The Mech Touch novel Chapter 739

The autopsy of Captain Murtadon revealed fairly little of importance. The man carried an extensive amount of organic implants capable of many different functions in his body. A special alloy shell surrounded the implants, hiding them from regular scans and making it appear that only normal organs took their place.

Ves wanted the alloy material. He had a strong suspicion that they were another application of stealth technology, one that worked with almost minimal power consumption. Despite his begging, the Vandals removed the alloy shells and chucked them into the vault. Ves felt like a little kid whose parents just locked his favorite toy in the closet!

He wanted to cry!

In any case, the doctors found out that Murtadon made use of several clever implants. Some boosted his physical performance. Others enhanced his piloting ability, if only slightly. The implants on his arms consisted of guns which utilized projectiles metabolized from the mech captain’s own body!

However, by far the most important implant consisted of the biocomputer integrated within Murtadon’s mind. It was like a comm, processor, hacking device, transceiver and scanner all rolled up in a dense piece of flesh the size of a chicken egg. What impressed everyone even more was that the doctors found that its growth had been induced from outside manipulation.

In other words, Murtadon’s body grew the biocomputer like a tumor inside his brains! This was by far the most effective way of installing an implant in one’s body because it minimized the risk of rejection and complications.

It took a while for the implant to grow to its current size and capabilities. Captain Murtadon constantly had to ingest or be injected with trace amounts of exotics that eventually made up the core components of the biocomputer.

Once the biocomputer grew to its mature state, Murtadon underwent an operation that covered up the biocomputer in the alloy shell that hid it from every means of detection.

"This is an expensive procedure." Ves remarked as he picked up a data pad and read through its contents. "I’m no expert in implants, but even I know how risky it is to hook up your brains to a processor. No matter if its biological, electronic or mechanical in nature, any processor or computer and be hacked. Their programming can easily be subverted once you know it’s there."

This was also one of the major reasons why hooking people up with processors, biocomputers, AI chips and the like fell out of vogue.

At some points during the Age of Space and Age of Conquest, implants rose into popularity as their functions substantially augmented a baseline human’s capability.

Implanted weapons integrated in an assassin’s body allowed them to take out their targets despite being searched for weapons.

A cyborg body thrown out into space due to an accident could survive in hard vacuum for hours as their entire body subsided on energy cells instead of oxygen.

AI chips integrated in the brains of children enabled them to learn faster and store the entire contents of a library for their perusal. Their processing power grew monstrous enough to the point where they could mentally plot an FTL transition by themselves!

Yet as quickly as these products rose, they quickly crashed and burned in a matter of years or months. No matter how ingenious their security measures safeguarded the integrity of the programming of the implants, hackers always manage to circumvent these means and gain malicious control over the integrated systems.

That assassin with implanted weapons? His body tore itself apart when its weapons discharged without prompting from the user itself!

The cyborg taking a casual spacewalk out in space? His artificial body’s energy cells abruptly discharged itself at once, frying the entire body and its protected organic organs!

The children implanted with AI chips? Their AIs experienced a gradual change in personality and guided the children into immoral psychopaths who utilized their substantial advantages over their unaugmented peers to attain positions of leadership before abusing them sow death and destruction on a sector-wide scale!

These days, everyone knew that installing an implant in someone’s body was like building a door into a stone wall. Made from wood, stone or metal, no matter how sturdy the door turned out to be, someone with the right key or lockpicking ability would eventually be able to open it and enter into the area behind the wall.

"That’s why the late captain’s implants are coated with this stealth alloy." The security captain pointed out. "I doubt he’s aware of the vulnerabilities they pose to his implants and his own mind, so the stealth shielding is necessary to prevent hackers from making their intrusion attempts in the first place."

This was like covering up the door with a fake layer of stone in order to camouflage it against the rest of the wall. It didn’t close the vulnerability, but it prevented others from detecting it through regular observations and scans.

"Are the implants retrievable? Can we pull out data from its organic data banks?"

The security captain shook his head. "Sadly not, major. The suicide trigger melted and burned the implants from top to bottom. The implants were designed from the start with the capability to wipe out every piece of data."

"Then what does that mean?" Ves grew confused."Is Captain Murtadon some kind of spy working for the Coman Federation?"

"Unlikely. Even the Coman know better than to dabble with biocomputers and implants. If they dare to utilize it to a wide degree, their entire society becomes vulnerable to an organized hacking effort. They’d be conquered without being able to fire a single shot."

"Then who else might do this?"

"It doesn’t appear to be the style of any of the states and influences from the Komodo Star Sector." Major Verle declared. "I’m much more inclined to believe that Captain Murtadon may have been employed by an influence foreign to the Komodo Star Sector."

That left them with a dead end. Without a way to retrieve any data from the fried biocomputer, the Vandals were left with nothing but reasonable guesses and an open-ended suspicion towards foreign interference.