The Mech Touch

The event that quickly became known as the Supreme Calamity had finally ended.

The degree of destruction inflicted on Prosperous Hill VI almost matched that of a war. The losses suffered by every stakeholder of the Life Research Association was disastrous.

The sheer loss of life and property not just set back the planet as a favorable trading destination, but also caused it to become tainted in the eyes of every foreigner looking to make a trade.

There was no way that the foreign trading partners that used to do business with the LRA would be eager to visit the planet and star system anytime soon after this incident!

The reputation of the LRA and its once-renowned biomechs had truly been flushed through the toilet.

The fact that the MTA bailed them out and prevented the monster that the Lifers had birthed from disappearing into space did not avail them much.

The MTA's intervention just proved that the LRA was just too weak to take care of its own mess!

A lot of condemnation and accusations circulated across the galactic net. Even if the officials of the LRA attempted to jam communications and put out their own spin on the calamitous incident, it was too difficult to shut up all of the people who were close enough to witness the biojuggernaut's rampage up close.

The mass destruction that Uranus inflicted on the planet and orbital infrastructure caused many of the devices that were responsible for blocking communications to disappear.

The few jammers that were left intact were unable to cover all of the holes that emerged. This allowed plenty of people to transmit their data to distant fleets.

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In fact, even if the jamming network was still intact, there were still numerous organizations on the surface that were still capable of sending signals off-planet. The only difference was that the Lifers could no longer control all of the people who wanted to get their word out for various reasons.

Some wanted to get the word out and inform the public.

Others tried to process their grief at the loss of their friends and family.

A few citizens even wanted to tear down their own state and ruin its future forever!

Now that the month-long tragedy on Prosperous Hill VI was finally over, the traumatized Lifers unleashed many of the emotions they held inside their hearts.

The newly-recruited Larkinsons in the airfleet were no different. They spontaneous erupted into tears or collapsed onto the surface as they tried to work out their heavy feelings.

"I don't want to stay in this state a second longer than is necessary." Someone muttered. "The Supreme Revolution is a giant farce. The conservatives, radicals and all of those other heartless researchers and politicians were just playing a game with our lives. They never cared about us since they began to fight among each other. We're just collateral damage to them. Their only goal from the beginning was to take control of that walking disaster!"

Whether these assertions were accurate or not, there was no doubt that a lot of Lifer that were lucky enough to survive the civil war and the emergence of Uranus developed a great degree of disillusionment towards their state and its rulers!

For the first time in centuries, many Lifers started to doubt their leaders. The biotech researchers who mostly remained in their ivory towers and rarely mixed up with the common citizens were completely absent throughout these difficult times.

No one offered them any sympathy.

No one made attempts to rescue the weak.

Too many citizens had to fend for themselves and escape the ravages of war without any preparation.

Yet even during the most chaotic moments of the Supreme Revolution, the majority of Lifers still maintained their faith in biotechnology.

Until now. Uranus was probably the greatest and most powerful product of biotechnology that they had ever witnessed in their lives. Yet this immensely powerful creation was not used to defend the state against foreign enemies or perform some other noble purpose.

Instead, the massive biojuggernaut that was clearly developed in secret in the LRA turned against its own side and made all of the worst fears of biomech designers come true!

The crisis of confidence that this singular event sparked caused the entire state and its people to question their existence.

The survivors of the calamity and those who witnessed from afar were both beginning to question many of the assumptions they once took for granted.

It was clear that the LRA was on course to undergo a revolution. The only difference was that the change would no longer be driven by the leaders of the conservatives and other political factions.

The people themselves sought to come up and implement their own answers. Though this inevitably meant that the most ardent reformers among them would unite into a brand-new faction, it would take many years or decades for the Life Research Association to recover from this disaster if it managed to survive all of the condemnation.

Of course, the foreigners who were unlucky enough to get embroiled in this series of disasters didn't care about all of that. The Larkinson Clan were utterly done with the state. It didn't matter whether the locals expressed an explosive increase in their willingness to leave their state.

None of the Larkinsons wanted to stay any minute longer in this state!

Ves most of all expressed his desire to leave. As the person who was definitely not responsible for unleashing a rogue biojuggernaut that killed millions of people and wrecked half the planet, he felt very concerned about getting caught up in follow-up investigations.

If the authorities happened to hold up the Larkinsons on the surface, there was a considerable chance that people would find out that Ves stole five whole vials of life-prolonging treatment serum from the pinnacle lab!

The fact that their airfleet occupied the warehouse complex that served a secret escape route for the same lab could not be hidden. Once someone who was aware of this connection looked everything up, Ves and his fellow Larkinsons would definitely enter hot water!

The only consolation was that this secret route should be very obscure. The Teak Order and the ultralifers may have learned of it somehow, but Ves seriously doubted that the main players of the civil war were aware of its existence.

