The Mech Touch

5743 The Red Fleet in Crisis

Sigrund experienced many changes as he continued to captain the Babylon Excavator in a dwarf galaxy gone mad.

Before the Great Severing occurred, the reconnaissance cruiser under his command conducted leisurely trips into the periphery of alien space.

The fleeters always meant to eradicate the native aliens, but the urgency had never been too great.

With the crushing warmaking potential of human civilization in the Milky Way, the real question was not whether the indigenous civilizations would be able to resist, but how expensive it would be to root them out of every star system.

Since the prevailing thought at the time was that there was no need to spend more money to conquer the Red Ocean than they needed to, the fleeters did not mobilize their fleets at a larger scale.

That came back to bite them when the Great Severing cut off the human immigrants from their powerful home civilization.

The Common Fleet Alliance of the Milky Way had abruptly become out of reach. The Red Fleet that emerged from the initial shock and chaos found itself in a completely different position for the first time in four centuries.

The fleeters were outnumbered and outgunned. The quality of their warships may be stellar, especially given that they were constantly in the process of upgrading them with hyper technology, but their quantity left much to be desired!

If that was not bad enough, the severe resource shortage and the Red Fleet's anemic resource base in human-occupied space made it a lot more difficult to construct new first-class warships.

Red humanity was severely lacking in high-end resources!

Although a huge amount of shipyards were currently in operation, the shipbuilding companies had already been forced to adjust to the painful conditions imposed by their new reality.

Warships could no longer be clad in thick and heavy first-class hull plating anymore. The resource requirements were too exorbitant to sustain for long. The vessels needed to be leaner and more cost-effective, which was a demand that was practically alien to the fleeters.

Other sacrifices had to be made as well. Phasewater became increasingly more precious and needed to be rationed to the point where smaller warship classes barely received any allotment of it these days.

The emergence of hyper technology partially compensated for this shortcoming, but it was not enough.

The cold hard truth was that the loss of just one warship became increasingly harder to replace.

If not for the fact that they did their best to salvage any piece of valuable warship wreckage after an engagement, the logistical challenges of the Red Fleet would have been ten times worse!

Still, as a fleeter officer who had increasingly distinguished himself in both ship command and technological development, Sigrund had become more cognizant of the dire state of his organization.

The long-term prospects of the Red Fleet were not good. The huge constraints on resources continually took a toll on its combat readiness. Irreplaceable resources were being spent and lost during each serious engagement.

The worst part about all of this was that the Red Association was doing a lot better in comparison!

Mechs were smaller and more efficient. They were more versatile and adapted a lot faster to the changing circumstances. The power of high-end mechs could rival that of entire warships due to reasons that boggled the mind.

Although the mechers alone did not have the numbers to win the war by themselves, their combat machines were much better suited to fight in an environment that had become affected by exotic radiation!

Perhaps a lot of fleeters still remained stubborn enough to stick to their unrelenting belief in the superiority of their warships, but as the procurement of new hulls and supplies became increasingly more constrained, even the hardliners began to recognize the cold hard reality of operating with a minimal resource base.

By the time the first year of the Age of Dawn came to a close, the fleeters had slowly come to a consensus.

"Our doctrines and approach needs to change. We can no longer cling to the old ways anymore."

The Common Fleet Alliance was a slow-moving organization by nature, and it was difficult for the Red Fleet to shake off these tendencies.

However, sheer necessity forced more and more fleeters to embrace change as an essential means to secure their continued survival.

Not only had the fleeters slightly loosened the previously unquestionable duonopoly on the use of warships, they also started to increase their engagement with the space peasants they previously despised and ignored.

Necessity drove their efforts to engage in serious diplomacy with numerous first-rate and second-rate states.

Trading resources for permissions was ultimately a worthwhile exchange. Many humans had become reacquainted with the power of warships, and desired to obtain it at nearly any price.

This helped relieve the Red Fleet's immense resource shortages, but only by a small measure.

For better or worse, the fleeters needed to reinvent their warships even further.

As painful as it was to admit it, they had little choice but to learn from the aliens and adopt much of their design approach.

Relying on vast amounts of hull plating for protection became increasingly less tenable.

Azure energy shield generators presented a much more efficient solution in terms of resources. The best ones still required high-grade exotics to construct, but the required quantities were not as severe.

The only resource that was truly crucial was phasewater. The inability to harvest enough phasewater in human-occupied space meant that the fleeters needed to go on the offensive if they wanted to obtain more phasewater.

The only way to gain significant quantities of it was by actively confronting the aliens.

While the fleeters often managed to harvest a bit of phasewater from every battle, the loss rate was still considerable.

This was why raiding alien space was the only viable way to secure a more substantial supply of phasewater.

Sigrund, in his guise as Captain Zonrad Reze, had been responsible for setting up much of these raids since the start of the Red War.

He received mission after mission that instructed him to bring his lightly upgraded reconnaissance cruiser further into alien space and identify any planets with large deposits of phasewater.

The threats he and his crew faced were much greater as a result.

With more and more alien warships converging towards the border regions, it became hard for the Babylon Excavator to evade the native alien's attempts to intercept the cruiser.

Stealth was not the Babylon Excavator's forte. Her passage frequently got detected by alien long-ranged sensors. It was only due to relying on her fast and powerful superdrive that the cruiser managed to circumvent the alien interception forces before they managed to get close.

The most harrowing moment during the sequence of missions was when his vessel accidentally encountered a phase whale that was passing through the same star system!

"The phase whale is continuing to pursue our ship! The creature's warp factor is continuing to increase over time and has already overtaken the warp factor of our own vessel. It is gaining on us, captain!"

