The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

"Meow~"

Lucky flew up to Vivian Tsai and offered up his back for petting and stroking.

The shipwright couldn't resist the cuteness. She grinned and put down her data pad to play with the gem cat.

"You're not as hard and cold as I thought. What is this unusual material? I've never encountered anything like it before. I would love to find out where to get some."

Ves ruefully smiled as he sat down on the chair opposite to Vivian's desk. "You won't be able to find it anywhere else. Lucky is quite a unique existence."

Though Ves hadn't met with Vivian a lot, she already looked more comfortable in her own skin than before. Despite her relatively junior age and experience, she occupied a high position within the hierarchy of the clan.

Being thrust in a position of great responsibility always changed people. Fortunately, Vivian successfully stepped up and managed to organize an entirely new department within the Military Bureau.

With a small army of engineers, analysts, lesser shipwrights and other personnel answering to her, she had made a lot of progress in developing new capital ships while at the same time evaluating existing ones the Larkinson Clan might wish to acquire to gain an instant boost.

Right now, the meeting revolved around the latter.

After Vivian had her fill with the affectionate cat, she returned to business.

"Ahem, after several weeks of exploration, outreach, preliminary negotiations and investigations, we are ready to present you with a small list of choices that the Larkinson Clan might wish to acquire."

The decision to add another capital ship to the expeditionary fleet was not a trivial one. Making impulse purchases with ships worth more than a trillion hex credits was not done. Every buyer had to study every possible angle of a ship for an offer in order to make sure it fit their needs.

Starships, especially larger ones such as capital ships, were often individualized. These were expensive assets that were usually put to use for fifty, a hundred or even two-hundred years!

With such a long service time, it was well worth it to invest money to modify them to better suit a specific purpose.

Over time, as new generations rolled in that introduced better technology and new innovations, owners might also choose to upgrade specific parts and systems to keep up with the times.

Starships never remained static. A good crew and owner constantly invested in them and cared for them so that they delivered reliable performance.

However, the opposite also happened. Plenty of starships suffered when dysfunctional crews and awful owners handled them improperly. These vessels exhibited greater problems that caused their total lifespan to shorten considerably.

The dossiers that Vivian prepared for Ves happen to fall under the latter category.

"The conditions you have set have made it rather difficult for us to attract good offers." Vivian patiently explained. "You chose to retain the two long-range FTL drives in order to upgrade the Spirit of Bentheim. While this is your prerogative, the value of the Auralis is severely diminished now that she has lost her greater advantage."

"She's still a very good fleet carrier. It's not as if she has become worthless after losing her long-range FTL travel capabilities. She possesses excellent armor coverage that is completely intact and there are a wealth of modern military-grade systems and components inside her hull. Her capacity is also good at 600 mechs."

"The supply of good, armored fleet carriers like these is considerably higher than the supply of deep strike fleet carriers, sir. We are working in a much less favorable market environment. This has caused us to receive a large number of sketchy offers."

Ves narrowed his eyes. "Sketchy in what way?"

"Whatever you can think of." Vivian shrugged. "The people and organizations that reached out to us were opportunities trying to see whether we were gullible enough to fall for their tricks. While the capital ships they showcased all seemed like good value at first glance, our inspections revealed many issues. Worn-out FTL drives, improperly-repaired hull structure, premature stress fractures in the keel, contorted software and most egregiously unannounced downgrades. My men and I have witnessed too many instances where quality parts and systems were replaced by cheaper variants without documenting the changes."

"And this actually works?"

She nodded. "I have grown up in the shipbuilding industry and I have listened to a lot of stories from my father and his colleagues. They have all encountered instances where the clients fail to do their due diligence. There are all kinds of reasons for that and there are also sellers out there who explicitly fish for these customers. What we needed to do was show that we aren't gullible suckers. Once we rejected the outright scams, we were left with more decent offers that are actually made in good faith."

"I see. Tell me what you have encountered."

"Oh, there is quite a decent variety of second-hand ships on offer. Most of them are non-combat oriented though. Organizations tend to cling to their fleet carriers a lot tighter so there is less on them in the market. Another issue is that the capital ships on offer are usually several decades old. The worst are over a century old. While they are technically in working condition, the outdated tech, worn construction and other issues mean that they require lots of time and effort to keep them in good condition."

Ves was familiar with this condition. It happened to mechs as well. "It's not worth it to acquire ships that are in the latter stages of their product life cycle. The upfront cost might be cheaper, but we will be bleeding a lot of money to replace their failing components and perform deep repairs."

"Those are our thoughts as well, sir. This is why we are left with only a modest selection of dossiers after we have ruled out all of the vessels that exhibit an excessive degree of maintenance issues."

"Do you have any favorites you want to start off with first?"

