The Mech Touch

The Titan-3 Project was unkillable under the right circumstances.

Derived from the matter harvested from the Titania's carcass, the meat suit was unexpectedly compatible with Venerable Joshua.

Ves believed this was not only related to his life domain, but also his passing familiarity with Titania the design spirit.

Although Ves had only tied the Titania to the Minerva, an expert mech that was exclusive to Commander Casella, that did not mean that Joshua had no ways of contacting the new design spirit.

Joshua only needed to approach the Minerva and experience its glow to come into contact with the Titania.

As long as Joshua managed to develop a friendship with the remnant consciousness of the ancient astral beast, he could definitely increase his affinity with her former flesh!

This was why Ves had high hopes for the amazing resilience of the meat suit. Only a mech pilot like Joshua could draw out its full potential!

The hope was that the meat suit would therefore turn the Everchanger into a miniature juggernaut! Even if its size did not even come close to matching the enormous dimensions of the Uranus, the meat suit was still large and tough enough to withstand a lot of punishment!

"The Titan-3 Project is quite powerful, but its properties allow it to excel in battles of attrition." Dr. Perris explained. "Since that is the case, we decided to add additional energy cells and biological power reactors to enhance the meat suit's staying power. As long as the meat suit does not incur critical damage to its biosystems, it will always be able to keep fighting."

Ves liked this aspect. "That's good. The Everchanger is not a mech that scores high on endurance. If it can drastically increase the time it can remain active on the battlefield by donning this meat suit, then that is worthwhile enough to invest in its development."

This turned the meat suit into a combat engine that just kept fighting under difficult circumstances!

As long as the enemy could not overcome the meat suit's defenses straight away, it was impossible to take it down as it continued to regenerate its damage while relying on its vast power reserves to keep on fighting!

After Ves studied the numbers and verified that the meat suit should theoretically be able to stay in a fight for several hours as long as Venerable Joshua wasn't pushing it too hard, he moved on to its offensive capabilities.

"I see that you have failed to integrate any ranged weapons in the meat suit. In fact, you also removed the spear that was present in the earlier iterations of its design."

Dr. Perris looked apologetic. "From the moment we chose to make the meat suit out of the Titania's biomatter, we were bound by its constraints. Given that the Titania was originally a massive but highly inflexible astral beast, the harvested tissue also possesses these traits. In order for the flesh to remain so dense, strong and resilient, we cannot treat it too much in order to make it more flexible or adaptable. Any changes we have made to the tissue has drastically weakened its structure, thereby turning them into weak points that can easily be exploited by our enemies. Without understanding the Titania's biomatter on a deeper level, we can only work with what we have."

The consequence was that the Titania's flesh could not be repurposed into sophisticated bioweapons such as organic laser cannons and so on. The dense flesh was also lacking in flexibility and fine-grained movements, so the meat suit would not be able to wield any melee weapons with adequate proficiency.

"The flesh we are employing are akin to alloy bricks that cannot easily be bent or shaped." Perris stated. "Since that is the case, we have eschewed sophisticated weaponry and resorted to embedding the arms of the mechs with sharp and thick claws."

The reinforced claws were large, thick and made of strong alloy.

Their purpose was fairly clear at first glance. They were meant to tear through the thick hull plating that protected ships from outside factors!

Even if the claws became chipped or damaged during a battle, it was no big deal to replace them after a battle had ended. There was even hope that Venerable Joshua would be able to regenerate easily enough since they were made out of biometals!

"These claws can be retracted, right?" Ves asked.

Dr. Perris nodded. "Correct. If the claws are not suitable and if applying blunt force trauma is more preferable, then the meat suit can retract its claws and fight with its fists. With the help of Tifi Coslone, we have designed the arms to be able to deliver a huge amount of physical force. This is also what the Titania's flesh excels at. The meat suit fights like a heavyweight brawler that relies on simple, winding attacks that can crush mechs with a single strike or punch holes through multiple layers of hull plating. There is no mech in the Larkinson Clan that can come close to dealing so much physical damage!"

It was tough for Ves to determine the best trait of the meat suit. Its high resilience and fast regeneration made it into an unkillable zombie machine. Its large size combined with its enormous physical might turned it into a close-ranged brawler that could tear entire ships apart if unopposed!

As Ves imagined the meat suit's performance in close-ranged combat, he did not think that few melee mechs would even dare to confront the machine directly.

Every other mech would just get crushed by the meat suit's vastly superior physical strength!

Not all was well, though.

As Ves continued to learn about the meat suit's exact specifications, he identified a number of shortcomings and vulnerabilities that could potentially hamper its effectiveness.

Ves put down the organic mech figurine. "I am impressed by what you and your team have accomplished, especially with minimal output from myself, but I still have a couple of concerns. I won't mention anything about the meat suit's obvious lack of ranged weapons. It is not a big deal if it cannot retaliate against ranged opponents as there will be other friendly mechs that can provide covering fire. What I need is a mech that can employ brute force to rip apart enemy forces that are not set up to defend against such a direct approach."

