The Mech Touch

5851 Under Heavy Strain

What Ves had just done was incredibly crude.

The conditions were incredibly scuffed and inadequate.

The Dominion of Man was not designed and built with the Carmine System in mind.

Yet Ves had managed to treat her as if she was a living starship solely due to the presence of the Brain Trust.

Without this ridiculous organic element that just happened to share a faint but passing resemblance to a Carmine System, he would have never concocted such a crazy scheme!

"The pact is formed."

Ves managed to complete the most important step. He worked hard to take advantage of the available conditions and combine all of the disparate elements into a crude Carmine warship.

Yet even as Ves could feel the enormously powerful storm clouds forming above the Dominion of Man, he quickly grew concerned about the state of the fragile bond.

His jubilation and laughter quickly faded, much to the relief of the fleeters. It was not exactly pleasant when they shared the sroom with a mech designer who apparently experienced a bout of madness.

What they did not know was that the reason behind Ves' abrupt change of mood might not be a positive turn of events.

"What have you done, Ves?" Sigrund asked as he stood behind his work station. "The stress levels of all of the brain units have skyrocketed. The Alpha Plus Brains are particularly showing signs of concern. Their readings have not only spiked to the point where they are heating up at a rapid rate, but their data is also getting scrambled! Nothing about this matches the scenarios that we have planned in advance! If this pattern persists, the most sensitive nerve cells of the Alpha Plus Brains wear themselves out to the point where they are unrecoverable! The entire Brain Trust will collapse at that point! What did you do?!"

Ves grimaced. The tribulation storm hadn't even arrived yet, and it already looked like his extremely bold and daring attempt to transform the Dominion of Man into the first Carmine warship hit its first major hurdle!

In hindsight, it might not have been a good idea for Ves to skip decades of careful experimentation and work on a dreadnought right away.

The fact that he becconfronted by a whole load of complications that never occurred when he experimented with his Carmine mechs showed that his theoretical framework on the Carmine System still had a lot of glaring holes!

The good news was that the Blood Pact hadn't collapsed in an instant.

The bad news was that the newly formed spiritual connection mimicked the behavior of a piece of string that was trying to hold up a weight that far exceeded its load capacity.

It did not take Blinky's precise senses to figure out that the Blood Pact would not be able to hold for long at this rate!

Ves offered a quick explanation to Sigrund and the fleeters.

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"I have employed a classified experimental design application to tie the ancestral spirit to the Dominion of Man. While the first step has proceeded as intended, the result is much less stable than I have anticipated. There is a clear disparity in strength between the two variables!"

"Can you compensate for these complications? If not, I recommend we disconnect the Brain Trust from the rest of the dreadnought by force. The ship is already relying on her other AI core arrays to regulate her systems."

"It won't work." Ves shook his head. "The pact has already formed. If you interrupt this process now, then the Brain Trust will have to be scrapped in its entirety! The Dominion of Man might not cout unscathed either. Our only choice is to commit and hope that we can fix this mess! Do your best to keep the 5 Alpha Plus Brains as connected to each other as possible. It is vital for them to merge."

Sigrund and the other fleeter specialists clearly desired a lot more clarification from Ves, but they would never get their wish.

Not only was Ves not allowed to divulge any details about the Carmine System, he did not want the fleeters to know how extensively heput the safety and the combat effectiveness of their dreadnought at risk.

They would probably crucify him if they learned that his risky experiment had the potential to render the entire Dominion of Man inoperate or worse!

While Sigrund quickly activated a few emergency measures that would hopefully extend the longevity of the brain units under strain, Ves and Blinky desperately tried to diagnose the problem.

It soon becclear that Ves was dealing with multiple problems that all compounded in a Blood Pact that was far too weak and inadequate to cope with them at the stime.

On a fundamental level, a traditional Blood Pact was a permanent spiritual bond between a Carmine mech pilot and a Carmine mech.

In this particular case, Ves forcibly created an unconventional permanent spiritual bond with a newborn ancestral spirit and an improvised Carmine dreadnought.

There were many sketchy aspects about this model. The newborn spirit had only just cto life and was incredibly unstable.

If Ves waited for the new spiritual entity to cinto its own, the entity would have been able to increase the strength and resilience of the Blood Pact.

Apparently, the strength of the current Blood Pact was mainly based on the 'pilot' due to the fact that the 'machine' did not possess a strong or cohesive spiritual counterpart.

This was bad, because the 'machine' was not a relatively small and manageable mech, but rather a dreadnought that was 18 kilometers long!

An ordinary Blood Pact was way too small and inadequate to form a stable connection with such a massive vessel!

It did not help that the Dominion of Man did not possess an adequate Carmine System either. The improvised blood channels only covered a small fraction of the immense capital ship, and the blood sacrifice of all of the crew members was not strong enough to serve as an adequate substitute.

The Brain Trust was not able to handle the load either. Despite all of the preparations, the Alpha Plus Brains were not merging properly, thereby making it difficult to form a theoretical 'Super Brain' that possessed an effective genetic aptitude score of S!

