The Mech Touch

"If you ask me, it is better to intensify our efforts into partnering up with a larger shipbuilding company." Gavin said. "Murphy & Sons was just right for us a few months ago, but now that we are returning with a mother load of MTA merits and phasewater, we can do much better."

"Elaborate, please."

"As long as we are willing to spend enough money, it is not impossible for us to become friends with a shipbuilding company that used to be out of our league. This will be an expensive relationship, but as long as we supply enough money and phasewater, we should be able to get a lot of priority on ship orders. If speed is of the essence and if you urgently want to add more capital ships in our fleet, then this is a much more attractive option than waiting for Murphy & Sons to get up to scale."

Gavin was right. Ves and the rest of the Larkinson Clan shouldn't be growing too attached to a single shipbuilding company.

However, Ves felt that there was greater potential in deepening his cooperation with Murphy & Sons.

As long as the Larkinsons could invest in the company, they could gain more influence over its operations.

It would become easier for Ves to steer the development and production of the company's starships, thereby making them more suitable for the Larkinson Clan.

This was not the time and place to make such a decision, though. Ves decided to shelve this topic and bring it up with Vivian Tsai at a later date.

He continued to ask Gavin about the state of the Larkinson Clan. The remaining issues weren't as important or noteworthy. Ves merely said a few words before he considered the next item on the agenda.

"There is one more thing, boss. You should address the clan about the Purgatory Campaign. A lot of Larkinsons have died, but a handful of them have also managed to break through. We managed to make it off with a lot of phasewater as well, so the clansmen all expect us to convert that into a lot of wealth and other luxuries. You need to convey a message that you respect the sacrifices of the soldiers and pledge to reward everyone for making this success possible."

"Hmm, you're right, but right now is too soon. We just returned from Purgatory and still need to handle the aftermath. In addition, I haven't made any concrete decisions on our future strategy and how to spend all of those MTA merits. Let's wait until we return to Davute. I can hold a more comprehensive speech on what we have achieved and where we shall be going forward."

"That will work. Just don't leave us guessing for long. The clansmen need clarity from the top."

"Understood."

These days, Ves no longer needed to address the losses they suffered or facilitate the mourning process. The Larkinson Army had enough leaders to perform this depressing but necessary chore.

Once Gavin finally finished his daily briefing, Ves dismissed his assistant and spent an hour checking a few files before deciding to pay a visit to different people and departments.

His first priority was to visit the ship's vault. When he arrived at the right place, he encountered a lot more guards than before.

The strategic materials reserve stored a lot more valuables than ever before!

"So… this is what happens when we store 120 kg of phasewater in a single place." Ves commented.

The vault underwent considerable renovations in order to store the phasewater more securely. Small metal crates that could contain up to 2 kilograms each were spaced as wide from each other as possible.

It became exponentially harder to store a lot of phasewater in a single place. In order to prevent this troublesome exotic from producing more violent spatial fluctuations, the Larkinsons had to resort to this improvised solution to minimize the risks to the Spirit of Bentheim.

When Ves personally inspected this arrangement, he thought that this was quite a clever layout. The alloy used to hold the phasewater was known to contain the spatial activity generated by this substance, but accidents could always happen.

By splitting them up in different containers and spreading them apart from each other, any accident was unlikely to produce a chain reaction.

To be honest, it would have been safer to split up the phasewater stash and store them in different compartments on numerous ships, but Ves rejected that approach.

He did not want to lose sight of all of this wealth!

Even though 120 kg of phasewater was not as precious as the 2 metric tons that his forces had originally retrieved, it still represented an immense amount of value!

As Ves personally checked whether the Larkinson Clan retained its fair share of phasewater, Sara Voiken arrived at the vault.

It turned out that she was the one who had made the specific arrangements to safely store the phasewater.

"Thank you for your work. All of this phasewater could have produced a disaster if no one was attentive enough."

"You don't need to thank me. Gloriana assigned me this duty." The defensive specialist replied. "Besides, the containers we have aren't all that bad. The materials are far from the best, and I recommend that we purchase a better storage solution once we return to Davute, but I don't think the phasewater will produce any accidents for the time being."

Ves turned around and swept his gaze across the vault. He still needed to wrap his mind around possessing so much phasewater.

He already started to think about what to do with so much resource wealth.

One of his goals was to acquire a lot of super drives and minidrives to grant additional superluminal travel capabilities to his starships and mechs.

100 kilograms was plenty enough phasewater to add superdrives to all of his capital ships and minidrives to his key mechs!

However, was this truly the best way for him to allocate all of that phasewater? This material had many other applications. He could also sell it for a huge amount of money or trade it for all kinds of rare and exclusive goods.

Phasewater was no longer a pure resource to him anymore. When he managed to gather this much of the exotic, it became a currency of sorts.

