The Mech Touch

"Okay, something has gone horribly wrong at the last minute."

"You think?!" Gloriana screeched in panic and anger. "We are not supposed to be caught in the middle of a warzone, let alone a cold and barren cell! Why didn't you protect us better, Ves?! It is already bad enough that a third party has taken the senior leadership of our clan away from our seating block. It is worse when my children and I have been taken as well! We were never meant to be exposed to the dangers that you so often embrace over the course of your expeditions!"

"Hey!" Ves paused in examining the details of the ceiling of the cell and turned his armored form around to face his half-panicked wife. "This is not on me! I distinctly recall that I voiced my concerns about bringing you and my children to a high-profile event that is just begging to get attacked by the enemies of Davute. Instead of sharing my concerns about the colonial government's ability to protect us from external threats, you cared more about networking and looking pretty in front of the recorders! At least I went out of my way to buy a first-class transphasic shield generator for each of our kids!"

"YOU! It is your responsibility to protect us, but you have abjectly failed as a father! Our children are our future. You should have put more thought in protecting them and the rest of us from involuntary displacement! Due to your negligence, we may all die if we cannot find a way out of this cage. If anything befalls our daughters and our son, I will never forgive you, Ves!"

Ves wanted to throw his hands up. What was Gloriana expecting from him?! It seemed that each time anything went wrong, his wife automatically cast all of the blame on him regardless of whether he was at fault or not. It was especially galling to deal with her complaints when he had already gone above and beyond what he should do. Even he did not expect that the state had dropped the ball so much that its engineers still hadn't managed to restore the devices responsible for blocking forced teleportation attempts!

"I will definitely invest in personal anti-teleportation equipment when I get out of this place." He promised. "I made sure to equip the Spirit of Bentheim with sufficient countermeasures against this kind of stuff, but who knew it would happen in the period where I have chosen to spend my time on a planet again."

He truly found this to be a frustrating sequence of events. All of his precautions this far hadn't been enough as the enemy struck when he was depending on the protection of a state!

His deep-seethed paranoia and lack of trust in the reliability of a state actor had taken another nosedive. It seemed that no state had the ability to make good on its promises and actually prevent hostile groups from pulling off their nefarious schemes!

"IT'S TOO LATE, VES! YOU HAVE BEEN NEGLIGENT IN YOUR DUTIES AGAIN! IF YOU ACTUALLY SPENT YOUR WINDFALL OF MTA MERITS ON MORE USEFUL PURCHASES INSTEAD OF TRYING TO TURN THE SPIRIT OF BENTHEIM INTO A PSEUDO-FORTRESS, WE WOULDN'T BE STUCK HERE WHERE ANY AWFUL BEAST COULD RAVAGE US WITH IMPUNITY!"

"Hey, we are not without protection! We still have our cats, you know!"

"Meow!"

"Miaow miaow!"

While Ves and Gloriana had been arguing against each other, the two cats had instantly become more guarded and protective. They hovered around Aurelia, Andraste and Marvaine and made sure that nothing could approach the kids without their notice.

At this moment, it had become clear that they had moved to a completely different location than before!

Although the gravity was still the same as back in the Government District, the air mixture became substantially different. The temperature was hotter and there were mildly toxic gasses in the air that would slowly poison any human physique that did not possess adaptability augmentations.

Everyone's smart clothing automatically formed an insulating layer around their bodies in order to prevent this from happening. The thin and transparent helmets that had wrapped around everyone's heads filtered the oxygen in the air and ensured that none of them would have to worry about their breathable air reserves.

Even so, this was still a frightening ordeal to many people. Some of the civilians among the crowd already started to shake as they began to fantasize about all kinds of awful outcomes.

Ves and Gloriana's children remained a lot calmer than their peers. Whether it was because they wanted to make their parents proud or whether they did not possess a clear understanding of the danger they had become exposed to, all three kids tried their best to put up a brave face!

Aurelia even decided that she should step up. She moved closer to the gathering of other children, some of whom looked ready to cry!

"Assemble, junior Larkinsons!"

When only a couple of children responded to the call, Andraste walked up and smacked a few of the ones that were waffling. "What are you waiting for?! Your my big sis demands your obedience! Let us form up and move out of the way of the grown-ups so they can bring us back to our homes!"

More and more Larkinsons started to regain their bearings and sought to find a solution to their current predicament.

It was a pity that Ves and Gloriana had become embroiled in one of their lover's quarrels again.

Just as the couple were beginning to get more heated in their argument, General Verle decided that he couldn't take it any longer. He firmly strode forward and interspersed himself between the clan patriarch and his wife!

"Let us not get distracted by recriminations and talk on how we could have prevented our displacement." The middle-aged man spoke. "We are in a crisis right now. The last thing we should do is waste our time on unproductive activity. If we want to survive and make it out, we need to maintain our focus and concentrate on what we can do. Let us begin with . Who is stuck here with us and what are we capable of? How many of us are combat capable and who among us need to be protected? Let us make that clear before we proceed."

