The Mech Touch

"Being a hero is not as glamorous as I thought." Venerable Tusa thought.

Originally, he did not think much of what he would do once he ventured back to settled space.

He heard plenty of stories about people abusing their biomechs for their own ends during his preparation. While these incidents were none of his business, he resolved not to stand by if he had an opportunity to make everything better.

So he did.

He no longer counted how many rampaging biomechs he demolished. Every district seemed to have their own collection of self-centered thugs. Why had the LRA never cracked down on these barbarians? Why did the authorities not go further in controlling the proliferation of mechs if they were already so strict?

"For all their fears about foreigners, the true danger lurked within their own hearts all along."

Every foreigner on the planet just wanted to escape the flames of the revolution and get away as soon as possible. This was not their struggle and they had little to no stake in its outcome.

Venerable Tusa should have minded his own business as well. The plunderers and murderers he met along the way rarely went out of their way to pick a fight against him. Rather than wage a costly battle against another mech and risk losing the source of their power, the criminals would rather direct their attention towards bullying the weak!

Each time the expert pilot encountered this reaction, his contempt and disgust led him to take action.

"You are a disgrace to our profession! At least have the courage to fight against a worthy opponent!"

As a former military mech pilot and expert pilot, Venerable Tusa spent the majority of his career surrounded by honorable men and women. Even before that, the old Larkinson Family along with the academies he attended in his youth constantly instilled him with the responsibilities and privilege of a mech pilot.

Potentates had access to an incredible amount of destructive potential. As long as they interfaced with any mech, they could use the power at their disposal to destroy enemies and innocent civilians alike!

Although Tusa admittedly did not pay too much attention to these classes, through passive osmosis, the values of an honorable mech pilot was ingrained into his bones.

Therefore, seeing these second-class mech pilots exercise little to no restraint broke something inside Tusa. He used to look up to these individuals who were lucky enough to be born in a better state.

He used to think that mech pilots that grew up in second-rate and first-rate states were better than him in every way!

Even when he advanced to expert pilot, it was still difficult for Tusa to shed his ingrained respect towards those who underwent much more rigorous training.

The Battle of Reckoning only reinforced this impression. Although the Fridaymen and enemy Garleners had hostile intentions in mind, he still respected their skill, valor, honor and sacrifice.

This was what warfare at a higher class should look like. One of the lessons that mech cadets always internalized during their initial years at the academy was that greater power conveyed greater responsibility.

No mech pilot was free to do as he or she wished.

"Pfff. How naive I was back then."

To be honest, he chafed at the restrictions. As a light mech specialist, he always desired to make his own choices. Obeying the orders of someone who did not fully understand what he was capable of did not sit well with him. It was also difficult for mech officers to know how to best make use of light mechs.

A disproportionate number of mech pilots turned officers initially piloted medium mechs. Their fighting instincts and war knowledge always centered around the use of the most popular weight class.

Light mech specialists frequently suffered the consequences of suboptimal orders!

This was why light mech pilots such as Tusa developed a reputation for being mavericks. They were more prone to stretch their orders and act on their own accord.

This stereotype persisted only because situations kept happening where commanders improperly utilized light mechs!

His current situation was a typical example of that. With a mech as strong as the Piranha Prime, it was by far the strongest scout mech in this region on the planet. It possessed the strength to defeat everything weaker and the speed to outrun anything that was stronger.

Shackling such a powerful light mech to a stationary base was a gross misuse of its capabilities!

This was why Venerable Tusa insisted on venturing out by himself. Yet now that he had finally gone out, a part of him wished he stayed at the base.

"These scum are disgusting."

He witnessed some of the worst that humanity could do to each other. While he wouldn't have been surprised if he witnessed this behavior from Nyxian pirates, this was not the case this time!

Every thug he killed along the way each showed enough proficiency to recognize they were academy trained. Sure, they probably scored at the bottom of their class, but they should have still been exposed to all of the duties and responsibilities that their profession conveyed!

Instead of making their instructors proud, the wayward graduates decided to pursue more selfish ends.

In a way, the criminals who let go of all restraint and revelled in the chaos were much more free than anyone else!

In a time where disorder had taken over, too many the thugs and murderers had given up on conforming. They shed the expectations and the compulsions that society imposed on them and acted without any disregard for others!

While Venerable Tusa acknowledged that these mech pilots liberated themselves, they embraced the wrong kind of freedom!

"Freedom doesn't give you the license to embrace anarchy!"

Biomech after biomech collapsed from his Unending alloy daggers. Even though the enemy mechs he faced were weird, they still worked like normal mechs for the most part. Their cockpits were all situated in the same location, and puncturing it always caused biomechs to shut down!

The more idiots he stopped, the more Tusa became conflicted about his own values.

Prior to his exposure to these scum, he could maintain the belief that pursuing absolute freedom was the right course of action for him. He wanted to maintain control over his own fate and did not wish to let anyone have the final say in what he could do. Not even the Larkinson Clan held his unquestioning obedience!

