The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5655 Wrangling Alien Tech

Archetech. It was an entire discipline unto itself. Originally developed by the arche race of the Red Ocean as extensions of their remarkable 'turtle shells', archemetal and archetech possessed many revolutionary properties!

It was a much more robust and resilient way of shaping technological products. The same device made with conventional technology was much more fragile and vulnerable to external attacks than if it was made with archetech.

Archetech introduced a brand-new branch of architecture that enabled any machine to do its job while taking significantly less space. Any mech designer who mastered this alien tech could cram in a lot more functions and other goodies in a mech without exceeding its capacity.

It also had the capacity to produce unprecedentedly powerful compound effects by the simple virtue of blending a huge amount of exotics together.

The arche grew up absorbing all kinds of random metallic exotics from their mineral-rich home planet and integrating them all into their iconic archeshells.

Presumably natural evolution gradually caused the physiology of the arche to become so proficient in adapting to different exotics and generating lots of synergy with them that the arche had actually become the foremost material science experts in the Red Ocean!

Not even the puelmers could rival the arche when it came to understanding the properties of exotic materials and discovering new combinations to produce brand-new synergies!

With so many clear and obvious advantages, it should have been an obvious decision to integrate archetech in mechs.

Yet Ves was not as enthused about embracing this radical tech as his wife.

"We are not ready, Gloriana. We haven't even completed our studies into conventional first-class technologies. It is way too premature for us to apply archetech to a living mech as important as the Dark Zephyr. If we somehow botch this upgrade attempt, Tusa's battle partner may not be able to recover from the damage! Are you really willing to take such a risk?"

"We can do it, Ves. Think of how much better and more productive we have become. You have made radical improvements, and so have I. My Arachne 01 Implant Set is particularly good at helping me comprehend existing knowledge. I have already spent many hours on studying archetech ever since we originally captured an archeship. Not only has our captured vessel yielded a large amount of reference data, we can also use our privileged access to the Red Association to read the growing amount of academic articles related to this topic. If that is not enough, we exchange large amounts of MTA merits to access confidential research and persuade knowledgeable experts to teach us what they learned."

Ves mulled over her argument. "You make a few good points, but I seriously doubt it is as simple as you think to integrate archetech into the Dark Zephyr. I still think it is too soon for us to apply archetech to one of our most important mechs. I am much more willing to give it a try if you can prove you can design and build a generic archemech, but right now you don't have anything concrete for me to determine the viability of your proposal. I think you are seriously underestimating the endless of archetech and overestimating your own capabilities."

It was a bit funny that Ves had to serve as the voice of reason this time. It was usually Gloriana who played this necessary role.

This was an indication that Gloriana had truly become a lot more serious about speeding up her progress!

"What if you get stuck?" Ves asked. "Not a lot of people have started to delve into this niche form of alien tech. Even fewer of them are in a sharing mood. I have no doubt that there are entire research institutions that must have made remarkable progress in this field, but they will do their best to keep their most vital secrets to themselves. It takes a lot of time for their more advanced research findings to trickle into the public sphere. This is another reason why it may be prudent for us to wait for a couple of years."

His wife understood this well, but she still made the decision to go ahead and utilize archetech anyway.

"As I have already said, we have an entire archeship that we can base our work upon. This is an advantage that many others do not enjoy. You know as well as I do that we can make much more progress into adopting new tech if we have existing examples on hand."

"That might not be enough. Sure, we have a fancy alien ship in our possession, but it doesn't come with any manual or guidance. A lot of functions still remain a mystery to us. Our attempts to secure the cooperation of the captured arche crew members has also yielded no results as far as I am aware of. Lucky went a little overboard when he turned against his alien captors. He deshelled all of the arche that had managed to survive his rampage. Do you know how traumatic it is for an arche to lose his own archeshell? Those aliens have lost their biggest source of pride! They still remain depressed and suicidal to this day."

The lack of response from the captured arche had been a considerable source of frustration for Ves and other Larkinsons interested in archetech. It would have been a lot easier to figure out the archeship with the cooperation of willing aliens.

Unfortunately, Lucky had been way too heavy-handed when he meted out his punishment on the arche!

Gloriana should have been clear about this as well, but she remained awfully confident at this time.

"The archeship is not the only trump card in our possession. We have another way to accelerate our comprehension of archetech and design a viable archemech. Lucky!"

"Meow?"

Lucky looked up from the bowl of high-grade exotics that Gloriana had prepared for him. She had deliberately offered this meal to bribe the gem cat into showing up today.

The woman strode over and picked up the cat before he even finished his meal.

Naturally, Lucky grew upset about this move.

"Meow!"

