The Mech Touch

The Ubiquitous Force was a ship of understated luxury. Just like her owner, the frigate was modest and relatively unassuming.

Certainly, the logo of the MTA, her personal emblem and some exceptional-looking ornaments made it clear that the Ubiquitous Force was an extension of one of the most powerful organizations of humanity.

However, much of the actual guts of the ship was buried beneath closed hatches, classic tiled decks and white-coated bulkheads. Ves encountered hardly any bots or crewmen when Jovy guided him to the lounge compartment.

As for the space he was currently in, the wood-paneled walls and the rich red carpeting made him feel as if he entered someone's home.

What drew his attention were the oddly playful gravity traps.

For example, a green-and-purple exoflower hovered above the coffee table.

The plant radiated a pleasant aroma that could only be smelled between 1.1 and 1.2 meters above the deck. Gravity firmly kept a grip on the scent molecules so that they did not spill outside this very specific band.

To water and feed this plant, streams of sparkling nutrient water emerged out nowhere and threaded a morphing, sophisticated route before enveloping the roots of the exoplant.

The threaded water changed shape every ten seconds, morphing into aesthetically-pleasing forms such as a sunflower, a roaring lion, the face of Master Willix when she was younger and so on. All of these transformations took place without spilling a single drop of water.

And this was just one of the decorative gravity traps!

A moving chandelier made out of crystals and crystal dust glittered above his head. From the hand-sized crystals to the tiniest mote of dust, each and every single one of them moved with remarkable precision as they adopted various shapes. The light they emitted caused the lounge to cast different shadows that somehow soothed his eyes.

Together with Jovy's amiable approach, Ves felt increasingly more at ease. Even if he knew that Master Willix engaged in some clever manipulation, it was simply too hard for him to keep his guard up when his body just wanted to sink into the ultra-comfortable couch that was already starting to massage his back as if it was an actual masseuse.

Yet beneath this friendly facade hid extreme danger.

While he wasn't able to observe any threats with his regular vision, he had a trick up his sleeve.

After contemplating the risks, he decided to take a risk. He concentrated his mind and rapidly created a spiritual augment based on a template stored in his implant.

Once he was finished, he gained access to a small and discrete spiritual eye. He was unsure whether the ship contained any means of detecting and tracking spiritual energy, so sending out a little spiritual eye also served as a test to probe Willix's capabilities.

When Ves cautiously sent the spiritual eye through the decks, bulkheads, ceilings and other solid objects, his blood began to freeze.

Underneath the warm decorations, he detected a large amount of dangerous and unknown machinery.

While at least three-quarters of the components he observed were too advanced for him to decipher their functions, he was still able to identify the remainder.

More than a dozen dormant plasma turrets rested in the ceiling above his head. Ves estimated that each of these turrets were so powerful that they could burn holes straight through his Bright Warrior mechs!

A handful of powerful positron beam cannon mounts were buried behind the bulkheads.

Ves almost jumped from his comfy massage couch when he noticed that an antimatter bomb was buried underneath his butt!

Yet no matter how scary all of these weapons appeared, it was still possible to resist them as long as he wore proper armor.

What truly destabilized his mood was the sophisticated gravitic modules taking up a lot of space beneath the deck.

The modules that were responsible for sustaining the gravity traps only channeled a fraction of their power. If they truly came online, Ves loosely estimated that they might be able to ramp up the artificial gravity to at least 10,000 g!

This alone was enough to unbalance his heart. What was the concept of generating 10,000 g? It meant that anything in the area of effect would suddenly become 10,000 heavier than normal!

Someone who weighed 100 kilograms would suddenly weigh 1 million kilograms instead!

Forget about being able to walk to walk or crawl, when someone's body was subjected to so much gravity, their bodies would instantly collapse in itself! With so much force, the hyper-advanced gravitic modules should easily be capable of squashing his augmented body into a cube the size of his thumb!

What was worse was that these powerful gravitic modules were everywhere. Their degree of miniaturization was incredible, so Master Willix was easily able to integrate them between the decks, behind the bulkheads and even in the furniture!

He suddenly understood why the ship was called the Ubiquitous Force. The moment someone stepped aboard the ship, there was no way to hide from her lethal gravity!

Throughout his examination, Ves gained a deeper respect for Master Willix's design philosophy. He thought that specializing in gravity systems mainly entailed designing highly-mobile mechs.

While that may be true, her specialty also enabled her to develop horrible weapons!

Of all of the possible ways to attack a mech, most of them had to overcome its armor system before dealing any serious damage.

Gravity happened to be one of the few forces that directly affected the mech pilot and the internals of mech.

Usually, modern mechs integrated numerous gravitic modules or inertial stabilizers to prevent excessive gravity or g-forces from crushing anything delicate. They were a necessity in spaceborn mechs, because otherwise a sharp turning maneuver might be enough to flatten a mech pilot against the side of the cockpit into a pancake!

What happened when mechs attempted to weaponize gravity?

