5105 Missing Shell
Ves hoped that Lucky remained in good shape by the time the Phobos caught up to the fleeing archeship.
He wanted to urge the Phobos to go faster, but the masterwork expert mech had little choice but to restrain his full mobility in order to maintain the effectiveness of the Seferath transphasic active stealth system.
Ves had yet to encounter a stealth system that was advanced enough to hide the very obvious disturbances produced by warp bubbles.
He did not believe it was impossible to find a way to dampen the emissions and other activity produced by warp travel.
He just hadn't entered a circle or come into contact with players who possessed the high technologies that he desired.
He was still a second-class Senior Mech Designer for the most part. He had yet to enter the most powerful ranks of red humanity, though he was working hard to increase his status and earn the qualifications to make contact with those who held true power in the current society.
Ves initially thought that it might take an hour or more for the Phobos to quietly overcome the headstart of the fleeing alien vessel.
However, the archeship oddly ceased her forward acceleration and drifted off into space on a ballistic trajectory.
Though the ship still remained in motion due to Newton's First Law of Motion, it had become a lot easier for the Phobos to shorten the distance due to the latter's continued ability to accelerate forward.
The Phobos just had to exert a little bit of extra effort to prevent himself from overshooting the archeship.
As the expert stealth mech slowly approached the coasting alien vessel, neither Ves nor Venerable Zimro Belson understood what was going on inside the ship.
Why had the archeship stopped her acceleration when she had not yet created enough distance from the other alien ships?
Why was the ship not employing more measures to reduce the odds of repeat infiltrations?
Why did Ves sense that the ship suddenly contained a lot less life than before!
All of these questions and doubts caused the two Larkinsons to become a lot more vigilant about this odd and suspicious situation.
Ves asked for clarification from the Golden Cat.
"What is going on inside the ship? Why has it become less responsive? Did Lucky manage to break out of his cage and neutralize the alien crew somehow?"
"Nyaaaa..." Goldie replied in an uncertain tone.
Her response hardly clarified the situation at all. Ves was still left with many unanswered questions. The only certainty was that Lucky's situation was no longer as acute as before.
"Is it safe to take a look inside?"
"Nyaa nyaa."
"Very well. Thank you for the intel." Ves said before he turned to issue an instruction to Venerable Zimro.
"Let's scout out the situation first. I need you to send out your least noticeable fiend to observe the conditions inside the archeship with as little fuss as possible. If the arche are still in control of their archeship, I don't want the aliens to realize that we have snuck up on them again."
"Understood." The expert pilot nodded. "I will dispatch Ahriman. Out of all of the Geist System's current collection of fiends, he is the best at hiding his presence, especially when there are pockets of darkness inside the ship."
Ves created a diverse range of fiends to populate the Geist System. Death energy was hardly the only main ingredient he used to create them. He made use of various other spiritual energy attributes to create fiends in order to increase the versatility of his expert stealth mech.
Compared to many other fiends, Ahriman looked a lot less vicious and violent.
Different from fiends like Mephisto and Nosferatu that would not hesitate to kill all of the hostiles that entered their sight, Ahriman was okay with keeping his aggression in check.
What he liked the most was to remain hidden and expose his presence as little as possible.
As a fiend that was mainly composed of shadow energy, darkness was his home and his ally.
He liked to stay away from brightly lit areas and the noisy activity of large crowds.
Ves deliberately conceived of a fiend like Ahriman to act as a spy and a secret observer that could linger in the same place for hours on end.
The other fiends were not as suitable for these kinds of boring observation missions. Their violent and destructive tendencies made them far too restless to stay in one place at a time.
They were all creatures of action who were prone to resisting their instructions whenever their instincts took over!
In order to prevent Ahriman from becoming an uncontrollable beast, Ves deliberately designed the fiend to possess a lot more rationality and capacity for thought than the rest of his own kind.
The result was a fiend that looked like an ancient and dignified noble official who was constantly surrounded by shadow.
Ahriman did not possess many abilities, but his lack of strong emotions and his deep affinity for shadows made it so that he could be just as subtle as the Phobos when he was at his best!
His only major shortcoming other than his lack of combat ability was that he could not pass through transphasic energy shields.
Ves hoped that Ahriman would grow strong enough to overcome this problem in the future. He just didn't know how much time the fiend needed to develop this crucial capability.
As Ahriman quietly slipped away from the Phobos and steadily passed through the thick and solid archemetal hull of the alien vessel, he was greeted by silence.
Archemetal systems contained almost no moving parts, so they rarely produced any noises when they were active.
However, the ship normally produced a lot more noises when she was operating normally.
For the interior to become so quiet signified that the archeship was operating significantly below her regular state!
As Ves and Venerable Zimro Belson saw through Ahriman's perspective through special means, they had the illusion that they had entered a ghost ship.
The light levels became inconsistent. Some areas were still brightly lit while other compartments and corridors had become shrouded in darkness.
A lot of marks of damage could be found throughout the ships. Marks of massed weapons fire along with random holes in bulkheads and decks showed that Lucky must have led the resident aliens on an extensive chase.
It did not take long before Ahriman encountered his first arche.
The alien was clearly dead, but the manner in which he died was strange.
