The Mech Touch

Solok Reyva's record did not reveal too many details. Much of it was classified and not accessible to a low-leveled external associate such as Ves. What little he had to go on only described the basics.

Almost thirty years ago, Solok Reyva was a Journeyman similar to Jovy Armalon. He was born into the MTA, where his parents worked for a long time.

The talented Solok did not opt to become a passionate mech designer. Like many of those who were brought up within the MTA, he chose the harder route and focused on designing mechs with his mind rather than his heart.

His design philosophy wasn't actually very impressive as a result. Officially, Solok specialized in burst-mobility propulsion systems. This was a rather plain Class IV design philosophy that allowed his mechs to exhibit extreme bursts of speed when needed.

Compared to a highly abstruse design philosophy like that of Jovy, Solok chose a much easier path to Master.

Regardless, as a rational mech designer, it really didn't matter if Solok could hardly contribute anything valuable to the MTA with his specialty.

The principal use of rational mech designers was to imitate and combine multiple different design philosophies developed by others!

This made tracking down Solok and the Krella Alliance that much harder. The latter had profited much from the former. Not only had the Krella Alliance grown its main fleet, it also established numerous other fleets!

What complicated the search even further was that every fleet hosted numerous mech designers. Whether willingly or not, they designed and produced various mechs on behalf of the Krella Alliance.

Within the vast and expansive pirate ecosystem of the Nyxian Gap, the Krella Alliance was one of the few reliable providers to medium and high-quality mechs!

While his did not sound very remarkable if the Krella Alliance operated in civilized space, in a region as difficult as the Nyxian Gap, most pirates could hardly find any mech supplier that sold something better than junk!

According to the intelligence provided by the Rim Guardians, most Krella Alliance fleets hid in the inner periphery of the Gap. The inner periphery was were most of the more established pirate groups resided.

Unlike the outer periphery, a lot less Peacekeeper outfits tended to venture into the inner periphery. The chance of encountering hazard zones was bigger, though it wasn't as bad as the core regions.

In general, the inner periphery was far enough from the Sentinel Kingdom to evade the authorities. It was also just beyond the core regions, where the spatial warping had reached such an intense level that most quantum entanglement nodes stopped working correctly.

In certain areas in the core regions, even his new Darkbreak module might not be able to maintain a connection to the galactic net!

Ves heavily suspected that the Oblivion Hand and his parents made their home in the core regions. This was why he never managed to get in touch with them through the backdoor he implemented in the Devil Tiger.

Even though the inner periphery sounded considerably safer than the core region, in truth nothing was absolute!

The CFA and MTA longer dispatched any of their main forces into the Nyxian Gap when a large proportion of their forces simply disappeared.

While the bulk of these disappearances took place in the core regions, it wasn't impossible for some of them to fall off the radar in both the inner and outer periphery!

The Big Two stopped sending big warfleets into the Nyxian Gap after that. Most of the time, the MTA relied on external help to investigate this perilous region.

Even if their local helpers encountered mishaps, the MTA didn't care! Such losses no longer hurt them. The only problem was that associates like Ves were not as capable and very reluctant to take on risks.

The MTA had no choice but to ramp up their merit rewards in order to encourage others to complete its missions.

Right now, Ves was one of the many fish that one of the MTA's daughter organizations had managed to lure.

The prospect of getting 10,000,000 MTA merits closer to his goal was simply too irresistible to him! Unlike many other missions, Ves was somewhat confident he could rescue Solok Reyva from the clutches of the Krella Alliance.

The key was to make use of all of his strengths. Aside from being confident that he could trace Solok's work, Ves also leaned on Calabast to facilitate the hunt!

The spymaster of the Larkinson Clan accompanied the task force in person. Instead of traveling on the Swordmaiden carrier, Calabast opted to take up residence in the Scarlet Rose.

That made it easier for Ves to visit her office in order to discuss their next moves.

When Ves entered her office compartment with Lucky, Calabast already awaited his arrival.

She draped black-clad body over the length of a couch that she specifically brought aboard the mobile supply frigate.

"Hello, Ves. Would you like to join me?" She asked in a teasing tone.

"No thanks." Ves scowled and opted to sit on the chair in front of her desk instead. "In case you don't know, I'm engaged."

"Hahaha, Gloriana won't mind what she doesn't know."

"Can you please stop joking around? I am in no mood to play this game."

Calabast shrugged and straightened her sinuously-curved body. The tightness of her uniform only accentuated her womanly charm.

"Fine. I suppose you are here to hear about Mr. Reyva's whereabouts?"

He nodded. "Have you narrowed down the area where we are likely to encounter the right Krella Alliance fleet?"

"Not exactly, but I have my suspicions." Calabast waved her hand, causing a projection of a map of the Nyxian Gap to come into view.

The map had already been segregated into different regions and zones. She first highlighted a sizable zone in the inner periphery.

"After my Black Cats have collected a lot of intelligence and performed an extensive analysis, we have good reason to believe that the main fleet of the Krella Alliance is likely situated in a zone commonly referred to as the Maynard Fields."