If someone as powerful as Master Cline of the conservatives or Master Brixton of the combinants learned of another entrance in the pinnacle lab, they would have descended upon it with at least an entire mech battalion!

Since this never happened, it meant that the amount of people who could tie Ves and the Larkinsons to the Pinnacle Lab, Special Project 'U' and Special Project 'V' should not be a lot.

This gave Ves an ample window of opportunity to get away before those fellows acted on their suspicions. After all, it is still a bit far-fetched that the Larkinsons were able to find the secret entrance, enter the pinnacle lab, overcome the soldiers employed by both sides and overcome all of the high security that prevented outsiders from intruding into the core labs!

"Still, I can't take anything for granted." He murmured. "I need to get as far from this state as possible. In fact, I should lead the entire expeditionary fleet out of Majestic Teal just to be safe!"

There was still a possibility that the Lifers would dispatch forces in order to 'persuade' Ves and his Larkinsons to return to the LRA in order to cooperate with an investigation.

He had no stomach for that, so getting out was his highest priority. He was willing to abandon any further gain he could make by sticking around in order to safeguard his freedom.

If there was one lesson he learned from this experience, it was that the Lifers couldn't be trusted!

After the final disaster, the LRA's credibility was completely shot. No one took the Supreme Revolution seriously anymore. Even the soldiers who fought for the conservatives or the radicals felt that they were being played.

Naturally, the inexplicable blockade that the Lifers maintained for such a long time could no longer be enforced.

As soon as people on the surface heard that a few space-capable vehicles managed to ascend into orbit and fly into deep space without getting destroyed, the floodgates had opened.

"Fly! Fly away from this terrible planet! We're never coming back here again!"

Thousands of vehicles and biovehicles ascended into the skies at once. More were being prepped and loaded for space travel as well, so the exodus was only growing bigger over time.

No one cared about the monopoly of the Prosperous Hill Transportation Service anymore. In fact, a significant proportion of transports that were ascending into orbit were originally property of the much-maligned service!

Though the initial wave of leavers mostly consisted of foreigners, there were plenty of locals who also decided to leave their home planet. Their numbers added to the flood of shuttles and transports that tried to get away, giving everyone the illusion that the entire planet was being emptied!

A significant portion of the Larkinson airfleet blended in with the outbound traffic. Since vessels rated for intersystem space travel were in short supply, the Larkinsons had to leave a lot of vehicles behind.

This forced the remaining clansmen to cram into a smaller number of vessels. The Larkinsons also abandoned all of their biomechs. They were not suited for long-ranged travel and did not add any value to the Larkinson fleet. Their inclusion into the Larkinson Clan would only complicate its logistics further.

The only mechs that Ves was willing to bring back to his fleet were the original Larkinson mechs that he had initially brought to the surface. Any of them that had survived the campaign on the surface were still useful, particularly the Piranha Prime.

Ves stood inside his temporary cabin while looking at a projected view of Prospereous Hill VI growing smaller and smaller in size.

The thousands of vessels that had joined the Larkinsons in getting off this forsaken planet stuck fairly close to each other. Every crew and passenger aboard those vehicles was a survivor. That caused them to develop an invisible bond among them that caused them to maintain a united front.

The vessels all flew through loose-flying debris and dodged rapidly-orbiting shards that had been flung into space after Uranus destroyed much of the orbital infrastructure.

Only a couple of hundred military biomechs flew in the vicinity of the escaping vessels. They did not stop the vessels from leaving even if lots of them were clearly stolen property.

The Life Research Association could hardly afford to provoke another controversy. It was in the best interest of the state if all of the survivors who developed the most negative opinion about it left on their own accord.

"Well, it's been a long day, right Lucky?"

"Meeeeoooowww…." His exhausted cat did not even acknowledge his question. He lazily rolled over the desk and began to sleep with its belly exposed.

Ves retracted the helmet of his Unending Regalia and took a deep breath of recycled air. While he did not remove his combat armor from his body quite yet, he already felt a lot safer now that he was no longer on that blasted planet anymore.

A sly grin emerged on his face.

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"I've definitely won big this time!"

He slowly retrieved all of the vials he stored in his armor and placed them on the desk. Their faint, glowing contents seemed to radiate a mysterious luster to him. Both is eyes and his spiritual senses grew excited as they focused on the high-grade serum that Ves had successfully smuggled out of the planet!

Ves examined them carefully now that he had the time to do so without worrying about getting his head chewed off by a giant biomonstrosity.

"Well, their quality is not quite up to my standards." He briefly frowned. "Still, their quantity more than makes up for it. I have enough serum to last me a couple of decades if I use the contents sparingly!"

He could do so much with all of the universal life-attributed energies locked inside the serum that he felt a rush of power running through his body!