The Mech Touch

Chapter 7243: Mutated Voribug Hives

After the meeting concluded, Ves and Gloriana reluctantly called it a day. They assigned a few mech designers to monitor the Riot Mark III on a rotating basis before they chose to retire to their grand stateroom.

Their children all reacted with surprise after their parents briefly explained what had happened.

Andraste looked sympathetic. “Poor woman. Rosa doesn’t deserve this. I would hate it if I was forced to live the rest of my life as a machine.”

“That might not necessarily be the case.” Ves gently replied. “As long as she is able to become a god pilot, she will gain the power to shape her own destiny. We all believe it is not that difficult for her to reform a human body for herself again. Aside from that, I have been thinking about giving her a stopgap solution. The simplest answer is to connect her to a mechanical or bionic avatar that can roam around within a certain distance of herself. This is not a perfect solution by any means, but it is still sufficient to give her a semblance of human life.”

He already had a few ideas on how he could improve on this idea. Just because he could not restore her original human body did not mean he could give her opportunities to enjoy human-like experiences.

It all depended on how much he could mess with the Riot. Now that Saint Orfan had fused with it, changing any aspect of the mech entailed greater risks than usual.

Any significant change could either strengthen or weaken her soul. It may even change core aspects of her personality.

Due to these concerns, Ves and Gloriana ultimately decided to postpone any upgrades until she woke up again.

In the meantime, they could revise their old plans about swapping out the resonating exotics and investigate whether they need to make other changes for the Riot Mark III Revision B.

Ves happily foisted most of the work onto Gloriana’s lap.

“Why do I have to undertake this burden?” She asked with a voice devoid of enthusiasm.

“This sort of work is more technical and delicate. You are much better suited to apply physical tweaks to an archemech. Besides, have you forgotten about my deal with the Dark Apostle? I borrowed a lot of time from him in advance. I am obliged to uphold my end of the bargain. I will surrender control over my true body to my other self for a handful of days. He will be spending his time over at the Armitage, so please take care of the Riot on my behalf.”

“What?” Gloriana looked outraged! “You are running away from your own problem! This is your mess, not mine! What if an incident occurs that only you can solve?!”

“Then call me over an emergency channel. The Dark Apostle will return control of my body to me and I will transfer over as quickly as possible.”

The pair continued to discuss their arrangements for the next week. It might not be fair to Gloriana to assume so many responsibilities, but Ves had no other choice.

“What will your other self be doing in the meantime?” She asked.

“That will be up to him. I expect my phase lord self to spend his valuable time on training and getting up to speed with his new leadership position. We also need to decide where exactly we should go and what we intend to do once we arrive at the frontlines.”

His wife grew grave. “Those mutated voribugs are dangerous. I have not spent much time on keeping up with the news of what is happening at the second Rubarthan front, but the news is still pessimistic. The reinforcements from the Cybernetic Empire are helping, but their efforts are not enough to stem the tide. For all of their vaunted CE tech, they can still get exhausted after getting flooded by unending tides of voribugs. At most, their warfleets are buying more time for evacuations. At least we will no longer see as many instances of entire populations getting abandoned and being left to the tender mercies of our alien enemies.”

The return of the Cybernetic Empire had not only changed the military landscape of red humanity, but also its infrastructure.

The Cybers had built up a huge merchant marine.

The Cybernetic Empire’s military aid was constrained by its own greed and ambition. The other major human powers were reluctant to give up so many resources, territories and manpower, afraid that they would ultimately contribute to the Polymath’s takeover of their people.

Fortunately, the Cybers were less reluctant in letting its merchant marine ply the star lanes.

Tens of thousands of cheap but serviceable civilian-grade cargo haulers had begun to engage in transport services.

While their service sounded a bit boring and unremarkable in an age where heroes and gods collided against each other, the value of all of these trading vessels was immense!

Not only was industry and trade beginning to work properly again, but many ships suddenly became available to assist with the relocation of humans on vulnerable planets to safer locations.

Of course, the Cybers were not doing this out of the good of their hearts.

The demand for logistical services had risen so much that many companies were willing to pay high premiums to contract the services of any cargo vessel, no matter whether they were Terran, Rubarthan or Cyber in origin.

This was also an easy way for the Cybers to connect to the wider human society that they had been separated from for over 50 years and earn a bit of goodwill in the process.

In addition, sending ships to evacuate large amounts of humans gave the Cybers an opportunity to bring back large amounts of people who would be happy to join the Cybernetic Empire and start new lives on newly colonized planets.

Many people could figure out that the Cybers were taking advantage of the ongoing wars to expand their population, but what could the others do? It was the fault of the established major powers that they were unable to protect their own citizens against their alien foes.