Another projection popped up that displayed various archival footage of the zone in question.

"Maynard Fields is one of the inner periphery zones with some of the highest concentration of asteroids. Navigating through this area will test every helmsman and navigator. One wrong move can easily cause a ship to collide against an asteroid."

The concentration of asteroids was at least twice or thrice that of a regular zone in the periphery!

This was bad news, because any fleet traversing through this field would have to slow down in order to minimize any chance of bumping into them. The higher concentration of asteroids also made it easier to set up ambushes.

"Why would anyone even hang out in this dense field of asteroids?" Ves frowned.

"Maynard Fields is not rich in medium-grade or high-grade exotics. What is actually notable is that a fair number of asteroids contain notable deposits of Kavenit. While it takes some effort to find a Kavenit asteroid, once someone does, it's very easy to extract large quantities of this low-grade exotic."

Ah. Kavenit. That was a familiar material to Ves. It was a fairly prevalent exotic in in the Yeina Star Cluster. Its wide applicability as an armor strengthener turned it into one of the most common ingredients used to toughen up cheap mechs.

Back in the frontier, Ves learned that the pirates there minted the Kavenit into coins, bars or slates in order to form a commonly-accepted hard currency.

Apparently, the Nyxian pirates adopted the same tradition.

"The pirate groups that are able to establish a presence in Maynard Fields are all able to mine a substantial amount of currency. The groups subsequently spend all of the wealth they mined to trade for other goods and services. It's quite a lucrative trade and the pirates that have managed to establish a foundation in Maynard are not weak."

"I see." Ves idly stroked Lucky's back. "So what is the main fleet of the Krella Alliance doing here?"

Calabast shrugged again. "I'm not certain yet. Perhaps the Krella Alliance requires a large amount of funds in order to fund an expansion. Maybe the group is searching for more recruits. There are a decent number of pirate bases and strongholds in Maynard that serve as hubs for pirate outfits. All kinds of misfits and criminals seek their fortune at these dens of iniquity."

The pirate organizations that were able to mine Kanevit on a large scale were not short on money. Hence, their publicly-accessible bases were home to a lot of markets and trading platforms.

With so much traffic and activity, ambushes must be very common here. The dense asteroid concentration provided considerable advantages to ambushers. Those that wish to travel through Maynard Fields unscathed had to remain alert throughout the entire journey!

Such conditions did not sound ideal to Ves. Despite the considerable strength of Task Force Predator, the difficult space terrain hindered its ability to bring all of its strength to bear.

The numerous asteroids not only got in the way of dispatching reinforcements, but also provided a lot of hard cover against ranged fire!

This effectively meant that most battles in Maynard consisted of short to medium-range brawls. Rifleman mechs and other ranged mechs were only able to fire at a limited distance.

"What about anomalies and hazard zones?" Ves asked.

"At least that isn't so bad. Kavenit is a relatively stable and unenergetic exotic. They hardly throw up any strange phenomena. The concentration of medium to high-grade exotics is too low in Maynard Fields to generate many space hazards. While that doesn't mean that an anomaly might emerge in certain localized areas, as a whole the zone has never presented a significant risk to its travelers. This is one of the other reasons why many pirate outfits prefer to linger in Maynard."

"Alright. That sounds good. I would rather fight against pirates then bump into inexplicable phenomena in space. How will we reach this zone?"

Calabast swiped her finger, causing a dotted route to traverse across the map. It began from the outer periphery and cut straight into Maynard.

"The direct route is best I believe. If time is an issue, then I advise the fleet to pass through an outer periphery zone called Wreckage Paradise."

"What a.. descriptive name. I take it that there's a lot of space junk floating in this region?"

Calabast nodded. "Wreckage Paradise has a relatively low concentration of asteroids. Most of them are filled with nothing but rock or mundane materials. What makes them notable is that a small amount of them actually hide modest deposits of medium-grade exotics. These are materials that can be sold for a high price in civilized space. This attracts a lot of Peacekeeper outfits. They usually cross into Wreckage Paradise with a mining ship or two to prospect and mine the valuable materials."

"And I suppose that attracts a lot of pirates, right?"

"Yup. The pirate gangs that prowl Wreckage Paradise tend to be rather weak. They aren't strong enough to enter the inner periphery, so they have to make do in the outermost zones of Nyxian Gap where they often clash with Peacekeepers."

That must be why the zone became known as Wreckage Paradise. Too much wreckage from mechs and ships floated in the area. Most of them were rather cheap to begin with, so salvagers hardly earned enough profit to compensate for the considerable risks of operating in a pirate-infested zone.

As Ves read up on Wreckage Paradise, he found himself agreeing with Calabast's choice. The bottom feeder pirates posed no threat to his forces, and the concentration of asteroids was so low that it would not slow down his fleet too much.

"Very well. I'll pass your recommendations to the fleet. If nothing else comes up, we'll adopt this route."

It would take around several weeks to a month to travel through Wreckage Paradise. After that, Ves planned to spend a couple of months in Maynard Fields.

Even if he failed to track down Solok Reyva, he could still pursue some other missions!