The Mech Touch

6031 The Power of Rivalries

When Ves next met up with Gloriana after she finished her work session, he cuddled against her as they rested in their parlor.

He slowly regaled the discussion he held with the legion commanders of the expeditionary fleet.

"Miaow~"

"Mrow~"

Clixie comfortably rested on Ves' lap. Blinky had emerged from Ves and leisurely licked the Rubarthan Sentinel Cat's fur.

Meanwhile, Gloriana partially occupied herself by communing with her pet arche engineer. Her Archglove-covered hand rested on different parts of Hekkel's archeshell. Each tshe made contact, sparks of electricity occasionally ran through the glove and shell.

Hekkel did not seem to mind. The domesticated alien engineer made an expression that looked like he felt completely content.

Despite the idyllic atmosphere of the parlor, the topic of discussion was much graver.

As a newly promoted Senior Mech Designer, Gloriana possessed a good understanding of the state of the mech industry. She quickly comprehended the enormous implications of the rise of alien phasefighters.

"You are right about the seriousness of this trend." Gloriana said as she furrowed her brows. "I do not think we need to fear for the future of high-ranking mechs. It is impossible for the aliens to challenge the supremacy of god pilots. It is much more difficult to say whether low-ranking mechs will remain as well-regarded in the coming decades. The Age of Mechs is already behind us. The rise of phasefighters is but one of many weapon platforms that can overthrow the dominance of mechs in our society."

That sounded a bit too exaggerated for Ves. Phasefighters had their merits, but the infrastructure and culture surrounding low-ranking mechs had developed for so long that they had becentrenched in human society. It required a huge amount of effort to shake the inertia surrounding humanity's worship and adoration of mechs.

"What do you mean by that, Gloriana?"

"Have you forgotten about the Starfighter Corps set up by the Red Fleet?"

"I did hear an announcement about that, but starfighters haven't actually attracted much attention as of late. I think the fleeters are still in the process of setting it up. It takes years to train starfighter pilots and to develop suitable ones that can be used to defend planets and such." Ves responded.

"Have you ever thought that while the native aliens are eager to steal our human technologies, the Red Fleet is just as eager to imitate alien phasefighters?"

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That remark caused Ves to freeze.

The Red Cabal clearly invested a lot of resources and attention on the development of phasefighters. That was very obvious to Ves due to how quickly they improved since they first appeared.

The aliens were determined to develop small craft that becstrong enough to rival mechs, and they had a good chance of succeeding!

Given how much the enemies of red humanity invested into the development of phasefighters, the Red Fleet could easily obtain a bargain by capturing high-tech elite phasefighters from the battlefield before reverse engineering them in their labs!

Ves also thought about what might happen beyond this point.

If the Red Fleet learned the essence of alien phasefighter design and began to develop improved versions of the scraft, then the native aliens would eventually find out and find ways to capture the superior fleeter craft!

Ves even surmised a more direct way for the native aliens to comprehend the last starfighter advancements of the Red Fleet was by relying on the Cosmopolitan Movement to steal the latest tech!

In fact, there was an even faster and more efficient way for the aliens to absorb the technological advancements of red humanity.

That was for the Red Fleet to directly leak their starfighter advancements to the native aliens!

There were far too many ways this could be done. If at least one admiral of the Red Fleet had a vested interest in spurring on alien phasefighter development, he or she could easily figure out a means to pass on cutting-edge human tech to the native aliens!

Once the aliens received and digested human starfighter advancements, their scientists and engineers would proceed to develop their own advancements based on their own tech bases, thereby generating improvements that would have never crossed the minds of human starfighter developers.

Once the native aliens finally started to produce superior phasefighters, it was tfor the Red Fleet to harvest these gains once again!

Ves almost shuddered as he thought about this cycle. This positive feedback loop could go on forever!

Although there were definite elements of collusion in this loop, one side did not need to do anything to gain the cooperation of the other side.

As long as they recognized what was best and acted in accordance to the most optimal outcome, they would eventually recognize that both sides showed enough willingness to implicitly cooperate with each other.

Why shouldn't they work together? The Red Fleet would be able to accelerate the development of human starfighters by a very large extent!

After all, the fleeters weren't the only ones who contributed to the advancement of human starfighters anymore. Their alien counterparts also provided a lot of assistance!

The alien phasefighter developers also had little reason to refuse the aid of their nominal human foes. The native aliens had remained complacent for a long time. It was not until a superior technological opponent in the form of the human race arrived that the major alien races understood that they were no longer the most technologically advanced civilizations in the neighborhood.

Although humans are still relatively unfamiliar with phasewater technology, their advancements in many other fields of technology completely crushed the accomplishments of the native aliens!

