.

"I don't believe I wasted my time."

Something must have happened, his instincts told him. The uncertainty of what happened and whether it changed something in him gnawed at his nerves.

Lately, the more he dipped into metaphysics, the more he realized how unfathomable the unknown represented. Doctor Jutland's shenanigans alone amply demonstrated its potential as well as its dangers.

In order to be certain of his health, Ves returned to the treatment center and had himself checked. Predictably, they found nothing unusual, they did state that his regulator organ became increasingly enmeshed with his spine.

"It's a fascinating process." Doctor Mellow admiringly told him. "It's as if your body isn't content with these strange new additions and seeks to subsume them completely. Rarely have I witnessed such initiative without being prodded by an outside stimulus. From what I've learned of Jutland's research, the regulator organ is supposed to stay self-contained in the event he wishes to update an older organ for a better-performing one."

"What about my Jutland organ?"

"There are no signs your body is merging it with anything else. It wouldn't make sense to do so since it serves a unique role."

Ves nodded in relief. "That's good to hear."

Despite the seemingly benign changes, Mellow cautioned him about the consequences of deviating from the human norm. "A different physique requires a different set of treatments. Standard medicines designed for baseline humans may react unpredictably when applied to cases such as yours. For example, a simple sleeping pill might make you drowsy for a second or put you in a coma. It's best to have a personal doctor on retainer who truly understands your body."

He'd consider such luxuries later. After thanking Doctor Mellow, Ves left the treatment center and returned to the workshop. The entire site buzzed with energy this time.

"Ves!" Chief Ramirez called. "I don't know how the scientists figured it out, but the Kaius is actually responding to the cockpit now!"

Ves looked with interest as the Kaius gently lifted a limb before lowering it again. It did so for all six limbs, demonstrating the exact control the pilot in the cockpit had over the appropriated mech.

Did he unlock the Kaius somehow with his weird thirty-minute seance?

"Is the pilot reporting any issues connecting with the Kaius?" He asked, concerned about the mental health of whoever served as a guinea pig. "I imagine it's quite dangerous to interface with a half-living mech."

"There are doctors monitoring his condition. As soon as they detect something amiss, they'll pull the plug."

The Kaius turned into a docile machine, seemingly willing to let the mech pilot take the lead. The neural interface connected the pilot to the mech without encountering any hindrance this time, but Ves still had his misgivings. It didn't make much sense for the subconsciousness buried deep to give in so suddenly.

"Still, if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Ramirez muttered. "We only need to get it to work for a day at most. By that time it'll be clear if we're getting rescued or getting captured."

They spent the next couple of hours undoing all of the damage the Kaius suffered. While the exobiologists did an amazing job regenerating damaged tissue, the mech would never regain its full mobility. They had better luck plugging the gaps with machinery, though most of the time they went half-cocked due to lack of time.

Ves shook his head as he supervised the installation of additional laser cannons on the flanks of the Kaius. "Imagine certifying this beast. The MTA would hate this mech."

Their hasty modifications had a rush job written all over it. Ves decided to add the laser cannons on a whim because the Kaius possessed an abundance of power. They hadn't even been properly calibrated. Furthermore, they only put in a standard targeting system designed for humanoid mechs for lack of anything better.

Ensign D'Amato shook his head. "It'll be a miracle if it can hit something beyond spitting distance."

"It's not meant to be a sharpshooter. The great thing about installing laser weapons onto the Kaius is that its heat organ acts as both an inexhaustible power source while also functioning as the perfect heat sink. it will be able to devastate a whole company of mechs on its own with its laser cannons firing almost nonstop."

Frankly, the heat organ functioned as a massive cheat in this regard. Ordinarily, directed energy weapons had no place in the hunt for hexapods, so the groundside team only stocked a couple of lasers for contingency purposes. Their current crisis qualified as one.

After several hours of working, the pirate fleet in orbit finally made a move. An alarm alerted everyone to the threat.

Ensign D'Amato approached Ves. "Our monitoring system has detected many incoming transports. They're on track to enter the cavern entrance."

"How much time do we have left?"

"Two hours at most. It depends on how many mechs they've committed to the first wave. The incoming fleet is still fifteen hours away, so we only need to hold on for half a day before the pirates become preoccupied with bigger enemies."

Ves thought about the exhausted personnel and worn out equipment and figured they'd be hard-pressed to hold their ground. It wasn't impossible to hold for thirteen hours, but the pirates must be feeling the crunch as well and hoped to wrap it up quickly.

The mech technicians quickly finalized their current assignments and made sure that nothing stuck out from the Kaius. With the Olympians wrecked, the Kaius took over their role as the hunting platoon's bulwark.

When he looked over the mobilized mechs, he noticed the imbalance between melee mechs and ranged mechs. Against hexapods, such a deployment made sense.

"It's not as bad as it looks." D'Amato told him while they retreated to the inner base. As noncombatants, they played no role in the upcoming battle, especially when the ensign still waited for a new arm. "The Dragons of the Void are impatient for results. They can't run out the clock by sieging us from a distance. Once they commit their mechs to a full-on assault, our melee mechs will be able to hold the line."

They quietly waited until the first signs of danger emerged through the haze in the air.

"Are those aerial mechs?" Ves asked with an astounded voice.

Around two squads of flying mechs buzzed around the base. Their flight systems screamed as they strained to keep the fliers aloft. A couple of turrets fired projectiles at them but their speed and distance along with their ECM kept them out of harm's way.

To all accounts, the pirate mechs behaved as if they were playing with their food. The passes high in the air were meant to test their defenses while observing the base camp's exact layout. The low-level miasma forced them to fly a little closer, but in turn it also interfered with everyone's targeting systems.

In the meantime, half of the defenders looked on with anticipation.

"There they go!"

The native wildlife finally detected the delicious morsels darting in the air. Huge flocks of hexabats converged from far away as they honed in on the heat emitted by the mechs trying to fly under 1.4 times standard gravity.

The formation in the air fell apart as thousands of hexabats gnawed at their lightly armored frames. While their armor proved to be a little more resilient than those enjoyed by civilian transports, many of their surface components such as sensors and joints sustained a lot of damage.

Furthermore, the aerial mechs had mainly been configured as riflemen and harassers, so they lacked the melee options to throw off the hexabats. They shot their lasers and rifles as best they could, but even as they harvested hundreds of hexabats, thousands more flocked to their constant heat build-up.

The invading force suffered a heavy blow with the loss of all of their flight squadrons. Best of all, the defenders didn't even have to lift a finger.