"About that, sir…"

"What is it, Perris?"

The biomech designer had presented her case with pride and confidence so far. It was odd for her to show so much hesitation all of a sudden.

"When we researched potential ways to integrate ranged weapon systems in the meat suit, we have found that all of the conventional options are not viable due to their inherent incompatibility with the Titania's flesh. However, one of the researchers assigned to the Scarlet Garden has come up with a rather novel idea."

"And what is that?"

"Before I say anything further, do you recall how the Titania originally fought against our fleet when we encountered the astral beast in space?"

Ves frowned and revisited his memories of the short battle. The Titania, despite being an ancient astral beast that was the size of a medium-sized battleship, was remarkably lacking in firepower.

Part of that was because the Larkinson fleet engaged the creature at longer ranges most of the time.

The Titania would have been able to bite and crush the expeditionary fleet's starships if it ever got close, but the Golden Skull Alliance wasn't stupid enough to let that happen!

Another part why the Titania's offense was so lackluster was that it had barely survived a fight against a mysterious phase whale. With so many scars and missing tissue, the creature was not able to put up a good enough fight against the Golden Skull Alliance.

However, Ves would be lying if he claimed the Titania easily succumbed. Even in a heavily-damaged state, she was still able to pose a lot of threat to the expeditionary fleet by employing a strange means of attack.

The Titania literally launched her own offspring towards her enemies!

Due to her immense size and biomass, she could comfortably launch meat torpedoes that were the size of mechs or larger at an enemy fleet!

Even though the tough missiles could eventually be intercepted as long as they received enough attacks, the expeditionary fleet still fell into a precarious situation if it wasn't able to defeat the Titania quickly.

Ves still had a decent impression of this unorthodox attack method. There had to be a reason why Dr. Perris brought it up in a discussion about the meat suit.

His eyes widened.

"Wait a minute… are you saying… the meat suit can attack at range by giving birth to children?"

The female biomech designer awkwardly coughed. "I wouldn't put it in those terms, sir. The meat suit is not the Titania and it doesn't have the reserves of biomass to launch those large flesh torpedoes. What we have managed to do is reverse engineer some of the mechanics behind the Titania's attack method and bioprogram a small-scale biological attack method that is derived from this research."

In order to illustrate her point, Dr. Perris projected the footage of another simulated battle.

This time, it showed the meat suit confronting an enemy fleet. While the target vessels did not possess enough defenses to repel the Everchanger when it was equipped with its organic wargear, the problem was that there were hundreds of vessels!

Even if the enemy ships weren't particularly large or important, the meat suit did not possess the ability to inflict mass destruction at a scale that could effectively destroy the entire fleet in a timely manner.

This was where its alternate attack method came into play.

The meat suit did not approach any of the enemy vessels but instead flew through their formation.

During this flight, the surface of the meat suit bubbled before they spat out small balls of flesh that launched towards the surrounding ships.

The clip then centered around one of the balls that impacted against the surface of an enemy ship shortly afterwards.

Once the flesh ball made contact, it began to search for weak points before trying to drill through the hull of the vessel.

If the autonomous flesh ball succeeded in entering the enemy vessel, it could subsequently absorb a lot of suitable matter so that it could rapidly expand in size and power!

What happened next was difficult to watch for Ves. The tiny flesh ball grew into a creature that was akin to a tiny astral beast. It began to wreak havoc inside the flesh and the crew were simply incapable of defending against a powerful enemy that had moved past all of the ship's exterior defenses!

If multiple flesh balls happened to land on the same ship, then the quantity of rapidly-growing offspring could easily destroy an entire starship from the inside!

Even though the simulated scenario was not entirely realistic, it still showcased the huge amount of destructive potential the meat suit possessed if it employed this unorthodox attack method!

What Ves managed to observe was hardly different from purposefully infecting enemy vessels with voribugs!

The difference between the ‘astral beast offspring' and the voribugs was that the latter were better at this job.

Even so, this was a horrifying attack method that was sure to disgust a lot of people if exposed!

Ves frowned at Perris. "I cannot deny the impressive combat effectiveness of this organic attack method. I would be highly impressed if you can add this feature to the actual meat seat. There's a big issue that prevents me from approving it. I am pretty sure that this organic weapon system is illegal. It is a self-replicating bioweapon that can not only depolate entire ships, but also planets if it runs out of control."

There was a very big taboo against employing biological monstrosities that could easily snowball to the point where they consumed everything alive on a planet!

Despite the admonishment, Dr. Perris did not look defeated. ᴀʟ ʟ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ full.com

"It doesn't have to be a self-replicating bioweapon, sir. As long as we program the ‘offspring' so that they cannot reproduce any further, they can be contained. Their effectiveness against ships will drop if this is the case, but this is not a fatal setback. This is not an unheard-of attack method back in the Life Research Association. It is hardly different from using mechanical bots to sabotage enemy ships from within. They are just organic in this instance."

In other words, it might technically be legal for the meat suit to make use of this insidious attack method!