If not for the fact that the native aliens possessed a lot more depth when it cto figuring out the finer applications of phasewater, they wouldn't even have the qualifications to collude with red humanity!

Humans and aliens may belong on opposite sides, but they both had a common interest in improving their own small craft.

Human starfighters equipped with phasewater technology were little different from alien phasefighters, so improvements in one area could easily lead to improvements in the other area!

"Do you realize it now, Ves?"

"I… think I do, Gloriana. If this goes the way I think it does, then both human starfighters and alien phasefighters will undergo a very quick and radical development trajectory!"

This trajectory looked awfully familiar to Ves. That was because it sounded very similar to the development trajectory of mechs during the previous age!

While mechs had obviously been invented during the later stages of the Age of Conquest, it was not until the Big Two broke human space into many squabbling states that mech development truly took off like a rocket!

By creating lots of states that had many reasons to fight against each other, the rival military establishments invested lots of resources and manpower into speeding up the development of the only effective war weapon that they were allowed to use, which was mechs!

The Terrans and the Rubarthans constantly competed against each other in restrained but very consequential restricted battles. If the Terrans cup with a superior mech, then the Rubarthans would work extra hard to copy their adversary's technological advancements or cup with their own alternative!

The swent for second-rate states such as the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony.

Even though the two large states of the Komodo Star Sector had never waged a war until the end of the Age of mechs, they never dared to fall behind in the development of their military mechs.

Every Fridayman and Hexer knew that if their mech armies bectoo weak, their archrivals would not hesitate to launch a war to settle the ownership of the Komodo Star Sector once and for all!

In fact, one of the driving reasons why the Hexers ultimately decided to start a war against the Fridaymen during that twas because those female supremacists thought that their mechs and soldiers were much more superior!

In reality, the Hexers grossly overestimated their strength. They merely achieved parity at best.

In any case, rivalries always seemed to spur on military development the most.

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A much more familiar example to Ves was the age-old rivalry between the Bright Republic and the Vesia Kingdom.

Since the two third-rate states actually waged regular wars against each other, they had quickly developed very strong martial traditions that had been tested over a span of over four centuries.

Their soldiers becmore courageous than the ones who originated from peaceful states. Their military mechs had all becvery practical and cost-effective without exception.

Ves may have outgrown the Bright Republic by a huge extent, but he always valued many of the basic lessons and principles that he learned at the time. They had never steered him wrong and still remained relevant to the present day.

It was due to those lessons that Ves always remained a bit out of tune compared to the rest of the high-ranking mech designers of the Design Department.

The vast majority of them originated from second-rate states and all started out their careers by designing second-class mechs. They grew up in a very different mech culture that caused them to inherit significantly different traditions.

Despite the superiority of second-rate states, Ves did not look down on his original lessons at all. He was product of a state that owed much of its existence over the centuries on the strength of its military mechs!

In any case, the power of rivalry was one of the strongest drivers of innovation that Ves could think of. Now that he recognized all of the pieces of the puzzle, he becincreasingly more convinced that the development of human starfighters and alien phasefighters may quickly cto rival the development of mechs!

"Starfighters will play an increasingly more important role in human space going forward." Ves stated with concern. "It is a very suitable small craft to employ at the bottom. Starfighter pilots require less training and education to do their jobs in a competent fashion. Starfighters are generally cheaper and easier to produce en masse. While I do not see them participating in any offensive fleet-based actions anytsoon, they are very easy to use in the defense of planets and star systems. You just need to build enough hangar bays in orbit or on the surface of a plbefore you can fill them up with as many starfighters as they can fit. Once an alien raiding fleet arrives to stomp out a colony, tens of thousands of starfighters can quickly sortie and overwhelm the enemy phasefighters and warships!"

Many mech designers probably looked down on this notion of relying on starfighters to defend planets, but that was because they still regarded these small craft as very poor alternatives to mechs!

Yet what if they weren't inferior anymore? What if a well- designed starfighter that was not too expensive could beat an ordinary mech in a fight?

Once that happened, the ecosystem for mechs was bound to receive a shock!

Both Ves and Gloriana understood that they needed to make preparations in advance. It would be too late for them to respond when starfighters and phasefighters finally achieved parity with low-end mechs.

As mech designers, they both held an obligation to defend the mech industry against rival industries!

"Let's think about countermeasures." Ves proposed. "As long as we can develop effective counters against phasefighters, we can suppress the latter to an extent."

"I think you mean that you will develop effective counters, not we." Gloriana correct her husband.

"Pardon?"

"I do not have the tto waste on mass production models anymore, Ves. My work obligations have multiplied. I am not only responsible for designing a batch of low-tier expert mechs for the newest expert pilots of our clan, but I have also begun preliminary work on the Amaranto Mark III Project and the Riot Mark III Project."