Gloriana settled down the gem cat by stroking and scratching his head and chin. She displayed a lot of appreciation towards Lucky's fairly recent makeover. He looked a lot more mysterious than before due to his much darker coloration and the obvious archetech features on his exterior.

"Look at him, Ves. Have you ever properly stopped and thought about how much of a treasure he has become? He is made of archetech now! Not only are his internal systems clever enough to recognize the superiority of archetech compared to his previous architecture, they are also sophisticated enough to integrate profoundly alien technology almost instantly. Do you understand what this means?"

"Lucky is an impressive creation alright, but he doesn't offer as much reference value to us. If he was just a regular mechanical creation, I would have disassembled him by now. However, he is a real cat with a real personality. He is not a simulation or anything. We can't derive a clues from his archetech construction so long as we are only able to admire his exterior."

"Meow!"

Talk about disassembling his body made Lucky a lot more nervous. The gem cat squirmed in Gloriana's grasp and clung onto her shoulder in fright.

"There there, Lucky. No one is going to cut you apart so that we can study your transformed components in excruciating detail. We have no need to resort to this measure when you can already supply us the necessary information in a different manner."

"What are you talking about, Gloriana?"

His wife smirked and lifted up the cat. "Lucky, can you be dear and project a part of your internal condition?"

"Meow…"

The gem cat did as he was told and activated a projection that showed a lot of data readings as well as a fairly detailed overview of the archemetal components inside his body!

The scope of the data was not complete. Ves immediately noticed that everything related to his core functions such as his stomach and the mechanisms responsible for repairing his systems were entirely absent.

Yet that was not important. What mattered the most was that Lucky displayed a lot of useful data on how to combine human technological principles with archetech!

Unlike the captured archeship which was fully based on alien tech, Lucky was fundamentally a human creation that had steadily assimilated a lot of exotic technologies and materials.

Although his entire entire body appears to have transformed into archemetal, there was no way that native alien technology alone could allow the gem cat to compress so many features inside a miniscule package.

Lucky's self-governing body somehow found a lot of ingenious solutions that enabled it adapt some of the powerful advantages of modern human technology to archetech!

The result exceeded the sum of its parts. The arche may have invented their own brand of tech, but they were not proficient in every scientific field. They were pretty mediocre in areas other than material science and stealth tech.

Ves leaned forward and studied all of the data that Lucky's openly revealed. "This…. Is remarkable. How do you get him to expose so much?"

"Have you ever tried asking, Ves?"

"..."

He felt really stupid at the moment. Then again, he never felt the need to inquire how Lucky worked. His previous body states were not weak, but they weren't groundbreaking either.

The moment Lucky embraced archetech was the first time that Ves developed a much more intense desire to study his exceptional construction in greater detail.

This development came at the right time. Though Lucky only lifted a part of the veil that hid all of his secrets, the relatively shallow data was already enough for Ves and Gloriana to make a lot of progress!

There was no need to be too ambitious in their first try. The most important objective in developing their first true archemech was to get all of the basics right.

As long as the foundation was sound enough, there were plenty of opportunities to revisit the design of the Dark Zephyr and apply incremental improvements to the living mech's brand-new architecture!

For the first time since his wife brought up this topic, Ves truly began to believe that they could design an actual archemech.

There were still a lot of other issues, though.

"This will not be easy." Ves frowned. "First, we do not have any significant infrastructure that can properly fabricate and service mechs made out of archemetal. Second, we will have to devote additional time and effort on studying, empirical research as well as figuring out how to design a brand-

new category of mechs. This will definitely add a few months of development time to the project. In addition, we have to hope really hard that our first attempt is good enough that the overall performance of the Dark Zephyr exceeds the estimated performance parameters of our original draft design."

It was not desirable to put such a massive effort into working with archetech, only to produce an archemech that was worse than if they just designed the Dark Zephyr Mark III the normal way!

All of these were valid concerns, but his wife remained undeterred.

"We can overcome all of those issues as long as we are willing to invest in additional help." Gloriana retorted. "How much MTA merits do you have?"

"I am not entirely sure. I have authorized the clan to spend a limited proportion of my MTA merits in order to boost its development. I haven't made any big exchanges as of late, so I should have about 1 billion MTA merits in account. Do you want to spend them in order to speed up our progress?"

"Why not?" Gloriana smiled. "It is not a waste as far as I am concerned. Time is of the essence, as your recent visions have shown. Additional tutoring from the Master Mech Designers of the RA should prevent our project from stalling or suffering frequent delays. If that is not enough, we can make use of a more effective solution."

"What solution?"

"Issue a small request to the Xenotechnician. Who better to consult on alien technology than the most powerful authority in this field? With his assistance, we can quickly become one of the more proficient mech designers in the promising field of archetech!"