Yet now that he saw what absolute freedom did to other mech pilot, Venerable Tusa began to doubt his purpose.

This was very dangerous. As an expert pilot, he knew that his conviction was the basis of his strength. When he attended an introductory lecture at the MTA, he learned the perils of questioning his own principles.

Once this happened, it was hard to stop it. The MTA instructor explicitly warned him that expert pilots must always confront their problems upfront.

Cowards didn't exist among expert pilots!

No matter how much an existential question threatened his personal cause, Tusa never thought about dodging it. Tests like these happened several times throughout an expert pilot's career.

Those who passed them would continue to grow stronger while those who shirked them lost the right to advance any further.

His mech wavered a bit as he started to go over his reasons to fight. The more he became swept by doubt, the more the Piranha Prime began to lose its luster.

When the mech's energy reserves started getting low, Tusa turned around and piloted it back to Gentle Lotus Base.

Along the way, he diverted his route so that he could take a look at the storage depot that one of the women he rescued earlier had brought to his attention.

Biomechs depended heavily on feeder stock to stay in shape. Even if they did not do anything, their cells constantly remained active. Just like how normal organisms needed to eat and drink on a regular basis, biomechs also needed a way to replenish the nutrients they spent.

Although biomech designers had gotten quite good at increasing the efficiency of their products, they could not eliminate this annoying requirement entirely.

A starving biomech always turned weak and brittle after months of neglect! This was one of the more troublesome aspects about organic machines that prevented the rest of the galaxy from embracing them. While metallic mechs also deteriorated under the same conditions, the difference wasn't nearly as drastic.

"Normal mechs are much more trustworthy than these freaky biomechs. They're no different from monsters."

Venerable Tusa even developed a theory that biomechs somehow infected the mentalities of their own mech pilots. There was no other way for him to explain why so many deviants popped up all at once.

Every biomech looked menacing in his eyes. Their raw strength, imposing stature and grotesque appearances all made it clear that their designers did not envision anything cuddly and cute!

Venerable Tusa spent enough time in the LRA to know that much of the special cells and tissue that made up biomechs were derived from all manner of exobeasts.

Even the most humanoid-looking biomechs were actually stuffed with beast DNA!

Although Tusa was not versed in biology, he still suspected that some of the bestial traits of biomechs were contagious. That, or the Life Research Association did a really poor job of educating their mech pilots!

No matter what the reason was for all of this anarchy, Tusa came no closer to resolving his doubts in a satisfactory way.

Everything he had seen so far pointed out the perils of freedom. In a way, for all of its strictness, the LRA granted too much freedom to its mech pilots.

Now that the Supreme Revolution broke the traditional hierarchy and granted every single serving mech pilot to choose which order to obey, far too many of them decided to fight for less-than-noble causes!

Though he hadn't clashed against them yet, Tusa held an even worse regard for the mech pilots who served in the Planetary Guard or other government institutions.

Millions of citizens in the outskirts needed their help. Yet instead of doing the right thing, the protectors of people instead chose to abandon their responsibilities in order to fight for a nebulous political cause!

When granted the choice to do what they wished, too many mech pilots from all walks of life chose to abandon their duties.

Instead, they became consumed with plundering wealth, eliminating rivals, pursuing their grudges and more! They also became more prone to getting bewitched by ambitious leaders who did not care for the harm they caused in order to fulfill their personal ambitions.

"People can't be trusted with power." He concluded.

It was a damaging admission and one that Venerable Tusa did not want to settle upon. However, the truth was there for him to see. Even though he knew that his fellow Larkinsons were vastly different, that did not alter the fact that there were plenty more people who abused any measure of freedom they could grasp!

The Piranha Prime grew more turbulent. While its presence hadn't collapsed entirely, Venerable Tusa did not feel so good about himself anymore.

Reality had dealt a harsh blow to his illusions.

"What is freedom?"

"What makes me worthy to make my own choices?"

"How much do other people deserve to be free?"

"Does absolute freedom even exist?"

All of these questions and more began to swirl in his mind. His will became clouded and his confidence began to falter.

A small alarm sounded from his mech. Venerable Tusa temporarily pulled himself out of his conundrum. He realized that he was approaching the storage depot.

The site was just as large as the female worker described. Thousands of containers and other goods were stacked indoors and outdoors.

What Tusa found notable about the site was that another group had already overrun the defenses. Numerous security mechs lay broken and fallen on the ground as the unknown assailants were in the process of loading up their transports with looted feeder stock!

The expert pilot frowned. Normally, he would barge in and eliminate the looters, but he could not deny the fact that he and his clan were thinking about doing the same!

"There's also too many mechs."

The Ferocious Piranha's passive sensors weren't able to provide him with a complete picture, but his mech estimated that there were upwards of 200 mechs at the site!

"What the hell are so many mechs doing here? Who is fielding them and why are they after so much feeding stock?"