The Mech Touch novel Chapter 759

Once Ves finally returned to the Shield of Hispania, received an immediate summons to Major Verle’s stateroom. After activating his signal jammer, he provided a brief report of his work using allusions, indirect words and code words.

Just because Ves trusted his signal jammer to disable most types of recording devices did not mean it could defeat everything. The Privacy Shield from the System worked a lot better than his cobbled up device, and worked on scientific principles far beyond his depth.

"So you don’t have a high degree of confidence that your modifications have worked?" Major Verle pressed with a frown.

"No, sir." Ves replied. He really wanted to scratch his head right now, but his armored fingers wouldn’t make that a pleasant experience. Due to the continued state of heightened alert, nobody had shed their bulky suits as of yet. "Look, the best way I can put it is like putting a third-year mech design student in charge of designing a mech. There’s a fifty percent chance the mech works and there’s a fifty percent chance the mech will suffer a catastrophic error such as blowing up or cooking the mech pilot alive."

"Fifty-fifty?"

"Maybe sixty-forty. I have a bit more confidence in my success than failure, sir. Even then, there are different gradations of success and failure. A partial success would be that the.. intended effect is working, but the intrusion is too blunt and noticeable. A partial failure may be that my modifications are working, but it is achieving the wrong effect."

"How do we know whether which one is the case?"

"We don’t, not at first. I had to make a choice how strong I wanted to push the modifications. If it’s shaped like a hammer, we risk incurring immediate damage. If it’s as soft as a pillow, then the effect won’t be as obvious, but it will take a lot of pillow hits in order to achieve the same effect as a simple hammer strike."

"What’s the timeframe until we are able to perceive a difference?"

"I truly don’t know, sir. According to historical examples, it may take up to a week of piloting time to achieve a lasting change. The effect is more telling with the real thing rather than with a simulation. I highly advise conducting at least one simulation session and one live exercise before we depart this star system. I can compare the telemetry of both situations. While it doesn’t allow me to determine whether the effect has the desired outcome, I can at least identify if anything has gone wrong or if there are unintended consequences."

A simulator pod contained a lot of safeties and hardware limitations for Ves to circumvent. Although it couldn’t prevent the brainwashing effect entirely, it severely curtailed its effect.

A neural interface faced fewer limits, especially when it came to versions geared towards expert pilots. They needed to be capable of channeling a lot more data as expert pilots exhibited a massively increased capacity towards processing data. Ves possessed a lot more flexibility in abusing its expanded capabilities to his will.

"Alright. I will immediately schedule some tests. It will take at least four to five hours before the Finmoth Regal and the Linever Swan regain FTL functionality. Once that is done, we will key in the right settings into our fleet’s FTL drives so that we can punch through the spacetime anomaly of the Aeon Corona System and finally reach the other side. The chief engineers have estimated that the journey will take about five to twelve days, depending on how much spacetime turbulence we will finally encounter. That will give us plenty of time to see whether your modifications have achieved the desired effect."

"Sir, if I may ask.. Do we know what’s out there on the other side?"

The mech officer gazed at Ves with a sharp glance. "We have.. clues. Snippets of information. If you are asking me if we know why the Aeon Corona System is surrounded by a spacetime anomaly, I can’t explain that. We don’t know how many planets orbit the trinary stars nor do we know what opposition we will meet beside our competitors."

"And the Starlight Megalodon, sir? How are you so sure she’s there and crash landed onto a Super Earth?"

"We don’t. We only have third-hand information at best. What information we have gathered on the long-lost CFA battleship is obtained from interrogation and torture conducted by others. I’ve been told the interrogations hasn’t achieved a lot of results. The shuttle pilots that have escaped the Aeon Corona System for the first time in three-hundred years actually turned out to be clones. They only provided the answers they intended to disseminate."

Clones!

"That makes this entire venture even more suspicious!"

"Don’t you think we don’t know that?!" Major Verle slammed his fist against his desk. His suit’s servos enhanced the impact force, causing the desk to rattle. "Even if the Aeon Corona System is a trap, someone has to take the bait, because the news we’ve learned is too great for us to ignore. Why do you think we’ve been sent? Because we are expendable! No matter what dangers we meet, all of the risks are worth it if even a fraction of what the clones have spilled are true!"

"This.." Ves knew in his heart that this had always been the case. He just hadn’t expected Verle to be so upfront about it. "What are we really after, sir? What is so valuable about the outdated remains of a CFA battleship that’s so attractive that the Bright Republic readily sends us out as sacrificial lambs?"

Major Verle didn’t sigh, but his face took on a weary expression. The pressure of shouldering a monumentally dangerous mission deep inside the frontier had taken on him as well. As the highest-ranking Vandal in the fleet, his decisions could either save or doom the thousands of Vandal servicemen under his care.

"Everyone is a pawn for someone else. It is not my role to question the orders handed down to us from above. Even if we are acting on dubious intelligence, someone has to go, because the consequences of missing an amazing opportunity is too dear to miss. Might I remind you that the Vesians have sent out their own expedition here, one that is both stronger and more costly than ours."

That reminded him of the strange battle that took place after he isolated himself in his work. It had been a stroke of luck to the Vandals that the Vesians fell prey to the vagaries of the frontier.