Ves shook his head as he sympathized with the hapless pirate mechs. "I guess it's safe to say they haven't received any intelligence of what is going on here."

"The Dragons of the Void haven't received any transmissions from base camp." Ensign D'Amato nodded. "Our investigators suspect that one of our attached mercenary vessels left behind a dead drop whenever they transitioned into FTL. That left a trail of breadcrumbs right into the Groening System."

"Didn't you keep an eye on this kind of stuff?"

"We did, but evidently the traitors outsmarted us."

In any case, the fact that the pirates only gained some coordinates and nothing else meant that they came in blind. Their lack of knowledge concerning the habits of the hexapod life forms would come to bite them back several times.

Ves could already imagine the land-bound hexapods drawing to their heat emissions, though the expedition had already cleaned up most of the creatures in the vicinity.

The landbound pirate mechs took their time approaching the base, as constant hexapod harassment must have delayed their deployment. Still, they came with numbers on their side.

"How many mechs are out there?"

"Around a hundred so far, but they're definitely holding back."

The expedition could only scrape around seventy mechs that functioned well enough. They also fielded a handful of half-crippled mechs that couldn't do more than stand and shoot, even if they didn't possess the right configuration to handle ranged weaponry.

The numbers alone highlighted the precarious state of the groundside team. Without support from the main fleet and with depleted supplies, they lacked the depth to withstand an overwhelming assault.

To put it simply, their backs were on the wall.

"Can you lend me a gun?" Ves asked his escort.

"Why?"

"Just in case. If they come for me, I won't go down without a fight."

In fact, Ves had no intention of staying aboard a sinking ship. If the worst case scenario happened and the base had been breached, Ves intended to sneak away under stealth and survive in the wilderness with his adapted body.

However, he'd have to leave behind Melkor to do so. His cousin's Stanislaw had joined the defending mechs in huddling behind the walls, using them as cover to fire pot shots at the approaching pirate mechs.

Between the risk of getting captured and having his System robbed of his possession, Ves would rather give up his cousin. As a noncombatant, Ves lacked the means to change the course of the ensuing battle. No matter how much his body grew stronger, he could never match Doctor Jutland's display of strength.

The pirates swelled to around two-hundred mechs. At least they came without any additional assets such as infantry or artillery. Still, as kings of the battlefield, mechs alone operated well-enough on their own.

No one spoke a word. Everyone waited with baited breath for the pirates to make their move.

This time, the pirate mechs came in a dizzying array of colors and symbols. Like House Kaine, the Dragons of the Void enlisted other groups to fill up their ranks. The lack of unity among the pirates could serve as a weak point.

A brilliant-looking swordsman mech in black stepped forward. Its sleek black coating had been decorated with a pair of coiling red dragons. It wielded a slim but high-quality mech dueling sword that looked perfect for swift, aggressive strikes.

The loudspeakers of the elite mech bellowed out the terms of the pirate commander. "I am Jaded Serpent. In the name of the Dragons of the Void, I lay claim to your lives and your possessions! We have gained complete orbital supremacy. There will be no help coming for your rescue. I will only say this once. Shut off your mechs and lock down your turrets!"

Captain Kaine's Cathrec stepped up above the wall and faced Jaded Serpent's mech. She gave a simple reply to the pirate commander's demands. "Get lost!"

Her reply firmed up their resolve. Even Ves felt an irrational sense of pride at the thought of resisting the pirates with his comrades in the expedition. He held his borrowed laser pistol with a tightening grip, though he quickly regained his cool.

The dragon mech reacted swiftly to the course reply by stretching out its sword. "Commence the attack!"

Chapter: 197

With the obligatory offer of surrender over with, the pirate mechs began their assault. They carefully pelted the star-shaped base walls from a single direction with lasers and shells.

It became clear that the quality of mechs and weapons used by the pirates adhered to the standard of a third-rate state. They matched relatively poorly against the better armed mechs of House Kaine and their mercenary partners from the Grey Willow StarSector.

However, the local mercs enjoyed very little superiority in this regard as they obtained their mechs from similar sources.

The defenses held up better than Ves had thought. House Kaine hadn't skimped on the prefabricated walls that had been anchored into the hardy soil. As they were meant to withstand a horde of hexapods, they took little damage from kinetic and explosive projectiles.

Unfortunately, the alloys used in the construction of the walls fared a little worse against lasers. The pirates quickly wised up and started to concentrate their laser armament at a single spot, trying to carve a very large hole in the defenses.

The defenders gave it as good as they got, though only half of the mechs had been equipped with ranged weapons. The fixed emplacements picked up the slack. The turrets had been designed to take a beating and dish it out in turn, and they fired back with accurate volleys that chewed up the pirates in the forest.

The dense, hardy metallic forest provided some level of cover to the pirate mechs. The trees proved to be incredibly resilient, though they were too thin to cover a mech's entire frame.

Losses piled up on both sides as a low-intensity firefight extended for half an hour. The pirates slowly softened up the expedition's formidable fixed defenses. The walls and turrets couldn't move, so the pirates simply aimed to wear them down by focusing their fire.

Before the pirates committed to a full assault, they wanted to lay the groundwork first. The defenses bought valuable time to the groundside team with their sacrifices. Yet with every turret down, the pirates faced a little bit less pressure, allowing them to position their forces more aggressively.

In the meantime, the Kaius stayed hidden and out of sight. The partially repaired and improved chimera mech had no place in this long-ranged firefight. To maximize its impact, Commander Tregis ordered it to be revealed at the last possible moment.

The situation changed for the worse when missiles rained from above! They ended their arc flight paths straight into the interior of the base, focusing mostly on the mech workshops and other critical infrastructure.

The base only possessed a limited amount of anti-air emplacements that took out half of the incoming ordnance. The rest impacted against the workshops with debilitating explosions that deformed their roofs but didn't manage to break through.

Like the walls, the other prefab structures had been formed out of highly durable alloys that didn't lose out too much compared to those utilized in mechs.

Still, another volley of missiles arrived right after the first wave! Explosions continued to rain down in the same area of the base, weakening the targeted structures until their roofs finally collapsed. Distant screams emerged as some of the subsequent volleys killed and wounded mech technicians ready to service damaged mechs.

Ves could have been one of them. If not for the special dispensation he received from Tregis for being an integral part in killing Jutland, he'd be among the thick of it. "Don't we have any countermeasures?"

"Missiles aren't useful against the hexapod, so we left them out of the defense plan." D'Amato explained. "The base planners never took into account that we had to face a pirate invasion alone."