"Here." Vivian waved her hand. Two separate projections appeared over her desk. "There is one party who is actually willing to exchange our Auralis with another fleet carrier. Since the value of their ship is substantially less than our modern military capital ship, they have also put a smaller capital ship on the table in order to make up for the difference."

Ves didn't feel very good about trading a good capital ship for two not-so-good capital ships, but there weren't many sellers out there who offered vessels of comparable value.

Most private organizations that were capable enough to own capital ships still tended to go for cheaper ones. It was too much of a risk to invest too much in a single expensive vessel only to lose this expensive boondoggle in a space accident or pirate attack.

The price to performance ratio of cheaper capital ships was also a lot more favorable. Customers had to pay exponentially more to gain a marginal degree of improvement. Any company would go bankrupt if it blindly chased after goods with the highest level of performance!

Because better vessels commanded such a high premium, it was more than fair to exchange the Auralis with two complete capital ships.

Ves immediately became attracted to a large and heavy vessel that was obviously built for war. Her hull construction looked odd. She resembled a junkheap at first glance due to all of the different materials adorning her exterior.

"What am I looking at here?"

"This is the Graveyard." Vivian introduced. "She looks odd, but there is a reason for that. First, you need to know that this is a dual-purpose capital ship. The genius part about this ship concept is that the two roles tie to each other. In combat situations, her thick armor belt allows her to act as a very sturdy shield against mass bombardment. Outside of battle, she possesses the capability to process and break down salvage."

"So she's a salvage ship with very thick armor?"

The shipwright grinned. "The Graveyard is more than that, sir. She's a salvage ship that can continually bolster her own armor plating. The reason why her exterior looks this way is because it is made out of lots of debris from fallen mechs and starships. She has been in operation for quite some time which is why her outer layers are actually made out of parts taken from thousands if not tens of thousands of different vessels and machines."

"And this actually works?"

This sounded like a ludicrous way to build up a vessel to Ves! While it sounded nice to be able to turn any piece of hardy space trash into additional armor plating, the Graveyard probably came under a lot of strain for this reason!

Due to all of the variety and inconsistency, the parameters of the ship were highly inconsistent across her hull. One section might be overburdened with mass while another side lacked protection. Ves also found it hard to believe that all of the salvaged parts were able to stick together so well.

He put much more faith in the protection offered by a uniform plate!

Vivian obviously knew what she was concerned about. "I know this ship looks dodgy, but the Graveyard is worth a deeper look. While she looks a bit rickety from the outside, she's actually quite solid. The Graveyard was built to be used this way from the start so her design incorporates many accommodations that support the use of armor plating made out of recycled space junk."

She pointed at the projection, causing it to grow in size. She tapped it again, causing a lot of different internal parts to light up in yellow.

"These are all systems that perform many different functions that keep the Graveyard balanced and her eclectic armor plating as solid as possible. The Graveyard can dynamically shift her center of mass in order to balance out her hull."

This was quite a good function. As Vivian pointed out several more critical systems that helped the defensive salvage ship maintain her function under difficult circumstances, Ves began to recognize the charm of the vessel.

"The Graveyard is a scrappy ship." He concluded. "She's not the most sophisticated or expensive capital ship, but she is definitely one of the most robust. She's adaptable and can endure a lot of rigorous circumstances."

"I agree with you, sir. Let me put it this way. If I need a combat vessel to fight against powerful opponents in civilized space, I would take the Auralis over the Graveyard any day. However, if I need a combat-oriented capital ship to function as the core of an expeditionary fleet in frontier space, then I would gladly give up all of the luxuries provided by the Auralis in favor of the more basic but less demanding Graveyard."

In other words, the Graveyard was much more suited to venture into the Red Ocean!

Ves nodded in agreement. "A salvage ship is always useful in those places. We can't always fill up our cargo holds and travel to the nearest industrial system in order to sell or process our salvage. There are times when it is much better to process them on the spot ourselves in order to obtain usable raw materials that we can use to replenish our battle losses or upgrade our assets."

"Exactly, and the best part about the Graveyard is that she can upgrade and repair her own hull without relying on any outside help! It is not a big deal if her thick, resilient but disposable armor belt incurs heavy damage. As long as the more delicate internal compartments remain untouched, her crew can renew the armor belt using the ship's own salvage processing capabilities!"

The ability to mount a ship with patchwork armor was very valuable when advanced services were unavailable or too far away. While it was possible to perform the same types of emergency repairs on the Auralis, the ship wouldn't be able to cope as well.

Yet… not everything about the Graveyard was all sunshine and roses.

"Alright, enough about the upsides of the Graveyard." Ves said. "What are the downsides? What do we have to take into account if we adopt this vessel?"