Each kilogram of phasewater was effectively worth 200,000 MTA merits!

While there were a lot of goodies that Ves could acquire for MTA merits, the problem with them is that he could only spend them on the institutions of the Mech Trade Association.

There was no way he could directly pay MTA merits to a private company in order to obtain an expensive product!

Phasewater was much more convenient in this regard. As Ves thought about it, its status as a resource where demand was incredibly high but supply was abysmally low meant that it could function as an alternate form of high-value currency!

Ves could buy all kinds of high-value goods from companies that would ordinarily turn him away for lacking sufficient capital or prestige.

Phasewater was the most desirable resource of the Red Ocean and its availability was enough to open the doors of many companies!

Aside from that, the ability to gather a lot of phasewater in the first place was an enormous reputation booster!

Best of all, the MTA's willingness to directly exchange phasewater for MTA merits meant that this exotic was actually a way to circumvent the non-transference rule!

Ves ever wanted to grant a couple of million MTA merits to Gloriana for whatever reason, he could not touch the 211 million MTA merits that he was about to obtain.

What he could do was transfer 10 kilograms of phasewater to Gloriana, who subsequently proceeded to walk into one of the branches of the Association in order to submit her newfound bounty for MTA merits.

For a moment, he considered whether he should throw his wife a bone. While she didn't directly participate in the Purgatory Campaign alongside many of the other clansmen who remained in the Garimel System, she did contribute indirectly by helping with the design of all of the Larkinson mechs.

Most notably, she made important contributions to the Everchanger, which made all of the recent breakthroughs possible, and the B-Man, which happened to be so excellent that Vincent Ricklin achieved the state of Unity of Man and Machine during his legendary apotheosis!

As Ves imagined handing over a bottle of phasewater to Gloriana only for her to splurge it on a second handbag or a pair of overpriced designer shoes, he quickly shook his head.

On second thought, it was best if he was the only person to decide on what to do with all of this phasewater!

"Sir?" Sara asked.

"Yes, Sara?"

"Forgive me for being presumptuous, but… what do you intend to do with all of this phasewater."

"I haven't decided yet. It's way too soon for me to decide." Ves replied as he gazed in her direction. "It sounds like you have a few suggestions. Well. Out with it. What do you think we should do with all of this phasewater?"

"I think there are many worthwhile uses for this phasewater, sir. The most obvious application is to supply them to a drive manufacturer so that we can equip all of our capital ships and possibly our sub-capital ships with super drives. It's just… this might not be the best use of this rare resource."

"Hm?" Ves raised his eyebrow. "Equipping our starships with super drives will not only increase the mobility of our fleet, but also increase our safety. Our chances of evading or outrunning unbeatable opponents will be much higher if we can use warp travel to zip through deep space and enhanced FTL travel to cross from one end of Krakatoa to the other end of the zone."

"You have a point, sir, but… think of how many fantastic mechs we can design and build with this phasewater! This is a resource with the same significance to all of our mech designers as Unending alloy is to you. It is a magnificent material that we can use to design a lot of high-quality mechs that are normally impossible for us to develop and build."

It sounded like Sara Voiken had a large personal stake in how the Larkinsons should use all of the phasewater.

As a fellow Journeyman, Ves quickly understood her motivations.

There were two attractive benefits to using phasewater on mechs.

The first was that the Design Department could design all kinds of unique and extravagant minidrive-equipped mechs.

From expert mechs to elite units of high-mobility machines, the possibilities were incredible!

If a mech as powerful as the First Sword or the Shield of Samar suddenly gained cruise drives, their biggest weakness no longer existed! Distance would no longer be a major hindrance for mechs equipped with miniature warp drives.

The second benefit to designing minidrive-equipped mechs was that every Journeyman involved in their design would be able to expand their design horizons.

The novelty and stimulation of designing mechs with much more powerful mobility options was enough to make people like Ves excited!

To design a mech that not only traveled quickly but also leveraged this rare function to achieve a decisive advantage in battle was an incredibly interesting challenge!

His imagination already started to go wild with all of the special mechs that he could design.

From designing an assassin mech that could reach the enemy's backline in an instant to designing a scout mech that could explore much further from the expeditionary fleet than before, there were a lot of useful mech concepts that Ves wanted to explore!

"I think… I will take your suggestion under advisement." Ves replied to Sara. "The design possibilities are fascinating and I truly wish to explore them further. Perhaps we might succeed in putting our own spin on warp-capable mechs."

He just remembered that he had harvested the Phase King's brain during the Purgatory Campaign.

If he converted this half-dead king fish into a design spirit, wouldn't he gain the perfect spiritual support for minidrive-equipped mechs?!

Ves was curious to find out whether the Phase King could make a material difference to these kinds of mechs!