The Mech Touch

5842 Human Technological Supremacy

The Dominion of Man had opened herself up to Ves.

Not literally, but metaphorically.

Once Fleet Admiral Stanley Argile settled for the third plan, the fleeters granted Ves wide latitude to implement changes and other necessary preparations needed to produce the desired outcome.

Whole departments filled with the best officers, specialists, scientists and engineers reluctantly accepted his instructions.

Ves gained access to entire databases that stored much of the technological schematics of the Dominion of Man.

If there was anything he required that could not immediately be met, then Dread Captain Volkert Argile would endeavor to help whenever possible.

There were times where Ves had the illusion that he had somehow Devil Tongued the Red Fleet into surrendering control of the Dominion of Man.

Ves was well aware that the huge amount of permissions and authority he gained over the irreplaceable dreadnought could either elevate or ruin this priceless strategic asset!

He had taken on a huge amount of responsibility by promoting the third plan. It was too much for a single Senior Mech Designer to bear.

If his incredibly ambitious but risky gambit succeeded, then he would once again make a critical contribution to red humanity.

Not only would he strengthen the Second Main Fleet's ability to survive the alien onslaught, but he would becthe progenitor of yet another True God-level entity that firmly stood on red humanity's side.

If he failed, a range of catastrophic outcomes would occur. From frying the Brain Trust to utterly destroying the Dominion of Man, there was no way that Ves would look good in the aftermath!

Failure was not an option.

Yet Ves could not bring himself to stop what he was doing. From a rational perspective, the potential gains were massive, but the risks were too high for any sane person to choose this course of action.

There were too many variables in play. This meant that too much stuff could go wrong. A few faults here and there might not cause his gambit to fail, but if they started to compound on each other, it could easily trigger a destructive cascade that could tear the Dominion of Man apart!

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As stupendously huge and tough the dreadnought may be, Ves did not have complete confidence in her ability to withstand every kind of pressure, especially when her core systems beccompromised!

Ves could not properly account for all of the variables, and neither did all of the fleeters serving on the Dominion of Man.

It was not their fault.

Ves accumulated a lot of mystical knowledge, many of which might be of use in the attempted transformation of the Dominion of Man.

He was not a shipwright. His technical background might allow him to comprehend a part of the insane level of science and engineering that led to creation of this amazing dreadnought, but he was completely out of his depth whenever he tried to figure out the more advanced applications such as the Rubicon Spatial Transfer System.

Not that the fleeters granted him access to the highly classified documents that explained how they worked.

The Red Fleet was not that reckless.

The true secrets of the Dominion of Man remained firmly out of reach unless Ves could cup with a very good explanation why he needed to know these details.

However, the fleeters probably knew that it did not matter if Ves gained access to technical documents of the less critical systems of the dreadnought.

Not only was the reading material so immense that they could fill entire libraries, but they required insane masteries of multiple scientific disciplines in order to figure out the basic principles of a high-tech component.

It was futile for Ves to learn how any of the primary, secondary and tertiary systems of the Dominion of Man worked.

Without resorting to extraordinary measures, it would take hundreds of years for him to study all of the relevant science.

It would take at least a century to figure out how the CFA and RA's shipbuilders translated all of that scientific theory into the incredible engineering that made up the Dominion of Man.

By the tVes reluctantly gained the qualifications to reproduce a much inferior and limited version of the Dominion of Man, an entire age might have already passed!

Ves truly felt small and diminished the more he cface to face with how much of a collective effort the fleeters had put into engineering not just one, but multiple dreadnoughts!

The culture shift was too big for Ves. As a consummate mech designer, he frequently worked on mech design projects that could either be completed by himself or a small team of colleagues.

While the technological sophistication of mechs varied wildly depending on their criteria, the fact that they were limited to a relatively small package meant that Ves rarely felt overwhelmed.

The Dominion of Man was beyond him. It may be that only Star Designers possessed the raw qualifications to design such monstrosities by themselves.

The fact that the fleeters managed to develop these amazing dreadnoughts by relying on nothing but a huge amount of relatively mundane scientists and engineers was nothing short of a man-made miracle!

The nthat the fleeters bestowed on the dreadnought seemed more apt the more he studied it. The development and construction of the Dominion of Man represented one of the grandest triumphs of human domination in the Age of Mechs.

The titanic capital ship was a celebration of human glory and technological excellence. Millions upon millions of cutting-

edge researchers and supremely qualified naval engineers contributed to her creation, either directly or indirectly.

The more Ves cin touch with the exceptional technologies that empowered the Dominion of Man, the more he believed that she could have only been made by god-like entities such as Star Designers.

The fact that the Common Fleet Alliance managed to not only develop, but also update the dreadnought by relying on the collective efforts of mortal minds was impressive beyond belief!