The missiles continued to wreak havoc while the mechs that launched them stayed far away. A couple of light mechs acted as relays that sent back targeting data for them to focus their missiles on. The Empyreans harassed them with their extremely powerful railguns, but they had little effect against the agile mechs.

"Something has to be done against those missiles!" Ves screamed over the din as the missiles started to drift over their direction. He imagined that the pirates brought plenty of ordnance in order to force the base into a quick surrender.

Boom!

A large explosion set off in the distance. The volleys of missiles suddenly cut off. A couple of nearby officers cheered.

"That's the hunting platoon at work! They succeeded in sneaking up on their artillery!"

Ves looked around and noticed that the Cathrec had quietly disappeared from the walls. Captain Kaine must have brought the Volmars along to strike at the artillery mechs quickly before they could seek refuge from their guards.

The Cathrec and its fellow melee mechs returned triumphantly a half hour later. From the rumor mill, Ves heard that they not only took out the artillery mechs, but also destroyed some of their spare supplies.

"It's a pity their transports are tightly guarded. They're holding back a solid number of mechs to keep their escape route open."

The removal of the artillery mechs and the earlier mishap that had befallen the aerial mechs had taken out a lot of options for the pirates. They ran out of tricks to pressure the base except for a straight-on slugging match.

A normal commander would have pulled back and given up the fight. The losses far outweighed the gains, unless they heard an inkling of the windfall the expedition earned so far. So many kilograms of monoexurite made plenty of people see red.

In fact, Jaded Serpent even urged his mechs to intensify the attack. "Stop pussyfooting around! Get closer and disable all of the turrets! We won't be able to bypass the walls with them intact!"

As the champion of the pirates, his sleek black adorned with twin red dragons attracted a lot of fire. However, the pirate commander possessed a sly sense of evasion, managing to dart in and out of cover just in time to spoil the aim of the heaviest guns arrayed against him. Sometimes his mech even dodged in a bewildering pattern that made Ves spin his eyes.

"That's the Roulette Spin! Not every advanced pilot knows how to perform that maneuver!"

The Roulette Spin could only be done with light and medium mechs focused on agility and flexibility. The mech half-spun into arcing paths that made it difficult to predict how far the mech moved and where it would orient itself next. It worked great against automated targeting systems and less skilled pilots, which happened to include most of the local mercs.

"That Jaded Serpent is a tough customer." An analyst remarked. "His mech can outmaneuver most of our melee mechs that focus more on brute force than finesse. Even our Volmars would be hard-pressed to match blows against his mech."

The firefight faded out another hour later when most of the turrets facing the direction of the pirates got destroyed. The pirate mechs also burned a number of holes in the solid walls of the base, though it took an extreme amount of energy to accomplish such a feat. The pirate mechs finally drew back to their landing site in order to replenish their ammunition and energy.

"They'll be back soon." D'Amato noted with grim resignation. "Our base is not in good shape at the moment. It's going to get ugly once the knife-fighting starts."

With the temporary reprieve, the defending side took the opportunity to replenish their own mechs. Mech technicians also received some of the mechs that sustained damage, though the missile barrage destroyed most of their workshops. This forced them to perform rudimentary repairs in the field.

Ves wanted to join them, but he knew his contribution wouldn't matter much at this point. The more complex repair jobs required time and facilities that the defenders didn't have anymore.

Some of the mech pilots milling around looked agitated. Ves saw that quite a few bots and security personnel kept a very close eye on them. He imagined that some of the mercs would turn their coats in a heartbeat if they could.

As Ves had helped with the maintenance of some of those mechs, he knew the expedition also slipped in another safeguard. The mech technicians installed kill switches next to their control circuits that could instantly turn the mechs off if they received a special signal.

Such a function normally risked being exploited by their adversaries, but the trustworthiness of the local mercs left a lot to be desired, especially after some of them mutinied. House Kaine basically trusted in their technological superiority over the pirates. So far, nothing has happened, so the pirates must not have brought any exceptional hackers.

The pirates returned some time later. This time, they brought a few knights with hefty tower shields to take the lead.

Jaded Serpent didn't waste any time. His dragon mech brandished its sword and extended it forward. "Charge!"

Well over a hundred different mechs charged forward at the same time. They maintained a fairly dispersed formation in order to avoid bumping into each other, but they also kept up with their assigned squads. Vast clusters of mechs converged around the numerous gaps in the walls with the shield bearers in front.

The defending mechs shot back with a vengeance, stopping some of the mechs in their tracks but not enough to make a difference. The ranged mechs finally received the order to fall back to the walls of the inner base. They fled the outer walls like rats jumping out of a leaking boat!

The defenders finally showed their teeth when their melee mechs met the incoming pirates. The shield bearers received special attention from the Cathrec. Its powered spear darted forward like a loosened arrow as it bypassed the shield and hit the bearers in the flank. Their armor easily parted against the special spear, allowing it to deal catastrophic damage with each single hit.

The pirates faltered for a moment as they witnessed Captain Kaine's prowess. Her mech truly outmatched most machines. No one wished to take a step forward into the jaws of death that her mech represented.

Until Jaded Serpent stepped forward with his swordsman mech. His sleek machine flourished its sword in preparation of a duel. "Your opponent is me!"

The other mechs made way for the two elite mechs and resumed their fighting at the other gaps. Every mech pilot adhered to the common convention of letting their leaders duel without interruption from others.

Of course, this could only be maintained if both sides possessed somewhat equal strength. While the Dragons of the Void brought much greater numbers to bear, the defending side had the edge in terms of quality and training. Neither side wanted to risk the consequences of doing something rash.

"Your name?"

"Captain Felicia Kaine of House Kaine."

"Ah yes, a direct scion of our visitors from the illustrious Constance Grand Kingdom." Jaded Serpent replied in a taunting tone. "You are far away from home, little miss. You will find no easy prey out here in the frontier."

"I can take on tough guys like you any day!"

The two mechs began to clash after that. Both pilots showcased the full capabilities of their mechs by dancing around their probing strikes.

The Cathrec had the advantage of reach. Captain Kaine extended her spear very far but darted back as soon as the dragon mech stepped closer.

The differences between the frames became clear after the first dozen clashes.

The dragon mech turned out to be a deviously designed machine. It possessed a lot of leg strength that allowed Jaded Serpent to leap in any direction at any time. It reminded Ves of the old Hoplite design he used as a basis for his popular Young Blood variant. The dragon mech possessed a very modern iteration of the system.

