The Mech Touch

After the quiet dinner party came to an end, every Larkinson returned to their own berths. The Gravada Knarlax was not a hotel, after all. Engineers and inspectors from the MTA constantly crawled through the huge vessel.

Ves decided to have some fun for his last night as a bachelor. He spontaneously decided to spend the night on the Gravada Knarlax.

Though this caused the clan a small amount of consternation, he eventually got his way.

In any case, the Gravada Knarlax was completely safe and devoid of pirates. With the MTA in firm control over the captured pirate vessel, Ves doubted that any boobytraps were left intact.

He approached the grand and spacious stateroom of Lord Hivex.

Though the Larkinsons had taken some of the furniture and trophies away, enough was left to make Ves feel as if he was a pirate lord.

"My new stateroom aboard our upcoming factory ship will look just as impressive as this compartment!"

"Meow."

Lucky, who was content with the exotics filling up his belly, floated over to the new king-sized bed placed in the center.

"Yeah, you're right. I'll be sharing it with Gloriana, so I'll effectively control half the space."

"Meow meow!"

"Hey! That won't happen! She won't hog my space!"

Lucky opened his maw to yawn before settling himself for some rest.

Ves proceeded to enter the bathroom to change his clothes. Once he reached his bed, he sat on it and looked around.

The banners, weapons and broken armor pieces each had a story behind them. If he was interested, he could access the archives in order to study Lord Hivex's backstory.

There was little point in doing so. The leader of the Allidus Alliance had become yet another dead enemy of his. Now that he exited the Nyxian Gap, Ves had no reason to entangle himself with people like Lord Hivex any further.

His parents should be able to meet any further challenges. His father piloted the Devil Tiger while his mother had gained a boost in strength. Not even other dark gods could rival their current strength.

Only the Five Scrolls Compact remained a bit of a question mark. What would they do after losing contact with Temple Protector Dista? The fall of such a powerful and transcendental figure would definitely alarm the higher ups of the Compact.

"Whatever the case, I don't want to be here when their inevitable follow-up party arrives."

As Ves slipped underneath the covers and tried to go sleep, a nervous tension prevented him from doing so. He was too excited and apprehensive to rest.

Though his physical condition wouldn't suffer if he decided to stay up all night, his mind might not be as acute.

"I have to be in my best condition for the wedding."

Yet the more he tried, the harder it was for him to fall asleep.

With his enhanced physique, regular sleeping pills weren't enough to make him slumber.

"This is a bit of a problem."

He shifted in his bed.

Lucky floated up to his head and landed on the pillow.

"Meow."

"Cats are nocturnal. It's fine for you to stay awake."

The cat pressed his paw against Ves' nose. "Meow meow"

"You don't understand. Tomorrow is an important day. Nothing must go wrong."

Why was he talking to his cat? He should go to sleep instead!

Ves huffed and turned his body so he faced to the opposite side. Lucky did not entangle with him any further and began to curl up to rest.

As time went by, Ves grew a little hazy. He hoped that sleep would come soon. His heartbeat calmed and his mind increasingly became less cohesive.

Tomorrow, he was about to become a married man.

Tomorrow, he would become husband to a Hexer.

Tomorrow, his grandfather would finally see one of his wishes come true.

By marrying Gloriana, Ves foreswore any other woman. The prospect of spending the rest of his life with her made him feel quite mixed.

Though she had her flaws, he trusted all the more because of it. No matter what interests she possessed, she would never betray him, and that was enough for his paranoid self to give her a pass.

Once they tied the knot, Ves wondered how soon they would begin to have children.

His face grew a bit concerned as this prospect.

He was not afraid of raising children. In fact, he looked forward to the fatherhood experience. He had fond memories of his early childhood. His parents took good care of him. Though his mother left quite soon, his father had done his best to pick up the slack.

Ves was very thankful for the efforts of his father. It made him even more eager to pass on the same teaching to his sons and daughters.

There were two reasons why he was worried.

First, Gloriana had made it clear that she insisted on following Hexer traditions regarding the amount of children she wanted to bear. She didn't want to settle for anything except rearing six offspring!

That was quite a handful to Ves to take care of. Even though there was no financial strain for him to raise this many children, the amount of time he needed to invest in him ought to be very considerable.

The more time he spent with his children, the less time he had left to design his mechs. It was a given that he would have to make some compromises in order to spend a sufficient amount of time in both.

Even then, he would never be able to fully satisfy his responsibilities as a father and a mech designer.

His career would definitely be affected. The younger years of a mech designer were critical. If Ves slacked off in any way, his advancement to Senior might very well be delayed by 20 or even 50 years. That was an unacceptable delay!