He had a good point. Though Gloriana clearly wasn't in the right mindset to focus on the matter at hand, even she understood that it would be counterproductive to implicate them all with her actions. She crossed her arms and huffed before she decided to head over to the children and see how they fared.

"Oh, did you do all of this, Aurelia? You're so brilliant! You are a much better leader than your father. Commanding our children is your first step to galactic domination!"

While Gloriana spent her time praising her eldest daughter, General Verle quickly counted and assessed the combat effectiveness of the people gathered in their current cell.

"Alright Ves, I have good news and bad news for you. Which one do you want to hear first?"

"Give me the good news. We all need a bit of optimism in this dreary place." Ves replied as his armored form waved across their cramped surroundings.

"The good news is that there are only Larkinsons among us. Back when we were taken from Block L, we had moved closely to each other. The leaders of the other groups assigned to the same seating block have either been moved to another cell or have been lucky enough to get passed over."

"That doesn't really sound like good news, Verle."

The man wearing a military dress uniform shrugged. "The bad news is that our guards haven't been brought along. They guarded our perimeter and fell just outside the range where they would have been assigned to our cells. We would have been in a much better position if your elite honor guards were by our side."

"Nitaa and the rest of my guard detail are fine." Ves answered. "I can sense they are located in a different part of this complex. Our clansmen are spread across multiple cells in an expansive space. They remain unharmed for now, but I am not comfortable with letting them stew in their cells. Who knows what our captors will do now that they have completed this step."

Not just General Verle, but many other Larkinsons turned to their patriarch in astonishment.

"How do you know that, sir?!" Cormaunt Hempkamp asked. The mech designer had been tapping at his comm for a while now but failed to receive any signals. "We are locked in an environment with strong signal suppression. These thick stone walls are not only transphasic, but they are also highly effective at blocking our sensor and communication systems!"

Ves grinned behind his helmet. Instead of telling them his answer, he concentrated his mind and poked the Golden Cat.

Nyaaaaa!

The cell briefly warmed up as Goldie briefly pulsed her glow through her connection with Ves!

Just like the Everchanger, Ves also possessed the capability of channeling his design spirits, though it cost a lot of energy to sustain the connection.

The effect was enough. Goldie's descent had brought the nexus of the Larkinson Network closer to the clansmen in the cell. Each of them could briefly feel all the bonds that led to the ancestral spirit!

Through this brief exposure, the more perceptive individuals among them could sense multiple different clusters of threads extending in different directions. There were modest clusters that led to several different horizontal directions, suggesting that there were dozens of other clansmen.

Then there was a group of threads that were so tightly packed together that it resembled an intangible laser beam!

The direction of this laser beam was quite strange. When Ves and other Larkinsons tried to determine the direction, they couldn't straightforwardly describe its orientation in any of the six conventional directions.

Instead, it seemed to follow a completely nonsensical direction that could not be properly described unless they could perceive at least 11 different dimensions!

A few people already started to experience headaches as they tried to make sense of a phenomena that ordinary humans were never meant to comprehend, so Goldie quickly retracted her power.

"Thanks to Goldie, I know where we are. If our judgment is correct, we may have fallen into another pocket space!"

That most certainly surprised a lot of Larkinsons!

They quickly accepted the conclusion once Ves explained the various clues he gathered. The Larkinsons soon theorized that Davute always had a pocket space the colonists had never discovered!

"These stupid phase whales and their habit of creating pocket spaces on different planets." Ketis grumbled as her hands twitched for a sword to hold. "I cannot believe that the founders of Davute neglected to investigate whether their impressive port system hosted phase whales in the past."

"Wait a moment." Dulo Voiken said. "If this pocket space was made by a phase whale, do we know if there are any dormant ones in our new location?"

This was a valid concern!

The Larkinsons already encountered two different variations of phase whales in two of their past expeditions. This was a remarkably high frequency. Ves wouldn't be surprised if he ended up in the clutches of another phase whale this time!

"Let me check." Ves murmured and concentrated his mind so that he could connect to a different design spirit.

His body exuded a significantly more alien vibe as the Phase King briefly descended into his mind!

Ves stared in every direction even as his recently-modified Unending Regelia seemed to sing as it faintly began to resonate with the spiritual fish-whale king!

He was grateful that getting displaced to a pocket space did not cut off his connections to his design spirits. They could play an extremely useful role in the right circumstances.

As Ves allowed the Phase King to examine the facility around him as thoroughly as possible, he secretly hoped that the fish-whale sovereign might possess a special connection to it. The design spirit might even be able to gain access rights due to his familiarity with phase whales!

That wasn't the case, unfortunately, but the Phase King did manage to gather a lot of information that others would be hard-pressed to discover!

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