Compared to the images of the arche in the MTA's internal database, the deceased alien crew member looked substantially different!
The most obvious discrepancy was the alien's distinctly lacking archeshell.
Only remnants of it remained on the back of his alien body. Ves could observe clear bite marks on the edges of the remnants of the archeshell.
He could recognize those bite marks anywhere.
"Lucky... ate the poor fellow's archeshell." Ves concluded. "He almost stripped the arche clean of his greatest source of pride as well as the anchor of his entire identity. I am not too familiar with this new alien race, but even I can deduce that an arche without a shell will probably be regarded as a cripple or an outcast among his fellow aliens."
Venerable Zimro's sight lingered on the sharp blade that the arche used to slit his own alien throat.
A lot of alien blood leaked out of the shell-less alien's body. The stains spread across the deck and formed a gruesome work of art.
Ahriman quietly moved on and phased through the next couple of bulkheads before he came across another arche.
Lucky had viciously de-shelled this particular turtle-like alien as well.
However, unlike the previous arche, this one did not muster up the courage to end his own existence.
"...Huwaakka..."
The alien moaned in constant pain and loss as he laid lifelessly on the deck.
It became clear to Ves and Venerable Zimro that it was still possible for the arche to live without their characteristic archeshells.
The aliens just couldn't handle the psychological blow from suffering such a heavy loss.
"I thought that Lucky only eats metals." The expert pilot softly remarked as his gaze moved away from the crippled alien. "Will he suffer any problems from eating so many archeshells?"
Ves shook his head. "Probably not. Lucky's diet encompasses all metallic substances. Plain metal alloys are best, but he is not above eating hard organic matter so long as they have a high enough metallic content. The arche just happens to have a habit of eating significant amounts of high-grade metallic exotics. This is the best way for them to develop the hardest and most colorful archeshells."
Ahriman encountered one crippled arche after another before he ultimately reached a chamber that looked a lot better secured than the other compartments.
Ves and Zimro immediately took note of several notable elements inside this space.
They finally caught sight of Lucky.
The gem cat looked substantially different than before!
His temperature had skyrocketed and steam constantly leaked out of his body.
"What?!"
All of the archemetal eaten by Lucky clearly had a profound effect on his body. Though the gem cat still retained his handsome feline shape and his striped and bronzed external appearance, his formerly smooth metal plates had acquired a rougher and more complicated texture!
This special texture was a distinct characteristic of archemetal.
Given that the archeship was riddled by many small-sized holes, Ves did not need to make any guesses to conclude without a shadow of a doubt that Lucky had converted to an archemetal body structure!
"Meoooowww..." Lucky wearily but aggressively expressed his resentment towards the fiend that just hovered into this special space.
His feline tone conveyed a lot of animosity and bitterness. It sounded as if Lucky suffered a big loss in order to free himself from captivity and turn the tables against his former captors!
Ves didn't see the problem, though. Lucky might have fallen into a low state now that he was suffering from the aftermath of overloading his systems, but all of the archemetal that he had managed to eat over the course of his stay on the archeship clearly benefited him enormously!
In fact, Ves was a little pissed that Lucky ate so much of this alien vessel. The archeship was an incomparably precious product of alien technology. The Larkinsons and their allies could derive many more benefits from her hull if her interior hadn't become so disarrayed!
"Meow..."
Ves shifted his sight towards the small pile of misshapen gems that laid a short distance away from the gem cat.
Different from the beautiful and symmetrically cut gems that Lucky usually produced, the ones that were currently strewn on the deck looked anything but complete.
Their surfaces were rougher. The gems were only partially cut. They also exhibited a complete lack of symmetry.
Yet despite all of these shortcomings, the nine gems all looked legitimate enough that Ves might be able to use them to augment his mechs!
Sure, the misshapen gems looked like waste products that an overstressed Lucky hastily forced out of his body without any thought, but any gem produced by a gem cat was a treasure in his eyes!
What caused Ves to become especially delighted by this fresh batch of gems was that they exhibited similar patterns to archemetal!
This meant that their properties likely had a direct relation to the characteristics of this special alien alloy!
Once Ves became satisfied with the sight of these new gems, he briefly observed the shell-less alien that had been beaten and thrown into a corner of the compartment.
This alien looked considerably larger and older than the others. It did not take much guessing to determine that he was the leader of the archeship.
Unfortunately, the once-proud arche lord no longer possessed the gravitas of before. His powerful archeshell which he had shaped and nurtured for centuries had all ended up inside Lucky's stomach at this time!
The arche lord would have killed himself by now if Lucky hadn't broken his bones!
The vengeful cat did not want to end the suffering of the arche lord so easily.
Once Ves took a good measure of the crippled and broken alien leader, he finally set his sights on the largest and most prominent archemetal constructs in the chamber.
"Meow..."
These... were superweapons.
Ves grew a lot more nervous when Ahriman's cautious inspections revealed that the archeship carried a small but extremely arsenal of anti-matter bombs and fusion missiles!
The repercussions of coming into contact with these destructive weapons were gigantic.
As long as Ves made the wrong move, he might get into a huge amount of trouble with the Red Two!
"Damn!"