In turn, the Cathrec held a decisive edge in the quality of its weapon. When Jaded Serpent acted a bit too boldly, Captain Kaine traded blows by taking the incoming sword chop with its shield while puncturing the dodging dragon mech in the side.

The powered spear almost encountered no obstruction when it dug into the dragon's mech armor. Jaded Serpent immediately pulled his mech backwards and assessed the damage.

"That spear! That's a Destroyer Weapon! How did you get your hands on such a treasure?!"

"I'm friends with the Terrans!" Captain Kaine brashly responded as she went on the offensive in earnest. "You'll be the first pirate scumbag I'll slay with this weapon!"

The dragon mech fell into leeward for a while as the Cathrec pressured it backwards with unrelenting spear thrusts. With his perception, Ves saw that Captain Kaine employed a precise, rhythmic pattern to her thrusts that unsettled Jaded Serpent.

"Enough! Dragon's Breath, deploy!" The pirate leader turned the tide by activating a special feature on his mech. Hidden flamethrowers popped open around various points of the dragon mech and spat out small jets of highly flammable liquids at the Cathrec.

Captain Kaine hadn't expected such a surprise. While the Cathrec managed to disperse half of the jets with its dueling shield, the other half encountered no obstruction. Her spear-wielding mech quickly became engulfed in flames.

"No!"

Chapter: 198

Jaded Serpent's personal steed appeared to be a pure swordsman mech. Even Ves got fooled by its appearance and dazzling performance that he never expected it to pop up miniature flame spitters.

While the nefarious burning liquids stuck on the Cathrec, Captain Kaine quickly pulled back her mech and made a radical decision. She rolled the Cathrec onto the ground, managing to brush aside most of the flames in the process.

She proved her skill with that move. Her mech rolled across the ground for three revolutions without putting too much of the mech's weight onto anything that couldn't bear the momentary pressure.

Many lesser pilots failed to control their mechs as well as she did and broke the arms or even the heads of their mechs. The Cathrec's armor system gained a large amount of ugly burn marks on its surface. It showcased its lack of strength against heat damage, of which nobody on the expedition expected to face on the ground.

"You're mine now!" Jaded Serpent roared and drove his mech into a punishing offensive that forced the Cathrec into straits. The flurry of blows prevented the white mech from regaining its balance.

Ves wondered when Commander Tregis released the refurbished Kaius.

"Not yet." D'Amato said, shaking his head. "The pirates still have too much fight in them. The Kaius is best used when they run out of steam. The goal is to shatter the exhausted pirates into pieces so that they can't form an effective raiding force anymore."

Such a strategy required a lot of patience and sacrifice. Even now, many mercenary mechs started falling under the weight of numbers. Fortunately, most of their pilots managed to escape death by ejecting their cockpits.

Even as they fell, the defenders stopped the pirate mechs in their tracks. Half of the pirate mechs consisted of cheap frontline mechs with no heads and weapon barrels for arms. Their deficient armor made them sitting ducks for the railgun wielding defenders, who took them out with two or three carefully aimed projectiles.

Ves noticed that the pirate mechs weren't using proper tactics. None of them adhered to the loose formation determined at the start and simply tried to swarm the damaged walls with fanatic glee. It reminded him of the first space battle between the expeditionary fleet and the harassing pirate fleet.

"The pilots of the pirate mechs look like they're drugged and brainwashed."

"It's difficult to scrounge willing cannon fodder. Pirates can be some of the biggest cowards in the galaxy. They value their lives above loyalty and brotherhood."

The Dragons of the Void certainly proved their ruthlessness by discarding so many lives and mechs. With the mech pilots fighting without regard for their lives, their ferocity steadily overpowered the beleaguered defenders even with their technological superiority.

In these fraught circumstances, one mercenary group took up the warbanner and fought back with twice the grit. As one of House Kaine's mercenary partners, Adila's Chosen had never really shown off their capabilities. Unlike George's Cavalry and the Stray Phantoms which often saw action, the religious group largely remained in reserve.

Their mechs consisted of sturdy medium mechs that might not be fast, but could take a hit or two. They boldly wielded heavy flails that bashed aside the lighter mechs in a single blow.

Ves became impressed by the way they wielded the flails. The spiked alloy ball at the end of the chain always managed to pierce through a critical portion of the mech being struck.

The mechs of Adila's Chosen momentarily stabilized the faltering lines, though their impact proved limited as they couldn't cover the entire wall. The defenders didn't have much of a reserve besides the Chosen.

"Captain Kaine is still holding on!"

The Cathrec managed to bait its opponent. It parried the last sword strike of the dragon mech and thrust before Jaded Serpent fully recovered.

The spear glanced past one of the swordsman mech's thigh, piercing aside the armor plating with contemptuous ease before dealing shallow but effective internal damage. The dragon mech's mobility suffered a minor loss that proved extremely debilitating in the closely matched duel.

Captain Kaine's Destroyer Weapon showcased its full potential as she used it as a naked threat against Jaded Serpent's sword. The pirate commander clearly wished to avoid the dreaded spear and made sure to leave his sword away from the spear's path.

"How did she get her hands on a Destroyer Weapon?" Ves asked.

"Captain Kaine followed a training course in an institute affiliated with the Terrans." One of the idle scientists replied. "I heard she acquitted herself well enough to win some awards. The Destroyer Weapon is a custom design that's made for her mech."

"She's very lucky to have such a renowned weapon."

"That she is. You can see how she's regaining the initiative. Even some flames can't stop her resolve."

Many people considered the Greater Terran United Confederation to be a stagnant first-rate superstate that clung to its old ways. They gradually let the New Rubarth Empire overtake them in terms of research and development.

The fairly recent invention of Destroyer Weapons put them back on the map. These special powered weapons used up a lot of energy, but converted almost all of that potential into a field that acted as a molecular disbonder.

Most materials become as fragile as paper when struck by a molecular disbonder. Even many kinds of compressed armor had to give way to the strange new technology.

The Destroyer Weapons quickly gained a reputation for being the ultimate melee weapons and dominated the Terran mech scene.

Unfortunately, the Terrans couldn't enjoy their moment of superiority for long. Their archrivals from the New Rubarth Empire came up with several special alloys that proved to be immune to the effects of a molecular disbonder.

Still, these alloys made use of extremely rare exotics that had only been found in the core regions of the galaxy. Out here in the galactic rim, many prospectors tried to find the valuable materials, but never encountered a trace of it so far. This turned the few Destroyer Weapons that made their way to the frontier into the perfect tools to bully the local mechs.