"Our attacks are ineffective! We are moving too quickly to ensure reliable hits."

"The phase whale has circled around our mines. The enemy's detection capabilities are much higher than we anticipated!"

The hull rumbled as the Babylon Excavator suffered a major impact.

"Report! What has happened?!"

"According to our preliminary investigation, the phase whale… has conducted a form of spatial manipulation that deliberately tried to induce a disruption in our active superdrive. If its design hadn't been robust enough to withstand a high degree of warp interdiction, it may have ruptured all at once, causing catastrophic internal damage to our hull."

The phase whale pursuing the Babyon Excavator had proven to be both relentless and powerful. It had to be a relatively other specimen of its kind. It was no wonder that the native aliens all revered them as the descendants of the Elder Gods.

Sigrund gritted his human teeth as he utilized his full alien hybrid processing power to calculate solutions during this crisis moment.

In order for the Babylon Excavator to get away, it needed to gain enough distance from the pursuing phase whale. There was no way to escape the creature's grasp as long as it came close enough to utilize its vast spatial abilities to lock the ship into place.

The problem was that the phase whale was continuing to gain on the reconnaissance cruiser. The naval engineers had already done all they could to overload the propulsion systems and force the superdrive to increase its warp factor.

Yet despite the use of advanced human technology, the power of an alien god proved to be even greater in this instance!

"We cannot shake off the phase whale by running away. We need to slow it down by going on the offense, if only briefly." Captain Zonrad concluded.

"Our combat simulations suggest that our reconnaissance cruiser cannot win in a direct confrontation against the phase whale, sir. Our Otendra laser cannons lack the power to break the phase whale's spatial barrier. The only weapon that can give us a chance is the Nu-Oblivion Torpedo that the command has recently assigned to us. The hyper antimatter torpedo is the only warhead in our arsenal that possesses the raw power to break the phase whale's first line of defense. However, if we launch it head-on, the creature will see it coming and intercept our torpedo before it can enter into effective range."

The destructive power of the Nu-Oblivion Torpedo was awesome, but space battles took place over such vast distances that even the greatest of explosions may be rendered harmless due to this variable.

Sigrund did not give up, though. He performed his own simulations in his mind, combining the raw processing power of his 'true body' with the human ingenuity that he had inherited from his human shell.

The effort paid off as he managed to come up with a new approach that happened to produce an optimistic result in his own simulations!

"We need to deliver the Nu-Oblivion Torpedo as close to the phase whale as possible. We cannot launch it. That would draw too much attention to it. We need to cover the entire torpedo with sensor-dampening materials and quietly eject it into space. Its lack of transphasic components will work in our favor as the phase whale will not be able to detect any suspicious spatial fluctuations."

"That will not work, sir. The phase whale has other senses as well. The Nu-Oblivion Torpedo is too large and energetic to hide when deposited into space."

The captain of the reconnaissance cruiser grinned. "That is why we must flip our hull and fire all of our Otendra cannons at full power."

"That… will cause us to slow our advance!"

"We have no other choice!"

As risky as Captain Reze's plan sounded, he had managed to lead the crew through numerous tough spots in the past.

After a brief moment of preparation, the Babylon Excavator went into action. She no longer tried to accelerate forward as much as possible, but instead began to 'somersault' her enormous hull so that her bow section faced the other way around!

The ballistic trajectory of the reconnaissance cruiser continued to fling her along her original direction, making it seem as if the RF warship was gliding backwards.

There was an important reason why the hull had to flip around. Her primary gun batteries were only able to be employed at the same time if they faced forward.

Now that the formidable Otendra Cannons were all able to align their barrels towards the approaching phase whale, they fired blindingly powerful hyper laser beams that accurately struck the pursuing creature's spatial barrier!

Just as expected, the powerful barrage failed to penetrate the seemingly impenetrable spatial barrier, but that did not stop the Babylon Excavator from firing other salvos.

Hyper laser beams after hyper laser beams continually struck the phase whale with pinpoint accuracy.

They first struck simultaneously, but eventually began to fire sequentially, making sure that the phase whale continually became blinded by a shower of intense light and heat.

The alien monstrosity grew annoyed more than anything and tried to evade the attacks in order to spare itself from getting blinded.

This was bad as it not only became harder for the Otendra Cannons to land a hit at this extreme range, but the phase whale also risked moving too far away from the Nu-Oblivion Torpedo that the Babylon Excavator had quietly dropped in her wake.

"Let me take over fire control!" Captain Reze insisted.

His vastly superior mental processing capabilities allowed him to increase the hit rate of the Otendra Cannons once again, but strangely enough the opposite took place.

The phase whale got struck with less hyper laser beams than before.

As the weapons officer was readying himself to retake control over his station, he froze when he realized what his captain tried to accomplish.

The phase whale was not evading as hard as before. The creature gained confidence and started to close the distance at a faster pace.

Just as the hungry predator was about to commence another long-range spatial strike that was meant to sabotage the escaping human vessel's superdrive, the phase whale suddenly panicked as it finally registered a dangerous object on a collision course!

The surrounding space started to shake just before an immense antimatter explosion engulfed the location in total cataclysm!

As the intense radiation and interference started to fade, the sensors of the Babylon Excavator discovered the state of the phase whale.

"It's… it's still alive!"

Just before the crew were afraid that the pursuit was about to continue, the frazzled sensors managed to glean more details.

"The phase whale is alive, but injured! It is bleeding phasewater into space. It is under no condition to persist in its pursuit!"

The Babylon Excavator was saved!

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