The Mech Touch novel Chapter 727

The Flagrant Swordmaidens almost reached the Woolox System after more than a week of travel. They encountered a couple of hitches along the way, but they weren’t delayed for very long.

During one of their stop-overs, Venerable Xie carefully took the newly modified Parallax Star on a test run.

The initial deployment went a little rougher than everybody liked. Ves overlooked a couple of compatibility issues that he immediately patched up. When Xie deployed yet again, he reported that he felt a lot more comfortable in piloting the machine, though it still felt like riding a bucking horse according to the expert pilot.

"Riding a bucking horse is better than walking on foot, sir." Ves reported in a routine status update to Major Verle. "There’s very little I can do to improve the compatibility between the Parallax Star and Venerable Xie. You can’t just shift any customized expert mech designed to be piloted by a specific expert pilot to a completely different person. There is some.. friction between man and machine."

"Will it help if Professor Velten pitches in on the design?"

Ves shook his head over the comm. "Yes, but not as much as you are hoping, sir. Even the professor can’t increase the compatibility between the Parallax Star and Venerable Xie if she isn’t able to meet the expert pilot in the flesh. While it’s possible for her to get to know Xie better through remote communication, it’s not as good as just meeting the man up close. I’ve interacted personally with the Venerable, so my work is not that much off from what she doubtlessly wishes to implement as well."

While that was true, Ves also didn’t want to stay aboard the Gorgon’s Gaze any longer. He still had a side project with his name on it waiting back on the Shield of Hispania!

If Professor Velten pitched in with her own tweaks, then he’d certainly be stuck here a couple of weeks longer!

"Very well." Fortunately, Major Verle bought his excuse. "What are your estimates of its fighting strength in Venerable Xie’s hands?"

"Sir, I’m sure your mech officers have made their own estimates based on his initial practice runs, but from a mech designer’s perspective I don’t think his resonance strength is up to the task of expressing more than thirty percent of its maximum strength. A lot of the expenses put into the fabrication of the Parallax Star is to enhance the effects of its energy shield and its piercing effects. It doesn’t help that Venerable Xie doesn’t favor utilizing charges in his fighting style. He can do it, but he’s not very adept at pulling out the expert mech’s strength."

"I am aware of this deficiency. It is a simple fact of life that we have to work with what we have at our disposal. The only role reserved for Venerable Xie in our mech regiment is to hinder the advance of enemy expert pilots. So long as he can be employed against ferocious tigers hell-bent on slaughtering our rank-and-file, we can save the lives of hundreds of fellow Vandal mech pilots."

Ves didn’t mention that the Parallax Star made for a relatively poor guardian in its new state and its new mech pilot. The mech lost much of the magic that made it competitive among expert mechs, and a weaker expert pilot only exacerbated the drop in combat strength.

After finishing his report, Ves received one more surprise visitor the day before his return to the Shield of Hispania. Lieutenant Koltov caught him just after he exited the toilet.

"Mr. Larkinson! A moment of your time please."

"Certainly, lieutenant."

The two found an out-of-the-way compartment to conduct their private talk. Of course, it wouldn’t be very private considering the Gorgon’s Gaze monitoring system recorded everything while an uninvited guest constantly followed behind Ves whenever he wasn’t in the same compartment as Venerable Xie.

Ves did take advantage of the caution shown by Acolyte Villis by implementing some measures out of her sight. He couldn’t do much on his own, but he hoped the precautions he prepared out of the cultist’s sight could save the Flagrant Swordmaidens from a potential disaster.

He still wondered what Koltov wanted from him. "Why have you called me out here?"

"It’s about Venerable Karol Xie. Some of us are harboring some concerns about his.. Dedication, shall we say. Haven’t you wondered why Xie is overly deferential and cooperative to a fault with us?"

"Hm. I thought that was part of his personality?" Ves threw out the obvious. "The Fourth Prince kept him on a leash since he was a puppy. Now that he has grown up to become a fierce guard dog, he still acts like he wants some treats to his master."

"We’ve thought of that, but there is just something that doesn’t quite fit. The whole circumstance surrounding the foundering of the Shining Stars Colonization Fleet is rather dubious in the first place. Although we’ve verified that Prince Hixt-Klaaster is a genuine royal from the Palast Kingdom of the Dark Plasma Star Sector, it requires a successive chain of poor decisions to lead his colonization fleet to ruin in the Ermeghast Star System."

She basically suggested that there might have been a possibility that the Fourth Prince deliberately led his colonization fleet to their doom. Yet Ves found this entire possibility ridiculous.

"There’s no apparent motive for this. What does the Fourth Prince and Venerable Xie gain from all of this? Sure, they get to ride on our fleet for a while, but we’re almost about to drop off the prince at the Woolox System. In addition, there’s no way the Fourth Prince can anticipate our arrival in the Ermaghast System at that date. This is way too convoluted. Occam’s Razor suggests that the Fourth Prince is simply a poor decision maker and that all of his mistakes can be attributed to his lack of judgement."

The lieutenant held up a hand to placate Ves. "We don’t necessarily disagree, but we must always remain vigilant against the alternatives. Right now, we are more than eager to get rid of the Fourth Prince and his surviving retainers. Yet even if we have made some arrangements so that the prince and his loyalists are taken care of, we still don’t know if Venerable Xie has made some other arrangements. We believe there is a small but potentially devastating chance that Xie is already spoken for. In the worst-case scenario, he has already pledged his loyalty to one of our competitors in our hunt for the Starlight Megalodon."