If a gravitic weapon was powerful enough, they had the potential to bypass the armor of a mech and directly crush the mech pilot and delicate internal components. This was an incredibly powerful effect that was very difficult to defend against!

It wasn't entirely hopeless to fight against gravitic weapons. There were still ways to defend against it. Certain special armor systems were capable of blocking or weakening external gravitic attacks.

One of the troublesome aspects of gravitic weapons was that they weren't that effective at range. The fact that the mechs that employed these weapons had to get close also exposed a vulnerability.

However, as long as these weapons were powerful enough, it was easy for them to overwhelm the defenses of most mechs. Even mechs that were specifically designed to counter Master Willix's works would have a hard time defending against powerful gravitic weapons.

She was one of the top authorities in this field!

Few mech designers were capable of developing defensive measures that exceeded what she could already do! Contesting her on her home ground was a losing prospect.

Opponents were better off trying to counter her mechs at range, but even then Master Willix probably had answers for that as well.

Perhaps her mechs were capable of deploying pylons that created a strong gravitic cage. 

Perhaps they were capable of launching missiles that generated powerful implosions akin to black holes on impact.

Perhaps her machines were able to exert gravity onto themselves in such a way that allowed to accelerate a hundred times greater than a regular mech!

While Ves had studied some of Willix's publicly-known works, the MTA was remarkably opaque when it came to their main machines. Releasing their specs made it easier for enemies to counter them. What little he knew about her mechs did not encompass any offensive applications of gravitic technology, but he would be a fool to think that they didn't exist.

When he realized the magnitude of his discoveries, he could no longer take comfort in his surroundings.

The warm interior, the plush carpet, the pleasant scents were all camouflage in his eyes. Without any way to control or defend against the weapons hidden beneath the surface, how could someone as paranoid as him ever feel secure?

His conversation with Jovy quickly grew stilted. Ves paid more attention to the many methods the ship could kill him. There were distressingly few options to defend against these threats.

"Are you really sure you don't want to enter Design World with me?" Jovy asked again. "For mech designers such as us, it's one of the steadiest ways to earn MTA merits. As long as you obtain a pass, you can enter whenever you want. Isn't that great?"

"It's all fake." Ves shook his head.

"Pardon?"

"Will our mechs be able to showcase their full strength in Design World?"

"Not entirely. The tech that supports it is incredibly advanced. It's capable of simulating reality to near-perfection. It's even able to simulate our design philosophies by at least half their potency, if not more. Don't look down on that, Ves. This is a remarkable achievement considering that many ordinary virtual simulations can't even reach 5 percent. What's even better is the location of the mech designer doesn't matter."

While Ves had to admit this accomplishment sounded incredible, he became more wary of it by the second.

The main reason he didn't want to enter Design World was because it would certainly entail interfacing with his implant.

Even though his implant came with various security measures to prevent unauthorized intrusions, he did not believe they stood a chance against the MTA's state-of-the-art hacking measures.

No matter what, establishing a connection between his mind and any virtual interface that was not under his control sounded like a bad idea!

Of course, he couldn't say his suspicions out loud, so he resorted to another excuse to decline the other Journeyman's invitation.

"Look, Jovy, I've dabbled with virtual mechs for a time. They're easy to design and easy for others to access. Piloting virtual mechs is a boon because they provide mech pilots with abundant training opportunities that they can't get in reality. Yet despite these conveniences, most professional mech pilots still value training in a real mech."

"Design World offers opportunities for you to design mechs that you can never design in reality. If you are willing to exchange some of your merits or credits, you can easily unlock the ability to design a first-class mech or even an expert mech if you can find some help."

"While all of that sounds attractive, it's all fake." Ves sighed. "How much time have you spent in Design World?"

"A lot. I've logged in plenty of times in the past few years. It's one of the main ways for me to earn more merits."

Ves crossed his arms. "I see. While you have been playing with virtual mechs, I have fought the Friday Coalition, wiped out numerous pirate gangs, razed Ulimo Citadel and defeated actual warships. I led my men in battle, losing thousands of them in the process, and came close to losing my life several times. I accomplished all of this with just a fraction of the strength that you are able to muster!"

"That.. Design World is.."

"No matter how close Design World is able to mimic reality, there is no chance that people there will actually die!" Ves burst out. "Do you know why? Because it doesn't matter! Nothing in a virtual reality ultimately matters! Take my last battle for example. Do you think you could have won against the Allidus Alliance if you were in my shoes? The odds were so low that I had to squeeze my design philosophy to the limit in order to come up with various means to eke out a victory. With my mechs, almost twenty of my mech pilots managed to break through in battle, thereby achieving their lifelong wishes, if only for a moment! Is that what you can do in a virtual reality?!"

"No…"

While it wasn't unheard of for mech pilots to break through while piloting a virtual mech, these were outliers. The fact that every mech pilot knew that there wasn't any skin in the game meant that they were never desperate enough to reach their full potential!