Perhaps he should suggest to Gloriana to spread out the birth of their children. Some long-lived pairs preferred to sire a child every decade. In any case, with modern medical technology and life-prolonging treatment, a wealthy couple could easily live more than two centuries.

During much of that time, their bodies remained in a good enough condition that they were able to procreate. Instances where 200-year olds or even 300-year olds birthed new kids weren't rare in the more prosperous parts of the galaxy!

Of  course, sometimes they needed some help.

This was the second concern of Ves. With how much his genes and physique had diverged from the baseline human norm, he was not strictly a human anymore.

To be sure, he still identified himself as a member of the human race. Human civilization also recognized him as a human even if a part of his chest was filled with alien-derived tissue.

It was different from a biological perspective. When Ves threw away all of these mental and social constructs, he was actually a unique half-human, half-alien specimen.

In some cases, the alterations to a human's genes and body still allowed them to sire children naturally.

If the changes surpassed a certain limit, then complications would begin to arise. Incidences of birth defects, stillbirth and other awful outcomes shot up very quickly the more someone diverged from the human norm.

If this wasn't bad enough, then if Ves wanted to have children with another half-alien, then the chance of failure was nearly 100 percent!

The CFA gene optimization treatments he enjoyed failed to solve this problem. In fact, it made the problem worse.

One of the defining goals of gene optimization treatments was to tailor them to enhance a single individual. This came at the cost of universality.

If the exact same changes were applied to a brother or sister, then the recipients wouldn't feel so good!

This was why most gene treatments weren't actually inheritable. Passing them on rarely worked. Even if a child managed to survive the gestation period, the poor kid needed frequent medical treatment in order to make it to adulthood.

This was one of the actual reasons why baseline humans still held an important place in human civilization.

Dr. Ranya had already studied his ability to procreate with baseline humans. Her verdict was not optimistic.

While Gloriana appeared to be a baseline human, many of her parameters were too high to be human. She was partially alien herself, though her genetic modifications were much more conservaive and refined than Dr. Jutland's work.

Natural birth was out of the question.

The only way for them to have kids was to resort to artificial processes. In order to conceive a healthy child, Ves and his wife would have to rear a designer baby that incorporates the older versions of their genes.

There was no problem in this regard. Both of them had access to the complete records of their baseline human genes. Though combining them to produce a fetus with the help of technology did not sound right, it was a fine substitute to the natural process.

There were even advantages through employing this method. As their name suggested, designer babies offered their parents a lot of choice.

Of course, there were many ethical and legal limits to how extensively the parents could demand a change. In addition, making too many changes to the genes of a child might give the parents the illusion that the offspring was not theirs!

Ves did not intend to go this far with Gloriana, but he did not want to waste this opportunity to design some fantastic children.

He hadn't given up on his intention to raise some children as qualified spiritual engineers. He wasn't sure which of his genes he needed to pass on to impart his offspring with heightened spiritual perception and spiritual control.

He had six chances in total to get it right.

Aside from this, Ves also wanted to bless his children in other ways. With all of the spiritual techniques he developed, surely he employed some of them to empower his sons and daughters.

Several interesting ideas came to mind.

He could implant his children with a small spiritual dynamo made from the Unending One's remains.

He could infuse their minds with doses of his own spiritual energy in order to enhance their spiritual growth.

He could create new spiritual entities that were specifically designed to form a symbiotic relationship with his children and would grow up alongside them over the course of their lives.

Each idea was more radical than the last. Though Ves knew they were risky, they were incredibly attractive to him. He didn't want to raise mediocre children!

Though it was a bit premature to think about his children, thinking about his future life as a happy father successfully caused him to fall asleep.

A quiet night passed. The entire compartment fell completely silent. Only Nitaa remained awake and alert. Even Lucky closed his eyes and grew dormant.

At some point in time, a large hand materialized into view. Despite the appearance of such an abnormal organ, no alarms went off as the sensors didn't detect anything amiss.

Nitaa, who should have been able to spot such a huge apparition, saw nothing at all. The space occupied by the giant hand might as well be empty space!

As for Ves and Lucky, neither of them were aware at all. They had both entered deep sleep and weren't cognizant of what happened around their sleeping forms.

The hand hovered over Ves' body for a moment. It lowered itself at a gentle pace. Once it hit the body, the hand phased right through.

Only the tip of the giant finger brushed against Ves' mind. Despite its passive and active defenses, his mind did not fight back against the foreign presence. Instead, it grew even calmer, as if the finger belonged to someone friendly.

The giant hand disappeared. No trace of it remained. No sensor captured anything. Ves and Lucky continued to sleep blissfully while Nitaa remained as ignorant as ever of what transpired.

Perhaps nothing happened at all.