Ves was sure that the new front had become a political as well as a humanitarian mess.

It might not be wise for him to dip his toes into this crisis, but he was still determined to take a look for himself.

The native aliens had become old news to him. He craved a new challenge.

Perhaps many people considered the mutated voribugs unbeatable, but that just meant that red humanity had yet to properly study their new adversaries and developed proper counters.

The Dark Apostle happened to agree with this sentiment.

Once Ves transferred to the new ship that was assigned to the Phase Lord Department and gave up control to his alter ego, the Dark Apostle decided to hold a meeting to discuss their upcoming war plans.

Eliza Mo Ragadan, Andrea Vos and the Divine Harpoon attended the meeting in person.

The differences in size did not bother any of them. The Dark Apostle and the Divine Harpoon were perhaps the Ascended Giants who harbored the most respect towards red humans. They had no problems with letting the two regular-sized humans make themselves heard.

“Now that our ship is closing in on the frontlines, I want to make sure we arrive somewhere exciting.” The new polemarchos began. “I have tasked you to study what is taking place at the frontlines and form a recommendation on where we have the best chance of earning glory. Please share your findings.”

A short moment of silence ensued before Andrea Vos spoke first.

“A new development has occurred in the war against the mutated voribugs. The insectile aliens have begun to… differentiate from each other. The Secret Department can tell you more about this, but from what I understand, the entire body of mutated voribugs no longer fight in a completely uniform manner anymore. We have gathered more and more proof that the entire race… is splitting up into multiple distinct hives. Each of them have the same starting point, but are slowly beginning to evolve and develop their own traits.”

The others had already learned about this, but this was very much new to the Dark Apostle!

He couldn’t help it as Ves had hogged so much time in order to complete the Riot Mark III Project.

The department head of the Phase Lord Department leaned forward. “Tell me more.”

“We have yet to gather enough proof, but one of our most convincing theories is that the powerful queen that is at the center of the mutated voribug race has chosen to delegate and diversify her massive swarm. Why it has done so remains unclear. Perhaps there is a limit to how many individual bugs she can directly control. Perhaps she is following a universal organic directive by birthing powerful offspring. Perhaps she wants to promote the evolution of her race by introducing internal competition.”

All of those theories sounded plausible, but Dark Apostle did not dare to put too much stock in any of them. Who knew if the completely alien voribug queen adhered to very different reasons.

“Our observations so far have exposed the existence of at least 6 hives, though we do not rule out the possibility that there are more. Regardless, the insects belonging to every hive are gradually beginning to evolve in different directions. They are developing subspecies that only belong to a single hive, and they are also executing different strategies than the ones they have chosen in the past.”

This sounded rather familiar to Ves. Similar rationale could easily be applied to the phalanxes of the Phase Lord Department or how the Larkinson Army began to develop multiple different legions.

There was strength in diversity. It was not a good idea to rely on a single solution. The so-called Devourer Queen must have recognized this as well, and also acknowledged that it alone could not pursue multiple divergent evolutionary ideas.

That did not stop the Devourer Queen from solving this problem in a different way.

A projection came to live that showcased very recent snapshots and archival footage that showed the evolving hives in action.

Eliza Mo Ragadan continued her explanation.

“Only a relatively short amount of time has passed, but the mutated voribugs excel in speed. They are rapidly improving upon the mutations they apply to their fellow kind. We believe that every hive is led by a ‘voribug princess’, a mutated voribug bred for leadership and concession. One of them may even be strong enough one day to challenge the Devourer Queen and possibly their mother over control of the mutated voribugs.”

All of this sounded interesting, but the Dark Apostle could not help but deduce that very little of this information could be verified at this time.

“These princesses sound really important.” The giant began to smirk. “I bet that they are deployed closer to the frontlines. That makes them vulnerable. If we can track one of them down and capture it, we can bring it back and have our scientists figure out the secrets of the mutated voribug. Even if we cannot capture it, killing it will definitely produce results.”

“It will be challenging to track them down, sir.” The Farseer said. “The Devourer Queen is untraceable, and we believe that the princesses will also put great effort into hiding their locations. We will have to resort to much more time-consuming methods to have a chance of tracking just one of these hives. Even if you can ascertain their locations, the Bluejay Fleet is not equipped to commence an assault of this magnitude. It may ultimately necessitate the intervention of a god pilot to take down such a powerful alien adjutant.”

On second thought, it was indeed a reckless idea to target the so-called princesses directly.

The Bluejay Fleet was simply not ready. The armed forces at the Dark Apostle’s disposal was primarily geared to fight against more traditional enemies. The hives would eat them up if they chose to barge in unprepared.

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