Despite the Cathrec's valiant performance, the rest of the defenders slowly showed signs of breaking.

Even the flail-wielding mechs from Adila's Chosen became entangled when the pirates surrounded them from multiple directions. Their flails hit hard, but it took a lot of time to swing them. The pirates finally wised up and waited until the flails finished their swing before diving in to press the Chosen body-to-body.

Nevertheless, dealing with these strong and daunting mechs was never easy, as they inflicted a lot of damage with their bare hands. The Chosen dished out plenty of damage before they ejected.

"There's hardly any obstacles left!"

The casualties among the pirate mechs had become very tragic, but none of them flinched. The raiders only knew how to go forward and fight. All thoughts of stepping back or preserving their lives had disappeared in their drug-fueled frenzy.

Commander Tregis finally had enough. He couldn't wait any longer to send out his reserve. He ordered the release of their final trump card.

The Kaius stepped forth out of the gates of the inner wall with a mighty animalistic bellow. Its horn-like roar emboldened the defenders while throwing some of the most engaged pirates into a stupor.

Every pirate who caught sight of the Kaius became frightened by its size. The half-living mech made for an intimidating sight as it could tower over heavy mechs.

Even scarier was the fact that despite its bulk, it moved forward with unstoppable momentum. The mighty chimera mech marched closer with six of its limbs working in tandem.

Once it came close to one of the frailest points of the wall, the defenders pulled back and made way for the king of mechs. When some of the more reckless pirate mechs entered the gap in the walls, the Kaius responded by unleashing the laser cannons strapped to the sides of its torso.

An unending torrent of lasers erupted from the cannons. The pilot threw out almost every rule in the book by letting them pulse unendingly like a flickering light.

The sheer amount of power the laser cannons used up went far beyond the usual safety guidelines. A regular heavy mech would have melted all of the barrels by now, but not before sucking out all of its energy cells.

Yet the Kaius still continued to fire without any signs of faltering! All of the excess heat building up in the barrels never had a chance to overheat anything as the augmented heat organ sucked away all of that delicious energy.

"This is the most impressive sight I've ever seen! This is the pinnacle of mechs!"

Even Ves underestimated the actual effectiveness of the improvised setup. The overconfident pirates lost almost a dozen mechs after a couple minutes of unrelenting laser fire. The befuddled pirates kept expecting the laser cannons to stop its self-destructing firing rate, but always ended up with molten mechs.

Once the pirates stopped invading the gap, the Kaius ceased its fire. While the laser cannons didn't have to be afraid of overheating, keeping them active all the time had other effects that quickly wore down the fragile weapons.

Instead of waiting for the pirates to muster up their courage, the Kaius decisively exited through the gap and charged towards the recovering pirate mechs. Its speed ensured that none of the drugged-up pirates could muster a proper defense by the time the massive monster reached their midst.

The Kaius released another primal roar as it practically ran over three mechs in close succession. Its massive weight flattened every mech that fell beneath its limbs into deformed pieces of scrap.

Meanwhile, Captain Kaine took advantage of Jaded Serpent's retreat at the sight of the intimidating monster mech and raised her mech's spear. "Onwards men! We are invincible!"

The mark of a good leader was their ability to inspire their subordinates. Ves thought that Captain Kaine lacked experience and largely reached her rank due to nepotism. It turned out that she had a keen sense of timing and broadcasted just enough words to rally the defenders.

Even though the Kaius only beat back a portion of the pirate force, its tall presence drew the eye of everyone in the field. The mech smashed its way into the thick of the pirates and lashed out in each direction with its limbs and lasers. None of the mechs that stood in its way lasted more than a couple of blows.

Jaded Serpent finally shook off his amazement and brandished his sword towards the unstoppable beast. "Are you daft! Ranged mechs, fire on this monster! Melee mechs, pull back from here and resume our push at the flanks!"

Despite receiving clear orders, the pirate mechs strained to follow their new instructions. The defenders left the middle for the Kaius and redirected most of their numbers towards the flanks, meeting the pirate push head-on.

Meanwhile, the ranged mechs found their rifles and cannons to be completely ineffective against the virtually indestructible scales of the Kaius. As a mech based on the carcass of a hexapod king, its scales had reached a degree of toughness that could even glance off a couple of railgun projectiles.

The entry of this giant monster and its subsequent rampage completely quelled the momentum of the invaders. Even concentrated volleys of fire accomplished nothing more than disabling the laser cannons, which didn't hurt the core performance of the Kaius at all. With another triumphant roar, the Kaius raced forward on all six limbs and bounded across the field, reaching the rifle-wielding mechs in an instant.

With fast, powerful swipes, the Kaius tore the rifleman mechs into shreds. Their thinner armor and inferior speed branded them as dead mechs walking that awaited their final destruction at the hands of the indomitable monster mech.

As much as the pirates drew their courage from their drugs and brainwashing, they couldn't handle the terror-inducing killing spree of the Kaius. For some of them, the shock tore apart their mental conditioning, which led to a third of the surviving pirate mechs to turn around and flee back to their transports.

"We broke them!"

"Run, you bastards!"

"Chase them to the ends of the universe!"

With the Kaius leading the charge, the more mobile defenders chased after the fleeing raiders and ran them down like dogs. Even Jaded Serpent gave up his attempts to corral his minions into reforming their ranks and joined the overall rout.

As the mechs ran out of sight, Ves let out a deep breath. "We survived."

Chapter: 199

The Kaius and its entourage of defenders chased the pirate mechs for twenty minutes before giving up the chase. Continuing to chase the pirates all the way back to their transports risked falling into an ambush, so the defending mechs wisely broke off well before they overextended themselves.

"Great work!"

Everyone back in base cheered as the scouts reported that the surviving boarded their transports and lifted off. They completely gave up on the assault and cut their losses.

"Too bad we haven't caught that Jaded Serpent. We could have interrogated him about the goal of their senseless attacks."

Certainly, the Dragons of the Void sacrificed a lot of ships and mechs, only to receive nothing in return besides damaging House Kaine. Ves reasoned that stopping House Kaine and ruining their much-vaunted expedition must be one of their primary goals. In that regard, the mysterious pirate group achieved some successes, but not enough to make up for their losses.

Ves eventually scratched his head. "No regular pirate group will throw away so many assets for nothing."

"It's not their assets to begin with." D'Amato replied. "The Dragons of the Void obviously employed patsies to do the heavy lifting for them. Don't forget that each time the battle went south, they always ran away the fastest."