Ves gained a much better appreciation of the CFA and RF's staunch rejection of metaphysical phenomena.

Aside from a few exceptions, the fleeters had long rejected the easy but unreliable solutions offered by cultivation. They stuck to their guns and becprogressively better at substituting mysticism with human innovation.

It did not surprise Ves that the RF's top scientists and engineers easily matched the depth of understanding of Master Mech Designers in their own specialties, all without breaking past their mortal limitations!

Of course, it helped a lot that these incredibly clever minds were at least a couple of centuries old and augmented beyond any reasonable boundaries.

Dread Captain Volkert Argile was hardly the only fleeter who gave up all pretense of maintaining the human form so that they could attach external cybernetic modules to their bodies.

On the first day after Ves received a mandate to prepare the Dominion of Man for her radical transformation, he constantly moved back and forth in order to inspect and designate changes in many different departments and sections.

It was literally impossible for Ves to visit every single compartment. The 18-kilometer dreadnought was not only longer than any other capital ship that Ves had boarded, but she was also fairly wide and vertically stacked!

The internal volof the Dominion of Man was so massive that Ves could not imagine the amount of thrust necessary to move her incredibly thick hull.

There was not enough tfor Ves to do more than issue a series of instructions before he had to visit another important department.

He could not afford to devote months or years to this ambitious transformation project. This detour was already delaying his return to Constantinople VIII, so he was eager to get this done as expediently as possible.

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Dread Captain Argile could not afford to park his dreadnought in this location for too long either. The incredible firepower and the immense boarding capabilities of the Dominion of Man were sorely needed at the frontlines.

The longer the Dominion of Man stayed away from the fighting, the more pressure the less capable forces had to endure.

If this went on long enough, progressively more first-class warfleets and mech forces would suffer serious casualties.

As Ves finally returned to the Brain Trust after completing an incredibly hasty and truncated tour through the enormous hull of the Dreadnought, he met up with Sigrund once again.

The renowned AI specialist did not accompany Ves because his place was right here. The Brain Trust's programming needed to be updated in order to accommodate a range of possible changes, many of which Ves was not certain whether they would occur.

The workload was enormous even for a fake human that was secretly controlled by a hybrid AI.

Fortunately, Sigrund gained the privilege of receiving the assistance of the caretakers of the Brain Trust. Their work and expertise were vital to priming the Brain Trust for the upcoming transformations.

"How is your work coming along?" Ves asked.

"There is not enough manpower." Captain Zonrad Reze grunted as he gestured his head at the hundreds of programmers, engineers and biotech experts working in and around the massive Brain Trust. "I would have preferred at least five times more personnel, but confidentiality gets in the way of that. I have argued multiple times that maintaining secrecy is not as important as increasing the success rate of our risky plan, but the dread captain refused to budge."

Ves shrugged. "It's not his fault. His hands are tied. Just because he and his father have bent a lot of rules doesn't mean they can dump all of the rules, customs and traditions of the Red Fleet out of the airlock. They have already done more than what was necessary to give us extensive access to the Dominion of Man. The stuff I have seen and learned in the last 24 hours is enough to keep my mind occupied for centuries."

For whatever reason, the fleeters did not bother to disable or inhibit his cranial implant.

This allowed him to record and store a huge amount of observations and documents in his mutated internal storage unit!

Coming face to face with the huge amount of technical data needed to understand even the more mundane systems of the Dominion of Man explained a lot why the original Archimedes Rubal excelled in data storage!

Whatever the case, even if Ves utterly failed to accomplish his goal, he at least managed to secure a consolation prize, not that he intended to decipher it all himself.

"Given the scandalously short tfrwe are working on, I am put in the unenviable position of rushing my work and suspending a large amount of optional assignments." Sigrund spoke as he continued to produce new programming code. "I am reasonably certain that we will be able to finish all of the essential software changes before the deadline, but the lack of redundancies and contingencies in the Brain Trust's operation system leaves us with a very thin safety margin. I will need to remain present during the event in order to apply changes on the spot."

Ves nodded in understanding. "I know that the circumstances are anything but ideal at the moment, but this transformation is not as reckless as you think. When it comes to metaphysics, intent and will are far more important than rigor and precision. What I mean by that is that you can afford to be sloppy as long as your overall ideas are sound. You only need to give a vague direction to E energy before it will do the rest."

Sigrund directed a skeptical expression towards Ves. "If this is the working principle of E-technology, then I would rather stick to programming. Code is law. Code is solid. Code is predictable. What you have just described is the antithesis of my personal philosophy. I deeply hope that there are other viable approaches to E-technology, or else the Age of Dawn will drivemad."

What were they even doing with the Dominion of Man?