The situation grew direr by the second. Alarms rang across the entire dreadnought while tens of thousands of spacers tried in vain to repair the issues plaguing their proud vessels.

Their efforts were doomed to fail. At most, they might be able to delay the point where something important inevitably broke.

Ves realized that it was up to him to fix the problem he created due to his recklessness.

As the acute crisis weighed down on him, he refused to crumble under the pressure.

Lesser people who becaware that their actions may have doomed one of the 8 precious dreadnoughts of red humanity would have panicked by now, but Ves had lived through so many comparable incidents that it did not take any effort for him to maintain his cool.

In fact, he always worked best when he was put under pressure.

The consequences of failure this twere so great that Ves entered into a highly focused state!

His perception of the passage of tslowed down as he rapidly analyzed the huge trouble he was in. So many different variables had gotten messed up that it was difficult to sort them all out, but Ves did so anyway due to his unflinching belief that there were always solutions to every problem!

It only took a few seconds for Ves to line out all of the acute problems and puzzle out possible solutions.

The newborn ancestral spirit's lack of power relative to the Dominion of Man was the most fundamental problem. A weak 'pilot' simply did not have the qualifications to mind-meld with such a massive and unreasonably powerful machine!

Bringing up the entity's strength was a crucial priority. The easiest way to solve this problem was to use Alexa Streon's companion spirit to rapidly nurture his latest creation.

"I shouldn't have left her behind." Ves blamed himself.

To be fair, it was unlikely that his direct disciple would have been able to provide much help. There were clear limits to how much Maia was able to boost the growth of other spiritual entities.

According to his original plan, the new ancestral spirit should have grown into power by absorbing the huge amount of spiritual feedback of people who believed in human supremacy.

This was similar to how Gaia reached the threshold of True God in record time.

However, the process of gathering spiritual feedback still took a bit of time. It did not help that the new entity was put under enormous strain shortly after its creation, thereby causing it to incur constant damage that the entity was struggling to regenerate.

Ves actually found it rather admirable that the spiritual product was able to persist under the circumstances.

He quickly activated a communication link with Dread Captain Argile.

"Activate the 2nd Caramond Contingency Plan!"

The commander of the dreadnought frowned. "We will throw secrecy out of the window if we do that. Are you absolutely certain it is necessary?"

"It is! Tis short. People need to praise and revere the suprmarshal that has once led our race to victory. The more they think about him, the more our new ancestral spirit can embody the aspect of human supremacy!"

It only took a single second for Volkert Argile to make his decision.

"Done. I have transmitted the requests and instructions. Fleet Admiral Argile will ensure that there will be no hindrances. What else do you require?"

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"Activate the 3rd Spark Reactor Contingency Plan."

That provoked a much stronger reaction from the dread captain!

"Maximizing the power output of the Spark Reactor is not a gentle process! Different energies will course throughout the entire hull. This may exacerbate our current problems."

"I know, but we don't have much choice! Just do what I say! I know what I am doing!"

Seeing that maintaining the status quo probably wouldn't lead to a good result, the dread captain nodded before implementing another dangerous plan.

"Anything else?"

"Nothing more for the tbeing. Be prepared for shocks and other disruptive phenomena. Since the gentle approach isn't working, I am switching over to a more forceful approach. Don't be too alarmed if your ship jolts a few times."

Ves cut off the communication channel before the captain could inquire any further.

It took tfor both contingency plans to cinto effect, but they should hopefully start to make a difference within the next two minutes.

"Caramond. Caramond. Caramond."

The 2nd Caramond Contingency Plan was already starting to cinto effect.

The spacers serving aboard the Dominion of Man as well as all of her escort vessels had been instructed to think really hard about a heroic figure of humanity's past.

SuprMarshal Caramond Perle was the defining hero who broke the hold of the Cosmopolitan Movement and led the human race to conquer half the galaxy!

Even though it had been many centuries since he died, the man was still famous enough to be in all of the history books.

Now, as the Red Fleet executed a mysterious order that compelled it to use all of its media and public relations channels to put this legendary hero in the forefront of human society, his nbegan to occupy more and more people's minds.

"Caramond. Caramond. Caramond."

The fleeters serving aboard the Dominion of Man were the most 'pious' of all. They continually repeated the hero's nas if they were reciting a mantra. This was not a surprise as Ves had already primed them to worship Caramond Perle for a lack of a better term.

It was working!

The newborn ancestral spirit that Ves deliberately modeled after the legendary suprmarshal of the human race was beginning to solidify!

Unfortunately, it was not enough.

Caramond wasn't growing fast enough to reverse the alarmingly rapid deterioration of the nascent Blood Pact.

The disparity between strength and load was still too great!

The ploy would have worked if Ves had chosen to bind Caramond to a Carmine mech or maybe a Carmine juggernaut, but a massive dreadnought was still too big!

This was where the Spark Reactor cin. It took a lot of tto raise its power output, but Ves could gradually feel that the Brain Trust along with many other systems began to expend a lot more energy than before!