"Even so, borrowed or not, losing so many ships and mechs will hurt overall strength. They'll be much less capable of threatening their opponents after losing so much cannon fodder."

The most frightening aspect about the Dragons of the Void was that they managed to indoctrinate so many pirate outfits. Why haven't they received any backlash over their unscrupulous use of mind-altering drugs?

Ensign D'Amato smiled at him. "Pirates aren't the smartest people in the bunch. Smaller gangs of pirates have a lot of trouble finding safe harbor among the stars. My guess is that the Dragons are secretly controlling several pirate harbors. Whenever they're short on manpower, they'll kidnap some unsuspecting visitors."

Such a scheme highlighted the cutthroat circumstances of those who resorted to piracy. Perhaps some of the pirates had an inkling of what went on, but where else could they service their ships and mechs? These outlaws deserved no mercy for turning their backs on human solidarity.

Hours went by as the survivors picked up the pieces. Ves volunteered to help with the repairs of the Kaius. While it pretended to be invincible in front of the pirate mechs, it actually sustained severe damage to its mechanical components.

Due to a lack of time, the repair team focused on stabilizing its condition so it wouldn't fall apart in the short term. Many other mech technicians crawled over the disabled mechs that had been strewn across the battlefield and assessed whether they could still be fixed.

When Ves looked at the battlefield strewn with so many wrecks, he couldn't help but count how much value lay on the ground. His salvager's eye came up with a figure that topped several billion bright credits.

The pirate mechs generally consisted of cheap mechs made out of cheap materials. The real treasure lay in the machines used by the forces from the Grey Willow StarSector. These high-quality mechs employed valuable exotics throughout their frame that many manufacturers loved to use.

"Will we be able to recover all of this salvage?"

"Maybe not. It depends on if the incoming fleet is friendly enough. Now that they're getting nearer, we've received more detailed readings. The mass readings are highly alarming, though we've also detected the presence of the Ark Horizon."

For a time, the groundside team feared that their mothership had been captured. It took several suspenseful hours for them to receive a signal from Lord Jeremiah Kane himself. Commander Tregis decided to broadcast the transmission throughout the base.

The old man appeared aged and tired on the projector. "Fellow expedition members, it has been a trying time for you all. We departed from the Grey Willow Star Sector and crossed many light-years with the hope of reversing the fortunes of House Kaine. Enemies stalked us every step of the way, but despite their determined attempts to drag us down, we have persevered against all odds. Be proud of your accomplishments."

His words had a very emotional effect on the men and women employed directly by House Kaine. All of them possessed a strong sense of belonging to the venerable noble house. The message resonated less with external consultants like Ves.

Lord Kaine spent the next couple of minutes explaining what happened after that. After the expeditionary fleet finished off the sandmen incursion, they suffered a devastating loss when the Dragons of the Void sprung their ambush. The bedraggled survivors fled far away until they eventually converged at a predetermined fallback point.

"Defeat can humble the best of men." Lord Kaine spoke evenly. "While I cannot change what has already happened, I can still change the outcome of this venture. Therefore, after much consideration, I've decided to approach the Common Fleet Alliance for assistance."

That explained the heavy fleet presence. Several destroyers along with a handful of frigates surrounded the Ark Horizon like an honor guard. Though the massive fleet carrier outmassed the smaller vessels, as dedicated warships they possessed unparalleled might.

The pirate fleet had no choice but to gamble on a quick win. As soon as they figured that they couldn't overrun the base camp with the mech forces at hand, they decided to cut their losses and run before the warships caught their scummy hides.

"It can't be cheap to enlist the aid of the CFA."

Ensign D'Amato nodded. "The CFA is humanity's common defense against pirates and aliens. While they won't shirk their duty, they never rescue fortune seekers knocking on their door without taking a cut."

Word came down from above what the price entailed. For the low price of guaranteeing the recovery of the groundside team, the CFA demanded eighty percent of all the expedition's mineral gains. House Kaine had to forfeit much of the motherlode they painstakingly recovered from the alien wilderness.

Furthermore, once the CFA received a summary of events on the ground, they also demanded the materials recovered from Doctor Jutland. This not only included the research materials and samples taken from his cave, but also the Kaius itself. In the face of their domineering demands, House Kaine could only act meekly and lower their heads.

Ves winced as he heard the sordid details. "Sounds like the CFA is the true winner of the expedition. They didn't even have to lift a finger to get their hands on all of that monoexurite."

"At least they left us with some crumbs. They could have demanded ninety-nine percent of all of our gains."

The expedition hauled in so many kilograms of monoexurite that everyone's eyes went green whenever they thought of it. Having to hand them over to their rescuers hurt a lot, but it was still better than being stranded forever on this strange and hostile planet.

As D'Amato remarked, the CFA left them with twenty percent of a massive fortune. This ensured that House Kaine still earned a very generous profit even with all of their losses taken into account.

"The CFA left us with some crumbs because they want to keep the requests coming. If they gain a reputation for being too outrageous in their demands, people will turn elsewhere for rescue."

As the warships and the Ark Horizon slipped into orbit, a large number of transports and shuttles descended into the underground cavern. The abundant amount of heat emitted by the vessels attracted thousands of hexabats, but the well-prepared shuttlecraft peppered them with a vicious rain of projectiles.

The half-ruined base camp received the new arrivals with trepidation and relief. While a few officers from House Kaine arrived to assess the situation, most of the other transports belonged to the CFA.

Armed spacers departed from the shuttles and transports and locked down the entire base. They herded every worker and mech pilot into a waiting transport vessel as if they couldn't get rid of them fast enough.

"What about our mechs!?"

"We will recover your possessions later. Please enter the transports first."

Against the strong-arming of the CFA, no one could say a thing. They separated Ves from the rest once they found him. "Mr. Larkinson, your presence is requested aboard the science vessel the Ramulus in order to treat your condition."

Ves expected to be summoned by the CFA. Their clear interest in Doctor Jutland's research extended to the invasive procedures the madman performed on his body. As a living example of his work, the researchers attached to the CFA would never let him off.

"Can I have a word with my companions before I go?"

"Make it fast."

With that reprieve, Ves quickly turned around and slipped his comm around Lucky's collar before handing him to Melkor. "Take care of Lucky. Don't let him run around wherever he pleases."

His cousin nodded at him. "I'm familiar with his habits. I'll keep my eye on him."

Assured that his cat and his comm would be kept out of the CFA's clutches, Ves turned to D'Amato. "You've been a helpful watcher, ensign. I learned a lot from you over these months."

"Likewise. I've always been a ship fanatic, but your work has opened my eyes to the intricate world of mechs."

Both of them gained something from the other through their long interaction with each other. While Ves never appreciated his presence, the engineer-in-training never obstructed him when he worked. This alone deserved a commendation.

While Ves would have liked to say a few words to Chief Ramirez and Captain Kaine, the impatient CFA spacers firmly pushed him onto a fast shuttle.

Ves could instantly tell the shuttle was special. Ves had never seen one that had evidently been made out of compressed alloys. The sheer wealth put into this tiny craft showcased the organization's power and wealth.

Once they loaded the shuttle with recovered research data, the vehicle took off with rapid speed. Ves looked out the viewscreen and estimated the shuttle flew at least four times as fast as the ones used by House Kaine.

They emerged from the underground cavern and reached orbit a very short time later. The shuttle zipped through space and entered the hangar bay of a large and peculiar looking vessel studded with sensors.

When Ves emerged from the shuttle, he looked around and found the hangar bay to be empty. To be frank, what he saw didn't impress him as much as he thought.

The interior of the Ramulus had been built to withstand an extreme amount of punishment. Ves only recognized a couple of well-known compressed alloys. Despite the extravagant expenditure, the white interior looked fairly boring, as if the designer worked hard not to cheer up the crew.

Despite the plain appearance, Ves suspected that the ship hid a lot of highly advanced systems underneath the surface. He caught hints of it as a pair of armed security officers guided him towards the labs. Every strange device prompted Ves to puzzle out their function.

Even more remarkable was when he passed by several uniformed spacers. Every crew member looked beautiful or handsome, which was a sign that they received expensive gene therapy. While not as heaven-defying as gene boosts, first-rate superstates applied gene therapy to all of their citizens to enhance their health and make them much less susceptible to diseases.

Ves had to curb his curiosity once they entered a quiet but extremely well-equipped lab. A handful of researchers awaited his arrival. The lead scientist stepped forward and shook his hand. "Welcome aboard the Ramulus, Mr. Larkinson. Ah, your skin is fascinating!"

The researchers hadn't even introduced themselves before they crowded over his body with medical scanners in their hand. They took preliminary readings of his conditions and discussed their findings among themselves.

"You'll be with us for a month, Mr. Larkinson. I suggest you make yourself comfortable aboard the Ramulus. We've prepared a complete examination that will allow us to get to the bottom of your new condition."

Hopefully the researchers didn't forget to treat his ailments. Their ravenous desire to get to the bottom of his changed physique unnerved Ves in a way that reminded him of Jutland.

At least his hosts were mindful enough to inform him that they didn't intend to keep him around forever. The CFA's contract with House Kaine included a clause that insured his safe return. Such an illustrious organization would never violate a contract that was already heavily in their favor.

They were the good guys, after all.

Chapter: 200

What did it mean to be human? Ves asked himself this question many times on the trip back to civilized space. The researchers avidly studying each and every corner of his body hummed with excitement as they unfolded the secrets buried within.

Ves had unquestionably departed from the standard of pure human. The trans-galactic organizations maintained a strict definition of what fell under the human race, and Ves happened to get kicked out of the playground.

In his daily life, Ves wouldn't be treated any differently. The Common Fleet Alliance's researchers revealed that certain levels of hybridization were a bit more common than usual in the upper echelons of society.

"We are at war with aliens, but we envy them as well. The most sophisticated races possess various wondrous powers that we secretly covet. It's therefore not a crime against humanity to depart from the norm, because we know we can't stop people experimenting on themselves."

The trans-galactic organizations discourage the practice, but allow it to happen as long as the recipients remain discrete. They did not wish to encourage a culture where the masses became accustomed to radical modifications.

"The reason why we are wary of fusing alien genes into the human genome is that it often goes very wrong. From all reports, Doctor Jutland is a perfect example of why it isn't a good idea to go too far. While we can't determine the exact causes of his mood swings, his tireless efforts to inject himself with the strength of these hexapods has turned him into a beast as well."

"The twenty-seven year isolation also didn't help." Ves remarked. Personally, he wished that spending all those years alone pushed the doctor over the edge. In this case, Ves would likely keep his sanity then.

While the researchers never felt inclined to share their results with Ves, they at least informed him that his new organs came with only a couple of traps.

To eminent figures such as them who received some of the highest education in human society, Jutland's work appeared crude. Only the decades spent on mastering everything about the hexapods allowed him to form a working set of hybrid organs.

Fortunately, the researchers possessed enough benevolence to fix the hidden dangers in his body. Although Ves could only take their word for it, he did feel a tiny bit better after he went through a number of operations. The tiny undercurrent of unease he always felt through his developing Sixth Sense had faded out when he next woke up.

"We adjusted your genes to a stabler level than before." A doctor said when he checked on his waking body. "Your body is still fairly strong, but you'll get to live longer than fifty standard years now."

Like many humans, Ves would rather live longer than have an inhumanly strong body. Jutland thought otherwise, and look where that got him. A mech designer like Ves relied on his intellect to advance his career. At no point should he rely on his physical strength to make a living.

In total, Ves spent roughly a month aboard the Ramulus. The science vessel flew next to the damaged Ark Horizon. Both ships enjoyed the protection of the destroyers and frigates that escorted them to Mancroft Independent Harbor.

Once they reached the quiet little star system, Ves had finished his obligations. The expedition formally came to an end and House Kaine released the local mercenaries and consultants from their duties.

The CFA actually let him go, to his surprise. Didn't they want to study him further?

One of the researchers knew what he was thinking and laughed. "You are overstating your own importance to our research. We've taken many samples and we also scanned your body down to their elementary particles."

To his horror, they showed him a vat containing an exact clone of his body. Seeing a duplicate of himself in the flesh provoked a minor existential crisis within his mind. Who was the actual Ves? Perhaps the researchers lied and put the real Ves in the vat!

"As I said, you're thinking too much. Fully adult clones are always lacking in their humanity. Even if we copy a person to an even more precise level, their clones always lack that spark that proves they are alive. It's the main reason why clones have not proliferated in our society. The clones basically end up as human-form computers that are incapable of appreciating art, expressing their creativity or feeling love."

"I see." Ves replied, and quickly calmed down. Once he tested his thoughts, he became more certain that 'he' was the true Ves. "So as long as I can prove I can deal with concepts that AIs could never understand, I'll be certain that I'm human."

In any case, the researchers only cloned him so that they could study Jutland's work. Even if they desired to treat him like a lab rat, at least they'd be studying a gimped copy of himself. "Better the poor sap than me."

Ves tried hard not to think about what his clones had to endure throughout their short existence. In a legal sense, the clones lacked some of the traits that defined humanity, so no one bothered to give them any rights.

Once a shuttle finally delivered him to the Barracuda, Ves finally felt relief at regaining some form of control over his life. Lots of people kept an eye on him for one reason or another these past few months. Ves did not enjoy the limits it imposed on his freedom.

"Welcome aboard, sir." Captain Silvestra greeted him with a neat salute. "We've already established a route back to Cloudy Curtain. We can depart the Mancroft System whenever you're ready."

"Has Melkor and Stanislaw arrived on this ship?"

"They arrived a couple of hours ago. We haven't packed up the Stanislaw in case we meet any threats. You might not be aware, but the shipping lanes throughout the Komodo Star Sector have deteriorated these past few months. Many interstellar vessels only travel in convoys at this point. It's too dangerous to set off on your own."

That sounded fairly bad, and not because they risked encountering a pirate attack. With the expert navigation of his new crew, he was reasonably confident the Barracuda could avoid and outrun any potential ambush.

No, the emergence of pirates meant that it became a lot harder to get access to critical materials Ves needed to build his mechs. At the very least, Ves expected a sharp rise in costs.

"Understood." Ves nodded as he tried to estimate the ripples of the changing times. "However, I intend to make a stop at Leemar before returning to the Bright Republic. Please set a course to the Leemar System first."

The Barracuda was his ship to begin with, so he could do whatever he wanted. Right now, Ves wished he could pay a visit to his master and ask for help in studying his condition. The CFA never really bothered keeping Ves up to date with all of the details, so he hoped to borrow Master Olson's influence in making sure they hadn't messed up his body.

In addition, Ves also planned to pay a visit to the Clifford Society's club house on Leemar II. He didn't forget why he signed on to the expedition in the first place.

"Four-hundred merits. I can buy almost anything with this much wealth."

Even a single merit held significant value, because they allowed members access to some of the restricted books in the libraries. Having several hundred merits all at once meant that if Ves so decided, he could hole up in the Moon Library pretty much forever.

"I can't really do that without leaving my Living Mech Corporation out to dry. It badly needs to expand its catalog of designs."

Ves always planned to pave the way for him to design an original mech. By shaking himself loose from the restrictions revolving around designing variants of other people's work, he'd save billions up-front and a few hundred-thousand credits more with each mech sale!

"At the very least, I'll have to hire a hacker to unlock the restriction on my recovered Dortmund printer. Then, I'll have to purchase a high-quality alloy compressor and chemical treatment machine."

The latter two machines allowed him to fabricate mechs for the premium segment. While they demanded a higher standard of quality, they also boasted much higher profit margins, which would be of great help in a time when the cost of resources kept going up.

Besides acquiring new machines, Ves also wanted to browse their library of component licenses. The Leemar Institute of Technology maintained a large network of mech designers and developers who both offered each other what they needed. He looked forward to seeing if he could pick up a bargain.

As the Barracuda prepared to transition into FTL, Ves first caught up with his subordinates. First, he inquired Captain Silvestra on what his corvette experienced during his stay on Groening IV.

"We stayed out of the fighting, if that's what you're concerned about. We mainly acted as forward scouts that explored the star systems surrounding the Groening System in order to send back word of any incoming threats. When the expeditionary fleet suffered a defeat, the Barracuda received orders to stay behind and maintain her post."

Nothing exciting happened to his ship, to his relief. "Did you get into trouble with the liaison sent by House Kaine?"

"No, sir. He kept to himself and behaved cordially among us women. Security Officer Sipos made sure he didn't get the opportunity to access any restricted systems."

"Good. Continue onwards to Leemar. I don't mind if you splurge on the fuel, just get me there quickly."

"It's not advisable to travel outside of a convoy, sir. I highly suggest you wait and join a well-protected group of trade vessels."

While she had a good point, she also boasted many times that his corvette could avoid and outrun any possible pirate ambushes. "I'm short on time and I really need to get to my destination quickly. Sticking to a convoy means that we'll be shackled to the slowest ship in the group."

The captain relented after Ves insisted. With that out of the way, he returned to his stateroom. Lucky lounged on his bed, but after he came in the cat jumped aside and greeted him with a rub.

"Hey there buddy. I've missed you too." Ves said and picked up his mechanical cat. "Have you produced a lot of gems yet?"

The cat meowed at him in an affirmative tone and padded over to a box filled with a couple of gems. Ves also found his comm among the jewels, which he quickly picked up and put over his wrist.

"I've missed you too, System."

After playing around with Lucky for a few minutes, Ves approached his desk and sat down behind his terminal. It had been a long time since he last checked in on his business. The first person he called was Carlos, who appeared on the projector after a few seconds.

"Ves! You're back on the grid!"

"It's been rough out here, but I've survived." He replied with a smile. "Is the workshop still intact?"

"Nothing happened. It's business as usual around here. I've been churning out the silver label Mark II's for over three months."

Carlos laid out the numbers to him. He fabricated and delivered seventeen Mark II's, which largely adhered to the schedule Ves had laid out. Each Mark II sold for 28 million credits, but the cost of raw materials had also risen in recent times, so the average costs amounted to around 19 million credits per mech.

After deducting some of his costs such as his mech broker's cut, the Living Mech Corporation earned an overall profit of 120 million credits. This was a generous sum of money, but Ves found it to be a little meager.

Added up with what he saved in his piggy bank as well as his family's investment, Ves had around 668 million credits at his disposal. Such a vast sum of money dried up very fast if he started shopping around some decent component licenses.

Ves nodded at Carlos while he continued to run the numbers in his mind. "Continue on with your work. You did well with keeping up with a stable rate of production. Once I return, I'll make some changes to our working environment."

After Ves signed off, he leaned back in his chair and considered his financial situation. He possessed a decent sum of money and merits, but not enough. If he wanted to fulfill his dream of designing an original mech, he had to acquire a lot more money at the very least.

"I've learned a lot from my recent trip, and my skills have matured a bit. I should make use of my improved capabilities."

While Ves could scrounge up some money by fabricating a handful of gold label mechs, their shrinking profit margins made it a thankless job. Ves had no enthusiasm of relegating himself to a full-time fabricator.

What he really needed was to fabricate a high-margin product like his planned-for but never-seen ruby label product line. It was time for him to call Marcella and see whether she could find a client for him that was willing to spend a lot of credits.